Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 12 December 1909, Nuremberg

23. The Influences of the Sun and Moon on Man

My dear theosophical friends!

Our spiritual science or Theosophy will, as has often been emphasized here, gain ever greater and greater importance for people in the future because it will be called upon to provide information about the great and small riddles of life and the world, not only about those riddles of existence that interest the narrower circles of those who want to deal with science, but those questions will be touched upon that we encounter at every turn in life, so to speak. And basically, one can say, mankind today has no idea what significance Theosophy should have if it wants to educate itself today about the most important questions of existence in a materialistic way. In the not too distant future, however, one will come to the conclusion that the essentials are lacking everywhere, so to speak, if one wants to create a world view from today's science that is supposed to bring satisfaction and strength for existence and life.

This is particularly evident in those questions which have undergone a complete transformation under the strongly materialistic current of thought in the nineteenth century - so much so towards the materialistic side that actually contemporary science and external human thinking together are at an impasse. It will go on like this for a while, so that people will say: We are standing on the solid ground of what has been scientifically researched; we are creating what is called a monistic world view. But if it were to take a long time, people would come to the conclusion that their souls would be completely dry, that people could no longer gain anything that could warm the soul, because it could shed light on the secrets of the world, that our soul could really feel that it belongs to the great cosmic facts. And only then, when the soul can feel this, can it be satisfied in itself and gain comfort in the difficult days of life.

In a lodge, it is appropriate to occasionally talk about questions that illustrate this important meaning of Theosophy. Let us now take up such a question, which in the nineteenth century, one could say, led science onto the slippery slope. This can be seen quite vividly - and I would like to touch on this by way of introduction - in a strange scientific dispute that took place in the course of the nineteenth century. It was about fifty years ago that this dispute took place between two natural scientists whose names have a good reputation. By way of introduction, we shall deal with this dispute so that we can then move on to what can show us how Theosophy can shed light on that which leads external science onto the slippery slope.

Two names are connected with this dispute. One name is that of the great naturalist who discovered the plant cell in the first half of the nineteenth century, Schleiden. We have to realize that such things, which are commonplace in popular literature today, are only an achievement of the nineteenth century. And just as Schwann later discovered that the animal organism is made up of cells, Schleiden discovered in 1838 that the plant organism is made up of cells.

And so it can be said: Schleiden is one of the most important personalities of the nineteenth century due to his rigorous thinking in the field of natural science. The other man who came into conflict with him is a no less, indeed in some respects more important personality, at least what we call an intellectual personality, that is Gustav Theodor Fechner. He was particularly active where questions of the border area between the spiritual and physical worldviews arose, and in his book on “Psycho-Physics”, for example, he presented very beautiful experiments on how to relate external life to the life of the soul in a certain mathematical way.

What led to the dispute between him and Schleiden, however, is that Gustav Theodor Fechner wrote a book entitled “Zend-Avesta”, in which he tried, using a completely different method than Theosophy does, of course, to speak of the animation of the plant world, for example, or of the world bodies. Gustav Theodor Fechner was anything but a theosophist in today's sense. For that which Theosophy gives us today is gained by the spiritual researchers directing clairvoyant perception to the spiritual facts themselves. Just as external observation gives the sensory facts, the spiritual researchers give the facts that are spiritually observed. Gustav Theodor Fechner did not proceed in this way, but arrived at what he said, let us say, about the ensouling of plants or the bodies of the world by drawing conclusions. He compared the life of man, as it manifests itself in various things of the soul, with the life of plants or a world body and said: "Well, we see that a plant - in this or that respect - shows something that can only be explained by assuming something similar to the soul for man. This procedure is called “reasoning by analogy”. So this was pure speculation; but it was something very intellectual, even if we have to regard it from a theosophical point of view as an intellectual game with all kinds of concepts. If today, again, certain people with little knowledge and much comfort lean on Fechner and want to build up a world view in his sense, one must say that one can admire Fechner as an intellectual man, but one cannot admire his followers in the same sense, but that it is incumbent on these followers to first learn something and to learn in the spiritual field what Theosophy can offer them before they should believe themselves called upon to say anything about the animation of plants, for example, or the world bodies.

Well, that Gustav Theodor Fechner came into a dispute with Schleiden, with the botanist Schleiden, when Schleiden in particular made sharp remarks about everything that was still in circulation in the first half of the nineteenth century, not only among laymen, but also in science itself about the influence of various celestial bodies on conditions on earth. One must not believe that things were always as they are today with regard to such matters. A great natural scientist of the first half of the nineteenth century, Burdach, collected in detail those cases in which it is shown how illnesses proceed differently when the moon is waxing and how they proceed differently when the moon is waning. This was carefully recorded and played an important role in very serious books in the first half of the nineteenth century. And other people also took seriously not only the assertion that can still be read today in every popular book that deals with these areas, not only the assertion that the moon is the cause of what is called ebb and flow, but there was also much talk of the influence that the moon has on the weather, on certain phenomena in general, let us say, also on plant growth and the like. So, as I said, these things were also taken quite seriously scientifically until the middle of the nineteenth century.

