Cultural Phenomena — Three Perspectives of Anthroposophy

GA 225 — 22 July 1923, Dornach

X. Three Perspectives of Anthroposophy: The Spiritual

As terrestrial beings, human beings initially experience three alternating states of consciousness: the waking state from the moment we wake until we fall asleep; the opposite state, which is the sleeping state, where the soul, as it were, descends into spiritual darkness and has no experiences around it; and between the two, the dream state, of which we are aware of how our waking experiences play into it, but on the other hand, how the connections of waking are changed by certain extraordinarily significant and interesting inner forces, how, to mention just a few examples, something long past appears as something immediately present; how something that passed by the consciousness in complete carelessness, that one perhaps did not pay special attention to in ordinary waking life, moves into the dream consciousness and so on. Things that otherwise do not belong together are brought together by the dream.

But at the same time, it is a very characteristic feature of the dream state that the dream content, everything that is perceived in the dream, is of a strong pictorial quality, that even when the word sounds into the dream, it is the pictorial quality of the word that plays into it, the tone of the word, the modulation of the sounds, all of which are resolved into pictorial quality, even if it is only audible pictorial quality that is heard by the soul.

Now, dreams contain an extraordinary amount of material that can occupy the human soul at its deepest level. But one does not gain insight into the actual spiritual existence if one is unable to form valid ideas about the relationship between these three states of consciousness: waking, dreaming and sleeping.

Today, we would like to characterize these three states of consciousness with the help of spiritual science, as far as possible. First, the state of consciousness during waking life.

A person can become aware that he can lead this waking life by beginning to make use of his body, the organs of his body, but also of his thinking, which is bound to the body, when he wakes up. And even if one has no knowledge of the fact that the I and the astral body submerge into the physical and etheric bodies when one wakes up, one must still feel how, albeit quickly, but distinctly perceptibly, at least distinctly perceptibly, one acquires power over one's limbs, power over one's organs and power to unfold one's inner thinking.

All this can teach people how the waking life of the day is bound to the physical body. And by looking at the etheric or formative body from the point of view of spiritual science, we must also say that this waking life of the day is bound to the etheric or formative body just as it is to the physical body. We must delve into these two aspects of our human nature, we must make use of their organization in order to lead an active daily life.

Now one can succumb to the most diverse illusions about this waking day life if one does not begin to illuminate it from the point of view of spiritual science. We need say little about the sense life; for what could be clearer than that man makes use of his sense organs precisely in the waking day life and that these sense organs convey to him what is around him as a manifestation of the external physical world. One has only to observe the nature of the sense organs to see how, through the relationships of the eye, the ear, and the other senses to the environment, what the human being calls his waking daytime experiences as a revelation of the sensory world comes about.

What now makes it necessary to proceed to a more exact observation is thinking, imagining. Let us be quite clear about the fact that man, with his imaginations, has initially only given an internalization of his sensory life.

If man looks honestly within himself, he will say to himself: Through the senses I receive impressions, in thinking I continue these impressions inwardly. And if we then examine our thoughts, we will find that these thoughts are shadowy images of what the senses convey to us. In a sense, the human being's thinking is directed entirely outwards. Thinking is now the activity of the etheric or formative body, so that we can also say: by thinking as a sentient being on earth, the human being's etheric or formative body is directed outwards. But in this way we have really only considered one side of the etheric or formative body. And if we consider what we have in ordinary waking consciousness, our thoughts about the outer world, it is as if we could only physically observe a person from behind under certain circumstances. Imagine that you had only ever seen a number of people from behind. You would form ideas about them that you might not dare express to them. You would be curious, inquisitive, as to what the people in question look like from the front, and you would be convinced from the outset that the front belongs to the back of a person, that this is the other side, the more expressive side for the physical human being on earth.

So it is when we become aware of the thinking of the external world: we see, as it were, the back side of thinking. It is the other way around because the direction of the currents of the senses always goes from front to back in the human being. Even where it appears to be otherwise, it must be thought of this way: What is represented physically as the front side is for thinking the back side. And basically we have to put ourselves in a position to view human thinking from the other side, where it is not turned towards the impressions of the outer senses, where it shows us its hidden inner side.

But then we come upon something very strange. Then thinking does not present itself to us as it appears when we carry images of the sensory external world in our consciousness. Then, viewed from this other side, our thinking, which after all constitutes the forces of the etheric or formative body, is transformed into forces that build our physical organism, into forces that create our physical organism.

