The Sources of Artistic Imagination and the
Sources of Supersensible Knowledge
Munich 6th May, 1918
It has been
felt from of old that a certain kinship or at least a
connection exists between the impulses inherent in artistic
imagination, artistic creative power and appreciation, and
the impulses inherent in super-sensible knowledge.
Those who
come across artists realise the fear, very prevalent among;
them, that artistic creative power might be disturbed by any
approach to conscious experience of the super-sensible world
whence artistic imagination receives its impulses, such
experience of the super-sensible world as is striven for in
Spiritual Science. On the other hand it is also widely known
that certain gifted artists whose creations suggest a kind of
instreaming from the super-sensible world, do experience
something like seership in the functioning of their creative
imagination. Writers of fairy-tales or other artists who try
to depict things that seem to shine from the super-sensible
into the physical world, know how figures, but wholly
spiritual figures, appear before their eyes, so that the feel
they are conversing with these figures of phantasy, or that
these figures are conversing with each other. In such cases,
provided there is present the full consciousness which
enables a man at any moment to wrest himself away from the
visions that come to him, it is legitimate to speak of
seership in the sense of Spiritual Science. There are points
of resemblance between artistic creation, artistic
imagination and the conscious vision that can function in the
spiritual world with knowledge. Nevertheless, many people
feel obliged to adduce against the spiritual-scientific point
of view the argument that the artist ought not to allow his
original impulses to be superseded by what is consciously
assimilated of the spiritual world. This attitude ignores the
essentials of the connection between artistic imagination and
clairvoyant vision of the spiritual world. For what we mean
by clairvoyant vision is the kind of vision which unfolds
purely through activity of the soul, independently of the
bodily, physical instrument. I cannot speak at length to-day
of the extant to which it is possible for the soul, free of
all bodily influences, to live consciously in the spiritual
world. I want only to say at the outset that the
spiritual-scientific investigator is more interested in the
connections of true artistic creation and appreciation with
genuine seership, than in the connection of seership with
abnormal visionary states which, although they may be
designated as ‘clairvoyance’, are connected with
bodily conditions and are not the expressions off,
experiences of the soul in its pure state. In order, however,
to understand the real nature of the connection between
artistic imagination and seership it is necessary to realise
the difference between them and it is a considerable one.
A man who is
creating out of artistic imagination or phantasy will
not — as happens in ordinary sense-perception and
subsequent thought about what has thus been
perceived — take in and reproduce inwardly the external
world of sense. He will change it, idealise it — no
matter what name may be given to the process. The nature of
the tendency which makes a man think realistically or
idealistically, or makes his an Impressionist or
Expressionist, is not the important point. A certain
transformation of what a man reproduces within himself from
the reality takes place in all artistic activity. In artistic
creation, perception of the external world remains alive and
active. The artist adheres to his perception of the external
world. In his artistic creation there remains the image of
the conceptions which are based upon external perception and
what is connected therewith in remembrance and memory.
Everything that the artist has absorbed in life works on as
an aftermath in his subconsciousness, and the richer the
resulting experience in his soul, the fuller his productions
will be of artistic imagination, based upon his personal
surrender to sense-impressions and to his own mental pictures
and memory. The power of seership possessed by a man who
penetrates to the spiritual world through super-sensible
perception is quite different. The essential point to realise
is that a man can only penetrate into the spiritual world
when he is able to eliminate sense-perception as well as the
process of mental presentation which functions in his memory.
Remembrance, memory, the faculty of perception of external
sense-impressions, must be completely suppressed and silent
in super-sensible cognition. It is very difficult to convey to
our contemporaries that the human soul can so strengthen its
slumbering powers that soul life can function in complete
wakefulness of consciousness when the faculties of mental
presentation and perception are suppressed. When, therefore,
the striving for super-sensible knowledge proceeds by true
methods, it should not be objected that conscious seership is
composed merely of remembrances surging up from the
subconscious. The kernel of the matter is that the man who
desires to penetrate into the spiritual world as an
investigator must learn the methods which make it possible so
completely to eliminate the faculty of remembrance that his
soul lives only in immediately present impressions, unmingled
with any reminiscences arising from the subconscious; so that
the soul with its inner pictures and experiences lives in a
world which it tries to penetrate consciously; no trace of
anything unconscious or subconscious remains.
