The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Thirteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] In our recent discussions during our branch meetings, we have presented various perspectives that all point to the mysterious interplay between human beings and the spiritual worlds—spiritual beings who are, in fact, constantly around us, and not only around us but also constantly passing through us in a certain sense—with whom we live in constant communion. However, we must not imagine that a relationship between human beings and the spiritual beings in their environment develops only in that—one might say—coarser sense that we mentioned in our previous reflections; rather, a relationship between human beings and the spiritual world also emerges through the manifold activities and deeds of human beings that are more in line with the human sphere of thought.

[ 2 ] In the two preceding discussions, we had to refer to spiritual beings that are, in a certain sense, subordinate. But we know from earlier lectures that we are also dealing with spiritual beings who stand above human beings, and that relationships and connections also exist between human beings and more exalted spiritual beings. We have mentioned that there are exalted spiritual beings who do not, like human beings, consist of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and so on upward, but who have the etheric body as their lowest member—who, so to speak, dwell around us. They are invisible to the ordinary eye because their physical form is a fine, ethereal one, so that the human eye sees right through them. And then we come to even higher spiritual beings, whose lowest member is the astral body; they thus present a physical form that is even less dense to human perception.

[ 3 ] All these beings, however, do have a certain relationship to human beings, and what is most important to us today is this: human beings can certainly do something to establish very specific relationships with such beings during their lives here on Earth. Depending on what people here on Earth do—one thing or another—to shape their living conditions, they constantly establish relationships with higher worlds, however unlikely that may seem to a person living in today’s so-called “enlightened” age, which is not at all enlightened when it comes to many of life’s profound truths.

[ 4 ] Let us first consider beings whose lowest physical form is an etheric body; with this fine etheric body, they dwell around us, surround us, and send their influences and manifestations down to us. Let us place such beings before our soul in our minds and ask ourselves: Can human beings do anything here on this Earth, or rather: Have human beings always done something to ensure that these beings have a connection, a bridge, through which they can exert a more intense influence on the whole human being? — Yes, human beings have always done something to that end! We must delve deeply into certain feelings and ideas that we have been able to absorb in the past few hours if we wish to form a clear conception of this bridge.

[ 5 ] So let us imagine that these beings, so to speak, live out of the spiritual worlds and, as it were, extend their etheric bodies from there. They do not need a physical body like the one humans have. But there is a physical form through which they can, so to speak, connect their etheric bodies with our earthly sphere—an earthly form that we can, so to speak, place upon our Earth, and which forms a bond of attraction, so that these beings descend with their etheric bodies to this earthly form and take the opportunity to dwell among human beings. Such opportunities for spiritual beings to dwell among human beings are, for example, the temples of Greek architecture and the Gothic cathedrals. When we place those forms of physical reality—with their lines and balance of forces, as found in a temple or in a sculptural work of art—into our earthly sphere, they create an opportunity for the etheric bodies of these beings to nestle and blend in from all sides, in accordance with these balances of force, into the works of art we have erected. And art is a true and genuine link between human beings and the spiritual worlds. Up to those forms of art that take shape in space, we have physical bodies on Earth to which beings with etheric bodies descend.

[ 6 ] Beings whose lowest physical form is the astral body, however, need something else here on Earth to serve as a link between the spiritual world and our Earth, and that is the musical and phonetic arts. A space filled with the sounds of music provides an opportunity for the agile, self-determined astral bodies of higher beings to express themselves fully within that space. There, the arts—and what they mean to human beings—take on a very real significance. They form the magnetic forces of attraction for spiritual beings who, according to their mission and their task, are meant to and wish to engage with human beings. When we view things in this way, our feelings toward human artistic creation and human artistic sensibility deepen. And our appreciation can deepen even further when we take in the human source of artistic creation—and thus also of artistic enjoyment—from the perspective of spiritual science. If we wish to do so, we must first examine the various forms of human consciousness in somewhat greater detail.

