Essay - Cosmic Intelligence and the Learning Heart

Therapeutic meditations are part of a future medicine with greater emphasis on the spirit and soul aspects of health and illness.¹ There is much to suggest they will become important for the body’s central organ, the heart.²

In the context of anthroposophical anthropology and medicine, meditative practices aim to establish—through willful effort—a renewed connection to the principles of becoming, of form, and of function inherent in one’s own spiritual-bodily constitution. If one understands illness as the process of an incipient or already well-advanced destabilization of these “principles,” then therapeutic meditations can offer a potential contribution to their restoration—to winning back that “picture of the human being” that is permanently endangered amid the civilizational and biographical conditions of life. Healing mantras have an ordering and orienting character in regard to physical, soul, and spiritual aspects. They serve the purpose of saluto- or autogenesis, that is—the summoning of one’s own healing forces from the spiritual core of the human being, from one’s efficacious ‘I’. In this way, healing mantras are an integral element of an anthroposophical medicine of the future. They rely not only on the spirituality of the physician and their therapy but on the patient’s as well.

Therapeutic meditations are for the sick; they are not primarily intended to be performed for patients, but rather by the patients themselves, insofar as they want to do so. Every meditative act is rooted in individual freedom and personal responsibility; acting “on behalf of” another—bypassing them or even going against their will—can yield positive results in this realm only in extreme situations. Precisely for this reason, therapeutic meditations are part of the future of human medicine in that they enable the patient to increasingly step out of the status of being “treated” and take up shared responsibility for their therapy, their future path, and their own destiny—down to the deepest regions, structures, and life processes of their bodiliness.

In his first course for physicians, Rudolf Steiner spoke of a necessary “self-movement that is truly and thoroughly lived through” in reference to the basic physiological prerequisites for cardiac health.³ This enlivened and experienced inner movement can also be applied to the field of soul and spirit and to the meditations under discussion here. “Stream through with sense’s might,”⁴ can be the motto or motif of an (auto-)therapeutic endeavor aimed at reconnecting—through a cultivation of “spirit contemplating” [Geist-Besinnen]—with one’s own conditions of existence, that is, one’s processes of incarnation and movements toward the future. The heart organ stands in the center of the organism, of the bearing, moving, ensouling, and spiritualizing body.⁵ When it is enlivened not only by the intrinsic movement of the bloodstream but also by the strength of the ‘I’, it can develop a healing direction—and not least because the heart, in one aspect of it’s nature, belongs to the rhythmic system of the human being.

Meditation as Remembering the Reason for Existence

The therapeutic heart meditations of anthroposophical medicine owe their origin to more than just Steiner’s ability to spiritually investigate complex anthropological relationships. It was also his ability to condense the results of his research into speech formations that contain and pass on the creative processes within a circumscribed space. The human bodily principles of becoming, of form, and of function are present in these anthropological mantras in an astonishing way. As the meditator moves within the inner space of these verses, they call to mind the sense of meaning (and the functional “power of meaning”) of their own organization. In the process of meditative internalization, they remember their own reason for existing, insofar as this manifests bodily. They thus bring into meditative waking consciousness what occurs nightly in organic regeneration in an even more far-reaching way.⁶ Steiner’s speech formations make possible this process of remembering, which bears within itself the process of re-righting the “logos of the human physis,”⁷ not only through their content but also through their form, that is, through the overall composition of the verse: “We would have to write many books if we were to exhaust their whole meaning: not only is every word meaningful, but so are the symmetry of the words, the manner in which they are distributed […], the intensifications therein, and much more. Only a long, patient devotion to them can elucidate all that lies therein.”⁸

In what follows, we will sketch out some brief observations of several heart mantras in terms of their anthropological relevance. The majority of the verses cited here stem from the field of medicine and therapy.

The Heart as Organ of Life and Warmth

The relation of the heart organ to life, warmth, and the human being’s ‘I’-organization (as well as to the “higher ‘I’”) is of fundamental significance. In this context, one meditation of particular interest was preserved by Steiner on one single piece of notepaper:

I think upon my heart
It enlivens me
It enwarms me
I place trust firmly
Upon the eternal Self,
Within me, it works;
Me, it bears.

