The Boundaries of Natural Science
GA 322
2 October 1920 p.m., Dornach
Lecture VII
It is to be hoped that my discussions of the boundaries of natural science have been able to furnish at least some indications of the difference between what spiritual science calls knowledge of the higher worlds and the mode of knowledge proceeding from everyday consciousness or ordinary science. In everyday life and in ordinary science our powers of cognition are those we have acquired through the conventional education that carries us up to a certain stage in life and whatever this education has enabled us to make of inherited and universally human qualities. The mode of cognition that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science terms knowledge of the higher worlds has its basis in a further self-cultivation, a further self-development; one must become aware that in the later stages of life one can advance through self-education to a higher consciousness, just as a child can advance to the stage of ordinary consciousness. The things we sought in vain at the two boundaries of natural science, the boundaries of matter and of ordinary consciousness, reveal themselves only when one attains this higher consciousness. In ancient times the Eastern sages spoke of such an enhanced consciousness that renders accessible to man a level of reality higher than that of everyday life; they strove to achieve a higher development, similar to the one we have described, by means of an inner self-cultivation that corresponded to their racial characteristics and evolutionary stage. The meaning of what radiates forth from the ancient Eastern wisdom-literature becomes fully apparent only when one realizes what such a higher level of development reveals to man. If one were to characterize the path of development these sages followed, one would have to describe it as a path of Inspiration. For in that epoch humanity had a kind of natural propensity to Inspiration, and in order to understand these paths into the higher realms of cognition, it will be useful if First we can gain clarity concerning the path of development followed by these ancient Eastern sages. I want to make it clear from the start, however, that this path can no longer be that of our Western civilization, for humanity is in a process of constant evolution, ever moving forward. And whoever desires—as many have—to return to the instructions given in the ancient Eastern wisdom-literature in order to enter upon the paths of higher development actually desires to turn back the tide of human evolution or shows that he has no real understanding of human progress. In ordinary consciousness we reside within our thought life, our life of feeling, and our life of will, and we initially substantiate what surges within the soul as thought, feeling, and will in the act of cognition. And it is in the interaction with percepts of the external world, with physical-sensory perceptions, that our consciousness First fully awakens.
It is necessary to realize that the Eastern sages, the so-called initiates of the East, cultivated perception, thinking, feeling, and willing in a way different from their cultivation in everyday life. We can attain an understanding of this path of development leading into the higher worlds when we consider the following. In certain ages of life we develop what we call the soul-spirit toward a greater freedom, a greater independence. We have been able to show how the soul-spirit, which functions in the earliest years of childhood to organize the physical body, emancipates itself, becomes free in a sense with the change of teeth. We have shown how man then lives freely with his ego in this soul-spirit, which now places itself at his disposal, while formerly it occupied itself—if I may express myself thus—with the organization of the physical body. As we enter into ever-greater participation in everyday life, however, there arises something that initially prevents this emancipated soul-spirit from growing into the spiritual world in normal consciousness. As human beings, we must traverse the path that leads us into the external world with the requisite faculties during our life between birth and death. We must acquire such faculties as allow us to orient ourselves within the external, physical-sensory world. We must also develop such faculties as allow us to become useful members of the social community we form with other human beings.
What arises is threefold. These three things bring us into a proper relationship with other human beings in our environment and govern our interaction with them. These are: language, the ability to understand the thoughts of our fellow men, and the acquisition of an understanding, or even a kind of perception, of another's ego. At first glance these three things—perception of language, perception of thoughts, and perception of the ego—appear simple, but for one who seeks knowledge earnestly and conscientiously these things are not so simple at all. Normally we speak of five senses only, to which recent physiological research adds a few inner senses. Within conventional science it is thus impossible to find a complete, systematic account of the senses. I will want to speak to you an this subject at some later time. Today I want only to say that it is an illusion to believe that linguistic comprehension is implicit in the sense of hearing, of that which contemporary physiology dreams to be the organization of the sense of hearing. just as we have a sense of hearing, so also do we have a sense of language. By this I do not mean the sense that guides us in speaking—for this is also called a sense—but that which enables us to comprehend the perception of speech-sounds, just as the auditory senses enable us to perceive tones as such. And when we have a comprehensive physiology, it will be known that this sense of speech is analogous to the other and can rightfully be called a sense in and of itself. It is only that this sense extends over a larger part of the human constitution than the other, more localized senses. Yet it is a sense that nevertheless can be sharply delineated. And we have, in fact, a further sense that extends throughout virtually all of our body—the sense that perceives the thoughts of others. For what we perceive as word is not yet thought. We require other organs, a sensory organization different from that which perceives only words as such, if we want to understand within the word the thought that another wishes to communicate.
In addition, we are equipped with an analogous sense extending throughout our entire bodily organization, which we can call the sense for the perception of another person's ego. In this regard even philosophy has reverted to childishness in recent times, for one can often hear it argued: we encounter another man; we know that a human has such and such a form. Since the being that we encounter is formed in the way we know ourselves to be formed, and sine we know ourselves to be ego-bearers, we conclude through a kind of unconscious inference: aha, he bears an ego within as well. This directly contradicts the psychological reality. Every acute observer knows that it is not an inference by analogy but rather a direct perception that brings us awareness of another's ego. I think that a friend or associate of Husserl's school in Göttingen, Max Scheler, is the only philosopher actually to hit upon this direct perception of the ego. Thus we must differentiate three higher senses, so to speak, above and beyond the ordinary human senses: the sense that perceives language, the sense that perceives thoughts, and the sense that perceives another's ego. These senses arise within the course of human development to the same extent that the soul-spirit gradually emancipates itself between birth and the change of teeth in the way I have described.
These three senses lead initially to interaction with the rest of humanity. In a certain way we are introduced into social life among other human beings by the possession of these three senses. The path one thus follows via these three senses, however, was followed in a different way by the ancients—especially the Indian sages—in order to attain higher knowledge. In striving for this goal of higher knowledge, the soul was not moved toward the words in such a way that one sought to arrive at an understanding of what the other was saying. The powers of the soul were not directed toward the thoughts of another person in such a way as to perceive them, nor toward the ego of another in such a way as to perceive it sympathetically. Such matters were left to everyday life. When the sage returned from his striving for higher cognition, from his sojourn in spiritual worlds to everyday life, he employed these three senses in the ordinary manner. When he wanted to exercise the method of higher cognition, however, he needed these senses in a different way. He did not allow the soul's forces to penetrate through the word while perceiving speech, in order to comprehend the other through his language; rather, he stopped short at the word itself. Nothing was sought behind the word; rather, the streaming life of the soul was sent out only as far as the word. He thereby achieved an intensified perception of the word, renouncing all attempts to understand anything more by means of it. He permeated the word with his entire life of soul, using the word or succession of words in such a way that he could enter completely into the inner life of the word. He formulated certain aphorisms, simple, dense aphorisms, and then strove to live within the sounds, the tones of the words. And he followed with his entire soul life the sound of the word that he vocalized. This practice then led to a cultivation of living within aphorisms, within the so-called “mantras.” It is characteristic of mantric art, this living within aphorisms, that one does not comprehend the content of the words but rather experiences the aphorisms as something musical. One unites one's own soul forces with the aphorisms, so that one remains within the aphorisms and so that one strengthens through continual repetition and vocalization one's own power of soul living within the aphorisms. This art was gradually brought to a high state of development and transformed the soul faculty that we use to understand others through language into another. Through vocalization and repetition of the mantras there arose within the soul a power that led not to other human beings but into the spiritual world. And if, through these mantras, the soul has been schooled in such a way and to such an extent that one feels inwardly the weaving and streaming of this power of soul, which otherwise remains unconscious because all one's attention is directed toward understanding another through the word; if one has come so far as to feel such a power to be an actual force in the soul in the same way that muscular tension is experienced when one wishes to do something with one's arm, one has made oneself sufficiently mature to grasp what lies within the higher power of thought. In everyday life a man seeks to find his way to another via thought. With this power, however, he grasps the thought in an entirely different way. He grasps the weaving of thought in external reality, penetrates into the life of external reality, and lives into the higher realm that I have described to you as Inspiration.
Following this path, then, we approach not the ego of the other person but the egos of individual spiritual beings who surround us, just as we are surrounded by the entities of the sense world. What I depict here was self-evident to the ancient Eastern sage. In this way he wandered with his soul, as it were, upward toward the perception of a realm of spirit. He attained in the highest degree what can be called Inspiration, and his constitution was suited to this. He had no need to fear, as the Westerner might, that his ego might somehow become lost in this wandering out of the body. In later times, when, owing to the evolutionary advances made by humanity, a man might very easily pass out of his body into the outer world without his ego, precautionary measures were taken. Care was taken to ensure that whoever was to undergo this schooling leading to higher knowledge did not pass unaccompanied into the spiritual world and fall prey to the pathological skepticism of which I have spoken in these lectures. In the ancient East the racial constitution was such that this was nothing to fear. As humanity evolved further, however, this became a legitimate concern. Hence the precautionary measure strictly applied within the Eastern schools of wisdom: the neophyte was placed under an authority, but not any outward authority—fundamentally speaking, what we understand by “authority” First appeared in Western civilization. There was cultivated within the neophytes, through a process of natural adaptation to prevailing conditions, a dependence on a leader or guru. The neophyte simply perceived what the leader demonstrated, how the leader stood firmly within the spiritual world without falling prey to pathological skepticism or even inclining toward it. This perception fortified him to such an extent on his own entry into Inspiration that pathological skepticism could never assail him.
Even when the soul-spirit is consciously withdrawn from the physical body, however, something else enters into consideration: one must re-establish the connection with the physical body in a more conscious manner. I said this morning that the pathological state must be avoided in which one descends only egotistically, and not lovingly, into the physical body, for this is to lay hold of the physical body in the wrong way. I described the natural process of laying hold of the physical body between the seventh and fourteenth years, which is through the love-instinct being impressed upon it. Yet even this natural process can take a pathological turn: in such cases there arise the harmful afflictions I described this morning as pathological states. Of course, this could have happened to the pupils of the ancient Eastern sages as well: when they were out of the body they might not have been able to bind the soul-spirit to the physical body again in the appropriate manner. One further precautionary measure thus was employed, one to which psychiatrists—some at any rate—have had recourse when seeking cures for patients suffering from agoraphobia or the like. They employed ablutions, cold baths. Expedients of an entirely physical nature have to be employed in such cases. And when you hear on the one hand that in the mysteries of the East—that is, the schools of initiation, the schools that led to Inspiration—the precautionary measure was taken of ensuring dependence on the guru, you hear on the other hand of the employment of all kinds of devices, of ablutions with cold water and the like. When human nature is understood in the way made possible by spiritual science, customs that otherwise remain rather enigmatic in these ancient mysteries become intelligible. One was protected against developing a false sense of spatiality resulting from an insufficient connection between the soul-spirit and the physical body. This could drive one into agoraphobia and the like or to seek social intercourse with one's fellow men in an inappropriate way. This represents a danger, but one which can and should—indeed must—be avoided in any training that leads to higher cognition. It is a danger, because in following the path I have described leading to Inspiration one bypasses in a certain sense the path via language and thought to the ego of one's fellow man. If one then quits the physical body in a pathological manner—even if one is not attempting to attain higher cognition but is lifted out of the body by a pathological condition—one can become unable to interact socially with one's fellow men in the right way. Then precisely that which arises in the usual, intended manner through properly regulated spiritual study can develop pathologically. Such a person establishes a connection between his soul-spirit and his physical body: by delving too deeply into it he experiences his body so egotistically that he learns to hate interaction with his fellow men and becomes antisocial. One can often see the results of such a pathological condition manifest themselves in the world in quite a frightening manner. I once met a man who was a remarkable example of such a type: he came from a family that inclined by nature toward a freeing of the soul-spirit from the physical body and also contained certain personalities—I came to know one of them extremely well—who sought a path into the spiritual worlds. One rather degenerate individual, however, developed this tendency in an abnormal, pathological way and finally arrived at the point where he would allow nothing whatever from the external world to contact his own body. Naturally he had to eat, but—we are speaking here among adults—he washed himself with his own urine, because he feared any water that came from the outside world. But then again I would rather not describe all the things he would do in order to isolate his body totally from the external world and shun all society. He did these things because his soul-spirit was too deeply incarnated, too closely bound to the physical body.
