The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. The Deification of Man: The Role of the Arts

[ 1 ] Medieval mystics speak of what is known as the “deification” of the human being. It is an extraordinarily apt expression for an inner process, for certain spiritual experiences. Underlying this is the idea that human beings can develop more and more through their inner core of being, allowing the spiritual being to shine through the outer shell more and more.

[ 2 ] This is the essence of deification. Those who speak of it mean that human beings also originated from the spiritual realm. They have, as it were, descended from the spiritual to the physical realm, only to ascend once more to their point of origin. Why did humanity have to take the path away from divinity, if the path back must be taken once more? A prominent contemporary mystic has said that those who have experienced even a little no longer ask this question so readily, and in essence, Greek mysticism has provided the answer by likening the soul to a bee. Just as the bee leaves the hive, flies out into the fields, gathers honey—taking the finest essence from the plant—and brings it back—so too does the soul in the world: it goes out into the fields, gathers treasures of wisdom for testing—things that can only be experienced here by souls—in order to enrich God’s dwelling place once more. We could learn more from such simple images than the sober mind is capable of grasping.

[ 3 ] Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking about the three arts and their development, presenting them as a reflection of those worlds that preceded our present one. The three elemental realms find their reflection in architecture, sculpture, and painting. Everything in the three elemental realms is, in a certain sense, the as-yet-uncondensed starting point of our world, which slumbers as if buried and which humanity brings forth again. That is why they have been compared to a resting place of God, where they rest, only to be reawakened by humanity. We can no longer see the realm of fluctuating images with our physical eyes. Humanity seeks to revive it within itself through the three arts, to bring it back to life.

[ 4 ] That our existence, through our creative work, is a redemption of the God who slumbers in nature; that God awakens anew in our souls and flows into our creations, so that the divine can live through the forms of human works—this is the noble task of art.

[ 5 ] And by doing so, man deifies himself, and thereby becomes the being who must bring the honey of the world back to the altar of God.

[ 6 ] Let our eyes wander over the works of the great painters. What Raphael and Michelangelo have conjured onto the canvas—what uplifts thousands of souls—is a creation of the spirit, grand and mighty; yet it will pass away, and the works of the great geniuses will be scattered into tiny atoms. But connected to this human creation is something that is imperishable—that which the human soul has cultivated. They have acquired something that is imperishable; they have carried into eternity what they have carried into and worked into their spirit. When the globe has disintegrated, beings will carry with them what the souls have learned and experienced here. They bring this back, like the bees of life, to the altar of God. This is what mysticism called deification. Time and again, humanity redeems the hidden God. Then what so few understand today will become apparent: that what humanity ultimately creates as the divine world was already present in its seeds. So that the highest to which humanity ultimately arrives is the deepest. So that in our knowledge we ultimately possess what God has placed within the world. Hellscherian insight is communion with the divine world.

[ 7 ] We have spoken of a special training of dream-filled sleep consciousness that leads to the recognition of the three elemental realms: the world of flowing images, the forms of formless forces, and the world of the world-shaping tone. Now there are other experiences. It is this dream, which has surrounded us with symbolic representations, that can rise to a perception of the formative forces. Now there is the awakened consciousness during dreamless sleep.

[ 8 ] When the continuity of consciousness sets in, human beings perceive the world of sound: the spiritual world begins to resound. What Pythagoras described as the music of the spheres is the real truth. The inner essence of the world is expressed in sound: “The sun resounds in the ancient way.” That would be a complete sentence, for the sun does not resound in physical life, but it does when we recognize it as the body of a spiritual being. Out of the chaos of the world, we hear the chaos organizing itself as sound, as spiritual harmony: “Resounding becomes, to new ears … the unheard is not heard.”

[ 9 ] But the spiritual can be heard. Spirits who possess theosophical wisdom have therefore spoken of sound as the shaper of the world. In Schopenhauer’s mind lived a premonition of a fact of immense significance. To the clairvoyant, the essence of the universe is a world of sounds. When we penetrate into its innermost being, we do so through the musical essence, through the world of sounds, and this is a truth.

[ 10 ] Forms strive outward, and even the creative forces themselves penetrate into space; their reflections are outward manifestations of inner essences. The most spiritual of all forms is what we perceive in the three arts. In music, we do not penetrate the surface, but go directly into the essence of things. When the bell rings, its innermost essence floods into the world. The sound is the beauty of the innermost essence emerging outward. That is why it is also an outward reflection of that into which the seer is immersed in his innermost being.

[ 11 ] When it comes to the inner realm, we also speak of three realms. When we speak of the innermost essence of the World Spirit, we cannot help but sense a trinity. Just as the human being emerged from the mineral realm, which pulsates within the physical body—so, too, does life pulsate within the physical realm in the highest being. Will, wisdom, activity. Here, the will once again manifests outwardly—the will of which Schopenhauer speaks as the entity that rises from the abyss. It lives within us and constitutes our very being.

