The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The World as the Result of Equilibrium Effects II

[ 1 ] You may have noticed something in the lecture I gave following *Kalewala*. As you reflected on this lecture, you will have said to yourself—for this is obvious—that it was explained how, in a sense, a being towers from the West to the East and extends three branches like three limbs, which were perceived by the ancient Finnish people as Wäinämöinen, Ilmarinen, and Lemminkäinen, and which are today, in materialistic terms, called the Gulf of Riga, the Gulf of Finland, and the Gulf of Bothnia. But you must have asked yourself: Yes, but how can he say that this has anything to do with a being, for it is merely a plane, the surface of the sea with its boundaries, which has extended itself in this way. It has nothing corporeal about it, and yet he speaks to us of a being! — That is what you must have said to yourself.

[ 2 ] What has taken place in your soul as you have reflected on a truth from Spiritual Science is typical, for it must happen time and again that one raises objections to the truths initially drawn from the spiritual world. And it is precisely this—that such contradictions arise—that is significant and right. Such contradictions can only be resolved by delving even deeper into the matters at hand. That is what we intend to do today with regard to certain questions of spiritual knowledge. To that end, I must preface this with a few remarks.

[ 3 ] We will first turn our attention to the materialistic prejudices of our time regarding human beings. Isn’t it true that there is a very understandable prejudice that manifold physical processes take place within the human being, including processes in the nervous system and the brain, and that as these physical processes unfold, mental processes occur which, for the materialist, are in fact merely the expression of these physical processes. The materialist studies what goes on in the human body, finds—or, as is still hypothetically assumed today—certain subtle nervous processes, and says: These are the causes of the processes of thought, feeling, and will; these processes of thought, feeling, and will are actually merely the accompanying phenomena of what is physically taking place. — This is a widespread view today, one that will naturally take even deeper root in the materialistic thinking of recent times. Just as clever as this view is the following one, logically speaking. Let us suppose that someone, while walking along a path, finds all sorts of tracks etched into it; he finds tracks that run in such a way that there are something like channels in the path, and also tracks that are impressions of feet. Now he reflects and says to himself: Well, the substance that makes up this path—the matter within it—has undergone certain processes, and as a result, the matter has contracted in places, forming such channels; and then, in certain spots, it has drawn inward, creating impressions that look like the soles of feet.

[ 4 ] Isn't that right? Of course, that is a great mistake. For the truth is that a cart drove by and made these two ruts with its wheels, and that a person walked by and made these impressions with his feet. It was not the nature of the ground that made these impressions, but the person with his feet and the cart with its wheels.

[ 5 ] The same is true of the processes in our nervous system. By thinking, feeling, and willing as souls, we are constantly forming mental and soul processes. As long as we live in the physical world, bound to the physical body, these processes unfold just as a carriage travels along the road and a person walks along the road, leaving their traces behind. These traces they leave behind have just as little to do with matter as the traces on the road have to do with any matter lying beneath it. In essence, the processes in the brain matter and in the nervous system have just as little to do with the thought processes as what the carriage or the person does has to do with what is happening on the surface of the earth.

[ 6 ] It is very significant to engage in such a line of thought, so that one may come to understand that the anatomist and the physiologist, when they merely examine the processes within the organism, are like a spirit that moves deep within the earth but never rises to the earth’s surface, having never seen people or carriages. He sees only within the earth that unevennesses arise, but never comes close enough to see them from the other side as well. He then examines this and believes that the earth itself causes this through its own activity. The moment such a spirit, who is always underground, were to emerge above the earth’s surface, he would become enlightened about the true facts. So it is also with the materialistic anatomist and the materialistic physiologist; he is always underground, that is, he knows nothing of Spiritual Science, and that is a state of being underground. He investigates only the processes in matter, which have nothing at all to do with what is happening up above in the spiritual-soul realm.

