The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Questions following Walter Johannes Stein’s lecture on “Anthroposophy and Physiology”

Note: Walter Johannes Stein's presentation was not transcribed. Participants' questions were submitted in writing.

Question: Why is the intensity of color perception different on the right and left?

[ 1 ] Rudolf Steiner: This has to do with the fact that, in general, a person’s entire vitality differs between the left and right sides. We are by no means organized in such a way that a person functions equally on both sides—the “left-sided person” and the “right-sided person,” if I may put it that way. What lives in our consciousness is actually always a middle state between what lives through the “left side” and what lives through the “right side,” and the extreme states—the lopsidedness and so on—are simply radical manifestations of what is already present in every human being as a potential. The difference in intensity stems precisely from the fact that we, as symmetrical human beings with these two [asymmetrical] parts, live and act with varying degrees of intensity.

The next question was: What is the significance of the heat points? To what extent should the heat points be regarded as organs of heat perception and of general internal and external perception?

[ 2 ] All in all, however, there is something to consider here that would be extremely difficult to explain in a few words. I would have to give you an entire lecture on the subject. What is referred to here as “heat points” do not actually function like the sense organs; rather, they serve to spread the sensations of heat as such throughout our organism, so that we identify ourselves with the heat within us.

[ 3 ] This expansion essentially serves to enable us to perceive ourselves as a unified being in terms of our sensation of warmth; indeed, we must recognize that we, as human beings, are organized in such a way that we rise above the animal realm through the very structure of our senses. The animal realm is, in fact, organized as our sensory physiologists usually describe it. In contrast, our human senses are structured in such a way that the orientation toward the “I” is already inherent in the individual sensory activities. The “I” is essentially a resultant of the twelve partial effects that converge from our various senses. If we were to formulate the facts precisely, we should not actually say: “We perceive through the eye.” Perception as such, however, lies in a process that takes place much earlier. What actually occurs through the eye is the integration of the perceptual process into our entire “I” process—and the same is true of the other senses—so that we are organized differently from the animal realm in that our senses are already oriented toward the “I.” This can also be demonstrated externally by the fact that the further down we go in the animal kingdom, the more dissimilar—and, in a sense, more complicated—the senses become compared to our human senses.

The next question: How should we understand biogenetic and phylogenetic processes?

[ 4 ] This will become very clear once embryology is actually practiced properly, and a sound interpretation of phylogeny will then follow from a sound practice of embryology. Current embryology is actually a very one-sided science; it essentially considers only the development from the egg cell into its complexity. However, it places very little emphasis on the vestigial organs—that is, on what disappears in the fully formed embryo—such as the amniotic sac, the allantois, the chorion, and so on. These structures regress, while what eventually becomes the visible human organs develops forward. The mistake made today is that one considers only the processes of evolution, not the processes of involution—not that which develops in the opposite direction as the other evolves. Once we begin to view embryology in such a way that we specifically take into account the organs that develop in a regressive manner—and which are subsequently shed—we will be able to correctly observe the transformations of form in phylogeny as well, and it will then become clear that what has been presented to you schematically today can be characterized as the true synthesis of everything that can be reliably traced phylogenetically.

[ 5 ] There is indeed a wealth of material available today in the empirical sciences, but this wealth of material is by no means being utilized in a rational sense. There is, so to speak, a great deal of chaos in this rich material, and as a result, the facts underlying today’s more schematic representation remain hidden from the observations of comparative anatomy, comparative physiology, and comparative biology in general. The relationships that have been indicated here—for example, the transformation, or metamorphosis, of the sense of taste into the sense of sight—are something that can already be clearly read between the lines of current physiological accounts. This can certainly already be substantiated. Likewise, this process can be observed phylogenetically across the animal kingdoms: If one traces back to rudimentary eyes that nevertheless already possess the organizational structure of the eyes found in higher animals and humans, one will discover how this metamorphosis of the sense of taste into the sense of sight can indeed be demonstrated—provided one is willing to look with an open mind.

Another question: What does the kidney actually sense, and what role does the adrenal gland play in this process?

[ 6 ] Well, the perception in question is, of course, very much rooted in the subconscious. When we use an expression like “kidney perception,” we are, of course, actually dealing with an analogical use of the word. For the point is that we can approach this perceptual process without immediately conceiving of it in a crude, clumsy way, as is the case with the external senses. The perception in question can be characterized roughly as follows:

[ 7 ] Human beings perceive, let us say, through their sense of hearing. They perceive in the way that has been described to you here today; they perceive the external world, and this perception takes place in the realm of consciousness. A perception that we might describe as the very opposite, the counterpoint to auditory perception—if we were to locate such a perception in the subconscious—we would have to characterize it by saying: Certain processes that take place in human metabolism and must be conveyed to the realm of rhythmic activity—these metabolic processes are, in a certain sense, conveyed to the rhythmic processes through something analogous to perception, just as, for example, external vibrational processes are conveyed to the brain through the perception of sound.

[ 8 ] It is therefore only possible to associate a clear concept with these things if one can rise to the level of imagining that inner vitality as it exists in the threefold human being. After all, everything that exists, for example, in the metabolic human being must be mediated to the rhythmic human being. The rhythmic human being can only be in harmony with the metabolic human being through such mediation, and this mediation is provided by kidney activity. The intensity of secretion and the quality of secretion constitute, so to speak, the mediating factor. In this way, the kidney creates a reagent for the rhythmic human being in relation to the metabolic human being.

[ 9 ] Of course, these issues can only be described in a superficial way. They delve so deeply into the workings of human society that they are really hardly suitable for a brief answer to a question.

