The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] I spoke to you about how human beings, in the course of their lives, are subject to what is commonly referred to in the natural sciences as heredity. I also spoke to you about how human beings are subject to the influences of the external world—that is, to adaptation to the external world—and how everything determined by heredity is connected to the Ahrimanic, while what constitutes adaptation to the external world in the broadest sense is connected to the Luciferic. But I also told you how, within the universe—that is, within the spiritual essences that underlie the universe—provisions have been made to ensure that the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic can be properly integrated into human life. Let us add a few more points today to what has already been said by revisiting the discussion from the day before yesterday.

[ 2 ] We have reflected on how memory—and everything related to it—shapes human beings as an inner, spiritual reality. As spiritual beings, we are, in fact, shaped by our memories far more than we realize. The way in which our experiences have become memories has, in fact, shaped our soul; we are, more than we realize, a product of our life of memory. And anyone who can practice self-observation to even a moderate degree—enough to delve into their life of memory—will see what a major role childhood impressions, in particular, play throughout our entire earthly life. The way in which we spent precisely that childhood—which then plays no major role in our conscious life—the time during which we learned to speak, learned to walk, during which we got our first teeth, our inherited teeth—the impressions during all these moments of development play a major role in the life of the human soul throughout our entire earthly existence. And much of what—I would say, in terms of character—internally surfaces as thoughts connected to memories—and everything we grasp in our thoughts that is not directly influenced by external impressions is, after all, connected to memories—everything that surfaces in this way, touching us inwardly with joy or pain, — for it is usually subtle nuances of joy and pain that accompany these freely arising thoughts — all that constitutes our life of memory is carried out by our astral body when we pass into the state of sleep. And when one now gazes upon the human being as a soul-spiritual being during sleep through imaginative vision, the situation presents itself in the following way. One might say: If you, schematically speaking, regard this as the human skin and imagine that within the human skin the etheric body and the physical body remain during sleep, and that the astral body is initially outside—I will draw the “I” later—and if you observe this, as it were, by standing opposite it, then you see that the astral body actually consists of memories. But one sees how these memories, which live in the astral body outside the human being, are, so to speak, thrown into disarray. Experiences that are far apart in time and far apart in space are brought together; certain elements are filtered out of some experiences, so that the entire life of memory is restructured during sleep. And when a person dreams, they dream precisely because this transformed life of memory comes to the forefront of their consciousness. And it is precisely in the nature of the dream that one can perceive this churning—perceive it inwardly—which, viewed from the outside, can be observed through imaginative clairvoyance.

[ 3 ] But another aspect comes into play here. What appears in our memories from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up—that is, what constitutes the main content of human astral soul life—unites during sleep with the forces that lie behind natural phenomena. So one can say: Everything that lives in these memories as the astral body enters into a connection with the forces that lie behind minerals—actually within the minerals themselves—within plants, behind cloud formations, and so on.

[ 4 ] For anyone who sees through this fact, it is actually—I would say—appalling when people come along and say: “Behind natural phenomena lie material atoms.” Yes, our memories do not unite with these material ‘atoms’ during sleep; but they do unite with what truly lies behind natural phenomena—with the spiritually active forces—and it is there that our memories rest during sleep.

[ 5 ] So that we can truly say: Our soul plunges into the depths of nature with its memories while we sleep. And you are not saying anything untrue or unreal, my dear friends, when you say the following: When I fall asleep, I entrust my memories to the spiritual forces that reign in crystals, in plants, and in all natural phenomena.

[ 6 ] Yes, you can go for a walk; along the way you’ll see the yellow flowers, the blue flowers, the green grass, the gleaming, promising ears of grain, and you’ll say: As I pass by you like this during the day, I see you from the outside; but while I sleep, I will immerse my memories in your own spiritual inner being. You absorb what I have transformed from my experiences into memories during my life; you absorb these memories when I sleep. — And perhaps it is, after all, the most beautiful feeling of nature—not merely to have an external relationship with the rosebush, but to say to oneself: I love the rosebush especially because it has this unique quality—distance plays no role here; no matter how far away the rose may be, we find our way to it even in our sleep—because the rosebush has the special quality of holding our very first childhood memories. People love the rose for this reason—they just don’t realize it—because roses hold our very first childhood memories.

