The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit
GA 68b — 30 November 1906, Cologne
42. Blood is a Very Special Fluid
As you know, the saying that serves as the leitmotif of this lecture can be found in Goethe's “Faust”. This, his greatest work, has given rise to so many explanations that a whole library could be filled with them. The sentence spoken by Mephistopheles is sometimes explained in very peculiar ways. It is not possible to discuss them all here, but I would like to refer you to Professor Minor, who wrote a three-volume commentary on Faust. He gives the following explanation: Mephistopheles says mockingly, “Blood is a very special juice,” because he does not like blood and therefore demands a signature that is written in blood.
Faust enters into a pact with the emissary of hell; Goethe took this motif, like the material of the Faust saga in general, from German legends. The fact that Faust, the representative of humanity striving for the highest, should sign over his soul with blood is already known in the oldest Faust books – as early as the sixteenth century. He has to cut his hand, dip the pen into the blood, write his name, and then the words are said to have appeared in the coagulated blood: “Man, escape” — and yet blood should be something that Mephisto could not stand? On the contrary, it must be something very precious to him; that is Goethe's opinion of this passage in his great poem. From the standpoint of spiritual research, we can approach the significance of blood for life by considering the question: What actually is this blood? — This question is not to be treated scientifically; from the standpoint of spiritual science, we can look more deeply into the nature of man. We see the undercurrent of this saying for the entire historical development of man, so that we can at least answer the question in a certain direction. In doing so, we want to start from a saying that comes from an ancient teacher of the Egyptian secret schools, Hermes Trismegistus:
Everything below is like everything above!
“Above” refers to the spiritual world, “below” to the physical world; for the mystic, everything spiritual is “above” in the sense of Hermetic theosophy.
When we look at a person, we first see their physical appearance, their body; but we not only suspect, we know that a spiritual essence dwells within this body. We see the spiritual being revealed through the physical; the physical shows what moves the person at the bottom of their soul. We see their joy in their smile, their suffering in their tears. The entire physical aspect is a testimony of the spiritual. The spirit has built up the body: a lovely appearance as the image of a lovely soul; a brutal physical appearance, built up by a brutal spirit. We call the soul-spiritual the “upper”, the physical is the “lower”. Plato spoke of the “upper” as the archetype of things. Everything that surrounds us is the image of a spiritual reality. The world of archetypes is the “upper world”. Just as the shadow on the wall is the image of the object, so the lower world is the faithful reflection of the upper. Those who look at the world with spiritual eyes see not only the material; they see not only the eye and the ear, the body and its limbs, in the human form; they also perceive a soul behind it.
The sum of all physical phenomena in nature: forests, fields, plants, minerals, yes, the heavenly and planetary bodies are the expression of a spiritual world. Every time we see something in the lower, we can conclude that there is something corresponding in the upper. Man gets to know the lower in his everyday experience; the scientist examines it with instruments. The spiritual researcher shows us the archetypes – the upper aspect. We will understand things when we recognize the upper aspect for each lower aspect.
In this way, we will also come to know the human being when, after having observed the blood with the nervous system and the heart, we then search for what prevails in them, what corresponds to them in the upper aspect, when we ask: What is the spirit of the blood?
In the same way, we want to understand the human being by considering what the spiritual archetype of blood is. To do this, we have to follow the path of human development together.
What is the essence of the human being according to spiritual science? We get to know the upper part of the human being through the connecting link, starting from the body. For materialism, this is everything. Bones, digestive and respiratory organs, nerves, reproductive and circulatory systems make up the physical body. What we know about the human being consists entirely of the same substances that make up the things found in nature. The same matter is everywhere in the world, even in minerals.
Theosophy or spiritual science distinguishes, in addition to the body that we have in common with all inanimate nature, an etheric or life body, but understands it to mean something different from the physicist's understanding of ether. While science previously assumed only the physical, it too has recently come to recognize a kind of life principle. But while science reaches its knowledge only through logic and reasoning, the theosophist has gained his knowledge by developing abilities within himself that lie dormant in everyone. We call such a developed person an “awakened one,” that is, the spiritual world opens up to him.