It is entirely in keeping with the spirit of Goetheanism to bring together that which leads to the highest goal attainable by earthly man and that which leads to pathological depths. One needs only slight acquaintance with Goethe's theory of metamorphosis to realize this. Goethe seeks to understand how the individual organs, for example of the plant, develop out of each other, and in order to understand their metamorphosis he is particularly interested in observing the conditions that arise through the abnormal development of a leaf, a blossom, or the stamen. Goethe realizes that precisely by contemplating the pathological the essence of the healthy can be revealed to the perceptive observer. And one can follow the right path into the spiritual world only when one knows wherein the essence of human nature actually lies and in what diverse ways this complicated inner being can come to expression.
We see from something else as well that even in the later period the men of the East were predisposed by nature to come to a halt at the word. They did not penetrate the word with the forces of the soul but lived within the word. We see this, for example, in the teachings of the Buddha. One need only read these teachings with their many repetitions. I have known Westerners who treasured editions of the Buddha's teachings in which the numerous repetitions had been eliminated and the words of a sentence left to occur only once. Such people believed that through such a condensed version, in which everything occurs only once, they would gain a true understanding of what the Buddha had actually intended. From this it is clear that Western civilization has gradually lost all understanding of Eastern man. If we simply take the Buddha's teachings word for word; if we take the content of these teachings, the content that we, as human beings of the West, chiefly value, then we do not assimilate the essence of these teachings: that is possible only when we are carried along with the repetitions, when we live in the flow of the words, when we experience the strengthening of the soul's forces that is induced by the repetitions. Unless we acquire a faculty for experiencing something from the constant repetitions and the rhythmical recurrence of certain passages, we do not get to the heart of Buddhism's actual significance.
It is in this way that one must gain knowledge of the inner nature of Eastern culture. Without this acquaintance with the inner nature of Eastern culture one can never arrive at a real understanding of our Western religious creeds, for in the final analysis these Western religious creeds stem from Eastern wisdom. The Christ event is a different matter. For that is an actual event. It stands as a fact within the evolution of the earth. Yet the ways and means of understanding what came to pass through the Mystery of Golgotha were drawn during the first Christian centuries entirely from Eastern wisdom. It was through this wisdom that the fundamental event of Christianity was originally understood. Everything progresses, however. What had once been present in Eastern primeval wisdom—attained through Inspiration—spread from the East to Greece and is still recognizable as art. For Greek art was, to be sure, bound up with experiences different from those usually connected with art today. In Greek art one could still experience what Goethe strove to regain when he spoke of the deepest urge within him: he to whom nature begins to unveil her manifest secrets longs for her worthiest interpreter—art. For the Greeks, art was a way to slip into the secrets of world existence, a manifestation not merely of human fantasy but of what arises in the interaction between this faculty and the revelations of the spiritual world revealed through Inspiration. That which still flowed through Greek art, however, became more and more diluted, until finally it became the content of the Western religious creeds. We thus must conceive the source of the primeval wisdom as fully substantial spiritual life that becomes impoverished as evolution proceeds and provides the content of religious creeds when it finally reaches the Western world. Human beings who are constitutionally suited for a later epoch therefore can find in this diluted form of spiritual life only something to be viewed with skepticism. And in the final analysis it is nothing other than the reaction of the Western temperament [Gemüt] to the now decadent Eastern wisdom that gradually produces atheistic skepticism in the West. This skepticism is bound to become more and more widespread unless it is countered with a different stream of spiritual life.
Just as little as a creature that has reached a certain stage of development—let us say has undergone a certain aging process—can be made young again in every respect, so little can a form of spiritual life be made young again when it has reached old age. The religious creeds of the West, which are descendants of the primeval wisdom of the East, can yield nothing that would fully satisfy Western humanity again when it advances beyond the knowledge provided during the past three or four centuries by science and observation of nature. An ever-more profound skepticism is bound to arise, and anyone who has insight into the processes of world evolution can say with assurance that a trend of development from East to West must necessarily lead to an increasingly pronounced skepticism when it is taken up by souls who are becoming more and more deeply imbued with the fruits of Western civilization. Skepticism is merely the march of the spiritual life from East to West, and it must be countered with a different spiritual stream flowing henceforth from West to East. We ourselves are living at the crossing-point of these spiritual streams, and in the further course of these considerations we will want to see how this is so.
But first it must be emphasized that the Western temperament is constitutionally predisposed to follow a path of development leading to the higher worlds different from that of the Eastern temperament. Just as the Eastern temperament strives initially for Inspiration and possesses the racial qualities suitable for this, the Western temperament, because of its peculiar qualities (they are at present not so much racial qualities as qualities of soul) strives for Imagination. It is no longer the experience of the musical element in mantric aphorisms to which we as Westerners should aspire but something else. As Westerners we should strive in such a way that we do not pursue with particular vigour the path that opens out when the soul-spirit emerges from the physical body but rather the path that presents itself later, when the soul-spirit must again unite with the physical organism by consciously grasping the physical body. We see the natural manifestation of this in the emergence of the bodily instinct: whereas Eastern man sought his wisdom more by sublimating the forces at work between birth and the seventh year, Western man is better fitted to develop the forces at work between the time of the change of teeth and puberty, in that there is lifted up into the soul-spirit that which is natural for this epoch of humanity. We come to this when, just as in emerging from the body we carry the ego with us into the realm of Inspiration, we now leave the ego outside when we delve again into the body. We leave it outside, but not in idleness, not forgetting or surrendering it, not suppressing it into unconsciousness, but rather conjoining it with pure thinking, with clear, keen thinking, so that finally one has this inner experience: my ego is totally suffused with all the clear thinking of which I have become capable. One can experience just this delving down into the body in a very clear and distinct manner. And at this point you will perhaps allow me to relate a personal experience, because it will help you to understand what I really mean.
I have spoken to you about the conception underlying my book, Philosophy of Freedom. This book is actually a modest attempt to win through to pure thinking, the pure thinking in which the ego can live and maintain a firm footing. Then, when pure thinking has been grasped in this way, one can strive for something else. This thinking, left in the power of an ego that now feels itself to be liberated within free spirituality [frei und unabhängig in freier Geistigkeit], can then be excluded from the process of perception. Whereas in ordinary life one sees color, let us say, and at the same time imbues the color with conceptual activity, one can now extract the concepts from the entire process of elaborating percepts and draw the percept itself directly into ones bodily constitution.
Goethe undertook to do this and has already taken the First steps in this direction. Read the last chapter of his Theory of Colors, entitled “The Sensory-Moral Effect of Color”: in every color-effect he experiences something that unites itself profoundly not only with the faculty of perception but with the whole man. He experiences yellow and scarlet as “attacking” colors, penetrating him, as it were, through and through, filling him with warmth, while he regards blue and violet as colors that draw one out of oneself, as cold colors. The whole man experiences something in the act of sense perception. Sense perception, together with its content, passes down into the organism, and the ego with its pure thought content remains, so to speak, hovering above. We exclude thinking inasmuch as we take into and fill ourselves with the whole content of the perception, instead of weakening it with concepts, as we usually do. We train ourselves specially to achieve this by systematically pursuing what came to be practiced in a decadent form by the men of the East. Instead of grasping the content of the perception in pure, strictly logical thought, we grasp it symbolically, in pictures, allowing it to stream into us as a result of a kind of detour around thinking. We steep ourselves in the richness of the colors, the richness of the tone, by learning to experience the images inwardly, not in terms of thought but as pictures, as symbols. Because we do not suffuse our inner life with the thought content, as the psychology of association would have it, but with the content of perception indicated through symbols and pictures, the living inner forces of the etheric and astral bodies stream toward us from within, and we come to know the depths of consciousness and of the soul. It is in this way that genuine knowledge of the inner nature of man is acquired, and not by means of the blathering mysticism that nebulous minds often claim to be a way to the God within. This mysticism leads to nothing but abstraction and cannot satisfy anyone who wishes to become a man in the full sense of the ward.
If one desires to do real research concerning human physiology, thinking must be excluded and the picture-forming activity sent inward, so that the physical organism reacts by creating Imaginations. This is a path that is only just beginning in the development of Western culture, but it is the path that must be trodden if the influence that streams over from the East, and would lead to decadence if it atone were to prevail, is to be confronted with something capable of opposing it, so that our civilization may take a path of ascent and not of decline. Generally speaking, however, it can be said that human language itself is not yet sufficiently developed to be able to give full expression to the experiences that one undergoes in the inner recesses of the soul. And it is at this point that I would like to relate a personal experience to you.
Many years ago, in a different context, I made an attempt to give expression to what might be called a science of the human senses. In spoken lectures I succeeded to some extent in putting this science of the twelve senses into words, because in speaking it is more possible to turn language this way and that and ensure understanding by means of repetitions, so that the deficiencies of our language, which is not yet capable of expressing these super-sensible things, is not so strongly felt. Strangely enough, however, when I wanted many years ago to write down what I had given as actual anthroposophy in order to put it into a form suitable for a book, the outer experiences an being interiorized became so sensitive that language simply failed to provide the words, and I believe that the beginning of the text—several sheets of print—lay for some five or six years at the printer's. It was because I wanted to write the whole book in the style in which it began that I could not continue writing, for the simple reason that at the stage of development I had then reached, language refused to furnish the means for what I wished to achieve. Afterward I became overloaded with work, and I still have not been able to finish the book. Anyone who is less conscientious about what he communicates to his fellow men out of the spiritual world might perhaps smile at the idea of being held up in this way by a temporarily insurmountable difficulty. But whoever really experiences and can permeate with a full sense of responsibility what occurs when one attempts to describe the path that Western humanity must follow to attain Imagination knows that to find the right words entails a great deal of effort. As a meditative schooling it is relatively easy to describe, and this has been done in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. If one's aim, however, is to achieve definite results such as that of describing the essential nature of man's senses—a part, therefore, of the inner makeup and constitution of humanity—it is then that one encounters the difficulty of grasping Imaginations and presenting them in sharp contours by means of words.
Nevertheless, this is the path that Western humanity must follow. And just as the man of the East was able to experience through his mantras the entry into the spiritual nature of the external world, so must the Westerner, leaving aside the entire psychology of association, learn to enter into his own being by attaining the realm of Imagination. Only by penetrating into the realm of Imagination will he acquire the true knowledge of humanity that is necessary in order for humanity to progress. And because we in the West must live much more consciously than the men of the East, we cannot simply say: whether or not humanity will gradually attain this realm of Imagination is something that can be left to the future. No—this world of Imagination, because we have passed into the stage of conscious human evolution, must be striven for consciously; there can be no halting at certain stages. For what happens if one halts at a certain stage? Then one does not meet the ever-increasing spread of skepticism from East to West with the right countermeasures but with measures that result from the soul-spirit uniting too radically, too deeply and unconsciously, with the physical body, so that too strong a connection is formed between the soul-spirit and the physical body.
Yes, it is indeed possible for a human being not only to think materialistically but to be a materialist, because the soul-spirit is too strongly linked with the physical body. In such a man the ego does not live freely in the concepts of pure thinking he has attained. If one descends into the body with pictorial perception, one delves with the ego and the concepts into the body. And if one then spreads this around and suffuses it throughout humanity, it gives rise to a spiritual phenomenon well known to us—dogmatism of all kinds. Dogmatism is nothing other than the translation into the realm of the soul-spirit of a condition that at a lower stage manifests itself pathologically as agoraphobia and the like, and that—because these things are related—also shows itself in something else, which is a metamorphosis of fear, in superstition of every variety. An unconscious urge toward Imagination is held back through powerful agencies, and this gives rise to dogmatism of all types. These types of dogmatism must gradually be replaced by what is achieved when the world of ideas is kept within the sphere of the ego; when progress is made toward Imagination, the true nature of man is experienced inwardly, and this Western path into the spiritual world is followed in a different way. It is this other path through Imagination that must establish the stream of spiritual science, the process of spiritual evolution that muss make its way from West to East if humanity is to progress. It is supremely important at the present time, however, for humanity to recognize what the true path of Imagination should be, what path must be taken by Western spiritual science if it is to be a match for the Inspiration and its fruits that were attained by ancient Eastern wisdom in a form suited to the racial characteristics of those peoples. Only if we are able to confront the now decadent Inspiration of the East with Imaginations which, sustained by the spirit and saturated with reality, have arisen along the path leading to a higher spiritual culture; only if we can call this culture into existence as a stream of spiritual life flowing from West to East, are we bringing to fulfillment what is actually living deep within the impulses for which humanity is striving. It is these impulses that are now exploding in social cataclysms because they cannot find other expression.