There have also been questions about the nature of separation. What is meant by separation here?

[ 10 ] Isn't it true that one can only use the word “separation” in this case if one means the following: When we speak of the sense of warmth, we are dealing with the perception of something in the external world that is present in the same way within ourselves, so that, in a sense—as was also mentioned in today’s lecture—only the difference in level is actually perceived between external warmth and internal warmth. And it is quite true that, fundamentally speaking—though externalized—the same process is at work as with a thermometer.

[ 11 ] When it comes to the perception of sound, it is not merely a matter of penetrating something that we also carry within ourselves; nor is it merely a matter of penetrating something that is, so to speak, a shared medium in which both we and the object are situated. Rather, in the perception of sound, we penetrate something that is intrinsically characteristic of the object. We can certainly say, for example, that every metal has its own distinctive sound. So, in a sense, we penetrate into the inner being [of an object]—in a milder way than when we penetrate into the inner being of another person as we listen to them speak, as they reveal their inner self to us— we do not penetrate into anything that is shared between us and the other person—only the mediations are shared, but not the content. Thus, we step outside of ourselves by penetrating into the object through the perception of sound.

[ 12 ] This can be characterized by the fact that, as we ascend from the sense of sight to the sense of warmth—and this is even more true of the sense of sight—we are still living within a shared medium for what is perceived and for ourselves; however, something separates again when we move from the sense of sight to the sense of hearing. Therein also lies an intensification, because we do not merely perceive a sound; rather, we perceive an inner psychological process.

[ 13 ] Thus, in the case of the phonetic sense, a separation can be perceived to an even greater degree. And one cannot arrive at a schematization—if I may put it that way—or a classification of the senses in any other way than by taking into account this inner-to-outer activity of the human being, this unfolding, this ever-widening unfolding in the sense of sound. Only in this way can one arrive at an objective classification of the senses. Precisely because this has not been done, it has been overlooked that one must truly move, for example, from the sense of hearing to the sense of sound, and from the sense of sound, in turn, to the sense of concept. For it is an absolute absurdity to speak of perceiving—say, with the sense of hearing—what another person puts into language as the content of their soul. Separating these two senses—the sense of sound and the sense of tone—from one another only leads to the inability to understand anything at all about these things in the world.

[ 14 ] The point, then, is to actually set a boundary where such a boundary is provided by the objects, and to recognize this distinction, which is not yet present in the sense of warmth. What is actually perceived by the subject itself first appears in the sense of sound, intensifies more and more in the other senses—the sense of speech and so on—or even in the sense of the “I.” All of this gets mixed up. In this theory, which one hears today, the perception of the other “I” is supposed to arise when I encounter another person and see a nose, two eyes, hair, and so on, and then tell myself through a semi-conscious conclusion: I also have a nose, two eyes, hair; what he has, I also have, so what I see must have a “self,” just as I do.

[ 15 ] We see this unconscious conclusion at work today. It is often called “empathy” or something similar, as chatty psychologists—Lipps, for example—have said. We find this unconscious inference at work everywhere, and we fail to notice how immediate the process is that lies in my actually perceiving the other person’s ego.

[ 16 ] Some people who have studied such topics—such as Scheler, for example—have, however, become aware — through a somewhat more intuitive observation available to them — just how immediate this perception of the other’s “I” is, and how fundamentally, how radically different this perception of the other’s “I” is from all the processes that lead me to the inner experiences I then synthesize into the totality of inner life.

[ 17 ] I mean, what has been mentioned is a radically unfolding, multifaceted, and deeply penetrating process, during which a person’s sense of self stands on exactly the same ground as other sensory perceptions—except that this is where the realm begins to which humanity is not yet at all predisposed today. I would say that to speak of organs in the way we speak here of the organ of the sense of self—given our current psychology and physiology, which, as I mentioned earlier, have even led to the development of an analytical psychology, so-called “psychoanalysis”—would be difficult to understand in light of these complexities.

[ 18 ] But at the very least, the bare fact must be presented to the world today: that self-perception is something other than the synthesis—the synthetic synthesis—of those processes that ultimately lead to the confirmation of the existence of the subject’s inner self.

The next question: What processes are involved in dowsing?

[ 19 ] With regard to dowsing, one must carefully bear in mind in all cases that the phenomena in question involve an intensified sensory process, in which, however, the whole human being acts as the mediator. One is not dealing with internal mechanical processes or magnetic processes or the like, but rather with the intensity of the human being, which is then expressed in what is transmitted through the human being to the divining rod.

[ 20 ] The situation is such that one can already point out how people who truly have absolutely no inclination to engage with spiritual science are, in all seriousness, compelled to deal with a problem such as that of the divining rod from a physical and physiological perspective.

[ 21 ] I still remember—though I do not wish to take a position for or against this topic here—how a Viennese researcher set Hansen straight—after all, most of what Hansen was doing with hypnosis back then was nonsense—and how that same researcher is now compelled to take the phenomena of dowsing very seriously. I need only point out that, in fact, attempts to locate springs and the like with the help of the divining rod have even played a certain role during this war, so that, in fact, rigorous research is now beginning in this field. But this research fails to consider that we are not dealing here with processes separate from human beings, but rather with processes based on the fact that human beings are, as it were, integrated into the entire course of these processes. This is confirmed, for example, by the fact that the movements of the divining rod vary greatly depending on which person is using it. We are dealing with something in which human involvement in the processes plays a role in its reactions.

[ 22 ] These questions are such that, if we wanted to answer them exhaustively, it would take us all night, and that cannot reasonably be expected of us.