The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] If we wish to penetrate the mysteries of human life, we must first and foremost focus our attention on a fundamental law of life: the so-called cyclical law of life. Characteristics are better than definitions. Therefore, in this case as well, I do not wish to provide a definition of what is meant here by the cyclical course of life, but rather I wish to characterize it. I have, after all, often spoken elsewhere about the limited value of so-called definitions. They always remain something rather meager in comparison to reality. In a Greek philosophical society, an attempt was once made to clarify the nature of definition by providing a definition of man. Definitions are supposed to reduce what the phenomenon presents to concepts. It is merely stated in radical terms what, for those with greater logical insight, is actually rather meager. The members of the Greek philosophical society now agreed to give the definition: Man is a being that has two legs and no feathers. This is, of course, not a particularly ingenious definition, but it radically reveals the shortcomings of every definition. It cannot be denied that this definition, even if it constitutes a sort of silly statement, does indeed capture the outward nature of man in a certain respect. The next day, however, someone brought in a plucked rooster and said: “So, according to your definition, this is a human being!” — Truly a silly remark. Yet it essentially captures the poverty of all defining. Therefore, when dealing with realities, let us refrain from all defining and instead seek to characterize.

[ 2 ] First, I would like to draw our attention to a very ordinary, cyclical process that occurs in our daily lives. It is the cyclical process of sleeping and waking. What do sleeping and waking actually mean for ordinary human life? One understands the nature of sleep only when one realizes that the inner soul activity of waking, in the current human cycle, actually represents a kind of destruction of the fine structures of the nervous system. With every thought, with every impulse of will that we generate in response to the external world, we destroy finer brain structures throughout our waking life. We have reached a point where one can indeed say that in the near future it will become increasingly clear to people how sleep must complement waking daily life; we are approaching a point where, in the near future, natural science—which is already on its way toward this—will increasingly unite with Spiritual Science. Natural science has already put forward this theory hypothetically on many occasions: that waking life represents a kind of destructive process in the nervous system, in the finer structures of the brain. Because we thus bring about destructive processes through our waking life, we must allow the corresponding opposite, balancing process to take place within us from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up. And indeed, while we sleep, forces are at work within us that otherwise do not come to light, do not become conscious in any way. Forces are at work restoring the finer nerve structures of our brain that were destroyed during waking life.

[ 3 ] It is precisely through the destruction of the fine nervous structures that thoughts and cognitive processes take place within us. Ordinary, everyday cognition would not be possible if processes of destruction and breakdown did not occur from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep. Sleep life, however, involves the restoration of these destroyed parts. Thus, a counteracting process takes place in our nervous system: on the one hand, a process of destruction and breakdown during wakefulness; on the other hand, a process of rebuilding and restoration during sleep. During sleep, forces within us work to rebuild the destroyed brain structures. We become aware of this because the process of destruction is taking place. We actually perceive the destruction; our waking daily life is the perception of processes of destruction. Because no processes of destruction take place during sleep, but rather processes of reorganization, we perceive nothing during this state either. The force that otherwise generates consciousness is used up for reconstruction. However, during the rebuilding process, the energy is not perceived, because we can only become conscious through processes of destruction. Thus, we have a cycle. Let us first consider what happens during sleep.

[ 4 ] Construction: Unconsciousness, because the forces are used as building forces; Deconstruction: Waking, consciousness, because the forces destroy, because the forces are set free and do not need to build. Unconscious sleep and conscious wakefulness, building and breaking down—this is one of the most common cyclical processes of human life. Sleeping and waking, building and breaking down, is such a cyclical process. It is for this reason, because this is how it is, that it is so dangerous for healthy human life if there is not sufficient sleep. Certainly, human life is structured in such a way that these most dangerous processes do not immediately come to the fore, because what is present in the human being has been formed over a long period of time. So that, fundamentally, the processes taking place in the human being today—even if they are abnormal—cannot penetrate human nature as deeply as one might initially suppose. One would actually have to believe, based on everything that has been said, that a person suffering from insomnia—since they are essentially allowing their brain to be destroyed—would have to break down completely in a relatively short time. This breakdown, however, occurs much less quickly than one would expect. The reason for this is the same as why, for example, in people who can neither see nor hear—such as Helen Keller—human intelligence can nevertheless be developed. One would actually have to consider this theoretically impossible in the present cycle, for the things that today constitute a large part of our intelligence enter our brain through the eyes and ears. But if a person like the now-famous Helen Keller is capable of being educated, it is because, even though the gates of the senses are closed to her, she has inherited a brain that makes such education possible. If the person were not situated within the line of heredity, then such an education, as in Helen Keller’s case, could not take place at all. If, through heredity, a person’s brain were not, so to speak, much healthier than one is usually inclined to assume, insomnia would completely undermine their health in a very short time. However, there is generally so much hereditary strength that insomnia can actually persist for a long time before it harms a person. Nevertheless, it remains true that this cycle essentially exists: building up, and thus unconsciousness during sleep; breaking down, and thus consciousness while awake.

