27th June, 1916 Berlin GA 169: 4 of 7

WHEN WE look at the world around us as our senses and intellect perceive it, we have something we may call, metaphorically speaking, a great cosmic edifice. We form concepts, ideas, and images of what it is like and what goes on in it. What happens in this cosmic edifice, even down to the details, affects us so that we develop certain sympathies or antipathies for this or that, and these then are expressed in our feeling life. Prompted by our will we do this or that, and thus intervene in the processes going on in this cosmic edifice.

At first, people think that this building of the cosmos consists of separate parts, and so they study these parts and find them made up of still smaller parts, which they then examine, and so on. Finally, scientists arrive at what they call the smallest parts, the molecules and atoms. As I told you, nobody has ever seen these molecules and atoms; they are hypothetical — in a certain sense the hypothesis of their existence is justified, as long as we keep in mind that it is only a hypothesis. In short, we are to some extent justified in thinking that the cosmic building consists of parts or members, and there is nothing wrong with trying to get a clear picture of these. However, the people who give rein to their fantasy in thinking about the atom and who perhaps even talk about the life of the atom, or have still wilder notions about it — well, they are simply speaking about the nothing of a nothing, for the atom itself is merely hypothetical. To build a hypothesis upon other hypotheses is nothing else but building a house of cards; not even that, for in a house of cards we have at least the cards, but in speculations about the atom, we have nothing.

Based on the insights to be gained from spiritual science, people should admit that if they want to see more of the cosmic edifice than our senses perceive, they must arrive at a different perspective. They must come to a way of thinking that is as different from our thinking in everyday life (which is also that of ordinary science) as our usual, everyday way of thinking is from dreams. We dream in pictures, and we can have a whole world in these pictures of ours. Then we wake up and are no longer confronted with the pictures of our dreams but with realities that impinge upon us, that push and tug at us, demanding attention. We know this from life itself, not on the basis of a theory, for no theory can enable us to distinguish between dreams and so-called everyday reality. Only our direct experience of life can teach us this.

Now, it is also true that we can wake up from everyday life experiences, which we may call by analogy “a dream life,” to a higher reality, the reality of the spirit. And again, it is only on the basis of life itself that we can distinguish between this higher spiritual reality and that of everyday life.

Now, what we see when we enter this world can be described with the following image — of course, one could use many different analogies to show the relationship between spiritual reality and ordinary reality, but I want to use a special image for this today. Let's imagine we are looking at a house built out of bricks. At first glance, the house appears to be composed of individual bricks. Of course, in the case of a house we can't go beyond the individual brick. However, let's assume the house doesn't consist of just ordinary bricks but of ones that are in turn extraordinarily artful constructions. Nevertheless, on first seeing the house we would only see the bricks, without having any idea that each brick in turn is a small work of art, so to speak. That is what happens in the case of the cosmic edifice.

We need only take one part of this cosmic edifice, the most complete one, let's say, the human being. Just think, as a part of this cosmic edifice, the human being seems to us to consist of parts: head, limbs, sense organs, and so on. We have tried over time to understand each part in its relation to the spiritual world. Remember, just recently I told you that the shape of our head can be traced to our previous earthly incarnation. The rest of our body, on the other hand, belongs to this incarnation and bears within it the rudiments of the head for the next life on earth.

I also spoke about the twelve senses and connected them with the twelve forces corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac. We said that microcosmically we bear within us the macrocosm with its forces working into us primarily from the twelve signs of the zodiac. Each of these forces is different: the forces of Aries differ from those of Taurus, which in turn differ from those of Gemini, and so on. Similarly, our eyes perceive different things than our ears. The twelve senses thus correspond to the twelve signs of the zodiac, but there is more to it than that.

We know that the rudiments of our sense organs were developed already on old Saturn, then evolved further during the old Sun and the old Moon periods up to the time of our earth. During our earth period, we have become self-enclosed beings with completely developed sense organs. In the Moon, Sun, and Saturn periods, human beings were much more open to the great cosmos, and the forces of the twelve signs of the zodiac affected the essential core of the human being. While the rudiments of our sense organs were being formed, they were affected by the forces of the zodiac. Thus, when we speak of the connection between the senses and the signs of the zodiac, we mean more than a mere correspondence. We seek those forces that have built our sense organs into us. We do not speak superficially of some vague kind of correspondence between the ego-sense and Aries or between the other senses and this or that sign of the zodiac.