There is a
tendency in so-called theosophical, mystical striving, to
yearn for cloudy, nebulous experience of all kinds; it is
easy to understand that this should be mistaken for what we
mean by seership — even by those who believe themselves
to be adherents. We need not, however, go into that; the
point is to understand what is meant by genuine seership.
Genuine
seership differs fundamentally from the activity out of which
artistic creation arises. The constitution and attitude of
soul are quite different. Those, however, who strive for
super-sensible knowledge, as we understand it, will have
experiences of a definite kind in connection with Art.
To begin
with, a cardinal experience. It is not possible to engage in
spiritual research all day long. Seership in the spiritual
world is connected with definite periods of time. There is
full consciousness of the beginning and ending of the
condition in which the soul penetrates into the spiritual
world. While in this condition the soul is able, through its
own power, completely to disregard any impression from the
senses. All impressions of colours, sounds and the like are
absent. Perception of the spiritual world proceeds, indeed,
from this gaze into ‘Nothingness.’ I mean this:
The seer is able to eliminate everything that presses in upon
him from the external world, everything that wells up from
his ordinary faculty of remembrance into his conscious life
of soul; but even when he deliberately puts himself into this
condition, he cannot eliminate certain impressions which come
to him from works of art originating from genuine creative
imagination. I do not mean by this that the seer, when in
such a condition, receives the same impressions from works of
art as does a man who is not a seer. The seer has these
impressions in moments when higher vision is not operating.
But in moments of seership it is possible for him completely
to eliminate everything of a material nature or of the nature
of remembrance of the external world — not, however, in
connection with a work of art which enters into his ken.
All such
experiences are specific. The seer has definite experiences
in connection with each of the arts. Precisely in the details
of the experience, such words as ‘Art’ lose their
ordinary meaning. Each of the several arts, from the
standpoint of super-sensible knowledge, becomes a domain
distinct in itself. Architecture differs from music,
painting, and so on. But in order to understand the nature of
the seer's experience in connection with art, we must ask
this question: If the seer must suppress the workings of the
external world and all that belongs to the power of
remembrance, what remains to him?
The process
of mental presentation (conception) and perception are
absent, but feeling and willing are present — although in
a quite different form from that of ordinary life.
Supersensible knowledge must not be confused with the
nebulous, emotional surrender to the spiritual world which
goes by the name of mysticism. It must be realised that
super-sensible knowledge, although it buds forth from feeling
and willing, is not to be identified with them. In
super-sensible knowledge, feeling and willing must fill the
soul in such a way that the soul is at rest, that the whole
of the rest of man's being is quiescent. Feeling and willing
must unfold entirely towards within — which is not the
direction when feeling and willing are functioning in the
ordinary way. Impulses of will come to expression in the
external world; no such expression must take place in
seership. Dervish customs and the like are not the expression
of true knowledge of the spiritual world.
When feeling
and willing develop towards within, an activity of soul that
is full of light and has clear definition develops from them.
It is an activity of soul to which thought-structures are
similar. An ordinary thought-structure is ephemeral. In
seership, however, something quite objective, but no loss
full of reality than ordinary thinking, is born from feeling
and willing.
Experiences
of the seer in connection with art can be described
specifically. As he tries to penetrate inwardly into
architectonic forms and proportions, into what the architect
introduces into his buildings, by means of the thinking that
unfolds within him as a seer and is quite different from the
shadowy thinking of ordinary life, he feels related to these
architectural proportions and harmonies. It can be said that
the clairvoyant develops a new kind of thinking that is to
nothing so closely akin as to the forms in which the
architect thinks and which he elaborates: Thinking as it is
in ordinary life has nothing to do with genuine seership. The
thinking that is active in seership embraces space within its
creative experience. The seer knows that together with these
forms — they are living thought-forms — he penetrates
into the super-sensible reality behind the world of the
senses, but that he must develop and elaborate this thinking
that expresses itself in forms of the world of space. The
seer realises: In everything that expresses itself in
harmonies of proportion and form, willing and feeling are
working. He learns to recognise the forces of the universe in
these forms which weave through proportion and the relations
between numbers as they exist in his thinking; hence, in his
thinking, he feels related with what the architect creates.
