The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit

GA 68b — 11 January 1907, Leipzig

43. Blood is a Very Special Fluid

You all know that the title of today's lecture, “Blood is a very special fluid,” is taken from Goethe's “Faust.” You know that Faust, the representative of striving humanity, is opposed by Mephistopheles, the emissary and prince of hell; he demands a contract from Faust in which Faust commits himself to the evil powers, and demands the signature in blood. Faust considers this a grotesque, a quirk, but Mephisto remarks: “Blood is a very special fluid.”

There are entire libraries explaining Faust, and this saying has also been explained in countless ways. One of the latter is the highly curious one from Professor Minor of Vienna, which goes: Mephisto, the emissary of hell, cannot stand blood, hates it, and that is why he demands a signature in blood. There may be some erudition in the explanation, but there is no reason in it. Mephistopheles would not demand a signature in a substance he hates. On the contrary, Mephistopheles places particular value on blood. This material has already undergone a long development of legends. In the sixteenth [seventeenth] century we already find in the Pfitzer's Faustbuch that Faust signs over himself to the devil with blood, and in older versions of this legend it is described exactly how the vein on the left hand is opened, the blood runs out, coagulates and in coagulating forms the letters: “Oh man, flee!”

Blood also appears in other legends and always has a special meaning. In these legends in particular, we see events that were significant for the last few centuries. Fairytales and myths all have a theosophical basis, and anyone who engages with theosophical wisdom can see that they contain figurative expressions for spiritual and profound truths. The legend of Faust is one such expression, and in particular this expression, in which Goethe used theosophical wisdom as a basis.

We want to point out the whole significance of blood in the world and in humanity, and we will see that the saying is to be taken literally. If we try to get it out of our minds, we say: It will get ahold of Faust especially when it has his blood in its name.

Theosophy wants to point to the near future, how to colonize, how humanity should mix. To understand what blood means, it must be explained from the point of view of theosophy.

To find access, one must place the old sentence at the top, the Hermetic principle: As above, so below; and vice versa.

At first incomprehensible, it contains a whole world view. All who have this guiding principle say: All that is material is the expression of a spiritual substance.

To those who look more deeply, it presents itself as ice and water.

If someone tells you: Ice is not water, you say that they just don't know the context.

Just as ice is nothing but condensed water, matter is nothing but condensed spirit.

The world is a great spiritual organism, and everything in it is a part of it.

The world is a great spiritual organism, and everything in it is a If someone says to you: Ice is not water, you can say that he does not know the context. Just as ice is nothing other than condensed water, so matter is nothing other than condensed spirit. In all material things we can find the underlying spirit. The true spiritual researcher calls spirit the upper part, the material, so to speak, the physiognomic expression, the lower part. When you look at a face, you can tell from the expression what is going on in the soul behind it, whether it is joy or sadness. To the true spiritual researcher, everything in the world, all of nature, is an expression of the spirit. For example, to the researcher, one flower is the expression of the joy of the earth spirit, another of pain.

In this way, the spirit expresses itself in everything. There is no matter that does not express spirit, and no spirit that is not expressed somewhere in matter. One understands why a face smiles, why it cries, when one knows the underlying pain and joy; one understands the lower when one knows the upper. Thus we will understand what corresponds to blood in the spiritual when we understand what blood means in the world.

To do this, we have to consider the fourfold nature of the human being. To the spiritual seer, the physical body is only one part of the human being. It consists of the same substances as nature outside. Only its juices can move, grow, digest, reproduce, the substance cannot do this by itself; for this it needs the etheric body, which it shares with plants. The third link, the astral body, the carrier of pain, joy, pleasure, displeasure, passions and base representations, is not present in plants, but in humans and animals. The fourth link, whereby humans become the crown of creation, is their ability to say “I” to themselves. This is what underlies all religions. In the ego, God speaks to the human soul, and a shiver went through the line of Jews in the temple when the priest pronounced the name of the ineffable God, “Yahweh”.

The higher limbs that make up the spiritual structure of the human being need not concern us today. You know that we can only perceive the sensual body sensually, and the other supersensible parts are therefore called the upper limbs. And each of these upper members has an instrument in the physical body, the parts of which are all of different kinds and not of equal significance. We shall understand this connection if we imagine that the physical body contains the same substances as the inanimate products of the external world. Think of a crystal. It is just a stone, but if you look at it more closely, you say to yourself: This stone could not be like this if everything in the world were not as it is. Each individual thing is a mirror of the whole. It takes on this form through the forces of the outside world and could not exist in this way on another star with different forces.

