The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophy and the Human Soul IV

[ 1 ] All the reflections I have shared with you here over the past few days were intended to draw attention to how human beings can, in a sense, transform from citizens of the Earth into citizens of the cosmos, how the horizon of their lives can expand into the vastness of the universe, and how, as a result, life within the earthly sphere can be enriched not only in terms of scope but also in terms of the intensity of inner impulses.

[ 2 ] Last time, I spoke about how a true spiritual perspective leads people to realize that the planets of our solar system are not merely the physical bodies described by modern astronomy, but can truly be perceived by us as manifestations of spiritual beings. In this context, I spoke of the Moon and of Saturn. Given the brevity of this discussion, I cannot, of course, go into detail about every single planet; nor is that relevant to our current purpose. I merely wanted to point out how one can expand the entire human state of mind from Earth out into the vastness of space. Only then does it become possible to regard the external world as an integral part of oneself, just as one regards what takes place within the human body—such as one’s breathing, blood circulation, and so on—as an integral part of oneself.

[ 3 ] Modern science, after all, regards our Earth as if it were merely a mineral, lifeless body. In today’s civilization, people do not even consider that what they view—for example, from a cosmological perspective—is not reality at all. Today’s state of mind is extraordinarily dull when it comes to the sense of reality. People readily call a salt crystal “real,” for example, and they also call a rose “real,” without distinguishing between these two realities. But a salt crystal is a self-contained reality that can exist on its own; a rose is not. A rose has existence only when it is on the rosebush. A rose—I mean the rose blossom—cannot come into being out there on its own. So if we have any conception at all of a rose blossom that we might take pleasure in, insofar as we have realized this conception externally, then we have an abstraction; even if we can touch this abstraction, we do not have true reality—only the rosebush possesses that. Nor does that earth—with its primary rock, shale, limestone, and so on—about which modern science tells us today possess any true reality, for this earth does not even exist; it is merely a figment of the imagination. And did not the real Earth bring forth plants from the solid earth? Did it not bring forth animals and human beings? That belongs to the Earth—it belongs to the Earth just as much as the crystalline slate of the mountains; and if I consider only an Earth consisting of stone, then I have no Earth. What external natural science observes today in any field of geology is not reality.

[ 4 ] So, in fact, our entire final consideration is about proceeding not only logically but in accordance with reality. We can say today: The obvious errors in contemporary education actually bother us very little; what is easily refutable bothers us very little. What is worst about today’s knowledge and understanding is that which seems impossible to refute at all. — You see, it truly requires intellectual richness and precise understanding to calculate all those things that, for example, modern geological science calculates regarding the formation of the Earth—the Earth’s formation so many millions of years ago. Admittedly, these calculations differ from one another by minor details. Some geologists say twenty million, some two hundred million years, but twenty million or two hundred million have become trivialities for people today in other fields as well. Nevertheless, even though these people hold such differing views, the method of calculation used here is truly one that commands our utmost respect. It is precise; it is accurate. But what is it like? It is as if I were to examine the human heart today, and then again in a month. Through certain—let’s say—more detailed examinations, I am able to detect changes in this human heart, and I then know how this heart has changed over the course of a month. Then I observe again how it has changed after another month, and so on. In other words, I apply to the human heart the same method that geologists use to calculate geological time periods spanning millions of years—after all, they also make calculations based on the sedimentary layers and so on in the Earth’s strata, and by correlating the small changes in the appropriate manner, they derive numerical data. But what can I do now with the results I’ve obtained regarding the changes in the human heart? I can now apply the method to these changes and calculate what this human heart looked like three hundred years ago and what it will look like three hundred years from now. The calculation may be correct. However, this heart did not exist three hundred years ago and will not exist three hundred years from now. Thus, even the most ingenious and precise calculation methods can lead to statements in geological science today about what the Earth looked like three million years ago, when there was no Silurian period yet, and so on. The calculation may well be correct, but the Earth did not yet exist. And in the same way, it can be calculated today—as physicists do—how the various substances will be completely different twenty million years from now. In this regard, American researchers have presented extraordinarily interesting studies and descriptions—for example, of what protein would look like then—but the Earth, as a physical celestial body, will no longer exist by then! Logical methods and precision, then, are actually precisely what is dangerous, for they cannot be refuted. It cannot be refuted if one were to calculate what the heart looked like three hundred years ago, provided the method is correct, or what the Earth looked like twenty million years ago; nor can anything be done about it even if one were to attempt such refutations. Instead, we must grasp a way of thinking that corresponds to reality, a worldview that corresponds to reality.

