The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. The Sensual and the Supernatural—Spiritual Insight and Artistic Creation

[ 1 ] Some friends who were present at my lectures in Munich on the relationship between Spiritual Science and art felt that I should also speak here in Vienna about the ideas I expressed there. And in accordance with this suggestion, I ask you to take what I will say this evening in a very unpretentious spirit, as merely aphoristic remarks on various aspects of the relationship between what might be called modern visionary insight—as pursued by anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science—and artistic creation and the nature of artistic appreciation.

[ 2 ] To begin with, there is a certain prejudice against an approach such as the one we are about to undertake—and prejudices are not always unfounded—there is a certain well-founded prejudice based on the insight that, in fact, artistic creation and artistic enjoyment, and artistic feeling do not wish to concern themselves with any particular view of art or any particular understanding of art. And very many who are deeply involved in the arts are of the opinion that they actually harm the elemental nature—which is said to lie in both artistic creation and artistic enjoyment—if they relate thoughts, concepts, and ideas too closely to what one experiences as an artist. I do believe, however, that this prejudice is well-founded with regard to everything that might be called abstract aesthetics—in the conventional, scientific sense. I believe that this science is, with some justification, shunned by the artistic perspective, because genuine artistic sensibility is actually stifled and impaired by everything that in any way directs one toward a scientific approach in the conventional sense.

[ 3 ] On the other hand, however, we live in an age in which, out of a certain necessity of world history, much of what until now could operate unconsciously within human beings must become conscious. Just as we are no longer able to view social and interpersonal relationships through the lens of myth, as was the case in earlier times, but are instead compelled by the course of human development to seek, in a genuine grasp of what pulsates in the unfolding of history, if we are to understand what social structure, social coexistence, and so on, mean among human beings; so, too, it is necessary that much of what was rightly sought—in a more or less conscious or unconscious manner—in the instinctive workings of the human imagination and the like be brought into consciousness. It would be brought to the surface even if we did not want it to be. But if it were brought to the surface in a way that runs counter to creative progress, then precisely what we are trying to avoid would occur: an impairment of the intuitive-artistic, an impairment that must be excluded from the living-artistic.

[ 4 ] I am not speaking as an aesthetician, nor as an artist; I am speaking as a representative of research in Spiritual Science, as a representative of a worldview that is permeated by the conviction that, as human development progresses, we will increasingly come to penetrate, through knowledge, the true spiritual world that underlies our sensory world. I am not speaking of some metaphysical speculation, nor of some philosophy, but of what I would like to call supersensible experience. I do not believe it will be long before people come to realize that all mere philosophical speculation and all logical or scientific endeavor are unsuitable for penetrating the spiritual realm. I believe that we are on the threshold of an era that will recognize as a matter of course that there are dormant powers within the human soul and that these dormant powers can be drawn out of the soul in a completely systematic and orderly manner. I have described how these powers, which lie dormant in the human soul, can be drawn out in my various books, in *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?* , *On the Mysteries of the Soul*, and *On the Mystery of Man*. I therefore understand spiritual knowledge to be something that, in essence, does not yet exist at all—something that only a few people take into account today—and which is not based on the continuation of existing knowledge, be it mysticism or natural science, but on the acquisition of a special kind of human knowledge, which is based on the fact that the human being, through the methodical awakening of certain soul forces lying dormant within, brings about a state of consciousness that relates to ordinary waking life in the same way that waking life relates to sleep or dream life. Today, we are essentially familiar only with these two opposing states of human consciousness: the dull, chaotic consciousness of sleep, which is only seemingly completely empty—it is merely subdued—and the waking consciousness from the moment of waking until falling asleep. We can relate the mere images of dream life—which arise when the human will, which connects us to the things in our environment, falls asleep—to external, physical reality. Likewise, as humanity continues to evolve, it will come to bring about within itself an awakening from this waking consciousness to what I call the contemplative consciousness, where one does not have external objects and events before one, but rather a real spiritual world that underlies our own.

[ 5 ] Philosophers want to comprehend it; it cannot be comprehended, only experienced. Just as one cannot experience one’s physical surroundings in the dream state, one cannot experience the spiritual surroundings in waking consciousness: not through mysticism, not through abstract philosophy, but by bringing oneself into a different state of mind—by transitioning from the dream state to ordinary waking consciousness.