We speak about this correspondence because during the earlier periods of our earthly planet the senses of the human being were not yet developed to the point of being enclosed in the organism. It was only through the twelve forces that the sense organs were built into our organism. We are built up out of the macrocosm, and when we study our sense organs, we are actually studying world-embracing forces that have worked in us over millions and millions of years, and have produced such wonderful parts of the human organism as the eyes and the ears. It is indeed true that we study these parts for their spiritual content, just as we would have to study each brick in order to examine the artistic structure of a house.

I could explain this with yet another image. Suppose we had some kind of structure artistically built up out of layers of paper rolls, some of them standing upright, others at an angle — all of these arranged artistically into some kind of a structure. Now imagine we had not just rolls of plain paper, but inside each roll a beautiful picture had been painted. Of course, just looking at the rolled up paper, we wouldn't see the paintings on the inside of the rolls. And yet, the paintings are there! And they must have been painted before the paper rolls were arranged in the artistic structure.

Now suppose it is not we who build up this artful structure of paper rolls, but the paper rolls have to form it by themselves. Of course, you can't imagine they could do this by themselves; nobody can imagine it. But let's suppose because the pictures are painted on all the paper rolls, the latter now have the power to arrange themselves in layers. And that gives you a picture of our true cosmic edifice. We can compare the paintings on the rolls with all that happened during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods, and is woven into every individual part of our cosmic building. These are not dead pictures, but living forces that build up everything meant to exist on earth. And we draw out what is artfully hidden in the structure made up of the individual rolls of the cosmic edifice — which science describes. This is what confronts us in our outer life. I have given much thought to finding an analogy corresponding as closely as possible to the facts of the matter and have come up with this image of the paper rolls with their living, active pictures. When you think this analogy through, you will find that when we first look at this structure, we cannot know anything about the paintings inside the rolls. If the structure is rather artful and ingenious, we can get an artful and ingenious description of it; however, it will not contain a word about the paintings inside the rolls.

You see, that's how it is with the conventional sciences. They describe this artistic structure, while ignoring completely the paintings on the inside of each roll. Now, you may wonder if a description of the elaborate structure of the rolls allows us to get an idea and to really know what is inside each roll as long as the rolls are rolled up and part of the whole structure? No, it does not! Conventional science is completely unable to arrive at the idea that the spiritual underlies our cosmic edifice. Therefore, simply continuing along the lines of conventional science will not lead to an understanding of spiritual science; something else must be added, something that has nothing to do with ordinary science.

Now picture all these layers of rolls; we can easily describe them and find them interesting and beautiful. Maybe some rolls are more slanted than others; maybe some are curved, and so on; all this can be nicely described. But in order to find out that there is a picture inside each roll, we will have to take out one of the paper rolls and unroll it. In other words, something special must be added to the human soul if we are to advance from the ordinary scientific outlook to that of the science of the spirit. The soul must be taken hold of by something of a special nature. This is what is so difficult to understand for our materialist culture. Yet, this must be understood again as it was in earlier cultural epochs when a spiritual world view permeated the physical one. In ancient times, people were always aware that everything they had to know about the spiritual content of the world was based on the spiritual taking hold of the soul. That is why people back then spoke not only about science, but also about initiation and the like.

Another analogy, one taken from the ancient traditions of spiritual science, will make the matter completely clear to you if you think it through. In spiritual science we speak of an “occult reading of the world,” and rightly so. What conventional science is doing cannot be called “reading the world.” If you look at what is written on a page of some book or other publication and you can't read at all, then what is written there will of course remain completely in comprehensible to you. Still, you could describe the handwriting; you could describe the lines, loops, and crossbars; you could tell what the individual letters look like and how they are combined. It will be a nice description, not unlike the one contemporary science gives of outer physical reality or the one contemporary history provides. However, this is not the same as reading.

Obviously, people do not learn to read by taking a page from a book, without having any idea what it means to read, and trying to figure out the meaning of the text from the shape of the letters. Reading is taught in childhood. We learn to read not by describing the shape of the letters, but because something spiritual is conveyed to us, and we are mentally and spiritually stimulated to read. It is the same with everything we call the higher and lower degrees of initiation. Initiation was not based on teaching souls to describe what was outside them, but on teaching them to read it, to decipher, so to speak, the meaning of the world. Thus, it was with good reason that what is spiritual in the world was called “The Word,” for the world has to be read if it is to be understood spiritually. And we do not learn to read by memorizing the shape of the letters but by receiving spiritual impulses.