When we grow, when our organs are built up from the germinal state, when our organs are plastically formed, it is the other side of thinking that actively intervenes from the etheric or formative body and organizes us. What works and lives in us as we grow, as we process the food in us, what formative forces are present in us at all, that is the other side of thinking. Ordinary thinking only gives rise to shadowy thoughts in us; it is the reverse side of thinking. But what first gives form to our thinking apparatus, what our brain and our entire nervous system develop, is the creative power of thinking, and this is at the same time the creative power of the formative forces or etheric body. That is the other side.

It does not take much clairvoyant power to see how this creative power of thinking works in man as a force of growth, as a formative force. One needs only, I might say, to turn inward to become aware that thinking is not just a shadowy reflection of the outside world, but an inner activity. One needs only, so to speak, to turn back from being turned to the outside world to what one does inwardly, what one thinks, then one becomes aware of this activity of thinking.

In this grasping of the activity of thinking, we now grasp first of all what human freedom is, and the understanding of freedom is one with the grasping of this activity of thinking. Therefore, by grasping the activity of thinking in this way, one also grasps the morality that permeates and interweaves the human being.

In my Philosophy of Freedom, I wanted to make comprehensible this grasping of thinking as an active element, this grasping of pure thinking as opposed to thinking filled with external sense images, this inward jerk, and to make comprehensible how the human being can inwardly grasp this activity of thinking, and how, through this inward turning, he can grasp morality as something that can arise in pure thinking, and how, through this, he can also truly attain the consciousness of freedom.

So that we can say: Let us turn human thinking, which initially shows us in its first aspect shadowy images of the sensual outside world, let us turn it around before us, then it becomes the plastic creative power of the human being himself, then it becomes the inner activity, then it becomes the carrier of freedom, that in which, as it were, what moral impulses are in the human being can be intercepted.

In this way, we advance from the physical body into the etheric body in a spiritual way. We can therefore say: the first step up into the spiritual world is the actual experience of the feeling of freedom.

And now let us look at dream consciousness. Dreams may be chaotic, they may be dreams of terror and fear, they may be sweet dreams, but they always weave and live in images that they conjure up before the soul. Let us disregard the content of the dream, but let us look at the drama of the dream, and we see how the soul, so to speak, weaves and lives waking up or falling asleep in these dream images.

Yes, a certain power of the soul expresses itself in this way. One may argue about the extent to which these images are right or wrong, but the fact that these images can be formed must indicate to us that there is a power in the soul that forms these images. The dream image is placed before this soul itself by an inner power of the soul. There is an inward weaving power of the soul in the formation of dreams.

Look at the moment of waking up. You must feel how, emerging from the darkness of sleep, this inner weaving power is present. But it submerges into the physical and etheric bodies. You would dream away if this power did not submerge. It is the power of the astral body. The astral body, which is incapable of becoming aware of itself when it is outside the physical and etheric bodies, begins to feel itself, to sense its own power, by awakening, by feeling the resistance of the physical and etheric bodies when it enters them. It appears chaotic in dreams, but it is the soul's own power that has been alive from the moment of falling asleep until waking up and that is now submerging. Yes, the dream-forming power pours into the physical and etheric bodies. It descends into the blood circulation, it descends into the muscle tension and relaxation. The dream-forming power also enters into the etheric body. Thereby this dream-forming power is strengthened. By itself it is weak and powerless. The dream images flit about aimlessly when the dream-forming power is alone. But when the dream-forming power engages with the physical and etheric bodies, making use of the organs of the physical and etheric bodies, it becomes strong.

What does it do as it becomes strong? Well, it develops memory in the human being. Remembrance and memory are nothing other than the dream-forming power embodied in the physical and etheric bodies. The dream enters into the physical body and is thus integrated into the order of the physical world. It then forms the content of memory, which is no longer chaotic but integrated into the physical world.

We could not remember anything if we did not bring the power of dreams with us into our physical body when we wake up; for in the physical body, the power of dreaming becomes the power of remembering, of memory.

And when you sit quietly, turned away from the external world of the senses, and let your memories play, your memories that surface, calm, bless, your memories that stir the imagination – when you let them run their course, it is the dream power, strengthened by the physical and etheric body, that dream-power which, when the astral body kept it outside the physical and etheric bodies, was immersed in the spirit of the world and experienced the secrets of things in the spirit of the world.

