The nature of man : approached through the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner

developing the potentialities in this thinking into active Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition that Steiner was able to develop the realm of spiritual science as distinct from natural science. With clear methodology he was able to develop the observation of soul and spirit as free from all traces of matter, thus complementing the natural scientific methodology which had purged matter of all soul and spirit. And this observation of the spiritual was conducted in full waking consciousness. In this relation to the scientific revolution lies the great importance of Steiner’s work. It makes accessible again to modern man the fruits of man’s original vision, the primal spiritual revelation to our distant ancestors, without loss of our achievement of freedom in our wide awake consciousness. This freedom we can now recognise as that offspring of the scientific revolution which must at all costs be protected and nurtured.

The aspect which I am approaching lies in the range of the phenomena of metamorphosis. In the vegetable kingdom we can observe the metamorphosis of the leaf into sepals, petals, stamens, pistils, fruit and seed. We can see the transformation from stage to stage, and observe them lying spread out together. In the animal kingdom the metamorphoses present us with a greater cognitional challenge: one manifestation vanishes and another comes into being. The caterpillar disappears from this world, from the chrysalis emerges the butterfly. Something quite new in form appears and we are hard put to it to grasp caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly in their unity as metamorphoses of one being. We have to hold our breath as we take a leap over the abyss.

The leap in the case of the human metamorphosis is far greater, according to the observations of Steiner. Following the course of the soul and spirit after death in passing out of the spatial world and its material embodiment, he describes the spiritual metamorphoses culminating in a new embodiment. The laws of cause and effect working in these vast metamorphoses are moral in nature, traditionally known under the name of Karma. Through these studies the Ego of Man is revealed as an entity amongst others in the spiritual world accessble to the extended intuitive consciousness. But it is in this physical world and no other that we can develop the concepts with which to understand the

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