I
Prague,
29th March, 1924
I
want to begin these lectures for Members by
speaking of how Anthroposophy lifts human consciousness above the
earthly and material domain simply through the light it sheds upon
the nature and being of man.
It is
hardly possible for anyone immersed in modern civilisation to think
otherwise than that during his life from birth to death he belongs to
the Earth. Membership of a spiritual world is in most cases a mere
belief or a dim inkling. Insight into the fact that man belongs to
any world other than the Earth is scarcely within the power of human
beings whose education and whole upbringing are the outcome of modern
civilisation. Nevertheless, to believe that when man is being spoken
of earthly conditions alone have to be considered is the great
fallacy of all contemporary spiritual life in the West and in Middle
Europe. The East alone has preserved a certain consciousness —
although in a decadent form — of man's connection with the
super-sensible, cosmic powers and forces around the Earth. In olden
times man felt himself dependent on the stars as well as on the
plants and the animals around him on the Earth; he knew, too, that
the Moon is not simply a physical orb revolving in space. Interest in
the Moon to-day does not really go much further than attempts to
discover whether there are or are not mountains or water there;
hypotheses are advanced, but little thought is given to any other
aspect of this neighbouring planet. As for the other heavenly bodies,
investigation is entirely concerned with their physical conditions.
In ancient times it was altogether different. Man was aware of his
dependence on the heavenly bodies just as to-day he is aware of his
dependence on the Earth.
I will
start with something that has a certain scientific importance; it is
an example that may perhaps not be to the liking of some people, but
it is easy to follow. I have often emphasised in Anthroposophical lectures that the formation of the human
embryo in earthly life, even when investigated from the purely
scientific point of view, provides the proof in itself that
something extra-earthly is at work in the process. Natural science believes
the ovum to be the most complex structure that can possibly exist on
Earth. Much thought is given to this complex structure of the ovum
and recently we have been hearing about the wonders of the atom and
the molecule! The structure of a cell is said to be indescribably
complex. But this is a fallacy, for the ovum is, in reality,
chaos; it is not
a complex structure. The chemical physical structure goes to pieces,
and before a living being can arise the ovum must have been in a
state of chaos. The very purpose of fertilisation is to produce this
state of chaos in the ovum, so that within the mother's organism
there is matter which has been completely broken down. The processes
in the mother's body produce this state of chaos. And now think of a
crystal. The Cosmos cannot work in a crystal with its hard, firm
edges; neither can the Cosmos work in the substance of a plant, which
also has solid form; nor in that of an animal. Fertilisation means
that the ovum becomes a chaos. Only then does the whole surrounding
Cosmos work in upon this germinating entity and build up the living
human form in such a way that the being of soul and spirit coming
from earlier earthly lives can enter into it.
According to modern views this is so much nonsense —
but it happens to be the truth! What is so deplorable in our time is
that when one speaks the truth it is almost inevitably pooh-poohed by
contemporary scholarship. Some people may say: “This statement
of yours may be based upon occult vision; but is it also capable of
proof?” It is indeed — and in more ways than one might
imagine. At our Institute for Biological Research in Stuttgart
remarkable confirmation of this fact has come to light.
Investigations have been made into the function of the spleen. You
know, perhaps, that the spleen has always been considered a very
enigmatical organ. The story goes that in a viva voce examination the
candidate was asked by the professor: “Can you tell me anything
about the spleen?” The candidate puzzled his brains and at last
blurted out in desperation: “I have forgotten it.”
“What a pity!” said the professor. “Nobody has ever
known anything about the spleen; you apparently were the only one,
and you have forgotten it!”
I
indicated a certain method, based on the
principles of Spiritual Science, according to which Frau Dr. Kolisko
has investigated the function of the spleen. The validity of her
results is still being questioned but they will eventually win
through, because the investigations were genuinely exact. During the
investigations something else came to light. Because of the methods
in general use to-day, one is sometimes obliged to adopt procedures
that go much against the grain, but we finally decided to excise the
spleens of rabbits. It was nothing in the least like vivisection but
a quite simple operation; and we did everything that could possibly
be done to avoid causing suffering. Unfortunately one of the rabbits
died from a chill after the operation because by an oversight it was
not taken immediately into the heated room. What result was to be
expected from this operation? After the removal of the spleen
something developed in the rabbit's body at the same place, something
to which the Cosmos could have access. As long as the spleen itself
was there the Cosmos could do nothing; but if the spleen is removed,
the etheric spleen alone remains, and the etheric spleen adapts
itself to the working forces of the Cosmos. It was to be expected,
then, that at the place where the spleen had been, something would
develop in the form that is a copy of the Cosmos, namely, the
spherical form. And this is what we actually found! When we opened
the rabbit we found a tiny organic body, spherical in shape; it had
been produced by the in-working cosmic forces — when the
condition in which the Earth alone works had been removed. This is
entirely in line with the contention that the fertilised ovum is a
body in which a state of chaos has been induced. And so karma led us
to an external proof of something that holds good in another sphere
altogether.
