The Circular Flow of Man's Life within the World Of Sense, Soul And Spirit
GA 68b — 22 January 1907, Nuremberg
44. Blood Is A Very Special Fluid
You know that the saying that is to be the leitmotif of our lecture, “Blood is [a very special fluid],” is found in Goethe's “Faust.” Mephistopheles, the emissary of hell, and thus of evil, demands that Faust sign the contract he is concluding with him in blood. The point is that Faust, whom Goethe presents as a representative of striving humanity, is placed between good and evil, that Faust is to be served by the servant of hell and that Mephistopheles is to accompany Faust throughout his life and Faust in return surrenders himself to him. This contract should be signed in blood, as Mephistopheles demands. Now you know the answer to Faust's remark as to whether such a form, and especially blood, is required: “And blood is a very special fluid.”
There is a whole literature about Faust, but very few people know the meaning of the word “Mephistopheles”: the liar, the corrupter – from the Hebrew =; much less [do they] know the meaning of the blood. In one of the last commentaries on Faust, you can read that one has to understand the saying of Mephistopheles in this way: Mephistopheles demands the blood and remarks ironically: “Blood is a very special fluid” because he hates the blood, because it is particularly unpleasant for him, so he demands the signature in blood. You really have to be a “Goethe explainer” to be able to make such a statement. Can you in your right mind demand something as a special prize because it is the most unpleasant thing to you? You don't do that; when you demand something, as strictly as Mephisto does, with the signature, you are designating this something as something valuable. Common sense simply dictates that the emissary of hell places a very special value on blood. Hence the signature in blood.
We can trace the legend on which Goethe based his poem back to the sixteenth century. Even then, we find the signature in blood, and it is still vividly depicted. How Faust's vein is opened, how the blood trickles out, how it then coagulates, how the sign finally appears: O man, cleanse thyself!
The Faust saga is in turn only one of the many sagas in which blood and blood oaths play a role. The blood oath did not come into the Faust saga by mere happenstance, but through that through which we find a deep wisdom expressed in so many sagas and myths. How mysterious a fact often appears! But the spiritual researcher knows that when we explore the old legends and fairy tales, not in the way of today's materialistic scholars who speak of a poetic folk fantasy that the connoisseur of the people certainly has never found them anywhere, and who speak of fantastic creations – if we observe not in this way, but as spiritual researchers, we find profound spiritual truths expressed in them everywhere, figurative expressions for profound spiritual truths. It is most remarkable that when we look at simple expressions of the people, we have before us great spiritual truths, presented in images. These are fairy tales, myths, legends! And we can always ask ourselves: is there perhaps a deep spiritual truth contained in this folk tale, perhaps in this one saying? And then, as spiritual scientists, we want to examine this saying.
Today, we will deal with the significance of blood, the significance of this particular fluid, in the life of the individual as well as in the life of humanity and nations. By illuminating the mystery of blood, we will shed some light on important cultural issues of the present.
We will understand what we have to say about it if we keep to an ancient saying, a saying that is called the Hermetic Principle. It comes from one of the greatest initiates, Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian initiate. Many scholars consider him to be a fabulous personality. However, spiritual science knows that he was the greatest teacher of Egyptian culture. This sentence may at first seem strange, it reads: “Everything above is as it is below, everything below is as it is above.”
What does this mean? You will understand when you consider the following: You see a smiling expression on a person's face; it is immediately clear to you that serenity is present in that person's soul. You see a tear, and it is clear to you that sadness or pain has settled on this person's soul. You draw conclusions about the inner being from what the eyes see on the outside, and about the material from the spiritual. Now, in the sense of the philosophy of Hermes Trismegistus, the material is called the lower, and the spiritual-soul is called the upper. And anyone who is familiar with this philosophy is aware that there is a spiritual world and that everything that takes place in this spiritual world can find expression in the material world. This philosophy tells us that at some point every spiritual reality finds material expression. There is no spiritual reality that does not express itself in the material world, and no material reality that does not have a spiritual side. Everything down in the material as well as up in the spiritual.
