The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] It is just as natural—though usually overlooked by science—that human beings, as they currently find themselves in this state of life, cannot truly know a part of their own nature. Just as the environment around human beings unfolds, so does it present itself—if one were to sketch it roughly, so to speak—rising from the mineral kingdom through the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom up to human beings. And human beings must, of course, assume that behind all the forms they perceive around them lies the creative force present in all the realms of nature that surround them. In all of nature surrounding us, the creative force must first be assumed. Now the point is that when human beings direct their gaze toward their environment, they acquire knowledge because the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms are external to them and they can observe them. But regarding what human beings possess within themselves, they can actually acquire knowledge only to the extent that the forces operating within them are also present in the three kingdoms of nature mentioned above. And to the extent that human beings possess within themselves forces that transcend the realms of nature, they cannot actually perceive them through ordinary means of cognition; they can know nothing of them at all. For it is precisely through that which elevates human beings above the realms of nature that they can perceive; it is through this that they can acquire knowledge. Just as the eye, which must see, cannot see itself, so too can human beings not recognize in themselves that which is there so that they may recognize. It is a simple thought, but one that is certainly true. It is impossible for the eye to see itself, because it exists for the purpose of seeing; it is impossible for those powers within human beings that exist for the purpose of cognition to recognize themselves. And these powers that exist for the purpose of cognition are precisely those that represent what elevates humanity above the animal realm.

[ 2 ] Materialistic Darwinism takes the easy way out. It overlooks the insight—as natural as it is simple—that the very power of cognition by which human beings rise above the animal realm must, by definition, be unknowable to ordinary perception. It does indeed state that this power is unknowable, and therefore denies its existence, viewing human beings only insofar as they still belong to the animal realm. You can see where the actual fallacy, the deception of materialistic Darwinism, lies. Human beings cannot recognize in themselves those powers that are the actual powers of cognition within them. This is as natural as the fact that the eye cannot see itself. But the eye can see another eye, and because the eye can see another eye, it can, under certain circumstances, believe in itself. Now, this is not the case with cognition. Cognition cannot recognize itself, but it would at least still be logically possible for a human being to encounter another human being and to recognize in that other human being the very cognition—that is, that which elevates humans above the animal realm. But even this is impossible, for the reasons already evident from our previous considerations.

[ 3 ] What, then, is ordinary perception of the external world? We have already emphasized this: it is a continuous process of destruction, a wearing down of the external—truly the external—structure of the brain and nervous system. So if one were to look for the facts of cognition in ordinary daily life—in the life that belongs to the outer physical plane—one would find a process of destruction in the nervous system. One would therefore find no creative, no constructive process. But the creative forces that actually enable human beings by raising them above animality cannot unfold at all in waking daily life, in the life that is usually the life of cognition. They must come into play there in such a way that they do not halt the destruction of the nervous structure. But that means they rest, they sleep in waking daily life. One has already grasped much if one has penetrated the statement that everything one would need to recognize in order to see materialistic Darwinism as nonsense even on the physical plane actually lies dormant from waking until falling asleep, and that instead there is a process of destruction at work, while that which elevates human beings above the animal realm remains dormant. The creative forces that produce the animal organism lag behind in perfection compared to those that work on the human organism. During waking daily life, these creative processes do not operate at all; instead, another force is constantly destroying precisely that which transcends animality—the creative forces of the human being. These forces are destroyed precisely during waking daily life. They are therefore not present at all. During waking life, therefore, the forces that actually elevate the human being above animality are dormant. During sleep, they come into play. There, what has been destroyed is restored; there, it is, as it were, replenished. So that the creative forces that elevate the human being above animality can actually only be perceived in the sleeping human being. We would therefore have to say: That which restores in the sleeping human being the forces that are exhausted during waking life must be forces that elevate human beings above the animal realm. These forces are, of course, still unknown to external natural science today; it is only gradually beginning to sense them. But it is on the way to one day uncovering these forces entirely by external means. They could only truly be observed in humans if one were to observe how the process of reorganization takes place in humans during sleep. For there are indeed exceptions to the rule that the forces which lead beyond the animal realm are not usually observable in humans. Once natural science learns to distinguish those forces in human beings that exist within them beyond the animal realm, it will be able to physically confirm, precisely in the sleeping human body, the human being’s elevation above the animal realm, because one will recognize how creatively that which acts destructively during waking hours works during sleep. Once natural science learns to distinguish the regenerative forces in human beings from what is present in the animal realm, it will recognize how the creative forces that govern earthly life—in order to lead human beings beyond the animal realm—are only active when the human being is asleep. Thus, a person’s true creative forces sleep when the person is awake; and a person’s true creative forces are awake when the person is asleep. From all this we can deduce that in self-knowledge, in true self-knowledge of the human being, creative forces—the truly human forces—can only be perceived when the human being becomes clairvoyant during sleep, that is, when they wake up clairvoyant in a state similar to ordinary sleep. I have already pointed this out in the fifth lecture of this series. But today I have already said that, in a certain way, one will gradually find scientific indications of these forces—which elevate the human being above the animal realm—in the processes that manifest in the sleeping human being. But these will always remain merely indications. For these forces, precisely when they present themselves today to the clairvoyant consciousness, manifest themselves in such a way that they cannot reveal their true, essential form to the external senses. One day it will be possible to draw conclusions about these forces from scientific facts. But for a reason entirely different from the fact that these forces are actually imperceptible, these forces—though imperceptible—will nevertheless be able to be deduced: namely, because these forces, which may be called the human-creative forces, relate to all other natural forces in a very special way. This is a rather difficult subject we are approaching, but we will be able to clarify it for ourselves in the following way.