[ 5 ] We perceive not only such smaller cycles throughout human life, but also larger cyclical patterns. I would like to draw attention to a cyclical pattern that I have, in fact, pointed out on several occasions. Anyone who traces the course of human life in Western regions will notice that there was a very specific configuration of humanity’s spiritual life, let us say from the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries up to the last third of the 19th century. However, people tend to look at the relevant aspects of everyday life far too superficially and fleetingly; generally speaking, they do not examine life deeply enough. But if one examines life thoroughly, one will be able to observe everywhere how, since the last third of the 19th century, an entirely different configuration of Western spiritual life has begun. Admittedly, we are only at the beginning of this emerging spiritual life. That is why people do not perceive it in all its significance and essential nature. But let us imagine that someone had tried, in the 1840s and 1850s, to speak before such an audience about the very things I am speaking to you about here—let us imagine that for a moment. — We simply cannot imagine that; it would have been nonsense; it would have been completely out of the question in the 1840s and 1850s. It would also have been completely out of the question to speak of these things in this way during the period from the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries up to the last third of the 19th century. That was precisely the time when scientific thinking had come of age, the very thinking that brought about the great successes of materialism, the very thinking to which natural scientists, unable to break free from it, will cling for a long time to come. But the true era of materialism is over. And just as the era of scientific thinking began at the specified time, so too is the era of humanity’s spiritualistic thinking now beginning.

[ 6 ] We are living in an era in which these two distinct epochs are in sharp conflict with one another. It will become increasingly clear that this new way of thinking must first come to terms with reality, that human thinking will become something entirely different from what it had to be over the past four centuries, because people had to learn to perceive the world through the natural sciences. Over the past four centuries, the focus has been on expanding humanity’s gaze out into the cosmos. I have often drawn attention to that significant moment in the spiritual development of the West when Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Giordano Bruno, working together, so to speak, shattered the blue vault of heaven. Until then, it was believed that this blue shell hung around our Earth. Then those minds appeared who declared this shell to be nothing and directed people’s gaze out into the infinite distances of space. What was actually significant about the fact that, let us say, Bruno taught people to look, made it clear to them that what they had set as the blue shell—the boundary of their own vision—was nothing, that he told them: This is not really there; just realize that you yourselves are placing this blue shell out into space? — That it was the beginning—that was what was significant. The end was the fact in the 19th century when people learned to examine the material compositions of the most distant celestial bodies with the spectroscope. A wonderful epoch, the epoch of materialism! Now we stand at the starting point of another epoch. It arises from the same laws, but it is the epoch of spirituality. Just as Bruno’s work prepared the scientific epoch, breaking through the blue shell of the celestial vault, so in the age that is now beginning, the firmament of time will be broken through. People will learn, having believed human life to be confined between birth and death or conception and death, that these are boundaries—self-imposed boundaries of the human soul. Just as people once made the limits of the senses for themselves as a blue celestial shell, and just as their gaze was then expanded into the infinite spheres of space, so too will the boundaries of time lying between birth and death be broken through; and detached from birth and death, the transformations of the human core—which we trace through the ever-recurring incarnations—will lie in the infinite sea of time. A new age is beginning, the age of spiritual thinking.

