Cultural Phenomena — Three Perspectives of Anthroposophy

GA 225 — 20 July 1923, Dornach

VIII. The Three Perspectives of Anthroposophy: The Physical

Recently, many members of the Anthroposophical Society, especially those with a scientific background, have come to believe that a discussion should take place between what is given in Anthroposophy as world knowledge and what is given today as scientific world knowledge based on the assumptions of the second half of the 19th century. Yes, it is believed that if one, as it were, accommodates science in a certain way, responds to it as much as possible, this could result in something extraordinarily favorable for anthroposophy.

It is precisely because scientific activity has entered the Anthroposophical Society, which in other respects is to be welcomed as an extremely gratifying fact, that an extraordinary number of errors have arisen with regard to the point mentioned.

We must not forget that in the course of the 19th century, under the influence of what was gradually called and is still called science, general human knowledge has taken on a character in relation to which anthroposophical knowledge of the world is quite different. One must assume that anyone who has grown into present-day scientific life with their habitual way of thinking will find it impossible to switch to the anthroposophical view without further ado. Therefore, one must be aware that no kind of approval of the anthroposophical view of the world can come from this side in the near future.

Those people who either have not grown into today's scientific work with their habitual way of thinking or who, as young people, grow into it and then out of it again, will be the ones who will mainly recognize the validity of anthroposophical world knowledge.

To bring a little life into what I have just said, I would like to speak today about an initial perspective on the path of Anthroposophy through the world. I would like to structure these three lectures somewhat aphoristically so that friends who have come from far away can take as much with them as possible. I would like to tie in with all kinds of phenomena in the life of civilization today, but in the main I would like to seek the content for these lectures in purely anthroposophical discussions.

We know what the facts are that a person experiences when they pass through the gate of death. Today, in order to present the physical perspective of anthroposophy to our souls, so to speak, we will first consider only the very first period of life after passing through the gate of death. It has often been mentioned how, throughout their entire life on earth, human beings have such a close connection between their physical body and their etheric body or formative forces that this connection is maintained throughout their entire life on earth.

When a person interrupts the ordinary state of consciousness during their life on earth through the state of sleep and dreams, they carry the astral body and the ego out of the physical and formative forces. These, in turn, are so closely connected that they do not separate. Thus, in the course of a normal twenty-four-hour day, the separation that occurs in the course of a normal day is such that the physical body and the etheric or formative body on the one hand and the ego and the astral body on the other hand separate, while each side forms a closely knit whole.

When a person now passes through the gate of death, it is different. Then it happens that the physical body is discarded first and that for a very short time a connection is established between the I, the astral body and the etheric body, which was not present during life on earth. This connection gives the first experiences that a person goes through after death, which only last for days. What are these experiences?

They consist of the person, as if melting away from himself, seeing everything that he has taken in through his senses and also through the mind, which combines the perceptions of the senses, during his life on earth.

During our life on earth, we become accustomed to seeing colored things and processes that shine in colors in our view when we look out into the world. But we also retain the impressions of colors in our memory, albeit in a weakened form. We carry them with us through our memory. It is the same with the impressions of the other senses. And if we are honest in self-observation, then we say to ourselves: Actually, when we sit in the quiet chamber and let our memories, that is, our inner selves, play, what we experience from our inner selves is composed of the shadowy images of external impressions. In our ordinary consciousness, we live either in the immediate, vivid impressions of the external world or in the shadowy memories of it. We will talk tomorrow about what we have beyond that. Today we only want to call to mind very strongly that during our whole life on earth this consciousness is filled with colors and color processes that spread over things, with sounds, with sensations of warmth and cold, in short, with the impressions that we receive through the senses, and with their shadowy afterimages in the inner life of the soul, as one might also say, in memory. Let us consider this as a kind of starting point.

Everything we experience melts away when we pass through the portal of death. Within a few days, so to speak, everything that fills our soul from birth to death has dissolved into the greater cosmos. This can be called: The etheric body or formative forces of the human being separate from the I and the astral body, after first entering into a connection with them that did not previously exist in earthly life.

Now let us imagine more precisely what this experience is like. I will make a schematic drawing for this purpose. Let us assume that the physical body of the human being is characterized by this schematic drawing; the etheric or formative body is characterized by this schematic drawing (shaded in yellow). We only experience what I have characterized as this, this interrelated structure of physical and etheric bodies, when we are stuck inside after waking up. So we actually always experience it from the inside. And to help us recall this as accurately as possible, I would like to design the drawing in the following way. I will indicate green for the part of the etheric body that seems inward. The physical body is discarded at death anyway, so we need not consider it at this point. And I will indicate what is directed outwards from the etheric body with this red line.

