The Rudolf Steiner Archive

47. The Ten Commandments

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! There are events in the spiritual life of humanity which, once they have entered into existence, will never lose their significance for a long, long time—indeed, for what, in historical terms, may be called human evolution—events that shine far into the future once they have come to be. One such event is that through which, in time immemorial, that law was given to humankind, or perhaps those laws, which were then so deeply inscribed not only in human souls as such, but also in the entire historical development of humanity—upon which depended not only what is engraved on stone tablets in legend and history, but what is engraved above all on those tablets of bronze, whose substance is drawn from the very soul life of humanity itself.

[ 2 ] Today we will discuss an event of this kind, known as the “Ten Commandments” (Exodus 20:2–17; Deuteronomy 5:6–21). Only from the perspective of spiritual science will we understand why these Ten Commandments have had such a profound significance for the life of all humanity ever since they were given. Without exploring the origin and significance of these Ten Commandments from the depths of spiritual life, we would still be unable to comprehend their enduring relevance and significance for our time. For they belong to those events in human history that, at the very moment they were given, were possible only in the way they occurred, and which derived their significance precisely from the manner in which they came about.

[ 3 ] Our materialist view of history will never be able to shed the proper light on this latter meaning. One of the many illusions to which people have succumbed recently is the claim that while historical research does show that these Ten Commandments were given to the Hebrew people, a look at other peoples reveals that they all had similar commandments. Indeed, people today are even pleased when they believe they can weaken the age-old tradition by showing that such commandments existed not only among the Hebrew people but also here and there among other peoples.

[ 4 ] This perspective completely loses sight of the historical significance of that great moment when, spiritually speaking, those commandments struck into the life of humanity like the fire of Sinai. However, the profound significance of such an event—as the imprinting of the Ten Commandments on human consciousness was—can only be truly understood by exploring the nature of the human being in a way that also directs one’s attention to the supersensible aspects.

[ 5 ] For those who have heard me speak on several occasions, some points will need to be repeated; however, this is necessary so that even those who are here for the first time today can understand. In spiritual science, what is called the essence of the human being is not as easy to grasp as the physical realm is for the external, sensory sciences. What can be perceived of the human being’s nature through the external senses is only a part of his essence; indeed, what can be seen with the eyes and felt with the hands is, for spiritual science, only the lowest part of the human essence—the part that human beings share with inanimate nature, which is governed by chemical and physical laws.

[ 6 ] But what the seer—who has developed the inner spiritual senses—perceives just as truly as the outer eye perceives color and light, and which is therefore just as perceptible a reality to the spiritual scientist as the physical body—these supersensory aspects of human nature—the ordinary person cannot visualize them, but he can at least grasp them clearly through concepts using his sound reason.

[ 7 ] Let’s imagine a person standing before us: Is there only what the eyes can see and the hands can touch? Everyone knows from their own direct experience that this is not the case. Everyone knows that there is something else there that floods through them as joy and pain, pleasure and suffering, and what we know as sensations and ideas. None of this can be seen with the physical eyes, yet it is a reality for the one who experiences it—and, through its effects, for others as well. Let’s take two basic everyday experiences: the feelings of shame and fear. For example, if something is discussed that offends our aesthetic sensibilities, a blush of shame rises to our cheeks. What everyone can clearly see here is that a psychological experience triggers a physical process, namely that blood flows from our interior to the periphery. Similarly, though in reverse, with the feeling of fear or anxiety, where blood withdraws from the body’s surface back toward the interior, which manifests as a paleness of the face.

[ 8 ] There are, of course, people for whom such considerations mean nothing, who wish to understand even more tangible consequences in purely materialistic terms—who, for example, believe that if something happens in our surroundings, it could trigger in us the phenomenon of tears streaming from our eyes. It is therefore by no means surprising when, as has in fact happened, such a materialistic researcher comes to the peculiar conclusion: “People do not cry because they are sad; rather, they are sad because they cry.”

[ 9 ] From the perspective of spiritual science, based on its research, everything material is an effect of the spiritual—with the exception of matter itself, which is nothing but an effect of the spiritual-psychic; even the physical body is merely an expression of the spiritual-psychic. Thus, behind the physical body lies another aspect of the human being—the bearer of pleasure and pain, instincts, desires, passions, and sensations—which sink into twilight consciousness in the evening as one falls asleep and reemerge in the morning upon awakening. In spiritual science, this aspect of the human being is called the astral body, and it is shared by humans and all animals. At night, this astral body leaves the physical body, only to re-enter it upon awakening.

[ 10 ] How absurd it would be to claim that instincts and desires fade away in the evening and arise anew in the morning; it would be just as absurd to claim that what the skin encloses fades away in the evening and is recreated in the morning. For the clairvoyant, it is an established fact that a person’s astral body moves out of the physical body during sleep, leaving the physical body behind in bed.