[ 7 ] For those who can perceive the occult foundations of these transitions from one age to another, what is the basis for this change in human thinking? No philosophy, no external physiology or anatomy can readily prove this. Yet it is true. The forces that have now emerged into the active human soul—the forces that are now being applied within the human soul to gather spiritual insights—are the very same forces that worked upon the human organism as constructive forces over the last four centuries. Let us take the entire period from Copernicus to the last third of the 19th century: throughout this entire time, mysterious forces worked on the physical body, just as the building forces work on the nervous system during sleep. These building forces, which were at work in human beings, created a very specific brain structure in particular parts of the brain. Western brains today are different from what they were five centuries ago. Today, the interior of the skull does not look the same as it did five to six centuries ago. A delicate organ has formed there; forces were at work there that created an organ that was not there before. Even if this cannot be proven externally, it is nonetheless true. It is true that a subtle organ has developed beneath the human forehead. Forces were at work beneath the human forehead, working through a cycle lasting four centuries. During this four-century cycle, these forces fulfilled their task as constructive forces. Today, the organ is now present, at least in most Western people. It will become increasingly present in the coming centuries, in the cycle toward which we are now moving. The organ has been built up; the forces are being set free. And with these very forces, Western humanity will acquire spiritual knowledge. Herein lies the occult physiological foundation of what is at stake. Today we are beginning to work with the forces that people have been unable to use over the past four centuries. During that time, these forces were occupied with building up what had to be prepared so that spiritual knowledge could take hold in the world.

[ 8 ] So we can imagine a person, say, from the 17th or 18th century: He stands before us in such a way that we know certain occult forces are at work behind his forehead, reshaping his brain. These forces have always been at work in these areas among Western people. Now let us suppose that a person had succeeded—and this is possible—in once halting these forces in the 17th or 18th century, preventing them from working: then the same thing would have happened to him—and it did happen—as happens to a person who, in the midst of sleep, halts the forces that otherwise work to build up the brain’s structure, who allows these forces to act without their building anything up at that moment. One can experience moments when, emerging from sleep, one seems to wake up yet does not fully wake up; when one remains motionless, unable to move one’s limbs; when there is no external perception, yet one is in a waking state. In such moments, what normally works on the brain’s ongoing development is at work. This is not working on the development, but is working freely, playing freely. These are the moments when we can use the forces otherwise expended on our brain for clairvoyance. These are the moments when, remaining motionless as in sleep, we can gain insights into the spiritual worlds. But it was the same when a person of the 17th or 18th century, so to speak, suspended the constructive activity of these building forces. Then they would let these forces rest for a moment, and for a moment they would become clairvoyant. What did they see there? What did they perceive? They saw what was at work in the brain, coming in from the spiritual worlds—the forces that had been preparing people from around the 15th century through into the 19th century so that these people could, from the 20th century onward, rise into the spiritual worlds. There have always been isolated individuals who had such experiences. Such experiences were profoundly unsettling because they were immensely powerful. There have always been people who, for moments, lived within what was working its way from the supersensible world into the sensory world, in order to bring forth in the latter something that had not existed in earlier cycles of humanity, namely this finer organ in the frontal sinus. Such people, who became clairvoyant in the manner described, perceived gods and spiritual beings at work in the building up of the human organism.

[ 9 ] In doing so, we are also characterizing clairvoyance from a particular perspective. By applying the exercises given in the book *How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds*, we can also induce such moments during sleep. We can then gain insights into spiritual life in the manner described in my book *A Path to Self-Knowledge for Humanity*.

[ 10 ] Thus, within a human cycle—where that which works preparatorily for the future becomes free—that which prepares the future can become visible to the clairvoyant eye. We also refer to this by another name—for names, after all, mean nothing—it would be just as well if we referred to those forces that have been at work for four centuries on the subtle restructuring of the human brain as the power of Gabriel. We say Gabriel, but what matters is that one gains insight for a moment into the supersensible worlds. One gains insight into a spiritual being who works on the human organism from the supersensible world. We are thus speaking of a sum of forces, which are, however, directed by a being from the hierarchy of the Archangels, Gabriel. We therefore say: The Gabriel force worked on the human organism from the 15th century until the last third of the 19th century. And because a spiritual force worked specifically on the physical, understanding of the spiritual lay dormant at that time, and this slumber of understanding for the spiritual brought about the great triumphs of natural science. But now this force has awakened. The spiritual has been at work. The spiritual age is beginning now that the forces we call the Gabriel forces have been set free, now that we can make use of these forces—which have become soul forces—that previously worked beneath the skull on the physical structure of an organ.

