The Rudolf Steiner Archive

How does one bring Being into the World of Ideas? IV

[ 1 ] With the various reflections I have offered here recently, I have sought not so much to convey individual concepts and mental images to you as to characterize a particular way of relating to the world. For it must be kept in mind again and again that the most important thing regarding the achievement to be brought about by Spiritual Science is not the conceptual or the imaginative, but rather the entire state of mind, the entire mood of the soul, which the human being of the future of our Earth’s development will be able to acquire through Spiritual Science.

[ 2 ] Today, almost everyone who engages with Spiritual Science still carries with them remnants of old ways of thinking and old states of mind. And this is particularly true because a certain state of mind has only emerged in the modern soul relatively recently—over the past three four to five centuries or so, in the quest to unravel natural phenomena—this state of mind, which I would like to describe as stemming from the so-called scientific worldview, which is today regarded in the widest circles as the only valid one. For we know that the permeation by scientific concepts and mental images as the foundation of a worldview has only recently taken hold among a small portion of humanity today; for, fundamentally speaking, modern school education ensures that it is not so much science as this scientific mindset that is spreading rapidly. And since this scientific mindset has only recently taken hold, it is naturally also difficult for the worldview of Spiritual Science to align itself with what has only recently taken hold and what, for the majority of people, must first develop as a transitional stage in evolution. This scientific worldview inevitably leads gradually to a kind of materialism, for it cannot be anything other than one-sided. It is, after all, acquired in a one-sided manner through what might be called the intellectual experiences of human beings, and it also strives to eliminate from the aforementioned worldview concepts as much as possible whatever does not correspond to this intellectual mood of human beings—whatever is not conceived, not devised, not gained through experiment or through observation aided by imagination and thought. This worldview has also, one might say, truly retained its one-sidedness with regard to the conception of the human being, and in view of the many impulses that have entered the human soul, we can sense how difficult it will be to unfold, through Spiritual Science, the more comprehensive soul attitude toward the world that emanates from the whole human being.

[ 3 ] If today someone who is deeply immersed in the scientific worldview comes across a book such as *Outlines of Esoteric Science*, they naturally regard the book’s content as a kind of harebrained nonsense, because their one-sided mental and intellectual disposition naturally prevents them from deriving any particular insight from it. Now, one particular phenomenon—though there are, of course, many such phenomena, this one being especially striking—reveals something of the radical contrast between the worldview of Spiritual Science and the natural-scientific worldview. I would like to highlight this one point first.

[ 4 ] When we study human beings from a perspective of Spiritual Science, as we go further back into the distant, past ages—as we say, into the lunar phase of our planetary existence—it becomes clear that, as we trace human development back in this way, precisely what appears so significant to modern humans in terms of human development on Earth was not actually present in the ancient lunar phase. In this ancient lunar evolution, what was essentially present in today’s human being—I say essentially—was that which is more or less connected precisely with the current development of the human brain. And what the human being has outside of their head, apart from what primarily belongs to the skull and the head—their remaining physicality—is essentially a product of the Earth, a product of the Earth’s organization.

[ 5 ] Essentially, I say again. One could also put it this way: If one traces human beings back to the ancient lunar evolution, then one gradually sees, the further back one goes, their outer limbs—through which they are today an earthly human being—shrinking, and what then remains is their head, which has of course been transformed by earthly evolution, but which essentially remains the same when one goes back to the lunar evolution. The rest has organized itself, become attached. I once elaborated on this in more detail in the lectures on “Occult Physiology”—which I hope will be published soon—in the Prague cycle I gave in 1911. So, essentially, we arrive at the conclusion that the human being originated from what is today compressed and concentrated within the organization of the skull; the rest has become attached. We must therefore say that, if drawn schematically, we would have the human being in his lunar evolution like this, and in his earthly evolution we would have him such that the rest of the organism is attached to it.

[ 6 ] Take what I have just said and compare it with what the one-sided scientific worldview has led to today. In a one-sided way—though, of course, there is some validity underlying all these things—it assumes that human beings have gradually evolved from the lower animal stages to their present perfection. What do we see in the lower animal stages? We see in them precisely what has only been added to human beings during the Earth’s evolution in the form of brain and head development; and we see precisely what constitutes the human head atrophied in animals. In animals, we see the limbs—that which has been added as an appendage in humans—particularly well-developed, and that which had already developed distinctly as the head in humans during the ancient lunar evolution, and which then became concentrated, we see in animals as still shrunken and atrophied. But the scientific worldview sees only this. We can say that the scientific worldview actually puts the cart before the horse, for it makes what was only later added to the human being the starting point, and what was present in the human being before he even possessed organs such as those found in present-day animals into something that is supposed to have developed from these forms themselves.