[ 6 ] Thus we speak of a spiritual world from which the spiritual-soul aspect emerges, just as the physical-bodily aspect emerges from the sensory world. Such spiritual research is, of course, completely misunderstood today in its uniqueness. People are, after all, such that they judge what occurs among them according to the mental images they already have—some even according to the words they already have. They want to tie something in with what is already known. As far as the results of the contemplative consciousness are concerned, this is not the case, for it is not something already known. The contemplative consciousness—one could, if the word were not misunderstood, call it the seer’s consciousness, the clairvoyant consciousness—by which I do not mean anything superstitious. What comes from the seeric is judged according to what people already know. It has been equated with all manner of things of a dubious nature, such as the visionary life, the hallucinatory, the mediumistic, and so on. What I mean here has not the slightest connection to any of that. Everything I have listed above are products of a diseased soul life—that soul life which is sunk deeper into the physical body and which brings certain images from the physical body before the soul. What I call the “contemplative consciousness” takes precisely the opposite path. The hallucinatory consciousness descends beneath the ordinary state of the soul into the physical realm; the contemplative consciousness ascends above the ordinary state of the soul, lives and weaves exclusively within the spiritual-soul realm, and renders the soul completely free from bodily life. In our ordinary consciousness, only pure thinking is free from bodily life—which is why many philosophers deny its existence, because they do not believe that human beings can develop an activity that is free from the body. This forms the starting point: It is possible to develop a contemplative consciousness that ascends into the spiritual world, where there is nothing physical around us. This contemplative consciousness, however, feels no kinship whatsoever with any form of mediumship or visionary experience; on the contrary, it feels a strong kinship with a genuine, authentic artistic perception of the world. This is what I hope and long for: that a bridge might be built—in an unpretentious, artistic way—precisely between these two human perspectives, connecting genuine, authentic seership with artistic experience, whether in creative work or in the appreciation of art.

[ 7 ] For those who live within the realm of clairvoyance, it is indeed an experience that the source—the true source—from which the artist creates is exactly the same as that from which the clairvoyant, the observer of the spiritual worlds, derives his experiences. However, there is a difference—a considerable difference—between the way the seer attempts to have his experiences and to shape them into concepts and thoughts, and the artist’s creative process—a difference we may perhaps discuss today. But the source—and this must be emphasized—from which both the artist and the seer draw is, in reality, one and the same.

[ 8 ] Before I address this fundamentally important question, I would like to make a few preliminary remarks that might seem trivial to some, but which aim at nothing more than to show that an artistic worldview is not something that is merely arbitrarily added to life. To those who strive for a certain totality, for a certain wholeness of life, an artistic worldview appears to be something that belongs to life just as much as knowledge and the mundane goings-on of everyday life. A dignified existence is inconceivable without the permeation of our cultural life with artistic sensibility.

[ 9 ] The point is to truly realize that, wherever we go and wherever we stand, there is a latent urge within us to perceive the world aesthetically and artistically. I would like to cite a few examples to illustrate this. However, we often fail to bring to consciousness the artistic experience that accompanies our lives, our existence, between the lines. It lies quite below the threshold of consciousness. When I go to visit someone somewhere and I walk into their room—and the room has red walls, red wallpaper—and then they come over and talk to me about the silliest things, or perhaps say nothing at all, behaving in a very boring way, then I sense that something is not quite right. It remains entirely a feeling; it doesn’t become a thought, but I sense that something is not quite right. As strange and paradoxical as it may seem, when someone wallpapers their room red, they disappoint me if they do not offer me meaningful thoughts in that red room where they receive me. Of course, this need not be true; it need not actually happen, but it accompanies our inner life. Deep down in our souls, we have this sense. If we enter a room lined in blue and someone rattles off words at us, doesn’t let us get a word in edgewise, and considers only themselves important, we find this to be at odds with the blue or violet walls of their room. The external, prosaic truth need not correspond to this, but there is a special aesthetic truth that is just as I have described it. If I’m dropped off somewhere—or let’s not say “dropped off,” but rather, if I’m properly invited to a dinner—and I see that the table setting is red, painted red, I get the feeling that these are gourmets who eat for the sake of eating and take pleasure in food. If I find a blue table setting, I get the feeling that they aren’t eating just to eat, but rather that they want to talk to one another while eating, and let the conversation—and the rest of the social interaction—be accompanied by the meal. These are real feelings that always live in the subconscious. If I meet a woman on the street wearing a blue dress, and she lashes out at me and acts aggressively rather than reservedly, I find that at odds with the blue dress; yet I would find it natural if I met a woman in a red dress behaving that way. Of course, I would also find it natural if a woman with curly hair were snarky. There is something that essentially lives within the soul as a fundamental tone. With these trivial examples, I mean nothing more than to say that an aesthetic feeling is present, even if we do not bring ourselves to perceive it—a feeling we cannot rule out: our mood depends on it; we are in a good or bad mood. We are familiar with being in a good or bad mood, but only those who examine things more closely can bring the reasons to consciousness. This is essentially what determines what one might call the necessity of moving from natural aesthetic sensibility to life in art. Art simply meets natural life halfway, just as do other human perspectives.

