An Insurmountable Problem: “One must overcome the inward counterblow that develops”

In the course of my work this became the most difficult problem in my path. I experienced, on the one hand, this powerful will of Michael, to penetrate through the astral and etheric bodies all the way to the physical body. But, on the other hand, I experienced in myself the greatest obstacles and opposition, working from my bodies against His forces. I realized indeed early on, that the ‘problem' is nothing less than my entire human constitution, incarnated in bodies hardened by the luciferic-ahrimanic instincts, drives, inclinations and habits, influencing us from early childhood so powerfully in the present age.

For me, in the place in which I was stuck for such a long time, this sentence from Rudolf Steiner, describing his own struggles in this domain, constituted an important, indeed, crucial confirmation of my experience, because he says that trying to penetrate consciously into the body, “One must overcome the inward counterblow that develops.” And this helped me to find the right way to comprehend and grasp my problem, because I could connect the experience of this counterblow or being thrown or pushed back, with the central problem of the Cognitive Yoga research,

In this regard, even the humblest beginnings require the most far-reaching long-term efforts...The creation of individualized spiritual science from below upward, step by step, as befitted the age of Michael and the development of the consciousness-and spiritual soul, must spiritualize the physical, etheric and astral bodies and the forces of hinderance and opposition that are anchored in them.

Also, the reversed cultus, the building of the community from the ground up in this spirit, must come to terms with what is contained in our bodies, much that is disturbing, blocking, falsifying our best moral and cognitive efforts.

Cognitive Yoga: How A Book Is Born

Chapter 3: An Insurmountable Problem  

This task, in other words, meant (pictorially speaking) to create the necessary key and password to cross this threshold and descend into these lower bodily forces, processes and organs. I could acutely experience that the cause of this problem is to be found in deeply ingrained bodily-soul forces, of luciferic-ahrimanic origins. Eventually, I concluded that once more I would have to give up the possibility of continuing this research to its desired completion. And then, when I truly `gave my problem up' I began to feel the above- mentioned inner prompting that indicated that I might pre- pare myself to engage more consciously with the `other side', with my colleagues, and that some indications were given that a unique advent was underway.

This preparation, mind you, amounts to this, that the above-described impenetrable problem became a real-life problem and concern of my whole being, in spirit, soul, and body. That is, I experienced it for many years in my whole being, until it became ripe enough to be given up and carried through the portal of the spiritual world. You must become the problem, consciously, because you are the problem, of course, all the time. The `problem' is nothing less than your entire human constitution, incarnated in bodies hardened by the luciferic-ahrimanic instincts, drives, inclinations and habits, influencing us from early childhood so powerfully, especially in the present age.

When I encountered this unsolvable problem again, as part of my renewed research, I was redirected to Rudolf Steiner's reports about his own struggles in this domain. I was of course aware of these reports for many years but was occupied with research problems in other domains of spiritual scientific work. I felt a need to contemplate again, but now from a different point of view, Rudolf Steiner's descriptions of his struggles in creating a truly modern spiritual science, Anthroposophy, based on a fully spiritual understanding of the bodily nature of the human being as part of his threefold being. I therefore returned to Rudolf Steiner's explanations of the reasons why he didn't complete and publish his only unfinished book, a big part of which was written down in the year 1910. (It remained incomplete and was published posthumously with the title: Anthroposophy, A Fragment, GA 45).

In this book, Rudolf Steiner says, he intended to give a first characterization of the physical human being as a being of the 12 senses, as part of a new study of the constitution of the human being, in body, soul and spirit, which would create a new foundation for Anthroposophy, as a modern science of the spirit.

Many years later, he describes in an exceptionally personal way, the obstacles he encountered in this field. He only mentions it in the first two lecture cycles given as the founding of the High School for Spiritual Science in 1920 and 1921. The first reference is in the sixth lecture of The Boundaries of Natural Science (GA 322), where he first introduced the new method of Michaelic or Cognitive Yoga on which my work is based. And the next year he referred to it, for a second and final time, in the sixth lecture in the second High School lecture cycle, Anthroposophy and Science (Observation of Nature, Experimentation, Mathematics, and the Stages of Spiritual Scientific Research), given on 22 March 1921 in Stuttgart (GA 324).

In the first reference, in the lecture from 2 October 1920, he says:

If one desires to do real research concerning human physiology, thinking must be excluded and the picture-forming activity of the senses sent inward, so that the physical organism reacts by creating Imaginations. This is a path that is only just beginning in the development of Western culture, but it is the path that must be trodden if the influence that streams over from the East, and would lead to decadence if it alone were to prevail, is to be confronted with something capable of opposing it, so that our civilization may take a path of ascent and not of decline. Generally speaking, however, it can be said that human language itself is not yet sufficiently developed to be able to give full expression to the experiences that one under- goes in the inner recesses of the soul. And it is at this point that I would like to relate a personal experience to you.