But people like Schleiden, who, as you have seen, was one of the most important personalities of the nineteenth century, were very much caught up in the material way of thinking of their time in order to be able to get involved in something like how any influence, however subtle, such as that of the moon, could have an effect on the earth. Schleiden was, one could say, biting about all the claims that the moon has an influence on this or that condition of the earth. The only thing he accepted was the moon's influence on the tides. And if you read such things today that relate to the moon, you can see that you will find much described of what people try to guess about the surface of the moon. For a while it was even boasted in schools that man knew the surface of the moon better than that of Africa. This is not the case, and it was a boast. But about everything that should actually interest man with the question: How does a star like the moon relate to the life of our earth? - External science is completely silent about this.

And that is precisely what you need as a human being, so to speak, to know something about.

Schleiden has now said: Well, if something is not in order in a household, for example if the dishes in the kitchen have been put out of order, people say: The cat did it. It's the same in science. If something that is happening on earth cannot be recognized, it is said that the moon is to blame. So Schleiden declared the moon to be the cat of science, and Fechner was extremely angry about this and wrote a really extraordinarily erudite treatise, which is basically still exemplary as an erudite work today, in which he tried to prove that, if you take the compilation of observations that have been made, the moon does indeed have a considerable influence on our weather conditions. Fechner carefully examined the observations and tested them over decades. The results were quite strange for many places on earth. In fact, Fechner found that on the days when the moon is waxing, i.e. the days leading up to the full moon, there are far more rainy days on earth and a far greater amount of water falls than on the days when the moon is waning, i.e. towards the new moon, and that again on the days when the moon is close to the earth, more rain falls than on the days when it is far from the earth. He compiled and checked this very carefully and saw that it could not be due to coincidence. He compiled the results, which in turn can indicate how one can arrive at the coincidences that affect what has been compiled about the fourteen days in which the moon waxes and the fourteen days in which the moon wanes in order to check the amount of rain. Thus he found that the number of rainy days in the fortnight of the waxing moon is equal to 107 to 100 in the fortnight of the waning moon.

Cross proof - all even days from one half, all odd days from the other half - resulted in a completely different ratio. Now Gustav Theodor Fechner himself said: "Well, a great influence of the moon, which would be coarse, so to speak, is not apparent, but the ratio of rainy days during the waxing moon to those during the waning moon of 107 to 100 is still a numerical ratio that - if it shows up like this for Strasbourg, Paris and a large number of other places for twenty to forty years - is at least something that can be taken into account.

Gustav Theodor Fechner did something that basically occurs quite sporadically, which corresponds to a theosophical principle that says: Practice offers the best evidence for what can be drawn from spiritual science. We draw the evidence for what spiritual science has to say from the practice of life. It was precisely in this case that Fechner wanted to draw on the practice of life. He explained it in a humorous way. He said: "Well, the skeptic will not be converted by this calculation, by this calculation that shows a ratio of 107 to 100. The skeptic will say: That's a kind of statistic, and you can prove anything with statistics. But I[, Gustav Theodor Fechner,] have a suggestion: what if we let our women fight this question out? Schleiden and I, even if we were in a scientific dispute, would certainly get along if we built a house and lived together. Our wives could then - as women used to do - get the water they need for washing by collecting the rainwater that flows from the roof. My wife, of course, since she is on her husband's side, would take the fortnight when the moon is waxing; Professor Schleiden would of course take the other fortnight. That way we would get along quite well. My wife would get one more jug of water than Professor Schleiden for every twenty-eight days.