If you were to perceive the same power that forms the power of memory in your waking state asleep, you would not have the chaotic images of the dream, which only form in the moment of immersion in the physical and etheric bodies, but you would experience yourself immersed in the external world, freed from the physical and etheric bodies, sleeping in a majestic world of images.

This world of images would be the cosmic counter-image of what ascends and descends in your memories in lonely contemplation. Your memory life is the microcosmic counter-image of that macrocosmic, gigantic, majestic weaving and billowing of images that our dream power undergoes when the astral body has submerged, instead into the physical and etheric bodies, into the things and processes of the outer cosmos.

And when we speak of the spiritual content of our soul and find that this spiritual content of our soul undulates in what is transformed from external impressions and lives in our memories, in the content of our memory, which, appropriated by our own inner being, basically constitutes everything blissful and tragic, joyous and sorrowful of our soul life, when we consider all that lives in our soul as spiritual content in our memory, then we must realize that we owe it to the fact that we can immerse the dream-forming submerge the dream-forming power, which is actually akin to the cosmos, into our inner being, so that what lives in the formative forces out there in the cosmos, what creates and works outside, is present in our inner being as the memory power that spiritualizes us and spiritualizes our soul.

Thus, in the power of remembrance, we feel related to all the creative and working forces of the cosmos. And we may say: when I look out and see how the images of plants unfold in spring, when I look into the forest and see how the trees develop from their germs over the years and decades, when I look up and see how clouds change under the influence of the more external formative forces, when I look out and see how mountains form and eroded away in the world, I look up at all these formative forces that work their way up to the stars: I have something akin to all this in my own soul, I have the powers of remembrance in my soul, and these are the microcosmic image of what weaves and works out there in the world in the metamorphoses of things.

And now let us consider the I, which, even in a sleeping state, leaves the physical and etheric bodies and connects with the things and processes of the cosmos outside. We then become aware of how we, as human beings, are able to immerse ourselves in things with our actual being, even if this remains unconscious in our experience of the world. However, the self itself emerges from the deep sleep, emerges into the physical and etheric body. And here it is only spiritual scientific initiation that can pursue this. While for memory, the slipping of the power of dreaming into the physical body still provides a point of reference for ordinary observation, with imagination, as it can be developed in the sense of my book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, one must now also learn to observe how, from falling asleep to waking up, the things and processes of the cosmos, how the I, which remains from falling asleep to waking up, submerges into the physical and etheric body, how now also that which is so powerless for the present human development on earth that the human being is immersed in sleep as in darkness, in the darkness of his soul , and when it submerges into the physical and etheric bodies, it now also strengthens itself in the physical and etheric bodies, as it takes hold of the pathways of the physical and etheric bodies and seizes the innermost power of the blood, through the innermost power of the blood.

And this too has its manifestation in the waking consciousness of the day. The I, immersing itself in the physical and etheric bodies, then expresses itself. The I is that which works and weaves in the human being as the free one; it can express itself, it cannot express itself. But when it expresses itself, what is its most characteristic expression in the human being? It is the power of love appearing in the human being.

We would never have the ability to merge with love in another being or another process, to merge with this other process, so to speak, if the I did not also leave us every night in real terms in order to immerse itself in the things and processes of the cosmos outside. There it submerges itself in reality. By slipping into us in our fully awakened consciousness, it gives us the inner strength to love through the abilities it has acquired outside. This is what emerges as the threefold power of the soul at its deepest core: freedom, memory life, love power.

Freedom, the inner primal form of the etheric or formative body. The power of memory, the inwardly occurring dream-forming power of the astral body. Love, the inwardly occurring power of love that leads the human being to devotion to the outer world.

Through the fact that the human soul can partake of this threefold power, it permeates itself with spiritual life. For this threefold permeation with the sense of freedom, with the power of remembrance, through which we hold together past and present, through the power of love, through which we are able to give our own inner being to the outer world and become one with the outer world, through the holding of these three powers of the soul, this our soul becomes spiritualized.

To grasp this with the right soul nuance means to grasp what it means that man carries the spirit in his soul. And anyone who does not understand this threefold inner spiritualization of the soul does not understand how the soul of man harbors the spirit.

This then extends to life. If we are able to establish a living inner connection between memory and love - the memory that prevails in us through the astral body, love through the I - then in certain cases a wonderful thing can be achieved.

