The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture I

[ 1 ] In every esoteric course, the key is to learn how to view the things around us. Naturally, every person senses something when looking at a flower or any object in their surroundings. However, what matters is gaining a higher perspective, looking deeper, and connecting specific insights with each object. This, for example, is the foundation of Paracelsus’s profound medicine. He sensed, felt, and saw the power of a particular plant and the kinship of that power with a corresponding power within the human being. For example, he saw which human organ is affected by the power of Digitalis purpurea (red foxglove).

[ 2 ] Let us illustrate this way of looking at things with a specific example. All religions have symbols. Today, one hears a great deal about these symbols, but much of it is merely an arbitrary, superficial interpretation. The profound religious symbols, however, are drawn from the very essence of things themselves. Let us discuss, for example, the symbol of the serpent, as it was revealed to Moses in the Egyptian mystery schools. Let us discuss what inspired him and what his intuition revealed to him.

[ 3 ] There is a fundamental difference between all animals that have a spine and those that, like beetles, mollusks, worms, and so on, do not have a spine. The entire animal kingdom is divided into the major phyla of vertebrates and invertebrates. When it comes to invertebrates, one might ask: Where are their nerves located?—since the main nerve cord normally runs through the spine. However, invertebrates also have a nervous system, and it is found in humans as well as in vertebrates. In these animals, it runs externally, along the spine, until it spreads into the body cavity. This is called the sympathetic nervous system with the solar plexus. It is the same system that invertebrates also possess, except that it is less significant in vertebrates and humans. This system is much more closely connected to the rest of the world than the nervous system in the human head and spinal cord. One can suppress the activity of the latter while in a trance state, at which point the sympathetic nervous system becomes active. This is what happens, for example, with somnambulists. The somnambulistic consciousness extends to the entire life of the surroundings and merges with the other beings around us. Somnambulists feel things within themselves. The life ether is the element that flows all around us. It finds its point of mediation in the solar plexus. If only we could perceive through the solar plexus, we would live in an intimate communion with the whole world. This intimate communion exists in invertebrates. Such an animal, for example, feels a flower within itself. The invertebrate is to the Earth system something akin to what the eye and ear are to the human being. It is a part of the organism. There is, in fact, a collective spiritual organism that perceives, sees, hears, and so on through the invertebrates. The Earth Spirit is such a collective organism. Everything around us is a body for this collective spirit. Just as our soul creates eyes and ears to perceive the world, so does this collective Earth Soul create the invertebrates as its eyes and ears to see and hear into the world.

[ 4 ] In the Earth’s evolution, a point in time now arrived when a differentiation occurred within the collective life and interweaving of the Earth Spirit. A part of it was enclosed, as if within a tube. Only when this moment arrived was it at all possible for beings to come into existence who could also become distinct beings. The others are members of an Earth soul. Only now does a particular degree of separation begin. Only now does the possibility arise that something might one day be able to say “I” to itself. This fact—that there are two epochs on Earth: first, the epoch in which there were still no animals on Earth with a nervous system enclosed within a bony tube, and second, the epoch in which such animals then arose—is expressed in a special way in all religions. The serpent first encloses the selfless, undifferentiated perception of the Earth Spirit within a tube, thereby laying the foundation for the “I.” The esoteric teachers instilled this in their students so that they could feel it: When you look at the serpent, you see the symbol of your “I.”—In doing so, they had to vividly sense that the independent “I” and the serpent belong together. Thus, this sense of the meaning of the things around us was developed. In this way, the students imbued every natural being with the correct emotional content. Moses, too, was equipped with this feeling when he left the Egyptian mystery schools, and so he established the serpent as a symbol. In those schools, one did not learn in such an abstract way as one does today, but rather by learning to grasp the world through one’s own inner experience.