[ 7 ] It will be the task of the modern era for people to move from anatomical and physiological thinking to Spiritual Science thinking. In a similar way, a goblin who has hitherto been only underground would penetrate into the truth if he were lifted up above the earth and saw how the impressions contained in matter actually come about. Goblins burrowing underground are, in essence, the materialistic researchers who concern themselves only with the spiritual elements found beneath the earth, for the material, too, is spiritual. And humanity must endure that great shock that will arise when these goblins, these earth spirits, penetrate into the realm of the spiritual-psychic.

[ 8 ] Well, I had to preface this because I want to explain something to you regarding the contradiction I mentioned earlier—namely, that the Bothnian, Finnish, and Riga Bays are actually areas, plains, and yet I spoke as if they were entities or parts of a mighty entity stretching from west to east.

[ 9 ] Well, you see, spatial beings—yes, you might readily say, “But as a human being, I am a spatial being.” That is certainly true. But what you are as a human being, as a spatial being, is not what you are in reality. For the situation with this human being is quite different from what one might believe when viewing him only in the outer maya, in the outer phantasmagoria. There he certainly appears as a being who stands spatially, is spatially enclosed within his skin, and who expands spatially. But here, in fact, three significant mysteries, three significant questions, are hidden with regard to the human form.

[ 10 ] The first question hidden there, I would say, appears in the guise of all sorts of deceptive views, all sorts of illusions. We are actually deceived about our own existence by the external phantasmagoria, by the external maya. Traces of this deception can be found in modern science, specifically in the areas where science is quite helpless and has put forward all manner of hypotheses. The question I am referring to is hidden in the fact that science repeatedly puts forward hypotheses as to why humans actually have two eyes and two ears, yet do not see and hear things twice; why the organs are arranged symmetrically; and why they exist not as single but as double. Simple perception poses a major problem, a major question for science, and if you go through the literature, you will find everything that has been written on the question of why we actually see simply with two eyes, hear simply with two ears, and so on.

[ 11 ] Humans are, in a way, rather crudely organized, and this is sometimes reflected in their language. Actually, they do have two noses; it’s just that these have grown together in such a way that they are not as easily discernible as the two eyes or the two ears. That is why we do not speak of two noses, but only of one nose; yet in reality, humans have just as much two noses as one. It is simply that they are so crudely organized that where something has grown together, they do not even notice it. But in any case, it is a fact that a whole symmetry, a left-right distinction, is expressed in human perception. For if humans did not have two ears, two eyes, two noses, their sense of self would not actually come into being. They also need two hands for this. By clasping our hands together and feeling one hand against the other, a sense of self already begins to emerge. But we do something very similar by combining the input from both eyes and both ears into a single unity. We always perceive the world from two sides—from the left and from the right—when it comes to sensory perception. And it is only by having these two directions of perception—from the left and from the right—and bringing them together at a point of intersection that we become the “I-being” that we are. Otherwise, we would not be this “I-being” at all. If, for example, our eyes were positioned near our ears and we could not bring our lines of sight together, we would remain a being trapped within the group soul. In order to be an “I”-being, we must bring left and right together at a point of intersection. Everything that is on the left and right in the realm of perception, we bring together at the center. Imagine a plane (it is drawn)—that is, a plane extending from this line on the blackboard. Everything comes together there, from the left and from the right, and we are truly within this plane. We are not in space at all, but within this plane, within this surface. In truth, we are not the spatially extended human being, but rather a surface being that comes into being through the intersection of the left impulses with the right impulses. And if you want to give someone an answer—I mean in reality, not in maya—to the question: Where are you, actually?—then you must not tell them: I am here or there, in the space filled by the body—but you must tell them: I am where my left human and my right human intersect. — That is where you really are. Just as surfaces exist in the being I mentioned earlier, in which the air half and the water half intersect—the two halves are distinct—so too in humans the left half and the right half exist—but are the same. In truth, the human being is also a surface being, a plane, and the very fact that he has his real form is already maya.

