The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we allowed the various forms of mysticism to pass before our souls, at least in part. The purpose of yesterday’s reflection was to show that the mystic is a person—especially in the modern, post-Christian era—who sets out on the occult path, the occult way, and to this end undertakes to overcome his personal, everyday sense of self.

[ 2 ] However, using the examples we cited yesterday, we have shown how the mystic can, in a sense, stray from the path he has chosen. He can miss it because, although he attempts to overcome—indeed, to eradicate—ordinary consciousness, he nevertheless—as we have shown in the case of outstanding mystical figures—often finds himself entering a realm at the very moment when a supersensory experience should be emerging in place of ordinary consciousness, he often enters a realm that actually excludes all experience, all real living. Therefore, we had to note how an outstanding mystical figure expresses her goal by clothing it in the word “marriage,” “union.” At the same time, we had to characterize this marriage, this union, as a kind of losing oneself, as an alienation from oneself, as no longer having oneself, as, in a kind of higher sleep, a passing over into another element.

[ 3 ] It is in the latter that mysticism, as it usually presents itself to us, is indeed the path toward occultism, but does not attain consciousness without a conscious object. For the moment the mystic abandons all the objects of this world—at least to the extent that we discussed mysticism yesterday—he also loses consciousness itself; a different state comes over him, a state of intoxication, of self-forgetfulness, so that he does not attain what must be designated as the third element of occult experience, namely the other consciousness, the higher consciousness, which possesses no external object of all the objects that consciousness otherwise has, and yet is a consciousness.

[ 4 ] Today I want to show you how the occultist actually goes about, at first, stepping out of ordinary consciousness, leaving it behind, and yet not losing himself, but still having something in which to live. When we ask ourselves the question: Where does it come from, in a form of mysticism such as we discussed yesterday, that the mystical personality loses itself? — we must say: It comes from the fact that in most of these mystical personalities, no matter how closely we investigate, we actually find no compelling inner reason to step out of oneself; a compelling inner reason is not there to begin with.

[ 5 ] It would be easy to demonstrate, with regard to all the mystics mentioned yesterday, how external factors led them, so to speak, to transcend their own personalities. We could show, for example, how certain, let us say, inherited clairvoyant and visionary states were present in Francis of Assisi. We could show, in the case of the various female mystics we have mentioned, how it is the personality—the personality, I emphasize—of Jesus himself who appears to them like a bridegroom, so that we immediately see: If the old Christian tradition—that is, an external circumstance—had not influenced these mystics, if they had not been stimulated from the outside, they would not have been able to attain their mystical state.

[ 6 ] This external stimulus was particularly evident among all the mystics we mentioned yesterday. However, it must be an internal, compelling reason that moves a person to transcend themselves.

[ 7 ] Such a compelling reason does indeed exist for the true occult aspirant. We can create a mental image of it in the following way. Suppose a person comes to reflect on their ego—this remarkable aspect of the human being, this center of their consciousness. At first, a person realizes that this ‘I’ is, in a sense, the cohesive force in their life within the earthly condition. If, for example, you were to examine your life from a scientific perspective, you would come to the realization that your outer body, as it appears to you in its physical form, has little to do with what remains of you on this earth; for natural science shows you that the substance of the body is completely renewed in seven to eight years, so that there will not be many among us who can assume that they still possess today any of the bodily substances they had within them in childhood; rather, almost all of us here will have to say: This body has thoroughly changed its substance in the course of life; this body has become thoroughly a different one. What remains is therefore certainly not to be found in the substance of the body.

[ 8 ] If you set aside the physical reality of the body and try to take a look at your inner experience—at your thinking, feeling, and willing—you will soon notice how these too have changed over the course of your life. You need only think back to how entirely different thoughts—namely, entirely different sensations, feelings, and impulses of the will—prevailed in your soul during your youth when you compare them with those of a later age, and you will notice how this inner life of the soul has actually changed quite thoroughly. But none of you, if you are, as they say, in your right mind, would think of saying that you are now a different self than you were ten or twenty or thirty years ago, or indeed as many years ago as you can recall. For the moment when a person would have to admit that he was, say, one self up to the age of seventeen, and a different self from the age of seventeen to the age of four or three, his inner being would be torn apart and he would no longer be in his right mind. Thus, regarding this self, which is the very center of our consciousness, we must indeed assume for this earthly life that it is something enduring throughout our earthly existence.