I just said that we only experience this structure of the etheric body from the inside after waking up; so, in a sense, we only experience what shines inward in the green. We do not experience what shines outward in the red.

When we have passed through the gate of death and enter into a certain connection with the etheric body with our ego and our astral body, this connection happens in the following way. You must now imagine that the whole etheric body turns like a glove when you turn all the finger linings inside out, as you would normally do with the skin, turning the inside out. So that I now have to draw what is colored red on the outside in the earthly state as the inner part, and what is colored green on the inside, I have to draw green on the outside. The entire etheric body turns in on itself. But this turning around is connected with an immeasurably rapid enlargement of the etheric body. It grows, it becomes gigantic, it expands immeasurably far into the universe, so that I would now have to make the drawing something like this (large green board 8 circles).

And whereas we used to be in there with our ego and our astral body, we are now (red circle) facing the etheric body that expands into the cosmic, but we look at it from its other side. That which we previously carried with us without meaning, the red on the outside, is now turned inwards. What was previously turned inwards and what alone has meaning for us during our life on earth is now turned outwards, no longer of any concern to us, and disperses into the universe. But in this green – of course presented schematically – is contained everything that we have had within us during our life on earth as a colored, sounding, and so on world.

As green, so to speak, goes through the etheric body turning to the other side, we lose it completely and we get a very different world as an impression. We must not imagine that we can still have the same world that we had during our life on earth after death. This world goes away. To imagine, for example, that after death we could experience, for my sake, in a different edition, the content of earthly life, that is quite wrong, that does not correspond to the facts. What we experience through the turning of the etheric or formative body is indeed of a gigantic size compared to the content of earthly life, but it is something quite different. We experience the whole of our earthly education through the fact that the outside is now turned inwards, in powerful impressions that are different from the sensory impressions. We do not experience the blush of the rose, but we experience how we have formed the blush of the rose within us as an idea. That is where it begins to be not as calm as it is in physical life. There, in earthly life, the roses are so beautifully arranged in a rose garden, and each one gives peace, and one feels suspended in the peace. Now the rose garden becomes something completely different, now the rose garden becomes an event in time. And as we gradually let our gaze wander from one rose to the next, as we formed the image of the first rose, the second, the third rose and so on within us, this, as in a living becoming, in a lightning-fast rippling and weaving, one rose after the other arises, but not as roses, but as images that unfold, this now emerges as our inner life as if in a sea of events. And so we are confronted with something we have not seen during our life on earth: the becoming of this earthly life, the gradual development of this earthly life. We know how our soul has become from childhood on. That which we have left completely unnoticed during our earthly life is now playing out in us. It is as if we had stepped out of ourselves, had become a second person and were watching how we gradually formed the simple ideas of childhood, the more complicated ones of later years, and so on. We see the emergence of all this earthly life from its inner side. We see how this earthly life, this earthly existence, is formed from hour to hour. Yes, we gain the impression that this whole earthly life is actually formed from the cosmos. For everything we perceive grows into the immeasurable, into the cosmic, and by growing into it, we become clear about the fact that what has been formed in us in earthly life is also formed from the cosmos.

And now we are gradually getting a valid idea of what it is like to live this human life on earth. Let us take as our starting point what is more or less believed today with regard to this life on earth. Man eats, and in doing so he takes the substances that are outside into his own organism. This is an undeniable fact. He also changes these substances. He changes them in his mouth, and then all the more so in the rest of his organism. What is absorbed goes into the whole organism, really goes into the whole organism. Science will still come and say: But we are also constantly losing substances to the outside. We need only think of how you cut your nails and your hair if you are not yet bald. You can see from the dandruff and so on how the human being loses matter, loses substance. And it is common knowledge today that in this way, by constantly losing matter, the human being completely rebuilds itself over the course of about seven years.

So that, if I want to put it drastically, everything sitting here on the chairs, in terms of the material, was scattered all over the world eight or nine years ago. Let me put it this way: what is sitting here on these chairs could only have gathered over the last seven to eight years. If what was in all of you more than seven or eight years ago were still sitting here in muscle tissue and so on – you are already older, so you will have regenerated several times – you would not all be sitting here.

