The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Heraclitus and Pythagoras

Ladies and Gentlemen!

[ 1 ] In my last two lectures, I took the liberty of presenting Heraclitus as a representative of the deepest insight, the deepest wisdom, as it was found in ancient Greece up until the fifth or sixth century. And I attempted to describe what has been handed down to us from him—that wisdom which Aristotle says is not the kind one is to assimilate intellectually, but rather one that requires initiation within the circle where such wisdom was cultivated, and which one must experience through one’s own personal involvement. The purpose of this reflection on Heraclitus was to show how far an individual personality, such as Heraclitus, can go, and how, on the other hand, the teachings of such a personality lead into the deepest spiritual life, against the backdrop of which Heraclitus himself also held his views.

[ 2 ] Now, as it were, to supplement and reinforce what I have said, I would like to add a few sayings, some of Heraclitus’s teachings that clearly show us how the entire essence of Heraclitus’s worldview flowed directly from these views—as I took the liberty of elaborating last time—regarding the relationship between the external world and human consciousness itself.

[ 3 ] I have shown that the essence of the Mysteries lay, first and foremost, in the fact that all the views held by the masses regarding the origin and nature of the external world are subsumed into that view of the human being which the person in everyday life grasps of his or her own “I”; that everything appears in a higher light, that human beings no longer seek the light outside in space but within themselves, that thus the highest knowledge is no longer knowledge of the external world but knowledge of the self, that this “Know thyself,” which runs through Greek wisdom, is not something secondary but the cornerstone of all Greek wisdom. In self-knowledge, knowledge of God is to be found: this, after all, is the essence of the mystery teachings. If we are ultimately led back to our own self, to the soul as that which we find when we look within ourselves; if it is true that—as with the statue at Sais—we find nothing but the human self, then this human self, which [human beings] believe to be confined to their physical life between birth and death, is not a finite self; rather, this seemingly finite self, this confined self, expands to encompass the entire universe, so that the universe ultimately becomes nothing other than the self.

[ 4 ] This is the deeper meaning underlying the mysteries. Cosmologies—theories of the origin of the world—represent nothing other than human beings who are capable of developing to the highest levels of consciousness. If the Self is truly the ultimate essence of the world, then one must say: This Self has in fact been present in what is called the origin and development of the world. What constitutes the human being is not merely a reflection of reality, as is assumed in the philosophy of knowledge. It is assumed that the world entity is complete, and that human beings are nothing more than a mere reflection. This [reflective aspect] ceases immediately when this Self appears no longer as an individual entity but as a primordial entity that has always been present throughout the entire process. It [is] therefore what human beings themselves are.

[ 5 ] To the senses, any external fact appears in a very specific way. Human belief is attached to sensory perception. This [breaks down into individual events, into individual beings] in space and time. Now, a person takes this entire event out of time and immerses it in the fire of their consciousness. Only then does it become what it is in its primordial essence, so that the process of cognition is not merely something that runs parallel to the world process, but something that is within it, something that precedes it. Cognition, then, is not a repetition of the world process, but a delving back into the primordial essence of the world, into that which actually underlies the world. Whoever is convinced, therefore, that he is not merely receiving, but pouring out his own essence and connecting it with the essence outside, recognizes in the world [...] himself. But a person can achieve this only by ascending the various rungs [of spiritual development]. That Heraclitus saw in knowledge nothing other than the highest flowering the world can produce, that he did not regard it as something that could be omitted, is evident from what has been handed down to us from him. Knowledge [normally] appears to us as something that has been added to the entire world process by chance. This is not how it appeared to Heraclitus. For him, the knowing human being was the truly existing human being; and when we grasp this, Heraclitus’s worldview will become completely clear to us.