[ 9 ] But you see, if you think about it further, you will soon realize that something is not quite right in this consideration of the “I.” When you speak of yourself to your fellow human beings, you say “I” in your sentence, and by this “I” you mean everything that has held your consciousness together during your earthly life. This fundamental conception of the “I” has led many philosophers—and some philosophers even to this day—to speak of the “I” as something from which one can start, if one wishes to say anything at all about human beings and their nature. One might say, if one were to survey modern philosophy, that the urge to take the “I” as a starting point arises again and again. From Fichte to Bergson—if we consider only this most recent period—you will find everywhere the striving to take the “I” as a starting point. Remarkable, significant results have come about through this. But for those who think even more deeply, who reflect even more deeply, another thought suddenly arises. The thought arises: You may always speak of your “I,” you may be convinced that this “I” is the enduring, the constant in earthly life, but do you actually know this “I,” can you in any way describe it? — Anyone who reflects on this more closely realizes that this “I” is not as enduring as they know it to be, for all mere “I” philosophy—when its proponents speak of a lasting “I” that they claim to know—is refuted by life itself. Every night, when a person sleeps, the enduring self is simply refuted, for there it is extinguished; so that, in fact, when we speak of our self, we commit a certain error in this speaking. We reflect on our lives and involuntarily exclude that which we know belongs to us—namely, our very self—during the states of night and sleep, for then we know nothing of this self. Thus, in our reflection on our self, we have a broken line, not a continuous one.

[ 10 ] How is it possible, then, that we are dealing with that broken line, that self-consciousness always breaks off? This is because what we, as human beings, have of the self is merely the thought, merely the mental image of the self. And because all mental images sink into the darkness of unconsciousness when we sleep, so does the thought of the ego. It sinks down with them. The very fact that it sinks along with the world of ideas shows us that in the ego—and the philosopher, logically, also has only the mental image of the ego—we have an image of something we speak of when we say “I,” but which reveals itself to us only as an image.

[ 11 ] So, with this enduring aspect of our inner life, with this “I” and its self-awareness, it is by no means the case that a truly occult point of departure can be derived, for it is initially given only as an image; it exists only as an image. But our soul life is an image of a peculiar kind, a very strange image; an image that suggests something. For there are many images in our soul life, many mental images. How, then, do these mental images enter the soul life of the earthly human being? Through the fact that there are objects around him. If you truly examine consciousness, if you examine your imaginative inner life—and that is consciousness—then you will find everywhere that what asserts itself as a mental image, what fills consciousness, is stimulated by external things; it is, so to speak, an image of external things.

[ 12 ] This would explain why we imagine this or that. It is because external things stimulate us. If they weren’t there, we wouldn’t imagine them. But the mental image of the self—that peculiar image of the self—is something quite special. Look out in the world for the object that stimulates your mental image of the self. There is none to be found; there is none. The difference with the mental image of the self, the mental image of the self—when we have it only as an image—is that we can point to objects for other mental images, but not for the mental image of the self. Thus, in the wider sphere of our external life, there cannot be present what is present in the mental image of the self, what is clothed in the words “I am.”

[ 13 ] We must therefore say that there lies at the root something that is, after all, unknown—something that cannot be found in the external world as it presents itself to human beings on earth. This “I” is something peculiar. For if this ‘I’ could be grasped or apprehended inwardly, as some intuitionists—such as Bergson, for example—maintain, and if there were more to be apprehended than a mere image, then one could say that although one would have little of an earthly reality—a reality not given from the outside—one would at least have something. But one cannot grasp it, cannot reach it, this ‘I.’

[ 14 ] But there is one thing every person can know about this “I,” one thing that can, in a sense, serve as a fulcrum, just as Archimedes once demanded one for his lever to lift the earth from its hinges. One thing can serve this purpose when we direct the reflection of our soul precisely toward this “I.” From the many questions and world-puzzles that can arise when people direct them merely toward the outer world, a particular question can emerge; and this will, in essence, always be the question with which the occult aspirant must begin if he wishes to transcend consciousness. He must ask himself: Do you see nothing at all within the wide sphere of your earthly experience that appears to you in such a way that you can say the innermost part of your being is expressed in it? Do you find nothing anywhere that expresses your “I”?