[ 7 ] We have, for various purposes, pointed out that in the waking human being before us we have the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the “I”; that in the sleeping human being before us, lying in bed, we have the physical body and the etheric body; and outside the physical body and the etheric body, the “I” and the astral body. It is helpful, for the purpose of today’s discussion, to examine these two states of consciousness—which alternate for every person within a twenty-four-hour period—in greater detail. First, we have the physical body in the human being, then the etheric or life body, then what we call the astral body in the coarser sense of the word—the soul body, which belongs to the astral body but is connected to the etheric body. This is the aspect of the human being that animals also possess here in physical life on the physical plane. But then we know that connected to these three members of the human being—you can read about this in my Theosophy—is what is otherwise summarized under the term “I,” which is actually a threefold being: the soul of feeling, the soul of understanding or the emotional soul, and the soul of consciousness; and we know that the soul of consciousness, in turn, is linked to what we call the spiritual self or Manas. If we consider this more detailed structure of the human being, then we can say:

[ 8 ] What we call the soul of sensation—and which otherwise belongs entirely to the astral body and is also of an astral nature—detaches itself when a person falls asleep in the evening; but a part of the soul body nevertheless remains connected to the etheric body, which stays in bed. Essentially, the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul separate in the human being. In a person who is awake during the day, all of these are connected to one another, and as a result, they are always at work within the person. So whatever takes place in the physical body affects the entire inner being—the feeling soul, the intellectual soul, and also the conscious soul. What affects a person in ordinary life—which is actually quite disordered and chaotic—the disordered impressions they take in from morning to night —just think for a moment about the impressions you take in when you walk through the clatter and clamor of a big city—all of these are impressions that carry over into all the members connected to the waking consciousness through the physical body and the etheric body. At night, the inner self—the feeling soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul—is in the astral world, drawing from there the forces and harmonies that are lost to it during waking life amid the chaotic impressions of the day. There, what is called the “I-soul” in the broader sense of the human being exists in a more orderly, more spiritual world than during waking hours. In the morning, this inner soul emerges from this spiritual realm and immerses itself in the threefold physicality: the physical body, the etheric body, and that part of the astral body which is actually connected to the etheric body and remains connected to it even at night.

[ 9 ] If a person were never to sleep—that is, were never to draw new, revitalizing forces from the spiritual world—then eventually everything that lives within his physical body and permeates it with vitality would fall into increasing decay and be increasingly undermined. But because every morning a strong inner life flows into the forces of the physical body, a new order is constantly established—one might say, a rebirth of the forces within this physical body. Thus, the human soul brings with it from the spiritual world something for each of the body’s limbs—something that takes effect when the inner soul, which is outside during the night, and the outer physical instrument are united.

[ 10 ] What now takes place in the interaction between the inner life of the soul and the physical body itself—if a person is receptive to the harmonies of the spiritual world—can, during the night, permeate the physical body in its forces (but not in its matter) with the forces one might call the forces of space. Because people in our present-day culture are so alienated from the spiritual world, these very spatial forces have little effect on them. Where the inner life of the soul comes into contact with the densest part of the human body, the forces brought along must be very strong indeed if they are to manifest themselves in the robust physical body. In more sensitively perceptive cultural epochs, the inner life of the soul brought with it the soul’s impulses and more easily permeated this physical body; and then people sensed that forces are always flowing through physical space in all directions, that this physical space is by no means an indifferent, empty expanse, but is permeated by forces in every direction. There is a sense of this distribution of forces in space; this is brought about by the conditions that have just been described. You must visualize this through an example.

[ 11 ] Imagine one of the painters who belonged to the great eras of art, when people still had a real sense of the forces at work in space. With such a painter, you might see him painting a group of three angels in space. You stand in front of the painting and immediately have the sensation: These three angels cannot fall; it goes without saying that they are floating, for they hold one another in place through the forces acting within space, just as the celestial spheres hold one another in place through the forces of space. For those people who, through that interaction between the inner life of the soul and the physical body, have made this inner dynamic their own, the feeling is present: It must be so; the three angels hold one another in space. - You will find this particularly in the work of some older painters, though less so in that of more recent ones. No matter how much one may admire Böcklin, the figure hovering above the “Pietà” evokes in everyone the feeling that it must plummet to the ground at any moment; it does not hold itself in space.

