The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Perhaps the lectures I have given here on the nature of colors—and the lecture that preceded these color lectures last Thursday—have shown that one can only approach the essence of the human being by viewing him or her in connection with the entire universe. But that is precisely where we must arrive if we are to inquire into the nature of the human being: we must look up from the earth toward that which is extraterrestrial. And our time demands this more than ever. We have seen how the human intellect has become increasingly shadowy, how—precisely as a result of the developments of the 19th century—it is no longer rooted in reality.

[ 2 ] All of this points to the fact that human beings must absolutely strive to receive new influences in their inner lives. This will now become particularly clear to us as we once again bring before our souls the relevant, profound cosmic events that have already been considered from certain perspectives.

[ 3 ] You will recall, and no doubt know from reading my Occult Science, that one of the major events that played a role in the Earth’s evolution was the Moon’s separation from the Earth. That which today shines upon us from outer space as the Moon was once connected to the Earth; it separated from the Earth and now orbits it from a distance as its satellite.

[ 4 ] We know what far-reaching changes in the entire course of human development are connected with the Moon’s separation from the Earth. You know that we must go back a long way, beyond the Atlantean Flood, if we are to reach the time when the Moon actually separated from the Earth.

[ 5 ] Today, let us consider only what has come to light on Earth—with regard to human beings and the natural beings surrounding them—as a result of the Moon’s separation from the Earth. We have seen, after all, that the variously colored minerals—that is, the colored mineral bodies—actually derive their colors, their chromaticity, fundamentally from this relationship between the Moon and the Earth. This has enabled us to bring these cosmic events into connection with the artistic perception of existence. However, other important and highly significant matters are also connected with this. Human beings have, after all, carried their essence over from the preceding metamorphoses of earthly existence—from the Saturn, Sun, and Moon beings; and while they were developing as Saturn, Sun, and Moon beings, there was as yet no mineral kingdom in their environment. The mineral kingdom—everything mineral—only came into being during the Earth era. And it is only through this that what we call mineral matter was drawn into the human being during the Earth period. The human being had nothing mineral within them during the ancient Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods. Nor were they yet a being who was dependent on spending their existence on Earth; rather, the human being was a being who, by their very constitution, actually belonged to the entire cosmos. Before the Moon’s separation from the Earth took place, and before the mineral realm developed its coloration within the Earth, human beings were actually not yet suited for Earth at all. If one may put it this way: It was entirely up to the spiritual beings guiding Earth’s evolution to decide what should happen to human beings—should they be transferred to Earth, or should they spend their existence outside of Earth? — And one could call it a decision by the beings who guide human evolution that the Moon was separated, thereby transforming the entire Earth and, with it, humankind. Through the separation of this coarse lunar matter, humankind attained the physical constitution that enabled it to become an Earth human. Human beings thus became “earthly human beings” through this event—through the separation of the Moon and the incorporation of the mineral kingdom into the Earth. Through this, human beings essentially acquired their earthly gravity. But they would never have become beings capable of freedom if they had not acquired this earthly gravity. In a sense, they were not yet truly personalities before that. He became a personality precisely because the forces that were to form his body came together. And they did so through the moon’s departure and the incorporation of the mineral realm. Thus, the human being became a personality and, through this, capable of freedom.

[ 6 ] This development of humankind on Earth, following the Moon’s departure, has proceeded through a wide variety of stages since that departure. And one can say: as long as nothing else had happened except that the Moon had withdrawn, human beings actually had the continuous ability, through their entire organism, through their physical and soul nature, to experience visions of the old clairvoyance.

