# The Nature of Man in the Light of Spiritual Science

## GA 68d — 3 February 1908, Mannheim

### 18. Man and Woman in the Light of Spiritual Science

Among the many spiritual endeavors of the present day, which those who are interested in them can find in literature or elsewhere in the world, is also the theosophical one, which can also be called the spiritual-scientific one. Its task is to educate human thinking, feeling and perceiving in a special way. Someone who reads about this world view in articles and books or hears something about it can easily develop a prejudice against it. Many believe that Theosophy is nothing more than a rehash of old superstitions and that it contradicts all healthy scientific sense. Others approach Theosophy with a certain fear, because they believe that this school of thought is behind the founding of a religion, a sect. Others believe that Theosophy leads people away from practical life, into a dreamy, fantastic realm, alienating them from the everyday. Still others believe that Theosophy wants to introduce an oriental religion here.

Today's topic may give cause to show, by considering a question of interest to humanity in the broadest sense, how Theosophy is able to raise the question to a higher point of view, but also to provide the means to solve the question. This touches on something that, in the deepest sense of the heart, concerns our contemporaries. Theosophy cannot be mixed up in all the fanaticism that is so often displayed when considering such questions. Of course, when considering such questions, one might think that Theosophy leads away from life. But those who think so do not take into account that the point of view that stands above party politics is a match for every position in life, every standpoint in life.

We must point out a little of what Theosophy wants in more detail, what it strives for. Theosophy wants to work quite differently from other spiritual endeavors, differently in terms of its content, and differently in the way it approaches people. Theosophy rests on two firm pillars. One of these pillars is that behind the external physical world, which is perceptible only to the external senses, there is a supersensible, spiritual world, and the other of the pillars is that there are dormant abilities in man, through which he can, if they are developed, get to know the spiritual world. When this is stated, we often hear the objection on the one hand that the idea of a supernatural world belongs to a childlike way of thinking that humanity had in earlier ages, because they did not yet know anything about scientific law. Today, however, when humanity has come to penetrate the world of law, it is no longer appropriate for people to believe in a world of supernatural facts. A simple comparison needs only be made. It is so easy to say today that science has shown us that, to a certain extent, man does not need spiritual beings that confront him. It is true that science cannot yet explain everything, but the ideal is to penetrate this world with its methods and tools.

Theosophy would have no prospect of really intervening in the spiritual life of humanity if it wanted to go against the facts of science. But even if the facts of science are true, it does not contradict the fact that spiritual processes are behind them. A clock can be explained on the basis of mechanical processes, but does this mean that because we can explain the clock from within itself, the clockmaker, the spiritual power behind it, is dispensable? No scientific explanation can explain the spiritual beings behind the phenomena. No scientific explanation can make the consideration of the spiritual background, of the supersensible in the world, superfluous.

The objection that the human capacity for knowledge is insufficient to penetrate the supersensible world cannot be taken seriously either. Theosophy speaks of a supersensible world in exactly the same way as the great German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte spoke to his audience in 1813 of a spiritual world. He said that this world requires a completely different sensory tool. Then he compares the knowledge of the spiritual world with the world of colors and light, which is inaccessible to the blind-born because he lacks the organ for it.

We can expand Fichte's example of the blind-born. We imagine a blind-born being operated on in this space and suddenly becoming sighted. A new, previously unknown world of colors and light would open up for him. Now, Theosophy says: Just as a new world appears for the operated blind person after he has received the organ to see, it is also possible for the organs that Goethe called spiritual eyes to be awakened in a person.

If we look around at our literature today, we encounter what could be called the man's point of view or the we's point of view. How often do we read the assertion: One can recognize, we can recognize, or one cannot know, we cannot know anything about it, etc., etc. People do not realize the profound illogicality of claiming such things. Logically, everyone should only claim that they can say something about what they know. Only perception decides, only experience decides, about what is present.

There have always been people who could see into the spiritual worlds. They were called initiates or seers. There is something, an experience, which can be compared to what the blind person experiences when he is operated on successfully, only in a much more magnificent way, where organs are awakened in man for the spiritual worlds, which he then perceives himself. To explore these spiritual worlds requires seership, initiation, awakening.

But when someone who knows something about the higher worlds recounts the facts, then anyone who brings with them a healthy sense of truth can understand them. Today, there are already many people who recognize the truth of this theosophical worldview from spiritual intuition, from a healthy sense of humanity, from a sense of truth. In this sense, Theosophy speaks of the spiritual worlds as being all around us, just as light and color and radiance are around those born blind, who simply cannot see them. The facts that the seer shares with the world today are drawn from this spiritual world. The theosophist does not want to secure anything from agitation or from any kind of teaching profession. Theosophy does not approach the world as a worldview sometimes does, in the sense that it assumes that those who cannot see it are stupid. No, the theosophical researcher only wants to be a storyteller, and he is aware that it is best to use persuasion as little as possible. Those who are persuaded to accept Theosophy are of no value to it. Truth must arise from the human soul itself. If Theosophy brings the truth, each soul must agree with it of its own free will.