[ 12 ] All these forces moving back and forth in space—which a person truly feels within space—are realities, and all architecture arises from this sense of space. Genuine, true architecture springs from nothing other than placing stones or bricks into the lines that must already exist in space, whereby one does nothing more than make visible what is already present in space—ideally and spiritually distributed—by filling it with matter. The Greek architect possessed this sense of space in its purest form; in his temple, he expressed through all its forms what lives within space, what one can feel in space. The simple relationship—that the column supports—and it supports either the horizontal or the diagonal linear forms—is a representation of spiritual forces existing within space. And the entire Greek temple is nothing other than a filling of what lives within space with matter. Therefore, the Greek temple is the purest architectural idea, crystallized space. And as strange as this may seem to modern people: because the Greek temple is a physical form assembled from thoughts, it provides the opportunity for those figures whom the Greeks knew as their deities to truly touch the spatial lines familiar to them with their etheric bodies and to dwell within them. It is more than a mere phrase when it is said that the Greek temple is a dwelling place of the god. The Greek temple has a peculiar quality for those who have a genuine sense of such things; it has the peculiar quality that one can imagine: far and wide, there would be no human being to behold it, and within it, there would be no one either. The Greek temple needs no one to look at it, no one to enter it. Imagine the Greek temple standing there all alone, with not a single person in sight. Then it is what it is meant to be most intensely. Then it is the dwelling place of the god who is to reside within it, for the god can dwell within its forms. Only in this way can one truly understand Greek architecture, the purest architecture in the world.

[ 13 ] Egyptian architecture, as seen in the pyramids, for example, is something entirely different. We can only touch on these things briefly here. The spatial relationships and lines are arranged in such a way that, through their proportions and forms, they point the way for the soul as it ascends into the spiritual worlds. From the paths the soul takes from the physical world into the spiritual world, we have derived the forms expressed in the Egyptian pyramid. And so, in every kind of architecture, we find the idea that can be understood only from a spiritual perspective.

[ 14 ] In Romanesque architecture, which features the round arch and which, for example, arranged church buildings in such a way that we have a nave and aisles, but also a transept and an apse, so that the whole structure has a cross-shaped form and is topped by a dome—here we see the concept of space evolving from the tomb. You cannot conceive of Romanesque architecture in the same way as Greek temple architecture. The Greek temple is the dwelling place of the god. The Romanesque building can be conceived of only as a burial site. The crypt is part of it; not that people do not also stand there in their everyday lives, but it is part of the fact that it is a place that brings together all the feelings related to the preservation and protection of the dead.

[ 15 ] Gothic architecture offers something else entirely. Just as it is true that the Greek temple can be conceived of far and wide without a single human soul—yet it is populated because it is the dwelling place of the god—so too is it true that the Gothic cathedral, which culminates in pointed arches at the top, cannot be conceived of without the devout crowd within it. It is not a complete entity. When it stands alone, it is not the whole. The people inside are part of it, with their hands clasped, just as the pointed arches are arched. Only then is the whole present, when the spaces are filled with the feelings of the devout believers. These are the forces at work within us, which are felt in the physical body as a sense of attunement to the space. The true artist feels the space in this way and shapes it architecturally.

[ 16 ] When we now ascend to the etheric body, we find once again what the soul’s innermost being acquires in the spiritual world during the night and brings with it when it slips back into the etheric body. What we have in this way as something expressed in the etheric body is sensed by the true sculptor, and he imprints it upon the living forms. Here it is not the concept of space, but the tendency to reveal and shape more in the living form than what nature has presented to him. What the Greek artist knew more about in this regard—for example, in the case of Zeus—is what he brought with him from the spiritual world, which comes to life and is felt when it enters into a relationship with the etheric body,

[ 17 ] Furthermore, such an interaction takes place with what we call the soul-body. When the inner life of the soul unites with the soul-body, a sense of line and of the fundamental elements of painting arises in the same way. And through the fact that in the morning the sensory soul unites with the soul body and permeates it, a sense of color harmony arises. Thus, we first have the three art forms that work with external means, drawing their material from the external world.