[ 5 ] There is a description of the human being based on an external examination of the individual parts of his organism. But in ancient mystical and occult works, one can also find descriptions of the human being. However, these descriptions came about in a completely different way than through anatomical examinations. They are even far more precise and much more accurate than what today’s anatomists describe, for they describe only the corpse. The ancient descriptions were obtained in such a way that the disciples, through meditation and inner enlightenment, became visible to themselves. Through the so-called Kundalini fire, a person can observe themselves from within. There are various stages of this contemplation. Precise, accurate contemplation first appears symbolically. When a person concentrates on their spinal cord, for example, they in fact always see the serpent. They may also dream of the serpent, because it is the essence that was projected outward into the world when the spinal cord formed and has remained at this stage. The serpent is the spinal cord projected outward into the world. This pictorial way of seeing things is astral vision (imagination). But it is only through mental vision (inspiration) that the full meaning becomes apparent.

[ 6 ] This path of knowledge leads a person to recognize the connection between the microcosm and the macrocosm, to understand that the self can be divided into nature, and to be able to identify which part of the world each of their organs belongs to. The Old Germanic myth describes the giant Ymir being divided in this way. His skull becomes the vault of heaven, his bones the mountains, and so on. This is the mythological representation of inner vision. In every part of the world, the esotericist sees a connection to something within himself. The inner kinship then becomes apparent. This vision must be intensively cultivated. All religions point to such intensive cultivation. The Gospels also point to this. The esotericist tells himself: All things in the environment—stones, plants, and animals—are signs of my own development; I could not exist if these realms were not there. This awareness fills us not only with the feeling that we have risen above these realms, but also with the realization that we could not exist without them.

[ 7 ] There are seven levels of human consciousness: trance consciousness, deep sleep consciousness, dream consciousness, waking consciousness, psychic consciousness, suprapsychic consciousness, and spiritual consciousness. In fact, there are twelve levels of consciousness in total; the other five are creative levels of consciousness. These are the levels of the creators, the creative gods. They are connected to the twelve signs of the zodiac. Human beings must pass through these twelve levels one after another. They have ascended through trance consciousness, deep sleep consciousness, and dream consciousness to today’s clear waking consciousness. In the subsequent stages of planetary evolution, he will attain even higher levels of consciousness. All the levels he has already passed through are also present within him. The physical body possesses the dull trance consciousness that was acquired by humankind on ancient Saturn. The human etheric body possesses the consciousness of dreamless sleep, as it arose on the ancient Sun. The astral body dreams, just as it does in dreams during sleep. Dream consciousness originates from the ancient Moon era. On present-day Earth, human beings attain waking consciousness. The “I” possesses clear, daytime consciousness.

[ 8 ] Higher evolution consists in that which is within the being projecting itself outward, just as man has projected the snake outward while retaining the snake at a higher level within his spinal cord. In an even further stage of development, human beings will project into the world not only stones, plants, and animals, but also levels of consciousness. In a beehive, for example, there are three kinds of beings that share a common soul. Beings that appear to be entirely separate act together. So it will one day be with human beings as well; they will separate their organs. He will have to consciously direct every single brain molecule from the outside. Then he will have become a higher being. The same will be true of the levels of consciousness. One can imagine a high being who has projected all twelve levels of consciousness from within himself. It itself will then be present as the thirteenth and will say to itself: “I could not be what I am if I had not separated these twelve levels of consciousness from within myself.”—We see this example in Christ with the twelve apostles. The twelve apostles represent the levels of consciousness through which Christ passed. This is evident in the Gospel of John through the description of the washing of the feet in chapter thirteen, which suggests that Christ owes it to the apostles that he has attained the higher level of consciousness: “Truly, take note of this: the servant is never to be held in higher esteem than the master.” - The more highly developed being has left the others behind on the path and has now himself become the servant of the others. Not many people understand the meaning of these words, yet when they hear this story, they are prepared to understand through the feeling it evokes. We, for example, were prepared in our feelings through these stories in the first centuries after Christ. Otherwise, our causal body would not be prepared to receive the truth now. The soul is prepared through the figurative form. That is why, in the past, the great sages told people fairy tales with a grand vision of the future. Even today, the teachers already have an idea of what will be brought about in the future through the teachings of Theosophy. Today, human beings have both good and evil within them. In the future, this will manifest externally as a realm of good and a realm of evil. And how the good will one day have to treat the evil is predisposed in the soul by today’s theosophical concepts. First, people were given images; now they are receiving the concepts; and in the future, they will have to act upon them in practice.