[ 15 ] At first, looking into our inner life is a disheartening, even fatal endeavor. We merely become entangled in our temporal mental images and can never be certain whether we will find anything that leads us out of the realm of temporal imagination. In any case, we cannot hope to detach ourselves from our personality—and this is what we must achieve as occultists—if we continually look into our personality. But outside of it lie only the experiences and events of the earthly human being. We find that only what is present in outward expression can be an expression of something corresponding to the I; but we simply cannot grasp the I. When we turn our gaze around us, we find only one thing, and that is, at first, the only thing we can find as an expression of our I: that is the human form.

[ 16 ] Now grasp this term—so that we can get past this difficult point, which must be overcome if we are to master our subject—“the human form” in its true sense, namely, that it confronts us in the external world. I believe that it is easy for every person to say to themselves: Just as a plant is, in its outer form, the expression of its essence—shaped as it is because it corresponds to its inner being; just as a crystal is shaped as it is because it corresponds to its inner being; just as every animal is shaped as it is because it corresponds to its inner being—so too must the human form correspond to the human being. And since we first synthesize our being in our ego from our earthly experiences, the human form must be the expression of the human ego. In other words: within the broad scope of our experience, the human form, the human figure, proves to be the expression of the human being. It may seem like a rather trivial statement, but it is one of the most important statements we can possibly contemplate.

[ 17 ] But now the occultist must go further. Regarding the “I,” he tells himself that while he expresses it when he says “I,” he does not possess it anywhere; it is not there; for what is there is always only the mental image of the “I.” Yet the human form seems to be there. Thus we are faced with a strange riddle: at every turn we see the human form, the expression of the human “I,” and yet we cannot grasp the “I” of this being.

[ 18 ] Now there is only one way to make progress, and that is for the occultist to fully commit to the realization that the human form behaves in the same way as the human ego. For if it is always there, then it does not correspond to the ego, which is not always there. It is therefore necessary that we somehow come to be able to say of what we seemingly encounter at every turn—the human form—that it is not there, that it does not exist at all among earthly things. It is of the utmost importance that we arrive at the realization that there is something quite special about the human form, similar to the mental image of the ego, and that this human form, by confronting us from the outside, actually deceives us in some way—that it lies to us in some way. This is the insight to which the occult aspirant arrives: that the human form lies to him by pretending to be an expression of his being, but simply wants to be there in a trivial way, while the being remains hidden.

[ 19 ] In another respect, too, it would not exactly meet the requirement we have set forth—namely, to have consciousness without a conscious object, which is, after all, consciousness—if we were to acquire consciousness of the human form, which is, after all, an external object. In other words: The human form, which we encounter everywhere in life, cannot be what we are seeking as an expression of the self.

[ 20 ] Now, however, the occultist must realize that he cannot live in mental images or conclusions derived from the outside world; he cannot take the experiences he must now attain from the outside, for what comes from the outside constitutes his earthly consciousness, which he wishes to transcend. When the occultist looks at his human form, however, he must experience something in this human form that leads him beyond all earthly consciousness.

[ 21 ] Can we experience something in the human form that takes us beyond all earthly consciousness? Yes, we can experience something in the human form by first looking at our own human face and noticing that this human face makes a very special impression. However, if one wishes to arrive at this corresponding sensation as an aspirant to the occult, one must not be infatuated or enamored with the ordinary mental image one once held; otherwise, one will always approach the human face in such a way that one cannot arrive at the sensation that needs to be developed. One will have to reach the deepest possible feelings that can be found within us, for when we face the human face, we arrive at a particularly strange sensation, namely the sensation that this human face is not as it should be. And one will learn to see in the human face and everything associated with it—indeed, in the upper part of the human being—that it has been altered by that aspect of human soul life which can be called arrogance, pride, and haughtiness.

[ 22 ] You see, this is the beginning of transcending ordinary consciousness, when a person penetrates to this primal sensation, saying: You, human face, you, human head, you, human torso, you are lying to me; through your pride and arrogance you have given yourself a form that you should not have. When I see you, human torso, I see right through your illusory image, and when I consider all that has been imprinted upon humanity through the many incarnations in terms of pride and arrogance, something quite different reveals itself to me. — Through what the human form is in its upper half, we come to the realization that humanity has altered its original form through pride and arrogance.