[ 18 ] The fact that the intellectual or emotional soul flees into the astral world every night gives rise to something else. When we use the term “intellectual soul” in the sense of spiritual science, we must not think of the dry, sober intellect that comes to mind when one speaks of intellect in everyday life. For spiritual science, “intellect” is the sense of harmony that cannot be embodied in external matter—the sense of inner harmony as experienced. That is why we also speak of the intellectual or emotional soul. Now, when every night the intellectual or emotional soul immerses itself in the harmonies of the astral world and becomes aware of them again in the morning within the astral body—the very same astral body that does indeed return, but which, in modern human beings, is unaware of its inner nature during the night—the following occurs: At night, the intellectual or emotional soul lives within what we have always called the spherical harmonies—the inner laws of the spiritual world, those very spherical harmonies to which the ancient Pythagorean school pointed as that which a person capable of perceiving into the spiritual worlds experiences as the relationships of the great spiritual world. Goethe also alluded to this when, at the beginning of his Faust, he transports us into heaven and characterizes this by saying: “/p”

The sun resounds in the ancient way
A song of value in the spheres of brotherhood,
And its prescribed journey
It completes with a thunderous roar.

[ 19 ] And he remains true to the theme when, in the second part—where Faust is lifted back up into the spiritual world—he uses the words:

With a resounding sound to the ears of the spirit
The new day is already dawning.
Rock gates creak and rattle,
Phoebus’ wheels roll with a crackling sound.
What a clamor the light brings!
It drums, it trumpets,
The eye squints and the ear is astonished,
The unheard cannot be heard.

[ 20 ] In other words, the soul lives in these spherical sounds during the night, and these spherical sounds are kindled as the astral body becomes conscious of itself. In the creative musician, we see no other process than that the perceptions of nocturnal consciousness break through into daytime consciousness, becoming memories—memories of astral experiences or, more specifically, of the intellectual or emotional soul. Everything that humanity knows as musical art consists of expressions, imprints of what is unconsciously experienced in the harmonies of the spheres; and to be musically gifted means nothing other than to have an astral body that is receptive, during the waking state, to what swirls through it all night long. To be unmusical means to have this astral body in such a state that such a recollection cannot take place. It is the resounding of a spiritual world that a person experiences in musical art. And because musical art brings into our physical world that which can only be kindled in the astral realm, I said that it connects human beings with those beings whose lowest member is the astral body. Human beings live with these beings at night; they experience their deeds in the harmony of the spheres and express them in daily life through their earthly music, so that these spherical harmonies appear in earthly music like a shadow image. And as that which constitutes the element of these spiritual beings enters this earthly sphere, floats through it, and lives within it, these spiritual beings have the opportunity to immerse their astral bodies once more in the surging sea of musical effects, and as the intellectual soul experiences its deeds during the night and brings the impressions it has received back into the physical world, a bridge is created between these beings and human beings through art. There we see how, at such a level, what we call musical art comes into being.

[ 21 ] What does the soul of consciousness perceive when it plunges into the spiritual world at night, even though human beings cannot become aware of this in the present cycle of humanity? It perceives the words of the spiritual world. It receives messages whispered to it, which it can receive only from the spiritual world. Words are whispered to it, and when these words are brought into daytime consciousness, they appear as the fundamental forces of poetry. Thus, poetry is the shadow image of what the conscious soul experiences in the spiritual world during the night, and we take this opportunity to truly reflect on how human beings, through their connection with higher worlds—and solely through this—bring about, in the five arts—architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry, creates reflections and revelations of spiritual reality here on our Earth. However, this is only the case when art truly rises above mere external sensory perception. In what is today broadly called naturalism—where human beings merely imitate what they see outside—there is nothing of what they bring with them from the spiritual world. And the fact that we have such a purely external art in many fields today, which seeks only to imitate what is outside, is merely proof of how people in our present age have lost their connection with the spiritual-divine world. The person whose entire interest is absorbed in the outer physical world—in what the outer senses are willing to accept—works on their astral body so intensely through this mere interest in the outer physical world that it becomes blind and deaf at night, when it is in the spiritual worlds. No matter how magnificent the sounds of the spheres may resound, no matter how lofty the spiritual tones may whisper to the soul, the person brings nothing of this into daily life! And then the person mocks idealistic and spiritualistic art, saying that art is only there to photograph external reality, for only there does it have something real and tangible under its feet.

