The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A Meditative Approach to the Study of Man III

[ 1 ] In life, it is essential that a person’s relationships with their environment be properly regulated. One can eat and digest the products provided by the outside world in the appropriate manner; however, one would no longer be nourished properly if one were to consume as food a product that had already been digested by humans to a certain degree. This demonstrates that it is essential for certain things to be taken in from the outside in a specific form and thereby gain their significance for life, so that they can then be further processed by the human being himself.

[ 2 ] The same is true in a higher realm, for example, in pedagogy, the art of education. In the art of education, what matters is what one is supposed to learn, and what one is actually supposed to discover for oneself through what has been learned while conducting the instruction. If one studies pedagogy as a science, consisting of all sorts of principles and formulated propositions, this means for the art of education roughly the same thing as if, with regard to nutrition, one were to choose for one’s own sustenance food that had already been digested to a certain degree by other people. If, on the other hand, one acquires an understanding of human nature—the knowledge of the essence of the human being—and thus learns to understand people, then one takes in what corresponds to what nature provides as nourishment. And in the conduct of instruction, the art of pedagogy itself then awakens within us, entirely individually, out of this understanding of human nature. Essentially, this art must be invented by the teacher at every moment. That is precisely what I would like to preface today’s discussion with.

[ 3 ] In teaching and education, there is a remarkable interweaving of what I would like to call, on the one hand, the musical—the tonal element of the world, experienced through hearing—and, on the other hand, the pictorial element of the world, which reveals itself through seeing. Of course, other sensory qualities intermingle with what is conveyed to human beings through hearing on the one hand and through seeing on the other; under certain circumstances, these may even have a secondary significance for teaching, but they do not carry the same great importance as seeing and hearing.

[ 4 ] The point is that we must truly understand these processes right down to the level of the physical body. You know that modern external science distinguishes in the human being what are called sensory nerves, which are said to run from the senses to the brain—or rather, to the central organ—and to transmit there everything that constitutes perception and imagination; and it distinguishes from these sensory nerves the so-called motor nerves, which are said to run from the central organ to the organs of movement and to set the organs of movement in motion. You know that from the standpoint of initiatory science, we must challenge this classification. There is absolutely no such distinction between the so-called sensory nerves and the motor nerves. Both are of one and the same nature, and the motor nerves essentially serve no other purpose than to perceive, at the very moment we are to move, the moving organ and the process of movement itself; they have nothing to do with the impulsion of the will as such. Therefore, we can say: We have nerves that run from our periphery toward the center, and then we have nerves that run from the center to the extremities of the motor organs. But these are, in essence, unified nerve tracts, and the essential point is simply that these unified nerve tracts are interrupted—that is, the innervating spiritual current, which, for example, travels from a sensory nerve toward the center, is interrupted at the center and must now make a leap; as a result, however, the innervating spiritual current becomes nothing other than — just as, for example, an electric spark or an electric current jumps across a switching point where the transmission is interrupted — to the so-called motor nerve, which, however, in every respect becomes nothing other than that; rather, it is exactly the same as the sensory nerve. It is merely predisposed to perceive the process of movement and the moving organ itself. But there is something that allows us to look particularly closely into this entire organic process, in which the mental currents and the physical processes interact.

[ 5 ] Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that we live in the perception of an image; that is, we live in the perception of something that is primarily conveyed through the organ of sight—a drawing, any arbitrary form that exists in our environment—in short, anything that becomes part of our inner life by virtue of our having eyes. Here we must now distinguish between three inner activities that are very sharply distinct from one another: first, perception as such. This perception as such actually takes place in the organ of sight.

[ 6 ] Then we must distinguish this from understanding. And we must be clear about one thing here: all understanding is mediated by the human rhythmic system, not by the nervous-sensory system. The nervous-sensory system merely mediates perception; and we understand, for example, any visual process only because the rhythmic process—which is regulated by the heart and the lungs—propagates upward into the brain via the cerebrospinal fluid. Those vibrations in the brain, which occur there and derive their excitation from the human rhythmic system, are in truth the physical mediators of understanding. We are able to understand because we breathe.

