The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. The Invisible Aspects of Human Nature and Practical Life

[ 1 ] When discussing the practical significance of the invisible—especially the invisible within human nature itself—a comparison may perhaps help illustrate what is meant. Practical are those people who direct their gaze and their perception toward the supersensible aspect of existence, and impractical are those who wish to remain at the level of the merely external, the merely physical. Is the person who has before him a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron fashioned into a magnet—and who then uses this object for whatever purpose it appears to him to be useful based on its outward appearance—truly the practical person? Or should such a person not be called impractical in the true sense of the word, and practical only the one who says to himself: In this piece of iron lies something that makes a much higher, nobler use possible for me than mere sensory appearance would suggest? — This is, of course, only a comparison, for we must not compare the higher forces we are to discuss today with any natural force. But practical is only the person who seeks out the inner forces within things and can use things according to their true values. In contrast to those who are guided by a certain practical sense, one could cite J. G. Fichte’s words on the practical significance of ideals. Fichte sought to explain the purpose of humanity through lofty ideals. In the introduction to his lectures on “The Vocation of the Scholar,” he rejects from the outset the notion that someone speaking from such lofty idealistic vantage points might not know what objections could be raised against them—namely, that ideals cannot be directly realized in practical life. Those who establish these ideals perhaps know this better than their opponents. “We merely assert that reality must be judged by these ideals and, by those who feel they have the strength to do so, modified accordingly. Even if they could not be convinced of this, they would lose very little in the process, since they are already what they are; and humanity loses nothing in the process. It merely becomes clear that they alone are not factored into the plan for the betterment of humanity. Humanity will undoubtedly continue on its path; as for them, may benevolent nature take charge and grant them, at the right time, rain and sunshine, wholesome nourishment, and the unimpeded flow of vital juices—and, along with that, wise thoughts!”

[ 2 ] This is particularly relevant today. Let us briefly bring to mind the invisible aspects of human nature. Spiritual science speaks of these invisible aspects of human nature, not as something that exists as an appendage to the visible, but rather as the spiritual element that is the creative force behind the visible. An almost obvious example is the following: Everyone—even someone who cannot look into the workshop of spiritual life—should keep bringing to mind, time and again, the feelings of shame and fear, so that they may learn to believe that the supersensible is the foundation of the sensible. What are they? Undoubtedly, for anyone who does not think in a convoluted way, they are soul experiences; we must say that there is something there that threatens us; the soul feels threatened. This is expressed in feelings of anxiety and fear. Certainly, we could cite various physical mechanisms. That would, of course, be easy, and the modern researcher would hardly be able to cite anything that the spiritual scientist does not already know. But what matters is that the blood is driven back from the surface of the body toward its center.

[ 3 ] So we have a physical process resulting from a psychological one. The same is true of the feeling of shame. Here, too, we see a redistribution of blood, a change in circulation brought about by a mental factor. What we see here on a small scale—and what can be observed on a larger scale when tears flow from the eyes as a result of a sad event—shows that psychological factors can be the cause of physical processes. Of course, under the influence of our not-so-obvious but rather covert materialistic way of thinking, there are people today who assert materialistic views even in this context. I have already cited here a saying characteristic of a certain worldview: “One does not weep because one is sad, but one is sad because one weeps.” This saying actually originated with someone who thought idealistically, but it has been misinterpreted. These are fully developed materialistic ways of thinking. Anyone who has managed to preserve a measure of sound thinking amidst the materialistic foundations of our time will see, in such obvious connections between physical facts and spiritual-psychic facts, something that can gradually lead them to understand that spiritual science, from its standpoint, must say: Everything—absolutely everything material—has a spiritual origin.

[ 4 ] Thus, underlying what we see in human beings—what we can grasp with our hands—is something spiritual, something soulful, in which we must not see an influence of the physical, but rather the very foundation of the physical. We call the physical body that part of a human being which he shares with all the beings surrounding him, which he shares with the mineral world. Underlying the physical body of the human being, as the next, supersensible, superphysical component of human nature, is the etheric or life body. It is that which, throughout the entire course of life, prevents the human physical body from becoming a corpse, prevents it from following solely the laws of the physical. Plants and animals also possess such an etheric body—an etheric body that can be grasped through thought by those who think merely philosophically, but which is as real to the clairvoyant as the physical is. Spiritual thinking tends to resist the idea of viewing the human body as a machine, but it need not resist this at all unless one is an “inner manipulator of thought.” One can certainly say that the human body is a complex mechanism if one wishes to include physical and chemical aspects within the mechanistic framework. But just as there must be a builder and sustainer behind every machine, so too here—and that is the etheric or life body, which is a faithful fighter against decay. Only at death does it separate from the physical body, and then the physical body, as a corpse, follows its own physical laws. But then it is, after all, merely a corpse. The etheric body is a more certain reality than the mere physical body.