The more organs a person has, the more worlds can be opened up to him. Through self-development, through self-perfection, he can attain higher development. Then he can see the etheric body, which underlies the physical body as a very fine body. Everything that lives in a person comes from the etheric body. Plants have this in common with us; just as color belongs to the flower, so the etheric body belongs to the physical body for those who can see it. Many say that it is immodest to claim such a thing and think that no one can know this. But it is much more immodest to say this, because those who have not seen the matter cannot decide, but those who see can. No one can say more than: I do not know —, just as little as a blind man can claim that there are no colors because he does not see them.
The third link of the human being arises when one seeks the vehicle for everything that is named: desire, lust, passion, pain. Not only blood and nervous systems are in man, but just as real are those phenomena. We call its carrier the “astral body”. We have it in common with the whole animal world. But what makes man the crown of all creation, what makes him rise above the animal world; what he has for himself alone, is the fourth limb, the ego body. This is what distinguishes him from all beings except himself; out of this he develops further and further upwards. We recognize this when we compare an uncultivated person with a cultured person. — example of Darwin and the man-eater. — The I, which is already in him, has not yet worked on the astral body.
We therefore usually distinguish two parts of the astral body: the one part that the human being receives, and the other that he has worked into it. The astral body transformed by the I is the spiritual self or manas.
We can also work on our etheric body; many principles and moral ideas, which are still rooted in the astral body, also extend as forces into the etheric realm, for example, art. What a person absorbs from a work of art has an effect on the etheric body; the same applies to what is achieved through religion. We also distinguish two parts in it: the received and the worked-in spirit of life. We call this Budhi. A chela acquires the ability to work more and more into it; spiritual training is a working out of the etheric body. Finally, such a working out of the physical body can also take place through special spiritual abilities. The theosophist calls the spiritualized part through which man stands in relation to the whole cosmos “Atman” or the real spirit of man. Thus we distinguish seven aspects in the human being. These aspects of the human being are not to be understood as separate parts, but rather as seven levels, degrees of his being, like the tones of a scale or the colors of the rainbow. The last three levels: Manas, Budhi, Atma, make up the archetype of the human being - the upper part.
Man has not had these seven members from the beginning; only gradually have they been developed with the physical body; in the original state, only the predispositions for this physical body are found. Man is an image of the whole cosmos. Cuvier, the important naturalist, says: For the one who studies animal anatomy, the smallest member is an image of the whole body. From the peculiar shape of a bone, he can deduce the shape of the whole body. In each individual there is an image of the whole universe. If a being who is able to see through this were to come to our world from another world and see only a rock crystal, it could deduce from it what the whole world should be like. Each one that can internalize the external becomes a mirror of the whole universe. The human physical body cannot be regarded as a mirror of the universe in itself; it is only through the etheric body that it is internalized, and internalization continues through the etheric body. In the animal, external life is reflected in inner consciousness. In the plant, we do not yet have consciousness. Consciousness does not depend on external stimuli, but is present where external stimuli are reflected internally: in the animal.
In the human being, this consciousness expresses itself in the first formation of the nervous system. This nervous system is the so-called sympathetic or digestive system, solar plexus, arising on the sides of the spinal cord – it is an organ of consciousness. To observe the human being in this stage as a being with only this system of consciousness requires a training such as the Hindu receives in the yoga training. When the brain and spinal cord systems are not active in him, the human being sees an unknown world shining within him, a consciousness that was once his own: dull and dim, a kind of omniscience. The whole universe is reflected in this consciousness; it depends on the nature of the universe. It can reflect everything that shines into it from the universe, but it cannot give anything itself.
When the soul begins to integrate the ego into the tripartite body, it integrates itself into the spinal cord. Only with this does the possibility arise for an inner life to develop; only with this is the human being able to react to attacks... [gap]
In no physical body could self-awareness take root without the blood system. The blood system, in which inner warmth can develop, the red, warm human blood must be there for the ego to reveal itself. The blood is the carrier of self-awareness in a being. Therefore, if you have found the way to his blood, you have also found the way to his self; what affects the blood affects the self. It is not the ego that is or creates the blood; the astral body does that. Only when the astral body has created the blood is the ego able to dwell in it. One can receive knowledge from a person, learn many things, and in the same way one can teach another and make communications to him; but one has access to the particular individuality of a person only when his blood is affected, set in faster or slower motion. The particular juice provides access to the ego. Control over the blood makes one the master of the person.