[ 10 ] The seer who has developed these powers I have spoken of has a special way of experiencing art, and I believe that, even if not in an artistic sense, something can nevertheless arise—in terms of the evaluation and perception of art—from the seer’s unique experience of art. The seer who awakens his soul in such a way that he can have a spiritual world around him is always able to turn his inner life away from, and divert it from, everything that is merely external, sensory reality. If I have before me—I am speaking in general terms, not of any individual case—a piece of an external physical object or event, as a seer I am always able, in the space and at the location where the object is, to shut out that perception for myself, so that I see nothing physical in that space. This is the true abstraction that is entirely possible for the seer. This is possible only with natural objects; it is not possible with what is truly artistically created. And I consider that to be significant. When faced with a work of art, the seer is unable to completely exclude the object—the artistic process—just as he can exclude an external process. What is truly artistic creation, imbued with the spirit, remains spiritually present before the seer’s consciousness.

[ 11 ] This is the first thing that can testify to us that truly artistic creation and visionary perception spring from the same source. But there are many other things that are very significant in this regard. You see, when the seer employs the means developed by his soul, he arrives at an entirely different kind of mental image as well as a different kind of will. Using ordinary terms, one might of course say that both mental images and will become “inner,” but this “inner” is actually not correct, because one is, after all, outside, extending one’s entire perception over a real spiritual world. A different kind of mental image and a different kind of will emerge in the practice of clairvoyance.

[ 12 ] A mental image does not take place through abstract thoughts. Abstract thoughts are something the physical world uses to register its phenomena, discover the laws of nature, and so on. The seer does not think in such thoughts; he does not think in abstractions; he thinks in thoughts that are actually weaving images. This is still somewhat difficult to understand today, because people do not yet fully grasp what is meant by an activity that is essentially a form of thinking, yet does not involve abstract thoughts, but rather follows things and lives within their forms and configurations. This mental image can be compared to the construction of surfaces and curves, as a mathematician does. But it comes alive inwardly, as Goethe attempted to do in his theory of metamorphosis in its elementary state. Today, this inner, contemplative mental image can become much more vivid. This contemplative mental image is extraordinarily closely related to what underlies certain fields of the creative arts, namely sculpture and architecture.

[ 13 ] The remarkable thing is that, with regard to this new way of thinking—this new mental image—that the seer adopts, he feels no greater affinity for anything than for the forms created by the truly artistic architect and the forms on which the sculptor must base his work. It is truly something like a mental image, or a mental image in sculptural forms, that is suited to following things in the seer’s perception of the world in such a way that one learns to understand them in their spiritual inner nature, to transcend them, and to rise purely into the spiritual world. Abstract thoughts cannot reveal anything about the inner essence of things. The seer feels a kinship—in terms of his new way of thinking—with the architect and the sculptor. He must conceive of the world through a form of spiritual thinking that, unconsciously or subconsciously, underlies the work of the sculptor and the architect. This led me to investigate where this actually comes from. One asks oneself the question: What, then, is it that the seer actually draws upon? — He draws upon certain hidden senses, senses that are present in ordinary life but that only faintly resonate, not fully manifesting themselves in ordinary life. We have, for example, a sense that one might call the sense of balance. We live within it, but we are only vaguely aware of it, not fully conscious of it. When we take a step—or when we bend or stretch our hand, or in any action that brings us into a relationship with space—this is accompanied by a perception that does not fully rise into consciousness—just as with seeing and hearing—except that these are much louder, more distinctly perceptible senses. But this sense of balance and the related sense of movement are so faintly perceptible precisely because they are not intended solely for our inner life, but rather mediate our placement within the cosmos. How I stand within the cosmos—whether I am moving toward the sun or away from it, and feel myself drawing ever closer to the light, and as I move away, feel the light dim in some way—this sense of being within the whole of the world is something that can only be described by saying: Human beings, in their movement, are structured as a microcosm derived from the macrocosm and, as a microcosm, experience their placement within the macrocosm through such a sense.