[ 6 ] With the exception of Pfleiderer, his worldview was not clearly recognized because human beings themselves are in a state of constant flux. Pfleiderer could not help but think that Heraclitus was caught in a contradiction. He regarded the eternal flow of things as the rising and falling, the coming and going, which Heraclitus envisioned through the image of fire. The human self, the human soul, is woven into the cosmic process of the world. And yet, says Pfleiderer, it is as if Heraclitus were positing an eternal soul. On the one hand, we have the highest cosmic principle, the primordial being, which completely excludes individuality; and on the other hand, we have the human being, who nevertheless possesses a certain immortality. On the one hand, we have the great cosmic process in its continuous coming and going; and on the other hand, the individual self, which is confined between birth and death but can expand toward the divine. The mystic, the initiate, differed from the ordinary person precisely in that the contemplation of the world and the contemplation of one’s own self was a contradiction for the latter, but not for him. The essence of the Mysteries lay precisely in the fact that, through life within the world of the Mysteries, this contradiction ceased to be a contradiction. People were meant to experience something through which the deep disharmony of the world would vanish. Being initiated, participating in the Mysteries, was precisely the path to making the contradiction—which clings to ordinary views of things—disappear. Thus, for the mystics—for those who underwent initiation—the ultimate goal was this: to no longer view in the same way that phenomenon of death which instills the greatest fear in ordinary people, because it seemingly causes the physical sensory world, the ebbing and flowing world, and the eternally unfolding events and deeds to vanish into nothingness. That was the goal of the mystic. The mystic was to be led to the point of learning to perceive this most dreadful event not as that dreadful event, but as a symbol of the deepest knowledge. Thus, what was the most dreadful and terrifying thing for the ordinary person, he was to regard as an experience. That is why the god of death, Hades, was also the god of life, Dionysus. Death as a symbol, not as a fact, is to be presented to the mystic. This is what underlies all of Heraclitus’s sayings, and they can only be understood from this standpoint.

[ 7 ] When Heraclitus says, “Corpses are to be regarded as ordinary things; no importance is to be attached to the corpse”—this leads you even deeper into Heraclitus’s philosophy. In Greek, there is a certain temptation to compare the human body to a burial mound, because such a comparison can be made through a simple play on words. “Som” means “body” and “sema” means “burial mound.” This play on words was used not only by Heraclitus but by all who were involved with Greek wisdom. This word leads us much deeper into the matter. Heraclitus is thoroughly imbued with the view, which runs through the entire Greek mystical tradition, that what the sage calls the “soul” rests in the body just as the body rests in the burial mound. In a truly sublime statement, he says that the gods live what is death for ordinary beings. The immortals live the death of mortals.

[ 8 ] Here, in a Heraclitean saying, we find another form of the common conception, of common Greek wisdom, which consists in viewing death as a symbol, not as a fact, because all the individual things of the external world lose the meaning they have for the everyday person, submerge into the spiritual world, and become something entirely different there. Things in their ordinary sense are killed off; they die away before the eyes of the discerning person. They appear in their infinite, eternal significance. That which the ordinary person calls life—that is, what is most fruitful and real to him—ceases to be real. Thus, what the ordinary person calls life—what humanity calls sensory reality—can be nothing other than that which first brings life into being and causes the sensory to wither away. That is why death becomes a symbol of this higher perspective. Now, for Heraclitus, this is linked to another perspective through which he—I would say—simultaneously embodies within himself what is the fundamental conviction of all mysticism, namely, the conviction of the infinity of knowledge. Those who cling to ordinary, everyday wisdom usually come to the conclusion that we cannot go beyond the sensory realm. “We cannot, after all, penetrate the fundamental essence, the ‘thing-in-itself,’” says [Kant]. Yet even a single genuine glimpse into Heraclitus’s fundamental view can show us that Heraclitus was far ahead of the adherents of Kantian philosophy around the year 1900 on this point. Heraclitus is convinced that whoever is truly able to walk the path will, as a result, attain a profound inner experience—one that we also find among the German mystics, and particularly in Tauler—namely, that when we penetrate the very essence of the soul, when we immerse ourselves completely in it, we will encounter no limits. There are no limits to knowledge. External things are finite; we can penetrate them only to the extent permitted by our senses. But when our self-knowledge reaches a certain depth, we can step beyond into even greater depths. There are no limits to knowledge because self-knowledge cannot remain static. A God who knew everything, who was all-knowing, would be an obstacle for the mystic. Therefore, there cannot be an all-knowing and all-wise God. For the mystic, there must be something unfinished; there must be the possibility of becoming even more divine and ever more divine, of ascending to ever higher levels of perfection, of delving ever deeper.

