169 169 Toward Imagination

Anthroposophic Press (1990)

169-01 1(6/6/1916, Berlin) 1ff. 3230 festivals of the year On the interrelation between the human etheric body and Christmas, between the astral body and Easter and between Pentecost and the ego. 169-02 1(6/6/1916, Berlin) 10ff. 3230 On the life of Hermann Bahr (1863-1934), his position to impressionism and expressionism, to Goethe. On his novel Himmelfahrt (Ascension). See lecture 3(6/20/1916). See 173/3(12/10/1916, Dornach), 176/12(8/21/1917, Berlin), and 176/14(9/4/1917, Berlin).
2(6/13/1916, Berlin) 28ff. 3231 169-03 Blood and nerves (systems) are polarities of the human physical body. The nervous system originally contains cosmic life (image of the starry heaven) and dies off becoming earthly. Because it is dead, Ahriman can exist in the human being. Against it, the blood is of earthly origin and living, indeed, only by the fact that it is connected in man with the extraterrestrial realm. The human being has the luciferic influences in his blood. In soullife, the polarity of abstract thinking and enthusiasm corresponds to this polarity. The cosmic life (nervous system) the human being had left behind with his descent came later in Christ who grasped the blood: Mystery of Golgotha by which a new connection of both polarities and by the fact that His blood united with the earth also a transformation of the earth happened. 2(6/13/1916, Berlin) p. 34 3231 169-04 The world of atoms outside is nothing but the projected nervous system. We project ourselves into the world and thus think of it as consisting of atoms, and of our nervous system as composed of many individual ganglion-globules. Science will always tend to atomism for it originates in nerve substance. By contrast, mysticism, religion, and so forth come from the blood and do not look for atoms but always for unity.

169-05 3(6/20/1916, Berlin) 49ff. 3232 life after death / third force The twelve senses [see 115-01 to 115-03, 170-08, 206-01, and 206-02]: the senses of touch, life, movement, balance, smell, taste, sight, warmth, hearing, speech, thinking and the ego-sense (perception of the other ego). The first four senses are unaware, the senses from the sense of sight on are conscious. Comparison with the passageway of the sun through the six upper and lower signs of the zodiac. The human being passes the pillar of Jakim at his birth (day side), the pillar of Boaz at his death (night side). The senses that were unaware up to then during the earthly life are transformed to conscious organs of perception: Our outer world during the life between death and rebirth consists of the perceptions of the sense of touch spread out over the whole universe, where we do not touch but are touched. We feel that we are touched by spiritual beings everywhere The human being has to find a balance between both pillars. Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) and the American John Ernst Worrell Keely (1837-1898), inventor of an engine that was said to be set in motion only by vibrations of the inventor 169