[ 14 ] When sculpture is created, it is nothing other than the translation of perceptions from a sense that is usually hidden into the design of external surfaces and the like. What we as human beings always carry within us in our sense of the world, we unconsciously express through architecture and sculpture. As strange as this remark may seem at first: Anyone who can truly explore, on a psychological level, the relationship between individual architectural forms—what lives in the sculptor’s imagination as he shapes his surfaces—anyone who can explore this knows that what I have just alluded to mysteriously plays a part in this creative process. The seer does nothing other than bring this sense of placing oneself within the world into full consciousness. He develops it in the same way that the architect and the sculptor, through what they feel within their bodies, are artistically impelled to shape it as forms in the external material. I would like to say that from this point of view, one comes to understand certain things; I could speak not only for many hours but for days on end on this subject. Anyone who develops a feel for the art of sculpture knows that anything that is merely imitative is not truly sculptural. Anyone who tries to answer the question intuitively—not abstractly—by asking, “What, then, is actually at the heart of sculpture?”—cannot say to themselves that a surface is significant to them merely because it imitates a surface found in external nature, in the human body, and the like. That is not it. What is experienced in sculpture is the surface’s own life. Anyone who has grasped the difference between a surface that is curved only once and one that is curved a second time knows that no surface curved only once can possess any kind of sculptural life within itself. Only a surface that is curved within its own curvature can express life as a surface. This inner expression—not symbolic, but artistic—this inner expression is what matters; not imitation, not adherence to the model—this is what constitutes the mystery of the surface itself.

[ 15 ] This touches on a question that is, in fact, as unresolved as it could possibly be at present. Today we see numerous people not only enjoying art—which is entirely appropriate—but we also see numerous people evaluating art almost professionally. Now, based precisely on the premises underlying today’s reflections, I truly do not believe I need to pass a critical judgment, but simply to express what is becoming increasingly clear to me: I do not believe that anyone who has never worked with clay—who is merely a critic—can ever gain a mental image of what the very essence of sculpture actually is. I do believe that anyone can enjoy art, but I do not believe that anyone who has not made those attempts—which have shown them what artistic forms can be realized within the material—can judge art. For in reality, the material gives rise to things quite different from the mere imitation of the model and the like. Mere imitation of the model is therefore no more artistically valuable than imitating the song of a nightingale with random sounds. True art begins where nothing is imitated anymore, but rather where one acts from something new and creative. In architecture—not so much in music, but very much in sculpture—we draw on the model. But whatever relates to the model in an imitative way is something other than art. Art only begins where imitation can no longer be said to exist. And that which acts and weaves as an independent spiritual force—unconsciously grasped by the artist, consciously grasped by the beholder—is the common element in the beholder’s perception of the world and the artist’s creative production, except that it is also expressed spiritually by the beholder, and by the artist—because he cannot express it, but only holds it unconsciously in his hands and in his imagination—it can be “incorporated into the material.”

[ 16 ] The seer feels a very different kind of affinity with poetry and with the art of music. In the case of music in particular, it is interesting to see how the seer experiences his perceptions in a different form when he enters the realm of art through his clairvoyant faculties. I must clarify what I mean by “clairvoyant”: I do not mean continuously, but only in those moments when one puts oneself into this state. Therefore, it is not the case that the clairvoyant experiences music in the manner described here at times other than when he chooses to do so. At other times, he experiences the musical just like any other person; he can compare what he experiences musically with what he experiences when he perceives the musical work of art through his clairvoyant vision. With musical works of art, it is significant that the clairvoyant is clear in his intention to experience the musical in such a way that it is entirely soulful—and specifically in such a way that the concrete soul feels connected precisely with the musical. I have said before: The seer develops a new power of mental image; he creates mental images in such a way that he feels at home in architectural and sculptural creation. — Since the seer not only comprehends through imagination but also develops powers of feeling and formation—yet in such a way that they enter into a union—one cannot speak of a separation between feeling and willing; in the case of the seer, one must speak of a feeling will and a willing feeling, of a soul experience that unites these two—which in ordinary consciousness exist side by side—into the totality of feeling will. At times this feeling-willing is developed with a nuance leaning more toward willing; at other times, with a nuance leaning more toward feeling. When the seer, in his soul state elevated to the spiritual world, immerses himself in music, he experiences everything that arises in his soul with a feeling nuance as truly musical, as genuine music. He experiences it in such a way that he does not separate the objective sound from the subjective experience of sound, but rather that these are one in the seer’s experience; that the soul flows just as the sounds flow into one another, only that everything is spiritualized. He experiences his soul poured out into the musical element; he knows that what he experiences through his newly formed feeling-will is infused into the musical fabric by the musician from the very same source. It is particularly interesting in the case of music to investigate where this comes from—that the creative musician draws from the unconscious the spiritual element that the seer beholds and incorporates it into his musical material. In music, what lies at the foundation is revealed.