In accordance with these prerequisites, let us first consider the nature of man in general, and then, from the spiritual world of facts, recognize the nature of man and woman. What the senses perceive of man is only one aspect of the human being. If we apply this to man and woman, we may ask ourselves: Does materialistic thinking recognize everything about man and woman? Could there not also be something hidden in them that cannot be observed externally?

It is precisely with such a question that the practical application of the theosophical world view must come to our minds. Who would deny that in the last century, research into sensual things has reached a peak that must be admired even by the theosophical world view? But let us review what those who claim to be scientifically educated have said about the relationship between men and women in the last century. I will cite only a few judgments as examples of what one arrives at when one does not know the spiritual.

A naturalist said: If we consider everything in a woman, then the basic character of a woman is gentleness. — Another said: If you know everything that comes to us in a woman, then you have to summarize it in one word – that is, anger-fortitude. Another, an anthropologist, summarized his view of women in the word: Women are characterized by feelings of devotion. Another said: Those who really understand women know that the most prominent thing in a woman's character is the desire for power. Yet another tries to sum it all up in one word: Women form the conservative element in human development. Another says: He who really understands history will find that all revolutionary ideas originate with women. In philosophy, this kind of thinking that summarizes everything and takes individual points of view is called synthetic thinking. One philosopher says: All of a woman's thinking is reduced to synthetic thinking. — An English philosopher, on the other hand, says: Women only possess analytical thinking.

This should show us how much consensus and certainty there is in the judgment of science. These contradictory judgments cannot satisfy people. But in reality, people long for the answers of spiritual science to the great questions of existence. Today, some people already have important intuitions about what lies behind external facts. Recently, a book by a young man caused a great stir: 'Gender and Character' by the unfortunate Weininger. In fact, there is already substantial good scientific research today, which Weininger, for example, published in a tumultuous and amateurish manner. A strange view confronts us here, one that contains a hint of the truth. Weininger says: Actually, there is something masculine in every woman's character and something feminine in every man. — That is a hint of something true, but it is completely corrupted by being immersed in a materialistic worldview. Weininger distinguishes between a masculine and a feminine substance, which are mixed up in all human beings. He comes to a strange conclusion about the feminine. Weininger characterizes the female as having “no ego, no individuality, no freedom, no character.” But he sees the masculine in every woman and the feminine in every man. So these things are mixed up in everyone. We see, then, that here it is like with Munchausen, who takes himself by the scruff of the neck; it is a view that dissolves itself.

Through Theosophy we see that what the senses perceive in man is only a part of man; it is the physical body that man has in common with all visible beings around us. More strictly than any science, Theosophy stands on the ground that what man has in the physical body of matter and forces is the same as the matter and forces of all physical nature. But these substances and forces are so composed in man that they would disintegrate if they were left to themselves. The crystal is maintained by its own substances and forces. But in man and in every living being, the etheric body or life body lives as the second link in his being. What is it? It is a constant fighter against the disintegration of the physical body. The moment a person passes through the portal of death, the physical body is abandoned to chemical and physical substances and forces. Together with all plants and animals, the human being has the second link of his being, the etheric or life body.

But there is still a third link of the human being, which spiritual science recognizes through its methods. Much closer than the bones, muscles and nerves that are enclosed in the human skin, there is a sum of joy and pain, urges, desires, passions and sensations, up to the highest ideals. Spiritual science calls the carrier of all this the astral body. Man only shares this astral body with the animal world.

Then there is a fourth element of the human being that makes man the crown of earthly creation. There is a word in the German language that man can only say about himself, that no one else can say to him. Anyone can say “chair” to a chair and “table” to a table, but there is only one thing that each person can say about themselves: that is the little word “I”. This is something so important that all school psychology has no idea of the importance of this fact. This name cannot be spoken to me from the outside like the name of any other thing in the world. Everyone can only pronounce the name themselves. That is what is special about the name that is referred to by the little word “I”. The name “I” can never sound to our ears when it refers to ourselves. Sensitive natures have always felt this. Jean Paul recounts how, as a child, he first realized: “I am an I”. He says that he looked into the most hidden holy of holies of his being. All religions, all world views that have looked into the essence of things have recognized the importance of this fact. That is why religions have named this the unspeakable name of God. The God himself lives on in the soul when man says “I” to himself; shivers of awe went through the assembly of the Hebrews when the Old Testament priest pronounced this name: “I am in the innermost soul, I am, Yahweh.”

It is easy to reproach Theosophy with making man into a god. But anyone who claims that a drop taken from the sea is the sea itself is saying something nonsensical. The drop is not the sea, but it contains sea substance. Therefore, we do not make the ego of man into a god, but into a drop or spark of the divine essence.

When this ego works on the other parts of the human being, the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body, higher parts of the human being arise from it. What condenses at the center of the being, what enables the soul to make the word “I am” resound from the human breast, that is what makes the human being the crown of the other beings.