Ich denke an mein Herz
Es belebet mich
Es erwärmet mich
Ich vertraue fest
Auf das ewige Selbst
Das in mir wirket
Das mich trägt.⁹

The first line captures the central activity for what the entire endeavor is all about: “I think upon my heart.” Anthroposophical verse meditation starts with thinking and essentially moves within it, in the sphere of pure, light-illumined thinking that unfolds through the mantric word heard within. The intention is not to feel the organs or organ systems, nor to summon impulses of will, but rather to engage in a spiritually creative activity. Letting the content of the meditation be present in consciousness becomes the (non-intellectual) “work of the ‘I’” upon this content, as Steiner elaborated when speaking with medical students and young doctors.¹⁰ Within the horizon of this centering work of the ‘I’, appears the heart organ, in its enlivening and enwarming qualities, but also, in its indirect relation to the dimension of the higher, non-bodily incarnated ‘I’, designated by the second part of the verse. Illnesses, and indeed even mere irritations, of the enlivening and enwarming heart unsettle a person at a deep level of their ‘I’-being. The converse as well—the loss of trust in what works through and bears one’s own life, one’s individual earthly biography—can also lead to a serious alteration in the experience of the heart, as traumatology and many other clinical phenomena show.

As part of a complex therapy, Steiner gave the following verse (also seven lines) to an exhausted and sleepless tuberculosis patient at the Clinical-Therapeutic Institute in Arlesheim:

Be, you, my heart,
You soulbearer,
House of my divine being
That lives with me, guiding,
Light bestowing,
Warmth bringing,
In time and eternity.

Sei du mein Herz
Du Seelenträger
Haus meines Gotteswesens
Das führend bei mir lebt
Licht spendend
Wärme bringend
In Zeit und Ewigkeit.¹¹

The “divine being,” which stands by, “guiding” the individual human being through their relation to the heart, is characterized as “light bestowing” and “warmth bringing.” The heart is the “soulbearer”—it is directly bound together with a human being’s soul activities, particularly in the realm of feeling (though by no means only there). However, it is not merely a psychosomatic organ but rather the “house of my divine being” and stands in relation to that higher, divine ‘I’, which accompanies the course of a person’s life without fully entering into it (“lives with me”). This higher ‘I’ rises above or transcends the temporariness of earthly biography (“in time and eternity”); yet meditative turning toward this dimension of one’s own self can result in an essential strengthening of one’s incarnated self, in the middle of the human being.

Ripe Sense, Ripe Breath, Ripe Earth

The sun’s relation to the light and warmth processes—which work through the human organization from top to bottom as streams of light and warmth ether—is evoked by the following meditation given to a patient suffering from angina:

Light of the sun
Working before me
It becomes warmth
Penetrates my heart
Streams through me
I am
In warmth.

Licht der Sonne
Wirkt vor mir
Wärme wird es
Dringt in mein Herz
Strömt durch mich
Ich bin
In Wärme¹²

“Divine Light / Christ Sun / Enwarm our hearts / Enlighten our heads,” wrote Rudolf Steiner in the Foundation Stone Meditation.¹³ The “light of the sun” that transforms into warmth has the qualities of the true ‘I’ or the Christ ‘I’. From out of this sun sphere originate the essential foundations of human being and becoming. The formation of the heart, according to Steiner, begins on “Old Saturn” in the warmth processes. Along the paths of the heart-blood processes established there, the ‘I’ prepares for its later incarnation into an earthly body. It gradually embodies itself into a structure of warmth and ultimately extends this from head to foot through the nerve-sense system (sense ripeness) and the rhythmic system (breath ripeness) into the metabolic-limb system (earth ripeness):

Within me, the power of warmth
I feel the power of warmth
That permeates me
Permeates from head through heart
Through the whole body
I feel myself warmed through.

In mir die Kraft der Wärme
Ich fühle die Kraft der Wärme,
Die mich durchdringt
Durchdringt vom Kopf durch das Herz
Durch den ganzen Körper
Ich fühle mich durchwärmt.¹⁴

This meditative practice involves training one’s warmth perception, which is of great importance for heart-related pathological processes, without becoming entirely immersed in them. Rather, it leads to the visualization (the “making present”) and inward recreation of the whole light-warmth-incarnation stream, in which the heart organ is integrated through its formative process down to the details of its embryology. Its spiritual aspects are also indirectly addressed, aspects that relate to the “Christ Sun” or the guiding (both evolutionarily and existentially) “divine being.” The heart is not simply a fully formed warmth organ, but it can increasingly become such in the future. It is and will become—on the path of its further development, which depends upon the spiritual-soul evolutionary process of the human being—an organ of perception for the warmth of the world, that is, of the ‘I’-nature of the environment and the cosmos. It is and will thereby also increasingly become the organ that illuminates the body toward a future “physiology of freedom,” for which human bodiliness is specifically designed.¹⁵ “Within me, the power of warmth.”