[ 7 ] You can see how wrong the view of these matters is today in many cases from a physiological perspective! People believe that understanding has something to do with the human nervous system. In reality, however, it is based on the fact that the rhythmic system receives what we perceive and imagine, and processes it further. But because the rhythmic system is connected to understanding, understanding is closely related to human feeling. And anyone who cultivates intimate self-awareness will see the connections that exist between understanding and true feeling. Essentially, we must feel the truth of what we have understood if we are to acknowledge it. It is precisely here that what arises from intellectual recognition converges within us with the soul-life of feeling through the rhythmic system.

[ 8 ] But then there is a third aspect: that is, taking in the matter in such a way that memory can retain it. We must therefore distinguish between the following in every such process: perception, understanding, and the internal processing of what has been understood to the extent that memory can retain it. And this third aspect is connected to the metabolic system. Those most subtle internal metabolic processes that take place within the organism—to which we must pay close attention, and which we, as educators, must be particularly aware of—are linked to memory and the ability to recall. Just observe how different children with a pale complexion are in their ability to remember compared to those with a healthy, rosy complexion; or how different the various human races are from one another in terms of their capacity for memory. All these are things that are based on the finest structures and processes of metabolism. And if, for example, as educators, we are able to help a pale child by ensuring that they get some healthy sleep—so that they experience a certain greater inner stimulation for the finer processes of metabolism—we can thereby give their memory a real boost. But we can also support the child’s memory by striving, as teachers, to maintain the right balance between mere listening and the child’s own independent work. Suppose, for instance, that you let the child listen too much; then the child will indeed perceive and, if necessary, understand, because the child is breathing continuously and thereby keeps the cerebrospinal fluid active; but the child’s will is not sufficiently engaged. As you know, the will is connected to metabolism. So if you allow the child to become too accustomed to merely watching and listening and let them do too little independent work—so that, because internal processing is linked to metabolism and the will, the will remains underutilized—you will not be able to educate and teach the child effectively. You must therefore find the right balance between listening, observing, and independent work. For what is not processed within a person in such a way that the will works into the metabolism—thereby stimulating the memory—will not be retained well. These are subtle aspects of physiology that must gradually be understood in great detail through spiritual science.

[ 9 ] While all of this relates to visual experience mediated by sight, the situation is different when it comes to anything involving sound—whether more or less musical; by which I do not mean only the musical element inherent in music—which merely renders these things particularly vivid and to which it is, of course, primarily applicable—but everything connected with the audible, which is more present in language and so on. I mean all of this when I now speak of sound. Here, the process is—as paradoxical as it may sound—exactly the opposite of what I have just described. That which constitutes the sensory apparatus in the ear is connected in a very subtle way internally with all the nerves that modern physiology calls motor nerves, but which are in reality the same as the sensory nerves; that everything we experience as sound is perceived through the nerve tracts embedded in our bodily organization. Everything musical must first penetrate deeply into our organism—and the nerves of the ear are already organized for this purpose—must first penetrate deeply into our entire organism and must take hold of that part where otherwise only the will acts within the nerves, in order to be perceived in the proper way. For those regions of the human organism that mediate memory in visual experiences—it is these very regions that mediate perception in the case of music, of the audible. So if you look for the parts of the organism that form the memory for visual perceptions, you will find in those very same parts the nerves that mediate perception itself for auditory perception. This, for example, is the reason why Schopenhauer and others associated music so closely with the will. Where visual images are remembered—namely, in the regions of the will—that is where auditory perceptions are perceived. Auditory perceptions are also understood through the rhythmic system. And this is what is significant in the human organism: that things are intertwined in such a peculiar way. Our visual images come together with our auditory images and interweave into a shared inner life of the soul because both visual and auditory images are understood through the rhythmic system. Everything we perceive is understood through the rhythmic system. Visual images are perceived by the separate head organism, and auditory images are perceived by the entire bodily organism. Visual perceptions flow into the organism; auditory perceptions flow upward from the organism. You must now reconcile this with what I said in the first lecture. This can be reconciled very well if one feels it. And because both worlds meet within the rhythmic system, what arises in our spiritual experience is that which encompasses both auditory and visual experiences. And what is recalled—the musical, everything audible—is now recalled in the same region where the visible has its sensory-nervous organs. These are at the same time those organs—sensory-nervous organs, as it were; that is how external physiology refers to them—which are, in reality, organs connected to metabolism, mediating the finer metabolism of the head region and through which musical memories come into being. In the very same regions where perception of visual images takes place, musical memory—and indeed, the memory of the audible in general—arises. In the very same regions where we perceive the visible, we recall the audible. In the same regions where we recall the visible, we perceive the audible. And the two intersect like a lemniscate in the rhythmic system, where they interlock and overlap.