So, of what you carried as your muscle meat, blood and other things at home or elsewhere seven or eight years ago, nothing is sitting there; you have gradually cut it off, shed it and so on.

But if science is now materialistically oriented, then how does it answer? It says something like this: During these last seven years we have all been eating. That which we have eaten now is here, and that which we ate earlier is no longer here. For example, each of you sitting here has a heart, doesn't he? Now, the physical matter of this heart, so science tells you, has renewed itself in the last seven to eight years. So you definitely have a new heart compared to your condition nine years ago, let's say. Yes, you could say something like that, if you think in terms of the present.

But it is not so. This idea exists only because people do not know what I have just explained to you, do not include it at all in the realm of their scientific observation and thinking. They know nothing of that reversal of the ether or formative forces of the body, of what shows us, after we have passed through the gate of death, how the whole being has actually come into being bit by bit. Because if one knows this, then one is also able to look into the human organism quite differently. And only then does one learn to recognize the truth.

One can believe that the cabbage, potatoes, other vegetables, cherries, plums and so on that one has enjoyed over the past few years have gradually accumulated this heart matter. But it has not. Essentially – listen to me when I say this – the heart you carry within you has not much to do with the material you have taken in over the last seven to eight years. Rather, the heart you carry within you today has essentially arisen in a very mysterious way out of the ether of the cosmos, which you have drawn together into the density of the heart over the last seven to eight years. So it is not that your heart has been renewed out of physical matter of the last seven to eight years, but it has been renewed out of the cosmos. You have renewed your heart and your other organs out of the ether. You have actually made yourself into a new person over the past few years, not from the earth, but from the cosmos. This can be seen from the effects of the etheric body after death, how it has worked during the whole of life on earth, that we have always regenerated ourselves from the cosmos.

Now your materialistic conscience – after all, everyone has to have one of those – will say: But we did eat. We did absorb external matter, and internal processes took place as a result.

Yes, but these internal processes have less to do with your actual, deeper nature than you might think.

The matter you have taken in through food has already been given off again through the various ways in which a person gives off. These ways go through the organism, but they do not essentially unite with what a person is; they only provide the stimulus. We have to eat so that processes and events arise within us that stimulate us. And by stimulating us, inciting us, we enter into the etheric activity, which, however, is connected with the cosmos, not with the earth. What happens there with the food we have taken in, digested, processed through the blood, and so on, these are processes that form the stimulus for a counter-process to oppose them, the etheric process. My old heart is stirred up by the physical, transformed matter that enters me. But I make the new heart out of the world ether.

Now we can even state a fact that may seem somewhat grotesque to today's thinking: You are all sitting there now; what you have renewed in yourselves over the past seven to eight years did not live in the cabbage and on the potato fields, but lived out in the universe in the sun, moon and stars, coming down from there, and you formed yourselves anew out of the universe. In doing so, we have pointed out an error that simply has to arise from today's thinking. They seek only the relationships of human regeneration to physical earth matter, but not to ether. And the consequence of this is that once one has become accustomed to the ideas presented in current physiology, one cannot help but regard everything that is given from the anthroposophical point of view as a kind of fantasy. Therefore, we must be clear about how fruitless discussions are today, how only by mastering both fields, contemporary science and anthroposophy, can we shed light on them from both sides, but how we must not give ourselves over to the hope – because if we give ourselves over to this hope, it is actually to the detriment of anthroposophy! - that those who are accustomed to materialistic ideas can be drawn over to it so easily by a discussion. One must have very clear and precise ideas about this. Then one will realize that, first of all, the whole way in which one appropriates anthroposophy must be appropriated by people before they can even enter into this anthroposophical way of looking at and knowing things.

I said that essentially we actually regenerate our new human being from the cosmos. We do not find the substances in the cosmos that we then find in the heart, of course not, because there they are so thin that they cannot be detected by physical means on earth. There they are ethereal. But what appears as dense heart matter at a certain age has only just condensed from the cosmic ether. So what is there today was all still out in the heavens, in the stars, nine or ten years ago, and what has remained, what has pushed its way in from the matter that should actually have formed out of the ether, that is what causes illness. When we carry physical matter that is too old within us, then that is one cause of illness. And deep insights into the nature of disease are gained when one knows how matter, instead of being expelled, persists; for all matter that is taken up as physical earth matter is actually doomed to be expelled again. If it persists in the organism, then it becomes the cause of disease.