[ 7 ] When we were children, other people were kind to us; they often made us smile. We have forgotten that. But we carry it within us in our state of mind. And the rosebush absorbs into its very core, while we sleep at night, the memory that we ourselves have forgotten. Human beings are, in fact, more closely connected to the natural external world—that is, to the spirit that reigns in the natural external world—than they realize. And this recollection of the early years of childhood is particularly remarkable in relation to human sleep, because from the early years of childhood and through the years leading up to the loss of baby teeth—until about the age of seven—it is actually only the soul that is absorbed during sleep. We truly have this within us as human beings: that the spiritual, the inner aspect of nature, essentially absorbs only the soul during our childhood. Of course, the opposite is also true: the soul elements we developed during early childhood—for example, by being cruel—are also within us; but these are absorbed by the thistle. Naturally, all of this is relative. But it certainly points to a significant reality. What is not absorbed into the inner nature of the child will become clear to us from what follows.

[ 8 ] You see, during the first seven years of life, virtually everything physical is inherited. The first teeth are, after all, entirely inherited teeth, because absolutely everything material that we carry within us during the first seven years of life is essentially inherited. But after about seven years of life, the entire physical substance is expelled, falls away, and is newly formed. The human being remains as a form, as a spiritual being. He expels his physical substance bit by bit; after seven to eight years, everything that was there seven to eight years ago is gone. And so it is that, by the time we have reached the age of nine, we have renewed our entire being. We then shape our being according to external impressions.

[ 9 ] And indeed, it is very important—especially for the child in the early stages of life—that it be able to shape its new body—not the body inherited from its parents, but the body formed from within—based on positive impressions from the environment and through successful adaptation. While the body a child has at birth depends on whether the inherited impulses are passed on in a positive or less positive way, the body the child carries from the seventh to the fourteenth year of life depends very strongly on the impressions the child absorbs from its surroundings. Every seven years, we reshape our bodies.

[ 10 ] Yes, but you see, it is the “I” that shapes things there. Even though the “I” has not yet even been born into the outer world in a child of seven—it is, after all, born only later—it is nevertheless at work, for it is naturally connected to the body, and it is the “I” that shapes things there. And it shapes what I have been speaking of; it shapes what then emerges as physiognomy and gesture—the outward, material manifestation of the soul-spiritual in human beings. It is generally the case that a person who takes an active interest in the world, who is interested in many things, and who also actively processes internally what he or she is interested in—such a person reveals in his or her outward facial expressions and gestures, in a material way, what he or she takes in with interest and what he or she processes internally with interest. In a person who takes the most active interest in the external world and who actively processes this interest internally, one will see in every wrinkle on their face in later life how they have shaped it themselves, and one will be able to read a great deal from it, because the “I” manifests itself in gesture, in physiognomy, and in expression. In a person who passes by the outside world with indifference or a lack of interest, the face retains the same expression throughout their entire life. The finer experiences are not imprinted on their physiognomy and gestures. In some faces, one can read an entire biography; in others, one can read little more than that the person was once a child—which is, of course, nothing special.

[ 11 ] But it is extraordinarily significant that human beings, through the renewal of their physical form every seven to eight years, shape their appearance. This work that human beings do on their outward appearance, their physiognomy, and their gestures is very significant; it is, in turn, something that human beings carry into the inner realm of nature while they sleep.

[ 12 ] And again, if one looks at a person with imaginative clairvoyance and now observes the “I” as it lies dormant on the outside, this “I” actually consists of physiognomy and gesture. It is therefore precisely in those people who are able to express much of their inner being through their facial expressions or gestures that a brilliant, radiant “I” is present. And this development of gesture and facial expression, in turn, is connected to certain forces within nature. And it is indeed true: if we have been able to be friendly and kind many times in life, then nature is inclined, as soon as that kindness has “become” a facial expression, to incorporate it into its very essence while we sleep. Nature absorbs our memories into its forces; it absorbs the formation of our gestures into its very essence, into the natural beings themselves. So intimately is the human being connected with external nature that what he experiences inwardly as memories, and how he expresses his inner soul life through gesture and physiognomy, has immense significance for external nature. For this lives on within nature.

[ 13 ] You see, I have often cited in my abstracts Goethe’s saying, which is actually a critique of a saying by Haller. Haller coined the phrase: “No creative spirit penetrates into the innermost depths of nature. Blessed is he to whom she shows only the outer shell.” Goethe responds: “O you philistine! In every place, we are within. Nothing is inside, nothing is outside; what is inside is outside, what is outside is inside”—so says Goethe. “Just ask yourself, above all, whether you yourself are the core or the shell.” Goethe says he’s been hearing this expression for sixty years and curses it—but surreptitiously—because Goethe felt—he didn’t yet know spiritual science, of course—but he felt: Whenever someone says this, whom he could only regard as a philistine:

