The Rudolf Steiner Archive

19. The Relationship between Occult Knowledge and Everyday Life

[ 1 ] Today I would like to say a few things that may be considered a continuation of some questions that have been on your minds in recent days. Today I would like to elaborate on some things that may have been inspired by comments made in previous days. So much has been said about the relationship between occultism and theosophy, between esotericism and theosophy, and so on, but nothing has been said about the relationship between theosophy and everyday life. Eight days ago, I already indicated that I would like to say a few words on this very subject. Today, I would like to draw your attention to less lofty points of view and talk about how occult knowledge plays a direct role in everyday life and how the theosophical worldview not only directs our gaze across vast times and spaces, but also gain a completely different insight into the most everyday questions through the concepts of occultism than would be possible without such concepts. We will then see how mistaken is the opinion we so often encounter, namely that occultism is something impractical and extremely remote from ordinary everyday life.

[ 2 ] And we will touch on another question. It is the question: How can those who have not yet achieved what will be granted to every human being in the future—namely, insight into the higher worlds—how can they, from the standpoint of every normally educated person, become convinced that theosophical teachings are true and that the aspirations of theosophy are truly justified? The evidence does not need to be derived solely from occult observation; indeed, it cannot be derived from it until it has been obtained from another realm, that of everyday life. This prepares us to gain conviction about the higher realms of existence. What has always happened continues to happen today in our everyday lives.

[ 3 ] If we trace human beings back to the earliest times of their origin, we find that they originated from a much finer, more spiritual matter than that of which they are composed today. In terms of form, modern human beings mainly display three bodies: the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body. The etheric body is a kind of archetype of the physical body. The astral body, the auric shell that surrounds and permeates the human being, is the structure in which the life of the emotions, the life of instincts and passions, and every thought finds expression. From the still undifferentiated astral body, the whole human being has basically developed over time. If we go back far enough, to the early epochs of humanity, we find that the physical and etheric substance that permeates human beings today is dissolved in the original astral body of the human being, like a seed in the earth.

[ 4 ] The human being of today is, so to speak, condensed from the astral substance. This process still takes place every day. When two people stand facing each other, it is first the two astral bodies that face each other in love or hate, goodwill or ill will, anger or kindness, repulsion or attraction. These are all phenomena that take place between the astral bodies. Interaction between people is a continuous exchange of states and relationships between astral bodies. When I stand opposite another person, my physical body does not undergo any great change, nor does my etheric body, but my astral body does. When someone says something hateful to me, the hateful currents enter my astral body and change it. I have to absorb what flows from them into my own astral body, and this then takes on completely different characteristics, depending on whether love, patience, or anger and impatience flow toward me from the other person.

[ 5 ] Something very similar happens between the educator and the child. There is a big difference between an educator who is loving and one who is narrow-minded and selfish. In the astral body of a child, we have something that looks different from the astral body of an adult. The astral body of a child is light and bright; it appears to us as something virginal in comparison to the astral body as it develops in the course of life. What is the astral body of a child? It appears as an undifferentiated cloud of light that gradually takes shape. Little has yet been engraved in it that determines it more and more, so that anything is still possible to be born from it. It is shaped by the ideas that the child absorbs from its environment. They enter into it, color it, and make it different.

[ 6 ] Depending on the ideas the child absorbs, whether from a materialistic or idealistic point of view, different formations flow into the child's astral body and shape it. The soul then becomes increasingly filled with such ideas. If the child is treated without love, the echo of this lovelessness appears in the child's astral body. It then closes itself off from the outside world as if with a skin. All this shows us that a continuous transformation of the astral body is actually taking place and that contact with other people has a great influence on this transformation.

[ 7 ] The child therefore still has an astral body that is uniform but contains an infinite wealth of possibilities. Consider the astral body of a child who is faced with an idealistic educator who himself has a harmonious soul, who looks at the world with devotion and is receptive to its beauty and grandeur, an educator who is capable of creating within himself an image of the beauty of the world. Such an educator will also develop the ability to respond to the predispositions of the child's soul. They then form soft and receptive structures in the child and send streams into them, which are dissolved by the child's own astral substance. Such an educator, harmoniously formed within themselves, continuously sends harmonious streams to the child. The character traits of the educator then flow naturally into the child, and with them flows all the world harmony that the educator has taken from the environment in the form of beauty. What the educator takes in as a noble person and good observer, he sends as an educator into the nature of the child, thereby bringing it to harmonious development.