[ 4 ] Let us suppose we have here the receptacle of an air pump, a glass bell jar from which we pump out the air, and let us suppose we were able to make this inverted glass bell jar truly airless. This is, after all, possible in terms of external experience. Now everyone who wants to cling to the sensory world with their intellect will say: So there is no air in there; there is a vacuum. One cannot do more than that; there cannot be less than no air in there. — But that is not true. Let us imagine for a moment that we were pumping, that is, making the air inside thinner and thinner. Then we can imagine that this could go so far that we would, so to speak, have reached the zero point, but that we would continue pumping and could now go below zero: then we would obtain a space that would be less than a vacuum. People who are very attached to the material world will find this difficult to imagine, for people usually cannot imagine “less than nothing.”

[ 5 ] When it comes to sensory perceptions, this mental image is easier to grasp. Let’s imagine we are in a forest where many, many birds are singing. We are right in the midst of this birdsong. But now let us suppose that we move further and further away, that we walk out of the forest, that we hear the birdsong less and less, that we come to a place where we can no longer hear it, but that we keep walking: then the diminishing of our hearing must surely continue. We arrive at silence, but if we go further, we also reach—in relation to the birdsong—that which lies beneath silence, beneath stillness. You see that this second mental image, this second image, is already easier to grasp than the first. We can easily imagine that there is a specific limit beyond which we hear nothing. But we can also imagine that we can go even further, to the point where we hear even less than nothing.

[ 6 ] It is sometimes quite remarkable how certain things are accepted as axioms, as self-evident truths. Thus, we can read in numerous Western philosophical works: Less than nothing cannot exist anywhere; less than nothing does not exist. — Indeed, some claim that not even nothing can exist. Now I must say something quite trivial. In life, people notice quite well that there is both a “nothing” and a “less-than-nothing” for certain sets of facts. If you have ten marks in your pocket, you can keep reducing them. You can turn them into five, four, three, two, one mark, and you can even spend that one. That way, you can indeed arrive at nothing. But in this realm, there is actually a very real “less-than-nothing.” This is often a very powerful reality, for every person is surely happier when they have two, three, four, or five marks in their pocket than when they owe two, three, four, or five marks. That is less than nothing, and this “less than nothing” is, in our practical lives, actually a quite strong, quite effective reality. For this reality of “less than nothing” can indeed be a much stronger reality than the reality of possession.