As a new life of feeling — different from that of
ordinary consciousness — is quickened within him, he
feels kinship with what the architect and sculptor create in
forms. An activity of intellect is born, which thinks in
terms of objects and space-forms; and these space-forms shape
themselves into curves and the like through their own
inherent life. These are the thought-forms by means of which
the soul of the seer penetrates into spiritual reality which
is felt to be related with all that lives in the forms
created by the sculptor. Thus, it is possible to describe the
nature of the seer's thinking and new life of feeling, by
considering his experiences in connection with architecture
and sculpture.
Experiences
of seership in the domain of music and poetry are of a quite
different nature. Before he can establish connection with
music, the seer must penetrate still further than the sphere
just described. To begin with, as we have heard, this new
spiritual intellectuality develops out of the feeling and
willing that have been turned inwards. This enables the seer
to penetrate into the spiritual world, knowing that the
soul — which bears him into that world — is served by
no element whatever of the bodily organisation. Then comes
the next stages penetration into the spiritual world would be
incomplete if this next step were not taken. Not only does a
spiritual activity of intellect unfold, but the seer is as
conscious of his existence outside the body, in the spiritual
world, as he is when he is standing in the physical world
with two feet on the ground, of grasping objects and so
forth. After knowing himself to be in the spiritual world
with his different kind of thinking and perception, the seer
begins to develop a new and much deeper kind of feeling and
willing — but it is a willing that expresses itself in
the spiritual world, not in the material world. Only when he
lives consciously in this willing can certain experiences in
connection with music and:the art of poetry arise in him.
The
experiences that come from music in the realm of
super-sensible knowledge are related particularly with this
new kind of emotion and feeling. In the condition of
seership, music is not experienced as it is in ordinary
consciousness; the seer feels as though he has become one
with every tone, with every melody, as though his very soul
were living in waves of tone and sound. The soul is outpoured
into the surging tones. Hardly anything gives one a truer and
more vivid conception of Aphrodite rising from the foam of
the sea than realization of the way in which the human soul,
in the state of conscious seership, lives within and is
lifted upward from the element of music.
And just as
if around Aphrodite, as she rises over the surface of the
sea, there hovered denizens of the air, coming to her as
demonstrations of the living life of the world of space, so
does poetry associate itself with music in the consciousness
of the seer. While the soul is having the experience of being
borne upwards and again drawn within the element of music,
feeling identified with it, poetry — the poetic
element — enters with intensity into the experience of
the seer. What he experiences depends upon the degree to
which his faculty of seership is developed. There is
something unique about the art of poetry. The poet expresses
through language or other instruments of his art, what comes
from poetry itself into the sphere of the seer's experience.
For example, character in a drama, into whose mouth the poet
puts only a few words — this character shapes itself out
of these few words into a self-contained imagination of a
human personality. That is the reason why everything that is
unreal in poetry, that is mere phraseology, and not the
product of creative power, makes such a disagreeable effect
upon the seer. Writing that is not genuinely poetic but
nevertheless attempts to form something by means of
catchwords and phrases appears to him as grotesque
caricature. Whereas plastic art (architecture, sculpture) is
transformed into spiritual intellectuality, the poetic art is
transformed into plastic, objective forces which the seer
beholds. He sees what is genuine, what has been formed out of
those truly creative laws which govern all that Nature
creates and he distinguishes this sharply from what is
produced by human caprice simply out of a desire to write
poetry, although the imagination has no real link with the
creative forces of the universe. Such are the seer's
experiences: with regard to music and poetry.
