Spiritual and Social Changes in the Development of Humanity

GA 196 — 10 January 1920, Dornach

Second Lecture

In order to make the transition from yesterday's cultural-historical consideration to the perspectives I will be moving on to tomorrow, today I will insert a kind of episode that may seem a little far-fetched to you, but which must be included, even if it is a rather difficult consideration.

Two forces intervene in human life that appear mysterious within that life and demand to be understood, for they actually fall outside the usual course of life. One is the fact that man is capable of illusion, that man can indulge in illusions. The other is that man can fall prey to evil. The effect of illusion and the effect of evil in life are certainly among the greatest riddles of this life.

Now, on various occasions, I have already taken the opportunity to point out the mystery that exists in relation to these two facts of life. The mystery that exists here is only such that one's thinking falls out of the usual channels. And all that one has to think about in relation to illusion and in relation to evil in life is related to the problem, to the riddle of illness and death, which, after all, are actually only not felt by man - like all these riddles - in their full depth because man has become accustomed to having illusions, evil, illness and death in life. But these things should be found incomprehensible by anyone who assumes a materialistic view of life. In particular, the materialistically minded person should ask himself again and again: How is it possible to reconcile that deviation from the usual course of natural laws in life, that deviation that appears in illness and death? For the laws of nature, which are supposed to work through the organisms, undoubtedly express themselves in the normal, healthy course of life. But illness and death intervene abnormally in the course of life.

In order to develop health in the whole world-view of civilized humanity, which has become sick, one will gradually have to realize that illness and death, evil and illusion, can only be understood from the point of view of a spiritual world-view. Man, as he stands as an expression of the facts of the world as he knows them, must be clear about the fact that his development is not possible if only those natural facts that he can immediately grasp play a role in this development, if he has no part in anything other than what today's science is talking about. For just consider the following from the point of view of common sense. Imagine: the vital, the life forces in you become more alive than they are in the so-called normal state, more alive, for example, in fever, more alive than you are able to control them. In all these cases, in which you do not come up, do not gain the upper hand over the natural forces at work in you, consciousness ceases, or at least consciousness enters into an abnormal state.

Anyone who looks at life impartially must say to themselves: having life and having consciousness are two entirely different things. Having consciousness depends on one's having sovereignty over life. When life becomes overgrown, when life becomes feverish and one loses control over this life, then it is impossible to continue to have consciousness in the right way. But it follows directly from this that what arouses life in the organism and what are the life forces in the organism cannot be the forces of consciousness at the same time. If we survey the development of humanity as it has taken place in the cosmos, you know that this earth consciousness, which we usually have in mind when we speak of human consciousness, and which we also want to consider first today, only arose in the course of time; that this earth consciousness was preceded by other, less bright states of consciousness. I have often pointed out to you how this, our earthly planet, was preceded by a planetary embodiment, which we call the lunar embodiment of the earth. In those days, when the human being was connected with this planetary moon condition, man had only a kind of dream consciousness. But he was also - you only need to read about it in my “Occult Science in Outline” - much, much more than today permeated by vital forces.

And if we go further back to even earlier planetary embodiments of our Earth, we find more and more life processes in the human being. The human being lives the life of the whole cosmos. But we find no consciousness behind the consciousness of the moon other than that of our dreamless sleep, that is, from an earthly point of view, no consciousness at all.

Through these states, in which man was, as it were, more alive, but in which he could not have earthly consciousness because of this liveliness, he developed through to this earthly consciousness. And we have already spoken about what this earthly consciousness depends on. It depends on the fact that, as today's physiology does not yet sufficiently take into account, in our head, in our mind, processes take place that, if they extended over the whole body, would have to bring us death continuously, every moment. Our nerve-sense processes are processes that are entirely equivalent to what happens in our organism when it is a corpse. Only as long as we are alive is this continuous dying of our nervous-sensory organism paralyzed, compensated for by the other life processes in our organism. We have to be awakened to life from our trunk and limb organism at every moment, so to speak. For if our organization were to follow only the forces of our head, we would continually die or be suited to dying.