[ 22 ] This is how a person speaks who thinks and feels in materialistic terms, because he lacks an understanding of the realities of the spiritual world. The true artist, however, speaks differently. He might say, for example: “When I hear the sounds of the orchestra, it is as if I were hearing in them the sounds of a primordial music that was already being played long before any human ear was there to hear it.” He might also say: In what resounds in a symphony lies an insight into spiritual worlds that is higher and more significant than anything that can be logically proven or analyzed through reasoning.

[ 23 ] These two statements were made by Richard Wagner, who so earnestly sought to convey to humanity the idea that where true art begins, there must at the same time be a transcending of the external and the sensory. When the spiritual-scientific perspective states: “There lives within the human being something that transcends the human being—something superhuman in today’s human being—which must appear ever more perfectly in future incarnations,” Richard Wagner feels this so deeply that he says: “I do not want characters who stand before me and stride across the stage just like the people of everyday life in the earthly sphere.” - He wants people who are elevated above everyday life. That is why he draws on mythical figures who possess a more comprehensive substance than ordinary people. He seeks the superhuman within the human. Richard Wagner wants to portray in art the whole human being, with all the spiritual worlds as they shine upon the people of the physical earthly realm. At a relatively early age, two figures stood before him: Shakespeare and Beethoven. Shakespeare appeared to him in his artistically brilliant visions in such a way that he said to himself: If I take everything that Shakespeare has given to humanity and put it all together, I see figures in Shakespeare’s works striding across the stage, taking action. — Actions—and words are also actions in this context—take place when the soul has felt what cannot be outwardly represented in space, what it has already left behind. The soul has felt the entire spectrum from pain and suffering to pleasure and bliss and has sensed how this or that action arises from this or that nuance. In Shakespeare’s drama, Richard Wagner argues, everything appears merely in its result—where it takes on a spatial form, where it becomes external action. This is a form of drama that can present nothing but the internal made external; and the viewer can at best only guess at what lives within the soul, at what is taking place there during the course of the action.

[ 24 ] Alongside this, the image of the symphony composer appeared to him, and he saw in the symphony the representation of what lives in the soul—the entire spectrum of emotions, from suffering and pain to pleasure and bliss, in all their nuances. It finds its full expression in the symphony, he told himself, but it does not become action; it does not step out into space. And an image arose before his soul that, as it were, conveyed to him the sensation that at one point this inner world had, as it were, burst open in artistic creation to flow out into the world. Beethoven remains within the musical framework in his work, stepping outside of it only once—in the Ninth Symphony—where the emotions have swelled so powerfully that they break through into words.

[ 25 ] From these two artistic phenomena, a vision arose in his soul: Beethoven and Shakespeare in one! - And we would have a long way to go if we wanted to show how Richard Wagner, through his unique treatment of the orchestra, sought to create that great harmony between Shakespeare and Beethoven—so that the inner life is expressed through sound and at the same time flows into the action. Ordinary language was not enough for him; for it is the means of expression for events on the physical plane. That language, which can be conveyed solely through the tones of song, became for him the means of expression for that which transcends the physical and human to become superhuman.

[ 26 ] Theosophy need not merely be expressed in words or felt as a thought. Theosophy is life. It lives within the process of the world, and when it is said that it is meant to bring together the various separate currents of the human soul into one great stream, we see this feeling come to life in the artist who sought to bring together the individual means of expression so that what lives in the whole might be expressed in the One. Richard Wagner does not wish to be a musician, a playwright, or a poet. Everything we have seen trickling down from spiritual worlds becomes for him a means of uniting in the physical world with something even higher, because he has a sense of what people will experience as they immerse themselves more and more in that epoch of development into which humanity must now enter—where the spiritual self, or Manas, unites with what human beings have carried with them since ancient times. And in Richard Wagner, a sense of that great human impulse toward the unification of what has emerged in the ages of separation lies in the convergence of the individual means of artistic expression. In other words, he had a sense of what human culture will be like when everything the soul experiences in this way is infused into the spiritual self-principle, or Manas, where the soul will immerse itself in its fullness into the spiritual worlds. From the perspective of the history of ideas, it is of profound significance that in art the first dawn has appeared for humanity, heralding the future that beckons, where everything humanity has achieved in various fields will converge into a universal culture, a comprehensive culture. In a certain sense, the arts are indeed the forerunners of the spirituality revealing itself in the sensory world. And far more important than Richard Wagner’s individual assertions in his prose writings is the fundamental spirit that lives within them—a religious, wisdom-filled, and solemn spirit that flows through them all and finds its most beautiful expression in his brilliant essay on Beethoven, where you must read more between the lines, but where you can feel the gentle breath in which this dawn is announced.