Then Gustav Theodor Fechner also tried to really look at other things in an unprejudiced way. He found that not everything can be justified by popular belief, but some things can. Such things must be ruled out, such as the popular belief that the razor becomes blunter when the moon is waxing than when it is waning, which has led to the fact that even the sign of barber stores today is still a moon. But, as I said, these are things that, if you examine them a little, can no more be proven true than the old assertion that hair that is cut off when the moon is waning does not grow again; that would be very pleasant, you would only have to be shaved once when the moon is waning and you would never have to be shaved again. Unfortunately, this is not the case. So practice does not support this rule, which you can often find in old writers. However, Fechner has been able to exclude a few things, such as the fact that the moon actually had a small influence in cases of illness. This is a chapter where, as I said, science has been led onto the slippery slope. For Gustav Theodor Fechner's extraordinarily careful treatise has not led to the question of whether the moon has an influence on the illnesses of people on earth being approached by external science. As already mentioned, the moon is only considered to be the actual cause of ebb and flow. Now, this is something I mentioned by way of introduction to show you how it is necessary that precisely in such areas where, as I said, science has been led astray, it is necessary that they be guided into the right channels by what we call spiritual science. Such things can really only be dealt with by spiritual scientific research, by clairvoyant consciousness, which can also investigate phenomena if they go beyond the realm of physical research. There is no other way of dealing with such phenomena. Strangely enough, superstition is certainly very, very mixed with that which is justified, especially in this area - especially if one pays attention to the influences of the moon on weather conditions or other influences of the moon. And if you go back a little further, popular belief everywhere is based on a certain clairvoyant insight. But today's popular beliefs have also suffered in many cases due to the spreading materialistic consciousness; and so many things in popular beliefs have simply been greatly distorted and are simply taken in an external way as they are cited today.

Not true, for example, when things are presented in such a way that it is said that the moon divides the clouds when it is full, so that it is beautiful when the moon is full, that is a cheap judgment. When the clouds are in the sky, of course you can't see the full moon. If you see it, you think it has parted the clouds.

Now it will be necessary for spiritual science, if it gains some influence, to tinker quite a bit with the witness of outer science in this very area, where it, outer science, has preserved its worst superstition, namely the superstition that has remained from certain judgments about the influence of the stars on our earth, which outer science has preserved. Namely, the matter of ebb and flow, which can be read today in every popular textbook on astronomical geography, is precisely the one that is not true. Something can only be achieved by (exposing superstition?) ...

I will completely disregard the fact that, for example, low tide and high tide are known to occur twice in the course of twenty-four hours, while the moon, which is supposed to be responsible for this with its highest point, is only at its highest point once during these twenty-four hours. But all of this must be taken into account, for example, that the tide occurs two to two and a half hours later than science says it should for various places on earth. This was already emphasized by the great natural scientist of the nineteenth century, Mayer, who, because he was one of the most important, was locked up in a madhouse by his contemporaries. He emphasized that during his great voyages he was able to establish that the high tide on the high seas occurs two to two and a half hours later than it should if the moon's position in the meridian were to cause it. Science simply says that the tide was delayed. Well, that's very much in line with the way things are concluded today. Anyone who thinks about such areas will already be able to state this. And when you see that in wells, for example, the tide doesn't come in at all when the moon is high, but just when the tide comes in on the open sea, then people say: the tide is so late that it only comes in when the tide comes in on the sea. You can read this in popular books, how infinitely much of what is proclaimed today in the most common world views, dictated with great pathos, and what people believe in like dogmas, is based on the weakest scientific foundations. That is precisely the desolate fact that world views based on the so-called certain results of science can take hold in the widest circles today. Anyone who knows how things stand will recognize the futility of opposing such worldviews; but he also knows that it is all built on sand, that science, by wanting to build worldviews, is bound to be led astray in the not too distant future.

The question now is, how can we approach things from a spiritual-scientific point of view in order to gradually move towards a spiritual-scientific view of these things, towards a spiritual-scientific illumination of external conditions? Here again I must mention to you something that Goethe - truly a spirit who is closest among modern thinkers and researchers to what we call Theosophy - attempted in relation to similar areas as others have attempted in relation to ebb and flow. Namely, when I had studied Goethe's scientific and other works in detail in Weimar, after having dealt with them for years, for seven years with the most diverse preparatory works that Goethe had done, there were also countless tables with an incredible accuracy. For today's Goethe researchers, especially for those who write Goethe biographies - well, they really are among the most terrible people today; today we have seen that an Englishman has written the latest Goethe biography, which is praised throughout paper Germany as something incredibly high, a book that only shows us how, when such an inferior spirit describes Goethe, it also makes him an inferior spirit; No man can rise above himself, and it is only too understandable that the same thing happens to Goethe when such a man takes aim at him - well, people naturally have no idea how precisely and diligently Goethe worked where it mattered to him to establish great scientific facts. There are endless rows of tables, set out in drawings, where Goethe tried to determine the air pressure for the most diverse places in Europe. He wanted to show that the barometer reading did not depend on random air currents and external influences from the moon and celestial bodies, but that the barometer reading showed a regular level, so that the air on the whole earth became thinner (at one point) and denser (at another point). And Goethe wanted to show this through the barometer reading by tracking the fall and rise in tabular form.