The brilliant Frenchman Cuvier says: Give me a human bone, and I will determine the entire figure from it. For the whole figure determines the individual bone. It is the same with the earth. Likewise, with only a physical body, man would be a mirror of the universe, but without consciousness; he could not express anything in it.

Now, however, we are not just looking at the physical being, but at the being that lives. You cannot find anything that does not grow and move its juices in a certain way, individualizes. You see growth, reproduction and so on in the plant as a physiognomic expression for the etheric body, so that two parts exist, firstly, in which there are only chemical processes, and secondly, the activity of the etheric body, which brings movement.

Now let us move on to the animal. It not only sets matter in motion, but is also able to reflect joy and suffering within itself. When a plant rolls up its leaves when touched, it is reacting to a stimulus, not sensing; it only becomes sentient when the external process is followed by an internal one. This requires a nervous system; this is provided by the astral body, so that when you have a human being in front of you, you can say: First of all, the human being has what only the physical part works on; these are the sense organs; they are lived through by the etheric body, but are not built by it. Its actual tool is growth, and so on. The astral body's tool is the nervous system, from the solar plexus to the finest nerves of the spine.

A being that has a nervous system will indeed reflect the outside world within itself, but without the fourth link it will never know the expression for its ego. It finds its tool in the blood. The fact that a being has blood enables it to feel joy and suffering from its innermost individuality, its very own being. I must first relate the ideas to myself in my blood, then the pain becomes my pain, the joy my joy. Hence the connection between inner processes and the bloodstream. Blushing and turning pale are a matter of the soul.

We speak of consanguinity. The name is not quite right. The recently told story of Anzengruber and Rosegger illustrates what underlies it. Anzengruber had farmers for ancestors, which is why he can describe them. As figurative as this may seem, it is still the actual truth. Blood itself is not inherited; it is always newly formed. Blood and all its organs are the last to form in the animal and human germ. What is inherited is what lies behind the blood, the shape and structure of, for example, the nose, the brain and so on. We connect what we have inherited with our innermost selves by letting it affect our blood; in this way it becomes our property. Thus the blood pulses through entire generations, although it is always new blood.

Certain things in the Bible are impossible to understand without understanding the meaning of blood. Right at the beginning of the Old Testament, you find that Adam, Abraham and so on live to be 800, 900 years old. At that time, there was a different way of naming, a different meaning of the word.

I must mention a fact here that was an important event in the development of humanity: the transition from close marriage to distant marriage. In all peoples, there comes a time when this ancient law is broken. When this happens, something always takes place in spiritual development. In the case of close marriage, the ancestors lived on in memory to a much greater extent. Everyone retained the memory of what had been done generations before. The moment that distant marriage occurs, memory is limited to the time between birth and death. In the past, you would find a great cult of ancestors for a tribal leader, to whom the whole tribe can be traced back. As long as blood comes to blood, the individual remembers, and so long the same name remains. As long as the memory of Adam lasts, his name remains. So you see that blood is like a tablet; what is inherited is the inner structure of the body, which is written into the blood. The same ego remains wherever the same is written into the blood.

We have the group soul and also speak of such a thing in animals. Therefore, we do not refer to the individual lion as an ego; and the further we go back in man, the more we come across the group soul.

It is only through long-distance marriage that the individual ego develops. The more distant the people who mix are from each other, the more the old view is killed and the outside world flows in; the earlier sense of identity with one's ancestors is pushed into the background. The more that flows in from the outside, the more the differences of personality develop; because the outside world is different everywhere. You can see that, for example, in different countries.

What primarily determines a person must have an effect on his blood. What you say to a person will only make an impression if his blood is stirred. You must not have access to his intellect or to his nervous system; you must make his blood pulsate, then you will touch his I, for the blood is precisely its instrument.

All ancient schooling consists not in theory but in influencing the I itself. Faust is to be understood in this way. At the moment when one takes possession of the blood of a being, one forms a bond with that being. He who wishes to assert his power in an unauthorized way does this; he who wishes to gain influence over a being in the good sense may only do so much that this being retains its independence at every moment — may not give him anything that the other is not willing to accept.

It is clear that where one wants to plant and foster a spiritual life, one must act on the blood.

In terms of colonization, cultures can only develop where the blood mixing of the peoples allows a good tone together. Where this is not the case, where the blood mixing does not go together, the culture that is already present will be destroyed. Those who look into this will see that the introduction of European culture into distant countries often appears to be an illusion and a deception. In the future, a culture will come that will ask about this law. Then colonization will no longer be based on blind chance, but on the theosophical significance for indirect life.

So you see that Mephistopheles really gets Faust under his control through the blood, and that the desire for the signature in blood is not a quirk or a grimace.