[ 17 ] In everything unconscious that occurs in the life of the soul, the marvelous structure of our organism plays a role in a completely different way. It is becoming increasingly clear that our organism must not be viewed as the ordinary biologist and physiologist views it, but rather as a reflection of a spiritual archetype. What the human being carries within is the image of a spiritual archetype. The human being enters existence through birth—or rather, through conception—and makes use of the laws of heredity that apply to him, as well as that which descends from a spiritual world and relates to the physical in such a way that the physical is truly an image of the spiritual. I cannot explain today how this comes about. It is an entirely objective fact that a process takes place within our organism that proceeds according to laws of spiritual reflection. This is particularly remarkable in the case of music. We believe that the ear is involved in the enjoyment of music, and perhaps the nervous system of our brain, but this is only a very superficial view. Physiology is still in its infancy in this field; it will only reach a certain level of understanding when artistic ideas begin to flow into this physiological and biological realm. There is something entirely different underlying it than the mere process of hearing or what takes place in the nervous system of our brain. What underlies the perception of music can be described as follows: Every time we exhale, the brain—the cranial cavity, the interior of the head—is caused by the act of breathing to allow its cerebrospinal fluid to descend through the spinal canal down to the diaphragmatic region; a descent is initiated. Inhalation, in turn, corresponds to the reverse process: the cerebrospinal fluid is driven back toward the brain. There is a continuous, rhythmic ebb and flow of the cerebrospinal fluid. If this were not the case, the brain would not lose as much of its weight as is necessary to prevent it from compressing the underlying blood vessels; if it did not lose that much of its weight, it would compress our blood vessels. This cerebrospinal fluid surges up and down within the arachnoid space, through expansions that are elastic and less elastic, so that as it rises and falls, the cerebrospinal fluid flows over the less elastic expansions and over various structures that expand to varying degrees. This results in a truly wondrous mode of action within a rhythm. The entire human organism, apart from the head and the limbs, expresses itself through this inner rhythm. What flows in through the ear as sound, what lives within us as a musical idea, becomes music when it encounters the inner music that is driven by the fact that the entire organism is a remarkable musical instrument, as I have just described.

[ 18 ] If I were to describe everything to you, I would have to describe a wonderful inner human music that, while not heard, is experienced inwardly. What is experienced musically is, in essence, nothing other than the response of an inner singing within the human organism. This human organism is, precisely in relation to what I have just described, the image of the macrocosm: that we carry within us, in the most concrete of laws—stricter even than the laws of nature—this lyre of Apollo, upon which the cosmos plays within us. Our organism is not merely what biology recognizes; rather, it is the most wondrous musical instrument.

[ 19 ] One can cite very basic examples to show how the human being is constructed according to a remarkable cosmic law. To give the most trivial example: On average, we take eighteen breaths per minute. Let’s calculate how many that is in a twenty-four-hour day: that’s 25,920 breaths—that many breaths in an entire day. Let’s calculate a human day. Isn’t it true that, even though many people live longer, we can estimate a human day to be seventy to seventy-one years: the human world day. Try calculating how many of these individual twenty-four-hour days there are! 25,920—that’s how many breaths you take in a single day! The world exhales us and inhales us as we are born and as we die. It takes just as many breaths during a human day as we do during a twenty-four-hour day.

[ 20 ] Consider the Platonic solar year. The sun rises in a specific sign of the zodiac. The vernal equinox continues to shift. In ancient times, the Sun rose in the sign of Taurus, then in Aries, and now in Pisces. Modern astronomy simplifies things. This vernal equinox apparently—though only apparently, and that’s not the point—travels across the entire sky, shifts around, and naturally returns to the same point after a significant number of years: after 25,920 years. The Platonic solar year spans 25,920 years! Take a human day of seventy-one years: it comprises 25,920 individual days; take a single human day of twenty-four hours: in lived experience, it comprises 25,920 breaths. You see, we are integrated into the rhythm of the world. I believe—and one could make many such observations—that there is no abstract religious mental image that could evoke as much fervor as the awareness of being so deeply embedded, even with one’s outer physical organism, in the macrocosm, in the cosmic fabric. The seer attempts to penetrate this embeddedness in a spiritual way. It finds expression in our inner music: What emerges from the organism, what surges up into the soul—the soul’s resonance, resonating with the cosmos—is the unconscious element of artistic creation. The whole world resonates with us when we truly create artistically.