You can also see from this how this really real knowledge, which we can only gain by having an insight into what occurs in us as first experiences shortly after we have completely discarded the physical body, plays a practical role. So after death, everything that we have had in the way of sense impressions and the mind's processing of sense impressions melts away from us. We look at the world quite differently. Minerals, plants, and animals, as we previously looked at them, are not there at all. How people become, that is there.

We have passed through the gateway of death. We have thereby resigned from the scene of the earth. We have stepped onto the scene of the cosmos: Another world surrounds us. It is as if we had stepped out of a small chamber of earthly existence into the majestically vast chamber of the cosmos, and we feel spread out over the cosmos, would truly not fit into the small earthly chamber. So we have entered the scene of the cosmos. And on this scene of the cosmos we must now remain until we descend again to our earthly existence, only that we now enter into contact with completely new worlds, with worlds whose essence belongs to the higher hierarchies.

This consideration, which one gains so directly in connection with man, must, however, be extended to the whole of nature. And I would like to characterize to you what has to happen there in the following way.

Let us assume, for example, that we have gone back a very long time in evolution, in the evolution of the earth. We would encounter very different living creatures and very different events on earth. You know that there have been periods of time when giant animals of a lower kind lived that no longer exist today. The entire species has died out and is no longer present. The paleontologist and geologist search for individual remains in the formations of the earth. Let us assume that I would draw schematically this very old development, where, for example, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, these strange beasts, would have lived here on earth. Yes, these creatures were not formed out of physical earthly matter, they were formed out of the cosmos, out of ether. And when the time approached when these creatures gradually died out, the entire etheric matter remained, if I may put it that way. (See drawing: yellow.) Now there were no more creatures. But all the etheric matter from which these creatures had formed remained behind, just as our etheric body remains behind. And this etheric matter was the cause that in later times, after this etheric formation had passed through the cosmos, other beings formed in earthly existence. Of these, in turn, the etheric remained behind. From these, other entities formed. And finally, the world of animals emerged as it exists today.

So if you have three consecutive periods here, first period, second period, third period, you have, let's say, consecutive animal forms. But for the following one to always arise from the previous one, a passage through the cosmos with the help of the ether is necessary, just as a passage through the cosmos between two earth lives is necessary for man. And if we finally have entities here (see drawing: red), then that can in turn pass into the ether, and there, formed out of the ether in a certain period, the human being can appear. But the influence has always happened in a roundabout way through the cosmos.

Now comes the purely materialistic observer. He sees all this, and now he believes that one thing has arisen out of the other. Certainly, on earth it also follows; but an etheric activity, a cosmic activity lies in between.

In the 19th century, it became common practice to look only at what follows on the earth, but not at what cosmic activity is beyond the earthly. Therefore, the consideration remained: ultimately man, before that simpler forms, still simpler forms and so on. This is what we can obtain as the development of organisms through natural science, which does not involve the etheric. This natural science could obtain nothing other than what it did obtain. If one admits its presuppositions, that one should not get involved in the ethereal, one poses the question in such a way that one should only consider that which belongs to earthly existence; yes, then there is no other choice than to present the physical evolutionary current. Darwinists have done this, Haeckel has done this, and to demand more as earth science or even to want to polemicize against what has come about as earth science is nonsense. Because only when one adds the knowledge of the ethereal world can that arise which belongs to it. So you see, there is no point in direct polemic; but if someone wants to remain on the ground of natural science, he can. And to the other, who speaks of some other principles of formation in what is on earth, he can always say: Yes, that has no significance at all. That is not there, he will say, when he has become accustomed to the merely earthly way of looking at things.

If one wants to speak differently, then one must first acquire knowledge of the ethereal world. So for a valid, reasonable polemic against today's science, the only thing left to do is to say: In your field, o naturalist, you are quite right, nothing else can come of it, we do not deny that, we fully admit that. But if you want to talk to us about what we mean, well, then you must first familiarize yourself with the elementary processes in the cosmic ether, then we can talk to each other. Otherwise you are not grounded in reality if you do not start from these things.

You see, a member sitting here has written a little book on botany from a spiritual scientific point of view. A very disparaging review of it appeared recently in a local paper. Well, what can one say about that! I said: Imagine you were the botanist who wrote this review, you had never heard of anthroposophy and this second edition of your little book came to your notice. It is only natural that you would write just like him! The fact that you do not do so, but on the contrary have written the little book yourself, is the very reason why you have taken up anthroposophy in the first place. You only have to put yourself in the other person's shoes for once, and then you can write all these opposing things yourself. But you see, if you want a person who has once put himself in one direction with all his habits of thought to be different, if you want him to be an anthroposophist, it seems to me almost like someone who has had a blonde daughter suddenly wants a black one. It doesn't work like that. What man has become through today's science is not something that can be changed in the twinkling of an eye. You have to think realistically.