In medieval philosophy of that great, wonderful brotherhood, which is called the brotherhood of the Holy Grail, you could have been an invisible spectator between the teacher and students of the Holy Grail covenant and overhear a long-lasting teaching scene. I cannot sketch this in any other way than in the form of a conversation. It did not take place like this, but you will get an idea of what happened between teacher and student.
It was made clear to the student: just as you can tell a person's soul and their cheerfulness by a laughing expression on a face, and their sadness by a tear, you can do the same in all of nature. For such a student, what Goethe characterizes as the earth spirit was not just a poetic image, but reality. Just as every human being, when he sees his fellow human beings laughing or sad-faced before him, says to himself: Here I have not only flesh and blood, but a soul, so the medieval Grail disciple had been brought to say to himself: When I look at this earth with its stones, plants, animals, people and everything else, , it is, like the human body, the expression of a soul or spirit; and it was made quite clear to him: If your finger were to imagine itself to be an independent entity without your soul, you could easily convince yourself that this is not the case by cutting it off from your body. It would wither away in no time. It cannot live an independent life. Nor can you, who belong to the earth soul. If you could separate yourself from it, you would wither like the finger if you were to move only a few miles away from the earth. The finger does not indulge in the foolish illusion of being an independent entity because it has grown; if it could walk around like a person, it would do so.
Thus the saying became a deep truth for the pupil, and the earth spirit a real being. And when he walked across the fields, a realization shone in him, going deep to his heart. When he saw one plant with a laughing face, it was the expression of the cheerful earth spirit, and when he saw another with dark purple flowers, it was the expression of the grieving earth spirit; the whole earth became the expression of a spirit, as did the seemingly dead stone.
When the student then went on to the so-called Rosicrucian school, which was founded in the fourteenth century, the teaching continued with the following: Look at the stone, this crystal! It consists of a certain substance. Compare this substance with animal and human substance. This is permeated by instincts and desires, by cravings and wishes; but desireless, without desire - only of glass - illuminated by the light, the stone substance stands there; chaste in the face of animal and human substance. - And so the disciple had to delve deeper into the chaste stone. As a lofty ideal, the goal was before his eyes, to become as pure as the stone in its kind. The disciple had to feel this way about the chaste stone.
I may only tell you the first sentence of a very solemn formula that was spoken every time there was an important section in the teaching, the formula that indicates the passage of divine wisdom through all nature. Where world wisdom works down in the realm of stones, it is characterized in the formula: The stones are mute. I have placed and hidden the eternal creative Word in them, and chaste and modest, they bear it in the depths.
And another scene that took place within the Grail Schools was this: one pointed to the plant calyx, which stands out from the plant, and said: “Behold the plant! It stretches its roots into the earth and its organs of fertilization towards the sun, those organs that appear here in chaste purity and are kissed by the sunbeam, which is called the holy lance of light. And this plant chalice contains the same reproductive organs that must be covered by the sense of shame in the human realm. Man is the completely inverted plant. The roots are the head of the plant. We have to imagine that, through the absorption of desires and instincts, the human being has to shamefully conceal what the plant holds up to the sun as a chaste chalice. A development takes place from plant to human being. Imagine the plant indicated by a downward stroke, the animal makes half the turn, the human being the whole. This is drawn: a cross is created. Plato expressed it thus: the world soul is crucified on the cross of the cosmic body. — For the three kingdoms were felt in spiritual science as the cross, and as the world soul passes from the plant to man, it passes through the cross.
And now the disciple was told: Imagine this development, imagine the chaste chalice of the plant as a model for the human power of procreation, and this purified from all desire; imagine man as a creative being, as pure and chaste as the calyx of the plant, then the chalice appears to man as the spiritual organ of production of the future, kissed by the sun of spiritual life. This ideal is called the Holy Grail. - So the spiritual content of the Holy Grail was distributed to the students.
Those who walk through nature as scientists see in the chalice a deep reference to what man should become. The lower, matter, expresses the spirit, the upper, everywhere.
And we learn to understand the lower when we get to know the upper. We understand the matter of blood when we get to know the upper that corresponds to it. Our task is first to look at the human being spiritually and then to see what corresponds to the blood in the spiritual.