[ 5 ] Such a comprehensive understanding of reality is precisely what matters in spiritual science across all fields. And through methods such as those I described yesterday—through such internalized methods, through which, as I showed yesterday, one comes to know the populations of the Moon and Saturn—one now comes to understand not only the relationship of the Earth to its own beings, but also the relationship of every being in the universe to the essence of the cosmos. Everywhere in the world, the spiritual is contained within the material, which is merely the outer expression of the spiritual. Imagination, inspiration, and intuition find the spiritual everywhere in the sensory and the physical, but they do not find this spiritual merely in such a way that one can grasp it, let us say, in sharp contours; rather, they find the spiritual in ceaseless movement, in ceaseless life. And just as what geology presents to us as “rocks” has no reality of its own—but the Earth must first be sought in its production of plants, animals, and physical human beings—so, too, if the Earth is to be grasped in its total reality, it must also be grasped as the outer physical manifestation of the spiritual.

[ 6 ] One first comes to understand, through the power of imagination, how the spiritual essence of the Earth nevertheless differs, in a certain sense, from what I might call the human spiritual essence. When a person stands before me, there are indeed many and varied manifestations of their being before my eyes. I see how they walk, I hear how they speak, I see their physiognomy, I see the gestures of their arms and hands. But all of this leads me to seek a unified soul-spiritual essence that reigns within them. Just as here the instinct must seek a unified soul-spiritual essence within the individual human being, so too does imaginative cognition, when it contemplates the Earth, find not a unified Earth-spiritual essence, but rather the Earth-spiritual as a multiplicity, as a diversity. One should therefore not infer, by analogy with the spiritual nature of the human being, the existence of a unified Earth Spirit, for true observation reveals a multiplicity of Earth Spirit—so to speak, of spiritual beings—that live in the realms of the Earth’s nature. But these spiritual beings are undergoing a process of life; they are in a state of becoming.

[ 7 ] Now let us take a look at what this imagination, supported by inspiration, perceives in terms of the Earth’s development over the course of a year. Let us first turn our soul’s gaze to winter. Outwardly, the earth is covered with frost and snow; the seeds, so to speak, of the earthly beings—the plants—are withdrawn into the earth. Precisely that which, in its germinating state, is connected to the earth from the animal and human worlds—which we can set aside for the moment—is drawn back into the earth’s interior. In winter, we come to know the dying life in contrast to the sprouting, budding life of spring and summer. But what does this dying life of winter mean in a spiritual sense? It means that those spiritual beings—which we might call elemental spiritual beings—that are the actual life-giving forces, particularly in plants, withdraw into the earth itself and are intimately connected with it. This is the imaginative vision of the earth in winter: that the earth, so to speak, takes its spiritual elemental beings into its body and shelters them within itself. The earth is at its most spiritual in winter—that is, most deeply permeated by its elemental spiritual beings.

[ 8 ] For the one who beholds this, as with all supersensible perception, this too passes into sensation, into feeling. During the winter, the observer looks at the earth with feeling and says to himself: Where the blanket of snow lies, the earth’s body is covered in such a way that the elemental spirits of earthly existence dwell within this earth’s body. When spring comes, the connection of these elemental spirits with the earth transforms into a connection with the cosmic environment. What during the winter constituted a deep connection within these beings with the Earth itself becomes, during the spring, a connection with the cosmic environment; the elemental beings strive outward from the Earth. And spring essentially consists of the Earth allowing its elemental beings to flow out in devotion to the universe. These elemental beings need to rest in the bosom of the Earth during winter; in spring, they need to flow out through the air, through the atmosphere, and to be shaped by the spiritual forces of the planetary system—the spiritual forces of Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and so on. Everything that the planetary system can exert upon the Earth spirits does not take effect in winter; it begins to take effect in spring. And it is truly the case that we can observe here a cosmic process that is more spiritual in relation to a process in human beings that is more material: the process of breathing in human beings. We inhale the outside air, take it into our own bodies, and exhale it again; we inhale, we exhale. Inhaling and exhaling are an integral part of human life. The Earth has breathed in all its spirituality during winter and, when spring arrives, begins to breathe its spirituality back out into the cosmos. And human beings sensed this in the very early days of human development, when a kind of instinctive clairvoyance still existed. They therefore perceived the Christmas festival as the appropriate expression of earthly existence at the winter solstice. It was precisely where the Earth is at its most spiritual that it was able to hold the mystery of Christmas for humanity. The Savior could only connect with an Earth that had taken all its spirituality into its bosom.