[ 5 ] If we now continue to observe the human being, we come to another aspect of his being—one that every person could already grasp if he were to say to himself: “Before me stands a human being, a physical body and an etheric body.” Suppose this human being contained nothing more than what can be seen from the outside—what physiology and so on reveal to us? Oh, there is something else there, something entirely different: the sum of feelings, sensations, desires and wishes, pains and sufferings, instincts and passions. All of this constitutes the astral body. Now one might say: “Surely one cannot imagine that these things constitute a self-contained reality.” But the spiritual scientist can ascertain this through the gift of clairvoyance. The astral body is there just as the physical body is. But common sense alone could already tell us that something like an astral body must exist. Why might one say that? I’ll give you an example where, so to speak, one can almost touch with one’s own hands how the astral body actually works. There are people who say: When a human being enters the physical world, they are not yet as fully developed as they will be later. External science can establish that, while the senses and their associated nerve organs are present in the brain, everything that connects the individual sense organs within the brain develops relatively late. One can literally trace how the connecting pathways from the auditory to the visual sphere first develop—the nerve pathways that ultimately make a person a thinker. So—the materialist concludes—we see how the inner parts gradually develop, and only then do they allow the world of sensations, perceptions, sufferings, joys, thought complexes, and so on to flash into being within the human being.—Let us now bring this course of development of the human brain to the forefront of our reflection. The complex trains of thought that solve the world’s mysteries are gradually formed. Let us hold this before our minds. Are we able to call what emerges there a mere mechanism that builds itself up? One can admire this marvelous construction just as one would a clock. But anyone who believed the watch came into being on its own would be a fool. One who is capable of something can only, in turn, develop what he is capable of. Someone who had within himself the seconds, the minutes, and the laws of the watch—he was the one who first put them together; someone thought ahead what we ultimately come to think. Is there nothing that weaves these connecting threads together in the brain in such a way that you ultimately become a thinker? I mean, sound reasoning must recognize that for what is developing there, there must be a builder who weaves the threads together so that you can then become a thinker. We are true only to ourselves and our common sense when we say that an astral body must have built the physical brain. In the first weeks, months, and years of a child’s life, the astral body first builds the tool that will later be capable of solving the world’s mysteries. Anyone who does not believe this acts just like someone who wants to use a machine but denies that there was an engineer who built it. The time will surely come when sound judgment will once again prevail among people, when they will tell themselves that the spiritual architect must be there first if anything is to come into being. This architect is already there before a person is born. The third component of the human being is this astral body, which in turn underlies the material.

[ 6 ] The fourth aspect of the human being is the “I,” which makes him the crown of creation. The human being shares the physical body with all minerals, the etheric body with all plants, and the astral body with animals. Through the “I,” human beings rise above the three kingdoms of nature. That is why all religions have focused their attention on the fact that in languages—in the German language, for example—there is only one name that differs from all others. There is one thing that can never be named from the outside: that is what lies within us as our innermost being. No name from outside can reach us if it signifies our very self. That is why, in the ancient Hebrew religion, the “I” was the unpronounceable name, which was unpronounceable for all others.

[ 7 ] These are the four lower members of human nature, of which only one is visible. The other three are something real, tangible—indeed, the very foundations of reality. Each member is a fundamental entity and, in its entire being, the cause of the next lower body; the I-bearer is the cause of the astral body, the astral body is the cause of the etheric body, and the etheric body is the cause of the physical body. Everything that constitutes the actual I-experiences—what a human being experiences by virtue of being a self-conscious being—is imprinted in the astral body. All “I” experiences are imprinted here. This gives rise to everything in the human being that consists of fleeting imaginings, judgments, and feelings. What lives in the astral body expresses itself and is imprinted in the etheric or life body, and through this it becomes something enduring—something that is not fleeting but, in a certain sense, persists. Let us suppose we form a fleeting judgment; we form an idea about this or that. If we form an idea again and again, it becomes a habitual idea. By becoming a habitual idea, it imprints itself upon the etheric body. What lives in memory—what we retain from day to day—lives in our etheric or life body. The fact that we play a piano piece once lies in our astral body; the fact that we acquire the ability and the habit of playing lies in the etheric body. All habits are in the etheric body or life body. When we make a moral judgment, this is again an act of the astral body. When a certain pattern of judgment becomes ingrained through repeated judgment, the moral judgment becomes a lasting one—the conscience. The moral judgment is an experience of the astral body; the conscience is an experience of the etheric or life body. Thus we see how, through the interaction of the higher members with the lower members, the entire human life is built up from the inside out.