“Into the heart of nature...
No creative spirit penetrates”

[ 14 ] Thus, he is simply unaware that human beings, simply by virtue of being beings of memory, gesture, and physiognomy, are constantly penetrating into the very heart of nature. We are not beings who merely stand at the gate of nature and knock in vain. It is precisely through what is most inner within us that we stand in the most intimate relationship with the innermost essence of nature. But because a child’s body is entirely inherited until the age of seven, nothing of the “I,” of gesture, or of physiognomy passes into the innermost essence of nature. It is only with the change of teeth that we begin to penetrate into the essence of nature. That is why it is only after the change of teeth that we become mature enough to gradually reflect on something in nature. Before that, the thoughts that arise in the child are arbitrary thoughts that have little to do with nature—thoughts that are appealing precisely because they have little to do with nature. We reach the child best when we compose poetry alongside the child, when we turn the stars into the eyes of the sky and so on—when the things we discuss with the child are as far removed as possible from external physical reality.

[ 15 ] It is only after the child’s teeth begin to fall out that he or she gradually grows into nature, so that his or her thoughts can little by little coincide with the thoughts of nature; and essentially, the entire period from the seventh to the fourteenth year is one in which the child grows into nature; for during this time, in addition to the memories of his or her soul, the child also brings his or her gestures and physiognomy into nature. And this continues throughout their entire life. As individual human beings, we are only truly born into the inner world of nature when our baby teeth fall out.

[ 16 ] That is why those beings I have described to you as elemental beings—gnomes and undines—love to listen when a human tells them about a child’s life up to the age of seven. For these nature beings, a human is not truly born until the teeth have been replaced. This is an extraordinarily interesting phenomenon. Before that, a human is a being from the other world to gnomes and undines. It is therefore quite a mystery to them when a human reappears, already in a certain state of perfection. But it would be immensely stimulating for the pedagogical or educational imagination if, by absorbing spiritual knowledge, a human being could truly put themselves in the place of these nature spirits in their dialogues; if they could put themselves in the soul of a nature spirit to gain their perspectives on what the human can tell them about children. For this is precisely how the most beautiful fairy-tale imagination takes shape. And if, in ancient times, fairy tales became so wonderfully concrete and rich in content, it is because the fairy-tale writers could speak with gnomes and undines—not merely hear something from them. These nature spirits are sometimes very self-centered. They fall silent if you don’t also tell them something that piques their curiosity. And the best story for them is when you tell them about the deeds of babies. Then you also learn all sorts of things from them that can easily take on a fairy-tale atmosphere. Yes, you see, what seems utterly fantastical to people today can actually become extraordinarily important, especially for practical spiritual life. But the fact is that, due to the circumstances I have described, these dialogues with the spiritual beings of nature are extraordinarily instructive for both sides.

[ 17 ] “On the other hand, however, what I have said does, of course, seem frightening in a certain sense, for when a person sleeps, they are constantly creating images of their innermost being. Behind the phenomena of nature, behind the flowers of the field, there are imprints of our good and useless memories extending all the way into the ethereal world. The earth is teeming everywhere with what lives in human souls. And it is indeed true that, in reality, human life is very much connected to such things.

[ 18 ] So there we first encounter the nature spirits as essences into which we penetrate with our world of gestures. But we also encounter the world of the angels, archangels, and archaic beings. We grow into this world as well; we immerse ourselves in it. We immerse ourselves in the deeds of the angelic world through our memories. We immerse ourselves in the essences of the angelic world through our own physiognomic and gestural expressions. And this immersion in sleep is such that we can say: When we live our way over into nature, then this immersion in nature appears to us as follows: This is once again the skin of our body (it is depicted); the further we go out, the more we enter—in a radial direction—into the regions of the angels, then the archangels, and finally the Archai. There we enter the third hierarchy. And when we submerge into it in sleep with our memories and our gestures, as into the surging sea of the weaving beings of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai—when we submerge there—then a current of spiritual beings flows in from one side (see drawing). This is the second hierarchy: Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis. And if we wish to allude to that which is outwardly in the world—that which we have just described—then this current proceeds in such a way that the sun’s course from east to west during the day expresses to us the path along which the second hierarchy intersects the third hierarchy. The third hierarchy—Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai—is as if floating up and down, passing “the golden buckets” to one another—floating up and down. In this depiction, the second hierarchy is then seen as moving with the sun from east to west—this is not merely an illusion, for the Copernican worldview does not apply here; rather, the current through which the sun passes during the day actually flows from east to west. Thus, as the human being looks—that is, if he is able to look—he grows into this third hierarchy during sleep. But this third hierarchy is continually and graciously permeated from the side by the second hierarchy. And this second hierarchy also makes itself fully felt in our soul life.