You see, it is necessary that the process of dying, the process of destruction, plays a part in human life. Without this process of destruction playing a part in the human organization, the human being would not be able to develop towards brightness of consciousness. These things must be recognized as necessities of cosmic evolution. And basically it is foolish for people to think: God is almighty, He could have arranged things differently. — That would be more or less the same as saying: God is almighty, He can also make a triangle with four corners. What is at issue here is a law of absolute necessity. The development of consciousness is not possible without the integration of the principle of death into the human organization. But now, insofar as we live in the earthly organization, insofar as we are earthly beings, we are completely integrated into this earthly organization, into this earthly existence. In a sense, the laws of earthly existence permeate our organism. Here it is necessary to distinguish between those cosmic laws that are the actual laws of the earth and those cosmic laws that cannot be regarded as earthly laws in the true sense. It is a rather difficult subject that is touched upon here. Let us imagine, schematically, that we are dealing with the earth, the sun, and many other things in the so-called universe; everything that lives and works in it is connected with everything else. But something has to be left out if it is to be possible to say that everything that lives and works in it is connected with everything else. We have to leave out everything for which our moon is the center.

We actually live cosmically in two spheres of the world, which do indeed interact with each other, but which are essentially different from each other. What belongs to the sun and the earth in terms of the active forces is connected, and everything that belongs to the active forces of the moon has, so to speak, been inserted into that. I should actually have to draw it like this: Earth (E), Sun (S), and many other things.

I draw the apparent movement of the earth and the sun (1). I would then have to draw the moon. If this is the sphere of the moon (2) and this is the sphere of the sun (1), I would now have to push the two into each other (3), so that they coincide spatially but are two entities in terms of their inner forces, not directly united with each other.

And we humans live in this duality. Everything that belongs to the moon is a remnant, a relic - you can read more about this in my “Geheimwissenschaft” - of the old lunar state, does not belong to what the earth has become in its normal progress. This piece, which belongs to the moon, has remained behind like a foreign body, has embedded itself, and we partake of both.

For anyone who truly wants to understand the nature of the world, it is essential to be aware of the independence of the earth-sun and moon. Because something extraordinarily important is connected with this, something so important that not only does present-day science have no idea about it, but it most likely considers it the greatest folly when it hears about it.

Every human being, as he undergoes embryonic development, does not undergo this development merely by following the forces that are unleashed in the mother's body through fertilization. If you want to be made to believe something like that, it's the same as saying: Here I have a magnetic needle that points in a certain direction, so it has the forces within itself. — That wouldn't occur to any physicist. Every physicist says: the earth is also a large magnet, and it attracts one end of the compass needle, and the other end attracts the other point. It is quite possible to talk about the fact that what is closed in itself is dependent in its activity, in its effectiveness, in its position on the larger whole. Only when the human being develops in the mother's womb, one would like to throw everything into this mother's womb that is organizing, while the cosmic forces are at work, from the cosmos, the forces shape the human being. And so it is that the human head organization, everything that is connected with his nerve-sense apparatus, is connected with the lunar forces, and the rest of the organization with the solar forces. And so we human beings become a contradictory being in life. We become a lunar being as a head human being, and a solar being as the rest of the human being. But here the matter becomes quite complicated. If you do not look closely here, you will immediately introduce a tangle of misunderstandings into the matter.

In so far as man is a being with a head, he is a being with a moon, that is to say, the forces of the moon are organized into his head. In so far as he is the rest of the organization, he is a being with a sun, that is to say, the forces of the sun are organized into the rest of his being.

But this means that the head, when the human being is awake and facing the world, is particularly receptive to everything that comes from the sun. The human being absorbs sunlight through the eye when it falls on objects. The head, the nerve-sense apparatus, is a moon creation; but what it receives is precisely the solar element. And in the rest of his organization, the human being is a solar being, that is, he is organized as a solar being. But what, in so far as he develops on earth, has an effect on him, is all lunar.

So you can say: Man, as a being with a head, is a moon vessel that absorbs the currents of the sun. Man, as the rest of the organization, is a sun being that absorbs the currents of the moon forces.