[ 10 ] Anyone who has ever studied that musical memory—which people take for granted, yet which is so wonderful and mysterious—will find how fundamentally different this musical memory, which is based on a specific, delicate organization of the brain’s metabolism, is, in its general character, related to the will and thus to metabolism, is, however, localized in a completely different part of the body than the recall of visual images, which in turn is connected to the will.

[ 11 ] You see, when you take these things into consideration, you will be able to allow the full complexity of the speech process to take effect on your soul as well. In the speech process, we have something that works from within, in which—because the rhythmic system is so closely connected to the speech organ—understanding first comes to life. But it unfolds in a peculiar way, and to help you fully grasp this, I’d like to remind you of Goethe’s theory of colors. Think for a moment about how Goethe—aside from calling the red-yellow side of the color spectrum “warm” and the blue-violet side “cold”—brings color perception and tone perception close together; how he, so to speak, perceives different “tones” in the red-yellow side of the spectrum than in the blue-violet side, and how he relates this to major and minor keys—that is, to aspects of musical experience that are certainly more intimate. This is particularly evident in those sections that were later published from his unprinted material in the Weimar Edition of his scientific writings and which I subsequently included in the final volume of my Kürschner Edition. And we can already say this: If we take what Goethe offers in his Theory of Colors—which is more in the nature of description—and apply it to the inner human being, something special emerges. It is, so to speak, the case within the human being that sound lives first and foremost in speech. Yes, sound lives in speech, but this sound is, in a certain sense, altered. I would like to say that this sound is permeated by something that “dulls” it in speech. And it is truly not merely a figurative comparison, but something that has to do with real processes, when we say that the actual sound is “colored” in speech. The same thing that happens with external color when we perceive it “tonally”—we do not perceive the tone in the external color either, but we hear, as it were, something resonating from every color—the same thing happens internally: we do not see a color when we say “I” or “U,” just as we do not hear the tones when we see yellow or blue. But we have the same experience when we perceive color as resonating as we do when we perceive the tone emerging from speech as a sound. Here, the world of vision and the world of sound intertwine. What we see outside in space as color bears a quite obvious visual character and an intimate tonal character, which then penetrates us in the way I described in one of the previous lectures. What emerges from within as language onto the surface of the human being clearly bears a tonal character, but also an intimate, color-like character in its articulation—one that works its way up, as I have described, more so in human beings up to the age of seven. You can see from this that in the outer world, the colorful aspect is more prominently present, while in the human inner world, the tonal aspect is more prominently present; and that beneath this surface in the outer world, the music of the worlds floats; beneath the surface of the tonal aspect within the human being, a mysterious, colorful astral realm floats and moves.