[ 12 ] But where does it come from, this true form? Well, you see, it comes from the fact that the human being stands right in the middle of a kind of struggle. On the left, one being is fighting another being that is fighting from the right. If what is on our left side were perceived spiritually, we would perceive this one being as light. If what is active on our right side were perceived spiritually, we would perceive the other being with different qualities. For we come into being as twofold human beings precisely because the Luciferic entity fights from the left and the Ahrimanic entity from the right.

[ 13 ] Now, to help you create a clear mental image of this, imagine that from the left the Luciferic entity is fighting, building up what it constructs as a fortress; from the right the Ahrimanic entity is fighting, building up what it constructs as a fortress. What constitutes your left-hand self are the fortifications of Lucifer; your right-hand self are the fortifications of Ahriman. And you have only the possibility of being in the middle, in between. Our art of living consists in finding the right balance. We do this unconsciously when we perceive through the senses. When we hear with the left ear and hear with the right ear, and then combine the impulses into a single perception, or when we perceive with the left hand and perceive with the right hand and combine the perceptions, we always place ourselves in the space that lies precisely on the border of the struggle between Lucifer and Ahriman. As sharp as a knife’s edge, indeed even sharper than a knife’s edge, is the leeway left to us in the middle. Our organism does not belong to us; rather, it is thrown into existence by the struggle of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, but also of those forces that are of the same nature as Lucifer and Ahriman. But that is something that should not be discussed further at this time.

[ 14 ] Thus, as two-dimensional beings, we are caught up in something that, as humans, is none of our business. Our left-hand self is actually none of our business, nor is our right-hand self; rather, it is the process, the event, that unfolds between the two.

[ 15 ] And now you can continue to think through the image I used earlier. Isn’t it true that processes and events are constantly taking place there? Yes, processes and events are constantly taking place in the earth as well. But what goes on in the earth does not leave these traces. What happens within you, in the left or right half of the organism, has nothing at all to do with what a human being experiences in the soul; these are processes that take place between Lucifer and Ahriman. The processes that take place down below, beneath the earth’s surface—everything that happens there, let’s say the crawling of worms, the alternating of cold and warm in the seasons—all these processes, which have nothing to do with these imprints that are being made there, you must compare with what is going on inside the human organism. So that one must say: Through the spiritual observation of physiological and anatomical processes, one must come to understand how Lucifer and Ahriman struggle with one another, but one must not succumb to the notion that the soul life is brought about by these processes between Lucifer and Ahriman. That is not correct, for that takes place within the soul itself. And this essentially takes place on the surface, on the plane, not within the organism inside, within the spatial organism; it is graded, and the observation of this gradation is extraordinarily interesting. With regard to the human head, it is the case that Lucifer and Ahriman have erected quite similar fortifications on the left and right. The left and right halves of the head are very similar; the forces there are such that they can interact with one another only slightly, so that they touch the plane in the middle only slightly. In the middle is the plane, with Lucifer on the left and Ahriman on the right; but because the left and right halves of the head are so similarly formed, they bounce off one another: Lucifer and Ahriman, and the human being can develop a calm activity here in the middle (see drawing on page 121). His thinking is disturbed very little by the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman, because they bounce off each other there.

[ 16 ] Further down, however, this is no longer the case. On the one hand, Lucifer succeeds in building up the stomach; on the other hand, Ahriman succeeds in building up the liver. And the stomach is the means through which Lucifer fights from left to right; the liver is the means through which Ahriman fights from right to left. One views the relationship between the stomach and the liver correctly when one considers that Lucifer succeeds in building up the stomach on the left as a kind of weapon, and that Ahriman succeeds in building up the liver on the right. This is a constant struggle, and science would do well to truly study this struggle between the stomach and the liver. And when the position of the heart tends slightly toward the left side, this position is an expression of how, on the one hand, Lucifer seeks to seize something for himself, while on the other hand, Ahriman seeks to seize something. The entire left-right relationship is an expression of the struggle in which Lucifer and Ahriman fight within the human being, except that in the human being, as I said, what lies on both sides of the plane is, in a certain sense, equal. But we see, of course, that it is actually only equal up there; it ceases to be equal the further down we trace the human being.