In this way, these things are grasped directly in life. We preserve the memory of a beloved dead person beyond death. We carry his image in our soul, that is, we add to the sensual impressions we received from him during our lifetime that which remains with us when his sensual existence has been withdrawn from us. We continue life with the dead in our memory with all the strength and intensity of our soul, continuing it in such a way that we no longer have the support of external sensory impressions, and we try to bring these memories to such a vibrancy that it may seem to us as if the dead person is there in the immediate present. We remain aware that we carry this in our memory, but we then connect this power, which is strengthened by our astral body, with the power that we have through our ego, with the power of love. We preserve the intense love for the dead person beyond the grave. We enable ourselves to connect the power of love with the image, which no longer receives sensual stimulation, in the same way that we could otherwise develop the power of love under sensual stimulation.

In this way, it is possible to strengthen what the astral body and the ego would otherwise only express when they make use of the organs of the physical body. Particularly when we preserve the memory of the dead, which can no longer be stimulated in us by the physical body and the etheric body, when we can keep this memory so active and alive that we can connect it with an intense love, then this is a way to awaken inwardly to a certain degree of astral body and I, and precisely in the memory that we are able to preserve for the dead lies one of the first steps to freeing the I and the astral body from the physical body. to a certain degree of the astral body and the I, and it is precisely in the memory that we are able to preserve for the dead person that one of the first steps towards freeing the I and the astral body from the physical and etheric body during the waking state lies.

If people could understand what it means to keep the memory alive, to look at the image that remains of the dead person as one would look at it alive, then they would experience the liberation of the astral body and the ego in this way, which leads across the threshold that lies between the physical and the spiritual world. This experience contains the following insight: We first have the memory, vividly, as if the dead person were still there; we know that through our waking consciousness we connect the image of the dead person with love, which we otherwise only had when we received sensual impressions from him. We bring all this to life within us. The jolt occurs when we are able to develop the necessary inner strength. The jolt occurs, we cross the threshold into the spiritual world. The dead person can be there in his reality.

This is one of the ways for a person to enter the spiritual world. It is connected with something that can only be revered, something that can even be recognized in reverence and with a certain inner serious attitude.

If you allow all the seriousness to take effect on your soul that can be associated with such ideas, as I have just presented to you for the case of crossing the threshold into the spiritual world, if you visualize this seriousness, then at the same time you have an idea of all the seriousness that must be associated with entering the spiritual world at all. Life must, as it were, have shown us by our own will its deep seriousness if we truly want to enter the spiritual world, yes, if we really seriously want to understand the spiritual world.

This is what the science of initiation has always sought to infuse into external civilization. But this is also what our so externalized time needs again.

For it is a remarkable phenomenon that to man today dogmatic science is worth more than reality. In every moral act man can be conscious of his freedom. And just as we experience red or white, so we actually experience freedom as human beings. But we deny it. We deny it under the authority of contemporary science. Why? Because contemporary science only wants to look at the mechanical, wherever the earlier is the cause of the later. And there this science dictates dogmatically: everything must have its cause. It dogmatically dictates causality, and because causality must be right, because one wants to swear by causality dogmatically, therefore one numbs oneself to the feeling of freedom. Reality is plunged into night in order to maintain the dogma, in this case the dogma of external science, which exercises such strong authority.

Science abolishes life. For if life were to become aware of itself in man, this life would immediately grasp freedom in the activity of thinking. And so purely external science, based on causality, has become the great killer of the sense of life in man. One must be aware of this.

Can we hope that if man inwardly abolishes the experience of freedom, he can then go further to the spiritual form, to the spiritual form of memory? Can one hope that man, just as he otherwise lets the red of the red rose be revealed, will thus let memory be that which, in him, reveals the 'power of dreaming' that is weaving and working in the universe? Can one hope that man can gain conviction for the second step if he kills the sense of freedom on the first step through the so-called dogma of causality? In so doing, man fails to look into the spirituality of his own soul. Thus he does not penetrate down to the point where he realizes that, in addition to the ability to live asleep outside among things, he acquires the ability in the spiritual I to love through his spirit. The last reason for love lies in the spirit-imbued I, which submerges into the human physical and etheric organism. And to recognize the spirituality of love means, in a certain case, to recognize the spirit at all. He who recognizes love also recognizes the spirit. But in order to recognize love he must penetrate to the inner spiritual experience of love. It is precisely in this respect that our civilization has taken the most false course.