[ 9 ] But for the festival intended to awaken the feeling that human beings belong not only to the Earth but to the entire cosmos, and that as citizens of the Earth they can awaken with their souls to the cosmos—for this festival of the Resurrection, only the time could be chosen that leads all that is spiritual on Earth out into the cosmos. That is why we see Christmas connected with earthly realities, with the Earth’s winter darkness, with the Earth’s—in a certain sense—sleep. Easter, on the other hand, is so embedded in the course of the year that we do not determine it according to earthly matters, but according to cosmic matters. The first Sunday after the spring full moon determines the date of Easter. Thus, in earlier times, the stars had to tell people when Easter was to be celebrated, because that is when the entire Earth opens itself to the cosmos. The “scripture” of the cosmos had to be consulted; people had to become aware that they are not merely earthly beings, but that during the spring Easter festival they must open themselves to the cosmic expanses.

[ 10 ] It truly pains one’s soul when these magnificent ideas from a bygone era of humanity—an era that was, in terms of such ideas, even greater than our own—are now discussed in the way we have been accustomed to for the past twenty or twenty-five years: all sorts of people who believe they mean well for humanity talk about how Easter should not be celebrated on such a flexible date; at the very least, it should be fixed on the first Sunday in April—that is, outwardly, in a purely abstract sense. I have had to listen to discussions in which people pointed out how the fact that Easter is so variable causes confusion in merchants’ ledgers, and how business would run much more smoothly if Easter were strictly regulated. As I said, it pains one’s soul to see how out of touch with the world this so-called “practical” civilization has become, for such a proposal is the most impractical thing imaginable; impractical because this civilization can indeed establish practices for a single day, but never for the entire century. For the century, only that which is in harmony with the universe can establish a practical foundation. But the course of the year must always be able to direct people toward an inner life in harmony with the entire cosmos.

[ 11 ] And as we move from spring toward summer, the Earth loses more and more of its inner spirituality. This spirituality—the elemental beings—moves from the earthly realm into the extraterrestrial realm, coming entirely under the influence of the cosmic, planetary world. This was once the immensely profound ritual that took place within certain mystery sites during the time we now mark as the St. John’s Festival in midsummer. This St. John’s Festival in midsummer was once the time when the initiates—the priests of the mysteries at those sites where St. John’s Festivals were celebrated in their original meaning—were deeply imbued with the realization that: What you had to seek in the depths of winter, at the winter solstice, by looking into the interior of the Earth through the snow cover that becomes spiritually transparent, you now find by directing your soul’s gaze outward. And the elemental beings who, during the winter, were governed by the Earth’s fundamental forces, are now governed by the planets. You learn of the experiences these beings have with the planets during the height of summer—the very beings you had to seek within the Earth during winter. — And just as human beings otherwise unconsciously experience their breathing as something that is an inner part of their existence, so too did human beings once experience their existence as belonging to the course of the year—in the spiritual realm that belongs to the Earth. During the winter, they sought the elemental beings of nature with whom they were kindred in the depths of the earth; during the height of summer, they sought them in the heights of the clouds. He found them in the depths of the earth, inwardly interwoven with and permeated by the earth’s own forces in connection with what the lunar forces had left behind in the earth; he found them during the height of summer, surrendered to the vastness of the universe.

[ 12 ] And when the height of summer draws to a close, the Earth once again begins to inhale its spiritual essence, so that from the time of St. John onward, as the Earth inhales its spiritual essence, the time is once again being prepared when the Earth will carry its spiritual essence within itself.