The Therapeutic Power of the Ideal

In his general anthroposophical writings and lectures, Steiner repeatedly made statements about the “true thinking” of the human being, which takes place through the joining of intelligence and spirituality, in the harmony of the heart and head processes. “[Human beings] think with the head, but the heart feels the light or darkness of thought.”¹⁶ The condition of modern human existence in the Age of Michael makes it possible—indeed, requires—that head thoughts open up a way to the heart, and that the heart processes sound or speak together with the thinking activities: “Hearts begin to have thoughts.”¹⁷ Michael, the reigning time spirit, prepares the heart for the light with his powers of the sun—that is, he opens up the real world of ideas to the heart, according to Steiner. Through the connection thereby made possible, ideas can be elevated into the sphere of ideals—that is, imbued with warmth forces—and gain a force that guides action and relates to the will.

All of this is of direct relevance to therapy. Another patient meditation states:

I feel in my head
The power of warming love
I feel in my heart
The might of enlightening thought
The power of warming love
Unites with the
Might of enlightening thought
And thus strong become
My hands
For good human work.
I feel myself.

Ich fühle in meinem Kopf
Warme Liebekraft
Ich fühle in meinem Herzen
Leuchtende Gedankenmacht
Die warme Liebekraft
Vereint sich mit der
leuchtenden Gedankenmacht
Davon werden stark
Meine Hände
Zu gutem menschlichem Wirken.
Ich fühle mich¹⁸

If “good human work,” in the Michaelic sense, comes to life from a love of the deed or from a selfless devotion to the necessary deed, then its physiological presuppositions rest on communicative exchange—the relation between head and heart, which, according to Aristotle, are functional counter-organs.¹⁹ If, on the contrary, these processes become dissociated and each isolates itself within itself, the person experiences a progressive loss of self. They no longer “feel” themselves because, in their spiritual-soul-bodily center—the heart—they fail to undergo the process of unification and thereby undermine the connection to their higher ‘I’, the guiding “divine power.” Their activities then become concept-driven or instinctual but are not “actions” arising from their own, individual essential core. Their feelings stand alone and become forces of catabolism and consumption.

Therapeutic meditation “reminds” us, in this pathological or pathogenic situation, of what it means to be human and humane; it becomes an internally experienced exemplar of another, inherently healthy way of living. It does not have magical power, but it can nonetheless be a first step on the path toward restoring the balance of inner forces and can lead to an intensified experience of self that emerges within the space of meditation and, later, increasingly in the course of daily life: “I feel myself.” Modern immunology, salutogenesis research, and various other disciplines of contemporary medicine have exhibited the health-preserving significance of the inner order of values—that is, the extent to which a human being, right down to their medical and physiological condition, benefits from the pursuit of soul-spiritual goals (and how pathogenic a corresponding disorientation or actual emptiness can be). The just-cited heart meditation has to do with this reality and describes its anthropological foundations. The one that knows and pursues the “ideal” has therapeutic power; it unifies and centers the soul forces and leads to the discovery of identity, which is of biographical significance. “I feel myself.”

Affirmation of Destiny

From an anthroposophical-anthropological perspective, the human heart is a comprehensive organ of perception.²⁰ A spiritual dimension of this perceptual capacity consists in integrating one’s life experience into the course of one’s own destiny, that is, in incorporating the life events experienced here and now into the totality of one’s own biography and fundamental being. This complex process is realized in different stages. In another patient meditation, it states:

I take my pain
from the left side
I take my pain
from the right side
I carry it upward
and transform it in my heart
For I am strong in the middle.