[ 7 ] What is present in this trivial example is, in fact, also present in the world. All philosophical pronouncements about “nothing,” about “going to nothing,” and so on are, when you get right down to it—even if they often appear with axiomatic pretensions—just wishy-washy, something that is a blurring nothing. These axioms are themselves just like a blurring nothingness. These axioms about nothingness are nothing. It is quite true that the something, the physical something, can be reduced down to nothingness, and then even further, to less-than-nothing. It is quite true that this nothingness is a real factor everywhere. The world that surrounds us, which we know as the forces of nature, we must conceive of as being reduced down to nothingness as it confronts us in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, and then reduced even further, below nothingness: then the forces emerge that are the creative forces when a person sleeps. This is how the forces that regenerate the human being while he sleeps relate to the ordinary forces of nature that surround us.

[ 8 ] But since conventional natural science knows only the outward aspect of forces—indeed, in fact, grasps only an abstraction—it cannot address this distinction at all. For conventional natural science relates to reality in the forces of nature in much the same way as one might relate, say, to ten lenses, ten peas, or ten beans, by omitting the quality and stating only the numbers: after all, all three are simply ten, nothing other than ten. Thus, external natural science does not distinguish, but rather uses common names that, like numbers, merely touch the surface of things.

[ 9 ] Now suppose that science one day comes to the conclusion that certain forces must be at work when the organism regenerates and rebuilds itself during sleep—it will relate to these forces just as someone would react to a person who says to them: “I have fifteen marks in my pocket”—and that person would reply: “Well, I’m not interested in marks; you have fifteen.” Then another person would come along and say: “I owe fifteen marks.” Then the first person would say: “That’s not true; you have fifteen.” — He ignores exactly what is at stake. In the same way, one will overlook precisely the characteristic nature of the forces that build up the human being during sleep. The result will be that one will confuse these forces with the ordinary laws of nature and fail to recognize that higher laws are at work.

[ 10 ] I mention all this to show the difficulty that external science always faces—and must face—when it seeks to discover the truth. It will, of course, draw conclusions and eventually arrive at the truth. But that will not be necessary for a certain number of people, for this science will gradually be supported by clairvoyant perception, for which, however, these forces behave quite differently from the forces we find active out there in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. I cannot go into detail now regarding the superficial objection that animals also sleep. Such objections are logically quite inferior, but one does not notice their inferiority because one judges not by the nature of the matter but by concepts. Anyone who were to bring animal sleep into this consideration would logically be making the same mistake as if someone were to say: I sharpen my pencil with a knife and I shave with a knife—and the other person were to say: That can’t possibly be right; a knife is for cutting meat. —That is how people judge things everywhere. People think that the same thing has the same function in other realms. But this is the same mistake as if someone who has only seen a knife used for cutting meat, and now sees a knife being used for shaving, were to equate shaving with cutting meat. Sleep has a completely different function in humans than in animals.