[ 12 ] The idea becomes an image; this is where the connection with the outside world occurs—most of all where there is action and activity. In them we embody ourselves and are present, just as the deity is present in its realm. Thus, we possess an abysmal will in the wisdom that establishes the connection with the world, and we possess activity in which it is concealed. If the will is the deepest thing within us, then it is so in nature as well. As the will awakens in the human soul, God celebrates his resurrection—just as in human wisdom and actions. Just as music leads us into the essence of things, so it is the deepest essence of things themselves that lives in the tones of music. Sound is the spiritual body of the will. The most primordial essence of the spirit lies in the will of music. A beautiful idea in Schopenhauer’s philosophy is that the mystery of the world is solved in music.

[ 13 ] Nietzsche, who sought to explore such intellectual connections with a yearning spirit unlike any other, arrived at a most exquisite, though confused, insight: in *The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music*. What did he hope to achieve in this book? Nietzsche attempted to describe the path of the spirit toward its inner life. He sought to penetrate to the point where human beings feel the will to the world pulsating within themselves. In music, human beings transform the will into a spiritual body. Human beings are most intensely united with their God when music resounds from their souls. Thus, for Nietzsche as well, music extends into the universe.

[ 14 ] From a broad perspective, Goethe has Faust proceed as far as “In the beginning was the deed.” “Deed” is the will poured forth, and if a person wishes to create a reflection of the deed in a work of art, he must give birth to it from music; hence, tragedy has its starting point in the chorus: the art of action arising from the art of sound, the spirit flowing outward. And then we will find the cosmic position of the speaking arts within the world spirit.

[ 15 ] Wisdom is the power of the spirit that reaches out halfway and allows the other part to be offered by the world: the interpenetration of the spirit with the essence of the external world. The harmony of the inner and the outer—that is wisdom. True wisdom is when a person finds harmony between his or her inner being and the external world. And true wisdom encompasses goodness. It is a wisdom of feeling.

[ 16 ] Just as the will finds expression in sound, so the soul creates its path to the word through meaning. Just as wisdom does, the word has an external aspect and an internal aspect. Through its meaning, it reveals something external to us. Just as the original will finds expression in the art of pure sound, so too is the wisdom of the soul expressed to the soul through the rhythm of the word.

[ 17 ] Poetry—a tone steeped in meaning,

[ 18 ] Song—the level of wisdom poured out and embodied.

[ 19 ] The Third is where the spirit withdraws and embodies itself in action. Human action is human creation; the third realm of the spiritual gives rise to dramatic art. Drama is the reflection of the third realm, that of activity.

[ 20 ] In this way, humans leave behind the phases of their being in what they create as a reflection: music, poetry, and drama.

[ 21 ] As long as the beings around us announce their presence through sound, we remain, in a certain sense, outside of them. They express their meaning through the inner word when they do not merely make sounds but actually speak. This is something that looms in the very distant future as an ideal; it is also something that stands at the very beginning of the world. And the artist presents it as a prophecy.

[ 22 ] The musician, the poet, and the playwright are the prophets of what is to come. The other three arts depict the past; these three depict the future. In this way, the artist creates a paradise for us in which the past, present, and future are united. This is what Goethe is referring to:

But you, the true sons of the gods,
Rejoice in the beauty that is rich with life!
That which is becoming, which eternally acts and lives,
May it enfold you within the sweet bounds of love,
And whatever hovers in a wavering form,
May it be strengthened by enduring thoughts! [Faust I, lines 344–349]

[ 23 ] [Thus speaks the Lord to the three archangels Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael in the prologue set in heaven in Goethe’s *Faust* Part I.] What exists in a fleeting form is made steadfast by thought.

[ 24 ] There is no more beautiful way to portray the cosmic mission of art. The Eternal itself is in this world. And if we are able to gaze upon beauty with devotion, to embrace it with our love, to feel the Eternal in the image, then we preserve beauty through enduring thoughts. When the entire globe has disintegrated into millions of atoms, the Eternal will be carried over into new worlds. Art certainly plays this role. In a work of art, human beings can create a limited reflection of the beauty of the world; art is a limited reflection of divine perfection.

[ 25 ] In the arts, too, we get a foretaste of that blissful freedom that flows to us from knowledge. Art appears as the surest pledge of our capacity for freedom. Thus, the beauty of appearance becomes the great educator leading to the highest good: freedom. Any German who is unfamiliar with Schiller’s Letters on Aesthetic Education is unaware of a crucial aspect of the German spirit. They are imbued with a theosophical spirit; theosophy seeks the experience of the divine essence. That is why the enjoyment of art rises to the level of selflessness, because it creates a disinterested delight in the highest spirituality. One must penetrate through matter to the spiritual; then, through the spiritualization of the material, the highest is attained; then beauty becomes education in the spiritual, and through the aesthetic perception of beauty, human beings attain wisdom.