How does one influence the blood? I would like to refer to a conversation between two well-known men: Anzengruber, the playwright, and Rosegger, the writer who portrayed Austrian rural life. Anzengruber spent his whole life in the city – and yet, with what genius he brought the figures of the rural world to the stage! Rosegger said to him: “Perhaps it would be better for you to study the farmers.” To which Anzengruber replied: “I wouldn't be able to do that; I can't do it by observation, it's in my blood. My ancestors were farmers, and when I am left to myself, it takes care of itself.”
There is a deep truth in this, and to explore it, we need to consider the nature of consanguinity. We speak of consanguinity, but in reality not a single drop of the father's blood passes into that of the son. Quite different organs are related, like the blood system. This forms itself at the latest in the embryo. If a similar organism descends from another, something similar is expressed in the blood. It is not the blood that is related, but that which is expressed in the blood, which moves it, warms or cools it. The relationship lies in the soul, which underlies the physical.
Among all peoples we find in ancient times that marriages were contracted within the near-kith and kin; small tribal unions married within the kin. It was a crime to marry outside the tribe, outside the blood relationship. All mankind has worked its way out of this.
From the near-marriage later developed the far-marriage. Tacitus, for example, in his “Germania”, gives a glimpse of how distant marriage developed from close marriage. At the moment this happens, a very special phenomenon appears: somnambulistic clairvoyance. For example, in 1000 and 900 BC, the ancient Greeks had the ancient clairvoyance; all legends originated from this state. Clairvoyance ceases when long-distance marriage occurs. Where form mixes with foreign form, something is expressed in the blood that does not belong to the common stock. This process was a change to the intellectual view in all peoples. Formerly, the process was similar for an old clairvoyant as it is today for a medium. To recall this state in our time would be an anachronism, as it was the natural state in the past; every child did not absorb from the outside, but felt within himself what was related to his tribe. When foreign blood was added, the person grew out of his tribe. Whereas in the past what was in the generations was expressed in the blood, later it was expressed in what the external senses conveyed. As a last remnant, although not quite like the old seer, Anzengruber feels not only what he himself feels as a human being, as an individual person, but also what his father has experienced. Hence the veneration of the ancestors, because and where one still felt their direct influence.
Thus there used to be an inner knowledge that the old sages exude from within, that emanates from systems that live below the blood, a knowledge of the whole universe; the knowledge that flows in from within instead of what later in human life gained control over one's blood from the outside. Now the influx from the outside has control over one's blood.
Genesis speaks of people living to be 800 and 900 years old. This can also be explained from what has been said before: in ancient times, not just a person was named with a name, but everything that the ego can encompass; a person who remembered not only what he, but also what his father and grandfather experienced, everything that could be summarized as a common memory, was given a common name. As age diminishes, so does memory, namely everything that is imprinted in the blood of a generation, we have the transition from close marriage to long-distance marriage.
Thus it is already evident in the Bible that whoever has a person's blood has the person himself. What has an effect in people inscribes itself in the blood, insofar as it inscribes itself, so much has the person. Through such combinations of spiritual research as here, through clairvoyance, the deepest cultural possibilities can be considered. It would be impossible for culture to graft a completely alien culture onto an original one. Many believe that this is precisely how it should be expressed in the blood; but this is a mistake.
If, for example, we were to impose our modern culture on the Hindus, we would only wipe out their original culture. If we want to bring the culture of the higher peoples into the lower one, we must know the preconditions; with the ever-increasing racial mixing, the underlying conditions should be considered. It is the purpose of Theosophy to intervene here and to bring about the observance of a correct system. He who would lead men to higher culture must know how to approach the blood of men from without. He cannot bring culture to man unless his blood reacts. Thus the wisdom of the saying is expressed for all culture:
Blood is a very special fluid.
What did Mephistopheles have to do to get to the very depths of Faust? He had to get his blood. He wants to take possession of his blood because he knows what the old legends always emphasize:
If you have his blood, you have his self!
Spiritual research finds that the penetration of this saying shines through into the cultural stages of humanity.