In many
respects it is the case that if a man's thoughts and feelings are the
outcome of contemporary civilisation, his outlook is bound to be
limited to the Earth; he is incapable of directing his gaze in any
real sense to the Cosmos. Let me remind you of what is said in the
book Occult
Science, namely that the Moon and the
Earth were originally one body, but that the Moon subsequently
separated from the Earth. This fact is revealed to seership but it is
also to some extent recognised by modern natural science.
Particularly in the last few years a certain literary and scientific
movement has been speaking — although in an erroneous way
— of this relationship of the Moon to the Earth. The Moon in
the heavens was once united with the Earth, was then ejected —
if I may so express it — and since then has been circling
around the Earth.
I must
now speak of a second fact, connected with man's spiritual
development in earthly existence. Even a purely external survey of
what men have achieved on the Earth indicates the existence of a
primordial, archetypal wisdom. It was not, of course, imparted in the
abstract, intellectual forms demanded to-day, nor was it so closely
bound up with the senses. It was imparted in a more pictorial, poetic
form. Of this primordial wisdom itself, which existed on the Earth in
times long before writing was known, nothing has remained. Echoes
have been preserved in sagas and myths, in the wonderful Vedic
literature, in the Vedanta and other Eastern texts. Anyone who steeps
himself in this literature — not in the style of Deussen who
sees only the outermost surface but for all that is an interpreter of
great renown — anyone who can get to the depths of what this
literature contains will have a profound reverence for the infinite
wisdom there expressed in a pictorial, poetic form. He will feel that
behind it all there was something unuttered and unwritten, perhaps
even greater and more significant a primordial, archetypal wisdom.
How was this wisdom attained? Men did not study as we do to-day,
imbibing the contents of book after book and so gradually amassing a
certain amount of information. Every human being who had developed a
certain insight in those ancient times knew what Inspiration is, knew
how to read in the world itself — not in books — when he
induced in himself the right attitude of soul. He knew the reality of
inner illumination; it was as real to him as the reading of books is
real to us to-day. The priests in the Mysteries brought him to the
stage where he was able to experience this inner illumination and
become aware of spiritual reality in the Universe. This indeed was
the purpose of the instruction he received in the Mysteries. He did
not feel that the illumination came to him from the clouds. If we
to-day were listening to someone talking from behind a screen, we
should not attribute the voice to some undefined source but to an
actual person. Similarly, a man who attained illumination knew: there
are Beings on the Earth who, although they are not in physical
incarnation, are the great Teachers of humanity. Man knew that he
moved among Beings who were not, like himself, incarnate in flesh and
blood but who were etheric Beings, imparting the illumination and the
content of the primordial wisdom. He knew that the Earth was peopled
not only by human beings of flesh and blood but by other Beings too,
working and living in etheric bodies.
In
studying these things we must get rid of the preconceived notion that
humanity has lived on the Earth since the time of which records exist
and that this was preceded by undefined conditions leading back to
the man ape or the ape man. This is a really ludicrous idea! What the
historians say holds good for a few centuries only, namely, that
human beings have not changed fundamentally, except that they are
supposed to have become cleverer. It is said that the Egyptians were
a superstitious people, that they had mummies and other such customs,
but apart from cleverness they are thought to have been just like
modern men. Nothing is known with any certainty of the long period of
previous history, but the view is that it leads back finally to the
man ape.
That is
a view of evolution which must be abandoned! Man peopled the
Earth before the animals, only in a different form; man is the older
being, as you can read in Occult
Science. The ancient Teachers of the
primeval wisdom did not incarnate in physical bodies but lived in
spirit bodies, and the men who communed with them, having experienced
— as we ourselves experienced — the event of the
separation of the Moon, knew that these Beings who had been among
them as great Teachers had gone forth into the Cosmos, that they were
no longer on the Earth but on the Moon. So that in truth not only the
physical substance of the Moon but these spiritual Beings too,
separated from the Earth. Once upon a time these Beings — who
do not pass through birth and death in the same way as man —
withdrew from the Earth and took up their abode on the Moon, although
the actual substance of the Moon has been involved for long ages in a
constant process of change.