[ 23 ] As occult aspirants, we also perceive a second aspect of the human being in relation to their form and the other parts of their being. Once again, when all the original sensations of the soul life are evoked, the human being gives the impression that they actually draw us in; the other parts of the human form must also be different. One must again subtract something; then one arrives at the original form of the human being; and what one must further subtract there is covetousness, desire. Man is transformed, one must say, above by pride and arrogance and by haughtiness, below by desire. If desire did not burn through him as an inner fire, the lower half of his organism would have a different form.

[ 24 ] These two feelings are the fundamental feelings from which one must proceed. One can experience these feelings. One can express them in two judgments: Man is too proud, too full of arrogance, and he is too covetous. — These are specific inner experiences of consciousness that one can have, which impose themselves when one truly looks at a person with the deepest feelings of the soul. But what has caused these sensations in us? Are these sensations evoked by any object in the vast world of earthly life? They are present in human experience only when a person perceives their own nature as incorrect, when they perceive what is within them as if it were originally differently constituted and had been altered by arrogance and desire. Thus, what we call external objects does not give rise to these two experiences. Nevertheless, they can arise in human consciousness; they can be present there because the human being lives in relation to their environment.

[ 25 ] It is of the utmost importance that it is possible to arrive at an inner judgment, an inner experience, that has no object. And this inner experience brings about something. It causes the person striving in the occult to turn away, at first, from his human earthly form, saying: You are not real, human being, as you actually stand before me. — He turns away; but not like the mystics we spoke of yesterday, who, by turning away from earthly experiences, have nothing left, but rather he steps out of his ordinary experience, taking something with him, namely a judgment about the human form that has, in fact, been expressed time and again in the most manifold ways out of human feeling.

[ 26 ] What has now been described is, so to speak, the fundamental element from which occult consciousness has often taken its starting point when it was to become not merely a mystical experience, but occult consciousness. It has proceeded from a judgment about the human being, but in such a way that the human form has been obliterated. However, not all inner experience has been obliterated. A certain judgment about the human being has remained, namely: In truth, the way you are has shaped your entire earthly life, and you are, in essence, such that you point to a completely different form, to a completely different shape.

[ 27 ] If we now wish to understand more deeply what we are actually dealing with here—that which can gradually dawn upon a person as a consciousness without an object—then it will be necessary for us to examine this human form in somewhat greater detail. For when we have shown how the occult aspirant steps outside of himself and retains only a kind of intuitive judgment about the human being—so that we turn away, as it were, from one half of the human being by saying it is too proud, and from the other half by saying it is too desirous— this is, as yet, still a rather indefinite inner experience that does not yet want to become concrete or definite. It is, after all, an inner experience that we shall see leads up into the highest regions of spiritual experience; but it is still indefinite.

[ 28 ] To arrive at greater clarity, let us first examine the human form as it initially presents itself to us in detail. To put it in scholarly terms, one might say: Let us break down the human form. — When one breaks down the human form, however, one divides it into certain members and parts that impose themselves with extraordinary significance, because the human form truly unfolds into these members. These members will reveal themselves to us when we ask: What actually makes it so that the human being is formed as he is? — if you are open to what I am about to say. You will find that the insights drawn from the depths of occultism do indeed provide an exhaustive classification of the human form, showing us how the human form is actually composed.

[ 29 ] The first thing we notice about this human form—what is essential, what, so to speak, makes a human being a human being externally, in terms of form—is what I already emphasized when I spoke, so to speak, the first sentence of these lectures. That is the fact that the human form is upright, the fact that the human being is an upright creature. That is the first important point, so to speak, the first aspect of his form. To highlight this aspect of his form, let us call it uprightness.

[ 30 ] You see, at first it will seem to you as though there is a certain arbitrariness in the way I am now breaking down the human being in terms of his form. But if you really engage with it closely, you will see that it is not arbitrary, but rather that it reflects the essence of the human being through his form, just as I am now describing the essence of the human being to you in terms of occult knowledge.