[ 7 ] This ability to perceive images through the ancient form of clairvoyance was not taken away from human beings by the Moon’s departure. Human beings saw the world in images, as we have often described. Had nothing else happened, human beings would still be living in this world of images today. But as we know, evolution has progressed further. Humanity has not remained in a state where it is bound solely to the Earth. Humanity has, so to speak, been compelled to undergo a process of regression, and the peak of this regression actually occurred in the 19th century. I have repeatedly characterized this in my recent lectures. But even in ancient times, it came to pass that human beings—even though they had become earthbound as beings of metabolism—were nevertheless, as beings of the head, so to speak, enabled to participate in cosmic existence. Human beings developed their intellect. The images of the old clairvoyance continued to condense within this intellect right up into the 4th century A.D. Only then, and especially since the 15th century, did the human intellect become increasingly shadowy. This human intellect now has, despite being an entirely spiritual aspect of the human being, no real existence at all; it possesses only what is, in essence, an image-like existence. When people today think solely through their reason, these thoughts are not rooted in reality. These thoughts exist only in a shadowy existence. And human thoughts are moving more and more into this shadowy existence. This trend reached its peak in the 19th century. And today, human beings completely lack a sense of reality. Human beings live in a spiritual element, yet they are materialists. With their spiritual thoughts—which are, however, only shadow thoughts—they think only of material existence.

[ 8 ] Thus, this second event has come to pass. Human beings have become more spiritual; but the spiritual content that matter once provided them no longer animates them. They have become more spiritual, but they use their spirituality only to think about material things.

[ 9 ] Now, as you know, the Moon will one day reunite with the Earth. Astronomers and geologists, who live in a world of abstraction, have pushed this moment—when the Moon will reunite with the Earth—thousands of years into the future; but that is merely a delusion. In reality, we are not that far from that moment. As you know, humanity as a whole is becoming younger and younger. You know that people are increasingly reaching a point where their physical and soul development is limited to a certain stage. At the time of Christ’s death, when the event at Golgotha took place, people were generally capable of physical and soul development up to the age of thirty-three. Today, this is only the case up to the age of twenty-seven. And a time will come in the fourth millennium when people will only be capable of development up to the age of twenty-one. Then there will come a time in the 7th millennium when human beings will only be capable of development through their physical nature until the age of fourteen. Women will then cease to be fertile; a completely different way of life on Earth will begin. It will be the time when the Moon once again approaches the Earth and reintegrates with it.

[ 10 ] You see, my dear friends, humanity must now begin to take notice of such extraterrestrial events. It must not merely dream in general and abstract terms of some divine entity, but must take a close look at the events connected with its own evolution. It must know: the Moon once broke away from the Earth; the Moon will once again enter the Earth. And just as this departure of the Moon was a momentous event, so too will this entry of the Moon be a momentous event. We as human beings will, of course, still be inhabiting the Earth then, but we will no longer be born in the usual way; we will be connected to the Earth in a way other than through birth. But by then we will have developed in a certain way. And we must relate what is happening now—the intellect becoming shadowy—to what will one day come as a momentous event in the Earth’s evolution: the Moon’s re-entering into Earth’s matter.

[ 11 ] Our intellect is becoming increasingly shadowy. If this were to continue, and if humanity were not to resolve to take into itself that which can come from the spiritual worlds, then human beings would gradually be absorbed more and more into the shadow-like nature of their intellect.

[ 12 ] Just think for a moment about what this shadowy intellect actually contains. This shadowy intellect cannot, after all, understand the human being itself. It understands minerals. That is, after all, the only thing this shadowy intellect can understand to a certain degree. Even the life of a plant remains a mystery to it; the life of animals remains an even greater mystery, and its own life becomes completely inscrutable. Thus, human beings form images of the world, but these are really only a question about the world—they contain, one might say, something that does not come close to the true nature of plants, animals, and especially human beings. This creation of images will continue on and on unless human beings resolve to accept what is handed down to them through imaginations—new imaginations—through which the existence of the world is depicted to them. What spiritual science can offer in the form of living wisdom must be incorporated into the shadowy concepts of the understanding and the shadowy intellectual ideas. In this way, the shadow-images of the understanding must be brought to life.