[ 8 ] Let us assume, on the other hand, that the educator stands before the child as an egoistic, pedantic person, as a person with narrow, stubborn ideas and concepts. These characteristics give rise to formations in his own astral body that make him appear enclosed in a solid crust, turning him into a thoroughly rigid, sluggish entity. Then he sends out streams of rays that are tightly closed within themselves, so that it is impossible for the child's astral body to dissolve them. At most, they injure the child's astral body like an arrow, but they cannot be dissolved and simply pass through it.

[ 9 ] Or take something even more commonplace. Two people are talking to each other. One can very well observe two such people in relation to the effects of their astral bodies on each other through their mutual conversation.

[ 10 ] In the astral substance, in the astral, something new is always forming. I will try to make this clear to you in the following way. Through their ideas, human beings are constantly building structures in the astral body. These appear in the most varied forms. The astral substance that remains unused between the individual structures is called an intermediate astral substance, in contrast to that which has formed into structures. This intermediate astral substance is constantly replenished from the astral substance of our environment, constantly flowing in and out, constantly being renewed. But the structures that humans have formed through their feelings, thoughts, and decisions remain fixed.

[ 11 ] Let us assume that two people are standing in front of us and having a normal conversation. One of them has formed rigid, fixed concepts that have also created very fixed structures in the astral substance. The other person responds to him and tries to explain something to him. What is the basis for making something clear to another person? It is based on sending one's own concept into the astral substance of the other person. This concept, this thought, then flows into the foreign astral substance. There it must first dissolve through the intermediate substance and be recreated and transformed according to the forms already present.

[ 12 ] Let us now assume that one person tries to make something clear to another, for example, something relating to reincarnation. The other person, however, has already formed a fixed concept about reincarnation. Let us assume that he is a prejudiced person and has formed the concept that it is something foolish and nonsensical. This thought has been floating in his astral substance. Now the thought of the former comes and dissolves in the intermediate astral substance of the other, but it should be able to transform itself into the thought forms already existing in him. However, this is not possible because his concept is too rigid, too fixed. He cannot transform the thought sent to him into his own thought form, and therefore he does not understand it.

[ 13 ] The more a person retains the flexibility of concepts, so that they can always be dissolved by the intermediate substance surrounding them, the more understanding he will have for other people. This is why it is so difficult to convey theosophical life to academically educated people. The concepts acquired at university create rigid, fixed, self-contained structures that are not easily dissolved. Filled with such structures, the academic usually comes to a theosophical lecture and is then unable to grasp theosophical life. It would be quite different if he had been educated in such a way that he said to himself about all concepts: Yes, it could possibly be different, because we only have a limited degree of experience, and some things that we now consider to be correct will have to be corrected in the future. If he did that, then his soul would still be receptive.

[ 14 ] Let us take another case. One person stands before another with feelings of reverence. How does this reverence appear to an observer endowed with astral senses? Reverence means sending out thoughts that sink into the substance of the other person's astral body and absorb it, as it were. When you have a feeling of admiration, it is expressed by your own admiration flowing out toward the other person as warmth. This warmth flowing out from you has its mirror image in the astral world, where it appears as a bluish color, the thought form of admiration and devotion. The warm, admiring feeling produces a thought form that has a bluish character.

[ 15 ] But what is it that appears bluish? You can see this when you look out into the infinite dark space of the universe. It appears blue to you because of the illuminated atmosphere. In the same way, something that was previously dark appears to you [in the astral world through the thought of worship] and is now illuminated by the warm, bright feeling of worship, also in this bluish color. You enclose a dark space with the feeling of worship, and the dark core then appears bluish, similar to how a blue core appears to you in a flame, surrounded by light. It is the same with the thought of reverence. It is an empty space filled with warmth. When you send the thought of reverence to another, you offer them the opportunity to let their own being flow into this empty space. This is how the balance between the reverer and the revered is achieved.

