Sense

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Senses serve the perception of the sensual world by means of suitable physical sense organs and are therefore also called organs of perception. Rudolf Steiner distinguishes between twelve senses of man which, as sense organisation, enable him to sensory perception. According to Steiner, the awake-conscious sensory perceptive faculty only began to develop gradually at the end of the Atlantean period and even today sensory perception, insofar as it is not permeated by clear thinking, has a largely only dream-conscious character. Before that, humanity had a natural, dream-like clairvoyant consciousness, of which the very last remnants have survived into our present consciousness soul age.

What is a sense?

The senses do not deceive, judgement does.

Goethe: Maximen und Reflexionen[1]

„In anthroposophical illumination, everything may be called a human sense which causes man to recognise the existence of an object, being or process in such a way that he is entitled to transpose this existence into the physical world.“ (Lit.:GA 45, p. 31)

Whereby a sense is quite generally something "... where a cognition comes about without the cooperation of the intellect, the memory, etc." (Lit.:GA 45, p. 35)

Judgment is eliminated in the pure experience of sense:

„Sense is that by means of which we acquire knowledge without the cooperation of the intellect.“ (Lit.:GA 115, p. 31)

„You must be clear about the fact that there is something unconscious - at least subconscious - in sense. If that which is unconscious in sense perception were to be made conscious, it would no longer be a sense, not a sense perception, but one would have to speak of a judgement, a concept formation and the like.“ (S. 50)

„The other thing that belongs to the life of the soul, judgement, is switched off precisely in the immediate experience of sense. There the desire, the surrender and exposure of the soul to external impressions alone asserts itself. A sense-impression is characterised precisely by the fact that the attention is so directed to it that judgement as such is eliminated. When the soul exposes itself to red or to any sound, only desire lives in this exposure, and the other soul activity, judgement, is in this case switched off, suppressed.“ (S. 160)

That there are beings capable of sensory perception is already a clear indication of the existence of a supersensible world. A notebook entry by Rudolf Steiner (Notebook 210/17) states:

„Sense can only give a section of the world; for in this world must lie the reason for its own lawfulness: these reasons it can no longer give. - The fact that organisms are incorporated into the world, which perceive this world, indicates a supersensible world. A sense organ which perceived not merely its object but itself would give an image of this supersensible world.“ (Lit.: Contributions 34, p. 24)

Goethe was of the opinion that the whole of nature expresses itself through each sense undivided, but in each case in a special way, which is why he already writes in the preface to his Theory of Colours with regard to the sense of sight:

„The colours are deeds of light, deeds and sufferings. In this sense, we can expect information about light from them. Colours and light stand in the most exact relation to each other, but we must think of both as belonging to the whole of nature: for it is nature in its entirety that thereby wishes to reveal itself especially to the sense of the eye.

In the same way, the whole of nature reveals itself to another sense. Close the eye, open it, sharpen the ear, and from the softest breath to the wildest noise, from the simplest sound to the highest harmony, from the fiercest passionate cry to the gentlest word of reason, it is only nature that speaks, reveals its existence, its power, its life and its relations, so that a blind man, to whom the infinitely visible is denied, can grasp in the audible an infinitely living thing.“

– Goethe: On the Theory of Colours, Preface

The teaching on the senses is one of the most essential core pieces of the anthroposophical study of man and a result of Rudolf Steiner's spiritual-scientific investigations over many years (Lit.: GA 93a, p. 67ff, GA 45, p. 31ff). Steiner gradually modified and refined the theory of the senses, extending the circle of the known five senses, first by two senses yet to be developed, to seven, then to ten and finally to twelve.

The head with its twelve pairs of cranial nerves, which is a metamorphosis of the twelve-membered body of the previous incarnation, forms the actual sensory centre of the human being today, although some sense organs are also spread over larger areas of the body or even over the whole body.

How external perception comes about

→ Main article: Perception

Man is inside the things and beings he perceives with his spiritual-soul, i.e. with his I and his astral body. He only becomes aware of these experiences, however, because they are reflected back to the sense organs of the physical body.