[ 31 ] The second thing we can consider essential to the human form—what makes a human being human—is the fact that the human form is structured in such a way that it can be a speaking being, that sound can be produced within it. Just consider for a moment that this is quite essential for human beings. While in general every human being is organized upward, they are specifically organized upward in such a way that their speech organs begin at the heart and larynx and extend upward toward the face. If you observe the human being in this light, you will find that all the forms of the limbs are organized toward the production and formation of sound. We can therefore say: The second important aspect in the arrangement of the human form’s limbs is their orientation toward sound formation, toward speech.

[ 32 ] The third thing you must consider important about the human form is the fact that it is symmetrical. You cannot imagine that the human form would lose anything of its essence if it were not symmetrical. This is the third essential point: all the limbs are arranged so that both sides are symmetrical. We know that there are exceptions to this, but symmetry is an essential feature of a number of limbs.

[ 33 ] The fourth possibility arises in the following way. If you consider what the human being possesses in these three aspects of his form—his upright posture, his speech, and his symmetry—you will have to say: What exists in the human being as these three aspects extends outward. The fact that the human being stands upright is something that places him within the external world. Speech is something of which you will readily recognize that it places him within the external world. The symmetrical form positions him in space in a certain state of equilibrium. — Now we come to something else; this is the fact that the human being, taken purely physically, is an inner being, that he has enclosed certain organs within his skin, within his exterior. We can therefore say: The human being has, as the fourth element of his form, the state of being enclosed by his skin, so that the organs which maintain the inner functions are internal and are protected from the external world. — We will therefore say: Enclosure or seclusion is something that belongs to this form.

[ 34 ] I ask you to see another, the fifth, aspect of this form in the fact that within this inner life—which is enclosed by the outer shell—the organs are active; that which acts and lives within. The fact that it acts and lives there within testifies to us that the human being, as he stands before us in his form, is not only dependent on the external world, but that he is also dependent on his inner self, that he has, as it were, a center of his activity and being within himself. So if we contrast the limbs we have already considered with, for example, merely the circulation of blood, we have something that takes place purely within, an inner self-containment. We thus have self-containment, and we have an inner self that is self-contained.

[ 35 ] But there is something quite special about this inner, self-contained aspect of the human form. Namely, this inner, self-contained aspect is, in purely physical terms, a duality within the human being. There are, in fact, internal organs such as the lungs and the heart that owe their form to a compromise, to an external influence. The heart must correspond with the lungs and has therefore been adapted to external conditions. The outside world—the air—penetrates into the interior through the lungs and is thus adapted to the internal organs. Then we also have organs whose very form indicates that they are adapted solely to the interior of the body. These are the organs of the lower abdomen. They derive their form from the fact that they are inside the human body. You can all imagine that the stomach, the intestines, the liver, and the spleen, if they were shaped differently inside, could still be connected to the heart and the lungs and could still perform their proper functions in some way. Once the exterior has found its way into the lungs, the interior can be shaped differently; then only the interior of the human being is decisive. So that we can say: Sixthly, we have a part of the human form that we can call the actual interior, the interior in a physical sense, and it is important here that we become aware: without relation to the outside world.

[ 36 ] Now we have reached the point where, in the human form, something must, so to speak, flow outward from within again; where we find something in the human form that is very much connected to the outside world. Just consider the shape of the human feet. If they were not shaped for the ground, if they did not have a sole at the bottom, a person could not walk. If they were shaped so that they tapered to a point, a person would constantly fall over. So, as you examine the human form, we come to organs that are, in turn, adapted to external conditions. But it is not only the feet; the legs, too, are shaped in such a way that the human being is precisely a human being. If he were a fish or a flying creature, his organs would have to be shaped differently; but they are shaped so that the human being is this creature that stands and walks on the earth. For this purpose—to be a being that works on Earth, capable of standing and walking—all the organs are shaped from the hips downward, so that we can say: In the hips, we have, seventhly, a certain state of equilibrium. What is above this is necessarily shaped outwardly or closed inwardly; what is below is shaped downward, so that we can say: In the hips there is a certain state of equilibrium. Of what lies below, we can say that it adapts to earthly conditions.

[ 37 ] If we continue to examine the human body, we find other organs that are fully adapted to external conditions, namely the reproductive organs.