Memory is a weaving and living within the soul, and there the differences are not so clearly and deeply apparent. Only mystic spirits, Swedenborg, Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, feel, as they immerse themselves in their memories, the weaving and living of the spiritual-eternal in this memory, speak of the igniting spark that flashes up in man when he becomes aware in remembrance that in this remembrance the same thing lives inwardly microcosmically that works and weaves outwardly in the creative, forming powers that lie dream-like at the basis of all world existence. There the things are not so clear.

But they become clear when we go to the third stage, when we see how our civilization has misunderstood the original spiritual nature and weaving of love. Everything that is spiritual naturally has its outer sensual form, for the spirit submerges into the physical. It embodies itself in the physical. If it then forgets itself and becomes aware only of the physical, it believes that what is stirred by the spirit is merely stirred by the physical. Our time lives in this delusion. It does not know love. It only fantasizes about love, yes, lies about love. In reality, it only knows eroticism when thinking about love. I do not want to say that the lonely do not experience love, because man in his unconscious feeling, in his unconscious will, denies the spirit much less than in his thinking - but when contemporary civilization thinks about love, then it only speaks the word love, then it actually speaks of eroticism. And one can truly say: if you go through contemporary literature, everywhere, for example, where love is written in German, the word eroticism should actually be used. For that is all that thinking immersed in materialism knows of love. It is the denial of the spirit that turns the power of love into the power of eroticism. In many areas, not only has the genius of love been replaced by its lower servant, eroticism, but in many places the opposite image, the demon of love, has now also emerged. But the demon of love arises when that which otherwise works in man as willed by God is claimed by human thinking, is torn away from spirituality by intellectuality.

So the descending path is: one recognizes the genius of love, one has spiritualized love. One recognizes the lower servant, eroticism. But one falls into the demon of love. And the demon of love has its genius in the interpretation, not in the real form, but in the interpretation of sexuality by today's civilization. How today, when one wants to approach love, not only is there talk of eroticism, but only of sexuality!

It can be said that much of what is aimed at today as so-called sex education is already included in this way in which civilization talks about sexuality. The demonology of love lives in this present-day intellectualized discourse on sexuality. Just as, on another level, the genius that an age is meant to follow appears in its demon, because the demon enters where the genius is denied, so it is in this area, where the spiritual is meant to appear in its most intimate form, in the form of love. Our age often prays to the demon of love instead of to the genius of love, and confuses that which is the spirituality of love with the demonology of love in sexuality.

Of course, the most complete misunderstandings can arise in this area. For that which lives originally in sexuality is permeated by spiritual love. But humanity can fall away from this spiritualization of love. And it falls back most easily in this intellectualistic age. For when intellect takes on the form of which I spoke yesterday, then the spiritual element of love is forgotten, only its external form is taken into account.

It is within man's power, I would say, to deny his own nature. He denies it when he sinks from the genius of love to the demon of sexuality — although I do understand the way people feel about these things, as it is mostly present in the present.

If we bear this in mind, we will have to admit that anthroposophy can guide us, not just intellectually, but also in our innermost soul and spiritual life, and help us to rediscover the spirit within the soul. For we can become intimate with anthroposophy. And we will become intimate with it if we understand how to take it in its reality.

Today, in some external way, it has been suggested that one should develop a picture or something similar of anthroposophy. Yes, is it not there in its reality? Do we still need a picture? But what we need is to become intimate with anthroposophy through our own inner honesty. Then it penetrates into the innermost fabric of our soul life and soul being. We should not try to form an image in an external way. But inwardly we should become intimate with this living being, which, as Anthroposophy, should, I would say, go everywhere between our ranks when we are united as people who understand such things.

If we really live with Anthroposophy as a real entity that walks among us in a higher sense, if we are real human beings, if we become intimate with this Anthroposophy, then we will be impelled to experience in real terms what humanity so urgently needs to experience in our time: not just an image for the soul's eye, but a love for the essence of anthroposophy in our hearts. That is what we need, and that is what will most be able to be an impulse of our time.

In this way, I have tried to add the spiritual perspective to the physical and soul perspectives of anthroposophy. The spiritual perspective is not an external pursuit of the spirit; on the contrary, the spiritual perspective is the experience of anthroposophy in the deepest, most intimate part of the human soul and heart. And this deep, intimate experience of anthroposophy in the human soul and in the human heart is the meditation that leads us to an encounter, to a real encounter with anthroposophy.

This is an attempt to present the three perspectives that anthroposophy can open up: the physical, the soul and the spiritual.