In tomorrow's lecture we will speak further of the path of Imagination and of how the way to the higher worlds is envisaged by anthroposophical spiritual science.
Siebenter Vortrag
Aus meinen Darlegungen über die Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis dürfte wenigstens andeutungsweise hervorgegangen sein, welcher Unterschied besteht zwischen dem, was innerhalb der Geisteswissenschaft Erkennen höherer Welten genannt wird und demjenigen Erkennen, von dem wir sprechen aus dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein heraus im alltäglichen Leben oder in der gewöhnlichen Wissenschaft. Im alltäglichen Leben und in der gewöhnlichen Wissenschaft bleiben wir stehen in bezug auf unsere Erkenntniskräfte bei demjenigen, was wir uns errungen haben durch die Erziehung, die gewöhnliche Erziehung, die uns bis zu einem gewissen Punkte des Lebens gebracht hat, und bei dem, was wir aus den vererbten Eigenschaften, aus den allgemein menschlichen Eigenschaften durch diese Erziehung zu machen vermögen. Dasjenige, was innerhalb der anthroposophisch orientierten Geisteswissenschaft Erkenntnis höherer Welten genannt wird, das beruht darauf, daß man gewissermaßen eine Weitererziehung, eine Weiterentwickelung selbst in die Hand nimmt, daß man ein Bewußtsein davon erwirbt, wie man ebenso, wie man als Kind vorwärtsrücken kann zu dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein, so im weiteren Lebenslauf durch Selbsterziehung aufrücken kann zu einem höheren Bewußtsein. Und diesem höheren Bewußtsein enthüllen sich dann erst diejenigen Dinge, die wir sonst vergebens suchen an den beiden Grenzen des Naturerkennens, an der materiellen Grenze und an der Bewußtseinsgrenze, wobei hier Bewußtsein als das gewöhnliche verstanden wird. Von einem solchen erhöhten Bewußtsein, durch das eine weitere Stufe von Wirklichkeiten dem Menschen zugänglich wird gegenüber der gewöhnlichen alltäglichen Wirklichkeit, von einem solchen Bewußtsein, von dem wir ja gesprochen haben, redeten in alten Zeiten die orientalischen Weisen, und sie haben durch diejenigen Mittel innerer Selbsterziehung, die eben ihren Rasseeigentümlichkeiten, ihrem Entwickelungsstadium entsprachen, eine solche höhere Entwickelung angestrebt. Erst wenn man erkennt, was dem Menschen sich offenbart durch eine solche höhere Entwickelung, bemerkt man völlig den Sinn desjenigen, was uns aus den alten orientalischen Weisheitsurkunden herüberstrahlt. Wenn man dann charakterisieren soll dasjenige, was als ihren Entwickelungsweg diese Weisen genommen haben, so muß man sagen: Es war ein Weg der Inspiration. - Es war eben damals die Menschheit gewissermaßen auf die Inspiration hin angelegt. Und es wird gut sein, wenn wir uns, um diese Entwickelungswege in die höheren Erkenntnisgebiete hinein zu verstehen, zunächst vorbereitend klarmachen, wie der Entwickelungsweg dieser alten orientalischen Weisen eigentlich war. Ich bemerke nur gleich von vornherein, daß dieser Weg durchaus nicht mehr derjenige unserer abendländischen Zivilisation sein kann, denn die Menschheit ist eben in Entwickelung begriffen, die Menschheit schreitet vorwärts. Und derjenige, der — wie es viele getan haben — wiederum zurückkehren will, um höhere Entwickelungswege zu betreten, zu den alten orientalischen Weisheitsanweisungen, der will die Entwickelung der Menschheit eigentlich zurückschrauben, oder er zeigt auch, daß er kein wirkliches Verständnis hat für das menschliche Vorwärtskommen. Wir leben mit dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein in unserer Gedankenwelt, in unserer Gefühlswelt, in unserer Willenswelt, und wir begründen dasjenige, was da als Gedanke, Gefühl und Wille in der Seele auf und ab wogt, wir begründen es zunächst, indem wir erkennen. Auch die äußeren Wahrnehmungen, die Wahrnehmungen der physisch-sinnlichen Welt sind es eben, an denen unser Bewußtsein eigentlich erst erwacht.
Nun handelt es sich darum, einzusehen, daß ein gewisses anderes Verhalten notwendig war für die orientalischen Weisen, für die sogenannten Initiierten des Orients, ein anderes Verhalten als dasjenige, das der Mensch im gewöhnlichen Leben hat in bezug auf die Behandlung der Wahrnehmungen, des Denkens, des Fühlens, des Wollens. Wir können zu einem Verständnis desjenigen kommen, was da eigentlich vorlag als ein Entwickelungsweg in die höheren Welten hinein, wenn wir auf folgendes hinsehen: Wir entwickeln ja in gewissen Lebensaltern zu einer größeren Freiheit, zu einer größeren Unabhängigkeit dasjenige, was wir Geistig-Seelisches nennen. Wir konnten charakterisieren, wie mit dem Zahnwechsel dasjenige Geistig-Seelische, das in den ersten Kindheitsjahren organisierend im Leibe wirkt, dann sich emanzipiert, gewissermaßen frei wird, wie dann der Mensch mit seinem Ich frei in diesem Geistig-Seelischen lebt, wie dieses GeistigSeelische sich ihm ergibt, während es vorher, wenn ich mich so ausdrücken darf, beschäftigt war damit, den Leib durchzuorganisieren. Nun aber tritt, indem wir immer mehr und mehr in das Leben hineinwachsen, dasjenige auf, was zunächst für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein die Entwickelung dieses freigewordenen Geistig-Seelischen in die geistige Welt hinein nicht aufkommen läßt. Wir müssen als Menschen in unserem Leben zwischen Geburt und Tod den Weg machen, der uns als geeignete Wesen in die äußere Erdenwelt hineinstellt. Wir müssen uns jene Fähigkeiten aneignen, die uns Orientierungsvermögen geben in der äußeren sinnlich-physischen Welt. Wir müssen uns auch diejenigen Fähigkeiten geben, die uns zu einem brauchbaren Gliede in dem sozialen Zusammenleben mit andern Menschen machen.
Dasjenige, was da auftritt, das ist ein Dreifaches. Ein Dreifaches bringt uns in den richtigen Zusammenhang insbesondere mit der äußeren Menschenwelt, regelt unseren Wechselverkehr mit der äußeren Menschenwelt: Das ist die Sprache, das ist das Vermögen, die Gedanken unseres Mitmenschen zu verstehen, das ist auch, ein Verständnis, gewissermaßen eine Wahrnehmung zu gewinnen von dem Ich des andern Menschen. Indem man diese drei Dinge sagt: Sprachewahrnehmung, Gedankenwahrnehmung, Ich-Wahrnehmung, spricht man etwas aus, was sich einfach ansieht, was aber für denjenigen, der in ernster, gewissenhafter Weise Erkenntnis anstrebt, keineswegs so einfach ist. Wir sprechen eben gewöhnlich nur von fünf Sinnen, zu denen dann die neuere Physiologie einige weitere, innere fügt. Also wir haben kein vollständiges System der Sinne innerhalb der äußeren Wissenschaft. Nun, über diesen Punkt werde ich noch hier vor Ihnen sprechen. Heute will ich aber nur bemerken, daß es eine Illusion ist, wenn man glaubt, daß mit dem Sinn des Gehörs, mit der Einrichtung des Gehörs und mit demjenigen, was eine heutige Physiologie träumt als Einrichtung des Gehörs, schon gegeben wäre auch das Sprachverständnis. Geradeso wie wir einen Gehörsinn haben, ebenso haben wir einen Sprachsinn. Damit ist nicht gemeint jener Sinn, man nennt ja auch das so, der uns zum Sprechen anleitet, sondern damit ist gemeint jener Sinn, der uns ebenso befähigt, die Sprachwahrnehmung zu verstehen, wie uns der Sinn des Ohres befähigt, die Töne als solche wahrzunehmen. Und wird man einmal eine vollständige Physiologie haben, dann wird man wissen, daß dieser Sprachsinn durchaus analog ist dem andern Sinn, daß er mit Recht als ein eigener Sinn angesprochen werden kann. Er ist nur mehr verbreitet innerhalb der menschlichen Organisation als manche andere, mehr lokalisierte Sinne. Aber er ist ein scharf zu umgrenzender Sinn. Und ebenso haben wir einen Sinn, der sich allerdings fast über unsere ganze Körperlichkeit ausdehnt, zur Wahrnehmung der Gedanken des andern. Denn dasjenige, was wir im Worte wahrnehmen, ist noch nicht der Gedanke. Wir brauchen andere Organe, eine andere Organisation als die bloße Wort-Wahrnehmungsorganisation, wenn wir durch das Wort hindurch verstehen wollen den Gedanken, den uns der andere mitteilt.
Und ebenso sind wir ausgestattet mit einem allerdings über unsere ganze Leibesorganisation ausgedehnten Sinn, den wir den Sinn für die Ich-Wahrnehmung des andern nennen können. In dieser Beziehung ist Ja auch unsere Philosophie in der neueren Zeit, man möchte sagen, in die Kinderschuhe hineingeraten, denn man kann heute zum Beispiel oft hören, daß man sagt: Wir begegnen einem andern Menschen, wir wissen, ein Mensch ist so und so geformt. Dadurch, daß uns das Wesen, das uns begegnet, so geformt vorkommt, wie wir uns selber wissen und daß wir als Mensch Ich-behaftet sind, so schließen wir gewissermaßen durch einen unterbewußten Schluß: Aha, der hat auch ein Ich in sich. — Das widerspricht jedem psychologischen Tatbestand. Wer wirklich beobachten kann, der weiß, daß es eine unmittelbare Wahrnehmung ist, nicht ein Analogieschluß, durch die wir zu der Wahrnehmung des andern, des fremden Ich kommen. Es ist eigentlich nur ein Freund, möchte ich sagen, oder ein Verwandter der Göttinger Husserl-Schule, Max Scheler, der eben darauf gekommen ist auf dieses unmittelbare Wahrnehmen des Ich des andern. So daß wir, ich möchte sagen, nach oben hin, über die gewöhnlichen Menschensinne hinaus, noch zu unterscheiden haben drei Sinne, den Sprachsinn, den Gedankensinn, den Ichsinn. Diese Sinne, die kommen in demselben Maße im Laufe der menschlichen Entwickelung hervor, in dem eben dasjenige hervorkommt, was sich nach und nach von der Geburt bis zum Zahnwechsel absondert in derjenigen Wesenheit, die ich Ihnen charakterisiert habe.