[ 13 ] This reanimation of the shadows of the mind, however, is not merely a human event; it is a cosmic event. Recall what I described in my Occult Science: that human souls once ascended to the planets and then descended again into earthly existence. In my Occult Science, I described how, one after another, the people of Mars, Jupiter, and so on returned to Earth. You see, a significant event has taken place—one can only describe it based on the facts confirmed in the spiritual world—a significant event took place at the end of the 1870s. While in the ancient Atlantean era these human beings from Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and so on descended to Earth—that is, while human soul beings took up their earthly existence—a new era is now beginning in which other beings, who are not human but who depend on coming to Earth to further their development and on entering into a relationship with humans here, are also descending from the extra-terrestrial realms. Since the late 1880s, superterrestrial beings have been seeking to enter earthly existence. Just as the Vulcan people were the last to descend here to Earth, Vulcan beings are in fact now entering earthly existence. We already have otherworldly beings in earthly existence. And it is thanks to this fact—that otherworldly beings bring messages down into this earthly existence—that we are able to have a coherent spiritual science at all.

[ 14 ] But on the whole, how does the human race behave? The human race behaves in a way that one might call cosmically boorish toward these beings that are emerging from the cosmos—albeit slowly on Earth, but emerging nonetheless. It pays no attention to them; it ignores them, this human race. And that is precisely what will lead the Earth into ever more tragic and tragic circumstances; for over the course of the coming centuries, more and more spiritual beings will walk among us, whose language we ought to understand. And we can understand them only if we seek to understand what comes from them: the content of spiritual science. That is what they want to give us, and they want us to act in accordance with spiritual science, to translate spiritual science into the social conduct of earthly existence.

[ 15 ] Since the last third of the 19th century, we have indeed been experiencing an influx of spiritual beings from the universe—initially beings that dwell in the sphere between the Moon and Mercury, but who, I would say, are already storming into earthly existence and attempting to gain a foothold in it by filling people’s minds with thoughts of the spiritual beings of the universe. This is another way of describing what I mentioned earlier—that we must enliven our shadowy intellect with the images of spiritual science. That is how one describes it abstractly. One describes it concretely by saying: spiritual beings want to descend into earthly existence, and they must be received. There will be upheaval after upheaval, and ultimately earthly existence would descend into social chaos if these beings were to descend and human existence were merely opposition to their descent. After all, these beings desire nothing more than to serve as outposts for what will happen to earthly existence when the Moon reunites with the Earth.

[ 16 ] You see, today it may still seem relatively harmless to people when they merely entertain those thoughts—automatic, lifeless thoughts—that arise when one perceives the mineral world and the mineral aspect of plants, the mineral aspect of animals, and the mineral aspect of human beings. I would say that people today take comfort in these thoughts; they feel at ease with them as materialists, for they are the only thoughts being entertained today. But just consider: if people were to continue thinking this way—if they were to develop nothing but such thoughts—until the point in the 8th millennium when lunar existence once again unites with earthly existence, what would then come into being? Yes, the beings I have spoken of will gradually descend to Earth; volcanic beings, volcanic superhumans, Venusian superhumans, Mercurian superhumans, solar superhumans, and so on will unite with earthly existence. But if humans continue to merely oppose them, earthly existence will descend into chaos over the course of the next millennia. Earth humans will, of course, be able to continue developing their intellect automatically; it can develop even within barbarism; but full humanity will not be drawn into this intellect, and humans will have no connection to those beings who wish to descend into earthly existence. And all those beings who are now misconceived by human beings—the beings who are misconceived because the mere shadow-like intellect conceives only the mineral, I might say the grossly material, in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, and even in the human kingdom—these human thoughts, which have no reality, will suddenly become reality when the Moon unites with the Earth. And from the Earth will spring forth a dreadful brood of beings whose nature lies between the mineral and plant kingdoms—automata-like beings endowed with an abundant intellect, with an intense intellect. With this movement, which will take hold over the Earth, the Earth will be covered as if by a net, a web spun by dreadful spiders, spiders of immense wisdom, yet whose organization does not even reach the level of plant life—terrifying spiders that will become entangled with one another, whose outward movements will imitate everything that human beings have conceived with a shadowy intellect that has not been inspired by what is to come through a new imagination, or indeed through spiritual science at all. Everything that people think in terms of such unreal thoughts will become a reality. The Earth will be covered—just as it is now covered by a layer of air, just as it is sometimes covered by swarms of locusts—with terrifying mineral-plant spiders that, though very intelligent, will weave themselves together in a terribly malicious manner. And the human being, insofar as he has not enlivened his shadowy intellectual … concepts, instead of uniting his being with the beings who have been seeking to descend since the last third of the 19th century, will have to unite his being with these terrible mineral-vegetative spider-like creatures. He will live alongside these spider-like creatures himself, and he will have to seek his further progress in worldly existence within the very development that this spider-like creature then undergoes.