The way in
which painting is experienced in seership is also specific
and unique. Let me make a rather trivial comparison. Just as
a geometrician, in order to illustrate some purely mental
image, is obliged by means of compasses and lines to
delineate it on a surface, just as the geometrician is
obliged to give body to the mental picture, so too is the
seer obliged to transpose into form, into substantiality, his
experience which is in the spiritual world, formless. To
achieve this he so intensifies the experience that he makes
it into an inner perception, into an imagination, filling it
with soul-substance, if I may use this expression. In the
inner condition of creative seership, the seer carries out a
process that is the reverse of that of painting. The painter
shapes his phantasy and imagination by the application of
inner, form-giving forces to the content of materiel
perception. From without inwards, he comes to the point where
he so transforms what exists in space that it works in lines,
forms, colours. The seer starts from the opposite side. He
densifies the content of his seership to colours, as they are
in the life of the soul; he permeates what is colourless with
colour, he develops imaginations. It is important, however,
to realise that the process used by the painter starts from
the opposite side and from there enters into the imaginations
the seer creates from within outwards.
In order to
envisage this, we should read the last chapters of Goethe's
Theory of Colours about the material-moral effects
of colours, where he says that every colour sets free a mood
or condition of soul. With this mood the seer imbues colour
into what would otherwise be colourless and formless. When
the seer speaks of the aura and of colours in what he sees,
we should understand that he is colouring what he is
experiencing inwardly, while this mood is working within him.
When the seer says that what he sees is red, he is
experiencing what in other circumstances he experienced in
connection with the colour red; the experience is the same as
it is at the sight of red — only in this case it is a
spiritual experience. What the seer beholds and the artist
charms on to canvas is identical, but it is perceived from
different sides. That is the way in which the seer comes into
contact with the artist; the meeting is a noteworthy and
significant experience, sharing that in regard to painting
super-sensible knowledge operates in a very particular way. An
instructive example is a phenomenon which constitutes a
problem for every thoughtful mind, namely, peach-colour, the
colour of human flesh, which to sincere students has both
mystery and charm, opening up vistas into great depths of
Nature and of Spirit. The seer experiences flesh-colour in a
particular way. And here I want to draw attention to a
certain matter.
When one
speaks of seership, of clairvoyance, the usual idea is that
it is something with which a few crazy people are endowed and
which lies quite outside ordinary life. This is not correct.
Serious vision is always present in life, We are all of us
clairvoyant in certain aspects. It is very important to
realise that a seer who is to be taken seriously does not
represent something that is outside life, but that is an
enhancement of life in certain directions. When are we
clairvoyant in ordinary life? We are clairvoyant in a case
that is grossly misunderstood nowadays because materialism
has given rise to such fantastic speculation about the way in
which a man becomes aware of another Ego, the Ego of another
human being standing before him. There are actually people
who say that a man becomes aware of another Ego or soul only
through subconscious deduction. We see the oval shape of the
face and its other lines, its colour, the shape of the eyes;
we have become accustomed, when we see a bodily structure
like this to assume that a human being is standing in front
of us; we draw the conclusion by analogy that such a form
contains a human being. Supersensible knowledge, however,
reveals something quite different. When we perceive a man's
form and colouring, this is a kind of perception similar in
character to the perception of the colour and shape of the
crystal. Colour, form and surface in a crystal present
themselves as they actually are in themselves. Surfaces,
colouring in the human dissolve, as it were become
transparent — in the conceptual sense. Material
sense-perception of the other human being is eliminated and
we have direct perception of the soul of the other. When we,
as human beings, stand in front of another man, a wonderful
and mysterious process is enacted in the soul that passes
right over into the other soul. The soul steps forth, as it
were, and passes over into the soul of the other. This is a
form of clairvoyance which is always and everywhere present.