This
applies equally to man. In a period of seven to eight years the
physical substances in the human body have completely changed. If
anyone imagines that the bodies sitting here are the same as they
were a few years ago, he is mistaken. The physical substance is
entirely different; the soul and spirit has remained. Natural science
is aware of this fact but pays no attention to it. The following
question was once put to me after a lecture: “It is said that
bees, as a hive, have a real link with the beekeeper, that if he has
been very devoted to his bees and then dies, the hive is aware of his
death and often dies too. How can this possibly happen? The bees as
single entities have no faculties for knowing a human being, and the
hive is only the sum total of the single bees!” — But
this is by no means correct. I answered by using the following
analogy. “Twenty years ago, two men were together. One of them
goes to America, the other stays behind; after fifteen years the
former returns from America and recognises his friend again. Yet not
a single particle of the same physical substance has remained!”
— And so it is not a question of each individual bee but of the
intelligence of the beehive as a unit and that is not really so very
different from human intelligence. As men, we are distinct from the
cells in our bodies, from our various organs. And just as no single
particle of the bodies of those who attended my lectures ten years
ago has remained, but only the soul and spirit, so, although the Moon
substance which once left the Earth has long since passed away, has
been exchanged in the Cosmos, the Beings have remained. How
these Beings have continued to participate in the life of earthly
humanity is clearly revealed to the vision of Initiation, and to
deeper observation of what we call karma. I will begin to speak
about this to-day and continue in the following lectures.
When we
make the acquaintance of a human being we do not as a rule give
sufficient thought to the fact that we have really steered our whole
earthly life towards this meeting. Acquaintance with another human
being may take two forms. If we pay close attention we shall find
more or less the following. — We get to know some person and
feel aware of an intimate bond with him, no matter what he is like
outwardly — good looking or ugly, intelligent or stupid. We pay
no attention to his outer appearance; we feel an inner bond with him.
That is the one alternative, in its extreme form. The other
alternative is this. — We make the acquaintance of someone
without feeling any inner bond, but he makes an intellectual or a
moral impression upon us. We can describe him in great detail. Our
relationship with the first acquaintance is such that if, after our
meeting, we are among other people who also know him, it goes against
the grain to talk about him; we feel a kind of embarrassment; there
is something essentially inward in our relationship
with him. But to talk about the second acquaintance is quite easy. We
say that he is intelligent, or that he is a fool; we can describe the
very shape of his nose, but we have no inner affinity with him. In
the case of some people, no sooner have we made their acquaintance
than we are always dreaming about them. We may get to know another
person extremely well; we may be with him every day but we never by
any chance dream about him because we have not been stirred inwardly.
Very rarely indeed will there by anyone like Garibaldi
[],
who felt the inner bond even before there was any direct, personal
relationship. Such cases are rare, but they do occur. The
circumstances in which Garibaldi met his first wife are very
interesting. External life affected him so little that he had no
interest whatever in women. On a voyage to the coast of Brazil he
happened to look at the land through his telescope and saw a girl
standing on the shore. At that very moment he knew that she must
become his wife. He hurried his ship to the land where a man greeted
him in a friendly way and invited him to a meal at his house.
Garibaldi accepted, and this man turned out to be the father of the
girl he had seen through the telescope! Even before the meal was
served he said to her — he spoke only Italian and she only
Portuguese — that she must be his for life. She understood, and
a very beautiful relationship was established between them. There you
have a telling example of a karmic relationship. There was something
heroic in the way the woman behaved. She accompanied Garibaldi on his
campaigns in South America and when the news came that he had fallen
on the battlefield, she went to search for him there. These were the
circumstances in which she gave birth to her child, and in order to
keep it warm she was obliged to strap it round her neck. Such
experiences helped Garibaldi to find a firmer foothold in life. His
wife eventually died and he married another woman whose acquaintance
he made in an entirely conventional way; but this marriage lasted
only for a day!
These are matters where
karma stares us in the face, indicating two ways in which karma comes
to expression between one human being and another. The karmic
relationships differ entirely according to whether a man feels an
inner bond or whether he can describe only the external
characteristics of the other person.
When we study karmic
experiences like that of an acquaintanceship where beauty or ugliness
counts for nothing but where the feeling of kinship wells up entirely
from within, we are led to discern the influence of those Beings of
whom I have said that they were the original, primeval Teachers of
mankind; they have remained active to this day, but now they work
from outside, from the Cosmos. Such relationships are of special
interest to these Moon Beings and through them they participate in
the most intimate way in the evolution of earthly humanity.
Just as
there are Beings who belong to the Moon, so there are Beings who
belong to the Sun. We have spoken of relationships where we find it
easy to describe the other person in a more external way. In these
cases it is the Sun Beings
who interest themselves in the threads that are
woven between soul and soul.
In studying human
relationships we are led away from the Earth, first of all to the Sun
and the Moon. There are human relationships in which we discern the
working of the Moon; others in which we discern the working of the
Sun. And so stage by stage we are led from the Earth to the
Cosmos.
All that
has been possible to-day is to make a beginning and we will continue
in the lectures that are to follow.
Notes:
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