[ 21 ] Therein lies the common source between artistry and visionary perception: unconscious in the artist, who imbues the material with the laws of the world; conscious in the visionary, who attempts to contemplate the purely spiritual through contemplative consciousness.

[ 22 ] By studying these things in this way, one learns to recognize what prompts human beings to unconsciously incorporate into their art what is entrusted to the material. Just as the inner music lives within our respiratory system—which then becomes outer music in art—so, too, does poetry live. Modern physiology is still very, very far behind in this regard. For if one wishes to gain clarity on this matter, what must be studied is not sensory physiology, nor the neural physiology of the brain, but rather the border region where the brain and the nervous system meet. It is there—precisely at that boundary—that the physiological realm lies where, if a person is predisposed to it—one must always be predisposed to the artistic—the source of poetic creation resides. And the seer finds poetic creation in a very special way when he enters the realm of his inner experience, where feeling-will leans more toward the side of the will. The will otherwise expresses itself throughout the entire physical body; in the realm of the imagination, the will lives where the brain, nerves, and sense organs meet: that is where poetic images are generated. When this is detached from the physical, it is the feeling will through which the seer enters the realms from whose very same source the poet draws. Therefore, through this feeling, willing sense of his own, the seer—when he adopts the state of mind necessary to enjoy the poetic with his own state of mind—finds himself in a peculiar position vis-à-vis the poetic. He must behold what the poet shapes. This leads to the fact that at the very moment when the poet presents one thing or another—not drawing from reality, but presenting something that is, in fact, merely imagined, contrived, unreal, and inartistic—at that very moment the seer perceives in a formative way what is being presented. Those who are not “seers” do not perceive it so starkly when the playwright presents an unreal character. The “seer,” for example, cannot perceive Thekla from *Wallenstein* as anything other than papier-mâché, so that when he looks at her, he constantly sees her knees buckling. And this from a great poet! Every deviation from reality, every failure to depict reality, is perceived in such a way that the “seer” must transform precisely what the poet creates into a three-dimensional form, and he derives his thinking from that three-dimensional form. With regard to the poet, the beholder immerses himself in an inner plasticity. This is the peculiarity: that here, in the realm of the poetic, the observing consciousness creates plasticity; hence the beholder sees caricatures in what is often truly highly praised. Yet the seer cannot help but see, in many a dramatic work—where it goes entirely unnoticed that the characters are merely puppets stuffed with tow—such puppets stuffed with tow marching across the stage, or else they come into being before him as he reads the drama. Therefore, the seer can endure torment caused by what is elevated by fashionable folly or other means, because he sees what is created formlessly in mere poetry.

[ 23 ] Christian Morgensiern, who strove toward the visionary, made a beautiful statement. It can be found in the last volume of his posthumous works, *Stufen*. There, in an effort to characterize his own soul, he says that he feels a kinship with architecture and sculpture. — This is the feeling: When one strives toward the visionary, the poetic is inwardly transformed into the sculptural. If one views these things in this way, one will never be able to believe that the visionary—with its inner mobility and its engagement with spiritual beings—could actually have a scorching or paralyzing effect on the artist, but rather only as a good friend, a good supporter. They cannot interfere with one another. Only things that flow into one another can interfere with one another. But the seer can never allow his seership to flow into his art in a disruptive way; he can, however, permeate it with his seership. They are completely separate from one another; flowing from the same source, they can never interfere with one another in life. People no longer sense this sufficiently.

[ 24 ] The seer has a very hard time making himself understood by others. He must make use of language. But there is something highly peculiar about language. It is only seemingly a unity; in reality, it is a threefold entity. For we experience it on three levels. First, as we actually use it—when we communicate with one another in everyday life, as we go about our philistine existence and utter the words that must flow from person to person to shape this philistine existence. Anyone who has a living sense of language—especially anyone who experiences language from a contemplative standpoint—cannot help but perceive the use just described as a degradation of language. One might say: The person is complaining about life. — They simply recognize that not everything can be perfect, and thus refrain from creating perfection in a realm where imperfection must necessarily prevail. In external, physical life, it is certainly the case that imperfections must exist: trees must wither as well as grow. There must always be imperfection in life so that perfection can arise. Language has been pushed down from its original level; it has been relegated to a subordinate status. And the way we use language in life, we could only become schoolmasters; then we would merely fashion a straw-like being out of a withered, dried-up, philistine state, but otherwise we would achieve nothing. Words cannot possess the value they have in and of themselves, for language—as the heritage of a people—exists on its own plane and, on that plane, is a work of art, not a prosaic construct. It is not meant to serve as a means of communication in everyday life; as an expression of the national spirit, it is a work of art. We belittle it, but we must do so by forcing what is actually an artistic creation down into the prose of life. It only comes into its own in the poetic creations of a people, when the spirit of language truly reigns. That is the second way in which language lives.

