Lessons for the Participants of Cognitive-Cultic Work 1906–1924

GA 265a — 12 May 1913, Cologne

The Twelve Senses

Notes from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede First degree

We live in a transitional age in which greater changes will take place than in any other transitional period. Things have happened in the supersensible world that the supersensible beings expect at least some people on earth to grasp and to build on in their work.

Man has not five but twelve senses. In addition to the five senses usually enumerated, there are seven more that do not open outwards but are situated internally; these are:

1. the sense of speech, by which we grasp the spoken word;
2. the sense of thought, by which we can connect concepts and thoughts with what we have heard;
3. the sense of self, by which we know that other people are also endowed with a self. We only experience our self internally, not with the help of that sense organ. These senses are located in the soft parts of the brain;
4. a sense of balance, by which we can consciously stand upright - in contrast to mechanical objects;
5. a sense of mobility, by which we perceive our movements, such as walking and so on;
6. the sense of life, by which we feel well or unwell, fresh or depressed;
7. the actual sense of touch, that is, the distinction between hard and soft and so on. This is not an external sense organ, because you only find the resistance that you have to overcome when touching the object. What is usually called the sense of touch also includes the sense of warmth, which is one of the external senses. This has its organ in the skin; the sense of hardness, however, has only an internal organ, not an external one like the skin.

Of the twelve senses, therefore, only five are turned outwards; these are hearing, sight, smell, taste and warmth. The twelve senses are related to the twelve signs of the zodiac. Just as the Sun is something quite different - when viewed occultly - when it is in a different constellation, so man is quite different depending on whether he is connected to one or other sense organ. When he sees, he is all color; when he hears, he is all sound, and so on. But just as the sun is ultimately something other than the signs of the zodiac, so man is inwardly something other than his senses.

The division of the senses into seven and five is like the division of the starry sky when the sun rises in Aries and seven constellations are above the horizon and five are hidden below the horizon. And just as two of these seven stand at the boundary points, half on and half below the horizon, namely Aries and Libra, so among the seven inner senses there are also two that stand on the boundary between the inner and the outer, namely the sense of balance and the sense of self, which nevertheless already relate our inner being to something else that is outside us.

The fact that there are five senses that are open to the outside world comes from Lucifer, from the Luciferic influence. Originally, all the senses were inner senses. That is why it is also said in the Bible: “Your eyes” - ears and so on - “will be opened.” Originally, the eyes were only intended to reflect that which was perceived spiritually in images that one would have seen inwardly. The ears were also intended only to inwardly transform sounds into what one would have heard as spiritual sounds.

This is how the Elohim wanted to make the human senses; and what we still have now as light generation in the eye itself - for example, through pressure on the eye or through imagination - these are the last remnants of what the Elohim wanted to make out of the eye. But when Lucifer opened human eyes, man would still have been unable to perceive the physical if Ahriman had not transformed the external world so that people could perceive the physical. He wove darkness into the light, creating colors that humans can now perceive, but only that, because humans cannot see light itself. He, Ahriman, placed sound in the air, so that one hears only a faint echo of the real sound through the vibrations in the air.

Now Lucifer and Ahriman are powerful spirits, but they now have under them hosts of less powerful beings, down to the smallest elemental beings, who work in a grain of sand. Among these are also the hosts of Mammon, against whom Michael has been fighting for eons. The Mammonite spirits work to attain all knowledge only through the senses and to register it with the mind that is bound to the brain. Since the fifteenth or sixteenth century, they have been active in modern natural science, and the fact that such spirits as Huxley, Darwin and Haeckel are materialists is because, before their last birth, they passed through a sphere in which the still unconquered hosts of Mammon exercised their influence. Since the last third of the nineteenth century, however, they have been defeated by Michael, who is working there as an emissary of Christ. He has pushed them out of heaven and thrown them down to earth.

That is what happened in the transcendental world and the transcendental beings expect that man will continue their work. For these mammonitic spirits are now on earth, and they are now fighting to gain control on earth after being defeated in heaven. When a person like Maack writes about xenology (the doctrine of the foreign) or allonomy (the doctrine of the other) and at the same time says that this “foreign” or “other” cannot be recognized - when he proposes to build a transcendental mechanics (which is the same as saying that in Cologne you want to eat with a spoon what is on a plate in Paris) is nothing more than the effect of these hosts of Mammon. From xenology to the Turkish war, there is a straight line.

Therefore, we are called upon to continue the work of Michael and not to let these spirits rule on earth.

Those who allow what has been said to sink in may gradually see small flames of realization. We no longer have the right to expect a great spiritual outpouring like the one at Pentecost, but we may consider ourselves in full humility as small flames in which the light is reflected. If it has been said of a certain Adyar event that it can only be compared to the Pentecostal outpouring, then that seems to us to be blasphemy. But we may hope that what once descended as the Holy Spirit will awaken in us the little flame that has been placed in us and will bring us the knowledge of the truth.