We no longer need to get to know the nature of the human being in detail in the spiritual. Four members: physical, etheric, astral body and I, through which the human being has become the crown of creation. The I is that which sensitive natures always feel as the expression of the actual and eternal in man. And you need only make a very small effort to consider what this name 'I' means in contrast to all other names. Anyone can call a chair a chair; but this cannot be done with the name 'I'. No one can say 'I' to me, the name 'I' can never approach us from the outside if it is to mean anything to us. The soul must begin to speak from within. With the I, we express something that gives itself its name. The true religions have always felt this. For example, the ancient Hebrew secret science called this divine the God himself, and the name for it the unspeakable name of God. “I am, who am” means nothing other than this “I am” in the soul. And that is what those who heard it, the listeners felt: the resounding of the spiritual in the soul when it was spoken: “Jav” = “I am who I am”; that is the unspeakable name of God.
The I is therefore the highest of the four members of man. Of these four members, you can only see and touch the physical body here, et cetera. The other three members are the upper part of man; but to every upper part there corresponds a lower. Each of these three members is built up in the physical body by special organs. The physical body, of which the ordinary materialistic anatomist knows something, is also a many-membered being. Its organs are not all the same; man has four kinds of organs: those that are purely physical, built only by the physical body itself; then those that he could not have developed without the etheric body, without the astral body, without the ego. Certain organs are the lower part of the etheric body, certain the lower part of the astral body, and certain the physical expression, the lower part of the ego.
At the same time, you must not believe that physical organs, which are only composed of the physical, can also be in a purely physical body; all are permeated by the etheric and astral bodies; but these first ones take their form only from the physical body. The ear and the eye are physical apparatuses. In his senses, the human being is an expression of the physical body. Now go from these senses to the organs of nutrition, reproduction and growth: these are no longer mere physical apparatuses, they are structured and are the lower part of the etheric body. You have to imagine that the human body, in its sense organs and its skeleton, is built by the physical principle itself. The fact that it is permeated by the etheric body means that the others are incorporated into it. The plant is also permeated by an etheric body, which is why it also incorporates the organs of nutrition, growth and reproduction. The moment a being is also permeated by an astral body, a nervous system is incorporated into that being. This is the expression of the astral body.
As man gradually developed as a material being, he passed through the various kingdoms of nature; he has found his way from the mere physical body up to the higher ones, and the higher members of his being have incorporated more and more organs from the lower ones. The organs are not of equal value. The nerves are the expression of the astral body, the stomach and liver those of the life body; they find, as it were, their outer physiognomy in the lower for the upper.
The matter can be explained in even more detail: the astral body has developed slowly; it consists of different members, first of all the so-called sentient body, the lowest member, then the sentient soul, then the intellectual soul, and finally the consciousness soul. They have developed little by little. If you want to understand this gradual development of man, you have to start again at the bottom. Look at a physical being! Great philosophers call this a mirror of the entire world system. Why? Look at the smallest stone, consider that it could not be as it is if the whole environment were not as it is. The great naturalist Cuvier said: If you show a very wise anatomist a single bone, he would be able to see from its structure what the structure of the whole animal to which it belongs should be; if the bone were a little different, the whole structure would have to be different. The whole is expressed in the individual; this applies to the whole cosmos.
Just as a single bone must be as it is because the whole is as it is, and would be different if the whole were different, so a very wise being could tell from the smallest stone how the whole planet is formed. The individual is a mirror of the cosmos.
But if we ascend from the mere lifeless mirror of the cosmos, as it already shows itself in the stone, this cosmic reflection appears to us in a higher form when we see it where there is life underlying the beings. There the cosmos is not reflected as it is in the stone; there the process of reflection continues within. The being closes itself off from the outside. Processes within are stimulated because certain processes are taking place outside. In its movements, the plant reflects what is happening outside.