[ 25 ] The third kind is experienced only in the realm of clairvoyance. One finds oneself in a peculiar situation: for when one wishes to express what is being seen, one lacks the words of language. They do not actually exist. Just as one learns to speak in any language and uses words to express what one wants, one cannot express what one experiences as visionary perception. The words are not suited for it. Therefore, the seer is compelled to express certain things in a completely different way. He is constantly struggling with language in order to say what he wants to say. He must choose the path of expressing a particular thing in a sentence that approximately conveys what he intends; he must then say a second sentence that conveys something similar. He must rely on the goodwill of his listeners so that one sentence illuminates the other. If this goodwill is lacking, then people will try to point out various contradictions to him. The one who truly has something visionary to express must work within contradictions, and one contradiction must illuminate the other, since the truth lies in the middle. By putting oneself in this position, one arrives at something in language that already expresses, even in this realm, the relationship between the artistic and the visionary. The visionary must indeed count on the goodwill of others to seek to penetrate more deeply into how he says things than into what he says. He strives to say much more in the way he says things than in what he says. Gradually, he manages to transport himself back into the language-creating spirit that prevailed before any language had emerged, to reacquaint himself with the sounds, with the genius of sound, and to immerse his mind within it. He sees how a vowel takes shape, how a vowel soon flows into this or that language. In order to return to the language-creating state of his people in particular, the seer is compelled to express himself more through the “how” than through the “what.” In this way, one can artistically and visionarily distinguish the stages of language that exist side by side. Because they are experienced separately, they cannot interfere with one another; on the contrary, they can enhance one another, for when they coexist, they illuminate one another. A time may come when the artistic world will no longer be hostile toward the visionary world, nor will the visionary world be hostile toward the artistic world. For everything that constitutes false artistry, unfortunately, leans too heavily toward a supersensory philistinism. To clothe everything that is not perceived outwardly through the senses in visionary perception—that is contrary to artistry. But that which is truly grasped by the perceiving consciousness from the spiritual world is, in fact, the very same thing that lives unconsciously in artistic creation and aesthetic feeling. It is commonly believed that the clairvoyance referred to here is something entirely foreign to human beings; yet it is present in human life, merely in a realm where it goes unnoticed.

[ 26 ] There is a great difference in the nature of the encounter depending on whether I am facing a plant, a mineral, an animal, or another human being. External things affect me through what they are as perceived by my sense organs. When one human being faces another, the senses work quite differently. In our time, people are completely averse to grasping the spiritual. People say that certain fields have overcome materialism—yes, people talk about that today. They can certainly find such arguments, but they say: When I stand face to face with a human being, I see the shape of their nose, and from the shape of that nose I conclude that they are a human being. A conclusion by analogy. Such a conclusion does not exist in reality. Anyone who can perceive the world clairvoyantly knows where conclusions lie; these conclusions based on analogy do not exist. The human soul is perceived directly; the person’s outer, sensory nature is such that it cancels itself out. It is very important to take this as a foundation for another art form, because it makes clear to us the coexistence of clairvoyance and artistry.

