The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] When people today speak of the Word, they usually mean only the feeble human word, which is, in essence, of little significance in the face of the majesty of the universe. But we know that the Gospel of John begins with the significant words: “In the beginning was the Word—the Logos. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God.” And anyone who reflects on this profound opening of the Gospel of John will have to ask themselves: What exactly is being referred to here when the Word is placed at the very beginning of all things? What exactly is meant by this Logos, by this Word? And how does this meaning relate to the feeble human word, which is insignificant in the face of the majesty of the universe?

[ 2 ] After all, the name of John is also linked to the city of Ephesus. And anyone who, equipped with an imaginative view of world history, approaches these meaningful words: “In the beginning was the Logos. And the Logos was with God. And the Logos was God,” will, through an inner path, be led again and again to the ancient temple of Diana in Ephesus. And regarding what resonates as a riddle from the first verses of the Gospel of John, it is precisely the one who has been initiated to a certain degree into the mysteries of the world who is directed toward the mysteries of the Temple of Artemis—the Temple of Diana—in Ephesus. So that it must seem to him as if something might flow from the exploration of the mysteries of Ephesus toward an understanding of the beginning of the Gospel of John.

[ 3 ] So today, armed with the insights we have allowed to arise in our souls here over the past two days, let us look into the secrets, the mysteries of the Temple of Diana in Ephesus, let us look back to the time of roughly the sixth or seventh century B.C. or even earlier, to see what took place in this site so sacred to the ancients. There we find that the mystery teachings in Ephesus did indeed initially refer to that which resounds in human language. We can learn—not from a historical account, for the barbarism of humanity has sufficiently ensured its destruction—but rather from the intellectual-etheric chronicle accessible to spiritual cognition, in which the events of world history are recorded, how things unfolded within these Ephesian Mysteries.

[ 4 ] Time and again, we are confronted with the fact that the student has been directed by the teacher, first and foremost, toward human language; that he has been admonished—admonished time and again—to feel, within his own speech organs, what is actually happening as he speaks. — The processes involved in speech cannot be perceived through coarse sensation, for they are subtle and intimate. But let us first consider the outward aspects of speech. And it was precisely these outward aspects of speech that served as the starting point for instruction in the Ephesian Mysteries.

[ 5 ] The student was made aware of how the word sounds as it comes out of the mouth. He was told again and again: Pay attention to what you feel when the word comes out of your mouth. — And the student was first to notice how, as it were, something from the word turns upward to take in the thought of the head; and how then, in turn, something from the same word turns downward within the person to experience the emotional content of the word inwardly.

[ 6 ] Time and time again, the student was instructed to force the utmost extremes of speech through the throat and, in doing so, to observe the rising and falling motion that can be perceived in the word as it emerges from the throat. “I am,” “I am not”: the student should allow a positive and a negative assertion to push through the throat in as articulated a manner as possible, and then observe how it is felt—in “I am,” more of a rising sensation; in “I am not,” a downward pressure.

[ 7 ] But now the student was directed even more toward the intimate inner sensations and experiences of the word, as he could perceive: Something rises from the word, like warmth, toward the head, and this warmth, this fire, captures the thought. And something like a watery element flows downward; it pours downward, just as a glandular secretion pours forth in human beings. And so the human being—as was made clear to the student in the Ephesian Mysteries—uses the air to make the word resound; but in speaking, the air transforms into the next element, into fire, into warmth, and draws the thought down from the heights of the head, incorporating it into itself. And again, as a state of transition sets in—the sending upward of fire and the sending downward of that which lies within the word—the air, as it were, drips downward like a glandular secretion, as water, as a liquid. Through this, the word becomes inwardly perceptible to the human being. The word drips downward as a liquid element.

[ 8 ] And then the student was introduced to the true mystery of speech. But this mystery is connected to the mystery of the human being. Today, this mystery of the human being is virtually barricaded off from scientists; for science places the most incredible caricature of a truth at the forefront of all thinking: namely, the so-called law of the conservation of energy and matter. In the human being, matter is constantly being transformed. It does not remain the same. That which emerges from the throat as air is transformed, as it emerges, alternately into the next, higher element—the element of heat or fire—and again into the element of water: fire, water—fire, water.

[ 9 ] This is how the student in Ephesus was made aware of it: as he speaks, a wave of sound emanates from his mouth—fire, water—fire, water. But this is nothing other than the word reaching upward toward thought, the word trickling downward toward feeling. And so, in speech, thought and feeling intertwine, as the living wave-like movement of speech thins out like air into fire, condenses into water, and so on.

[ 10 ] Fire => Thought Water => Feeling Fire Water

[ 11 ] And this is what the student should feel when, in the Mystery of Ephesus, the great truth was brought before his soul through his own speech:

Man, speak, and you
reveal through yourself
the becoming of the world.