[ 11 ] I wanted to draw your attention to forces at work within human nature—forces that initially stand in our way when we look into the eyes of a sleeping person, and that stand in our way during the regeneration of the organism in sleep. But these forces are related to other forces, indeed closely related to the very forces that develop within the human being with a certain—one might say—unconsciousness. Certain forces develop within the human being with a certain unconsciousness: these are the forces connected with human procreation, with human generation. We know, of course, that in human consciousness, up to a certain age, a sweet, immediate unconsciousness reigns over these forces—the innocence of childhood. We know that at a certain age, consciousness awakens to these forces; that, as it were, from a certain age onward, the human organism is permeated by consciousness of the forces that are later called the sensual love of the sexes. What previously reigns as sleeping forces, which only awaken with sexual maturity, are, when viewed in their very own form, precisely the same forces that restore the destroyed forces within the human being during sleep. These forces are concealed only by the other aspect of human nature, because they are mingled with that other aspect of human nature. There are forces at work invisibly within the human being which only become culpable when they awaken, which sleep or at most dream until sexual maturity sets in. Since in human nature the later forces are only just preparing themselves, these later forces, which are not yet awake, are already mixed with the other forces of human nature from birth, and this human nature is, as it were, permeated by these sleeping forces. This is what confronts us as such a wondrous mystery in the child: the sleeping forces of generation, which only awaken later. This is also why those who have a sense for such things perceive something like the breath of the gods when, amidst the manifold misbehaviors, stubbornness, and other more or less unpleasant traits of childhood, they find at work the very same forces that are merely withdrawn during childhood—the same forces that awaken at puberty. These qualities of the child are, through no fault of their own, the qualities of the adult. Thus, those who recognize in these qualities the generational forces that seem withdrawn into childhood sense the breath of the gods, the divine forces that appear so wondrous because, while they later represent the lower nature of the human being, as long as they reign in innocence, they truly present a divine breath. One must perceive these things, feel them. Then one will recognize the human being so wonderfully synthesized from the forces that reign as if asleep in the tenderest childhood and later, when they awaken, are effective only when they reign in innocence, when the human being sinks back into the innocence of sleep at night.

[ 12 ] Thus, human nature is, as it were, divided into two parts. In every person, we actually have two people before us: the one person we are from the moment we wake up until we fall asleep, and the other person we are from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up. In one person, we are constantly striving to degrade our nature down to the level of animality with everything that is not knowledge, everything that is not grasped purely in the spirit. With all of this, we are always striving to degrade our nature down to the level of animality. This occurs during our waking state. But what elevates us above this person reigns first as a sweet, innocent force during childhood within the generative forces, and reigns, when these forces awaken, in sleep, when that which has been destroyed by the waking day is regenerated. Thus we have within us a person who is related to the creative forces in the human being, and a person who destroys these forces. What is significant, however, in the dual nature of the human being is that one must actually suspect, behind everything the senses perceive, the presence of another human being—namely, a human being in whom the creative forces are at work. This second human being, in whom the human-creative forces are at work, is actually never present in an unmixed state. He is never present without mixture: he is not present during waking hours, nor during sleep. For during sleep, the physical body and etheric body remain permeated by the aftereffects of the day, by the destructive forces. But when these destructive forces have finally been removed, we wake up again.

[ 13 ] This has been the case since that era we call the Lemurian Age, which is when modern humanity actually began its evolution. At that time—you will find this moment described in greater detail in my *Secret Science*—the Luciferic influence took hold of humanity and brought about certain effects that we can characterize as follows: From this Luciferic influence arose, among other things, that which today constantly compels human beings to degrade themselves to the level of animality. But that which is mingled with human nature, which humanity, as it is, does not yet recognize—the creative forces—reigned as humanity in the first Lemurian epoch before the Luciferic impulse. In our contemplation, we ascend from the human being as it has become to the human being as it is becoming, from humanity as a creature to the human-creative forces. This, however, simultaneously broadens our view into that ancient Lemurian epoch, when human beings were still entirely and completely permeated by these creative forces. It was then, therefore, that human beings took on their present form. If we trace the human race from this point in the Lemurian epoch onward, we always have before us this dual nature of the human being throughout everything that followed. At that time, humanity entered a kind of lower nature. But back then—as the clairvoyant gaze into the Akashic Records reveals—a certain soul, like a sister or brother soul, joined those human beings who were also permeated by human-creative forces. This sister soul was, so to speak, held back; it was not transferred into human evolution. It remained only imbued with human-creative forces. A human remained behind in the ancient Lemurian era, as it were, the sister or brother soul—for in that time it makes no difference—the brother soul of Adam remained behind. This soul remained behind at that time; this soul could not enter into the physical human process. It remained behind and reigned invisibly over the physical human process. It was not born like the human beings in the ongoing process. For if it had been born and died, then it would indeed have entered into the physical human process. It reigned in the unseen and could only be perceived by those who raised themselves to those clairvoyant heights, to those clairvoyant powers that awaken in the state that is otherwise sleep. For then the human being is attuned to the forces that reign more fully in the sister soul. The human being entered into evolution, but reigning above it, living a life of self-sacrifice, was a soul that did not initially incarnate throughout the entire human process, that did not strive for incarnations, that did not strive for birth and death like human souls. This soul became visible, could reveal itself, only when human beings could become clairvoyant while asleep. Yet this soul did influence humanity, wherever humanity encountered it through special clairvoyance. These were people who, through training or by nature, possessed such clairvoyant powers that they could perceive the creative forces. And wherever such schools appear in history, one can always recognize that they became aware of a soul that accompanies humanity. In most cases, this very soul was discernible only in such clairvoyant states that extended the spiritual gaze into the consciousness of sleep.