[ 7 ] Logically speaking, this amounts to nothing less than the following conclusion: One first considers a child and then the father, and finds that the father is larger than the child. Since, as a result of a logical conclusion, one assumes that the larger entity, in its development, could only have arisen from the smaller one, the father must have developed from the child, and not the other way around. — This is indeed the conclusion one draws. The one-sidedness of modern scientific thinking will one day appear just as grotesque to a new consciousness of humanity. It will be understood that Darwin’s theory, when taken at face value, is logically nothing other than the assertion that the child gave birth to its father.

[ 8 ] Now you can imagine what efforts will still be necessary before humanity can re-learn things like those that have just been mentioned, and everything that is involved in truly re-learning them. We have successfully managed to establish a worldview that turns the world upside down, and now humanity will face the necessity of setting the world back on its feet. But for barely three or four centuries now, we have become quite accustomed to viewing the “upside-down” position as the correct one.

[ 9 ] It is truly part of our task not merely to acquire theoretical mental images about this or that in the world, but to cultivate feelings and sensibilities for the tasks that fall to us within the Spiritual Science movement. We must be clear about how much what must follow for us from the view of Spiritual Science of the world must truly differ from what surrounds us everywhere outside today. Otherwise, we will fall into the error again and again of failing to notice the radical differences and of wanting to make reckless compromises, whereas we must be aware that we have no choice but to refrain from grafting anything onto earlier worldviews, but rather to develop, from a new primal cell of worldview life, that which can increasingly emerge before us as the right path from Spiritual Science. Only from this awareness will we succeed in placing our soul into our task, and we must accustom ourselves to the fact that many questions that arise outside the circle of spiritual scientific outlook can only be addressed—as I demonstrated yesterday with regard to one such question—if we open ourselves to what Spiritual Science can awaken in our soul.

[ 10 ] Let us consider something else that may be close to us in relation to the place where we are standing right now, the place where we have built our structure. I have often emphasized in the past how art, science, and religion are three branches of human spiritual life that sprang from a single root. If we go back—as I have often said—to the time of the ancient mysteries, we find that the rituals of the ancient mysteries cannot be categorized as art, religion, or science; rather, they are all of these things together. Science, religion, and art form a unity, organically interconnected, within the ancient mysteries.

[ 11 ] What people today try to visualize using the abstract concepts and mental images I spoke of yesterday, humanity once perceived in vivid depictions, in living visions, within the ancient mysteries. They perceived what we can only think of today. Just as we view a work of art today, we will not approach the work of art in the future. In the future, we will not approach a work of art by looking at it and then believing that we understand it only through thought, but rather we will understand it through direct perception, experiencing it in the soul. Thus, the person initiated into the mysteries understood—by experiencing what they beheld—that which they were meant to grasp through knowledge. What he was to grasp in this way through knowledge, what he was to understand by beholding and to behold by understanding, was at the same time something beautiful appearing in external forms and colors, speaking in tones and words: it was at the same time art. They were one, science and art.

[ 12 ] Today, only art—which has separated itself from what science is supposed to give us—gives us a mental image of how one can be united with the object both externally and internally at the same time; and only those who wish to introduce the barbarism of symbolism, of symbolization, into art, sin against this immediate, experiential understanding of the work of art. For the moment one begins to interpret a work of art, one departs from what might be called the experiential understanding of the work of art. It is, in essence, a true barbarism, let us say, to approach “Hamlet” in such a way that the individual characters are interpreted as the principles of theosophical doctrine or the like. I would not wish to see the individual forms of our architecture interpreted symbolically in this manner, for it is the immediate, understanding experience that is at stake here!

[ 13 ] Thus, in the primordial mysteries, the scientific experience of the world was at the same time an artistic experience of the world, and at the same time, this scientific and artistic experience of the world was a religious perception of the world. For what was experienced in this way—in immediate, living perception, in experiential understanding and understanding experience—was at the same time that which one could revere, to which one could lift one’s whole soul with religious fervor. Religion, art, and science were one; and—I would like to use the religious term—because of human original sin and weakness, a separation had to occur between science, art, and religion. What was originally one had to split, so that a religious current, an artistic current, and a scientific current arose. What originally encompassed the entire human soul as an organism, woven from scientific, religious, and artistic content, had to be distributed among the individual powers of the soul. For the intellect, for thinking, science was given to humanity so that, when experiencing the world through scientific thought, their will and feeling might sleep, might rest.