[ 12 ] Yes, it was indeed the case in Ephesus that when a student entered the Gate of the Mystery, he was constantly reminded of this saying:

Man, speak, and you
reveal through yourself
the becoming of the world.

[ 13 ] And when he went out again, the saying was spoken to him in another form: “The becoming of the world is revealed through you, O human, when you speak.” And the student gradually felt as if, with his own body as a vessel, he were to encompass the mystery of the world—which resounds from his breast and lives in speech.

[ 14 ] This was presented to the student as a preparation for the actual, deeper mystery. For through this, the student was enabled to recognize that his or her own human being is inwardly connected to the mysteries of the world. The phrase “Know thyself” took on a sacred meaning in this way, not merely as a theoretical statement, but as something that could be felt and experienced with inner solemnity.

[ 15 ] And then, once the student had, in a sense, ennobled and elevated his fellow human being in this way—by perceiving him as a vessel that encloses the mystery of the world—he could be further initiated into that which, in a sense, extends the mystery of the world out across the vastness of the cosmos. And here we recall what came before our soul yesterday.

[ 16 ] I have described to you a stage in the Earth’s development in which the following occurs. In that stage, we have the Earth. We know that the Earth already contained—as an essential element for that stage of its development—everything we find in the unremarkable limestone that we also have in the Jurassic period. In the limestone mountains, in the limestone formations of the Earth, we find what we wish to consider here. And the Earth is surrounded by what I referred to yesterday as the liquid protein. And we know that the cosmic forces act upon this liquid protein in such a way that it coagulates into specific forms. And we have heard that during this stage of Earth’s formation, what we experience today as the rising of rain vapors and the descent of water takes place to a greater extent, in a denser form. The calcareous element rises upward, permeates what has condensed within the liquid protein with calcareous matter, and fills it in such a way that it acquires a bony substance as its content; and thus we have the emergence of animals in the course of Earth’s formation. The animal is, so to speak, drawn down from the still protein-like atmosphere by the spiritual force that lives within the calcareous element.

[ 17 ] But I also said something else. I said: When a person connects with the metallic nature of the Earth, he feels everything that has happened there as if it were his own being, as if it were a memory within him. And at this stage, they do not yet feel confined within their own skin as a small human being, but rather feel that they encompass the entire Earth. If I were to sketch this out in a grotesquely schematic way, I would have to say: At first, a person mainly feels that their head encompasses the Earth.

[ 18 ] The processes I have described, then, are felt by the human being as processes within themselves. But how does a person feel them within themselves? Everything I have described to you here—the rising of the calcareous substance, its combination with the coagulated protein, and the descent, the bringing down of the animal nature to the earth—a person experiences this during this time in such a way that they hear it. After all, a person experiences it inwardly. You need only imagine that a person experiences it inwardly. He hears it. This formation that arises as the calcium fills the protein coagulum, making it bony and cartilaginous—what is formed there is something like what is felt and heard in the ear. The mystery of the worlds is heard.

[ 19 ] In fact, even in memory—in this memory created by the Metallic Force—one perceives the Earth’s past as if one were hearing what I have described resound. And within this resounding, the events of the world are woven and come to life.

[ 20 ] Yes, what is it, then, that one hears there? These world events—as what do they reveal themselves, as what do they manifest themselves? They manifest themselves as the Word of the world, as the Logos. The Logos, the Word of the world, resounds in the rising and ebbing chalky sound. And if one can hear this language within oneself, one already perceives something else as well. Then this becomes something entirely possible for one.

[ 21 ] My dear friends, we are standing before a human skeleton, before an animal skeleton. What external anatomy tells us about it is, after all, something so superficial, something so shamefully superficial in relation to these forms. What do we say to ourselves when we look at this skeleton in inner connection with the natural and spiritual being? One says to oneself: Do not merely look at it. It is appalling to view it merely in its forms—that which stands there as the spine with its wonderfully formed, stacked vertebrae, with the ribs that protrude and curve forward, with the marvelous articulation of how the vertebrae transition into the skull bones, and the even more difficult-to-fathom articulation of how the ribs—which simply wrap around the chest like uniform arches—then, in a sense, form with sharp articulation into the arm bones and the leg bones. Faced with this mystery of the skeleton, one cannot help but say something very specific to oneself. It is indeed the case that one says to oneself: Just listen to all this, don’t just look at it, listen to it all—listen to how one bone transforms into another. It speaks, after all.