[ 14 ] Due to those special circumstances under which Arjuna’s soul perceived everything around him and allowed it to affect his feelings—by sensing what was taking place at that time in Kurukshetra, on the battlefield where the Kurus and Pandavas faced each other—it came to pass that this particular, unique soul spoke through the soul of Arjuna’s charioteer. And the manifestation of this soul, speaking through a human soul—that is Krishna. Which soul, then, was suited to instill within the human soul the impulse toward self-awareness? It was that soul which remained behind in the ancient Lemurian era, when humanity entered the actual evolution of the Earth. In the past, this soul was often to be seen in manifestations, but in a much more spiritual form. At the point in time, however, of which the sublime Song, the divine Gita, tells us—one must think of a kind of incarnation, though there is much Maya involved—a kind of incarnation of this soul of Krishna. But then a specific incarnation occurs in human history: this very same soul later truly incarnates in a boy. Those of my esteemed friends to whom I have spoken of this often know that at the time Christianity was founded, two boys were born into families in both of which the blood of the house of David flowed. One boy is described to us in the Gospel of Matthew, the other in the Gospel of Luke. This is the true reason why, from an external perspective, the Gospel of Matthew does not agree with the Gospel of Luke. The same boy Jesus, of whom the Gospel of Luke tells, is first and foremost the embodiment of this very soul, which has never before dwelt in a human body, yet is a human soul because it was a human soul during the ancient Lemurian era, in which our actual evolution began. It is the same soul that revealed itself as Krishna. Thus we have what the Krishna impulse signifies—the impetus toward human self-consciousness—embodied in the body of the Luke-Jesus boy. That which was embodied there is related to the forces that lie dormant in childhood in such sweet innocence, before they awaken as sexual forces. In the Luke Jesus-child, they can be active and manifest themselves up to that age when, otherwise, a person enters sexual maturity. The body of the Jesus-child—which, after all, was taken from the general humanity that had descended into incarnations—would no longer have been suited to the forces that are, indeed, related to the sweet, innocent sexual forces in the child. Therefore, the soul that is in the other Jesus-child—and which, as most of our dear friends know, is the Zarathustra soul, that is, a soul that has passed from incarnation to incarnation and has attained its height precisely through special work within many incarnations— therefore this Zarathustra soul passes into the body of the Luke-Jesus child and is from then on—as you will find described in my book *The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and of Humanity*—connected with this body of the Luke-Jesus child. Here we touch upon a wondrous mystery. There we see how the human soul, as it was before the human being descended into the earthly series of incarnations, enters a human body—the body of the Luke-Jesus child. There we understand that this soul could only reign in the human body until the twelfth year of that body, and we understand that then another soul, one that has undergone all the transformations of humanity, such as the Zarathustra soul, must take possession of this particular body. The miraculous event takes place whereby that which is the innermost core of the human being, his true self—which we have seen addressed as Krishna, which we have seen flash forth as an impulse in the Krishna impulse—permeates the Child Jesus, as described to us in the Gospel of Luke. The forces contained therein are the innermost forces of humanity. We can also call them the Krishna forces, for we know their origin. What I depicted in the previous lecture as if without a root—this Krishna root extends all the way back to the Lemurian epoch, to the dawn of human history. It was connected to humanity at a time before the physical development of humanity had begun. This root, these Krishna forces converging and uniting in the indeterminate, then worked to bring about the unfolding and development of the human inner being from within. Specifically, within a single human being, this root is present in the boy Jesus of Luke; it grows and continues to work beneath the surface of existence after the Zoroastrian soul has entered this particular human body. Then, at that moment described in the Bible as the baptism by John—that is, in the thirtieth year of this unique human body—that which now belongs to all humanity approaches this body. At the moment marked by the voice: “This is my beloved Son; today I have begotten him,” Christ now approaches the physical from the other side. Here we have the moment: in the body standing before us, we have concretely what we considered abstractly yesterday. That which belongs to all humanity approaches this body, which contains within itself that which, through a different impulse, has brought the individual powers of the human inner being—which the human being still wishes to unfold—to the highest ideal.