[ 16 ] If, on the other hand, you face another person with feelings of envy, then another thought form lives within you, which you send toward them. You then send out the red thought form of egoism, of self-love. This in turn encloses another thought form, which is full of the idea of your own self, perhaps generated by ambition. This is not expressed in an empty space, in a hollow structure, but in a completely filled form into which nothing more can enter. It is surrounded by a feeling of coldness and has the opposite thought form, namely a bluish circle around it with a red core in the middle. The coldness of the blue color repels everything that wants to enter, and the vain red thought form remains as it is. It accepts nothing. This is how the envious person, who is incapable of reverence, stands opposite the other.

[ 17 ] You see, what takes place in our astral body is nothing other than the result of everyday life. Only those who are trained to see it can perceive what takes place in the astral body. But the effects of these processes in the astral body are constantly present in the physical world, and everyone can convince themselves of this through their own lives. Anyone can try the following experiment by saying to themselves: I will leave it entirely open whether the occultist's statements are true or false. But I want to examine them with an open mind. I can live as if these statements were true. I can then behave accordingly toward my fellow human beings, and if I do so carefully, I will see whether life confirms in every single case what the occultist says. And life will confirm this in every case. You will gain immensely from this.

[ 18 ] Anyone who thinks this through and, for example, as an educator, not only imbues themselves with pedagogical concepts and ideas, and does not only influence others through what they say, but also through what they feel, sense, and think, anyone who is imbued with the awareness that two astral bodies interact with each other and knows what happens when these astral bodies face each other, also knows that they have a duty to improve themselves more and more. To the extent that they improve, they also have a better effect on the child's predispositions. They do not kill the predispositions, but bring them out.

[ 19 ] It means something quite different from merely knowing that what is shown to us through the veneration of another person who is worthy of veneration is a truth, a reality; it means something else to experience that when we send countless such thought forms, enveloped in warmth, to other people, we grow through the greatness of the other person. It is something quite different from merely grasping such things outwardly with the intellect, from merely knowing what they represent. In occultism, we learn to grasp life with greater seriousness, to recognize that what is not tangible, what cannot be perceived with the senses, nevertheless has a reality. We learn to understand and appreciate the full scope and significance of our soul world.

[ 20 ] Some may say that these are merely schematic rearrangements. No, they are not! We must be thoroughly imbued with the significance of our actions and the responsibility that life imposes on us. It is our everyday life that can be influenced in this way by occultism. Those who know what happens in the invisible world as a result of thoughts and feelings will eventually come to realize that it is just as important not to send another person bad feelings as it is not to shoot them with a gun. They know that it is just as bad for the astral human being to throw a hateful thought at them as it is harmful for the physical human being to have a brick thrown at them.

[ 21 ] This can be understood very quickly; those who come together in gatherings such as theosophical ones will feel and experience it. They then bring back with them a new source of life. They can say to themselves that for others there is a simple reality, but for us there is a threefold one. The other person feels realities only from the sensory world and thinks nothing of it when he says: Thoughts are duty-free! But those who have gone through the theosophical worldview can no longer say that thoughts are duty-free; they are convinced that they are responsible for what they think and feel toward other people. You carry this sense of responsibility out into the world as the most beautiful fruit of the theosophical worldview. Even if we are still beginners, trying things out, we are already working from the hidden, occult world into the visible world. We beautify and improve the world from the hidden realms of existence.

[ 22 ] That is one side of how we understand life. But there is another side. Human beings do not live alone as individuals in the world; they also belong to a family, a tribe, a people, in other words, to a community. They are only separated from this community by their physical and etheric bodies. I have already said that the astral body has fluid boundaries, that the intermediate substance is constantly inclined to absorb currents from outside and to renew itself. But when we consider that we belong to a people, a tribe, a family, then the matter takes on another aspect.

[ 23 ] When we look at the astral body of an individual human being, almost every one differs from the astral body of another in its basic coloring. It has a certain shade that manifests itself outwardly as temperament. Temperament is thus expressed in a certain basic color. In this way, the human being is related to his entire environment, in that the character of the family, tribe, or people to which he belongs is expressed in the basic color.

[ 24 ] As an occultist, one can make interesting observations when, for example, one revisits a city that one may have seen ten years ago. If one looks at the virgin astral bodies of children, one finds that they have another basic color in addition to their personal basic color. If one has looked closely at these virgin astral bodies of children during one's first visit and compares them with those of children who have lived in the city for ten years, one finds that their appearance has changed. There is something in human individuality that progresses like the development of a city, a tribe, or a people. This comes from the fact that the currents of a collective astral body that surrounds me from outside are constantly interacting with my own, which lives in this collective astral body. That is why we also have a national temperament that is expressed in the collective astral body of the people.