In the nervous system, the reflection is even more complete. The simplest nervous system is the one that still exists in humans as the sympathetic nervous system, which spreads out in two strands on either side of the spinal cord and whose activity our consciousness is unaware of. This nervous system, as the lowest nervous system, is the lower one for the sentient body. Now you can see, as is shown in my Theosophy, how the sentient soul integrates itself into the sentient body. There is an expression of this in the lower part: the spinal cord nerve strand integrates itself between the two ganglion strands. Everything below is like everything above!
The material world is a wonderful expression of spiritual life. Theosophy will offer you a spiritual image of the world. This has the seal imprint outside. And this is the meaning of the word seal. In the language of revelations, St. John calls it “sealed” where we have something material in front of us and we do not yet know the spiritual aspect of it. And our world will become apparent with its seven secrets. The whole world is sevenfold: seven colors, seven tones, seven limbs of the human being. There is nothing miraculous about this, only the same basic law. This sevenfold universe is, as far as it is not revealed, a book with seven seals. When it is unsealed, one will recognize the upper part for the lower.
For the mind soul, which is a higher link in the astral body, the brain is the outer expression, the lower.
Now the question arises: if the physical body is, so to speak, its own physical expression, everything that belongs to the nutritional and et cetera system, the expression of the ether body, if the nervous system is that of the astral body, what then is the expression of the eternal?
That is the blood and the blood system. Wherever blood appears, it is an expression of an ego.
In this way, we will understand in a spiritual-scientific way why, for example, in the human being, when the germ develops, the heart and blood come only after all the organs have been formed in the womb. This corresponds entirely to what takes place in the spirit. The I is the crown of everything and also appears last.
There is also a wonderful connection between blood and the I. You may be able to get an idea of how blood is connected to the I, to the very essence of the human personality, if you consider the following: where the I is afraid, where it is horrified, its physical body turns pale; where it wants to hide, the blood appears in the form of a blush. Wherever the ego is particularly engaged, we see external expression in the discoloration of the face. This is trivial, but it gives us an idea of the connection between the ego and the blood.
You see, our materialistic science regards the heart as a kind of pumping station. It is of the opinion that the heart pumps blood through the body, quite mechanically. Hegel was the only German philosopher of the nineteenth century to know that this is not the case. He said: it is not the heart that drives the blood, but the blood that gives the heart its movement. And the blood gets its movement from the soul, is driven by the spirit. The heart beats faster when the spiritual impulse is there. The blood is the driving element of the heart.
It was a bold statement, but it is common knowledge in spiritual science. It has never said anything other than this: that it is the soul itself, under the impulse of the ego, that causes the blood to flow either under a sense of terror or under some other feeling that belongs to the soul, that this soul, this ego, drives the blood and thereby the heart.
And at the same time, this will draw your attention to something in spiritual science that will make one thing clear to you. Namely, the heart is something that thwarts today's material science. The voluntary muscles are so-called striated muscles, all involuntary muscles are so-called muscles with smooth muscle fibers. The heart is now an involuntary muscle; most people cannot control it. And yet it is striated; where does that come from? Spiritual science explains it thus: the heart as it is today is at the beginning of its development; there will come a time when what is still an involuntary movement today will become an involuntary one, subordinate to its spirit. The brain is the thinking organ of today and the heart will become the spiritual organ of the future. In the future, the heart will occupy a completely different position. Man will consciously make his blood circulate through his body. The heart will be the expression of his spiritual life, a consciously working muscle. In the future it will be so. That is why it is already present in the germ. Thus we have these very different organs of man, blood and heart, as the expression of the I and can follow it in its significance for the world.
We speak of blood relationship, of the importance of blood. We sense this, but we have no real insight into it. I will present such intuitions from life: Anzengruber and Rosegger, who are both known for their depictions of rural life – the latter describes them as he sees them, but the former very aptly describes them entirely from his own perspective, without having observed and studied them more closely – had a conversation in which Rosegger said to Anzengruber: You live and have lived entirely in the city, and yet you have characterized the farmers so admirably. If you were to go out to them and take a good look at them, you would be able to describe them perfectly. That would just drive me crazy, Anzengruber replied. I have lived in the city all my life, but my ancestors were farmers, all farmers, it's in my blood.