That is what I want to make clear through the presentations in our circles. As you remember the themes running through our lectures, you will see I have always tried to use images. Today I am also using them, for it is only through images that one can lead the way into the spiritual. As soon as images are crammed into concepts applying only to the physical plane, they no longer contain what they should. This confuses people because they cannot grasp what is given in images in such a way that it is a true reality for them. Right away, they think of the images themselves in completely materialistic terms. When we look at more primitive cultures, we see that people then did not have our modem concepts but thought in images and expressed their reality in them. Even in Asian cultures, which are somewhat atavistic because they have kept features from earlier times, you find that to meaningfully express something profound, people always speak in images, images that definitely have the significance of a reality.

Let us take an example where the image really has the significance of an immediate reality, of a coarse and rough reality, so to speak. Europeans frequently find it very hard to understand Asians who have preserved older, atavistic ideas of reality; they often have only a very rough understanding of Asians. There is a very beautiful Asian novella telling the following story.

Once upon a time there was a couple, and they had a daughter. The daughter grew up and was sent to school in the capital because she showed special talents. On leaving school, she married a merchant, an acquaintance of her father. She had a son and died when the boy was four years old. The day after the mother's funeral, the child suddenly said: “Mother has gone upstairs to the top floor, and she must be there now!” And the whole family went upstairs.

Now we must put ourselves into the Asian soul in order to understand what follows. I am telling you something bordering closely on reality. Yet if a European were told by a four-year-old that his mother, who had been buried the day before, was upstairs and if he were then to go up with a candle to look around, he would of course find nothing there. The whole thing would be denied. In other words, we have to try to put ourselves into the Asian mind.

Well, the family went up there with a light and found the mother actually standing there before a dresser and staring at it. All the drawers were closed, and the people felt that there had to be something in the dresser that was troubling her. They emptied the drawers and took the items that had been in them to the temple to store them there. In that way those things would be removed from the world. They believed that now the soul would not return anymore; they knew it would return only if something was still binding it to this world.

However, the soul returned anyway! Every evening when the family looked upstairs, she was there. Finally, the family went to a wise guardian of the temple; he came, said he must be left undisturbed, and recited his sutras. And, when the “hour of the rat” struck — in the Orient, the time between midnight and two in the morning is called the hour of the rat — there was the woman again, staring at a certain spot on the dresser. He asked her if anything was there, and she gave him to understand by a gesture that there was indeed something. He opened the first drawer but nothing was in it, the second, nothing, the third, nothing, the fourth and still nothing. Then it occurred to him to lift up the paper lining of the drawers, and there between the last layer of paper and the bottom of the drawer he found a letter. He promised to tell nobody about this letter and to bum it in the temple. He did so, and the soul never returned again.

Now this oriental story actually agrees with reality; it expresses reality. It would be very difficult to present this matter in European concepts. Besides, the conceptions of modem Europeans are still too coarse. They think when something is real, then everybody must be able to see it. Europeans generally allow only for two things; either everyone sees something, and then it is a reality, or not everyone sees it, and then it is subjective and not objective. Now this distinction between subjective and objective applies only to the physical world but has no meaning in the spiritual world. There we cannot call anything others do not see subjective but not objective.

Now you may say that such things as told in that story also exist in Europe. Indeed, they do, but Europeans are generally glad to say it is only fiction and is not necessarily true. That is why it is so much easier to speak about the spiritual world in fiction. Fiction does not lay any claim to truth. People are content when they do not have to believe what is said in stories and the like. However, the objection that this is after all only a novella does not count. Europeans obviously have little understanding of Asians or they would not say such things. What Europeans call novellas, or art, is a most superfluous and useless game to Asians and means nothing to them. They even make fun of our telling stories about things that do not exist. Asians do not understand this. In what they call works of art, they tell only about what really exists, albeit in the spiritual world. That is the profound difference between the European and the Asian world views.

That Europeans write novellas about things that do not exist is, according to the Oriental view, a highly superfluous activity. In their view, all our art is only a rather superfluous and useless occupation. Clearly, we have to understand the Asian art works we possess as Imaginations of spiritual reality; otherwise we will never understand them at all. We Europeans in turn judge Asian stories not by Asian standards but by our own and call them fanciful and beautiful fiction, products of the fertile, unbridled Oriental imagination.

People will gradually have to realize that we have to speak more and more in images. Of course, if we were to speak in pictures only, we would be going against modem European culture, so we can't do that. But we can gradually allow ordinary thinking, applicable only on the physical plane, to turn into thinking about the spiritual world, and then into pictorial thinking, which develops under the influence of the spiritual world. Natural scientists also develop a view of the world, but if they think their view is clear and comprehensible, they make the same mistake as we would if we claimed we could paint a portrait, and the subject would then step out of the canvas and walk around the room.

In my latest book,