Let us now consider the state in which we all find ourselves during the night, the state of sleep. Sleep is also called the brother of death. As Voltaire says, all truths that emerge into the world for the first time are treated like the envoys of educated states at the courts of barbarians. They only gradually gain recognition. Let us compare the state of consciousness during the day with the state of sleep, where all joy and all suffering sink into an indeterminate darkness. This is because when a person falls asleep, the astral body with the ego is lifted out of the human being. In sleep, the four members of human nature are separated in twos. In death, it is different, for then not only does the I separate with the astral body, but also the etheric or life body separates from the physical body. In death, it also leaves the physical body, which is then a corpse. The etheric body or life body is the fighter against the decay of the physical body. During the night, the I is lifted out with the astral body. What is it that enables a person to see through the eyes and to hear through the ears during the day? Eyes and ears are the instruments of the astral body. The moment a person awakens, the astral body and the ego descend into the etheric body and the physical body. In the morning, when he wakes up out of the darkness, he recognizes the world around us in form, sound, color, shine and light.

Why does man not perceive the world during the night in which he lives during the night? Today it is already possible for individual people to perceive this world, the actual home of the soul in which it lives at night. From this world, the human being returns to the physical world in the morning.

In everyday life, the human being takes on such an appearance that his I and the part of his being that is the carrier of pleasure and suffering submerges into the two sheaths, which give him a set of instruments for perceiving the physical world. This is also how man appears to us when we consider the question of the nature of man and woman from this point of view. When we observe the human being as he stands before us, with his physical body, etheric body, astral body and I, then for spiritual science the matter presents itself in such a way that the physical body only has the outwardly determined characteristics in man and woman. The etheric body has the polar, opposite characteristics. For man the etheric body has feminine characteristics; for woman the etheric body has masculine characteristics.

If we are good observers, we see that the man who shows masculine qualities for sensory perception also shows precisely the opposite qualities. When the corresponding qualities appear in a woman, they appear with a distinctly masculine character. Because every man has female qualities in his etheric body and every woman has male qualities, these terms, “male” and “female”, are not exhaustive in their sensory meaning. Those who believe that if you know the physical body of a person, you know everything about that person will not be able to explain why you sometimes find anger in a woman, sometimes docility.

If we now consider the human being as a whole, we see that the sexual is only linked to the physical and etheric bodies, and that when we wake up in the morning, we take it on as our tool just like the other organs of the physical body. We can look into the nature of the human being with the help of spiritual science and see where the sexual begins. It is only present in the physical and etheric bodies. It leaves the person during sleep at night.

At the moment when the I leaves the person with the astral body, the terms male and female completely lose their meaning. The opposition that manifests itself in the physical world as male and female does not exist. In the spiritual world, this opposition is the opposition between life and form, indeed between life and death. When we penetrate into the spiritual worlds, this contrast is ever present: the contrast between the ever-advancing life and the perpetual inhibition of life; the sprouting tree is one and the bark the other.

We can consider this using an example from artistic creation. Let us imagine the Juno Ludovisi, that wonderful image of a woman. In the wonderfully broad forehead, in the peculiar expression, in all the flatness of the face of this Juno, something is expressed that makes us say: In this form, the spirit is fully developed. But it has become entirely form. Everything has flowed into the form. The spirit, which otherwise flows away, the life, had to be captured in a moment. That is the one extreme of existence, where the form becomes so solid that it captures life in a moment. The other extreme is the sculpted work of art, which is close to this Juno Ludovisi, the Zeus, with the peculiar forehead, the peculiar mouth. It is a characteristic form, not really a beautiful form. We can say to ourselves, life is still in it; the form can be different at any time.

These two opposites of life flowing forth and life unfolding and dying into form, are, in the higher world, the male and the female. From the female comes form, which strives towards sculpture; in the male lies the form that makes change possible. Here we see how what meets us externally in man and woman is a reflection of the supersensible. Only when this is understood can full understanding, unclouded by any antagonism, arise between the two sexes. This transsexual understanding is only given through a view like the theosophical one.

Our culture to date has been a male culture. Why have we ended up in today's science, in which everything stems from the external sense perception, from the passive devotion to external experience? Today, people are forbidden their own inner spirituality. This is because this culture is a male culture, because science has become so feminine. It was that which arose from the female etheric body of man. In Theosophy we have a world view. We must find the strong source of certainty in our inner abilities. Theosophy is masculine. And the strange thing is: today it is mainly women who are interested in Theosophy. This is because women have an active male etheric body. Theosophy wants to raise humanity to a higher level than that on which these questions about man and woman are usually negotiated. Today, these questions are usually only discussed from the lowest point of view. And this will be taken to extremes the more sensual ideas gain influence. Only Theosophy can bring people salvation and truth in this area. Genuine cooperation between the sexes will bring it about.

Real insight and true knowledge can only come from elevating ourselves above the everyday. Theosophy aims to be a remedy for human culture. It will have proven itself when it helps people. Theosophy must prove itself in real life. Schiller expresses in beautiful words the uplifting of the human being above the everyday:

> Only the body lends itself to those powers  
> That weave the dark fate;  
> But free from every temporal power,  
> The companion of blessed natures  
> Walks above in the corridors of light  
> Divinely among gods the form.