[ 19 ] The day before yesterday, I hinted to you at the significance of revisiting experiences from our youth. In this regard, you can gain a profound insight if you pick up the Mysteries again and, perhaps now with a greater understanding than you once had, read what is described there about the appearance of John in his youth. It is indeed true that a person can make their inner life particularly vivid and intensely perceptible to themselves when they actively revisit their youth. I have told you: Take old schoolbooks—from which you once learned something, or, for that matter, learned nothing—and pick them up again; immerse yourself in that process of learning or not learning—it doesn’t matter whether you learned something or not, but rather that you immerse yourself in what you did with them: you can already gain your own experiences there. For me, a few years ago, it was of immense importance to put myself in such a situation from my youth when I needed to strengthen my powers of intellectual comprehension. I was just eleven years old and had received a textbook. The first thing that happened—it happened by chance—was that, through carelessness, the inkwell tipped over and ruined two pages so badly that I could no longer read them. That, too, is an event. I relived that event many times over the years—that schoolbook with the ruined pages, and everything I had to endure—because the schoolbook had to be repurchased by a poor family. It was something dreadful—all the things one could go through with that schoolbook and its giant inkblot—back then they still called it something else! So, to bring something like that vividly back to life. As I said, it’s not a matter of having been particularly well-behaved in the events you’re recalling, but rather that it’s something that was experienced with great intensity. If you try to actually bring that back with all your inner intensity, then you will experience something else as well. You will experience a situation—more than in a dream, in a real vision—when you are resting in your bed, cut off from the impressions of the day. Whereas during the day you have summoned to mind a scene that you have lived through inwardly, when night has fallen, when it is dark around you, when you are alone with yourself, you will experience the situation—as if it were right there in the room—in which you were either before or after that event. So let’s say you’ve brought a scene to mind that—for the sake of argument—you once experienced at eleven o’clock. Afterward, you went somewhere where you sat across from other people. You’re sitting there, and the people are sitting around you. You’ve brought up something you’ve experienced inwardly. What was outwardly around you at that time then appears to you entirely as a spatial vision. One need only look for such connections. Very significant discoveries can be made there. For the sake of argument, let’s say that as a seventeen-year-old, you ate lunch every day at a boarding house where the guests changed frequently. Now you somehow recall a scene that you experienced inwardly. You relive it vividly. At night, you experience it: you are sitting at the table, surrounded by people whom you rarely saw simply because they were constantly changing at the boarding house. Looking at one face, you realize: this is exactly what I went through back then. The external, spatial aspect joins the inner, spiritual aspect when you actively engage with your memories in this way.

[ 20 ] You see, that actually means living in harmony with this current that flows from east to west. For you are increasingly coming to realize: In the spiritual realm you enter during sleep, you do not merely live in such a way that you merge with the spiritual; rather, within this spiritual realm, what is taking place is reflected outwardly at the very moment when you see people sitting around the dining table once again. You have long since forgotten this, but it is there. You look at it just as you look at those things that are often recorded as being in the Akashic Records. At the very moment you have this before you, you have grasped this current flowing from East to West: the current of the Second Hierarchy. Within this current of the Second Hierarchy lives something that is reflected outwardly in the course of the day.

[ 21 ] The length of the day varies throughout the year. In spring it grows longer, in fall it grows shorter; in summer it is longest, and in winter it is shortest. The day undergoes a metamorphosis throughout the year. This stems from a current flowing from west to east, which runs counter to the east-west current. And this is the current of the first hierarchy—the Seraphim, the Cherubim, and the Thrones. Therefore, observe how the day changes over the course of the year; move from the day to the year, and then, my dear friends, you will enter into that which you encounter during sleep as the opposing current.

[ 22 ] Indeed, it is true that while we sleep, we grow into the spiritual world in a radial direction—in the direction that runs from west to east, and in the direction that runs from east to west. As I have told you, spatial images are presented to our soul when we allow something to step before our soul in active remembrance].

[ 23 ] But this is also true when we become aware of our will. That is precisely what is expressed in gesture and facial expression: when we become aware of our will. What I am about to say should be of particular significance to eurythmists, even though eurythmy, of course, does not intend to emphasize what I am about to say. The fact is that when a person truly shapes their outer appearance more and more from within—when their “I” finds increasing expression in facial features and gestures—they do not merely receive an impression of the day. For this is an impression of the day: the transition from inner experience, from an active inner life of memory, to the perception of external, spatial things. One relives what one learned at the age of seventeen, and then one sees the people who sat around one in boarding school, in a afterimage as in the Akashic Records. That is daytime experience!