[ 27 ] Thus we see how, from the perspective of the spiritual sciences, we can gain a deeper understanding of those human activities that find their expression in human deeds. We have seen today in the realm of the arts that there the human being does something, accomplishes something, through which—if we may put it that way—the gods can dwell within him, through which he grants the gods a dwelling place in the earthly sphere. If spiritual science is to make people aware that the spiritual realm interacts with physical life, art has certainly already done so in physical life. And spiritual art will always permeate our culture if people are to immerse their souls in the spiritual realm at all. Through such reflections, what is otherwise presented in spiritual science merely as doctrine or a worldview expands into impulses that permeate our lives and can tell us what is to come and what must come to be. In the musician and poet Richard Wagner, the new star first rose, sending the light of spiritual life to Earth. This life impulse he has given must continue to expand and expand until, once again, the whole of outer life becomes a reflection of the soul.

[ 28 ] Everything we encounter in the outside world can become a reflection of the soul. Do not regard this as something external, but rather as something that can be gained through spiritual science. It will be as it was centuries ago, when in every door lock, in every key, we encountered something that was a reflection of what the human being had felt and sensed. Likewise, when true spiritual life returns to humanity, all of life—everything we encounter externally—will once again appear to us as a reflection of the soul. Secular buildings remain secular only as long as human beings lack the ability to imbue them with spirit. Spirit can be imbued into everything. The image of a train station, conceived artistically once more, can come to life before us. We do not have that today. But when people once again sense what forms should be, they will feel that the locomotive can be designed architecturally, and that the train station could be something that relates to the locomotive in the same way that the outer shell relates to what the locomotive expresses in its architectural forms. Only then will they behave like two things that belong together when conceived architecturally. But then it also matters how we approach the forms—whether from the left or the right.

[ 29 ] When people learn how the inner world is expressed in the outer world, then culture will once again emerge. Truly, there were times when neither Romanesque architecture nor Gothic architecture existed yet, when those who carried a new, emerging culture within their souls gathered down in the catacombs of the ancient Roman city. But what lived within them—what could only be carved in sparse forms into the ancient earthen caverns, what you find on the coffins of the dead—that dawned upon them there, and that is what then appears to us in the Romanesque arch, in the Romanesque column, in the apse. That idea was carried out into the world. Had the first Christians not carried that idea in their souls, it would not meet us in what has become world culture. The theosophist feels himself to be a ‘theosophist’ only when he is conscious that he carries a future culture within his soul. Let others then say to him: “What have you actually accomplished?”—Then he says to himself: “Yes, what did the Christians of the catacombs accomplish, and what has become of it!”

[ 30 ] Let us try to expand in our minds what lives within our souls as a faint impulse of feeling when we sit together—just as the Christians’ thoughts were able to expand into the arched wonders of the cathedral that would later be built. Let us imagine, in such moments when we are together, that these thoughts expand outward and are carried out into the world. Then we will have within us the very impulses we need when we are conscious that Theosophy is not meant to be a mere pastime for a few who gather together, but something that is to be carried out into the world. The souls who dwell here in their bodies will, when they reappear in physical form, find much of what already lives within them today already realized. We take such thoughts with us when we gather for the last time in a season and process the spiritual-scientific ideas of the winter. Let us put these spiritual-scientific ideas into practice in such a way that they may act as cultural impulses. Let us try to imbue our souls with such sensations and feelings, and let us allow them to respond to the summer sunshine, which reveals to us from the outside, in the physical realm, the active cosmic force. Then our soul will increasingly take on the right mood and be able to carry into the outer world what it experiences in the spiritual worlds. This is part of the theosophist’s development. In this way, we will take another step forward when we carry such feelings and sensations with us and use them to draw strength from the summer.