What was his ulterior motive? He had the following ulterior motive: he wanted to show that the earth is not this dead being that another view shows us, [he wanted to show] that it is not merely the physical-sensual being that physical geography wants to make us believe, but that the physical earth is the physical body of a being, just as the physical human body belongs to an etheric body. And just as the etheric or vital body of man causes breathing, so Goethe wanted to show that the breathing of the earth consists in the rarefaction and compression of the air, which is caused by the etheric body of the earth. Goethe wanted to prove this through his tables, which he had compiled with tremendous diligence - he had set all his friends here and there in the most diverse places in Europe in motion so that they would send him the data for the tables and he could formulate the earth's law of respiration: when the earth exhales, the air layer becomes thinner, and when it inhales, the air layer becomes denser.

In this way, Goethe traced the ebb and flow of the atmosphere back to the living conditions of our earth, to what corresponds in our earth to the exhalation and inhalation in humans. In a similar way, other people have also attributed the ebb and flow, the sinking and rising of the water, to the inner life forces of the earth, and truly, they were not bad people. If you ever read that beautiful book [gap in text], my dear theosophical friends, you will see that Leonardo dealt with the most diverse areas of human knowledge, and that the regular sinking and rising of the sea also corresponded to an inner life process of the earth. And we have the great, epoch-making scientist Kepler to thank for the saying that the Earth can be compared to a large whale that breathes in and out, and that this can be seen in the ebb and flow of the water.

These are all things that need to be taken into account. Of course, people are trying to make you believe this everywhere today, as if Kepler - who is fully recognized for what he has achieved and cannot be wiped away - as if he had not said such things and [as if he] would agree, if he were alive today, with all the ridiculous theories that today's monism puts forward. This monism invokes Kepler, but conceals what has just been stated, for example, that according to him the earth is an internally animated being.

With such statements we are already approaching what spiritual science or theosophy has to say about such relationships as they are in our subject today. Such relationships can only be considered if they are viewed in relation to human life as a whole. For the human being belongs to the earth just as the finger belongs to the whole human organism. I have often said that the finger is actually more intelligent than the human being, for it does not imagine, as the human being so often does in relation to the whole earth organism, that it can lead an independent life without the living organism. He is only the finger because he is part of the whole organism. If you cut it off, then it is no longer a finger, it perishes, it disintegrates. Only man imagines that he can be something without the organism of the earth, while he belongs to the earth organism like the finger belongs to the human organism.

Of course, man is seduced into this view because he can walk around, and he takes this external appearance as if he really does not belong to the earth. The finger would probably also consider itself to be an independent being if it could walk around freely, if it had not grown on. Man need only consider how he would fare if he were taken by the scruff of the neck and removed a few miles from the earth; he would be no more able to live than the finger that was severed from his organism. The cutting off can also be done in other ways than with a knife. Man must certainly be regarded as belonging to the earth. It is a wrong view to consider the individual beings separately. Earth and man belong together. Only then do you get something sensible when you consider the earth in connection with man.

As you know, the human being initially consists of the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral body and everything that the ego now brings about in the human being. If we first consider these first three members, the physical body, the etheric or life body and the astral body, and how they relate to the ego, we must say: In the waking state of the human being, we see that these four members - the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral body and the ego - are divided into one another. Man is a being consisting of these four members in the waking state. In the sleeping state, which will occur in a decent person within twenty-four hours, the physical body and etheric body remain in bed and the astral body and ego are carried away into the spiritual world.

Now let us first consider this waking human being as we have him before us today. We can only understand him in his present meaning and in his present nature if we say to ourselves: the physical body, the etheric or life body and the astral body are the carriers of the ego. The I lives in them. In the distant future the I will work more and more on these shells, first of all on the astral body. It will reshape it, and this will become the spirit self or manas. But the I must work self-consciously on the astral body if the spirit self is to arise. Therefore we are only at the beginning of this conscious work for normal humanity. But the I must also work consciously on the etheric body or life body. By reworking the etheric or life body, the ego will have to work into the distant future; that which is spiritualized in the etheric or life body, that which is a transformation of the etheric body through the ego, that is the buddhi or life spirit. That which will be spiritualized by the physical body through the conscious work of the ego is the spirit man or Atma. So that we can say: Man presents himself to us as physical body, etheric body, astral body and spirit self, life spirit and spirit man; but the last three members are transformations of the first three through the ego.

There we have before us the man of the past and the man of the future. But a certain transformation has already taken place with the lower members of man on our earth, only not arbitrarily through the ego. The ego has already worked on the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body. That which the ego will consciously transform in the astral body will be its manas or spirit self. That which the I has made of the astral body into its tool in the past, without working consciously, is the sentient soul. Thus we call that which is the shell of the sentient soul, that which has remained from the old astral body, the sentient body, and that which the ego has unconsciously transformed, the sentient soul. Now the ego has also worked on the etheric or life body. What the ego has unconsciously worked on it, what it has drawn out of the etheric body in terms of substances, that is what we call the intellect or mind soul. And that which the ego has worked out in the physical body, which it has made its tool, we call the consciousness soul. So that between that which was in the past and that which man will be in the future stand the actual soul members of man, in the middle of the sensory body the corresponding soul member, the sensory soul, in the etheric or life body the corresponding soul member, the mind or spirit soul, and in the physical body the corresponding soul member, the consciousness soul.