This form of clairvoyance is inwardly connected with the
secret of flesh-colour, as the seer realises when he comes to
one of the,most difficult problems in seership, namely, the
clairvoyant perception of flesh-colour. To ordinary vision,
flesh-colour gives the effect of rest, repose; to the seer it
appears to be in inward movement, it is not static or final;
he perceives it as an intermediate state between two other
states. When he concentrates on the colour of a human being,
he perceives a continual wavering of the man between
blanching and a kind of reddening — at a higher level
than ordinary reddening — which becomes outstreaming
warmth. Those are the two boundary conditions between which
the colouring of man oscillates, the flesh-colour lying in
the middle. The seer is aware of a constant to-and-fro
vibration. Through the blanching he understands what the man
is in mind and intellect and, through the reddening, what he
is as a being of will, and the nature of his relation to the
external world. The higher, finer content of the character of
a man vibrates and is perceived by the seer.
You must not
imagine that seership arises when a man
‘develops’ and is then able to see spiritually
all other human beings and material objects. The way into the
spiritual world takes many forms and is highly complex.
Realisation of the innermost being of another man has as its
main problem the experiencing of the mysteries of
flesh-colour.
Thus the seer
has manifold experiences in connection with the arts. There
is still something else that is indicative of the position of
seership in life, namely, its relation to human speech, human
language.
In reality,
speech lives in three different spheres. There is the sphere
where speech can be regarded as an instrument for mutual
understanding between human beings and in science. What the
seer experiences with regard to this may seem strange, but
none the less it is a fact; the seer feels this application
of speech, as a means of everyday mutual understanding and
for the expression of intellectual science, to be a
degradation of speech to something that is alien to its
innermost nature. Seership realises speech to be the
instrument enabling a race of men to live in community. What
lives in speech, with its manifold forms and nuances of
sound, etc., is, if rightly understood, art. Speech, as the
instrument of expression in a race, is art, and the creative
power in speech is the creative power common to the people
who speak it.
Use of speech
as the means of everyday mutual understanding is really a
degeneration of its fundamental nature. Those who have a
feeling for what lives in speech and is revealed in the
subconsciousness, know that the creative power in speech is
akin to poetry, to art. Artistic natures have a disagreeable
impression when speech is debased unnecessarily into the
sphere of commonplace intercourse. Christian Morgenstern is
an example. He was not afraid to build the bridge between
artistic creation and seership; he did not believe that
artistic originality is spoilt by endeavors to penetrate into
the spiritual world; he felt that the poetic urge is in him
was akin to the forces underlying plastic, architectonic art.
Morgenstern expresses what he feels about speech when he says
that chatter is an abuse: “All careless chatter has, at
its basis, uncertainty about the import and value of the
single word. To the chatterer, speech is something indefinite,
vague ... but speech gets its own back in the very sound of such
words as Verschwommenes, Schwimmer.
Morgenstern
felt that there is a creative power in speech and that a
degeneration takes place when, in prose, speech becomes
merely an instrument of understanding between human beings.
The seer has
still a third kind of spiritual experience in regard to
speech, What he sees is not in the form of words, nor does it
express itself directly in words. Thus it is difficult for
the seer to make himself intelligible to the external world,
because most people think in words and cannot conceive of
living activity that transcends words. A man who has
conscious experience in the spiritual world has a feeling of
frustration when he has to pour into an already formed speech
what he experiences; but because he silences the factors of
mental presentations and memory, he is able to quicken within
him the creative forces of speech themselves — creative
forces that were working at the evolution of man at the stage
when speech was born. The seer must put himself into the
condition of soul-life prevailing at the birth of speech; he
must develop the twofold activity of giving form to the
Spiritual inwardly, and of so immersing himself in the spirit
of speech-formation that he is able to make the union between
the two processes. And so it is important for us to realise
that our attitude to the words of a seer must be different
from our customary attitude to words. If the seer is to
impart information he is obliged to make use of speech, but
he does this in such a way that he allows the creative forces
of speech to work; he uses the formative forces of speech. He
gives form to the spoken word by greater or less emphasis, by
speaking of certain matters first and others later, or again
by introducing illustrations at some particular point. A man
who desires to clothe spiritual truths in speech, must have a
particular technique when he wants to express what is living
within him. As regards the utterances of a seer, we must pay
attention to the “How” — to how he expresses
himself, not merely to what he says. It must be remembered
that he has first to give form; what is important is how he
speaks of things of the spiritual world, not so much what he
says. Because this is so seldom realised, and because people
think always of the ordinary meaning of words, they find it
difficult to understand a seer. He has to unfold (in a
relative sense of course) the faculty of speech-creation, so
that he expresses the Supersensible through the way in which
he speaks. More and more it will be necessary for men to
realise that the all-important factor is not the actual
content of what is said, but that through the way in which
the seer expresses himself, people have the living
impressions he is speaking out of the spiritual world. And so
speech, even in ordinary life, is an artistic activity With
speech too, the seer has a particular relationship.