[ 17 ] Regarding the being I spoke of, which extends like three tentacles—Lemminkäinen, Ilmarinen, and Wäinämöinen—it is this: one half is air, the other water; in this respect, they are still distinct. However, as soon as one arrives at clairvoyant insight, one immediately notices that the human being is, in essence, also merely a surface between two halves; for as soon as one visualizes the physical body away and looks toward the etheric body, one finds that the left half becomes significantly brighter than the right half. The left half appears much more permeated by light, radiant, glittering, and shimmering; the right half much more shrouded in darkness, dimmed. This is the case with regard to the left-right human being. But the human being is also placed within space in relation to the other directions; in occult terms, this means nothing other than being placed within the struggle between Lucifer and Ahriman. Thus, the human being is placed within the front and the back, the forward and the backward.

[ 18 ] If you now think not in terms of left and right, but of front and back in relation to the human being—you must think of the whole human being— then the human being is not oriented in the direction from front to back of this spatial being (see drawing), but rather just as Lucifer and Ahriman fight each other from the left and from the right, and the spatial elements are merely the barricades they have erected against one another; so too does Ahriman fight against the human being from the back, and Lucifer from the front. From behind, so to speak, Ahriman pushes his activity forward; from the front, Lucifer pushes his activity toward Ahriman. And the human being stands right in the middle of it all.

[ 19 ] However, we must now point out that, with regard to this front-to-back direction, the two have not quite succeeded—I would say—in coming close enough together to form a single plane. Here, the situation is different. For Ahriman reaches only as far as a plane that you can imagine running through the spine, and Lucifer reaches as far as a plane that you can imagine running through the sternum, roughly where the ribs meet. And in between there is a space through which they are separated, where their influences intermingle. They fight there, one might say, not by clashing directly with one another, but by sending their projectiles through this space. But Ahriman extends only as far as the spine, and Lucifer only as far as where the ribs meet the sternum. And we stand there in between, amidst this struggle between Lucifer and Ahriman. So, in terms of the forward and backward directions, we are indeed beings who possess space. In terms of left and right, we have no space.

[ 20 ] In the left-right dimension, Lucifer and Ahriman primarily wage their battle through thoughts. Here, thoughts swirl back and forth from left to right and intersect in this realm. These are cosmic thought-forms that collide and touch one another in the human middle realm. In the front and back, Lucifer and Ahriman fight more through feelings; there, the battle is waged more through the feelings. And because the forces do not quite come into contact with one another here, a space remains for us in the middle, in which we are with our feelings within ourselves. We sense, when we have thoughts that fight one another from left and right, that these thoughts actually belong to the world. With our thoughts, we think about the things that are outside. When we form our own thoughts, these are phantasmagoria; then they no longer truly belong to the world. In our feelings, we belong to ourselves, because Lucifer and Ahriman do not fully clash there, because we have a space there between the two realms. That is why we are so within ourselves with our feelings.

[ 21 ] You see, as human beings, we are creatures brought into being through the workings of the beings of the higher hierarchies. And we are these beings of the plane on the left and right because the higher hierarchies place us humans there as beings of the plane. There, they do not allow Lucifer and Ahriman to come together. We are, in this respect, beings of the good gods, in that these good gods, out of their creative thoughts, have said: Here before us lies a struggle between Lucifer and Ahriman. Now we must establish a boundary for a realm into which they cannot enter, so that they cannot come into direct contact with one another. — We humans are placed within this struggle as creatures of the good gods, and the more we prove ourselves in this struggle, the more we are creatures of the good gods.

[ 22 ] As for the front and the back, the good gods do not allow Lucifer to enter us completely. They have erected barricades against him at the front end of the ribcage. And in the formation of this marvelous tower, which encloses the spinal cord and the brain, the good gods have erected a fortification against Ahriman. He cannot pass through it; at most, he can send his emotional projectiles across to Lucifer. There we truly stand within it, separating the two from one another by a space.