Diese drei Sinne, sie weisen uns zunächst auf den Wechselverkehr mit der andern Menschheit hin. Wir werden gewissermaßen hineingeleitet in das soziale Leben unter andern Menschen dadurch, daß wir diese drei Sinne haben. Aber der Weg, der durch diese drei Sinne genommen wird, der wurde eben zum Zwecke der höheren Erkenntnis von den alten, namentlich indischen Weisen in einer andern Art genommen. Es wurde für dieses Ziel der höheren Erkenntnis nicht so die Seele nach den Worten hin bewegt, daß man durch diese Worte zum Verständnis desjenigen kommen wollte, was ein anderer sagte. Es wurde die Seele mit ihren Kräften nicht so zu den Gedanken hingelenkt, daß man dabei die Gedanken des andern wahrnahm, und nicht so zum Ich hingelenkt, daß man dadurch mitfühlend wahrnahm dieses Ich des andern. Das wurde dem gewöhnlichen Leben überlassen. Wenn der Weise sozusagen aus seinem Streben nach der höheren Erkenntnis, aus seinem Verweilen in geistigen Welten, wiederum zurückging in die gewöhnliche Welt, dann brauchte er diese drei Sinne im gewöhnlichen Sinne. Dann aber, wenn er ausbilden wollte die Methode der höheren Erkenntnis, dann brauchte er diese drei Sinne in anderer Art. Er ließ gewissermaßen die Kraft der Seele nicht durchdringen durch das Wort beim Zuhorchen, beim Sprachwahrnehmen, um durch das Wort hindurch auf den andern Menschen begreifend zu kommen, sondern er blieb beim Worte selbst stehen. Er suchte nichts hinter dem Worte. Er lenkte den Strom des Seelenlebens nur bis zum Worte. Dadurch ergab sich ihm ein verstärktes Wahrnehmen des Wortes. Er verzichtete auf das Verstehen von etwas anderem durch das Wort. Er lebte mit seinem ganzen Seelenleben in das Wort hinein, ja er gebrauchte das Wort beziehungsweise die Wortfolge so, daß er sich ganz in das Wort hineinleben konnte. Er bildete gewisse Sprüche aus, einfache, wortschwere Sprüche, bei denen er ganz im Wortklange, im Worttone drinnen zu leben sich bestrebte. Und er ging mit seinem ganzen Seelenleben mit mit dem Klang des Wortes, den er sich vorsagte. Das führte dann zur Ausbildung solchen Lebens in Sprüchen, in den sogenannten «Mantren». Die mantrische Kunst, das Leben in den Sprüchen, es besteht darinnen, daß man nicht durch die Sprüche hindurch das Inhaltliche der Worte versteht, sondern daß man die Sprüche selbst wie ein Musikalisches erlebt, daß man die Sprüche selbst mit der eigenen Seelenkraft verbindet, daß man darinnen bleibt in den Sprüchen, daß man durch fortwährendes Wiederholen seine Seelenkraft, die in den Sprüchen lebt, verstärkt, daß man durch immer und immer fortwährendes Sich-Vorsagen dieser Sprüche seine Seelenkraft verstärkt. Diese Kunst, sie wurde nach und nach in hohem Maße ausgebildet und sie verwandelte jene Kraft, die wir sonst in der Seele tragen, um durch das Wort den andern Menschen zu verstehen, sie verwandelte diese Kraft in eine andere. Es ging in der Seele eine Kraft auf an dem Hersagen und Wiederholen des mantrischen Spruches, es ging in der Seele eine Kraft auf durch die Wiederholung des Mantrams, die nun nicht hinüberführte zu andern Menschen, sondern die hineinführte in die geistige Welt. Und hat man die Seele so erzogen an den Mantren, hat man es so weit gebracht, daß man innerlich verspürt das Weben und Strömen dieser Seelenkraft, die sonst unbewußt bleibt, weil alle Aufmerksamkeit auf das Verstehen des andern durch das Wort gerichtet ist, hat man es dazu gebracht, daß man solche Kraft so fühlt als eine seelische Kraft, wie man sonst fühlt die Muskelanspannung, wenn man mit dem Arm etwas ausführen will, dann hat man sich reif gemacht, zu erfassen dasjenige, was in der Kraft, in der höheren Kraft des Gedankens liegt. Im gewöhnlichen Leben sucht man durch den Gedanken hinüberzukommen zum andern Menschen. Mit dieser Kraft aber ergreift man den Gedanken in einer ganz andern Art. Man ergreift das Gedankenweben in der äußeren Wirklichkeit. Man lebt sich hinein in die äußere Wirklichkeit. Man lebt sich hinauf zu dem, was ich Ihnen beschrieben habe als Inspiration.
Und dann kommt man auch dahin auf diesem Wege, statt sich hinüberzuleben zum Ich des andern Menschen, sich hinaufzuleben zu den Ichen von individualisierten geistigen Wesenheiten, die uns ebenso umgeben, wie uns umgeben die Wesenheiten der sinnlichen Welt. Dasjenige, was ich Ihnen hier schildere, war für den alten orientalischen Weisen eine Selbstverständlichkeit. Er wanderte gewissermaßen seelisch so hinauf zu der Wahrnehmung einer Geistwelt. Er erlangte im höchsten Maße dasjenige, was man Inspiration nennen kann, und er war gerade für diese Inspiration organisiert. Er brauchte nicht so wie der Abendländer zu fürchten, daß sein Ich ihm irgendwie verlorengehen könne bei dieser Wanderung hinaus aus dem Leibe. Und in den späteren Zeiten, in denen, weil die Menschheit schon vorwärtsentwickelt war, auch der Zustand eintrat, daß man sehr leicht ohne sein Ich da hinauskommen konnte in die äußere Welt, da wurde Vorsorge getroffen. Es wurde dafür gesorgt, daß der Betreffende, der der Schüler der höheren Weisheit werden sollte, nicht ungeleitet in diese geistige Welt hineinkam und etwa in jene Zweifelsucht pathologisch verfiel, von der ich in diesen Tagen hier gesprochen habe. In den alten orientalischen Zeiten wäre das wegen der Rasseneigenschaft ja ohnedies nicht zu fürchten gewesen. Aber beim weiter Fortrücken der Menschheit war es doch zu fürchten. Daher jene Vorsicht, welche gerade in den orientalischen Weisheitsschulen strenge gebraucht worden ist, die Schüler zu verweisen darauf, daß sie sich anlehnten an eine nicht äußere Autorität — das, was wir heute unter Autorität verstehen, kam im Grunde genommen erst in der abendländischen Zivilisation auf —, sondern durch ein selbstverständliches Sich-Anpassen an die Verhältnisse suchte man zu entwickeln in dem Schüler ein SichAnlehnen an den Führer, an den Guru. Das, was der Führer darlebte, das, wie der Führer für sich drinnenstand ohne Zweifelsucht, ja auch nur ohne Hinneigung zur Zweifelsucht, in der geistigen Welt, das nahm einfach der Schüler wahr, und an diesem Wahrnehmen gesundete er selbst so weit bei seinem Hineingehen in die Inspiration, daß ihn die pathologische Zweifelsucht nicht erreichen konnte.
Aber auch wenn so dasjenige, was geistig-seelisch ist, bewußt herausgezogen wird aus dem physischen Leib, stellt sich ja dann ein anderes ein. Es stellt sich das ein, daß dann der Mensch wiederum eine Verbindung herstellen muß mit dem physischen Leib, die jetzt auch bewußter werden muß. Ich habe heute morgen gesagt, es darf nicht das Pathologische eintreten, daß der Mensch gewissermaßen nur egoismusbehaftet, nicht liebend, untertaucht in seinen physischen Leib, denn dadurch ergreift er in falscher Weise seinen physischen Leib. Auf naturgemäße Weise, so sagte ich, ergreift ja der Mensch seinen physischen Leib, indem er zwischen dem siebenten und vierzehnten Jahre diesem Leib den Liebesinstinkt einprägt. Aber gerade auch dieses naturgemäße Einprägen des Liebesinstinktes kann pathologisch verlaufen. Dann stellen sich eben diejenigen Schäden heraus, die ich als die pathologischen Zustände heute morgen geschildert habe. Das allerdings konnte auch den Schülern der alten orientalischen Weisen passieren, daß, wenn sie heraußen waren aus ihrem physischen Leib, sie nicht wiederum die Möglichkeit fanden, das Geistig-Seelische in der rechten Weise mit diesem physischen Leibe zu verbinden. Da wurde eine andere Vorsichtsmaßregel gebraucht, eine Vorsichtsmaßregel, auf die ja die Psychiater, manche wenigstens, zurückgekommen sind, indem sie Menschen, die an Agoraphobie oder dergleichen erkrankt sind, zu heilen hatten. Das sind Waschungen, kalte Waschungen. Das sind durchaus physische Maßregeln, die da zu ergreifen sind. Und wenn Sie hören, daß in den orientalischen Mysterien - das sind die Initiationsschulen, die Schulen, die zur Inspiration führen sollten — auf der einen Seite die Vorsichtsmaßregel der Anlehnung an den Guru gebraucht worden ist, so hören Sie auf der andern Seite von allem möglichen, was an Vorsichtsmaßregeln durch kalte Waschungen und Ähnliches angewendet worden ist. Versteht man die menschliche Natur so, wie man sie durch Geisteswissenschaft verstehen kann, dann versteht man auch dasjenige, was sonst ziemlich rätselhaft klingt in diesen alten Mysterien. Geschützt wurde der Mensch davor, daß er durch eine mangelhafte Verbindung seines Geistig-Seelischen mit dem Physischen ein falsches Raumgefühl bekam, ein falsches Raumgefühl, das ihn zu Platzfurcht und Ähnlichem treiben konnte, das ihn auch dazu treiben konnte, nun nicht in der regelrechten Weise seinen sozialen Verkehr mit dem andern Menschen zu suchen. Das ist ja eine Gefahr, aber eine Gefahr, die vermieden werden kann und soll und muß bei jeder Anleitung zur höheren Erkenntnis, das ist eine Gefahr, weil, wenn der Mensch auf diese Weise den Weg zur Inspiration sucht, wie ich es beschrieben habe, er dann in einer gewissen Weise ausschaltet die Wege der Sprache, des Denkens zum Ich, zu dem andern Menschen, und er dann, wenn er in krankhafter Weise sein Leibliches verläßt, auch wenn es nicht zum Zwecke einer höheren Erkenntnis ist, sondern wenn es nur herausgefordert ist durch pathologische Zustände, er dann abkommen kann davon, den Wechselverkehr mit den andern Menschen in der richtigen Weise zu pflegen. Er kann dadurch dann geradezu das, was sich in normaler, ja in zweckentsprechender Weise entwickelt durch geregelte Geistesforschung, er kann das abnorm pathologisch entwickeln. Dann stellt er eine Verbindung des Geistig-Seelischen mit seinem Leibe her, so daß er sich so egoistisch in seinem Leibe fühlt durch ein zu starkes Untertauchen in seinen Leib, daß er den Verkehr mit andern Menschen hassen lernt und er ein unsoziales Wesen wird. Man kann oftmals in recht fürchterlicher Weise die Folgen eines solchen pathologischen Zustandes in der Welt kennenlernen. Ich habe ein merkwürdiges Menschenexemplar dieser Gattung kennengelernt, ein Menschenexemplar, welches aus einer Familie stammte, die neigte zu einem gewissen Freiwerden des Geistig-Seelischen vom Physischen, die auch Persönlichkeiten in sich schloß -— eine lernte ich auch sehr genau kennen -, die den Weg in die geistigen Welten hinein suchten. Aber gewissermaßen ein entartetes Individuum dieser Familie bildete dieselbe Tendenz in krankhafter, pathologischer Weise aus und kam zuletzt dazu, überhaupt nichts mehr an den eigenen Leib herankommen zu lassen, was irgendwie von der Außenwelt her an diesen Leib herankommen wollte. Essen mußte dieser Mensch wohl, aber — wir reden ja unter erwachsenen Menschen — waschen tat er sich mit seinen eigenen Ausscheidungen, weil er Furcht hatte vor jedem Wasser, das von der Außenwelt kam. Und was er sonst zu tun pflegte, um sich ganz und gar abzuschließen, das mag ich nun doch nicht schildern, was er alles tat, um diesen Leib abzusondern von der Außenwelt, um sich ganz und gar zu einem antisozialen Wesen zu machen, was er alles tat, weil sein Geistig-Seelisches zu tief eingetaucht war in die Leiblichkeit, weil es zu stark, zu intensiv verbunden war mit dieser Leiblichkeit.