And now the
question arises: Upon what are these conditions between the
seer and the artist based? Why is it that the seer cannot
ignore the impression that comes to him from a work of art?
It is because in the work of art there is something akin to
super-sensible knowledge, only in different clothing.And it is
also because the inner life of man is much more complex than
modern science is able to conceive.
I want to
speak on this subject from an angle that will seem to savour
of science, and will indicate something that must more and
more develop in order to build the bridge between the
ordinary perception of reality on the one side and artistic
imagination and super-sensible knowledge on the other. A
question arises: By means of what process does the musician
produce from within himself what lives in his music? First of
all, it must be understood that what goes by the name of
self-knowledge is usually something extremely abstract. Even
the ideas about self-knowledge held by ‘Mystics’
and nebulous theosophists are very abstract. Genuine seership
regards all such talk about experiencing the Divine in the
soul as nebulous, lacking in clarity. A human being has his
life of inner experience, his thoughts, feelings, impulses of
will; he can sink down into this realm and then speak of
mysticism, philosophy, science ... but if once he has
contacted living reality, he knows that this is all too
empty, too unsubstantial, in spite of efforts to fill it with
content. Even in intense mystical experience a man always
flutters above the reality, does not penetrate to the true
reality, experiences inner pictures only, mere aftermaths of
reality; neither does he reach reality through his ordinary
perception of the material process of Nature.
Du
Bois-Reymond has said, with truth, that contemplation of
Nature (the sense world) can never produce knowledge of what
lives in space. The scientist speaks of matter, of substance,
existing in space, but this evades the faculties with which
we try to grasp reality. In ordinary consciousness there is,
on the one side, man's inner life which does not reach to
reality and, on the other, the external reality which evades
his inner life. An abyss lies between. This abyss, the
existence of which must be realised, is an obstacle to man's
power of cognition. The only means for overcoming it, is for
the soul to develop super-sensible perception — the kind
of seership I have been describing to-day by explaining its
connection with different forms of artistic activity.
When this
faculty of seership develops, we enter into a different
relationship with our own being and with the material reality
that in present as our body. The body becomes something new,
ceases to be the object that evades and resists the inner
life. The inner life no longer hovers above the reality but
impregnates, saturates itself, within its own bodily natures
with everything that has material existence in the body. But
in all material existence there is spiritual existence,
spiritual reality.
Let us try to
envisage this by thinking of the art of music,. While a man
is unfolding musical or other mental images, and while in his
ordinary consciousness he is engaged in acts of perception,
complicated processes are taking place within the body. He
knows nothing of them, but they are taking place
nevertheless. Clairvoyant consciousness penetrates to this
inner sphere of complicated and very wonderful bodily
experience. With every out-breath the cerebral fluid in which
the brain is contained pours into the spinal marrow, passes
downwards, forces the blood into the veins of the lower part
of the body. With every in-taken breath everything is borne
upwards again. A wonderful rhythm takes place, accompanying
all our activity of mental presentation and perception.
Breathing, with its plastic rhythm, passes in and out of the
brain. A process takes place which helps to produce an
experience within the human being. It is enacted in the
subconsciousness and the soul has knowledge of it. Modern
physiology and biology are still almost entirely ignorant of
these matters, but they will, in time, become the subject of
a widespread science.