Ich nehme meine Schmerzen
von der linken Seite
Ich nehme meine Schmerzen
von der rechten Seite
Ich trage sie nach oben
und wandle sie in meinem Herzen
Denn ich bin stark in der Mitte.²¹

The “upper human being” perceives, with the help of the heart, the deeds and sufferings of the “lower human being”; the nerve-sense pole of the human organism perceives the processes of the metabolic-limb pole. The heart performs the central act of perception; however, it is also within its realm that those “transformations” take place that are connected with the transition from Being to consciousness, from life to conscious living experience. Here in the heart, completed acts are perceived, internalized, and evaluated—that is, judged from a moral viewpoint and, according to Steiner, “mirrored” into consciousness: “This is simply, I would say, to be taken entirely from the physical side: the pangs of conscience that stream into our consciousness are precisely what is reflected of our lived experiences through the heart. This is what the spiritual knowledge of the heart teaches us.”²² “All that happens morally in human life, and what happens physically on the other side, comes together precisely in the human heart.”²³

The heart, in which the present is perceived, evaluated, and metamorphosed, is thereby the organ of memory for one’s individual biography and an instrument for shaping the future. Through its physical, soul, and spiritual processes, it makes an indispensable contribution to the integration of one’s own form of life—that is, to the acceptance and transformative inclusion of Being into a whole of a higher order for which one must take up responsibility—and this, in turn, in physical, soul, and spiritual terms. The pains on the left side and those on the right side exist and must be perceived, carried upwards, and transformed, whether they are of a somatic or biographical nature. The word, that which is to be shaped in human life, must be read in the heart—only then can that acceptance and insight into one’s destiny gradually take place, which in many processes of illness and therapy is the fundamental act that makes everything else possible. The “speech of the heart” can be discovered and actively employed, through which the progression of one’s own becoming is accomplished. The presupposition for this, however, is the successful act of perception from which everything else must proceed. In the space of verse meditation, these processes can be allowed to unfold in an archetypal way and practiced—even when they are still confronted by a multitude of obstacles in life. The sphere of meditation opens up the way, or a first path to the clearing, and strengthens the human being in their ability to go forward: “For I am strong in the middle.”

Hearts interpret karma
When hearts learn
To read the word
That should be shaped
in human life
When hearts learn
to speak the word
That should be shaped
in the human essence.

Es deuten die Herzen das Karma
Wenn die Herzen lernen
Lesen das Wort
Das in Menschenleben
Gestaltet
Wenn die Herzen reden
Lernen das Wort
Das im Menschenwesen
Gestaltet.²⁴

The Ensouled Human Sun

Steiner gave our final heart verse not to a patient, but to the mother of Ita Wegman, Henrietta Maria Wegman, as a gift for her 73rd birthday (on November 27, 1924). Like the verse “Hearts interpret karma,” which Steiner gave to Ita Wegman nine months earlier, on February 27, 1924, this is also not a therapeutic meditation in the strict sense. Both verses touch upon the Christ or Logos mystery of the human heart organ, its relation to the spiritual sun, to the etheric streams of light and warmth, and to the higher ‘I’ of the human being. From a spiritual-scientifically extended concept of the organ, the human heart is to be spoken of as the “Christ organ” of the human being; it has a special relationship to that being who makes individual destiny possible, affirms it, and increasingly connects it with the destiny of all collected humanity. Christ, according to Steiner, is becoming the “Lord of Karma” after death. He accomplishes this in close relation and harmony with those human physiological heart processes that transform the temporal into the eternal: “What people do not yet believe today, they will one day believe: that which today can only work as the Christ force within human hearts themselves will be effectively perceived as permeating the entire cosmos.“²⁵ In the space of meditation, one can perceive the heart as a Christ-related sun organ and as the starting point of a new bodiliness for the human being. Within the heart, “physiology of freedom” can take its start—one that belongs to the future of the Earth and humanity, yet begins here and now, in health and sickness. In the spiritual heart, one can experience the absolute affirmation of the human being’s essence, in all its formations and infirmities, which distinguishes Christ, and whose meditative visualization (“making present”) or internalization is of indispensable significance for all that continues:

I behold the sun;
Its light speaks to me, streaming,
Of the spirit who, full of grace,
Through all the world reigns.
Sun, you bearer of streaming rays,
Your light’s substantive might
Conjures life from the Earth’s
immeasurable rich depths.
I feel in my heart;
The spirit speaks its own word
Of the human being, whom it
Loves through all time and eternity.
Heart, you soulbearer,
Your light’s spirit might
Conjures life from the human being’s
Immeasurably deep inner being.
I can see, looking upward,
In the sun’s bright round:
The mighty world heart.
I can feel, beholding within,
In the heart’s warm life:
The ensouled human sun.