[ 14 ] Humanity has grown weak. In a one-sided way, through thought, it sought to experience the world scientifically; and again, in a one-sided way, it sought to experience it artistically, so that the other forces might lie dormant; and again, in a one-sided way, it sought to experience the world religiously for the same reason. Humanity would not be able to shape what it can develop intellectually with such perfection as is the case today if a one-sided scientific current had not emerged; he would not have been able to attain what has been achieved artistically had art not separated itself; and religious fervor would not have reached the heights it had to reach had it not separated itself from the other spiritual forces devoted to science and art.

[ 15 ] But with regard to this separation, we have indeed reached a crisis, and this crisis is making itself felt very clearly; it is making itself felt very, very clearly. In what way? I would say that, especially in recent centuries, humanity has had to experience more and more how this crisis manifests itself. Science, art, and religion have become so estranged that they no longer understand one another, that they can no longer have any relationship with one another. We are slowly seeing how “diplomatic relations” are being severed between religion, science, and art. We see how such relationships still existed, let us say, during the heyday of the Italian Renaissance, where a deep bond was still woven between religion and art in the works of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci. But the further we move into modern times, the more we find that a mutual lack of understanding is gradually taking shape between science, art, and religion. We see there—and must unfortunately admit—how often in recent centuries religion has even become hostile to art; we see how it has cast art aside, how there are religious movements that seek to attain the heights of religious feeling by casting out works of art and making churches as austere and devoid of art as possible. We also see how another religious movement has come to retain visual works, but mostly ones that are no longer works of art, for what we often still find in churches from the past centuries is certainly not intended to awaken the artistic sense or the aesthetic sense, but rather to thoroughly eradicate it. And on the other hand, we see how art has increasingly renounced its connection to the conception of divine-spiritual being, how everything has shifted toward naturalism, and how there is an ever-growing tendency to depict only that which has a model in external nature.

[ 16 ] Of course, art must then sever its—if I may put it that way—“diplomatic relations” with religion if it wishes to be purely naturalistic art, for that which religion must revere cannot have a model in external nature. That goes without saying. And we can see just how little science has maintained its relations by the slow approach of this severing of relations. Yes, one can see it slowly approaching.

[ 17 ] We have an outstanding artist from the 16th century who was also active as an anatomist and technician in a wide variety of fields: Leonardo da Vinci. Anyone who examines his scientific works can still sense everywhere how deeply these works are imbued with artistic sensibility. But one sees how this sensibility has increasingly evaporated in more recent times, how unartistic it has become, and how people today seem to believe that the very greatness of science lies in being unartistic. It has virtually become a dogma for a certain school of thought in modern times that Goethe was such a dreadful physicist precisely because his artistic sensibility prevented him from becoming a proper physicist.

[ 18 ] In short, a breakdown in understanding has occurred between the three currents. But that is what defines a crisis. For when that which stems from a single root becomes so separated in its mutual relationships that the life-sustaining forces no longer flow from the common root, then a crisis must occur; then the one-sided development of these currents must lead to their withering away. With regard to the lack of understanding of what constitutes a common organism, a coherent organism in human nature, and which separates in external development, we have in recent times brought about a crisis situation. We are caught up in these crises. Such crises can be described by saying that human nature demands the organic unification of what, for a time, had to follow separate paths in the external world. In many areas of life, a person who does not go through world development in a dull-witted manner can perceive such crisis-like conditions, and such a person will observe in these crises the causes of much of what cannot remain as it is in today’s development, and will gain insight into what must happen to overcome the crises.

[ 19 ] We have hinted at a crisis in the mutual incomprehension between science, art, and religion. Another crisis is sweeping through the world, one that is noticed by only a few but is terrible in its effects—a crisis that stems from a failure to understand two currents. One of these currents is the one that once breathed through the world in the infinitely profound sayings engraved in the human heart: “My kingdom is not of this world” and “You are from below, but I am from above.” Humanity’s roots lie in the spiritual world.

[ 20 ] The second current, which must increasingly develop into a crisis-ridden opposition to what is expressed in the words: “My kingdom is not of this world” and “I am from above, but you are from below,” is the statement: “L'état c'est moi! The state is me!“, my kingdom, the kingdom of my ego, is entirely bound to this world. The truth lies in the synthesis of the two statements. It lies in Christianity understood in its universal sense, expressed in the words ”Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s." In correctly understood Christianity, there is no false turning away from the world. Nor, however, does it contain that one-sidedness which can only find expression in clinging to the material institutions of worldly existence.