In epochs, to
the customs of which we cannot return, men were obliged to
seek for the spiritual life in a different way. It is no
longer suitable to seek for Spiritual Science in an oriental,
Indian form. This may be taken as a subject of subsequent
study, but it is quite erroneous to think that there must be
a return to Indian methods. They are not suitable for our
epoch and would lead men along a wrong path. The methods that
are right for us are of a much more intellectual kind,
although it is well to study and understand the aims of
ancient Indian culture. In Indian culture a considerable part
of the training for higher knowledge consisted in subjecting
the breathing process to rhythm; the aim was to regulate and
control the breathing. Think of this in connection with what
has been said and you will realise that the aim of the pupil
of Yoga was to develop, through inner awareness of the path
taken by the breathing, what I have been describing. The aim
was to become conscious of the ebb and flow of the breathing
process.
Our methods
are different. Those who understand such matters know that it
is not right for us, in our epoch, to sink down in this
physical sense into the bodily organism; but to endeavour
through a meditative, intellectual activity to grasp what
streams downwards and, through exercises of the will, what
streams upwards. We confront the upward and downward currents
with our life of soul, feeling their ebb and flow.
This denotes
a definite advance in human evolution. Science and the
everyday consciousness know nothing about the process, but
the soul, in its depths, is aware of it. And what the soul
experiences in this domain can, under special circumstances,
be raised up to the level of consciousness, as happens, for
instance, when a man has genuine-musical talent. How does
this happen? In the normal condition of a human being there
is a strong connection between the soul-and-spirit and the
physical body. The soul-and-spirit is closely connected with
the processes described above. When the balance is very
delicately adjusted, and the soul-and-spirit is loosely
connected with the body, this particular constitution (which
is the result of inner destiny) produces musical talent or
sensitiveness to music. Other special artistic faculties also
depend upon this labile connection. Men who are gifted in
this way are able to raise to a higher level an activity
which, in other circumstances, proceeds only in the depths of
the soul (where we are all of us musicians). When the balance
is not labile this process cannot be raised to a higher
level, and then artistic talent is lacking. A man in whom the
balance between soul and body is labile, (scientific
Philistines may speak of degeneration in such cases) such a
man raises upwards, either clearly or dimly, inner rhythmic
forces and gives them form through sound and tone. If we
study the stream of the nerve currents, from below upwards to
the brain, there we find music. The process by which the
optic nerves connected with the blood vessels, spreads out in
the eye, remains in the subconscious. Something happens here
that is eliminated when the human being; confronts external
nature; the external sense-impression is eliminated. But
between nerve-currents and sensory processes a
“poet” is present in every human being. And
again, whether or no a man is able to raise this process to a
higher level and turn it into poetry, depends upon the kind
of balance which exists between soul and body.
Think now of
the process of radiation, the current that flows downwards
and meets the stream of the blood as it branches out; at this
point our own balance or equilibrium is inserted into the
balance of the surrounding world. A most intense experience
arises in the subconscious when the human being ceases to be
a crawling baby and acquires equilibrium in the upright
posture. Something that is distorted in the ape but is of
great significance for man, namely, the line through the
central point of the body coinciding with the line of
gravity — this coincidence is an intense and profound
experience; it is an unconscious experience of the
architectonic principle. When the nerve current downwards
meets the blood-stream, architecture, sculpture are
experienced — and again the labile or rigid condition of
the balance determines whether the experience can or cannot
be raised upwards and given form.