Es liegt durchaus auch im Sinn des Goetheanismus, in dieser Weise das eine, das zum Höchsten führt, was wir zunächst als Erdenmenschen erreichen können, zusammenzubringen mit demjenigen, was in die pathologischen Niederungen führt. Man braucht sich ja nur ein wenig bekanntzumachen mit der Goetheschen Metamorphosenlehre und man wird das sehen. Goethe sucht zu erkennen, wie sich die einzelnen Glieder, zum Beispiel der Pflanze, auseinander entwickeln, und damit er erkennt, wie sich die Dinge metamorphosieren, blickt er mit besonderer Vorliebe hin auf diejenigen Zustände, die durch Entartung eines Blattes, durch Entartung einer Blüte, durch Entartung der Staubgefäße entstehen. Goethe ist sich klar darüber, daß im Anblicke des Pathologischen dem richtig Schauenden sich gerade die wahre Wesenheit des Gesunden enthüllen könne. Und man kann auch nur einen richtigen Weg in die geistige Welt hinein tun, wenn man weiß, worinnen das Wesen der Menschennatur eigentlich liegt, in welch mannigfaltiger Weise sich dieses komplizierte Wesen der Menschennatur äußern kann.
Aber wir sehen auch an anderem, daß gewissermaßen der Orientale noch in der Spätzeit darauf angelegt war, beim Worte stehenzubleiben, nicht durch das Wort hindurch die Seelenkräfte zu leiten, sondern im Worte drinnen zu leben. Wir sehen es zum Beispiel an den Reden Buddhas. Man lese einmal diese Reden Buddhas mit ihren vielen Wiederholungen. Ich habe abendländische Menschen kennengelernt, die liebten diejenigen Buddha-Ausgaben, wo die vielen Wiederholungen bis auf den einmaligen Wortlaut eines Satzes zusammengestrichen waren, und dann glaubten die Leute, wenn sie einen so zusammengestrichenen Buddha hatten, in dem alles nur einmal vorkommt, da gewinnen sie eine Erkenntnis von dem wirklichen Inhalt desjenigen, was Buddha eigentlich gemeint hat. So bar allen Verständnisses des orientalischen Wesens ist nach und nach die abendländische Zivilisation geworden. Denn wenn man nur dasjenige aufnimmt, was wortwörtlich in den Reden des Buddha liegt, was jenem Inhalte nach, den wir als abendländische Menschen schätzen, jenem Inhalte nach in den Reden Buddhas liegt, dann nimmt man nicht dasjenige, was Buddhas Anschauungen sind, in sich auf, sondern die nimmt man nur auf, wenn man mitgeht mit den Wiederholungen, wenn man will leben in den Worten, wenn man will leben in jener Verstärkung der Seelenkraft, die durch die Wiederholungen entsteht. Wenn man sich nicht aneignet eine Fähigkeit, etwas zu empfinden bei den immer fortwährenden Wiederholungen und der rhythmischen Wiederkehr gewisser Passagen, so kommt man nicht hinein in dasjenige, was mit dem Buddhismus eigentlich gemeint ist.
So muß man sich bekanntmachen mit dem inneren Wesen der morgenländischen Kultur. Denn ohne diese Bekanntschaft mit dem inneren Wesen der morgenländischen Kultur gelangt man schließlich nicht einmal zu einem wirklichen Verständnis unserer abendländischen Religionsbekenntnisse, denn im Grunde genommen stammen letzten Endes diese abendländischen Religionsbekenntnisse aus der orientalischen Weisheit. Etwas anderes ist das Christus-Ereignis. Das ist eine Tatsache. Das steht da als eine Tatsache in der Erdenentwickelung. Aber die Art und Weise, wie man das zu verstehen hat, was durch das Mysterium von Golgatha geschehen ist, die war durchaus in den ersten Jahrhunderten der christlichen Entwickelung aus der orientalischen Weisheit heraus genommen. Mit orientalischer Weisheit verstand man zunächst das Grundereignis des Christentums. Aber alles schreitet vorwärts. Dasjenige, was einstmals im Oriente vorhanden war in dieser Urweisheit, die durch Inspiration errungen wurde, im Griechentum ist es noch bemerkbar, indem es sich herüberentwickelt hat aus dem Oriente nach Griechenland, im Griechentum ist es noch bemerkbar als Kunst. In der griechischen Kunst wurde denn doch noch etwas anderes erlebt als dasjenige, was wir gewöhnlich heute in der Kunst erleben. In der griechischen Kunst wurde noch erlebt dasjenige, wozu sich Goethe wiederum heranerziehen wollte, indem er seine innersten Triebe ausdrückte mit dem Worte: Wem die Natur ihr offenbares Geheimnis zu enthüllen beginnt, der empfindet eine tiefe Sehnsucht nach ihrer würdigsten Auslegerin, der Kunst. — Für den Griechen war die Kunst noch ein Hineingleiten in die Geheimnisse des Weltendaseins, war die Kunst nicht bloß eine Offenbarung der Menschenphantasie, sondern eine Offenbarung desjenigen, was aus einer Wechselwirkung der menschlichen Phantasie mit den Offenbarungen der Geistwelt durch Inspiration hervordringt. Aber immer mehr und mehr, ich möchte sagen, verdünnte sich dasjenige, was noch durch die griechische Kunst floß, und wurde zum Inhalte der abendländischen Religionsbekenntnisse. Wir haben es zu tun beim Ursprunge der Urweisheit mit einem vollinhaltlichen Geistesleben, wir haben es aber in der weiteren Entwickelung damit zu tun, daß dieses vollinhaltliche Geistesleben sich verdünnt und daß es endlich ankommt im Abendländischen und den Inhalt der abendländischen Religionsbekenntnisse bildet. So daß diejenigen Menschen, die dann für ein anderes Zeitalter veranlagt sind, in dem, was da als Verdünnung entstanden ist, nur etwas sehen können, dem sie eben mit Skepsis begegnen. Und im Grunde genommen ist es nichts anderes als die Reaktion des abendländischen Gemütes auf die orientalische Weisheit, die in die Dekadenz gekommen ist, was sich als atheistischer Skeptizismus im Abendlande allmählich entwickelt und was immer weiter und weiter kommen muß, wenn nicht eine andere Geistesströmung ihm begegnet. Ebensowenig wie man ein Naturwesen, das eine bestimmte Entwickelung, sagen wir, eine Altersentwickelung erreicht hat, wiederum durchgreifend jung machen kann, ebensowenig kann man dasjenige, was sich geistig-seelisch entwickelt, wenn es in einen Alterszustand verfallen ist, wiederum durchgreifend jung machen. Aus den Religionsbekenntnissen des Abendlandes, die Abkömmlinge sind der orientalischen Urweisheit, läßt sich nichts machen, was die Menschheit wiederum voll erfüllen kann, wenn diese Menschheit vorrückt aus den Erkenntnissen heraus, die nun für diese abendländische Menschheit seit drei bis vier Jahrhunderten aus dem Naturwissen heraus und aus der Naturbeobachtung heraus gewonnen worden sind. Es muß sich ein immer weitergehender Skeptizismus entwickeln. Und derjenige, der die Weltentwickelung durchschaut, der kann geradezu davon sprechen, daß von Osten nach Westen ein Zug der Entwickelung geht, welcher nach dem Skeptizismus sich hinbewegt, das heißt, daß sich von Osten nach Westen ein Geistesleben bewegt, das, indem es aufgenommen wird von den immer mehr und mehr in das Abendländische sich hineinlebenden Gemütern, zu einem immer stärkeren Skeptizismus führen muß. Der Skeptizismus ist einfach der Marsch des Geisteslebens von dem Osten nach dem Westen, und ihm muß begegnet werden mit einer andern geistigen Strömung, die nunmehr geht vom Westen nach dem Osten. Und wir leben in der Kreuzung dieser geistigen Strömungen und wollen sehen im weiteren Verlaufe dieser Betrachtungen, wie wir in der Kreuzung drinnen leben.
Zunächst ist aber darauf aufmerksam zu machen, daß das abendländische Gemüt mehr daraufhin angelegt ist, eine andere Entwickelung nach den höheren Welten zu nehmen als das morgenländische Gemüt. Wie das morgenländische Gemüt strebt nach der Inspiration zunächst und daraufhin rassenmäßig veranlagt ist, so strebt das abendländische Gemüt durch seine besondere Seelenanlage - es sind jetzt sogar weniger Rassenanlagen als Seelenanlagen — nach der Imagination. Es ist nicht mehr das Erleben desjenigen, was im mantrischen Spruch musikalisch vorhanden ist, nach dem wir als Abendländer streben sollen, es ist ein anderes. Wir sollen als Abendländer so streben, daß wir nun nicht besonders stark verfolgen denjenigen Weg, der folgt dem Hinaustreten des Geistig-Seelischen aus dem Leibe, sondern daß wir vielmehr folgen dem Späteren, das eintritt, wenn sich wiederum bewußt verbinden soll im Ergreifen des physischen Leibes das GeistigSeelische mit der physischen Organisation. Wir sehen das natürliche Phänomen in der Entstehung des Leibesinstinktes: Während der Orientale seine Weisheit mehr gesucht hat, indem er zu einem Höheren ausgebildet hat dasjenige, was zwischen der Geburt und dem siebenten Jahre liegt, ist der Abendländer mehr dazu organisiert, dasjenige weiter zu verfolgen, was zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife liegt, indem in das Geistig-Seelische hinaufgeführt wird dasjenige, was für diese Epoche der Menschheit das Natürliche ist. Das aber erlangen wir, wenn wir — ebenso wie man hineinnehmen muß in die Inspiration das Ich — das Ich nun heraußen lassen, indem wir wieder untertauchen in unsere Leiblichkeit, aber nicht es etwa unbeschäftigt lassen heraußen, nicht etwa es vergessen, nicht etwa es aufgeben, es in die Unbewußtheit hinunterdrängen, sondern gerade dieses Ich verbinden mit dem reinen Denken, mit dem klaren, scharfen Denken, so daß man zuletzt das innere Erlebnis hat: Dein Ich ist ganz stark durchzogen von all dem scharfen Denken, zu dem du es zuletzt gebracht hast. Man kann geradezu dieses Erlebnis des Untertauchens haben in einer sehr klaren, in einer sehr ausgesprochenen Weise. Und ich darf Ihnen vielleicht an dieser Stelle von einem persönlichen Erlebnis sprechen, weil Sie dieses Erlebnis hinführen wird zu dem, was ich hier eigentlich meine.
Ich habe Ihnen gesprochen von der Konzeption meiner «Philosophie der Freiheit». Diese «Philosophie der Freiheit» ist wirklich ein Versuch, in bescheidener Weise es bis zum reinen Denken zu treiben, bis zu jenem reinen Denken, in dem das Ich leben kann, in dem das Ich sich halten kann. Dann kann man, wenn man dieses reine Denken auf diese Weise erfaßt hat, ein anderes anstreben. Man kann dann dieses Denken, das man jetzt dem Ich läßt, dem sich frei und unabhängig in freier Geistigkeit fühlenden Ich überläßt, man kann dann dieses reine Denken von dem Wahrnehmungsprozesse ausschalten, und man kann gewissermaßen, während man sonst im gewöhnlichen Leben, sagen wir, die Farbe sieht, indem man sie zugleich mit dem Vorstellen durchdringt, man kann die Vorstellungen herausheben aus dem ganzen Verarbeitungsprozeß der Wahrnehmungen und kann die Wahrnehmungen selber direkt in unsere Leiblichkeit hineinziehen.