When a person stands before us today with his ego in his waking state, these three soul members live in their corresponding bodies. These three bodies are interwoven with the soul members; these three are also dependent on a certain environment. Man is threefold dependent on his surroundings during the waking state. What does it actually mean, then, when we look at day-waking in relation to the world? It means that what is out of the physical body and etheric body during the night is called into the physical and etheric body by the rising of the sun. And when the sun sets again, that which had been driven in through the rising of the sun, the astral body and the ego, is driven out of the physical and etheric body.

Now the development of man consists in the fact that man becomes independent of external conditions. In the countryside outside, sleeping and waking are still somewhat dependent on the setting and rising of the sun. Man is called to make himself independent of external nature. Through urban life, man has already become highly independent of the direct co-experience with the sun and the night. But man retains the same rhythm within himself, so that it is really like a clock that is three hours fast. It goes round once in twelve hours like a clock that has been set correctly. It takes as long as usual, but always shows the wrong time. Internally, it is dependent on solar time, but it is no longer in tune with external conditions. It is necessary for people to separate themselves from the external conditions and only maintain the rhythm internally. So the sun rises and sets outside; man sleeps and wakes but not with this setting and rising of the sun; but he retains the rhythm inwardly. Even if he is able to wake at night and sleep during the day, day and night still alternate inwardly. Whereas in earlier times man's inner life coincided outwardly with day and night, now they are indeed torn apart outwardly, but man has retained the rhythm inwardly. Thus man's day-waking - the living together of the soul with the outer body - means man's belonging together with the sun. Therefore it is the sun that regulates this coexistence of the soul with the outer body. The outer body is regulated in relation to the soul by the relationship of the earth to the sun.

This is regulated in three ways. First we have the sensory body and within it the sensory soul. What do the sensitive body and the sensitive soul depend on in relation to the influence of the sun? The sentient body and the sentient soul depend on the place on earth where [the person] lives in relation to the influence of the sun; depending on this, the sun's rays fall at different angles. The sensory body and the sensory soul are in a different relationship to the physical body, depending on the place where the person lives. What we call the sun's influence on man's sensory body and - indirectly - his sensory soul depends first of all on the place where he lives on earth. We encounter this first of the sun's influences in what we call the feeling of home. This feeling of home is man's attachment to the land on which he lives. And the cases are known where we can say that people who are still so down-to-earth, who are still so attached to the place where they live, that when they are transplanted to another place, they fall ill with homesickness, and that the very thought that they could return makes them well again. Now man is called to grow out of such dependence; but we see in the sentient soul and the sentient body in the feeling of home this first influence of the sun, which is expressed by the fact that man is born in a certain place. He is born in a certain place and certain instincts depend on this, which show themselves in him where the ego has not yet consciously worked on the sentient soul. We can prove this if we look around a little on the outside.

It is interesting to note that two things, if we pick out just two, that two things have only taken hold in very specific areas of the earth. These are iron working and the work of obtaining food from animals, which is called milking. If we go further back in time, we only find this in Asia and Europe. Among the populations of the earth, which we call the indigenous peoples, there was originally no evidence of the work of milking cows and working iron. For example, the Native Americans, the Indians, did not work with iron or milk animals. This was only brought to America by the invading Europeans. Just as animals were not milked there, iron was not processed there either. On the other hand, we can see that these things prevailed throughout Siberia, but that they did not spread across the Behring Strait.

There we see that in the times we are talking about, it is about the intensive processing of the environment. This is bound to the sentient soul; it depends entirely on the place on earth where one lives. So the sentient soul lives and dwells in the sentient body, and the influence of the sun is expressed by the fact that the person lives in a certain place on earth.

Let us now try to determine the influence of the sun in relation to the etheric or life body and the intellectual soul dwelling within it. This depends on the seasons, on the position of the earth in relation to the sun. It depends on the seasons how the human being feels as a mind soul in his etheric body, which is the tool for the mind soul. This in turn shows itself through external facts.

Look at the peoples at the North Pole. If a certain culture of mind and spirit does not penetrate them - and when it does, they have great difficulty in assimilating it - they fall into apathy because of the distribution of winter and summer as it appears around the North Pole. It is the same in tropical regions with their long summers. Humans also fall into apathy there. That culture, however, which is bound to the intellectual soul, can occur in the temperate zones, which have their regular alternation of summer and winter. This has to do with the fact that the peculiar relationship between the intellectual or emotional soul and the etheric body can only occur when the human being really experiences what can be called all the longing for spring that manifests itself in the temperate zone, all the happiness that is then present in summer, all the melancholy that arises in autumn, and everything that can be experienced in winter. This rhythm is necessary so that the etheric body can thrive in such a way that the intellectual or emotional soul can dwell in it in the right way.