[ 21 ] In speaking of such things, we are truly touching upon the deepest tasks of anthroposophy, the very deepest tasks. For anthroposophy, in the true sense of the word, must not arise one-sidedly from an intellectual mood, but from the whole soul of the human being. And only then will this soul find the transition into the anthroposophical life, when it is wholly, not merely in its imaginative life, seized by what Spiritual Science has given, when it is wholly, wholly seized by it.

[ 22 ] It is a fact that what became the head of the human being during the Lunar phase is, during the Earth phase, on the path to becoming the whole human being. During the ancient Lunar evolution, there was a being—the ancestor of modern humans. What was then an external organism has now become the head. The limbs have developed. When the coming Jupiter evolution takes place, this entire organism of today’s human being will have become the head. What you are today as a whole human being will be the brain, the head of the Jupiter human, just as the entire Lunar human became the head of the Earth human.

[ 23 ] The task of true spiritual development lies in truly anticipating the future. That is why we must realize that the culture around us is a culture of the mind, and that it is up to us to create a culture of humanity. Our head could not think, could not reflect any mental images or concepts, if it behaved like the rest of our organism; it could never truly fulfill its task. Our head reflects the world—which becomes our world of perception—only because it can forget itself in its perception, truly forget itself. In their feeling, human beings are—thank God—always headless. If you try to feel your way through yourself and ask: What do I feel least in my organism? — it is truly the head that forgets itself most in normal life. And when it does not forget itself, it hurts, and then it prefers not to perceive anything at all, but to be left in peace and kept free of perception. That is when it asserts its egoism. Otherwise, however, it erases itself, and because it erases itself, we can perceive the entire surrounding world. It is organized to erase itself.

[ 24 ] If you were to focus just a little bit on the outer periphery of your head rather than ignoring it, you would no longer be able to perceive your external surroundings. Imagine that, instead of perceiving the external world, you would see your own eye; if, for example, you were to take just one step back with your perception, you would see the cranial cavity, but you would no longer perceive the external world. To the same extent and at the very moment that a person succeeds in completely shutting down their organism—which, as is well known, is achieved through meditation and initiation—to that same extent and at that very moment, this organism becomes a true mirror of the world, except that we then do not see the organism, but the cosmos. Just as the head does not see itself but rather what is around it, so the whole human being, when it becomes an organ of perception, sees the cosmos. This is the ideal we must hold before us: to forget the organism as it appears to us on the physical plane, and instead to be able to use it as a mirror for the mysteries of the cosmos.

[ 25 ] In this way, we gradually expand our intellectual conception of the world into a whole-human conception, and we must learn to sense, perceive, and feel something of how anthroposophy must truly engage the whole human being, overcoming this intellectual mood—as I may call it in contrast to the anthroposophical mood —the one-sided intellectual mood that emanates from modern science and thus engages only the head.

[ 26 ] If you take to heart what I said yesterday when I described how a human being can become aware that they are a lamp for the cherubim, a source of warmth for the seraphim, how through their thinking and willing they place themselves within the world of the cherubim and seraphim, how they mean something to this world, how their self is not merely there for themselves but stands in a living relationship to the weaving and life of the spiritual hierarchies—if you make this your attitude, then you will sense something of how the whole human being can truly become a brain, how they, as a whole human being, can thus enter into communication with their surroundings in a way that otherwise only the head can. Then you will feel what is actually meant by this: to perceive the world as a whole human being.

[ 27 ] But when one perceives the world once again as a whole human being, then one cannot think, feel, and will in a one-sided way; rather, one immerses oneself in the entirety of earthly existence. One immerses oneself in the entire experience of the world, and it arises of its own accord—I would say—an inner dependence on not merely having things in thought, but also in form; not merely in formless thought, but in beautiful, expressive forms. There arises the impulse, the need, to express in artistic forms the things one grasps intellectually.

[ 28 ] And again: when a person immerses themselves in the entire spiritual life of the world, their life essentially becomes prayer, and they no longer feel such a pressing need to set aside little moments specifically for prayer. Instead, they know: When I think, I am a candlestick for the cherubim; when I act, when I act with intention, I am a source of warmth for the seraphim. The human being knows that they live within the entire spiritual fabric of the world. Thinking itself becomes a religious disposition for them; acting becomes a moral prayer.