You see from this: if you do not look closely, if you do not grasp things exactly, but seek convenient concepts, then you will not get by. For someone may come and say: Man is a lunar being as a head being, as a being of the head. — The other says: That is not true, he is a solar being, because the solar processes take place in him. Both are correct. One must only become acquainted with the way in which these things interact. I have often said that reality is not so easy for us to grasp that a few pinned-down concepts would suffice to grasp this reality; rather, it is the case that one must make a little effort to form only those concepts that approximately correspond to this reality. In man himself, the lunar and solar natures interact in two ways. And all that takes place as life processes cannot be understood if man is not understood in this ambivalent connection with the cosmos.

One of the most important matters of the present should be for today - if she feels right - tormented humanity the realization: How did we lose the old, known in the atavistic clairvoyance of humanity concepts, and how are we only at the beginning of Copernicanism, of Galileism! - The ancient Egyptians, so man should say, he knew the man as a member of the whole cosmos. But for this Egyptian, this cosmos was much more highly organized than man himself. Today, man looks out into the cosmos and sees a great machine that he calculates with his mathematical formulas. For him, the planets move around the fixed stars just as if one wanted to calculate that the arms and legs of a human being move according to mathematical laws! In all that is in the cosmos and in which man is included, in all that lives organization - soul and spirit. And without considering the soul and spirituality of the cosmos, one cannot understand anything about human life, which is included in this soul and this spirituality of the cosmos.

So, I would say, we live in the lunar sphere. But with us in this lunar sphere lives everything that is Luciferic. And in a roundabout way, through our head organization, it is precisely the Luciferic that enables us to make this head organization suitable for the solar aspect of our earthly existence. And the Luciferic permeates our head organization. But it is as foreign to the earthly as the moon itself with its sphere. Just as little as our nervous-sensory apparatus is organized out of the same forces as our heart, lungs and stomach are organized out of, just as little is it organized out of our earthly-spiritual-soul what our Luciferic forces are. These are poured into us with the moonlight.

Few people know much about the influence of the moon on earthly life, except what poets sing of moonlit nights of magic and love. We know of the affinity of those flights of fancy with the moonlight that plays into the love life, when it is the higher love life, the romantic love life. But this is only the most shadowy part of what comes from the moon. Not only the imaginative element that plays out between lovers on moonlit, magical nights plays into our ordinary existence from this lunar sphere, but deeper forces play in from this sphere, forces that detach themselves from everyday life, from that which binds people to the earth, just as lovemaking in the moonlit nights of enchantment usually detaches itself from philistine everyday life. And the extreme, the way it plays out, as if coming from this completely alien sphere to the earthly, is the power of illusion that man can develop. If this sphere of the moon's power would not come into us, we would not be capable of illusion as human beings.

But then we would also not be able to detach ourselves from the vital, from the organizational life of our organism, and we would not be able to ascend to that brightness of consciousness that is necessary for us as human beings. In order to ascend to this brightness of consciousness, it is necessary that we are able to live in images that are completely detached from the everyday organism. But then we ourselves must hold them together with the everyday organism. Then it is within our power to hold together what plays through our head with this everyday organism, not to let the illusions tear themselves away from reality, but to relate them to reality in the right way. In order for us to be able to develop concepts that are free of sensuality in the world at all, we must also be capable of illusion. It is simply a necessity that the human being be capable of illusion. And this ability to illusion is also connected with the possibility for man not to be in a feverish or unconscious state all the time, that is, to ascend to clear consciousness. If he lets go the reins, if he does not remain master of the illusion but the illusion becomes master over him, then this is only a necessary accompaniment to the fact that we must be able to illusion.

Thus I have first shown you the capacity for illusion in man from the cosmic-humanistic point of view, according to its origin, and have pointed you to a point in the world view where that which we call natural necessity and that which we call inner human activity converge, while both fall apart for the mechanistic view commonly held today.