Painting, and
what comes to expression there, is experienced inwardly at
the point where nerve-currents and blood-currents meet. The
artistic process itself is a conscious one but the impulses
underlying it are unconscious. In seership there is clear
consciousness of the impulses underlying artistic
imagination; it is an inner experience, not abstract but so
concrete and real that each single phase is discovered again
in the form and configuration of the human body. In ancient
times it was felt, and with truth, that every form, every
proportion in architecture exists also within man's own being
as he stands in the external world. The experience of these
proportions which gave rise to the architecture of antiquity
was different from the experience which expressed itself in
the Gothic style, but both styles originate from a
realisation of the connection between a man's own equilibrium
and the equilibrium of the macrocosm. The human being, in his
structure, is an image of the macrocosm. Hence the body is
called the temple of the soul. Such expressions contain great
truth. Thus we can say: The sources out of which a true
artist and a seer create, are really the same; the seer
raises to the level of consciousness both impulses that are
meant to remain such, and also those impulses which the
artist shapes into a concrete picture — only in the
artist's case the impulses remain in the subconscious. These
regions are quite separate in human experience. The fear,
therefore, that the artist's originality might be spoilt by
seership is unfounded. Seership develops out of conditions
which can be altogether separate from artistic creation and
experience; the one activity need not in any way be injurious
to the other. Indeed the contrary is the case.
The time has
arrived when men must become more and more conscious, freer
and freer in their spiritual activity. The artist himself
must bring the light of consciousness into the sphere of art,
and in this way the bridge will be built between artistic
creation and seership, between which, in reality, there are
no disturbing elements.
It is
understandable that the artist should feel uneasy about the
growth of a science of art modeled after the pattern of
modern science or intellectual aesthetics. The kind of
knowledge which would have vision enough to understand art in
its real nature is not yet in existence, but then such
knowledge is born artists will feel that it enriches and is
not in any way a destructive factor.
Those who use
the microscope know how to adjust it in order that they may
closely scrutinize the object under observation. But just as
the faculty of real ‘microscopic’ perception from
within has yet to be developed (and when this happens inner
activity does not hinder, but quickens external vision) so a
time will come when genuine seership will impregnate and
pervade the elementary faculty of production and creation in
the artist.
What is meant
by ‘seership’ is sometimes misunderstood because
in thinking about super-sensible science and knowledge people
are too apt to take ordinary, material science as their
model. Moreover, those who approach Spiritual Science
sometimes feel disappointed; instead of finding ready answers
to their commonplace questions, they find other worlds whose
problems are often much deeper than those of the material
world. In Spiritual Science new problems arise which are not
solved by theoretical speculation, and which indeed resolve
themselves into processes of life, thus generating fresh
problems. But within this world of enhanced life, man's
relationship with art remains. Hebbel actually asks for
conflicts and struggles which necessarily remain unsolved,
and he regards Grillparzer as a Philistine because, in spite
of the beauty of his writing, he resolves all conflicts
simply by managing to be a little cleverer than his hero.
Genuine seership does not dole out cheap answers, but adds
conceptions of the world to those evolved by materialistic
thought. Certain deeply thoughtful artists have realised
this. In his recent book Stufen (Steps), Morgenstern
says that those who, like the artist, really want to reach
the Spiritual must set out to assimilate what, even to-day,
super-sensible knowledge can grasp of the Divine-Spiritual. He
says: A man who is willing only to have feelings about what
can be grasped of the Divine-Spiritual to-day, in like an
illiterate who passes through life asleep with a primer under
his pillow.
This
indicates the point at which we are standing in our cultural
life. If we can realise what our epoch really needs, we
shall, like Morgenstern, be convinced that we must not remain
illiterate as regards clairvoyant knowledge; if we are
artists we must find the connection with super-sensible
knowledge. Just as it is important for seership to Pour light
into artistic creations, so is it equally important for the
Philistine seership of to-day, which is very far from having
the inspiration of the Muses, to imbibe and be enriched by
true artistic taste.
To the knower
of the spirit, the bridges that can be built between art and
seership are more important than any form of pathological
clairvoyance. Men who understand this realise that the
healing of mankind in the present and future lies in the
quest for spiritual knowledge. The light of seership must
shine out in art, in order that the warmth and splendour of
art may work in and through the wide horizons of seership.
This is necessary for all art which seeks to penetrate into
that form of true existence which is needed by man if he is
to be capable of mastering the great tasks approaching him
from unfathomed depths.
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