[ 13 ] People today are not very inclined to pay attention to this inhalation and exhalation of the Earth. Human breathing is more of a physical process, whereas the Earth’s breathing is a spiritual process—it is the outward movement of the Earth’s elemental beings into the spaces of the cosmos and their sinking back into the Earth. But truly, just as human beings experience what takes place in their blood circulation as part of their inner life, so too do they, as fully human beings, experience the course of the year. Just as the circulation of blood is internally essential to their existence, so too—in a broader sense—is this circulation of the elemental beings from the Earth up to the heavens and back to the Earth again essential to human existence. And it is only the coarseness of human sensibility that prevents people today from even suspecting what within themselves actually depends on this external course of the year. But as human beings will have to strive, over the course of time, to take in the ideas that spiritual science and supersensible knowledge provide, and as they will have to develop the inner activity necessary to truly make present within their own souls the findings of spiritual science entrusted to them, such an understanding of these findings will also refine their capacity for feeling. This is actually what you should all expect from delving into the supersensible knowledge that anthroposophy refers to. If you read an anthroposophical book—or, for that matter, even a lecture series—and you read it in such a way that your reading is no different from reading any other book, that your reading proceeds just as abstractly as when reading any other book, then you really have no need to read anthroposophical literature at all. In that case, I would rather advise you to read cookbooks or technical manuals or the like, for that is more useful, or a guide on how best to do business. Reading anthroposophical books or listening to anthroposophical lectures only makes sense if you realize that, in order to absorb these insights, you must attune yourself in a completely different way than you would for other kinds of knowledge. This is already evident from the fact that those people who today actually consider themselves particularly intelligent regard this anthroposophical literature as sheer madness. Yes, they must surely have reasons for considering it madness. The reasons are these: they say, “Everything else says something different; everything else presents the world to us in a different way. We simply cannot accept that these anthroposophists come along and portray the world in a completely different way!” — Yes, what emerges into the world as anthroposophical insights is indeed different from what one is otherwise told today. I must say: The approach sometimes taken by some of our friends—seeking to make anthroposophy look good to the world by presenting the matter as if there were no contradictions whatsoever with the trivial opinions of others—these efforts cannot really be considered sound, even though one encounters them time and again. One needs a different attitude, a completely different orientation of the soul, if one truly wants to regard what anthroposophy says as plausible, tangible, comprehensible, sensible—and not as madness.

[ 14 ] But once one acquires this different orientation, after some time not only will the human intellect undergo a process of refinement, but the human soul will also undergo such a process; this soul will become more finely attuned. And one will not merely experience winter in the sense of putting on a winter coat when it gets cold, nor will one experience summer merely by taking off a few layers of clothing when it gets warm again; rather, over the course of the year, one will feel those subtle transitions from the frosty snow of winter to the sultry height of summer in earthly existence. And one will learn to truly perceive the course of the year in the same way that we perceive the expressions of a living, animated being. Indeed, through the proper study of anthroposophy, one can develop one’s soul to such an extent that the course of the year becomes so vividly real that one feels, in the face of its manifestations, as if one were hearing the words of encouragement or reproach from a dear friend. Just as one can sense, from the words of a friend’s soul and from the friend’s entire demeanor, the warm pulse of an animated being—which speaks to one in a truly different way than anything lifeless or inanimate—so too will nature, which is at first silent, begin to speak to human beings as if animated. Human beings will learn to perceive nature as a soul—a soul in the process of becoming throughout the course of the year—and will learn to listen to what the year has to say, just as they would to a great living being, whereas otherwise in their lives they deal with small living beings; they will learn to place themselves within the entire animated cosmos. But when summer gives way to autumn and winter draws near, it is precisely through this transition that something special will speak to him from nature.