[ 9 ] Thus, for Heraclitus, the world expands toward infinite depth through self-knowledge. This shields Heraclitus from any accusation made by those who have claimed, “I know everything.” — For he was also convinced of the impossibility of ever reaching a limit. This shows that Heraclitus also possessed the true, great, genuine humility that is the result of true, genuine self-knowledge, which can never be something perfect or complete. Thus we see that on the path that constitutes the very essence of all mystical insight, there is never despair regarding knowledge, but rather the true, genuine confidence that through continual deepening, ever new and ever deeper knowledge can be attained. This is what underlies Heraclitus’s worldview. And this conviction, which comes over a person when they become aware of it through continual deepening into the inner self, Heraclitus describes by saying that the soul strives more and more to move from the wet to the dry. The wiser a soul is, the further it moves away from the wet, the drier it becomes. Wisdom flashes through it like lightning.

[ 10 ] This shows that Heraclitus had reached the point where all external perceptions of the world are remolded in the fire of knowledge, where they begin a higher life. Now, what at first appears to us as a contradiction dissolves into a higher harmony. The contradiction that exists [on the one hand] between the cosmological worldview, which sees the world as

[ 11 ] constant coming and going, within a great cosmic harmony, and [on the other hand] the [individual] human being, who is caught between birth and death—and which then constitutes an encroachment into the human world—is resolved by the fact that the [individual] being is a truth only for the lower levels of knowledge, and that this ceases to apply at the higher [levels of knowledge]. [It also ceases] within temporal life between birth and death, [when] the light of the Eternal [shines into] temporal life, so that it appears to be one and the same with the temporal. When [in this way] individual human life appears to be of equal value, to be synonymous [with the Eternal], then the contradiction ceases. This happens because Heraclitus, on the one hand, possesses great harmony and, on the other hand, dissolves individual entities into an immortal entity, into an eternal entity. To know is to live, and to live is to overcome a contradiction that has existed from the beginning. Anyone who believes they can resolve a contradiction through intellectual speculation will not be able to move beyond the contradiction; they cannot grasp the essence of mystical insights. The mystic knows that a contradiction must first exist and that life consists in overcoming that contradiction within one’s own life. This is what Heraclitus meant to convey with his various scattered sayings. But if we have a background in the Mysteries, we can connect these sayings and thereby arrive at a coherent worldview that shows us how this personality shines brightly right into modern times, and that we have much to gain by delving into the philosophy of this wonderful personality and drawing strength from it.

[ 12 ] Now a few words regarding the Greek mystery teachings, now that we have covered Heraclitus, since I must discuss the Orphic teachings together with the Pythagorean school, which spread at roughly the same time that the Orphic teachings had reached their peak. These Orphic teachings also gave rise to a form of mysticism, and this appears to us, alongside the mysticism of the Pythagoreans, like one light beside another. [The Orphics] are on one side, the Pythagoreans on the other. We encounter the convergence of these two currents about two hundred years later in the Platonic worldviews. In these, the two currents merge.

[ 13 ] Suddenly, a higher balance between Pythagorean and Orphic mysticism appears to us. Greek mysticism aimed to [transform] the most terrifying event—death—as a fact into a symbol of ever-deepening knowledge. This was possible only if the initiates were gradually introduced to the higher stages of knowledge. They were guided very slowly. Among the Pythagoreans, too, a slow pace of guidance was the norm. This had to be the case because what mattered was not logical penetration but a vivid passage through the individual stages of knowledge.

[ 14 ] When we consider the content of [their] worldview, the Orphics appear to us to be at a higher level of scientific development than what is contained in the Greek belief in the gods. When we consider the Orphics’ cosmogony, it initially appears to us as a description of external processes. It appears to us as nothing other than mythology rendered in scientific language.

[ 15 ] Thus, in the profound Orphic worldview, we find a worldview that regards time, first and foremost, as that which existed in the beginning. It was time, then, from which everything originated. From time sprang the ether and chaos. Ether is roughly the same as what we know as fire in Heraclitus. Chaos is the entire abundance and diversity of the material world.

[ 16 ] From the union of chaos and ether—that is, the most boundless and [the] most solid—becoming arises, together with chaos. Becoming, conceived as an image, is the immediate outflow of the most rigid. It presents itself as that which gives birth, as that which brings forth. It arises from the fluid. Becoming arises from the finite and the infinite. From the egg, Chaos first gave birth to a male-female being. This being brought forth from itself a purely feminine entity. And from these two emerged the first beings, whom we encounter in Greek mythology as Uranus and Gaia. Uranus and Gaia are devoured by [Cronus], so that Zeus, in turn, absorbs within himself all the earlier world entities I have just named, [...] and revives them through himself.