But now the other sphere. You may have noticed that I have made a small retouch, and since you are probably extremely attentive, you will have mentally reproached me for making a kind of retouch. I said first: the earth-sun sphere and the moon sphere are interwoven. — Afterwards I spoke of the sun sphere. I was also right in a certain sense. For that which has an effect on the nerve-sense organization, also from the earth, is always a solar effect. Even the illuminated surfaces of objects are only sunlight reflected back. And so everything that plays into our lives, even if it comes from the earth, insofar as it plays into our conscious lives, is a solar effect. But not everything. I could only omit it so far. It is correct that everything you process in your consciousness at first is connected with the sun. But the fact that you have a weight when you stand on the scales is an effect of the earth. But in truth, the solar sphere, that is, what I have so far been allowed to describe as a unified sphere, is in turn differentiated within itself. The earth is a certain inclusion in this earth-sun sphere. And this earth, by being a kind of inclusion in the earth-sun sphere, has an effect on what comes to us from the sun. It does not allow us to be pure sun beings. Again, as far as this point is concerned, one must not see the cosmos merely as a mechanism, but must consider it in its soulfulness and spiritualization.

Man, being part of the terrestrial solar sphere, follows in his subconscious forces more the actual forces of the earth. In his conscious activities, he follows what the sun sends to the earth. But when we examine what is heavy, that which is connected with everything that gives us a certain heaviness when we stand on the scales, it is not just the gravitation that Newton described, but at the same time it is everything that we experience as playing into our moral life. With the sun, it is really as the poet says: It shines on the good and the bad alike. It is indifferent to it. But if we examine the earth from a spiritual scientific point of view, we find that it is not indifferent. The earth is the expression of certain forces that want to stand out from our entire planetary system. Like the moon, which has crept in, the earth wants to 'slip away'. It wants out; it wants to become independent. We human beings would lack something very definite if we did not live under the influence of these earth forces that want to become independent: we would not have the sense of independence. If you were able to rush with the elements without being pulled down by the heaviness of the earth, you would never come to independence. Only by being constantly drawn to the earth – if I may use this expression, but as the expression of a fact, not a theory – does independence develop. And that is what this enclosure in the earth-sun sphere is for, to give us independence.

You may now object again, as you probably already have in your mind: Isn't it the same with animals? No, it is not the same. For the animal's head is attached to a horizontal backbone; the human head, with its full weight, is attached to the rest of the organism. That makes the difference. That is why man has this sense of independence, why man is harnessed in a completely different way into the forces of the earth and the sun than the animal.

We can only approach questions such as the ones we are dealing with here by asking, in effect, the alternative: What would become of us humans if we were left only to the influence of the earth, to the influence of the moon? What would become of us humans if we were left only to the influence of the sun? If we were left only to the influence of the sun, we would be a kind of angel, but stupid. Not that I want to say that angels are stupid. Angels are clever enough; but we would be a kind of angel, but not clever like angels, but stupid. Because we lack a sense of independence. We would only be links in the organization of the cosmos. That we are independent, we owe to our earthly existence. But if we were only under the influence of the earth, if the sun did not affect us, what would we be? Beasts, predators, beings that develop the wildest instincts.

Here you have one of the points where you can really look deeply into the constitution of the universe, because you have to say to yourself: that which is at work in the universe cannot be effective from just one side. For if it were effective from just one side, it would have to be at one radical extreme. If we were only under the influence of the earth, this earthly influence would develop the wildest instincts in us. The flames of our wild instincts would flare up. But if the influence of the earth did not work, we would never become independent beings. It must be there, otherwise we would never become independent beings. We must have the possibility of being wild animals in order to become independent beings. But so that we do not become wild animals, the influence of the earth must be counteracted by the influence of the sun, must paralyze it. That is what happens. And as this is happening, you can see the origin of evil. It simply arises from the fact that we are harnessed into earthly existence. So that on the one hand we are indeed exposed to a radical extreme, the earthly extreme, which, if it were the only influence acting on us, would make us evil beings, would fill us only with illusions.

The solar principle works from the cosmos into both. The solar principle makes it possible for us to develop in such a way that we do not fall prey to illusion. And the solar principle makes it possible for us to develop in such a way that we do not fall prey to evil. Under the illusion lies the possibility of becoming intelligent human beings. If it were not for that which makes us capable of illusion, we would never become intelligent human beings. Expressed cosmically: If we were not creatures of the moon, we would not be capable of illusion on the one hand, nor of intelligence on the other. If we were not subject to the earth and its forces, we would not be exposed to the possibility of evil on the one hand; but at the same time we would be condemned not to develop independence in life.