[ 11 ] Why is it that when the astral body leaves the physical body, it does not perceive what is happening around it in the astral world, just as the physical body perceives what is happening around it in the physical world? This is very easy to understand. Imagine a person without eyes; that person cannot perceive anything related to light and color. The same is true of the ear—if it fails, all sounds disappear—and when all the senses are extinguished, the person can no longer perceive their surroundings.

[ 12 ] Human beings therefore perceive as much of their physical environment as their organs allow. The same is true of our astral body; because, at the present stage of development, the astral body of the average person has not yet developed the necessary organs; it is therefore impossible for them to perceive their surroundings during sleep, and for this reason, a person inevitably sinks into unconsciousness while sleeping, whereas someone who has already developed these organs retains consciousness even in sleep and lives consciously in this astral world.

[ 13 ] Spiritual science, however, distinguishes a second aspect of the human being, which lies between the physical and astral bodies: the etheric or life body. The physical body possesses the same forces as so-called inanimate nature—the mineral world. But only when a human being is a corpse does the body follow physical laws; in life, however, like every animal and every plant, it possesses within itself a faithful fighter against decay, a unifying force that never leaves it, not even in sleep. At every moment, the physical body would be a corpse and would disintegrate into its constituent parts by following the physical forces if it did not possess this etheric or life body within itself, and it is this alone that fights at every moment for the preservation of life.

[ 14 ] Thus we have three bodies: the physical, the etheric, and the astral. At death, the etheric body separates from the physical body; when a person sleeps, the physical body lies in bed together with the etheric body. This etheric body is common to every animal and every plant.

[ 15 ] But human beings have a fourth element that elevates them far above all other living creatures, distinguishes them from all others, and makes them the crown of creation: the “I.” This little word has no equal. Anyone can say “table” for a table or “chair” for a chair, but the little word “I” can never reach our ears from another’s tongue when it is meant to refer to ourselves; only I can say “I” to myself—to everyone else, I am a “you,” and that is deeply significant. In the depths of our very soul, in our most sacred innermost being, it must fade away as the expression of what is most hidden in our essence.

[ 16 ] The mystery that this is meant to convey has been sensed by all religions based on spiritual science, and above all by the religion of the ancient Hebrew people; therefore, we can only come closer to the moment when the lightning of the Ten Commandments shone into humanity if we examine this fourth element closely. It is “the ineffable name of God” in the human soul, a drop from the ocean of the Divine that floods the world. This is the spark from the Divine that permeates and interweaves the entire world. Spiritual science has often been accused of turning the world into God, but just as a drop of water does not become the ocean, so too is this accusation unjustified; yet just as the drop is of the same substance as the ocean, so too is a part of the Divine alive within every human being. Thus the Divine lives and weaves throughout the world, and a drop of it is within every human being; and because this Divine need not penetrate through any of the senses, it makes itself known in the innermost sanctum.

[ 17 ] Anyone capable of feeling has always sensed something infinitely sacred when they have come to understand what this “I” means. Jean Paul recounts how, as a boy, he stood in front of his father’s barn and suddenly realized: “You are an ‘I,’” and that from that moment on, he knew that something immortal lived within his soul. If people were to reflect deeply on the path this reveals, they would be able to delve ever deeper into spiritual science. Of course, what Fichte says is entirely true: Most people would rather consider themselves a piece of lava on the moon than an “I.”

[ 18 ] Thus, we have described human beings as composed of four aspects of their being; but they have evolved to this point over long periods of time—these four aspects were not present in their full significance from the beginning, but developed gradually toward self-awareness. For a long time, it lay dormant, dim and indistinct, within the other three bodies, and immense stages of development were necessary before it awoke and became conscious of itself.

[ 19 ] Thus, in spiritual science, we can go back through the centuries and find that the human soul, too, has changed; and the further back we go, the greater the change we find in the soul. The “I” was not always present either; the further back we go, the less distinct it becomes, and there was a time when human beings had developed their astral, etheric, and physical bodies in a similar way, but the “I” was still unawakened and lay dormant.

[ 20 ] Thus, human beings have evolved over time, beginning with the physical body, then the etheric body, then the astral body, and finally, their “I” has awakened. The “I,” which we regard as the divine spark, is the last aspect to have awakened in human beings as we know them today. There was once a human being in whom the “I” had not yet fully awakened. If we were to look for such a person, in whom the “I” was still slumbering, we would find such a person in the early days of ancient Greece. It was only with the emergence of the first philosophers that the “I” awakened; but Greek religion arose from a time when human beings were not yet conscious of their “I”—from a worldview that was essentially bound to the astral body—and that is why we see the gods of Greece endowed with instincts, passions, and desires, with ideas and feelings just like the people of that time themselves. What the Greeks sought and implored spurred them to recognize the divine in their surroundings—for example, the Furies. If we were to go back even further, we would find how human beings perceive their surroundings through the etheric body.