[ 8 ] Insofar as human beings are merely natural beings, they initially share the etheric or life body with plants. What causes the sap to rise and fall in plants, what enables them to nourish themselves and reproduce, has the same effect in human beings. But what we call habit, practice, or conscience is imprinted upon this etheric or life body from above. In this way, what is soul-spiritual is imprinted upon human beings from above. The experiences of the higher members are transmitted more and more to the lower members. Here we see how important it is for human beings to have an inkling that the higher members must influence the denser members. It is thus placed in the hands of human beings to influence the lower members in a healthy, practical way.

[ 9 ] Human beings can ruin what nature has given them. Just as a plant could develop abnormally if the etheric or life body did not regulate the processes taking place within it, so too does an inner abnormality arise in human beings when they act incorrectly from within—from the “I”—upon the lower members. The astral body must be permeated in a healthy way by the experiences of the “I.” Anyone who refuses to acknowledge that an astral body is at work in the development of a child’s brain will also fail to realize how important it is for the ego to act correctly upon the astral body. But those who do recognize this will say to themselves: You can continue to work where nature has left off. If you allow the entire range of feelings to unfold in a healthy way, this will continue to affect your physical body, your brain, and in this way you will build your own physical body throughout your entire life.

[ 10 ] How many people today suffer from what is called writer's cramp! The entire marvelous structure of the human body is constructed in a wondrous way. Through everything he does, a person adapts his hand to the outside world. This interaction between the hand and the external world detaches itself from him in a certain sense if he is unable to infuse his hand with the fire and power of his inner life. It is a process similar to having artificial teeth fitted. The essential point is that we must have imbued and infused everything we can retain as our own with the power of our “I.” You only get shaky hands when, to a certain degree, the hands detach themselves from the rest of the body’s forces. These are matters that will once again be given the most intense consideration in a not-too-distant future, and then people will come to understand what it means to grasp the human being once more in his spirit.

[ 11 ] I want to illustrate this with an example. Let’s stay within our field! It will become clear how what takes place in the mind actually affects a person and makes him suitable or unsuitable for life, practical or impractical. Let’s take a person who is impractical in life because they suffer from certain feelings of fear, which in turn lead to nervousness. This word alone conveys the full extent of their impracticality. Anyone who, in any respect, does not have complete control over themselves is characterized as nervous, or the catchphrase “hereditary predisposition” is used when something is lacking or present that renders the person impractical for practical life. All these things do not stem from a careful observation of actual facts, but rather from the fact that, under the influence of materialistic thinking, people lack the sense to pursue the spiritual, the more subtle aspects. It is important to observe whether, in the early stages of life—when the invisible works so intensely upon the visible—everything proceeds correctly and is not disrupted. What is neglected here cannot be made up for later. If anything is not finely enough chiseled, the most diverse kinds of disharmony will arise throughout one’s life. A person who is unable to allow harmonizing experiences to be weighed and balanced within the astral body will always, in a certain sense, render themselves unfit for life. Instead of searching for hereditary predispositions when dealing with feelings of anxiety and fear, we should rather investigate how this or that experience has led to the development of something that has a hardening, ossifying effect on the physical body. It could be, for example—though this is not always the case—that a good portion of what is called “claustrophobia” has, under certain circumstances, been instilled in a person through a very specific type of childhood upbringing. And they cannot shake off this affliction because, later on, they lack the means to stir things up again and again. Let us imagine children who, throughout the entire year, recognize all festivities solely by the fact that they are showered with gifts! They receive more than they can use up. This undeserved influx of gifts paralyzes certain drives that would otherwise generate a healthy sense of self. Something like this can lie dormant in a person during the time when external education fills their life, or when a new career completely absorbs them; but it eventually surfaces in the form of a fear of empty space.

[ 12 ] One cannot grasp this unless one understands what it means for the astral body to gradually transform into what a person is in terms of their physical, observable behavior. Or we may find that when certain specific states of incapacity arise in a person, there is something in their soul that weighs heavily upon them. They cannot put it into words, cannot admit it, and feel they must keep it hidden. Because the person cannot find the words to express it, it takes hold of the lower faculties and continues to exert its influence. How beneficial it is for a person to be able to confess such things! Then they have the feeling that it no longer lies like a stone in their soul, and this sense of relief has a healing effect. In this regard, confession is an important remedy. The religious communities have known this. Here we see how the invisible inner life of a person affects the visible, so to speak, and even certain rational physicians are beginning to realize that inadequacies for practical life cannot be properly cured by cold-water cures, but rather by initiating a kind of confession—by releasing something from the person—if healing is to occur.