[ 15 ] I believe that if you consider what has led us today to a certain understanding of that great moment, which is symbolically expressed in the Bible as the baptism of John in the Jordan, you will have to say: This anthroposophical perspective takes nothing away from the sublimity of the Christ idea; on the contrary, by shedding light on this Christ idea, it adds much to what can be given in the outer, exoteric views of humanity.

[ 16 ] Today I tried to present it in a way that might make it somewhat understandable to an unbiased mind, based on the outward course of human history. But this mystery has not been discovered in this way. Perhaps someone, based on my lectures on the Gospel of Luke that I gave in Basel years ago—where I first pointed out the two Jesus children and their lineage, where I was first able to point out that the Zarathustra soul lived in one of the Jesus children, and that at a certain point in time this soul passed into the body of the other Jesus child— someone who heard that might ask: Well, why then was what has been added today not presented back then? — That has to do with the whole way the matter was discovered. Namely, with the fact that this entire truth was not discovered in a single piece by the human intellect. It was not discovered in the way I tried to present it today, but rather in such a way that first the truth stood there—as I described a few days ago—that the fact was there. Then the rest came of its own accord, attaching itself to the root of this recognition of the truth concerning the two Jesus children. From this you can see how, in the anthroposophical movement that I take the liberty of representing before you, nothing is an intellectual construct. This is not something I wish to present as if everyone must do what I myself regard as a special task for myself: namely, to say nothing that is given by the intellect as such, but to take things as they are initially presented to occult observation, which is only later penetrated by human reason. What has been discovered about the two Jesus boys did not come from external historical research, but was an occult fact from the very beginning. Then the connection with the Krishna mystery became apparent. From this you can see in what way the science of humanity, which must work into the occult in the age into which we ourselves are entering, will also make understandable to individual human souls what the actual fundamental impulses of Earth’s evolution are, how this will increasingly shed light on what has happened, and how true science will truly not merely speak to the intellect, but will truly fill the whole soul of the human being. Precisely those who familiarize themselves with occult facts—and truly, one experiences this more and more the deeper one penetrates into the world of facts—have the sensation, have the feeling for the greatness, for the glory, and for the power of these facts. Our whole soul is engaged, not just our intellect and reason; our whole soul is stirred when we engage with the truth in this way. And especially in such a moment, when we turn our gaze to that wondrous fact—where the entire inner life of humanity lived within a human body, and on the other hand, a soul developed from the entire evolution of the Earth to take possession of this body—and how, during three years of his life, something approached this body from without, something bestowed from the cosmos of all humanity: truly, this shakes and fills our whole soul. The spiritual age will also bring us the opportunity to delve even deeper into such moments. But what is inseparable from the spiritual age is that we learn to relate to the great world riddles and world mysteries differently than the pre-spiritual world did, that we learn to set not only intellect and reason against the sacred riddles, but our whole soul. Then, with our souls, we will become participants in the entire evolution of humanity. And the way in which we become participants will become for us something like a source of blissful human consciousness: that we find ourselves spiritually fulfilled, that we feel we are allowed to belong to the humanity that is to develop across the earth the very impulses that have just been discussed.