[ 23 ] There is also a third direction, which is from top to bottom. Here we must be clear that things do not unfold as they appear in the outer phantasmagoria, the maya. Here, Ahriman acts from below upward, and Lucifer from above downward. And here, too, the good, progressive divine beings have erected a barrier against Lucifer. His effects from above downward are, so to speak, held back by a surface. You can visualize this surface by taking a skeleton and removing the skull. Where the skull sits on the cervical vertebrae, you must imagine a plane. This invisible horizontal plane, where the skull sits on the cervical vertebrae, is the barrier. When a human being positions themselves there, they can halt the Luciferic influences moving from top to bottom. Lucifer can only send his projectiles in from above; and these are now projectiles of the will. From left to right are projectiles of thought, from front to back are projectiles of feeling, and from top to bottom and from bottom to top go the projectiles of the will.

[ 24 ] But there is room for maneuver here as well. If you take the diaphragm at the bottom, you have an area running roughly along the diaphragm that stands upright against Ahriman, who is pushing upward from below. Thus, with his will, with his projectiles of will, with his own being, Ahriman can only reach as far as the diaphragm from below. He can never act further with his projectiles. What lies above that is our own scope for action.

[ 25 ] Now you see just how complex human beings really are. Take any part of human nature—let me say, the left side of the face. As a being of thought, Lucifer can completely penetrate this left side; as a being of feeling, he can also penetrate it to a certain extent; and as a being of will, he can penetrate it from top to bottom. In this way, you can use these descriptions to discover how Lucifer and Ahriman work within the spatial human being through cosmic impulses of thought, feeling, or will.

[ 26 ] But we must be clear about the fact that, as thinking beings, we are essentially two-dimensional creatures. As feeling beings, we have a certain range of movement between front and back; as willing beings, we have a certain range of movement between top and bottom, between this plane here—defined by the upper cervical vertebra—and the plane of the diaphragm. And only when you set aside that which does not belong to the human being at all will you obtain the true form of the human being. You can now construct that for yourself.

[ 27 ] But you see that human beings are in reality put together from the outside, that they receive their character from the outside, and that we do not understand him if we simply take the forms as they appear to us, but that we understand him only when we know how he is connected to the entire spiritual-cosmic realm, how the Luciferic-Ahrimanic forces approach him from the right and left, from below and above, from the front and the back, and how they thus shape his being as a spatial being.

[ 28 ] You see, just as you must view that which, in a certain sense, is a reflection of the true cosmic workings in the world, so too must you view our building. If we regard it as a phantasmagoria, we might at first believe that the most essential aspect of this building is what is filled with wood in the space. But that is not the main thing; rather, the main thing is where there appears to be nothing. If a certain form in our building looks like this (see Drawing 1) and there is wood there, then the essential part is not this here—the wood—but rather that which is empty, where the air meets it. And you would get our true structure if you took a huge lump of wax and made an impression of the interior, and then looked at the impression. So that which, when you enter the structure, you stand inside of—what you cannot see but must feel—that is actually what matters. I’ve said before: The principle of our structure is that of a Gugelhupf pan. — “Gugelhupf pan” is a term that won’t be well understood here. But imagine a pan: that’s the mold; inside it, you bake a Gugelhupf (Drawing 2). What is important about this Gugelhupf pan? It is not the pan that matters, but the cake—that it takes on the right shape and rises properly inside. The pan must simply be such that, when you pour the batter into it and bake it, the Gugelhupf turns out just right.

[ 29 ] So, in our building, what matters is not the surroundings, but what is inside. And inside will be the feelings and thoughts of those who are within the building. These will arise because people see as far as the edge of the building, feel its forms, and fill themselves with thought-forms. What is inside will be the Gugelhupf, and what we are building is the shell, the form. But it must be such that the right things are thought, felt, and sensed within it. And that, you see, is the principle of modern art as opposed to ancient art. In the old arts, it always depended on what was out there in space. In the new art, it does not depend on what is out there in space. What is out there is the pot, and what matters—well, you can’t actually make that; it is inside. This applies not only to sculptural forms but also to painting. Here, too, it is not what is painted that matters, but what is felt and experienced in the process. Painting, too, is merely a “Gugelhupf pot.”