[ 17 ] You see, this is precisely what lies at the heart of the reality of humanity’s development on Earth, and it is something that is well known today by a large number of those who are holding humanity back from embracing spiritual scientific insights. For there are also those who are, in fact, the conscious allies of the process of entangling human existence on Earth. One must no longer allow oneself to be deterred by descriptions of this kind today. For descriptions of this kind lie behind what many people still say today—those who, out of old traditions, still retain some awareness of such things, who hold to the old traditions, and who wish to shroud these old traditions in a certain veil of mystery. The development of humanity on Earth is not such that it may continue to be shrouded in mystery; and no matter how great the resistance from hostile quarters may be, these things must be said, for—as I have said time and again—what is at stake for humanity in the acceptance or rejection of spiritual scientific insights is a matter of the utmost seriousness. We are not dealing here with something from which decisions could be made based solely on indifferent sympathy or antipathy, but rather with something that profoundly affects the entire fabric of the cosmos; we are dealing with whether humanity wishes to resolve, in the present time, to gradually grow into that which benevolent spirits—who wish to connect with human beings—bring down from the cosmos, or whether humanity, entangled in the web of its own mere shadow-like thoughts, seeks its future cosmic existence in that entanglement. It is not enough today merely to outline the necessity of spiritual-scientific insights in abstract formulas; rather, it is necessary today to show how thoughts become realities. This is what is so terrible about all the abstract theosophists who appear on the scene: they present such abstractions to people—such as “thoughts will later become realities”—but it does not occur to them to present the full scope, the concrete scope, of the matter. And this concrete significance of the matter is this: that the intellectual, shadowy thoughts which people spin within themselves today will one day cover the earth like a spider’s web, and that people will become entangled in this spider’s web if they do not wish to rise above these shadowy thoughts.

[ 18 ] And the path to elevation, my dear friends, has already been laid out. We must take such things very seriously—such as the thought with which I concluded my lectures on color last Sunday, when I said, the point is that the understanding of color must be extracted from abstract physics, that the understanding of color must truly be raised to a realm where the imagination, the sensibility of the artist who comprehends the nature of color, and a spiritual-scientific insight into the world all interact. We have seen how the beings of color and the nature of color can be grasped, how one can lift up that which physics plunges into the Ahrimanic realm with its terrible diagrams, and how the artistic is lifted up, so that a theory of color can indeed be established—one that is, admittedly, far removed from the habits of thought in modern science, but which can certainly serve as a foundation for artistic creation if a person allows it to permeate their being. Such thoughts must certainly be taken seriously.

[ 19 ] And there is another idea that must be taken seriously. What are we witnessing today throughout the civilized world? Our young people are sent to medical schools and science departments, where they are taught about the human being. They learn about the human skeletal system and the human body’s overall structure through cadavers. They learn to construct a logical model of the human organism through abstract thought.