[ 27 ] When we stand face to face with a person, we look at them, and we do not realize that what appears from them appears in such a way that it negates itself—that they make themselves spiritually transparent. Every time I stand face to face with a person, I see them clairvoyantly. The seer faces a very special problem when a person stands opposite them: this is the mysterious incarnate being. The seer perceives the incarnate being—as a person stands opposite them—not at rest, but in oscillating motion. As he stands facing a person, he perceives a state in which what normally appears in the person fades away, and then again, where the person becomes warmer and redder than he actually is. The physical form oscillates back and forth between these two states, so that it appears to the seer as if the human form were changing—blushing with shame and turning pale with fear—as if it were constantly restoring its normal state between feelings of fear and shame, just as a pendulum has its point of rest between its upward and downward swings. The incarnate being, as it appears to us outwardly, is merely an intermediate state. The incarnate being as perceived is bound to something that remains unconscious to the human being: it enables the first unconscious glimpse behind the scenes. Just as the human incarnate is perceived by the seer in such a way that he sees a spiritual element within the physical—the seer perceives a physical-spiritual reality in the incarnate—so everything that is outwardly colored and shaped gradually transforms in such a way that one perceives it spiritually. He perceives it in such a way that, in everything that is otherwise color or a sense of form, he perceives something inner. You will find the most fundamental aspects of this in Goethe’s sensory-moral section of *The Theory of Colors*. The entire theory of colors becomes an experience, but in such a way that the seer experiences the spiritual aspect of it. He also experiences the rest of the spiritual world in such a way that he has the same experiences he otherwise has with colors. In my *Theosophy*, you will find that one sees the soul in the form of a kind of aura. It is described in colors. Crude-minded people who do not delve deeper into these matters but write books themselves believe that the seer depicts the aura—that he describes it—because he thinks there really is a kind of misty haze before him. What the seer has before him is a spiritual experience. When he says the aura is blue, he is saying that he is having a spiritual-soul experience that is as if he were seeing the color blue. He describes everything he experiences in the spiritual world that is analogous to what can be experienced in the sensory world through colors.

[ 28 ] This offers a hint as to the way the seer experiences painting. It is a different experience from that of any other art form. With every other art form, one has the feeling of being immersed in the artistic element itself. One has that element, goes as far as a certain limit, and that is where clairvoyance ends. If the clairvoyant were to continue, he would have to apply this color here and that color there; if he were to go even further, he would have to completely color in what he experiences. When he experiences painting, it comes toward him from the other side. The painter, by painting what takes shape out of light and dark, brings his artistic work—by creating in a truly painterly way—exactly to that point where painting meets vision, where the visionary begins. And the visionary extends precisely to that point where, if one were to continue it outward, one would begin to paint. When one has a concrete mental image, one knows: here one must paint this color with the brush, and the other color next to it. There one begins to grasp the mystery of color, to understand what is written in my mystery drama *The Gate of Initiation*—that the form of color is the work itself, that drawing lines is, in fact, an artistic lie. There is no line. The sea does not border the sky with a line; where the colors meet, there is the boundary. I can use a line as an aid, but it is merely the result of the colors’ interaction. The mysteries of color reveal themselves to one. One learns that one is performing an inner movement, that movement lives in what one paints. One knows: You cannot do this any other way than by treating the blue in a certain way. — One experiences the inner life of the color along with it. That is what is special about painting: that the visionary, the artistic, and the creative touch one another.

[ 29 ] Once one understands what is at stake in this field, one will see that what is meant by “clairvoyance” can go hand in hand with artistic creation, and that the two can inspire and enrich one another. However, it will become increasingly clear that someone who has never held a paintbrush and knows nothing of what can be done should not pass judgment based on abstract principles. Criticism from outside the realm of art—criticism for criticism’s sake—may have to take a back seat once the friendship between artistry and clairvoyance takes hold. But precisely what is meant here by modern Spiritual Science is something entirely different from what used to be called aesthetics and is called that today. Artists have told me that such people are called “aesthetic grunters.” Aesthetic grunting is not what is meant here; it is a life lived in the same element in which the artist also lives, except that the seer experiences in the purely spiritual realm what the artist shapes. I would like to say that, among the many things that benefit humanity, this, too, seems to me to be one of them. I believe that the times will come to an end when it was thought that the elemental and the primordial were compromised by what is explored by the spirit.

[ 30 ] Christian Morgenstern said: Anyone who still believes today that what lives as the spiritual in the world should not be grasped through clear mental images, but can only be attained through a dark, mystical contemplation, is like an illiterate person who, with a primer tucked under his pillow, wants to sleep through his entire life in illiteracy. - We are living in a time when much of what is subconscious must be brought up into consciousness. Clairvoyance will only stand on solid ground when it transcends all philosophy and feels a kinship with artistry. I believe that in this field, too, there lies something connected to the significant questions of human development. People will increasingly come to understand that a supersensible world underlies the sensory world. What can be recognized through supersensible perception cannot be an arbitrary addition to life; rather, the truth lies in what Goethe said from his own life experience: “Whoever to whom nature begins to reveal her manifest secret feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” — Anyone who wishes to see through how art is embedded in the whole of life and in its entire development—anyone who truly perceives art in accordance with its essence, who perceives it through insight—must admit that this is fostered by the gift of vision, and that the gift of vision will be something that, in the future, will stand hand in hand with the artist, bringing new inspiration and support.