[ 13 ] Now let’s consider the other side of the coin. Today, there are sensible physicians who tell themselves that one must turn to the human soul if one wants to understand how a person becomes, in a certain sense, unfit. These physicians know that joy and pleasure are remedies, that they have a healing effect, that they soften what has become rigid and ossified, bringing it back under our control. But that is not enough—just as it is not enough for someone to say that the hidden mystery must be detached from the human soul. They do not realize that everything that is an inner experience has great significance, even if it manifests in a distorted way. Should we do away with everything mysterious in human nature simply because it has a negative effect on some people? Should we, as is sometimes demanded, turn doctors into confessors? It can also be infinitely healing for the soul when it is able to draw the veil of mystery over certain things. A Persian proverb says: The time one spends in silent reflection before speaking is time saved from the regret that follows what one has said thoughtlessly! It was not for nothing that Goethe spoke of the “revealed mystery.” In everything sensory that surrounds us, we can perceive something mysterious—something that lies so deeply within things that it cannot be put into words, yet which also flows from soul to soul. And health spreads when a person can feel the mystery of life in this way.

[ 14 ] This mystery of life is cultivated especially through spiritual science. However, it does not make it easy for people to gain access to these things. It is not so easy to gain access to them. Spiritual science can only inspire, only point out that this and that exists. Then the individual must turn inward and actively participate. It may be inconvenient, but it is infinitely healthy. In this way, the innermost aspect of the human being is stimulated; spiritual science acts directly upon the “I.” When we hear about planetary evolution, when we are told what the invisible aspects of human nature are, what passes from life to life with the human being—all of this appeals directly to the “I.” All these great ideas, all these world-encompassing ideas, do not remain dry concepts and abstractions. Warmth and bliss radiate from them; warmth and bliss permeate and surge through the human astral body. Contentment and bliss arise from what spiritual science offers. And what interweaves and glows through the human being as warmth, as fire, continues into their life body. All the forces of the etheric body are permeated by the forces of spiritual science itself, and the etheric body in turn transmits these forces to the physical body, transmitting them as dexterity, so that, for example, the hand becomes dexterous and practical when the great, sublime ideas of spiritual science flow down into the physical body.

[ 15 ] Spiritual science transforms the brain into a supple, flexible tool, enabling it to free itself from prejudices. Spiritual science exerts a powerful influence that extends down into the human physical body. A person can be immersed in spiritual science right down to the level of practical actions. I would like to give you an example of this. It is certainly beneficial to provide children with opportunities for gymnastics today. It is an extraordinarily healthy form of exercise when practiced correctly. Already in my lecture on education, I pointed out that it is important to remain conscious of the fact that a human being is not merely a physical apparatus, but is imbued with higher bodies. One must be able to fully put oneself in the place of the person doing gymnastics in order to empathize with every movement of the etheric and astral bodies. I knew a physical education teacher who was a great theorist. He knew the human physical body very well. He also had to teach theoretical physical education. What matters is not that one knows the physical body in detail, but that one experiences an increase in inner well-being with every exercise. One should purposefully experience what each individual exercise is meant to be. Anyone who has a living sense—not just an abstract conception—of the physical body knows that one can have a living sense of everything a child experiences, for example, when climbing a ladder. It is conceivable to have a form of physical education that works so harmoniously through the interaction of the etheric and physical bodies that it lays the best foundation for a good memory in later life. Even what takes place visibly is only truly understood when it is understood from the perspective of spiritual science. We would have the best remedy in gymnastics for the decline of memory in old age if physical education were to be conducted on the basis of spiritual science.

[ 16 ] Spiritual science is not a theory, nor is it dogmatic; rather, it is something that infuses life with vitality. One day it will be recognized that only through spiritual science can a person become a true practitioner of life. Only the one who can manage this life—who is not its slave—is a practitioner of life. Through his invisible members, a person should always remain master of his external nature. Only by always being the guide of the physical can a person become a practitioner right down to the very last member of his life. A person is a practitioner of life who, based on a true understanding of his or her faculties, can grasp what Fichte said—which is so often misunderstood. This will be the ideal for humanity when people once again direct the visible from the invisible: “A person can do what he or she ought to do; and when he or she says, ‘I cannot,’ it is because he or she does not want to.”