A third influence of the sun is that of night and day, or as man repeats it in his consciousness soul. If man does not sleep properly, that is, if he does not alternate the dwelling of the astral body and ego in the physical and etheric body with being outside of them, so that what has been done to the physical body by the astral body can be repaired, then his life cannot flourish properly. In order to develop the state of the ego that is necessary today, the human being must be awake for a certain number of hours as dictated by solar conditions and sleep for the other number of hours. The development of the I in the physical body as a consciousness soul is bound to those conditions in the course of the sun that confront us in the alternation of day and night.

This is how we have expressed the relationship of the earth to the sun in the human being. The astral body or the consciousness body with the consciousness soul dwelling in it has a relationship to the place on earth where we live. We only make ourselves more and more independent of the place where we are by becoming stronger and stronger inwardly and growing beyond the groundedness of home. By making the whole earth our dwelling place, we develop the feeling of home to the [dwelling place] of the whole earth; but we are then dependent on the whole earth, and we will have to take this earthly locality as corresponding. The changing of the seasons corresponds to what we experience within the etheric body. The change of the times of day corresponds to what we experience as the change of waking and sleeping.

Thus we have characterized the position of man in relation to the sun and the earth. For when man with his inner being, with which he is outside the physical and etheric body during the night, when he is inside the physical and etheric body with his inner being, so that man stands before us as the whole human entity, so to speak, during the day - even better said: in the waking state - [then] man is a result - in his whole life - of this threefold relationship of the earth to the sun. In the waking state, the relationship of the earth to the sun is repeated.

And now we consider the human being who is the actual inner human being, who is in a sleeping state outside the physical and etheric body. Of course no outer science can look at him, only the clairvoyant eye can look at him; for outer science naturally has only the physical body and etheric body before it in sleep, it denies the etheric body, so only the physical body remains for it, and that is the same when awake and asleep. External science does not concern itself with that which comes out at night. It is precisely that which, after man is exposed to the influence of the sun during the day - in general, when he is inside his physical and etheric body - and repeats the influence of the sun in himself, which stands in exactly the same relationship to the moon. Just as day life repeats the relationship of the sun to the earth in a threefold way in man, so man's night life, namely that which emerges from the physical body and etheric body when he falls asleep, repeats the rhythm of the moon, the relationship of the moon to the earth. And this is the case with every human being. But we have to realize how it is. I have described in a somewhat dry way how threefold the human being repeats the influence of the sun in his daily life in order to be able to show you now how, when the human being is asleep, the influence of the moon expresses itself on his actual inner being. The facts are such that no external evidence can be found [...]. If you look at human life, you will indeed find individual indications of this, but only points, because you have no means of using them in the right way other than through spiritual science.

You will have heard of those real, genuine poets, for example, who have to be silent with their poetry at certain times, who can produce nothing; the other less important ones can write poetry at any time, can't they? But those who really give their soul's blood when they write poetry must be silent at certain times, while at other times - and indeed in every field of art - the inner being is really like a spring that drives forth artistic intuitions and intentions and so on. Where does that come from? Well, it is not observed in external science. Where does it come from? It is because there is indeed a regular rhythm in that which is outside the physical body and etheric body at night, because there is a regular rhythm in the astral body and ego. If one examines this latter rhythm, it presents itself in such a way that it runs from fortnight to fortnight, that it has an ascending movement and a descending one, that in this inner being of man, which is outside the physical and etheric body at night, that through a certain time one experiences precisely that which stimulates the imagination, which brings forth thoughts, which is productive, and that through the other fourteen days that which stimulates the imagination, which brings forth thoughts, which stimulates man to production, is silent. In particular, the imagination becomes less and less productive, and there are dead spots where nothing at all wants to come out of this inner being. In fact, there is a certain regular rhythm within the human being. There are certain times when a person's inner thoughts bubble up. At other times, these thoughts can be written down, but a person is only actually productive at certain times. This is not related to his external life, but to the influences he experiences at bedtime. There are dead spots where he is not internally productive, and these dead spots - including the highest points, of course - are always about four weeks apart. They correspond to the influence of the moon - for example - that man is most productive at the full moon and the dead spot occurs at the new moon. But this rhythm is repeated within the human being, so that the moon does not still have this influence today, but in such a way that we can say: Once upon a time, in the distant past, man was stimulated to inner productivity during sleep by the forces emanating from what is now called the full moon, which caused his thoughts, his insights, that which brings man together with the spiritual world, to rise, and that when what is now called the new moon came, he came to a dead point where the outer spiritual world closed itself off to him. Today it is no longer the case that this inner life coincides with the phases of the moon. Man has freed himself from this. He has retained the rhythm. The phases of the moon correspond to a rhythm that man's inner life shows, not only in great poets and artists, but in every human being. In every human being there is an ascending and a descending life that corresponds exactly to the rhythm of the moon - but does not coincide with it externally in its highest and lowest points. While the human being is, so to speak, a child of the sun's influence when he is inside the physical body and etheric or life body, the actual core of his being is under the moon's influence with his inner life, but not directly, but in such a way that he repeats the rhythm of the moon in an inner process.