It is in the blood – that could seem like a picture; but is it a mere picture? Anzengruber really did describe from his blood. He didn't have a notebook. Why? Not because blood is inherited, it cannot be inherited. Not a single drop of blood passes from father to son. It is even the latest thing to arise in the germ. But just as you inherit your father's nose, the structure of external organs, you also inherit the structure of your nervous system, the structure of your internal organs. Everything that is the expression of the physical body, the etheric and astral body, you inherit from your ancestors. You could just as easily examine the similarity of your stomach to that of your father as you could your nose. And you could examine the similarity of the Anzengruber brain to that of his peasant ancestors, like the nose. The limbs of the human being that prove to be similar to the ancestral forms express themselves in the blood as in a tablet, because the blood represents the I. What makes an impression on the blood makes an impression on the I. If I live entirely as a son of my ancestors, and what has been inherited is the strongest in me, then what has been inherited is imprinted in the blood, and I feel in the blood what was still present in my ancestors. If the impressions of the outer world are stronger, then what has entered my ego, my blood, drowns out what flows from within. I forget what the ancestors have allowed to flow in.
Thus, the one of whom it is said that he has “race” will truly be a son of his family, have the structure of his ancestors. He imprints this in his blood, his I. The one in whom the race is no longer so strong is dependent on external impressions. Everyone has these impressions, whether they are the son of this or that father. They have drowned out their inner impulses when faced with stronger external impressions. If the impressions of the outside world are stronger, then he has its blood, if race lives in him, then race has his blood. What the ancestor has experienced is then expressed in what he does and writes.
Expand this and consider the spiritual origin of man. Imagine: Even more is expressed by what is inherited. Imagine that; it really happened.
If we go back to ancient times, we find a certain starting point in every people. Very different marriage relationships, relationships of love and belonging and kinship prevailed then; within the family, the tribe, the individuals married. In every nation, you will find the transition from what can be called close marriage to what is called distant marriage. In the time of the former, it would have broken the custom, the law of a tribe, if a male or female member had married outside it. In every nation, however, we see how close marriage is later broken, how individuals married into other tribes. And everywhere this transition from close marriage, where blood relatives marry, to distant marriage, where those who are distant unite, is linked to a change in spiritual life.
The legends of the peoples have preserved this transition from close to distant marriage in a special, unique way. There are many legends in which women are abducted and taken to foreign tribes. Something tragic in the transition from the old order to the new is expressed in them. The transition to distant marriage is linked to a transition from an ancient clairvoyance to a modern one, more dependent on the observation of the external world of the senses. Where close marriage is common practice, people still have something like a natural clairvoyance. This is lost when foreign blood is mixed with the close blood. What Anzengruber felt in his blood was also felt by those who were in close marriage, but to a much greater degree. They did not feel what their ancestors had experienced as darkly, as half unconsciously as Anzengruber, but as something they had experienced themselves. Through the close relationship, the inherited structure was so strong that it was imprinted in the blood. Thus the ego, the blood, the whole family felt, not just itself. Only when foreign blood was added did the power of generation cease, did the old cult of ancestors lose itself. Where a distant ancestor was honored, it was not the product of the imagination, but rather the feeling that the most distant descendant felt connected to the ancestors in his blood, in his ego. Clairvoyance was there. All legends, which are like images of truths, become understandable to us when we know that they arose out of other perceptions, out of clairvoyance, which can still be found today in primitive, natural peoples.
You need to know this if you want to understand the writings that are based on spiritual science. One writing belongs here above all: the Bible. You cannot understand the most important parts of it in today's times. It is impossible if one does not know one thing: that in ancient times a name did not refer to what was represented in a personality, but to what lived on in the blood of a distant relative for entire generations. Because the inherited structure was expressed in the blood of the most distant descendant, one felt all of this in one's self. It did not yet work as it did with the Anzengruber, but rather like a true memory. The person in whom all the blood had merged with another through the distant marriage remembers only his own life, while the person from the close marriage remembers everything that the ancestors have experienced. They, the ones from the close marriage, referred to it as belonging to their ego. Through generations the same name resounded, because the experiences of the ancestor were recalled. Thus Adam was not the name of an individual man, but of a continuous memory through generations.