[ 29 ] We see how these three realms—art, religion, and science—which for a time had to go their separate ways in the world, are once again seeking one another from within the whole human being. At the beginning of Earth’s development, humanity brought so much with it from extraterrestrial evolution that it still possessed the living, unified feeling, the unified striving, as expressed in ancient times through the union of art, religion, and science. One might say that at that time, humanity’s angel, its Angelos, was still striving within it. But humanity would never have become free if things had continued that way. Humanity had to be emancipated from this ancient heritage. Yet in the ascending phase of development, it must rediscover what it lost in the descending phase.

[ 30 ] Much has been said about a beautiful remark Goethe made regarding architecture. He called architecture “frozen music.” Let us pause to consider this statement. One can truly describe architecture, in its development to date, as a kind of frozen music. The forms of architecture are like frozen melodies, like harmonies and rhythms that have solidified. But since we are directly in the midst of the crisis I have described, our task is to set what has frozen back in motion, to bring it back to life—in a sense, to make the frozen forms musically alive again. When you see our building, you will see in it the endeavor to set the old, frozen architectural forms in motion, to transform them into life, to make them musical again. This is the underlying reason why we do not have a circular building, but a single axis of symmetry along which the motifs move.

[ 31 ] Thus we see how what the spiritual-science worldview also seeks to achieve through art is intimately connected with all the tasks and all the necessary impulses of our time, which we recognize in the crises of our age. To understand this, to see through it, is our task; it is of immense necessity to our task. We must gradually bring all the details of our task into focus from this perspective.

[ 32 ] Today, people quickly lose the ability to use their entire body as a kind of brain. They already possess the capacity, but as soon as they have developed from a crawling infant into an upright human being in the first years of life, they lose the ability to maintain a relationship with their entire organism, just as they do with their brain throughout their entire life; for this standing upright, this bringing oneself into the vertical position, is in fact a work of the spirit on the whole human being. This is the last remnant of what we bring with us from spiritual, prenatal life, for in earthly life we quickly forget it. And then we drag the entire organism—which eats and drinks and digests—through life like a burden; we drag it through life and no longer bring it into a meaningful relationship with the spiritual world, but far away from the spiritual world.

[ 33 ] The child still possesses the great wisdom to recognize that humanity’s purpose lies in realms far removed from this world, and within its organism lies the orientation toward those distant realms. When that is over, the body—I do not wish to be as crude as the medieval mystics who said it becomes a repulsive sack of maggots, but rather I will say—the body becomes a digestive and gastric sack and is separated from its relationship to the outside world.

[ 34 ] Not even that connection to the outside world that I spoke of yesterday is maintained any longer. For example, when we rest our head in our hand to express something significant in the external organism, we hardly notice it. And if someone has retained, even in their unconscious, a little of the habit of using the whole organism—not just thinking with the brain, but also placing a hand or index finger on the forehead or nose to indicate that they are now truly distinguishing and judging — we do not notice that this is an instinctive striving to use the whole organism as a brain. It need not, of course, happen in this outward way. Of course, Spiritual Science does not intend to turn people into fidgeters who think with their whole bodies. But spiritually, consciousness must naturally expand to the point of standing within the cosmos with the whole human being, knowing that the cosmos can be reflected through the whole body, just as the cosmos is now reflected only through the brain.

[ 35 ] When consciousness is expanded in this way, when human beings truly transcend the state of merely dragging their physical bodies through life, so to speak, and learn to use and master them, then the groundwork is laid for what must be prepared in our time: A human, a wholly human worldview—as opposed to a mere intellectual perspective—must become the very thing that anthroposophy must strive for.

[ 36 ] If we try this, and strive to elevate to a state of consciousness what would otherwise remain merely a mental image, then we will achieve what is intended by our Spiritual Science movement. For as human beings, as we ascend in our development, we will gradually find the true Christ-figure once we have become more and more attuned to the fully human conception of the world. The fact that this Christ-figure cannot be found is solely due to the intellectual perspective. The moment this is overcome, the moment Spiritual Science has become so strong that it reorganizes human consciousness in the manner described, what has often been said about the Christ-view will truly come to pass. Then, however, our human world will be able to attain that which it can only attain from within, and which will lead it beyond many things that have now led not only internally, in terms of worldviews, but also externally, in terms of people and nations, to a veritable crisis among the educated humanity of the Earth.

[ 37 ] We would like people to gradually realize—or at least for a small portion of them to realize—that help is truly needed. Then people will also realize that the help humanity needs can only come from the soul, only from within, and that nothing else can even serve as a substitute, because in the face of the great crises of our time, substitutes can no longer help—only what is genuine and true. And what is genuine and true must be attained by humanity in spirit. Christmas Celebration