Many years ago, in a different context, I tried to give expression to what might be called a science of the human senses. In spoken lectures, I succeeded to some extent in putting this science of the twelve senses into words, because in speaking it is more possible to turn language this way and that and ensure understanding by means of repetitions, so that the deficiencies of our language, which is not yet capable of expressing these supersensible things, is not so strongly felt. Strangely enough, however, when I wanted many years ago to write down what I had given as actual anthroposophy and to put it into a form suitable for a book, the outer experiences, on being interiorized, became so sensitive that language simply failed to provide the words; and I believe that the beginning of the text- several sheets of print- lay for some five or six years at the printer's. It was because I wanted to write the whole book in the style in which it began that I could not continue writing, for the simple reason that at the stage of development I had then reached, language refused to furnish the means for what I wished to achieve. Afterward I became overloaded with work, and I still have not been able to finish the book. Anyone who is less conscientious about what he communicates to his fellow men out of the spiritual world might perhaps smile at the idea of being held up in this way by a temporarily insurmountable difficulty. But whoever really experiences and can permeate with a full sense of responsibility what occurs when one attempts to describe the path that Western humanity must follow to attain Imagination knows that to find the right words entails a great deal of effort. As a meditative schooling, it is relatively easy to describe, and this has been done in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. If one's aim, however, is to achieve definite results such as that of describing the essential nature of man's senses- a part, therefore, of the inner make-up and constitution of humanity- it is then that one encounters the difficulty of grasping Imaginations and presenting them in sharp contours by means of words.

Nevertheless, this is the path that Western humanity must follow. And just as the man of the East could experience through his mantras the entry into the spiritual nature of the external world, so must the Westerner, leaving aside the entire psychology of association, learn to enter into his own being by attaining the realm of Imagination. Only by penetrating the realm of Imagination will he acquire the true knowledge of humanity that is necessary for humanity to progress. (2 October 1920, GA 322)

In the second reference, given in the lecture from 22 March 1921, Rudolf Steiner speaks more explicitly about the inward cause of this difficulty:

It became increasingly clear to me that before one could finish the book called Anthroposophy, in the form intended at that time, one must have certain experiences of inner vision... One must first be able to take what one perceives as soul-spiritual activity working in the nervous system and carry it further inward, until one comes to the point where one sees the entire soul-spiritual activity- which one grasps in Imagination and Inspiration- crossing itself. This crossing point is really a line, in a vertical direction if looked at schematically... One goes consciously into oneself, but again and again one is thrown back, and instead of what I would call an inner view, one gets something not right. One must overcome the inward counterblow that develops. (22 March 1921, GA 324)

For me, in the place in which I was stuck for such a long time, this last sentence constituted an important, indeed, crucial confirmation of my experience: “One must overcome the inward counterblow that develops.”  And this helped me to find the right way to comprehend and grasp my problem, because I could connect the experience of this counterblow or being thrown or pushed back, with the central problem of the Cognitive Yoga research, that Rudolf Steiner described in this manner:

The experiences of the senses of smell, taste and touch are sedimented as it were on top of what we would have experienced through the senses of balance, movement and life ... through the fact that they are imposed on one another, there arises a solid self-consciousness in man; thereby he feels him- self as a real self. (GA 322, lecture of 3 October 1920, and see also GA 326, lecture of 1 January 1923).

I could also experience how the sense of smell, in addition to the effect it has on the bodily senses of life, movement and balance, powerfully influences the higher cognitive faculties. It has therefore (together with the senses of taste and touch) a central position, in creating the sedimented, hard, unsurpassable threshold below the middle of the body. I could very clearly experience the fact that our modern, intellectual, analytic thinking, is strongly bound to this sense, and what is more, that this hardened intellect is a direct metamorphosis of the sense of smell.I therefore took it as my second major point of entry to the spiritualization of the senses and the lower body. Now because in the spiritualization of smell, together with taste and touch, one confronts and spiritualizes the instinctive activity of this analytic, brain-bound intellect of modern humanity, one creates also a powerful and trustworthy spiritual sword. We need this sword to support the spiritualization of the fallen cosmic intelligence, which is Michael's primary concern in our age; and one must confront the ahrimanic, instinctual side of the intellect if one would find the way, armed by the etheric Christ impulse, to the virgin, pure Adamic forces in the unconscious depth of the body.

Read on in Cognitive Yoga: How a Book Is Born