You see how man must have the possibility, in order to be intelligent, to have illusions. He had illusions for a long time. Then his will came, which was only born into his soul's constitution over time, and he could make the illusion the expression of his own being, he could become a liar. For the lie, objectively speaking, apart from man, is the same as the illusion. Only that which does not correspond to reality is arbitrarily set in opposition to reality by man in the case of the lie.

Thus, that which works into man from the lunar sphere is at the same time the creator, the creator being of his intelligence, and at the same time the creator being of his mendacity. In ancient times, people understood this and formed proverbs out of truths. We Germans, when we see the moon like this, say that it can be added to to make a - the moon waxes. If we see the moon like this, we say that it can be added to a – the moon is waxing. – If we go back to French, which is the legacy of the Romance languages, we have to say of the waning moon: La lune décroît, from décroître. Here the moon does not say what it is doing; it says the opposite. This moon has only just begun to tell the truth for the Germans. Hence the Latin saying: The moon is a liar. But this saying also has its esoteric side; for the forces that come from the moon are at the same time the forces of the human lying nature, and the saying: The moon is a liar has a very, very deep background, as you have now seen. It was only when civilization arose in the 15th century that the moon began to tell the truth in terms of its appearance for certain languages, just as materialism generally tells the truth in terms of its appearance. But in terms of its inner being, the moon is now truly a liar.

I am telling you this merely for mnemonic purposes, so that you remember this profound, cosmic-human truth. And you see, the best thing we humans have, our independence, is inwardly connected with evil. The best thing we humans have, our intelligence, is inwardly connected with the ability to create illusions, with the possibility of error. And we humans must also be capable of development. We must have the opportunity not to stand still. We could not be capable of development if we were not called upon to create something new on the basis of what has been destroyed. This means that we must carry within us illness and the possibility of death so that we can develop within us the forces for further development.

These extraordinarily important truths have been completely covered up, completely buried, by the worldviews of recent centuries. For today, when science extends to anything other than mathematics and mechanics, it is only called that which takes place on earth. From outside the earth, only mathematically and mechanically tangible laws have an effect. Humanity will first have to understand again that completely different forces are at work in this universe, in which the moon goes its way, in which the stars go their way, than mere mechanically and mathematically calculable impulses. And when you consider that the most mundane thing in us is an effect of the cosmos, that the most mundane thing cannot be understood without man considering himself as an effect of the cosmos, how then do you want to pour fruitful thoughts into that which is to permeate human life as a world view? Today man is isolated from the world. He has no inkling of his connection with the world. And he would like to found a social existence and does not even know with whom, because he has no idea what he is.

Yes, until the questions enter into the human soul: How little we know about the world under the influence of the last few centuries, how much we need to know! — no salvation will come into all social endeavors. Wherever it is possible to say mechanical-mathematical somewhere, people of the present still dare to construct connections. They know that all kinds of things are associated with the periods of sunspots, such as plagues and the like on Earth. There are some places where people want to link earthly existence to cosmic events. That everything that takes place in earthly existence is a result of the cosmos, people today would like to deny that, they would not want to think about that. The things that take place on earth among people can never be understood if they are not understood cosmically. And man can never find effective ideas for his work on earth if he does not imbue these effective ideas with the consciousness of his belonging to the cosmos.

Today, one has a bitter feeling when one only looks at what is actually happening historically. If you have a wall here and see all kinds of shadowy figures scurrying across it, you will investigate where these shadowy figures come from. If you see the events of the last five to six years passing over the earth's surface, you do not investigate, even though these are also only the projections, the shadows, of what is happening in the cosmos as a whole. And the big questions that are playing out today between the different areas of the earth can only be understood if the understanding is imbued with cosmic ideality.

Today I read an article in which it is hoped that the British government will find the right impetus to create order between what is happening in Russia and what is happening in the Western countries. They want to develop something in the middle, in the devastated Germany. These hopes will not be fulfilled, for everything that speaks out of such a spirit, that waits for the insights of those who create out of the old, leads to nothing.

The only thing that is fruitful for the future today is that which creates out of something completely new. Only when humanity wakes up to see this will it be the beginning of the salvation of much damage in the development of humanity.