[ 12 ] And if you now truly understand language itself—this marvelous organism that sets itself apart from the human being—then, as language resounds from within the human being, you will simultaneously sense all the vibrations of the astral body that are present there within the colored oscillations, which flow directly into the language. Otherwise, they do indeed act within the human being, but they enter into a peculiar state of agitation, concentrate toward the larynx, receive their influences from the sun and moon, and this creates something like a play within the astral body, which manifests externally in the movements of the larynx. And now you have the opportunity, at least as an image before you: You listen to a language, look at the astral body, which then immediately transmits its vibrations to the etheric body, making the whole experience seem even more intimate; You now sketch the entire process; in doing so, you capture only movements rooted in the human organism, and you obtain that eurythmy which is always performed jointly by the astral body and the etheric body when a person speaks. There is no room for arbitrariness here; rather, this process merely brings into the realm of the visible what otherwise takes place continuously in the invisible realm.

[ 13 ] Why are we doing this now? Yes, we are doing it because it is in our nature to now consciously do those things that we used to do unconsciously; for the entire process of human development consists in the supersensible—which previously existed only spiritually—gradually descending into the sensible realm. The Greeks, for example, still thought with the soul, so to speak; their thinking was still entirely soul-based. Modern people, especially since the mid-15th century, think with the brain. Materialism is, in fact, a perfectly valid theory for modern human beings. For what the Greeks still experienced in the soul has gradually been imprinted in the brain; this is passed down from generation to generation through the brain, and modern human beings already think through the imprints of the brain; they already think through material processes. This was bound to happen. We need only ascend once more; we need only add to these processes the human being’s elevation to those results that come from the supersensible world. Therefore, we must now counter the imprinting of the former soul elements into the body with their antithesis: the free grasping of the spiritual-supersensible through spiritual science. But for human development to continue, we must consciously take charge of this process of bringing the supersensible down into the sensible. We must consciously imbue the human body—this sensible body—with visible mobility, just as has hitherto occurred only in the invisible realm, unconsciously to us. In doing so, we consciously continue the path of the gods by taking on the work of the gods: the imprinting of thought into the brain, by transforming the supersensible aspect of eurythmy—supersensible eurythmy—into the sensory. If we did not do this, humanity would gradually sink into a state of soulful dreaming; it would become dormant. It would come to pass that, although all manner of things would flow from the spiritual worlds into the human “I” and the astral body, this would always occur in a state of sleep, and upon awakening, it would never be transferred to the physical organism.

[ 14 ] When people practice eurythmy, it serves both the eurythmists and the audience in their lives; both derive something essential from it. For those who are eurythmists themselves, the physical organism is transformed through the movements of eurythmy into a suitable receptive organ for the spiritual world, because these movements seek to descend from the spiritual world. In a sense, eurythmists become receptacles for processes of the spiritual world by preparing their bodies for this purpose. For those who are spectators of eurythmy, the movements that are alive in relation to their astral body and their “I” are, in a sense, intensified by the movements of eurythmy. If you were to wake up suddenly in the middle of the night after a eurythmy performance, you would find that you have much more within you than after a sonata—if you had attended an evening concert and then woken up again during the night; this occurs to an even greater degree with eurythmy. This strengthens the soul by allowing it to become vividly attuned to the supersensible realm. However, a certain degree of moderation must also be observed here. For if it becomes too much, the soul fidgets in the spiritual world at night—when a person is supposed to be sleeping—and this fidgeting would be the psychological counterpart to physical nervousness.

[ 15 ] You can see how these things point us toward perceiving this marvelous structure of the human organism in an ever more real way. On the one hand, it reveals itself to us down into the physical realm, where everything points to the fact that nothing exists in our body that is not imbued with spirit; and on the other hand, we see the spiritual-soul aspect, which strives toward a state where nothing in the human being is spiritual-soul in nature unless it processes physical experience. And it is particularly interesting when one then allows such things—as I have spoken of again today—to take effect within oneself and regards them as inspirations. If, for example, vivid meditative images now form in your mind regarding the entire life of music within the human being in the realms of the will of the visible, and again regarding the memory-based experience in music, regarding the life of musical memories in the realms of imagination of the visible — and conversely, if you connect what is in the realms of imagination within the audible with what is in the realms of memory within the visible — if you bring all these things together and meditative images form from them, then you can be certain that something will be stirred within you: a deep creative power that you need when you are educating a child.