[ 30 ] That, I would say, is the crux of the evolutionary progress we are currently undergoing: that we are truly—pardon the expression—moving from the pot into the cake. Remaining in the pot means materialism; moving into the cake means, for us, spiritualism, and that is what we are striving toward. If one does not take this into account, one will also be unable to judge everything artistic—which is what we are concerned with—in the right way. If one views our building artistically according to the old model, one might say: Yes, but for heaven’s sake, you haven’t made a beautiful pot at all! — For one will not know that it is not the pot that matters, but the Gugelhupf. With such an artistic principle, we thus approach the whole meaning and significance of evolutionary progress through Spiritual Science. Through the progress of Spiritual Science, the human being must work his way out of the pot and into the Gugelhupf.

[ 31 ] And so he must let go of the belief that, for example, the causes of thoughts lie in brain processes, whereas the brain’s own processes are in fact cosmic phenomena, and the struggles between Lucifer and Ahriman take place there. And he must realize that human soul processes—thoughts and feelings—are merely the traces carved into these battle entrenchments, but have nothing to do with so-called material processes—in other words, with the Luciferic-Ahrimanic processes.

[ 32 ] I’d like to use another image. Let’s suppose we enter a beautiful garden—beautiful because the layout of the trees is lovely, the arrangement of the flowers is lovely, and so on—and we want to take it all in. Then, if we could look down into the earth through a hole, a little goblin would come up to us. This goblin—let’s say—would then tell us: I’ll tell you why there are roses, violets, why there’s a bush there and flowers there. You see, I crawl around everywhere down there beneath the earth’s surface, and there I see the reason that caused the trees, violets, and roses to sprout. — We might say: “Yes, you’re explaining these processes quite well. Everything you’re describing must be possible in the physical world. But for the plants to thrive, for the garden to come into being, there had to be a gardener. Yet these are realms you haven’t looked into at all, realms you haven’t given any thought to.”

[ 33 ] So we must learn to say to the materialist anatomists and physiologists: I only find your work when I look through the peephole into the earth. There you crawl around and study processes that must take place, but which have nothing to do with what is happening up here in the realm of the soul and spirit. And you will only truly interpret what is happening down there when you open yourself to recognizing the relationships that exist between Lucifer and Ahriman and the other hierarchies, which bring Lucifer and Ahriman back into a state of balance. — And that which has hitherto, so to speak, only worked as in the mental image of the “I” will be enriched through Spiritual Science.

[ 34 ] A time will come when people will say to one another: We are told in the biblical account of creation about the breath, the breath of Yahweh, that was breathed into man. — Then the people of the future will ask: Yes, when this breath is breathed in, where is it breathed? — If you hold together what I have said, you will find that the next place into which it was breathed are these interstices, where, from front to back, from top to bottom, Yahweh creates man, as it were, as a cube (see drawing) and thus fills him with his own being, with his magical breath, so that the effect of this magical breath then spreads throughout the rest of the human being into the regions of Lucifer and Ahriman. But here is an intermediate space, bounded on the right and left, above and below, in front and behind, into which Yahweh’s breath enters directly as into the spatial human being. What I have said applies first and foremost to this physical spatial human being.

[ 35 ] You see, this opens up a perspective from which we can perceive the human being standing at the very center of the entire cosmos. I would like to say: With regard to what this human being seemingly fills in the external spatial realm, there are also moral and spiritual aspects to all of this. For even in what acts within us as moral and spiritual, we initially have a phantasmagoria, albeit not to the same degree as in the spatial human being. And in everything moral, in everything logical, in everything that is part of our soul activity, Lucifer and Ahriman interact with one another, and the human being is positioned at the boundary.

[ 36 ] We'll discuss this chapter—which is particularly meaningful and important to us—tomorrow.