Goethe war schon auf dem Wege. Er hat schon die ersten Schritte gemacht. Man lese im letzten Kapitel seiner Farbenlehre: «Die sinnlich-sittliche Wirkung der Farbe», wie er bei jeder Wirkung etwas empfindet, das zugleich tief sich vereinigt nicht bloß mit dem Wahrnehmungsvermögen, sondern mit dem ganzen Menschen, wie er das Gelbe, das Rote als attackierende Farbe empfindet, die gewissermaßen ganz durch ihn durchdringt, ihn mit Wärme erfüllt, wie er ansieht das Blaue und das Violette als diejenigen Farben, die einen gewissermaßen aus sich selber herausreißen, als die kalten Farben. Der ganze Mensch erlebt etwas bei der Sinneswahrnehmung. Die Sinneswahrnehmung mit ihrem Inhalte geht unter in die Leiblichkeit und es bleibt gewissermaßen darüber schweben das Ich mit dem reinen Gedankeninhalt. Wir schalten das Denken aus, indem wir also intensiver als sonst, wo wir den Wahrnehmungsinhalt durch die Vorstellungen abschwächen, nun den ganzen Wahrnehmungsinhalt hereinnehmen und uns mit ihm erfüllen. Wir erziehen uns in besonderer Weise zu einem solchen Erfüllen unserer selbst mit dem Wahrnehmungsinhalte, wenn wir dasjenige, wozu als zu einer Entartung der Orientale gekommen ist, das symbolische Vorstellen, das bildliche Vorstellen, wenn wir das systematisch treiben, wenn wir, statt daß wir im reinen Gedanken, im gesetzmäßig logischen Gedanken den Wahrnehmungsinhalt auffassen, nunmehr diesen Wahrnehmungsinhalt in Symbolen, in Bildern auffassen und dadurch ihn gewissermaßen mit Umgehung der Gedanken in uns hineinströmen lassen, wenn wir uns durchdringen mit all der Sattheit der Farben, der Sattheit des Tones dadurch, daß wir nicht begrifflich, daß wir symbolisch, bildlich zu unserer Schulung die Vorstellungen innerlich erleben. Dadurch, daß wir nicht mit dem Gedankeninhalt, wie es die Assoziations-Psychologie machen will, unser Inneres durchstrahlen, sondern daß wir es durchstrahlen mit diesem durch Symbole und Bilder angedeuteten Wahrnehmungsinhalt, dadurch strömt uns von innen entgegen dasjenige, was in uns als ätherischer Leib, astralischer Leib lebendig ist, dadurch lernen wir die Tiefe unseres Bewußtseins und unserer Seele kennen. Man lernt wirklich das Innere des Menschen auf diese Weise kennen, nicht durch jene schwafelnde Mystik, die oftmals von nebulosen Geistern als ein Weg zum inneren Gotte angegeben wird, die aber zu nichts anderem führt als zu einer äußerlichen Abstraktion, bei der man doch, wenn man ein ganzer, voller Mensch sein will, nicht stehenbleiben kann.
Will man den Menschen wirklich physiologisch erforschen, dann muß man mit Ausschaltung des Denkens auf diese Weise das bildhafte Vorstellen nach innen treiben, so daß die Leiblichkeit des Menschen in Imaginationen darauf reagiert. Dies ist allerdings ein Weg, der in der abendländischen Entwickelung erst im Beginne ist, aber es ist der Weg, der eingeschlagen werden muß, wenn demjenigen, was vom Oriente herüberströmt und was in die Dekadenz führen würde, wenn es allein Geltung hätte, wenn dem etwas, das ihm gewachsen ist, entgegengestellt werden soll, so daß wir zu einem Aufstieg und nicht zu einem Niederstieg unserer Zivilisation kommen sollen. Aber man kann sagen: Im allgemeinen ist die menschliche Sprache selbst noch nicht so weit, daß sie nun jene Erlebnisse, die man da antrifft im Inneren seiner Seele, voll ausgestalten kann. Und hier ist es, wo ich ein persönliches Erlebnis Ihnen erzählen möchte.
Ich habe vor vielen Jahren auf einem gewissen Gebiete versucht, in Worte zu kleiden dasjenige, was man nennen kann menschliche Sinnenlehre. Es ist mir in einer Weise gelungen, das in Worte zu kleiden, was solche menschliche Sinneslehre, die Lehre von den zwölf Sinnen ist, im mündlichen Vortrage, weil man da noch eher die Möglichkeit hat, die Sprache so zu drehen und zu wenden, und durch Wiederholungen zu sorgen für das Verständnis, daß man die Mängel unserer Sprache, die solch übersinnlichem Wesen noch nicht gewachsen ist, nicht so stark fühlt. Aber als ich dann — es war, wie gesagt, vor vielen Jahren - aufschreiben wollte dasjenige, was ich als eigentliche Anthroposophie gegeben habe in Vorträgen, um es zu einem Buche zu formen, da stellte sich das Merkwürdige heraus, daß das äußerlich Erlebte bei seinem Hineintragen in das Innere etwas so Sensitives wurde, daß die Sprache nicht die Worte hergab, und ich glaube, fünf bis sechs Jahre lag der Anfang des Gedruckten, mehrere Bogen, in der Druckerei. Ich konnte, weil ich das Ganze in dem Stil fortschreiben wollte, wie es angefangen war, einfach weil die Sprache zunächst das nicht hergab für meine damalige Entwickelungsstufe, was ich erreichen wollte, nicht weiterschreiben. Nachher ist eine Überlastung mit Arbeiten gekommen, und ich konnte bis jetzt dieses Buch noch nicht fertigmachen. Derjenige, der es weniger gewissenhaft nimmt mit dem, was er aus der geistigen Welt heraus seinen Mitmenschen gibt, der mag vielleicht lächeln über ein solches Stehenbleiben bei einer zeitlich unüberwindlichen Schwierigkeit. Wer aber wirklich erlebt hat und wer zu durchdringen vermag mit dem vollen Verantwortlichkeitsgefühl dasjenige, was sich ergibt, wenn man schildern will die Wege, die nun die abendländische Menschheit zur Imagination hin nehmen muß, der weiß, daß vieles notwendig ist, um gerade für eine solche Schilderung die richtigen Worte zu finden. Als Schulungsweg ist es verhältnismäßig einfach zu schildern. Das ist in meinem Buche «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» geschehen. Aber, indem man ganz bestimmte Resultate erzielen will, wie es das Resultat war, die Wesenheit der menschlichen Sinne selber, also eines Teiles der inneren Menschheitsorganisation zu beschreiben, wenn man solche ganz bestimmte Resultate erzielen soll, dann ergibt sich die Schwierigkeit, Imaginationen zu erfassen und sie in scharfen Konturen durch die Worte hinzustellen.
Dennoch, dieser Weg muß von der abendländischen Menschheit gegangen werden. Und geradeso wie der Morgenländer an seinen Mantren empfunden hat das Hineingehen in die geistige Welt des Außeren, so muß der Abendländer über alle Assoziations-Psychologie hinaus das Hineinschreiten des Menschen in seine eigene Wesenheit dadurch lernen, daß er zur imaginativen Welt kommt. Nur dadurch, daß er zur imaginativen Welt kommt, wird er eine wahre Menschheitserkenntnis erringen. Und diese wahre Menschheitserkenntnis, die muß zum Fortschritte der Menschheit errungen werden. Und weil wir in einer viel bewußteren Weise leben müssen, als die Orientalen gelebt haben, so dürfen wir nicht einfach etwa sagen: Nun, wir können es ja der Zukunft überlassen, ob nicht durch natürliche Vorgänge sich allmählich die Menschheit diese imaginative Welt aneignet — nein, diese imaginative Welt muß, weil wir in das Stadium der bewußten Entwickelung der Menschheit getreten sind, auch bewußt angestrebt werden, und man darf nicht bei gewissen Etappen stehenbleiben. Denn, was geschieht, wenn man auf gewissen Etappen stehenbleibt? Dann setzt man nicht das Richtige dem immer mehr überhandnehmenden Skeptizismus, der von Osten nach Westen zieht, entgegen, sondern dann setzt man dasjenige entgegen, was doch davon herrührt, daß das Geistig-Seelische zu gründlich, zu tief, unbewußt sich verbindet mit dem physischen Leibe, daß gewissermaßen eine zu dichte Verbindung entsteht des Geistig-Seelischen mit dem physischen Leibe.
Ja, man kann nicht nur materialistisch denken, man kann auch materialistisch sein, indem sich das Geistig-Seelische zu stark verbindet mit dem physischen Leibe. Dann lebt man nicht mit dem Ich frei in den Begriffen des reinen Denkens, zu denen man es gebracht hat. Und taucht man mit dem bildhaft gewordenen Wahrnehmen in die Leiblichkeit unter, dann taucht man mit dem Ich und mit den Begriffen in die Leiblichkeit unter. Und wenn man das dann verbreitet, wenn man mit dem die Menschen durchdringt, dann entsteht dadurch die geistige Erscheinung, die wir gut kennen, der Dogmatismus aller Sorten. Der Dogmatismus aller Sorten ist nichts anderes, als ins Geistig-Seelische übersetzt dasjenige, was dann auf einer tieferen Stufe ins Pathologische übertragen in der Platzfurcht und dergleichen zutage tritt, und was deshalb, weil es verwandt ist, sich auch in etwas zeigt, was eine Metamorphose der Furcht ist, in allerlei Aberglauben. Aus dem, was sich da als Dogmatismus entwickelt hat, was, ich möchte sagen, aus dem unbewußten Drang nach Imagination entsteht, der aber zurückgehalten wird durch Gewaltmächte, aus dem, was sich da entwickelt, entstehen alle Arten des Dogmatismus. Sie müssen allmählich ersetzt werden durch dasjenige, was entsteht, wenn man die Ideenwelt in der Region des Ich erhält, wenn man zur Imagination schreitet, dadurch den Menschen in seiner wahren Gestalt in sein inneres Erlebnis aufnimmt und allmählich auf eine andere Art den abendländischen Weg in die geistige Welt hinein geht. Dieser andere Weg durch die Imagination, er ist derjenige, der begründen muß dasjenige, was als Geisteswissenschaftsströmung, als Geistesentwickelung von dem Westen nach dem Osten hin sich bewegen muß, wenn die Menschheit vorwärtsschreiten will. Das aber ist dasjenige, was jetzt eine wichtigste Angelegenheit der Menschheit ist, zu erkennen, wie der wahre Weg der Imagination sein soll, welchen Weg die abendländische Geisteswissenschaft einzuschlagen hat, wenn sie gewachsen sein will dem, was einstmals die orientalische Weisheit, auf die den Rasseeigentümlichkeiten jener Völker entsprechende Art als Inspiration, als Inspirationsgehalt gewonnen hat. Nur wenn wir der entarteten Inspiration des Morgenlandes entgegenstellen können geistgetragene, wirklichkeitsdurchsättigte Imaginationen, die auf dem Wege zu einer höheren Geistkultur sind, wenn wir die als einen Geisteszug von Westen nach Osten hervorrufen können, dann tun wir dasjenige, was eigentlich in den Untergründen der Menschheitsimpulse lebt, wonach die Menschheit hinstrebt, und was sich heute noch in Explosionen sozialer Natur entlädt, weil es nicht herauskommen kann.
Wie nun der Weg der Imagination eigentlich eingeschlagen werden muß, wie nun der Weg zu den höheren Welten für anthroposophisch orientierte Geisteswissenschaft sich gestaltet, davon wollen wir dann morgen weiter sprechen.