[ 11 ] Here we have a somewhat more significant cyclical pattern than that of day and night, or waking and sleeping. However, there are even more significant cyclical processes in human evolution. We can point out, for example, that the human self-consciousness which, right now in this cycle of our post-Atlantean era, constitutes the very pride of humanity, had to develop only gradually. It did not exist in earlier times. People speak a great deal about development today, but they rarely take development entirely seriously.

[ 12 ] One can sometimes have very strange experiences that reveal just how naive people are about the world around them. People naively allow many things to surface from the subconscious and find it difficult to consciously attribute to the supersensible worlds those forces that flow from unknown worlds into the known ones. Just in the last few days, I have again encountered a strange example of, so to speak, a logic that stops halfway. One must admit that one understands the resistance encountered by the anthroposophical worldview when one realizes that understanding anthroposophy requires a very particular way of thinking, in which one must not stop halfway with any given thought. A “Free Thinker’s Calendar” has now been published in Germany, for the first time last year. In it, a thoroughly honest person argues against teaching children religious concepts. He explains that this actually goes against the nature of the child. He has observed that if children are allowed to grow up freely, they do not develop religious concepts. So it would be unnatural to instill these concepts in children. One can be quite certain that this calendar reaches hundreds of people and that they believe they understand how it is actually nonsense to teach religious concepts to children. Such things are everywhere today, because people no longer even notice the illogic. One need only reply that, just because children who, due to some circumstance—let’s say, having lived alone on an island—did not learn to speak, one should not teach children to speak at all. That would be exactly the same logic. However, people will not accept that this is the same logic they find so incredibly witty in the first case. It is charming when one has such an experience; one is tempted to say that, against the vast horizon of today’s external life, which is now nothing more than an epilogue, a fading out of the materialistic age.

[ 13 ] There are some very remarkable essays that have appeared recently by the President of the United States of America, Woodrow Wilson. There is an essay on the laws of human progress. In it, he explains in a truly charming and even witty way how people are actually influenced by the prevailing ideas of their age. And he explains very wittily how, in the age of Newton, when everything was filled with thoughts about gravity, one could feel the lingering effects of Newton’s theories—which in reality applied only to celestial bodies—in social concepts, indeed, in concepts of the state. Thoughts on gravity, in particular, can be felt reverberating in everything. This is truly very witty, for one need only read up on Newtonianism to see that terms like “attraction” and “repulsion” and so on are coined everywhere. Wilson really highlights this very wittily. He points out how inadequate it is to apply purely mechanical concepts to human life, to apply concepts from celestial mechanics to human relationships, by showing how human life at that time was virtually embedded in these concepts, how these concepts have influenced state and social life everywhere. Wilson rightly criticizes this application of purely mechanical laws in an age in which, so to speak, Newtonianism had yoked all thought under its yoke. One must think differently, says Wilson, and now constructs his concept of the state. And he does so in such a way that, having demonstrated this in the age of Newtonianism, Darwinism now peeks out from his work. Yes, he is so naive as to even admit it. He is so naive as to say: Newtonian concepts have not been sufficient; one must apply the Darwinian laws of the organism. Here we have a living example of how one strides through the world today with half-baked logic. The laws that spring purely from the organism are simply no longer sufficient. Today we need psychological and spiritual laws.

[ 14 ] The fact is, one can understand how contradictions pile up from all sides against the anthroposophical worldview, precisely because it requires penetrating thought and a logic that permeates everything. But that is also the strength of the anthroposophical worldview: it compels its adherents to think clearly. Thus, we must conceive of evolution in a spiritual sense, and not in the Darwinian sense of Wilson. We must realize that what now constitutes the essential characteristic of the human being—self-consciousness, the standing on the “I”—has also developed only gradually. But this, too, had to be prepared, just as our spiritual thinking has been prepared over the last four centuries. Spiritual forces had to work from the supersensible worlds to shape what later found expression in human self-consciousness. We can speak of a turning point in human development, a preceding and a subsequent age. The latter is the one in which self-consciousness slowly and gradually emerges in human beings. Let us call it the age of self-consciousness.