[ 16 ] The reflections that a humanities-based pedagogy undertakes—as we have done—all aim to gain a deeper understanding of the human being. But when you then meditate on these things, you cannot help but allow them to continue to have an effect within you. — You see, when you eat a slice of bread and butter, for example, you are initially engaged in a conscious act; but what happens next, as the bread and butter undergoes the complex process of digestion, is something over which you have little control; yet this process takes place, and your overall life is closely connected to it. Now, if you study human nature, as we have done, you initially experience it consciously; if you meditate on it afterward, an inner, spiritual-psychic process of digestion takes place within you, and that is what makes you an educator and teacher. Just as metabolism makes you the living human being you are, so does this meditative assimilation of a true anthropology make you an educator. You simply approach the child as an educator in an entirely different way once you have gone through what follows from a genuine anthroposophical anthropology. What becomes of us, what works within us, and what makes us educators—all this takes place in the meditative development of such an understanding of humanity. And reflections such as today’s, when we awaken them within ourselves again and again—even if we return to them for just five minutes a day—set our entire inner soul life in motion. We become people so rich in inner thoughts and feelings that everything just bubbles up from within us. In the evening you meditate on the science of the human being, and in the morning it wells up within you: “Yes, with Hans Müller you must now do this or that”—or: “This girl lacks this and that,” and so on. In short, you know what you must apply to each specific case.

[ 17 ] What matters in human life is that one allows the inner and the outer to work together in this way. It doesn’t even take that much time. Once you’ve gained the momentum for it, you can work through something internally in three seconds—and when you apply this to education, it often provides enough material for an entire day. Time ceases to have any significance when it comes to bringing the supersensible to life. The spirit simply operates by different laws. Just as when you wake up you may have a thought whose temporal content might, for example, span weeks—yet it has flashed through your mind in a time that is almost impossible to specify—so, conversely, what flows out of you from the spirit can then be prolonged. Just as everything contracts in a dream, so what flows out of us from the spirit is prolonged. In this way, by immersing yourself in anthroposophical anthropology through such meditative reflection, you can reach a point where, by the time you are 40 or 45 years old, you can undergo in five minutes the entire transformation of your inner being that you need for your teaching—a transformation that will then make you, in your outer life, something entirely different from what you used to be.

[ 18 ] Such matters are discussed in writings by people who have experienced them. One must understand this. But one must also understand that what is experienced to a very special degree by individual personalities—and can now shed light on life as a whole—must play out on a smaller scale in the life of the educator.

[ 19 ] He must take up the study of humanity, understand it through meditation, and recall it: then remembrance becomes living life. It is not merely a recollection as it usually is, but a recollection that drives forth new inner impulses from within itself. There, memory springs forth from spiritual life, and there, what comes as the third stage is transferred into our outer work: After meditative understanding comes the creative, the creative act of remembering, which is at the same time a receiving from the spiritual world. So we have the following: First, a reception or perception of the science of humanity; then an understanding—a meditative understanding—of this science of humanity, as we go deeper and deeper within ourselves, inwardly, where the science of humanity is received by our entire rhythmic system; and then we have a recollection of the science of humanity arising from the spiritual realm. This means: creating pedagogically from the spirit, becoming pedagogical art. This must become a mindset; this must become a state of soul.

[ 20 ] You must look at people in such a way that you continually feel these three stages within yourself. And the more you come to say to yourself: Here is my outer body, here is my skin; within me, this encloses the one who absorbs the study of humanity, the one who understands it through meditation, the one who is inspired by God through the remembrance of the study of humanity—the more you carry this feeling within you, the more you are an educator and a teacher-educator.