[ 24 ] “But one can also experience the year. And this is possible when one pays attention to how the will affects one; when one pays attention to how relatively easy it is to assert one’s will when one is quite warm, whereas it becomes difficult—as one will realize upon closer self-observation—to let one’s will flow through the body when one is cold. Anyone who can truly experience this inner connection between the will and feeling warm or cold will gradually, once this ability has been developed, be able to speak of a “winter will” and a “summer will” within themselves.

[ 25 ] In fact, it is generally agreed that the best way to describe this will is by reference to the seasons. Let us consider, for example, a will that, so to speak, carries one’s thoughts out into the universe, that makes it easy to control one’s body, so that in the control, in the gesture of the body, the thoughts are as if carried out into the universe... they slip from one’s fingertips: one literally feels how easy it is to unfold the will. You stand facing a tree; something up there particularly appeals to you: as the will within us warms, our thoughts are carried all the way up to the treetop—yes, sometimes they reach as far as the stars, when on summer nights you find yourself truly endowed with a warm will.

[ 26 ] When the will grows cold within, it is as if all thoughts were confined to our minds, as if they could not reach our arms or our legs. Everything goes into the head. The head endures the coldness of the will, and if that coldness does not have an overwhelming effect—so that a frosty feeling sets in—then the head warms up through its inner counteraction, and it then gives rise to thoughts.

[ 27 ] So one can say: the will of summer leads us out into the vastness of the world. The will of summer, that warm will, carries our thoughts everywhere. The will of winter, on the other hand, draws our thoughts into our heads, into our minds. One can distinguish between these two wills in this way. And one will then feel that the one will, which carries us everywhere into the universe, is akin to the course of summer; the will that carries our thoughts into our heads will be felt as akin to winter. Just as one otherwise experiences the day, so does one experience the year through the will.

[ 28 ] And you see, there is a way to actually experience what I am about to write on the board as reality. When one experiences winter through the lens of human will, one can experience it in such a way that one says:

O images of the worlds,
You float toward me
From the vastness of space.
You reach out to me,
You penetrate
The thinking powers
Of my mind.

[ 29 ] You see, this is not merely abstract; rather, when a person feels their own will connected to nature, they can come to feel—when winter arrives—as if what is being conveyed to them from the cosmos were, in fact, experiences that originated within themselves and which they had first entrusted to nature. And one can, on the waves hinted at here:

O images of the worlds,
You float toward me
From the vastness of space.
You reach out to me,
You penetrate
The thinking powers
Of my mind —

[ 30 ] One can sense one’s own experiences there—experiences that have already become part of nature. That is the sensation of the winter will.

[ 31 ] But one can also feel that summer spirit that expands our thoughts out into the vastness of the universe:

You, my head
Creative powers of the soul,
You fill my very being,

[ 32 ] that is, the thoughts that are first experienced in the head spread throughout the entire body, initially filling the body, but then they extend beyond the body —

You surge forth from my being
Into the vastness of the worlds,
And unite me
With the creative powers of the worlds.

[ 33 ] This is what the “summer will”—the will within us that is akin to summer—allows us to express as its very essence, so that we can say: When we feel that we have drawn from within ourselves the active memory of something long past—the day, with its night, brings it back to us by supplementing it with the external perception of space. And this corresponds to the flow from east to west. Thus we may say: Within us, winter will transforms into summer will, and summer will into winter will. We are no longer related to the day with its alternation of light and darkness; we are related to the year through our will, and thereby to the flow from west to east of the first hierarchy: the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones.

[ 34 ] We will now see how human beings can be hindered or aided by heredity and external adaptation in relation to this union with the inner essence of nature. For what I have just explained to you relates to the fact that when human beings are hindered as little as possible by Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, they grow into the innermost essence of nature through imagination and will, and are taken up by the forces of the times, the forces of the day, and the forces of the year: the third hierarchy, the second hierarchy, and the first hierarchy. But the Ahrimanic forces, as they manifest in heredity, and the Luciferic forces, as they manifest in adaptation, exert a significant influence on all of this. We shall then address this great enigma next time.

Winterwille: O images of the world, You float toward me From the vastness of space. You reach out toward me, You penetrate The thinking powers Of my mind.

Summer Will: You, the creative forces of my soul You fill my very being, You flow forth from my essence Into the vastness of the worlds, And unite me With the creative powers of the worlds.