[ 17 ] We may only interpret this process of the world’s creation in terms of inner processes of consciousness. Thus, this description of external facts provides what should initially be presented to the mystic. We must realize that for the mystic, time—Kronos—[...] has become a vivid experience as an existing void, as that which is not yet, but which can bring everything forth from within itself.

[ 18 ] Unfulfilled time appears as the most congruent image of becoming. For consciousness, this is translated into a state of consciousness that can be described by nothing other than memory; thus, we have no choice but to conceive of Kronos as nothing other than the eternal memory of the world. If we now translate the individual entities—not the state of consciousness of the individual beings, but if we imagine the being that has been transcended by humanity—then we attain a state of consciousness that consists solely of the memory that things are behind and beside one another and that [coming] and going within time can only be retained by connecting the individual with the other individual to form the eternal world memory.

[ 19 ] From this eternal memory of the world arises an eternal division ] into the most solid and the most rigid.

[ 20 ] Within memory, no distinction can be made between the ether and chaos. This distinction only becomes possible when the opportunity arises to differentiate between the material and the spiritual within the Eternal. These two stand in opposition to one another in such a way that the spirit creates its own dualism. The process involves allowing consciousness to unfold on its own. Through this, the material and the spiritual come into being, and it is only through this that human beings gain the ability to perceive something of the world’s very lowest level. The world is in a state of eternal becoming, and this is nothing other than the eternal transition from coming into being to passing away, from being to non-being. This eternal emergence of that which is imperceptible to the senses into a sensuous existence is the interplay between spirit and matter.

[ 21 ] The greatest minds have made this interplay an integral part of their fundamental teachings. Let us pause for a moment here to consider Goethe. As is well known, he also wrote about the metamorphosis of plants and animals. He held the view that the beings of the animal and plant kingdoms arise because everything is in a state of eternal transformation. Goethe arrived at this conclusion because he believed that a continuous interplay takes place between spirit and matter.

[ 22 ] Goethe contemplates a seed, a small material grain, it would seem, a tiny piece of formless matter that is nothing more than substance enclosed within certain boundaries. But is that the truth? The very same thing we see before us today as a small material particle will, in a very short time, stand before us as a fully developed plant, with leaves and flowers. The fully developed plant and the small seed are, in reality, one and the same—one and the same at two different points in time. In terms of substance, they are different, yet they are one and the same.

[ 23 ] What is one and the same? What is in the small seed is the same as what is in the large plant. The entire plant is contained in the seed in spiritual form. The spirit has withdrawn into the hidden realm. This same spirit, which manifests itself in the plant, already existed. The spirit reveals itself in sensory existence and is later present in the plant.

[ 24 ] In our sensory world, there is a constant diversity of the spirit, which hides itself, withdraws into a point of matter, and then spreads out again and becomes visible, so that it presents before us, in a visible form, that which it had previously kept hidden. But it is only by distinguishing between the two essences—spirit and matter—that we are able to penetrate this interplay. The seed and the plant would fall apart. We would never be able to say that they are one and the same. We would not understand this. The one who cannot perceive with the soul will say: They have nothing to do with one another. The other will say: The entire plant is already present within the seed as the multiplying spirit, which once enters sensory existence and then withdraws again. Only by unpacking the whole of reality into spirit and matter and being able to trace their interplay are we able to comprehend this interplay.

[ 25 ] We have now arrived at the state that appears to mystics as a state of becoming and giving birth. This is nothing other than the mystery of the spirit’s presence in the real world. We can imagine this through the symbol of the egg, the thing that can bring forth another—one that is, admittedly, spiritually identical but sensually different. Thus, the entire manifold world no longer presents itself as it does to the senses, but as it appears before the soul through the spiritual eye.