„How does external perception actually come about? Well, isn't it true that people usually think - especially people who think they are very clever - that external perception comes about because things are outside, the human being is in his skin, that external things make an impression on him, and that his brain thereby creates an image of the external objects and forms inside him. Well, it is not at all like that, but it is quite different. In truth, man is not at all within his skin [with his spiritual-soul]; he is not that at all. For example, when a person sees this rose bouquet, he is in fact inside the bouquet with his I and astral body, and his organism is a reflecting apparatus and reflects things back to him. In truth, you are always spread out over the horizon that you survey. And in waking consciousness you are also in the physical and etheric body with a substantial part of your I and your astral body. The process is really like this - I have often mentioned this in lectures -: Imagine you are walking around in a room with a number of mirrors on the walls. You can walk around the room. Where you don't have a mirror, you don't see yourself. But as soon as you come to a mirror, you see yourself. If there is a place without a mirror, you do not see yourself, and if there is another mirror, you see yourself again. It is the same with the human organism. It is not the producer of the things we experience in the soul, it is only the mirroring apparatus. The soul is together with the things out there, for example here with this bouquet of roses. The fact that the soul consciously sees the bouquet depends on the fact that the eye, in connection with the brain apparatus, reflects back to the soul what the soul lives with. And at night man does not perceive, because when he sleeps he withdraws the I and the astral body from his physical and etheric body, and these thereby cease to be a reflecting apparatus. Falling asleep is like taking away a mirror that you had before you. As long as you can look into the mirror, you have your own face in front of you; take the mirror away and there is nothing of your face left.

Thus man is indeed with his soul-spiritual being in that part of the world which he overlooks, and he sees it consciously through the reflection of his organism. And at night this mirroring apparatus is drawn away, he sees nothing more. The part of the world that we see is ourselves.

That is one of the worst parts of Maya, that man believes that he is in his own skin with his spiritual-mental being. He does not. In reality, he is in the things he sees. When I face a person, I am inside him with my I and astral body. If I did not hold my organism up to him, I would not see him. That I see him is the fault of my organism, but I am inside him with my I and astral body. That it is not seen in this way is one of the most, I would say, fatal things about Maya.

Thus we obtain a kind of conception of how perception and experience are on the physical plane.“ (Lit.:GA 156, p. 22f)

In the 171st anthroposophical leading thought - written in March 1925 shortly before his death - Rudolf Steiner clearly states that in perception man participates with his spiritual-soul being in what the world experiences in him through his senses. Human perception is thus at the same time and primarily a world process in the form of a self-perception of the world in which man participates.

„171. The human sense organisation does not belong to the human being-ness, but is built into it by the environment during life on earth. The perceiving eye is spatial in the human being, it is essential in the world. And the human being stretches his spiritual being into that which the world experiences in him through his senses. Man does not absorb the physical environment during his life on Earth, but grows with his spiritual-soul being into this environment.“ (Lit.:GA 26, p. 236)

Literature

Rudolf Steiner
Contributions to Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Blackboard Drawings
Other authors
  • Robert F. Schmidt, Hans-Georg Schaible: Neuro- und Sinnesphysiologie, 5. Auflage, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 978-3540257004, eBook ISBN 978-3540294917
  • Albert Soesman: Die zwölf Sinne. Tore der Seele. Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart 1995; 6. überarb. A. 2007, ISBN 978-3-7725-2161-4
  • Karsten Massei: Zwiegespräche mit der Erde: Ein innerer Erfahrungsweg, Futurum Verlag, 2014 ISBN 978-3856362461
  • Johannes Weinzirl (Hrsg.), Peter Heusser (Hrsg.): Bedeutung und Gefährdung der Sinne im digitalen Zeitalter, Wittener Kolloquium für Humanismus, Medizin und Philosophie, Band 5, Königshausen u. Neumann 2017, ISBN 978-3826059919
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
  1. ↑ [[w:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|]]: Maximen und Reflexionen, Werke - Hamburger Ausgabe Bd. 12, 9th ed. Munich: dtv, 1981, p. 408, ISBN 3423590386
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