[ 22 ] If I may make a personal remark here, this is what it would be. Something truly wonderful greets you when you enter a natural history collection or museum with a sense for these things. For it is a marvelous assembly of instruments forming a magnificent orchestra that resounds symphonically in the most wonderful way when you step into such a museum. I once felt this particularly deeply when I visited the museum in Trieste, where, thanks to a special arrangement of animal skeletons—one that had been created instinctively—the mysteries of the moon actually resounded one after another at one end of the animal, and the mysteries of the sun at the other end. And the whole scene was interwoven as if with the resounding suns and planets. There one already senses the connection between this bone system living within the limestone—the skeleton—and that which once resounded from the weaving cosmos to humanity, which was itself still one with this cosmos; it resounded as the mystery of the world, and at the same time as humanity’s own mystery.

[ 23 ] The beings that first came into being—the animal beings—were thereby expressing what they are. For the essence of the animal realm lived within the Logos, within the resounding mystery of the world. What one perceived was not two separate things. One did not perceive the animals and then, in some way, the essence of the animals. It was the very becoming and weaving of the animals themselves within their essence that spoke.

[ 24 ] You see, in the proper way—as was required in those ancient times—only the initiate of the Ephesian Mysteries could absorb into his soul, into his heart, what could be made clear regarding the very beginning, when the Word, the Logos, wove itself as the essence of all things. He was able to take this in because he had been prepared for it by having ennobled and elevated his humanity, so that he could feel himself to be a vessel for the small reflection of this world mystery, which lay in the resonance of his own speech. And now we sense how the becoming of the world has, so to speak, passed from one level to another. Let us look at this. Here in the calcareous substance, we still have something that was once a liquid; it rose as vapor, dripped down as rain. The calcareous substance was a liquid; as it rose, it transformed into air; as it descended, it transformed into earth. Here we have water, air, earth. It is one level lower than here in the human image:

[ 25 ] Air, heat, water. Back then, in that primordial state, water was weaving: that is to say, the still-liquid lime diluted into air and condensed into earth, just as today, in our throats, air dilutes into fire and heat and condenses into water. That which lived in the world rose from the water into the air. It used to live in the water, condensed into earth, and diluted into air. It rose into the air, thinned into heat, and condensed into water. This makes it possible for us humans to encompass this mystery of the world on a small scale. When it was still vast, when it was the mighty Maja of the world, it existed at a lower level. The earth condensed everything. Lime became denser, and so on. We could not have encompassed that, even if it had come to us in miniature form. We could only encompass it because it rose one level higher—up from water into air and, through its ebb and flow, into heat and into water, which is now the denser substance. Thus, what was the great world—the macrocosmic mystery—became the microcosmic mystery of human language. And the beginning of the Gospel of John points to this macrocosmic mystery, the translation into the Maja, into the great world: “In the beginning was the Logos. And the Logos was with God. And the Logos was God.” For this was what still lived and wove within the tradition at Ephesus, even as the evangelist, the writer of the Gospel of John, was able to read in the Akashic Records at Ephesus that which his heart longed for: the proper expression for what he wished to convey as the mystery of humanity’s emergence into the world.

[ 26 ] But we can go one step further. We can recall that we said yesterday: Preceding the calcareous stage is the siliceous stage, which appears in quartz. Within it, plant forms appeared—as I said, greening, verdant cloud-like formations. And if, I said, people back then had been able to look out into the vastness of the cosmos, they would have seen this emergence of the animal realm and this greening, verdant primordial plant. But all of this was perceived as something inner. It was perceived as an essence inherent to the human being. In addition to hearing, as something living within oneself, the resounding of the animal’s becoming, one could, in a certain sense, walk inwardly with what one heard resounding there—just as when, within one’s own human head, in the human chest and head, one ascends through the warmth with words to grasp a thought; so one could move with what one heard from the animal stage toward what one experienced in the plant stage. And there lay the peculiarity: one experienced the weaving and essence of the animal stage in the evaporated and seeping-down lime; and when one then sensed further into what was present in the siliceous element as the greening, degreening, and re-greening plant being, then the world-word became the world-thought, and the plant in the siliceous element added the thought to the resounding word. One took, so to speak, a step upward, and the world-thought was added to the resounding Logos, just as today the world-thought is added to the word resounding in language, as language ripples outward: fire, water, fire, water—in the fire the thought is grasped.

[ 27 ] My dear friends, if you look today into how to treat precisely those pathological conditions that relate to the sensory system of the head and to the sensory system in general, you will discover the healing effects of silicic acid. And here, within the mysteries of the world, the silicic acid element presents itself to you as that which, in the original greening and vegetating plant forms, is precisely the element of thought—about which I could also tell you: this is, after all, the perception, the sensory perception of the Earth in relation to the structure of the world. In a truly wondrous way, what existed in the macrocosm—the becoming and weaving of the world—is expressed microcosmically in modern human beings.