[ 20 ] But, my dear friends, that is not how one comes to know human beings; that is how one comes to know only the mineral aspect of human beings. Through this science, one comes to know—and this alone—what has significance from the moon’s departure to its return, and what is transformed into spider-like beings from the spider-like thoughts of the present. We must prepare for a form of knowledge that grasps human beings differently, and this can only be prepared if science is elevated to an artistic perspective, once we admit: Yes, science, as it is understood today, can go only so far—to the mineral aspect in the mineral kingdom, in the plant kingdom, in the animal kingdom, and in the human kingdom. But even in the plant kingdom, science must transform itself into art, and even more so in the animal kingdom. To want to grasp an animal form, to want to understand it, in the way that anatomists or physiologists do—nonsense! And until one admits to oneself that this is nonsense, the shadowy intellect cannot transform itself into a living, spiritual grasp of the world. What is taught today to our young people in such a bleakly abstract form when they enter universities must, everywhere, give way to artistic perception. For what surrounds us as nature creates artistically. And until we understand that what surrounds us in nature is artistic creation and can be grasped only through artistic concepts, no salvation can enter our worldview. The idea should take hold that the torture chambers in medieval castles, where people were placed in the “Iron Maiden” and then pierced them with spikes, are merely a somewhat more vivid physical representation of the very same procedure that is carried out when we demonstrate anatomy and physiology to the young people of our time, telling them that this will help them understand something of the nature of the human being. No, they understand nothing except what has been produced by an element of mental and spiritual torture: they understand the dismembered human being, the mineralized human being—that aspect of humanity which will one day be woven into the spider’s web of the earth.

[ 21 ] Isn’t it harsh that the power of civilization today lies with those who regard the truest thoughts—that which is most deeply and intimately connected with the well-being of human development, with the entire mission of human development in the world—as nothing but folly! It is tragic, and we must bring this tragedy before our eyes. For only when we vividly picture this tragedy before the eye of the soul will we perhaps summon the resolve to to do as much as one can in this place to ensure that the intellect, which has become shadowy, finds the possibility of letting in the spiritual world entering from the super-earthly, so that this shadowy intellect may be made fit for that into which it is to enter. This shadowy intellect is not, after all, to be cast back into the subplant realm, into the spider-like brood that spreads across the earth; rather, humanity is to be lifted up when, one day, women will no longer be fertile, when the 8th millennium has dawned, when the moon will once again unite with the earth. What will then remain behind is the earthly realm, which humanity need only direct from the outside—like a footstool—that which it need not carry over into cosmic existence. Humanity must prepare itself so that it need not become one with what must one day develop in this way on the Earth’s surface. For just as humanity was drawn from pre-earthly existence into this earthly existence—just as the physical birth, the birth of a human being from a woman, occurred with the moon’s departure—so too will there come a time when humanity will no longer be born through a woman, for this is only a temporary episode in the entire course of cosmic development; it is the episode that is meant to bring humanity the sense of freedom, the consciousness of freedom, and the integrity of individuality and personality—an episode that must not be disregarded, an episode that was necessary in the entire course of cosmic progress, but it is something that must not be clung to. And human beings must not succumb to the convenience of looking toward a merely abstract Divine, but must look concretely at that which is connected to their own development. Only by grasping this great period of time—but in its concrete form of development—through which he passes into his successive earthly lives can he achieve a true inner revitalization of his entire spirit-soul being.

[ 22 ] This is what true spiritual science tells us today. Things are simply colliding. Today, there is a threat that the will to be cast out of the spiritual realm will become entangled in the Earth’s web; this will lives consciously within certain individuals because they believe they will benefit from it if they educate themselves spiritually while leaving others in ignorance. For most, however, the situation is such that they live on in ignorance; they have, in fact, no inkling of the terrible earthly fates they are heading toward by connecting with what an earlier spiritual science called the sixteen paths of human ruin. For, my dear friends, just as there are manifold ways to turn one’s shadow-like intellect toward that which may come as news or a message from the spiritual world, so too are there naturally variations—different forms of the shadow-like intellect—for connecting with the spider-like being that will envelop the Earth in the future through this intellectual activity. The intellect will then function objectively within the various limbs that this spider-like creature will possess—limbs that will weave themselves together, that will entwine one another, and that, in this entwining, in these mutual, mercury-rod-like entanglements, will give rise to the most wondrous, cleverest, and most ingenious—in the modern sense of the word “ingenious”—forms. But by coming to understand the artistic from within once again, human beings will be able to develop an understanding of that which is super-mineral, of that which finds its expression in the form of the plant.