Schau ich in die Sonne,
Spricht ihr Licht mir strahlend
Von dem Geist, der gnadevoll
Durch Weltenwesen waltet.
Sonne du Strahlentragende,
Deines Lichtes Stoffgewalt
Zaubert Leben aus der Erde
Unermesslich reichen Tiefen.
Fühl’ ich in mein Herz,
Spricht der Geist sein eignes Wort
Von dem Menschen, den er
Liebt durch alle Zeit und Ewigkeit.
Herz, du Seelentragendes
Deines Lichtes Geistgewalt
Zaubert Leben aus des Menschen
Unermesslich tiefem Innern.
Sehen kann ich, aufwärtsblickend
In der Sonne hellem Rund:
Das gewalt’ge Weltenherz.
Fühlen kann ich einwärtsschauend
In des Herzens warmem Leben:
Die beseelte Menschen-Sonne.²⁶

Translation Joshua Kelberman
Image Adrien Jutard

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Footnotes

Cf. P. Selg, Patienten-Meditationen von Rudolf Steiner [Meditations for patients from Rudolf Steiner] (Arlesheim: Verlag des Ita Wegman Instituts, 2019), 11 ff.
Cf. Christoph Rubens und Peter Selg, eds., Das menschliche Herz: Kardiologie in der Anthroposophischen Medizin [The human heart: Cardiology in anthroposophic medicine] (Arlesheim: Verlag des Ita Wegman Instituts, 2014), 321ff.
Rudolf Steiner, Introducing Anthroposophical Medicine, CW 312 (Hudson, NY: SteinerBooks, 2010), Dornach, Mar. 29, 1920.
Rudolf Steiner, Twelve Moods, from GA 40 (Chestnut Ridge, NY: Mercury Press, 1984), 19 (Lion zodiac).
Cf. Peter Selg, The Mystery of the Heart: The Sacramental Physiology of the Heart in Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Rudolf Steiner (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2012); Armin Husemann, What Makes Blood Move? A Mind-Body Physiology of the Heart (SteinerBooks, 2022).
Cf. Peter Selg, Vom Logos menschlicher Physis [On the logos of human physis], 2nd edn. (Dornach: Verlag am Goetheanum, 2006), 148 ff.
Ibid.
Rudolf Steiner, “The Theosophical Congress in Munich,” in Rosicrucianism Renewed, CW 284 (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2007), 37 (first published in Lucifer-Gnosis, no. 34 (1907).
Rudolf Steiner, Mantric Sayings: Meditations 1903–1925, CW 268 (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2015).
Cf. Rudolf Steiner, Understanding Healing: Meditative Reflections on Deepening Medicine through Spiritual Science, CW 316 (Forest Row, East Sussex: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2013), Dornach, April 21, 1924.
See footnote 9.
Ibid.
Rudolf Steiner, The Christmas Conference: For the Foundation of the General Anthroposophical Society 1923/1924, CW 260 (Hudson, NY: SteinerBooks, 2020), Dornach, Dec. 25, 1923, 10:00 a.m.
See footnote 9.
Cf. footnote 6, p. 173 ff.
Rudolf Steiner, Leitsätze—Leading Thoughts. Bilingual Edition, CW 26 (Arlesheim, Switzerland: Ita Wegman Institute, 2024), “The World Thoughts in the Working of Michael and in the Working of Ahriman,” Nov. 16, 1924, p. 357.
Ibid., “At the Dawn of the Michael Age,” Aug. 17, 1924, p. 223.
See footnote 5 for facsimile.
Ibid.
Cf. Christoph Kaufmann in Das menschliche Herz (see footnote 2), 71 ff.
See footnote 1, p. 107 ff.
Rudolf Steiner, Freud, Jung, and Spiritual Psychology (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2001), Dornach, July 2, 1921 (GA 205).
Rudolf Steiner, Life of the Human Soul and its Relation to World Evolution, CW 212 (Forest Row, East Sussex: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2016), Dornach, May 26, 1922.
See footnote 5.
Rudolf Steiner, Artistic Sensitivity as a Spiritual Approach to Knowing Life and the World, CW 161 (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2018), Dornach, April 2, 1915.
Facsimile of the transcript and context in Peter Selg, «Die beseelte Menschen-Sonne». Eine Herzmeditation Rudolf Steiners [“The ensouled human sun.” A heart meditation by Rudolf Steiner] (Arlesheim: Verlag des Ita Wegman Instituts, 2011).