Seventh Lecture
From my explanations about the limits of knowledge of nature, it should at least have become clear to some extent what difference there is between what is called knowledge of higher worlds in spiritual science and the knowledge we speak of from ordinary consciousness in everyday life or in ordinary science. In everyday life and in ordinary science, we remain limited in our powers of cognition to what we have acquired through education, ordinary education, which has brought us to a certain point in life, and to what we are able to make of the inherited qualities, the general human qualities, through this education. What is called knowledge of higher worlds in anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is based on taking further education, further development, into one's own hands, so to speak, on acquiring an awareness of how, just as one can advance as a child to ordinary consciousness, so in the further course of life, through self-education, one can advance to a higher consciousness. And it is only to this higher consciousness that those things are revealed which we otherwise seek in vain at the two limits of natural knowledge, at the material limit and at the limit of consciousness, whereby consciousness here is understood in the ordinary sense. The ancient Oriental sages spoke of such an elevated consciousness, through which a further level of reality becomes accessible to human beings beyond ordinary everyday reality. They spoke of such a consciousness, and they sought such a higher development through those means of inner self-education that corresponded to their racial characteristics and their stage of development. Only when one recognizes what this higher consciousness is, can one understand the true nature of the world. and they strove for such a higher development through those means of inner self-education that corresponded to their racial characteristics and their stage of development. Only when one recognizes what is revealed to human beings through such a higher development does one fully perceive the meaning of what shines forth to us from the ancient Oriental wisdom texts. If one then has to characterize what these sages took as their path of development, one must say: It was a path of inspiration. At that time, humanity was, so to speak, predisposed to inspiration. And in order to understand these paths of development into the higher realms of knowledge, it will be good if we first prepare ourselves by clarifying what the path of development of these ancient Oriental sages actually was. I would like to point out right away that this path can no longer be that of our Western civilization, because humanity is in the process of development; humanity is moving forward. And those who, as many have done, want to return to the old Eastern wisdom teachings in order to embark on higher paths of development, actually want to turn back the development of humanity, or they show that they have no real understanding of human progress. We live with ordinary consciousness in our world of thoughts, in our world of feelings, in our world of will, and we justify what surges up and down in the soul as thoughts, feelings, and will; we justify it initially by recognizing it. It is also the external perceptions, the perceptions of the physical-sensory world, that actually awaken our consciousness in the first place.
Now it is important to understand that a certain different behavior was necessary for the Eastern sages, for the so-called initiates of the East, a different behavior than that which human beings have in ordinary life in relation to the treatment of perceptions, thinking, feeling, and willing. We can come to an understanding of what actually existed as a path of development into the higher worlds if we consider the following: At certain stages of life, we develop what we call the spiritual-soul life toward greater freedom and independence. We have been able to characterize how, with the change of teeth, the spiritual-soul element that works in an organizing way in the body during the first years of childhood then emancipates itself, becomes free, so to speak, how the human being then lives freely in this spiritual-soul element with his ego, how this spiritual-soul element yields to him, whereas previously, if I may express it this way, it was occupied with organizing the body. But now, as we grow more and more into life, something arises that initially prevents the development of this liberated spiritual-soul life into the spiritual world from emerging into ordinary consciousness. As human beings, we must make our way in life between birth and death in such a way that we are suited to the outer world of the earth. We must acquire those abilities that give us the power of orientation in the outer, sensory-physical world. We must also give ourselves those abilities that make us useful members of the social community with other human beings.
What occurs here is threefold. Three things bring us into the right relationship with the outer human world in particular and regulate our interaction with it: language, the ability to understand the thoughts of our fellow human beings, and also an understanding, a kind of perception, of the other person's ego. By saying these three things: perception of language, perception of thoughts, perception of the self, we are expressing something that seems simple, but which is by no means so simple for those who strive for knowledge in a serious and conscientious manner. We usually speak only of five senses, to which modern physiology adds a few more, inner senses. So we do not have a complete system of the senses within external science. I will speak more about this point later. Today, however, I would just like to note that it is an illusion to believe that with the sense of hearing, with the apparatus of hearing, and with what modern physiology dreams of as the apparatus of hearing, the understanding of language is already given. Just as we have a sense of hearing, so we have a sense of speech. This does not mean the sense that is called that, which enables us to speak, but rather the sense that enables us to understand speech perception in the same way that the sense of hearing enables us to perceive sounds as such. And once we have a complete physiology, we will know that this sense of language is entirely analogous to the other senses, that it can rightly be addressed as a sense in its own right. It is simply more widespread within the human organism than some other, more localized senses. But it is a sense that can be sharply defined. And in the same way, we have a sense that extends almost throughout our entire physicality for perceiving the thoughts of others. For what we perceive in words is not yet the thought. We need other organs, a different organization than the mere word-perception organization, if we want to understand through words the thoughts that others communicate to us.
And in the same way, we are equipped with a sense that extends throughout our entire physical organization, which we can call the sense for the ego-perception of others. In this respect, our philosophy in modern times has also taken its first steps, one might say, because today one often hears people say, for example: We encounter another human being, we know that a human being is shaped in such and such a way. Because the being we encounter appears to us to be shaped in the way we know ourselves to be, and because we as human beings are endowed with an ego, we conclude, as it were, through a subconscious inference: Aha, he also has an ego within him. — This contradicts every psychological fact. Anyone who can really observe knows that it is direct perception, not an analogy, that leads us to the perception of the other, the foreign ego. It is actually only a friend, I would say, or a relative of the Göttingen Husserl School, Max Scheler, who came up with this immediate perception of the other's ego. So that, I would say, above and beyond the ordinary human senses, we still have to distinguish three senses: the sense of language, the sense of thought, and the sense of ego. These senses emerge in the course of human development to the same extent that what gradually separates itself from birth to the change of teeth emerges in the essence that I have characterized for you.
These three senses initially point us toward interaction with other human beings. We are, in a sense, led into social life among other people by virtue of having these three senses. But the path taken through these three senses was taken in a different way by the ancient sages, especially those in India, for the purpose of higher knowledge. For the purpose of higher knowledge, the soul was not moved by words in such a way that one wanted to understand what another person was saying through these words. The soul was not directed with its powers toward thoughts in such a way that one perceived the thoughts of another, nor was it directed toward the I in such a way that one perceived the I of another with empathy. That was left to ordinary life. When the wise man, so to speak, returned from his striving for higher knowledge, from his dwelling in spiritual worlds, back to the ordinary world, he needed these three senses in the ordinary sense. But then, when he wanted to develop the method of higher knowledge, he needed these three senses in a different way. He did not allow the power of the soul to penetrate through the word when listening, when perceiving speech, in order to understand the other person through the word, but he remained with the word itself. He sought nothing behind the word. He directed the flow of his soul life only as far as the word. This gave him a heightened perception of the word. He renounced understanding anything else through the word. He lived his whole soul life into the word; indeed, he used the word or the sequence of words in such a way that he could live himself completely into the word. He formed certain sayings, simple, word-heavy sayings, in which he strove to live entirely in the sound of the words, in the tone of the words. And he went along with his whole soul life with the sound of the words he recited to himself. This then led to the development of such a life in sayings, in the so-called “mantras.” The art of mantras, of living in sayings, consists in not understanding the content of the words through the sayings, but in experiencing the sayings themselves as something musical, in connecting the sayings themselves with one's own soul power, in remaining within the sayings, in strengthening one's soul power, which lives in the sayings, through constant repetition. and that by repeating these sayings over and over again, one strengthens one's soul power. This art was gradually developed to a high degree, and it transformed the power that we otherwise carry in our souls to understand other people through words, it transformed this power into something else. A power arose in the soul through the recitation and repetition of the mantric saying; a power arose in the soul through the repetition of the mantra, which now did not lead to other people, but led into the spiritual world. And if one has trained the soul in this way with mantras, if one has reached the point where one feels within oneself the weaving and flowing of this soul force, which otherwise remains unconscious because all attention is directed toward understanding others through words, then one has brought oneself to the point where one feels this force as a spiritual force, just as one otherwise feels the tension of the muscles when you want to do something with your arm, then you have made yourself ready to grasp that which lies in the power, in the higher power of thought. In ordinary life, you seek to reach other people through your thoughts. But with this power, you grasp thoughts in a completely different way. You grasp the web of thoughts in external reality. You live your way into external reality. You live your way up to what I have described to you as inspiration.
And then, instead of living your way over to the I of another human being, you also arrive at this point by living your way up to the I's of individualized spiritual beings who surround us just as the beings of the sensory world surround us. What I am describing to you here was a matter of course for the ancient Oriental sages. They wandered, as it were, spiritually upward to the perception of a spiritual world. They attained to the highest degree what can be called inspiration, and they were organized precisely for this inspiration. Unlike Westerners, they did not need to fear that their ego would somehow be lost during this journey out of the body. And in later times, when humanity had already evolved to the point where it was very easy to enter the outer world without one's ego, precautions were taken. It was ensured that the person who was to become a student of higher wisdom did not enter this spiritual world unguided and fall into the pathological doubt I have spoken of here in recent days. In ancient Oriental times, this would not have been a cause for concern anyway, due to the racial characteristics. But as humanity progressed, it became a cause for concern. Hence the caution that was strictly exercised in the Oriental schools of wisdom to point out to the students that they should not rely on an external authority — what we understand today as authority only really emerged in Western civilization — but rather through a natural adaptation to circumstances, seeking to develop in the student a leaning toward the leader, the guru. What the leader experienced, how the leader stood within himself without doubt, indeed without even a tendency toward doubt, in the spiritual world, was simply perceived by the student, and through this perception he himself was healed to such an extent in his entry into inspiration that pathological doubt could not reach him.
But even if what is spiritual and soul-like is consciously drawn out of the physical body, something else then sets in. What sets in is that the human being must then reestablish a connection with the physical body, which must now also become more conscious. I said this morning that the pathological must not occur, that the human being must not, as it were, be egoistic, unloving, submerged in his physical body, because then he grasps his physical body in the wrong way. In a natural way, I said, the human being grasps his physical body by imprinting the love instinct on this body between the ages of seven and fourteen. But this natural imprinting of the love instinct can also take a pathological course. Then the damage that I described this morning as pathological conditions becomes apparent. This could also happen to the students of the ancient Oriental sages, that when they were outside their physical body, they did not find the possibility of reconnecting the spiritual-soul element with the physical body in the right way. A different precautionary measure was needed, a precautionary measure to which psychiatrists, at least some of them, have returned when treating people suffering from agoraphobia or similar conditions. These are washings, cold washings. These are entirely physical measures that must be taken. And when you hear that in the Eastern mysteries — that is, the initiation schools, the schools that were supposed to lead to inspiration — on the one hand, the precautionary measure of leaning on the guru was used, you hear on the other hand about all kinds of precautionary measures that were used, such as cold washings and the like. If you understand human nature as it can be understood through spiritual science, then you also understand what otherwise sounds rather mysterious in these ancient mysteries. Human beings were protected from acquiring a false sense of space through a deficient connection between their spiritual and physical selves, a false sense of space that could drive them to agoraphobia and similar conditions, which could also drive them to seek social interaction with other people in an inappropriate manner. This is indeed a danger, but it is a danger that can, should, and must be avoided in any instruction toward higher knowledge. It is a danger because when people seek the path to inspiration in the way I have described, he then in a certain way shuts off the paths of language and thinking to the I, to other people, and then, when he leaves his physical body in a pathological way, even if it is not for the purpose of higher knowledge, but only when provoked by pathological conditions, he can then stray from maintaining proper interaction with other people. He can then develop in an abnormal, pathological way precisely what develops in a normal, indeed appropriate way through regulated spiritual research. He then establishes a connection between the spiritual-soul and his body, so that he feels so selfish in his body through excessive immersion in it that he learns to hate interaction with other people and becomes an antisocial being. One can often see the consequences of such a pathological condition in the world in quite terrible ways. I have met a remarkable example of this type of person, someone who came from a family that tended toward a certain liberation of the spiritual-soul life from the physical, which also included personalities—one of whom I got to know very well—who sought the path into the spiritual worlds. But one degenerate individual in this family developed the same tendency in a sick, pathological way and eventually reached the point where he would not allow anything that came from the outside world to come into contact with his body. This person had to eat, of course, but — we are talking about adults here — he washed himself with his own excrement because he was afraid of any water that came from the outside world. And I do not wish to describe what else he did to shut himself off completely, what he did to separate his body from the outside world, to turn himself into an antisocial being, because his spiritual and emotional life was too deeply immersed in his physicality, because it was too strongly, too intensely connected with this physicality.
It is entirely in keeping with Goetheanism to bring together in this way that which leads to the highest, which we can initially achieve as earthly human beings, with that which leads to pathological depths. One need only familiarize oneself a little with Goethe's theory of metamorphosis to see this. Goethe seeks to understand how the individual parts of, for example, a plant develop separately, and in order to understand how things undergo metamorphosis, he looks with particular interest at those states that arise through the degeneration of a leaf, through the degeneration of a flower, through the degeneration of the stamens. Goethe is clear that, when looking at the pathological, the true essence of health can reveal itself to the correct observer. And one can only take the right path into the spiritual world if one knows what the essence of human nature actually is, in what manifold ways this complicated essence of human nature can express itself.