[ 25 ] Every people and every other community has such an astral body, and this flows into the astral bodies of the individual human beings. This is the reason why a certain disharmony can arise between individual human beings and the task of the whole people. For not all developmental tendencies in the world always follow the same course. Very often, the more comprehensive rushes ahead of the less comprehensive.

[ 26 ] Let us consider a people, for example. A people is not a random collection of individuals thrown together in the world, not something created by chance, but each people has its own specific task in the course of human development. Anyone who views a people from a higher perspective can say that each people has a specific task and that his own people also has a specific task to fulfill. He can say to himself: I belong to this people, so I must serve the common task of the people, and I can serve it because there is an astrality living within me that belongs to the whole people. This destiny of the people is clearly expressed on the astral plane; it is a specific thought, something that lives on planes higher than the astral plane. In order to study the thoughts of the world order, one must ascend above the astral plane to the mental plane.

[ 27 ] The fourth subrace, for example, from which our race emerged, developed from a small circle of people in Asia and formed the Hebrew-Greek-Latin race. This race had the task of fulfilling the first mission of Christianity from the point of view of the peoples. The idea of this race was to spread Christianity in its first stage throughout Europe and the neighboring regions. This is a national idea.

[ 28 ] In earlier times, the comprehensive idea of reincarnation and karma prevailed. Then a change occurred and people were brought up to believe that physical life was important. This is clearly evident in Greek art, which developed a sense of external form. This was the refinement of the physical plane for the external senses. Among the Roman people, the law then developed, which is lived out directly on the physical plane. Finally, Christianity permeated this law with a morality, so that a single earthly life attained such importance that an entire eternity was made dependent on it. This is a one-sided idea, but it was correct and necessary. The Catholic peoples took on the mission of spreading Christianity and carried it to northern Europe, whereby the Germanic peoples received a new mission.

[ 29 ] We see, then, that a national idea lives in the whole people, and that each individual belongs to this idea. What was formerly developed in the field of plastic art in the beautiful forms of the sensory world in Greek art, what was developed as law and later deepened into morality, we have developed in our time for the benefit of the citizens into technical life. Cities were founded, they grew and flourished, and thus developed their own culture, the culture of the bourgeoisie. From this arose a morality of utility, which gave impetus to the development of a one-sided science, which has probably reached its peak in our present time.

[ 30 ] Here we can recognize the workings of a devachanic principle. This is the comprehensive aspect of these changes in the course of development, which shows us how a national idea works. How this idea is expressed depends on the common astral body of the people, on the national temperament. Art, for example, would have found expression in a completely different way in a people other than the Greeks.

[ 31 ] Although the national idea lives in each individual, the individual does not merge into the national idea. He also expresses his personality. Here we see something very strange and peculiar. At first, it is easier for people to find their way into the world of ideas of their people, into their devachanic destiny, than to achieve a balance between their own feelings and the feelings of this people. This is not so easy, especially for those who have already attained a certain higher level of education and culture. At the lower stages of development, this balance of feelings between the individual and the people is more easily achieved because there is always a greater integration of individual feelings into the general feelings of the people. The lower the individual stands, the more strongly the feelings and thoughts of the people are expressed in him, in the same way that an animal is an imprint of its species.

[ 32 ] But as man develops, he raises his own astral body, he becomes more differentiated, more definite. And then it is possible that his astral body is able to take on a form of mentality that is above the level of his people's mentality. If one grasps what shines down from this higher stage intellectually or conceptually, one can easily grasp the ideals. Sometimes it also happens that the feelings of a person's astral body are not as developed as their thoughts. The thoughts of a people can have such a powerful effect on the thoughts of an individual that they seize them before they have otherwise developed sufficiently.

[ 33 ] Individuals to whom this applies are ideal enthusiasts, martyrs for the progress of a people. They are so because they themselves precede what their other astral body actually is, because they devote their entire noble soul to the one ideal in a selfless manner. When such people die, their undeveloped astrality emerges with all the greater force; then what was not in the ideal of the people comes into effect, because in the future they will only have to deal with their own development. When such a person, who was a great and noble idealist in life and devoted himself to the ideal of his people, dies, he is overwhelmed by the personal element still present in him. Then the lower qualities of his astral body come to the fore. Now suppose that such a human being has become a martyr. He has created something noble, but has been mistreated by his people, as such advanced natures are sometimes mistreated. Then, during his life, he will usually pursue his ideal boldly and courageously, looking neither to the right nor to the left. But if he has been tortured or even killed for his ideals, thoughts of revenge arise immediately after his “death.” What he had suppressed as personal remains in Kamaloka.