[ 15 ] Anyone who gradually develops that subtle sensitivity toward nature that I have sought to describe—and the anthroposophist will notice after some time that this can be the emotional and spiritual outcome of his or her anthroposophical striving—will learn to distinguish between: an awareness of nature that arises during the spring and summer, and true self-awareness, which feels at home during the fall and winter. Awareness of nature: when spring comes, the earth develops its sprouting, budding life. And whoever has the right feeling toward this sprouting, budding life, whoever allows what is actually present during spring to speak within them—one need not be consciously aware of it; it also speaks in the subconscious to the fullness of human life—whoever possesses all this does not merely say: “The flower blooms, the plant sprouts”—but truly feels a sense of surrender to nature, so that they can say: “My ‘I’ blooms in the flower, my ‘I’ sprouts in the plant.”—Only through this does an awareness of nature arise: learning to participate in what develops and unfolds within this sprouting, budding life. To be able to sprout with the plant, to be able to bloom with the plant, to be able to bear fruit with the plant: this is what it means for a human being to step out of their inner self, what it means to merge with outer nature. To develop spirituality truly does not mean to abstract oneself. To develop spirituality means to be able to follow the spirit in its weaving and becoming. And when a person, by blooming with the flower, sprouting with the seed, and bearing fruit with the fruit, develops this sense of nature within their own subtle perception of nature throughout the spring and summer, they thereby prepare themselves to live, especially in the height of summer, in devotion to the universe and the starry sky. Then every little firefly becomes something like a mysterious revelation of the cosmic; then, I would say, every breath of air in the atmosphere during the height of summer becomes an announcement of the cosmic within the earthly.

[ 16 ] But then, when the earth breathes in again, and when one has learned to feel in harmony with nature—to bloom with the flowers, to sprout with the seeds, to bear fruit with the trees—then one can do nothing else but experience autumn and winter as well, for one has learned to be at one with nature through one’s own being. Whoever has learned to live with nature will also come to die with nature. Whoever has learned to live with nature in spring will also learn to die with nature in autumn. And so it is that one reenters, in a different way, those feelings that once so deeply permeated the Mithraic priest, as I have described in recent days. The Mithras priest felt the cycle of the year in his own body. This is no longer appropriate for present-day humanity. But it must become more and more appropriate for the humanity of the near future, and anthroposophists should be the pioneers of this experience—of living through the cycle of the year, of being able to live with spring and die with autumn.

[ 17 ] But human beings must not die. Human beings must not allow themselves to be overwhelmed. They can live in harmony with nature as it sprouts and blossoms; they can develop an awareness of nature through it. But when he witnesses nature’s dying, this witnessing is a call to set the creative forces of his own being against this dying within himself. Then the spiritual-soul aspect—true self-awareness—sprouts and blossoms within him, and through this inner experience, as he shares in nature’s dying in autumn and winter, he becomes the awakener of his own self-awareness to the highest degree. And so the human being transforms himself over the course of the year by experiencing: awareness of nature — self-consciousness. When one participates in nature’s dying, the inner life force must then awaken. When nature takes its elemental beings into her bosom, the inner human power must become the awakening of self-consciousness.

[ 18 ] The forces of Michael—we can feel them again! The image of Michael’s battle with the dragon arose from entirely different circumstances in the old, instinctive days of clairvoyance. But now, as we come to understand with full vitality: awareness of nature—self-awareness, spring, summer, fall, and winter—the same force presents itself to humanity once more at the end of September, reminding us of what, as we witness nature’s dying, is to emerge from this grave as a victorious force—a force that kindles within the human being the true, strong self-awareness that leads to clarity. Now Michael, victorious over the dragon, is here once more.

[ 19 ] Thus, anthroposophical knowledge and insight must simply flow into the human soul as a force. And the path leads from our dry, abstract, yet precise concepts to a place where the living insight absorbed into the soul once again places us before something as full of life as the magnificent image from ancient times of Michael battling the dragon. Thus, something other than abstract concepts stands before our souls in our worldview. Do not believe that such an experience has no consequences for the whole of human existence on Earth. How a person becomes attuned to the consciousness of immortality, how they become attuned to the consciousness of pre-earthly existence—I have often described this over the years at anthroposophical gatherings, including here in Vienna. I wanted to explain to you, particularly at this gathering, how a human being can receive spiritual power from the spiritual world—but now in a completely concrete sense—into their soul. It is truly not enough to speak in general terms, whether pantheistically or otherwise, of a spirit underlying the external world. That would be just as abstract as if one were to content oneself with saying: A human being simply has a spirit. — What does it mean to be able to say only that a human being has a spirit? — Spirit has meaning for us only when it speaks to us in concrete details, when it reveals itself to us in concrete details at every moment, when it can give us comfort, inspiration, and joy. The pantheistic spirit in philosophical speculations has no meaning at all. It is only the living spirit—which speaks to us in nature, just as the human soul speaks to us within a person—that can enter the human mind in a life-giving and uplifting way.