[ 23 ] Just consider how symptomatic it is in the course of human history that Goethe—who had an artistic disposition—discovered the theory of metamorphosis. All the pedants around him regarded it as dilettantism, and pedants still regard it as dilettantism today. In Goethe, however, the artistic view of the world—indeed, clear perception in general—was combined with that way of seeing which perceives nature itself as artistic. He had not yet reached the point where he could perceive the animal aspect beyond the structure of the vertebrae and skull bones. That marvelous transformation of a previous human existence, which shapes the rest of the physical body into the form of the head—this marvelous artistic reshaping of the long bones into spherical bones—is what, when truly understood, first yields a genuine inner grasp of the distinction between the rest of the human form and the head. One must grasp this if one wishes to integrate the human head plastically into the rest of the human organism.

[ 24 ] But this is, at the same time, true science as art, for any science that does not rise to the level of this art is a deceptive science—a science that plunges humanity into cosmic misfortune. Thus we see, in fact, how, on the one hand, a true spiritual science points toward an artistic grasp. It lived—I would say in a hymn-like way—in Goethe’s soul when, as early as about 1780, he wrote his prose hymn “Nature”: “Nature, we are surrounded and embraced by her...” The whole piece weaves such a tapestry of imagination that one might say it is like the unfolding of a longing to take in spiritual beings from the entire cosmos. Yes, the further development of these thoughts, which live in Goethe’s prose hymn “Nature”—the further development of these thoughts—would provide a place for those beings who wish to descend from the extraterrestrial cosmos. But what has been developed over the course of the 19th century—these dreadful, torturous concepts of human physiology, biology, plant taxonomy, and so on, which, when it comes down to it, have nothing to do with what a plant truly is—as we were able to point out again in our consideration of colors—all these inartistic concepts, are precisely what cannot provide insight, what cannot reach the human being. Therefore, what is essentially regarded as science today is a product of Ahriman, something that leads human beings into earthly ruin, something that prevents them from entering the sphere that has, I might say, been carried toward them since the last third of the 19th century by extraterrestrial beings.

[ 25 ] The practice of spiritual science, my dear friends, is not merely something abstract; to practice spiritual science is at the same time to open the gates to extraterrestrial influences that have been seeking to enter the Earth since the last third of the 19th century. The practice of spiritual science is a real cosmic event; we need only become aware of this.

[ 26 ] So we can say: we are surveying the period from the Moon’s departure to its return. This Moon, which, as we say, reflects sunlight, is thus actually deeply connected to our existence. It separated itself from the Earth so that human beings on Earth could become free. But human beings should use this time to ensure that they do not provide the Moon with the material that can become bound up with the Moon’s existence within the Earth once the Moon has returned—in that new realm of nature, which I have now described to you in a somewhat vivid way.

[ 27 ] One might say that even today, people sometimes experience a certain foreboding of what is to come. I do not know with what mindset people have read what Nietzsche describes in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra in the chapter about the ugliest man in the Valley of Death. It is a moving, tragic description. Nietzsche, of course, had no conception of that Valley of Death into which earthly existence will be transformed when this spider-like brood, of which I have spoken, covers the earth. But at the very time when Nietzsche’s imagination conceived of this Valley of Death, something of this vision of the future was already living subconsciously within him, and he then placed the ugliest man in this Valley of Death. It is something like a premonition of how human beings, if they continue to nurture their shadowy thoughts, will one day be carried away as the ugliest figures by the lunar existence descending upon the earth, only to fall into this swarm of spiders as the ugliest of humans and be united with it.

[ 28 ] What good would it do to keep these things secret today, as many wish to do? It would amount to pulling the wool over people’s eyes. Much of what is promoted today as spirituality is, after all, nothing more than pulling the wool over people’s eyes. One sometimes meets people who understand what it means to pull the wool over people’s eyes—to fail to perceive a single historical event as it really is. How many people today, after all, know that events of fundamental significance are taking place in our time? I have already drawn attention to such matters. How many people are willing to engage with them? People would rather close their eyes to these things, saying, “Well, these things aren’t really that significant.” But the signs are definitely there, and people should understand them.

[ 29 ] That, my dear friends, is what I wanted to add to my reflections on the world of colors and on humanity’s connection to the extraterrestrial cosmos. We will continue these reflections in the future.