[ 34 ] A people that treats its idealists in this way creates evil forces in Kamaloka that have an effect on the people. Russia has created such terrible forces for itself. For years it has mistreated certain noble personalities with the knout. The base forces of these personalities are now active in Kamaloka as enemies of what lives in Russia, as enemies of those for whom they sacrificed themselves in life. It was evident that such martyrs who had recently died were now fighting on the side of the Japanese against their own people. This is a fact that becomes understandable to us when we look into the deeper forces of the soul life. The phenomena of the future become clear to us when we view them from this standpoint.

[ 35 ] We live as members of Germanic peoples, enclosed in the east by Slavic peoples and in the west by Anglo-American peoples. Both the American and the Slavic peoples are rising races which have their purpose to fulfill in the future, races which are only at the beginning of their national consciousness. The basic character of the Slavic peoples is expressed in their spiritual disposition. Try to understand Slavic culture, and you will find that it tends toward a spiritual culture, that something spiritual is coming to life there. These Slavic peoples first had to deal with the tribes in the East, with the Chinese and Japanese. These are remnants of earlier Atlantean peoples, just as all Mongols are remnants of the late Atlantean culture. They have astral bodies that are themselves inclined toward spirituality. The Slavic peoples have to deal with these.

[ 36 ] We have something similar in America. Materialism has been taken to extremes and radically developed in all aspects of the people's outlook. In the modern era, this has led to the spirit itself being understood in a material way. While individual personalities such as Tolstoy emerge among the Slavic peoples, who are beautiful and great and try to stimulate development from their spiritual soul, the American people strive to grasp the soul and spirit in a material way. That is why we find a strongly materialistic spiritualism and spiritism among them. They seek the spirit in exactly the same way as they seek physical truths. But it is precisely in the way of seeking that the difference lies. If you try to see the spiritual with your eyes, it becomes psychic, and this psychic side has developed strongly in America.

[ 37 ] The American peoples have to deal with another element of the human race that originated in Atlantis and is gifted with psychic abilities. This element lives in the Negro peoples. The way in which these two peoples grow together is characteristic. The psychic has to deal with the psychic, the spiritual with the spiritual. Thus we have a spiritual national consciousness in the East and a psychic one in the West.

[ 38 ] We have experienced science and art on the outer plane; now the spirit must also be raised again. This can happen in two ways: either in the spiritual way or in the psychic way. The spiritual way is progress, the psychic way is regression.

[ 39 ] You see how the world becomes understandable when we look at it from the occult basis. Again, there is no need to say that we cannot convince ourselves of these things. Just take what is really happening. You will be led to this conviction if you compare the psychic worldview and psychic research with the worldview of occultism. If we try to understand the worldview of occultism, then the world of appearances will become more and more comprehensible to us. Such an occult-spiritual worldview leaves no gaps in our understanding of the world. From this we will then gain faith in the occult world reported by occultists, and through this we will educate within ourselves an element that will lift us higher. This is not blind faith, but a tentative faith. With every new experience, this faith becomes stronger and more justified, ever more firm and secure. And when faith has created this security within itself, it also creates the predisposition for knowledge. One has always tried before ascending to knowledge. Those who want knowledge before research are like those who want the fruit before the seed. Knowledge must be acquired by ourselves. If we already knew, we would not need to research. What researchers lack in certainty and security must be supplemented by the certainty and security of faith. Thus, they must work together, and thus they will ultimately produce in unity what must confront us as a unity: the fruit of experience, knowledge.

[ 40 ] Let us listen to the occultists and say neither yes nor no. But let us consider it as the foundation of our own lives and our attitude toward life; let us consider it as if their research were useful guides for our lives, then we will find that they will be our guides through life and ultimately lead us to an inner knowledge and a life that flows through us, then we will find that they will be our guides of trust toward research, toward satisfaction, and toward a harmonious life within ourselves.