Let the Bible describe the original ages; it knows that the names were given in that way. A wonderful light falls on those ancient reports. They are correct as soon as one knows that their names belong to the time when the same structure was expressed in the blood over and over again.
And then we find everywhere, where the transition from the near to the distant marriage takes place, how that ancient clairvoyant memory is killed. Today you can find everywhere the very first elementary truths, which are thousands of years old in occultism. You can find the sentence presented: The more closely related the blood relationship is, the more vivid the power of vision is. The mixing of blood had an extinguishing effect on the life of the spiritual body. Today, researchers are trying to see if the blood of different animals can be mixed. The blood of mice does not kill rats, that of rabbits does not kill hares, because these animals are closely related. Blood from more distantly related animals kills them. Distant blood really does kill here. It was different with humans. Distant blood did not have an extinguishing effect on the physical body, but on the spiritual body, which was the carrier of that higher wisdom.
This shows us the function of blood. We see that the one who has the blood has the I. Where the outside world has gained greater power because foreign blood has been added, there the external experiences have taken effect and these have the blood. Whoever has the blood of a being has the being's I.
Not everything is the same for all time. When close marriage existed, conditions on earth were different. This does not apply to the new era; because conditions on earth have changed, the I had to move into distant marriage. The old aristocratic families have retained the old ways, and this has adverse consequences today. What in ancient times was the bearer of high spiritual human development must have a harmful effect in materialistic times.
In the future, humanity will rise again to higher levels of consciousness, but in a different way, in that the individual will take possession of spiritual rebirth; he will become so strong that he himself as a person will be able to imprint the spirit in his blood, gaining power over his blood. Then man will become clairvoyant again, so that he will not merely conquer abstract knowledge, but will be able to transfer this knowledge into his blood. Try to acquire as much theoretical knowledge as you want, it remains dry and abstract, sober and bare; try to develop knowledge in such a way that concepts become feelings for you, higher affects, touch your blood, then it becomes higher knowledge. Hence that medieval schooling that led the student across the fields, that let the flowers speak to his blood, and not just to his cool mind.
This is how things are connected. It is necessary to research the function of blood. Just as blood is the creator of what holds the ego together, so if we bring spiritual life to the blood from the outside and it does not match the blood, the spiritual life cannot be understood by the blood. Therefore, the European cannot simply impose his culture on a “savage” tribe. They can preach as much as they like, but they will not achieve their purpose and will only destroy it. This is how the Spanish destroyed the Indians: the blood differences were too great. The Indians had very different blood from the Europeans.
Thus you will see that the spiritual intercourse between nations must be consciously regulated. One must pay attention to the mission of the blood, the blood question is related to the colonial question. Here again one can see how practical Theosophy is. The time will come when we will have to consciously guide what we call cultural mixtures. We must not overlook the fact that only the upper part can penetrate into the lower part, where it can truly find expression.
Study the conditions of your blood, for then you will get to know the conditions of your various selves.
When you speak to a person in everyday life, you speak to them in terms of abstract, bare, and dull concepts! The other person can learn a lot from you, but everything they can learn remains in a certain shadowy conceptual state. If you speak to them about something that touches their heart and makes their blood boil, then you will not only have their mind, but also their soul, and you will have them inside you. Whoever has a man's blood has his soul. Whoever has a nation's blood – not in a materialistic sense, but as an expression of the soul – has the nation, and whoever wants to have a nation, to teach it, must understand the soul and the expression of the soul in blood. Whether for good or evil, if you want to take possession of a human soul, you must take possession of the blood.
Thus the folk tales have spoken wisdom here, by emphasizing the blood oath, to indicate that a person gives himself completely. There is profound wisdom in the legend that lets the devil win Faust, his entire self, by obtaining the signature in blood. Once Mephistopheles has the blood of Faust, he has his ego. That is why he did not mean it mockingly, but it is truth and really the expression of deep wisdom; yes, it is precisely the deepest wisdom about the nature of man in the sense that the lower is the expression of the upper, it confirms this sentence to us: And blood, yes, blood is a very special fluid.