This is particularly interesting when we look at spiritual scientific production itself. When a man develops in such a way that he can consciously follow how his inner being has separated itself from the outer, when the inner being has become independent, when clairvoyance has come with full consciousness, when he sees not through his outer eyes but through the higher organs of perception, then he can consciously state how the matter proceeds, and there it becomes apparent that one can perceive a period of fourteen days when the inspirations pervade the spiritual plan, when everything stands before the clairvoyant consciousness; A time that is, so to speak, a period of brilliance in clairvoyance occurs, and then again comes a period where the images fade. And these periods are all held in the rhythm of the moon's course. It is like experiencing an inner full moon night - for the outer view this can be described as night, although it is inwardly illuminated. If you look at a brightly lit world seen through clairvoyance, you will experience a new moon night a fortnight later, when the images fade. This changes like the course of the moon. Where we are able to state how this inner being of man has a rhythm through fully conscious clairvoyance, there it is best shown that man does indeed have an inner rhythm. Just as man's outer life corresponds to the rhythm of the sun, his inner life corresponds to the rhythm of the moon. Where does this come from?

Well, my dear theosophical friends, you all know from what exists as the Akashic Chronicle that the earth was once embodied as the moon, that today's moon is, so to speak, thrown out of our earth and has retained conditions that were there before. Ancient conditions from times when our present-day ego, which has since trained itself, had no influence on our spiritual conditions, on our astral body and so on, have been preserved for us. On the other hand, future conditions are already announcing themselves on earth. Just as we had a time during the old lunar period when we had no influence of the ego on our spiritual conditions, just as we will work out the astral body into the spirit self or manas during the Jupiter period, so the earth has, as it were, preserved the old time in the moon. The moon is nothing other than a piece of earth. It has held it in one piece in such a way that it appears like a piece of earth as it revolves. As it revolves around the earth, it revolves once around itself; you always see the same side of it because it is a piece of earth.

And, isn't it true, if you imagine the whole surface of the moon instead of the moon, it would always show the outside to the outside (and the inside to the inside). And the moon is nothing other than a piece of earth that shows the outside to the outside and the inside to the inside. The moon has captured in one piece what the earth was. What man once was is therefore recorded in his inner life during sleep, while those relationships that can only be there through the earth show themselves to us when we are awake. So that we can say: Our inner being stands in such a relationship to itself, to the whole human being, as the moon stands to the earth. Our inner being repeats the rhythm of the moon. It is an extremely important fact that we repeat the solar rhythm in relation to the earth with our outer being and repeat the lunar rhythm with our inner being.

However, this inner being of ours is at the same time something that goes from incarnation to incarnation, from embodiment to embodiment. Therefore, only the individual embodiment is placed directly under the influence of the sun, while the inner life, which goes from incarnation to incarnation, is placed under the influence of the moon. If only the sun were at work, human life would proceed so quickly that we would experience in one incarnation what otherwise only many incarnations bring. But we would also experience no more than [what] we can experience in one incarnation. The influence of the moon means that we can appear anew in every incarnation. It really is the case that that which stands between birth and death is placed under the influence of the sun, and that which stands behind it, where the spiritual is active, is under the influence of the moon.

This is really one of the points where today's science mocks itself and does not know how. Wherever one still finds talk today of the conditions relating to the time before birth, the calculation is even made according to lunar months. Ten lunar months are reckoned. The lunar cycle is repeated ten times during the development of the human germ from conception to birth. Because each month actually corresponds to a very specific course of development of the germ and the germ develops [gap in the transcript], you have to calculate by lunar months. The human germ lives for ten lunar months before it is born. Even external science reckons with these conditions, mocking itself and not knowing how. The conditions of man, which do not relate to his life between birth and death, but lie directly behind it, all relate to the influence of the moon, except that it is not directly the present moon that is at work, but the rhythm is recorded. Enormous perspectives open up for those who want to explore these suggestions further. What lies behind the outer life points back to the rhythm that is captured by the earlier moon, which will be repeated at a higher level in the Jupiter rhythm. Everything that lies behind outer life points back to the influence of the moon. No wonder that outer science knows nothing of the lunar influence and is mistaken even where it has retained such an influence. The earth itself used to be in such a rhythm, which can be seen today in the twenty-eight-day lunar cycle. It is therefore not [surprising] that it has retained something in its life, this earth, which expresses itself in the same way as the rhythm of the moon.