[ 21 ] Little by little, “self-consciousness” awoke within human beings, striking the human soul with elemental force. We can catch a glimpse of this moment—the moment when the Eternal-Divine calls out to them, that moment when they clearly heard the call: “The noblest, most divine within you can only be grasped in your ‘I’; look into your ‘I’ and you will find the spark through which you share in the divine being.” Then, at a certain point in human evolution, the moment arrived when the God within humanity spoke: “I, the God, speak to you by taking the name you utter when you wish to designate the center of your being.” — That was the great moment in the becoming of humanity when Moses, that great sage and initiate, sensed this dawning in the course of the unfolding of time, when he found himself in a state of inspiration in which he felt the Divine blowing through the world in a wholly new form and how this Divine sought to break through into human consciousness. And he asked God: “How shall I call You when I want to tell the people about You?” And the Divine One said: “Call Me Yahweh, which means ‘I Am Who I Am.’” (Exodus 3:13–14)

[ 22 ] If the Greeks had seen in their gods what human beings can experience in the astral body, it was now a deity for which there is only one fitting name—namely, the one with which we designate our very innermost being—and the name Yahweh is nothing other than that which is meant to express the core of our being. And only a personality such as Moses could receive that inspiration, which struck the world like a bolt of lightning, bringing a new understanding of God.

[ 23 ] But it was necessary for Moses to be able to bring this revelation to life. The people to whom such a God was to be proclaimed were not allowed to have any other deity than this one, who emerged from the “I.”

[ 24 ] For an individual of Moses’ stature, it was not merely a matter of receiving that powerful inspiration and proclaiming it to his people, but of permanently cementing it in the consciousness of that people, thereby completely imbuing the soul of the Jewish people with it. How could this happen? Let us ask ourselves how what we have designated as the four parts of the human being finds expression in the material world. The physical body finds its expression through itself, the etheric body through the glandular system, the astral body through the nervous system, and the “I” through the blood. This is also how Goethe’s words are to be understood: “Blood is a very special sap.”

[ 25 ] Hence the significance of blood in the entire spectrum of human existence. Hence, too, the great importance of kinship by blood among ancient peoples, as it was determined by marriage within the clan. For example, clan kinship among the Germanic peoples.

[ 26 ] Because the same blood flows through their veins, the generations feel a sense of belonging to one another. For these people, the “I” is not only expressed in their own blood, but also flows down through the generations; and it is not an individual “I” as it is for people today, but a “group I.” Such was also the “group I,” for example, among the ancient Jewish people, who could say: “I and Father Abraham are one.” /From here on, different transcript]

[ 27 ] This divine impulse had to take effect within the blood, which is passed down from generation to generation. In the past, human beings had not yet grasped the innermost core of their being. Now they had. This realm beyond was translated into laws and commandments. These are the Ten Commandments. Through this, the full power of Yahweh had to take effect, passing from grandfather to son to grandson, and so on. The correct conception had to live in the soul of humankind.

[ 28 ] No ordinary translation is provided here. A literal translation does not reflect reality. The Ten Commandments should appear before the soul just as they were understood back then.

[ 29 ] I. I am the Eternal Divine. From now on, you shall not place any other gods above me. I am the Eternal within you and an eternally active force within you. If you allow me to work within you, your body will remain healthy, and this effect will extend to your children and your children’s children. Otherwise, the bodies will wither away.

[ 30 ] II. You shall not speak of me within yourself through error, for every error within you will lay waste to your body.

[ 31 ] III. You shall distinguish between weekdays and holidays. That which lives within you as “I” formed the world in six days and lives within itself on the seventh day. On the seventh day, your gaze shall find Me within you.

[ 32 ] IV. Continue to act in the spirit of your father and mother, so that the strength they have gathered—which I have given you—may remain within you.

[ 33 ] V. Do not murder; that is, do not interfere with another person's sense of self.

[ 34 ] VI. Do not break a marriage—that is, do not interfere with the union that another person has entered into.

[ 35 ] VII. Do not use a stem.

[ 36 ] VIII. Do not belittle your neighbor by speaking untruths about him.

[ 37 ] IX. Do not look down on another’s property with envy.

[ 38 ] X. Do not look upon another’s wife with envy

[ 39 ] his maidservants and so on, through which he finds his way forward—that is, (through which) his ego can continue to develop. (Exodus 20:2–17; Deut. 5:6–21) The Torah expresses how the Yahweh impulse best enters into human beings. These commandments are still effective today because they speak to the innermost essence of the human being, to his “I,” which still needs these commandments even when it has risen so high that—in a higher sense—it no longer needs them. Then the “I” will do of its own accord what the commandments prescribe.