[ 26 ] Now we have seen that what strives upward is contained within the seed, then rises, becomes a plant, and has thus taken on a sensory existence. When we have a plant before us, the plant is still something that conceals the spirit—something that possesses more spirit than it reveals. A higher being, an animal, reveals even more spirit; and in human beings, in particular, a great diversity of spirit comes into direct sensory existence. But the entire essence of the spirit can be perceived only through spiritual work in self-knowledge, so that what lies dormant in the seed ultimately stands before self-knowledge in its true, unveiled form as a distinct spiritual essence, and the consciousness that contemplates itself—the soul that faces itself—recognizes nothing other than, in a manifest way, that which is generally hidden. The spirit that is in the seed is the same spirit that stands self-consciously before the other being—the male-female being that emerges in the diversity of the world. Comprehending this being is a central goal of the mystical worldview. It must be understood in such a way that the entire consciousness of the human being standing before it becomes spiritualized, that it becomes spirit and will, that it does not merely enter into the human being but, illuminated, presents itself to us in the external world. This is what presents itself to the mystic, who now, of his own accord, gives birth to the entire world once more. It is thus like Zeus, who represents the highest state of consciousness, having absorbed everything and himself.

[ 27 ] Thus, for the mystic, the entire cosmogony was nothing more than a foundation for understanding humanity’s progress and deepening of understanding. Yes, but in that case the concept is nothing other than his own knowledge. Yes, there was precisely the conviction that knowledge is not something added to the world, but that it is the very essence itself. The mystical experiences were to be raised to a higher level, for the mystic says that the spirit exists but is not yet present to the senses—just as the spiritual is present in the seed but has not yet spread throughout the plant, though it already existed as such. That is why all the Greek mystics say that the primordial being is not to be sought in the past.

[ 28 ] Cosmogony is not structured in such a way that the primordial being stands as the creator, but rather appears in Greek mysticism as something that is ultimately attained as a stage of knowledge, so that the process of knowledge within Greek mysticism is not a kind of communion, not a union of the human being with the eternal world-being, but an actual bringing forth. I emphasize: an actual act of bringing forth, so that for the Greek mystic, the most perfect indeed appears as a sensory creation of the world. Sensory creation and spiritual perfection could merge into one for the mystic.

[ 29 ] The other side of the mystical worldview—which did not seek to penetrate to the primordial being, but rather endeavored to understand the world through immersion in our inner world—is evident in Pythagorean thought. One school of thought sought to plant the seed in moist soil. The Pythagoreans did not plant in the soil, but devised a method—without burying the seed in the soil before bringing it to development—to discover the spiritual plant within the seed itself. How? By bringing the seed to development [spiritually]. How they sought to discover the spirit already within the seed—we will examine that next time.

FAQ:

[ 30 ] The question of “where from” is one that has been instilled in human beings. We ask it because we see becoming in the process of emergence. We see the thing becoming more perfect. There can be no doubt whatsoever that the plant, as perceived by the senses, is more perfect than the seed. What comes later is contained within what came before—not in reality, but in a spiritual sense. The word “beginning” refers to something future in the theories of the origin of the world. A final echo of the approach of a perfect kingdom can be found in early Christianity. It is the same as the kingdom of Zeus. There can be no cause without a corresponding effect. When we ask, “Is one of these present before the other?” it is only because we perceive one as occurring first. I add the force required to write with a pencil because I feel it; and this exertion of force is projected out into the world. I also find forces in the external world. We anthropomorphize the external world. I truly put myself in the things; I am truly immersed in them. The act that you perform in your mind is the primal force of the world. “Before and after” lose their meaning. The seed can look back on the plant that brought it into existence. Its own cause already exists as its own cause, but not in a sensory way, rather in a spiritual way. Every thing is its own cause and has no single cause. The effect brings itself into being. We call it force because it is a sensory, dull striving. If we imagine the force within the seed, that is already the plant.

[ 31 ] If God were to spread out His work over time, He would also have to strive for perfection. Only when He is transcendent of time and space is everything present at once; only then is He perfect. All opposites have a point where they meet. “To whom time is like eternity and eternity like time, that person is freed from all strife,” [as Jakob Böhme said]. Eternity broken down into individual moments is time. Time taken as a whole is eternity. The circle is finite; the straight line is infinite, boundless. The Orphics did not arrive at the same concepts of numbers as the Pythagoreans.

[ 32 ] Why did Plato present his views in the form of dialogues? He could not have presented them any other way. If one takes Plato’s Phaedo and follows it closely, one finds that it is a dialogue between a Socratic initiate and a Pythagorean. The method of the mysteries led to expression through dialogue.