[ 28 ] Just imagine for a moment how human beings used to live—they were still at one with the cosmos, in unity with the cosmos. Today, when a person thinks, they must think in isolation, within their own head. That is where the thoughts are; that is where the words come from. The universe is outside. Words can only signify the universe; thoughts can only reflect the universe. It was not so when human beings were still one with the macrocosm; back then, they experienced the universe as being within themselves. The word was, at the same time, the environment; the thought was that which permeated and flowed through this environment. Humanity heard, and what was heard was the world. Humanity looked up from what was heard, but looked up within itself. The word was, at first, sound. The word was, at first, that which strove for unraveling. In the emergence of the animal kingdom, something revealed itself that strove for unraveling. Like a question, the animal kingdom arose within the calcareous realm. One looked into the siliceous realm: there the plant being responded with that which it had taken in as the sensory being of the Earth, and unveiled the mysteries posed by the animal kingdom. It was the beings themselves who unraveled one another. One being—here, the animal—poses the question; the other beings—here, the plant—provide the answer. And the whole world becomes language. And one may well say: This is the reality of the beginning of the Gospel of John. For we have first returned to a primal beginning of that which now exists at all. In this primal beginning, in this principle, was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God. For it was the creative being in all of this.

[ 29 ] It is indeed true that what was taught to the students of the Ephesian Mysteries regarding the Primordial Word is precisely what later led to the beginning of the Gospel of John. And one might well say that looking into these mysteries, which lie dormant in the bosom of time, is quite timely among anthroposophists today. For you see, in a certain sense—in a very, very real sense—what stood here on the hill in Dornach as the Goetheanum had indeed become the center of anthroposophical activity. What lives within us today as pain must continue to live as pain, and it will do so for everyone who was able to feel what the Goetheanum was meant to be. But everything that takes place in the physical world must, for those who strive in their knowledge toward the spiritual, simultaneously become an outer revelation, an image of something deeper and more spiritual. And while we must accept the pain on the one hand, we must also—precisely as people who strive for spiritual knowledge—be able to take what has happened in the pain as an opportunity to look into a revelation that goes deeper and ever deeper. For this Goetheanum has been a place where people have sought to speak—and have indeed spoken, time and again—about those things connected with the beginning of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God.”

[ 30 ] And then the Goetheanum went up in flames. And this terrible image of the Goetheanum fire can stand before us. And out of this pain can arise the call to look ever deeper and deeper, to gaze into what still stands before our power of thought: this Goetheanum burning down on New Year’s Eve. But this is an event—painful as it may be—that leads us into ever greater depths. That which was meant to be fathomed within it, and which, like some of what I said yesterday and the day before, is connected to the Gospel of John, was already enclosed within the scorching and consuming flames. And there is something important—an important impulse, my dear friends—that we can grasp: Let us allow these flames to be an occasion to look through them toward other flames, toward those flames that once consumed the temple at Ephesus. And let this be a call to cultivate a sense for fathoming what lies at the beginning of the Gospel of John. Let us look—prompted precisely by these painfully sacred impulses—from the Gospel of John back to the temple at Ephesus, which also once burned, and we will then find in the flames of the Goetheanum, which speak so painfully, a reminder of what flowed into the Akasha with the scorching flames of the Temple of Ephesus.

[ 31 ] Do we not still see today, my dear friends, when we cast our eyes back to that fateful night and the scorching flames of the Goetheanum fire, the melting metals of the musical instruments within them? Did we not see within them those melting metals—precisely those of the musical instruments—speaking so loudly and so sacredly, conjuring the most wondrous colors into the flames? Promising colors, colors that are close to the metallic! And through this connection with the metallic, something like memory arises in the earthly realm. This act of remembering—we have it here in what burned with the temple at Ephesus. And just as these two fires can be linked, so too can the longing to fathom something like: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” — with what was made clear to the disciple in Ephesus time and again: Study the mystery of humanity in the little word, in the Mikrologos, so that you may become mature enough to perceive within yourself the mystery of the Makrologos.

[ 32 ] Human beings are the microcosm in relation to the world, which is the macrocosm, but they also carry the mysteries of the world within themselves. And that mystery of the world, which lies in the first three verses of the Gospel of John—we will fathom it when we truly grasp that which, like so many other things, the flames of the Goetheanum condense into written characters; when we take this to heart:

Look at the logos
In the scorching fire;
Find the solution
In Dianen's house.

[ 33 ] The Fire-Akasha of New Year’s Eve speaks these words very clearly, among many other things. And it calls upon us to fathom the Micro-Logos within the microcosm, so that human beings may gain an understanding of that from which they themselves, in their very essence, are made: the macrocosm through the Macro-Logos.