The period that followed the mid-19th century gave the whole state of mind a very specific character. I will give you an example of this from a completely different angle.

You know that there is something today called analytical psychology, psychoanalysis. I have often said here that psychoanalysis produces some beautiful things; but, first of all, it arises from an incomplete, amateurish knowledge of human physiology, so it is amateurishness. Then it arises from an amateurish knowledge of the human soul, of human psychology. That is also amateurism. And because one usually follows the other, the things multiply, and psychoanalysis is actually amateurism squared. - If you multiply d by d, you get d?. But it does have an effect, even if only in an amateurish way, if it is pursued further. And one can also understand that this thing could gradually emerge from inadequate physiology and psychology. But it does rub off on people's minds, this way of thinking does rub off!

Today we have an enormous literature about it. You could fill a large library with psychoanalytic literature. People argue terribly in it, so that if you go into the polemics, it is sometimes quite interesting. Well, this psychoanalysis has also been mentioned here from time to time. One can really fill a library with what has been written about it. But if so much is written in this field, then there must be a lot of study in it, at least on the surface. This colors the state of mind of people.

Now there is something very peculiar. You see, in 1841, there was already a psychoanalytic literature in Central Europe. But it consisted of only fourteen lines. They read: “In our modern overcrowded consciousness, we throw many things around that we cannot develop because we lack the time. They remain in us in the form of tasks that we could work on. They are, to quote Tieck, unborn souls that, yearning for existence, hover in the background of our own soul as if in a limbo."

You see, in these fourteen lines - if you make the lines longer, there is even less - the principle of the whole of psychoanalysis is contained. At that time, it was called “unborn souls” that live in the background of the soul in a limbo, struggling for existence. Now it is called “hidden provinces in the depths of the soul,” “soul provinces,” and so on. In those days, however, it was considered such an insignificant thing that it was noted in a few lines. Today our civilization has come to write entire libraries about it. But everything essential, everything fundamental, is contained in those fourteen lines. But in those days, when it was all contained in just fourteen lines, the libraries were filled with different books than they are filled with today, and people who wanted to learn took in different material.

If today, as a young student, you somehow study psychology and are supposed to write a dissertation, you can't avoid psychoanalysis. You have to study it. Yes, it rubs off on the soul. In 1841, the essential was expressed in these fourteen lines. It was not considered something so important that could have such a tremendous significance for human thought. And so it has been with many things.

It means something tremendous, whether we look at any field of facts or whether we do not look. In those days, in 1841, people slept through psychoanalysis. This thought, which I read to you in the fourteen lines, only emerged in a single person, in Karl Rosenkranz. He dreamt about it once. Dreams pass quickly and do not have much influence on life. But people filled their waking hours with other things. Today, on the other hand, much is missed because one has to be awake for psychoanalysis and similar things.

This matter really needs to be looked at carefully, then it will be possible to say where to start in order to bring anthroposophy to bear in the world. In any case, polemics are not the answer. Polemics are almost like someone lying in a room and snoring terribly, and cannot be woken up at all, and someone else is watching, and now the person watching is trying hard to make the snorer, who is sleeping through everything, understand

what the other is saying. He cannot understand him. Nor is it possible for two fields of spiritual life to communicate with each other if each sleeps for the other's field and only watches for his own.

Now there will still be many who sleep for anthroposophy. They will not wake up so quickly for anthroposophy. But one would like the anthroposophists to wake up for the others, so that they know why anthroposophy is the all-embracing one, not only out of their blind faith but out of a real insight into the quality of the other and also encompasses what the others consider to be the only one, and how anthroposophy broadens the horizon because it goes beyond those areas that the others consider to be merely within a narrow horizon.

In this way I have presented one of the perspectives, the perspective that arises when we ask about the details of what surrounds us as the earth world and what melts away after death. It is the physical perspective. In order to be understood, it leads us into that which is immediately adjacent to it, into the etheric.

Later, we will look at the soul perspective, how the human being awakens to the soul perspective, and then conclude with a consideration of the spiritual perspective of anthroposophy. These will be the three perspectives of anthroposophy.