So it is not today's moon that causes the flood, but it is the inner life of the earth itself that shows itself, that inner life that has remained from the earlier lunar time. This has been preserved in its own earthly phenomena, in ebb and flow; and again on the other side in that [that the earth] drives the moon around itself. No wonder the two coincide! For they both lead back to one and the same cause.

He is right who speaks of the moon's revolution as well as the phenomenon called ebb and flow being traced back to a common spiritual cause on earth. That is why the two phenomena run parallel; that is why they can also overlap; just as with man, so also outside the phenomena that run parallel overlap.

In this sense, my dear theosophical friends, the tide can indeed be delayed, just as with man, however, that which is his inner rhythm holds the matter in the sequence of time, but is also not at all bound to the external influences. In short, if we look at things in terms of spiritual science, everything that can be explained in this field is explained.

So we see that we have to ask, when we consider that which stands behind the outer phenomena, that which goes through the incarnations, that we have to ask about that which was already present as spiritual during the old moon time. The moon is, as it were, a symbol of what the earth used to be, the influence on man that was already at work before man became the ego of today. When man looks up at the moon, he can say: "You have preserved what the earth once was. I have attained my ego on earth. But what makes my ego eternal and in which I live when I sleep, when I go into hiding after I have passed through the gate of death, is connected in its rhythm with the course of the moon.

What goes beyond the individual life leads us to the course of the moon. Religious documents have faithfully preserved many occult truths, but people today have little understanding of religious documents. The ancient Hebrew confession, which prepared Christianity, has perceived what we have said in a wonderful way. Moses said: "Something lives in me that is related to the divine spirit of the world. What causes the rhythm in me is what I see above in the rhythm of the moon. That is why he calls Yahweh the Moon God, who established the lunar order before the earthly order, so that it is the rhythm of inner humanity. And how does Moses describe Yahweh? Read the relevant passage, it is wonderfully and beautifully appropriate. We are expressly told that Yahweh can never see his face; he only shows himself from behind. Why does the Mosaic document describe Yahweh in this way? It describes him in this way because Yahweh or Jehovah is represented externally by the moon, which sets its face and always passes by the earth with the same side and never shows its face. The way of the moon is given in this description.

This is one of those examples where the whole depth of the biblical document confronts us as a true occult document, if only we understand it. Now we must also be clear about the fact that that which was a rhythm in the ego-disclosed man, in that man who had not yet awakened to his ego, which is preserved as a rhythm for the subdued ego, must now come for the ego. The human being has stepped out of the rhythm of the moon. If this still occurs today, it shows that what was the rhythm of the moon has remained. But man must step fully consciously into spirituality, that is, that which was given for ancient times in the rhythm of the moon must also be able to be given for the future in the rhythm of the sun. For this, the spirit of the sun had to connect with the earth's development.

As the Old Testament still points us back to a spirit that is connected to the moon, so the New Testament points us to Christ Jesus, who will now bring the development to the other side, who will place the [solar rhythm] into the day, into the fully developed self.

We have already indicated that in the fully developed ego, today's clairvoyant consciousness is already evident.

So, for the night side of our development, we understand that the lunar influence is asserting itself. For everything that is connected, so to speak, with any state of sleep, the moon's influence makes itself felt. This is what can be said about the influence of the moon from a spiritual-scientific point of view. And it is not through registration work, as Gustav Theodor Fechner did, that one arrives at recognizing the moon's influence, but by examining the matter from a spiritual-scientific point of view. Then one will see that once one has familiarized oneself with the lunar rhythm, one will find it again in many earthly phenomena, then one will see that in many earthly states a similar rhythm takes place as it does in the moon. Things coincide, although it must be said that there is no direct influence.

I wanted to show that in fact, just as man harmonizes with the influence of the sun in his outer daytime life, he harmonizes with the influence of the moon for the night side, but that you have to look for both for yourself so that the rhythm on one side corresponds to the rhythm on the other, but that you don't get the result if you say that the moon does this or that. You have to follow the moon for itself and the human being for himself. You will see that these are two rhythms. The clock is also set to the rhythm of the sun, but it can be quite different from solar time. Even if we follow the clock when we get up in the morning, it will not occur to us to look for the cause of getting up in the clock, to look for it in the fact that the hands of the clock have turned around, although getting up agrees with the clock, because the two must agree according to deeper laws. Thus, the moon's course coincides with the inner life of man, because both lead to a deeper cause.