[ 38 ] You need only consider that if a human being is to walk in the manner appropriate to a human being, the thighs must also be arranged in such a way that they bend at an angle, separate from the lower legs. This enables him to adapt his gait to his earthly circumstances, so that, following the thighs—which is important—man has the knees, which essentially determine his lower form. Then man also has the lower legs and, again separate from them, the feet.

1. Uprightness
2. Orientation toward sound production
3. Symmetry
4. Self-containment
5. Inner, self-contained
6. Inner in a physical sense, without relation to the outside world
7. Position of balance
8. Reproductive organs
9. Thighs
10. Knees
11. Lower legs
12. Feet.

[ 39 ] You will say that the hands are missing here. In the next reflection, we will see why the hands are actually missing here. But I ask you to take a look at this table first. I said that it might initially appear as though it were an arbitrary arrangement that the entire human form has been divided here into twelve members. But everything a human being truly needs to be an earthly human—we will discuss the matter of the hands tomorrow—is contained within these members; and it is contained in such a way that each of these members possesses a certain independence, that each of these members is separate from the others; and it would at least be conceivable that each of these members could be connected to the others and yet be shaped somewhat differently than they are. You can imagine other forms; but the fact that twelve such parts are joined together to constitute the human form—that you cannot disregard.

[ 40 ] If you consider what a human being is meant to be on Earth, you cannot ignore the fact that it must be a structured form, arranged in such a way that, when we look at the human form, it must be divided into twelve distinct parts. These twelve individual members have always held the greatest possible significance in occultism. We need these twelve individual members of the human form in order to grasp the full significance of this human form in its connection with the human being. Occultism has always recognized them, and for reasons that will become clear to us as we proceed with these lectures—when we come to know the human being in occult, theosophical, and philosophical terms—it will become evident to us why these members have been given very specific designations within a certain context.

[ 41 ] The constellation mentioned in the first point is called “Aries” and is represented by the symbol ♈︎.

[ 42 ] The second item listed is referred to as “Taurus” and is symbolized by the sign ♉︎.

[ 43 ] What is referred to as the symmetrical, as “twins,” has been designated by the symbol ♊︎.

[ 44 ] What has been characterized as an inner sense of isolation is represented by this symbol ♋︎ and has been called “Cancer.”

[ 45 ] What was characterized as an inner, self-contained life was called “Lion” and symbolized by this sign: ♌︎.

[ 46 ] That which is internal in a physical sense, without relation to anything external—that is, which is self-contained within—denotes the threefold human nature and suggests this inward self-containment; it is called “Virgo” and is represented by the symbol ♍︎.

[ 47 ] What the symbol for equilibrium suggests doesn't need much explanation when you call it a “scale”: ♎︎.

[ 48 ] The reproductive organs, which again point outward, are referred to as the “Scorpion” and symbolized by this sign ♏︎.

[ 49 ] The thighs, known as the “Sagittarius,” have this symbol: ♐︎.

[ 50 ] The knees, as “Capricorn,” are symbolized by this sign: ♑︎.

[ 51 ] The lower legs, known as “Aquarius,” are represented by this symbol: ♑︎.

[ 52 ] And finally, the feet as “fish” with this symbol: ♓︎.

[ 53 ] At first, view these symbols merely as signatures, signs representing the parts of the human form, which can be said to make up the entire human form. At first, view these symbols as nothing more than a means, just as if one had chosen letters to name these individual parts of the human form. Then you will have done enough for now to grasp what we call the human form. And because we break it down into individual parts, we can give them the names listed, assigning these individual parts—as if with letters—the symbols that are written alongside them.

[ 54 ] As you all know, in a certain sense these terms correspond to ancient customs, and they play a role in astrology specifically as they are listed here. But I ask you not to associate anything else with these terms in these lectures other than that we use them to direct our attention to the human form and naturally divide it into twelve parts. If we give these divisions strange names and add strange symbols, this should not be interpreted any differently than when the sounds of human language are sometimes such that we cannot immediately recognize why they express this or that; no differently than when letters are such that one cannot always say why they denote this or that.

[ 55 ] What we have achieved with these designations is that we have expressed the human form, divided into twelve parts, and that we have assigned them names for our further use—names that have already found their way into the public domain here and there from the realm of occultism.