[ 20 ] But then, from such insight—transformed within the mind—the human mind will also gain for earthly existence those powers that humanity needs precisely for social life. Over the course of three to four centuries, humanity has become accustomed to viewing all of nature—and human existence as well—exclusively through intellectual, abstract concepts. And now, as humanity faces the great problems of social chaos, there is a tendency to try to solve these social problems with this same intellectualism. But in doing so, people will never produce anything other than chimeras. To have a say in social matters requires a full human heart. But this cannot exist unless a person finds their connection to the cosmos—and specifically to the spiritual content of the cosmos. The dawn of a necessary solution to the current social issues will arrive the moment human minds take spiritual consciousness into themselves—that spiritual consciousness which consists of the transformation of natural consciousness (spring-summer consciousness) into self-consciousness (autumn-winter consciousness). In a profound sense, it is not, for example, the intellectual content of the social problem that depends on this, but rather the power that the social problem requires—that a sufficiently large number of people be able to take such spiritual impulses into their inner being.

[ 21 ] But it is necessary to bring all of this to mind when we consider that the three festivals symbolized by Christmas, Easter, and St. John’s Day should be joined by the autumn festival, St. Michael’s Day. How wonderful, how incredibly wonderful it would be if this Feast of St. Michael at the end of September could be celebrated with all the strength of the human heart. But it must not be celebrated by holding this or that event that amounts to nothing more than abstract emotional sensations; rather, St. Michael’s Day involves people who fully feel in their souls all that can awaken spiritual consciousness within the human being. For what is the significance of Easter among the festivals of the year? It is a festival of resurrection. It reminds us of that resurrection which took place through the descent of the Solar Spirit, Christ, into a human body in the Mystery of Golgotha. First death, then resurrection—this is the outward manifestation of the Mystery of Golgotha. Whoever understands the Mystery of Golgotha in this sense beholds death and resurrection on this path of redemption. And they may then say in their soul: I must unite myself in my heart with Christ, who is the victor over death, in order to find resurrection in death. But Christianity is not confined to the traditions associated with the Mystery of Golgotha; it must go further. The human soul internalizes over the course of time, and alongside this feast—which presents the death and resurrection of Christ—humanity needs that other feast through which the cycle of the year appears to the human being in an internalized way, so that they may first find the resurrection of the soul within the cycle of the year; they must first bring the soul to resurrection so that it may pass through the gate of death in a worthy manner. Easter: first death, then resurrection; Michaelmas: first the resurrection of the soul, then death.

[ 22 ] Thus, the Feast of St. Michael becomes a sort of “reverse Easter.” At Easter, people celebrate Christ’s resurrection from the dead. On the Feast of St. Michael, a person must feel with all the intensity of the soul: If I do not wish to sleep as if half-dead, so that I find my self-awareness subdued between death and new birth, but rather wish to pass through the gate of death in full clarity, I must—in order to do so—awaken my soul before death through inner forces. — First the awakening of the soul, then death, so that in death that resurrection which a person celebrates within themselves may then take place.

[ 23 ] May these lectures have contributed, if only a little, to building a bridge, so to speak, between the purely intellectual insights of anthroposophy and what anthroposophy can mean to the human mind. Then I will be very happy and will be able to look back fondly in the future on precisely what we were able to discuss in these lectures—lectures in which I truly did not wish to speak to your intellect, but rather to your hearts, and through which I sought to point out, in a way that is uncommon today, the social impulses that humanity so desperately needs today. We will actually only be able to instill a receptiveness to social impulses within humanity through such an inner deepening of the soul. This is what now stands out particularly strongly in my soul as I must conclude these lectures, which I have truly given here before you, my dear Austrians, out of a deep inner need of the heart.