But we also see from other things that, in a sense, even in late times, Orientals were still inclined to dwell on words, not to guide the soul forces through words, but to live within words. We see this, for example, in the speeches of Buddha. One need only read these speeches of Buddha with their many repetitions. I have met Western people who loved those editions of Buddha's sayings in which the many repetitions were cut down to the unique wording of a single sentence, and then people believed that if they had a Buddha like that, in which everything occurs only once, they would gain insight into the real content of what Buddha actually meant. Western civilization has gradually become so devoid of any understanding of the Eastern nature. For if one only takes in what is literally in the words of Buddha, what is in the words of Buddha according to the content that we as Westerners value, then one does not take in what Buddha's views are, but one only takes them in if one goes along with the repetitions, if one wants to live in the words, if one wants to live in that strengthening of the soul that arises through repetition. If one does not acquire the ability to feel something through the constant repetition and rhythmic recurrence of certain passages, one cannot enter into what Buddhism actually means.
This is how one must become acquainted with the inner essence of Eastern culture. For without this acquaintance with the inner essence of Eastern culture, one will ultimately not even arrive at a real understanding of our Western religious beliefs, because ultimately these Western religious beliefs originate from Eastern wisdom. The Christ event is something else. That is a fact. It stands there as a fact in the evolution of the earth. But the way in which one must understand what happened through the mystery of Golgotha was taken entirely from Eastern wisdom in the first centuries of Christian development. Eastern wisdom was initially understood as the fundamental event of Christianity. But everything progresses. What once existed in the East in this primordial wisdom, which was attained through inspiration, is still noticeable in Greek culture, having developed from the East to Greece; in Greek culture it is still noticeable as art. In Greek art, something else was experienced than what we usually experience in art today. In Greek art, something was experienced that Goethe wanted to return to when he expressed his innermost impulses with the words: “To whom nature begins to reveal her manifest secret, there arises a deep longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” For the Greeks, art was still a way of slipping into the mysteries of the world's existence; art was not merely a revelation of human imagination, but a revelation of what emerges through inspiration from the interaction of human imagination with the revelations of the spiritual world. But more and more, I would say, what still flowed through Greek art became diluted and became the content of Western religious creeds. At the origin of ancient wisdom, we are dealing with a spiritual life that is full of content, but in its further development we are dealing with the fact that this rich spiritual life becomes diluted and finally arrives in the West, forming the content of Western religious beliefs. So that those people who are then predisposed to a different age can only see in what has emerged as dilution something that they meet with skepticism. And basically, what is gradually developing in the West as atheistic skepticism, and what must continue to develop further and further unless it is countered by another spiritual current, is nothing other than the reaction of the Western mind to Eastern wisdom that has fallen into decadence. Just as you cannot make a natural being that has reached a certain stage of development, say, old age, thoroughly young again, so you cannot make something that has developed spiritually and soul-wise thoroughly young again once it has reached old age. Nothing can be made out of the religious creeds of the West, which are descendants of the original wisdom of the East, that can fully satisfy humanity once this humanity advances out of the knowledge that has now been gained for Western humanity over the last three or four centuries from natural science and from the observation of nature. An ever-increasing skepticism must develop. And anyone who sees through the development of the world can say quite clearly that there is a movement of development from East to West which is moving towards skepticism, that is to say, that a spiritual life is moving from East to West which, as it is taken up by minds that are increasingly living in the Western world, must lead to ever stronger skepticism. Skepticism is simply the march of spiritual life from the East to the West, and it must be countered with another spiritual current, which now moves from the West to the East. We live at the intersection of these spiritual currents, and in the further course of these considerations we will see how we live within this intersection.
First, however, it should be noted that the Western mind is more inclined to take a different path of development toward the higher worlds than the Eastern mind. Just as the Eastern mind strives first for inspiration and is racially predisposed to do so, the Western mind, through its particular soul disposition — which is now less a racial disposition than a soul disposition — strives for imagination. It is no longer the experience of what is musically present in the mantric saying that we as Westerners should strive for; it is something else. As Westerners, we should strive not to follow particularly strongly the path that leads to the spiritual-soul out of the body, but rather to follow what comes later, when the spiritual-soul must consciously connect again with the physical organization in grasping the physical body. We see the natural phenomenon in the emergence of the bodily instinct: While Orientals have sought wisdom more by developing what lies between birth and the age of seven into something higher, Westerners are more inclined to pursue what lies between the change of teeth and sexual maturity by raising what is natural for this epoch of humanity into the spiritual-soul realm. But we achieve this when we — just as we must take the I into our inspiration — now let the I come out by submerging ourselves again in our physicality, but not leaving it outside, not forgetting it, not abandoning it, not pushing it down into unconsciousness, but connecting this ego with pure thinking, with clear, sharp thinking, so that one finally has the inner experience: Your ego is strongly permeated by all the sharp thinking you have finally achieved. One can actually have this experience of submerging oneself in a very clear, very distinct way. And perhaps I may speak to you at this point of a personal experience, because it will lead you to what I actually mean here.
I have spoken to you about the conception of my “Philosophy of Freedom.” This “Philosophy of Freedom” is really an attempt, in a modest way, to push it to pure thinking, to that pure thinking in which the ego can live, in which the ego can hold itself. Then, once you have grasped this pure thinking in this way, you can strive for something else. One can then take this thinking, which one now leaves to the I, to the I that feels itself free and independent in free spirituality, one can then eliminate this pure thinking from the process of perception, and one can, in a sense, while in ordinary life one sees, say, color, by permeating it with the mental image, one can lift the mental images out of the whole process of perception and draw the perceptions themselves directly into our physicality.
Goethe was already on the way. He had already taken the first steps. Read the last chapter of his Theory of Colors: “The Sensual-Moral Effect of Color,” how he feels something in every effect that is deeply united not only with the faculty of perception, but with the whole human being, how he perceives yellow and red as attacking colors that, in a sense, penetrate him completely, filling him with warmth, how he regards blue and violet as colors that, in a sense, tear one out of oneself, as cold colors. The whole person experiences something in sensory perception. Sensory perception with its content sinks into physicality, and the ego with its pure thought content remains, as it were, hovering above it. We switch off thinking by taking in the whole content of perception more intensely than usual, where we weaken the content of perception through mental images, and fill ourselves with it. We train ourselves in a special way to fill ourselves with the content of our perceptions when we do what the Orientals have degenerated into doing, namely, symbolic imagination, pictorial imagination, when we do this systematically, when, instead of grasping the content of our perceptions in pure thought, in lawful, logical thought, we now perceive this content of perception in symbols, in images, and thereby allow it to flow into us, as it were, bypassing our thoughts, when we immerse ourselves in all the richness of colors, the richness of tone, by experiencing the mental images symbolically, pictorially, rather than conceptually, for the purpose of our training. By not letting the content of our thoughts shine through our inner being, as association psychology wants us to do, but instead letting it shine through with the content of our perceptions indicated by symbols and images, what is alive in us as the etheric body and astral body flows toward us from within, and we get to know the depths of our consciousness and our soul. In this way, one truly gets to know the inner being of the human being, not through the vague mysticism that is often presented by nebulous spirits as a path to the inner God, but which leads to nothing other than an external abstraction, where one cannot remain if one wants to be a whole, complete human being.
If one really wants to explore the human being physiologically, then one must, by eliminating thinking in this way, drive the pictorial imagination inward so that the physicality of the human being reacts to it in imaginations. This is, of course, a path that is only just beginning in Western development, but it is the path that must be taken if something is to be set against that which is flowing over from the East and which would lead to decadence if it alone were to prevail, so that we may achieve an ascent and not a descent of our civilization. But one can say that, in general, human language itself is not yet advanced enough to fully express the experiences that one encounters within one's soul. And this is where I would like to tell you about a personal experience.
Many years ago, in a certain field, I attempted to put into words what can be called human sensory science. I succeeded in putting into words what such a human sense theory, the teaching of the twelve senses, is in oral lectures, because there one still has the opportunity to twist and turn the language and to ensure understanding through repetition, so that one does not feel so strongly the shortcomings of our language, which is not yet equal to such supersensible beings. But when I then — as I said, many years ago — wanted to write down what I had given as actual anthroposophy in lectures, in order to form it into a book, I discovered the strange thing that when I brought my external experiences into my inner life, they became so sensitive that language could not express them, and I believe that the first draft, several pages, lay in the printer's for five or six years. I couldn't continue writing because I wanted to continue in the style in which I had begun, simply because language did not initially provide what I wanted to achieve at my stage of development at that time. Afterwards, I became overloaded with work and have not yet been able to finish this book. Those who are less conscientious about what they give to their fellow human beings from the spiritual world may perhaps smile at such a pause in the face of a temporarily insurmountable difficulty. But anyone who has truly experienced and who is able to penetrate with a full sense of responsibility what arises when one wants to describe the paths that Western humanity must now take toward imagination knows that much is necessary in order to find the right words for such a description. As a path of training, it is relatively easy to describe. I have done this in my book How to Know Higher Worlds. But when one wants to achieve very specific results, such as describing the essence of the human senses themselves, that is, a part of the inner organization of humanity, when one wants to achieve such very specific results, then the difficulty arises of grasping imaginations and presenting them in sharp contours through words.
Nevertheless, this path must be taken by Western humanity. And just as the Easterners felt in their mantras when they entered the spiritual world of the external, so must Westerners, going beyond all association psychology, learn how human beings enter their own essence by coming to the imaginative world. Only by entering the imaginative world will they attain true knowledge of humanity. And this true knowledge of humanity must be attained for the progress of humanity. And because we must live in a much more conscious way than the Orientals have lived, we cannot simply say: Well, we can leave it to the future to decide whether natural processes will gradually enable humanity to acquire this imaginative world — no, because we have entered the stage of conscious development of humanity, this imaginative world must also be consciously strived for, and we must not remain at certain stages. For what happens if we remain at certain stages? Then we do not counter the increasingly rampant skepticism spreading from East to West with the right thing, but with something that stems from the fact that the spiritual-soul element is too thoroughly, too deeply, unconsciously connected with the physical body, so that a connection arises between the spiritual-soul element and the physical body that is, in a sense, too dense.
Yes, one cannot only think materialistically, one can also be materialistic by connecting the spiritual-soul life too strongly with the physical body. Then one does not live freely with the I in the concepts of pure thinking that one has arrived at. And if one submerges oneself in physicality with one's perception that has become pictorial, then one submerges oneself in physicality with one's ego and with concepts. And when one then spreads this, when one permeates people with it, then this gives rise to the spiritual phenomenon that we know well, dogmatism of all kinds. Dogmatism of all kinds is nothing other than that which, translated into the spiritual-soul realm, then appears at a deeper level in the pathological, in agoraphobia and the like, and which, because it is related, also manifests itself in something that is a metamorphosis of fear, in all kinds of superstition. From what has developed there as dogmatism, what, I would say, arises from the unconscious urge for imagination, but which is held back by forces of violence, from what develops there, all kinds of dogmatism arise. They must gradually be replaced by what arises when one keeps the world of ideas in the region of the ego, when one proceeds to imagination, thereby taking the human being in his true form into his inner experience and gradually entering the Western path into the spiritual world in a different way. This other path through imagination is the one that must establish what must move as a spiritual science current, as spiritual development from the West to the East, if humanity wants to progress. But this is what is now most important for humanity to recognize: what the true path of imagination should be, what path Western spiritual science must take if it wants to grow to what Eastern wisdom once gained as inspiration, as inspirational content, in a way corresponding to the racial characteristics of those peoples. Only when we can counter the degenerate inspiration of the Orient with spirit-bearing imaginations that are saturated with reality and are on the path to a higher spiritual culture, only when we can bring about a movement of the spirit from West to East, then we will be doing what actually lives in the depths of the impulses of humanity, what humanity is striving for, and what is still being discharged today in explosions of a social nature because it cannot come out.
How the path of imagination must actually be taken, how the path to the higher worlds is shaped for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, we will discuss further tomorrow.