[ 15 ] But preceding this, in a cyclical alternation, is an age in which the organ of self-consciousness was first built into human beings from supersensible forces. Preceding it is the age in which spiritual forces organically prepared human beings to possess self-consciousness. That is to say, that which works psychically within self-consciousness was at work in that preceding age, invisibly and unrecognizably, within human nature. The turning point, the connecting point between these two great ages, is a significant turning point in human development. Before the epoch that follows this turning point, self-consciousness was entirely absent in most people and relatively weak in the more advanced ones. Back then, people did not think as they do today, knowing with every thought: “I am thinking this thought.” Instead, thoughts arose like living dreams. Nor did the impulses of the will and the feelings enter consciousness as they do today; rather, something arose within the human being that lived within them almost instinctively. Self-consciousness had not yet permeated the life of the soul. But those beings who were preparing humanity to later be capable of possessing self-consciousness of their own accord were working on the human organism and human nature from the spiritual realm. People had to behave quite differently before the epoch of self-consciousness than during the epoch of self-consciousness, just as external experience presents itself quite differently from the 15th to the 20th century A.D. than it will later on.

[ 16 ] Just as we see all Western cultures proceeding in such a way that the external laws of the material mode of action are discovered and applied in practice, and just as spiritual knowledge and spiritual understanding are then added to this, so too, up until the age in which self-consciousness entered the soul, everything that could prepare for this self-consciousness had flowed into human life. People were divided into strict castes in the region where self-consciousness was first to emerge. And people respected these castes. Those born into a lower caste regarded it as their highest goal to conduct themselves within that caste in such a way that they might rise to a higher caste in later incarnations. This caste system was a powerful incentive for the development of the human soul. For people knew that by developing their inner soul forces, they made themselves fit to ascend to a higher caste in a future incarnation. And they looked up to their ancestors and saw in them that which is not bound to a physical body. The ancestors were revered by people because they had already died, and what remained was the manic, the spiritual, which continued to work spiritually from the higher world after death. This was a good preparation for the great goal in human nature: to see in the ancestor cult that which already lives within us and is not bound to the physical body—the self-conscious soul that, upon death, passes through the gate of death into the spiritual worlds. Just as, for four centuries, the best education in spirituality was the education that compelled people to think scientifically, so the best education at that time was to instill in people a deep respect for the caste system and for their ancestors. This was a wonderful preparation for the development of self-consciousness. People stood within their caste and developed a very special inclination toward caste division. It was precisely in the reverence for the caste and for the ancestors that human beings had something that had an immense impact on their lives. Caste division and ancestor worship had a profound effect on human life. Spiritual beings worked into this outer human life, as it unfolded within the castes and in the veneration of the ancestors. This was what prepared the possibility that in the future, with every thought, a human being could say: I think; with every feeling: I feel; and with every impulse of will: I will. — Self-consciousness was prepared in the preceding epoch, in which self-consciousness did not yet exist, but had been worked out of human nature by the gods.

[ 17 ] Let us now suppose that, toward the end of this period, a person experiences—as if through a powerful shock—an instantaneous severing of all ties to the forces just described, to the forces of the preceding epoch. Then it was for him as it is for us in sleep, when we momentarily withdraw the forces of construction and become clairvoyant, or as it was for people of the 18th century when they could halt the forces that were then acting upon the brain’s structure. Thus, at that time, a person could—if he withdrew his understanding of ancestor worship and the sacrificial fires for a moment—by experiencing a shock, use the forces he would otherwise have employed for this understanding to cast a glance into the supersensible worlds for a moment; he could see how work was being done from the spiritual world to prepare human self-consciousness. This is what Arjuna did at the very moment he experienced that shock in battle. At that moment, the forces within him—which were otherwise constructive forces—came to a standstill, and he was able to catch a glimpse of the divine being who was preparing the forces of self-consciousness, and this deity was none other than Krishna. What does this make Krishna to us? Krishna is the being in human evolution who has worked spiritually for centuries upon centuries to prepare the organization of human nature, enabling humanity, from the 7th and 8th centuries before the founding of Christianity onward, to gradually enter the age of self-consciousness. How does Krishna, the architect of human egoity, the architect of human self-consciousness, appear in this context? He must speak to Arjuna in words that are entirely imbued and permeated with self-consciousness. Thus we understand Krishna from another perspective as the divine architect in that which prepared and brought about self-consciousness in human beings. And how a human being, under special circumstances, could come to behold this Architect—that is precisely what the Bhagavad Gita presents to us. This is one aspect of Krishna’s nature. We will then come to know another aspect of Krishna’s nature in the next lectures.