The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. Group Ego and Individual Ego

[ 1 ] Following yesterday’s introduction, let’s dive right in today and discuss some very characteristic symbols and imagery.

[ 2 ] Yesterday we emphasized that only human beings, as they live here on the physical plane, have an individual soul, an “I,” and that the animals around us have a group “I,” a group soul, which lives on the astral plane and can be found there as a distinct entity. Thus, when viewed spiritually, the animal kingdom and the human kingdom stand opposite one another as group soul or group ego and as individual ego. We must not, however, create a mental image of there being no transitions whatsoever between the individual entities in the universe. Although the saying that “nature takes no leaps” is by no means correct for the occultist, you will find transitions everywhere. And so you will also find a transition between the group souls of the animal kingdom and the individual soul of the human being. It would be incorrect to have a mental image of the human being, upon entering earthly existence, already possessing a perfected individual soul, and that this soul now incarnates here on Earth in the same form over and over again. Rather, modern humans are in a gradual transition from a group soul they possessed in ancient times to the fully developed individual soul, which they still do not possess today. They are only on the path toward the complete integration of their individual soul into their physical body. They will possess this fully developed individual soul only when earthly existence is more or less complete. For the vast majority of people today, their ego is an intermediate stage between a group ego and an individual ego. The further back we go in the past, the more the human ego is still a group ego. At the beginning of earthly existence, when souls first descended from the divine worlds into our physical plane, human souls were still group egos. Several people belonged together to a group that had a collective soul, a group ego.

[ 3 ] Let us keep that in mind, for one thing. On the other hand, let us now take a closer look at the components of human nature themselves. As you are well aware, since it has been said time and again, human beings have four constituent parts of their being: the physical body, the etheric or Life-Body, the astral body, and the ego. And this I, when we examine it more closely, appears to us to be further divided into three parts, which we know by the names: the feeling soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul. It is in the sensory soul and in the intellectual or emotional soul that the independent “I” first begins to dawn, and it is only in the conscious soul that we have the first hint of the self-conscious “I.” It is only then that what is called the fifth part of the human being’s being—the Spirit-Self or Manas—gradually begins to shine forth within the person. We thus have the following structure in modern human beings: the physical body, the etheric or Life-Body, the astral body; then, intimately connected to the astral body, the feeling soul, which is as if embedded within it; then the intellectual soul and the conscious soul; and again, incorporated into the conscious soul—which is the actual ego-soul—the Spirit-Self or Manas. This is roughly how we would have to create a mental image of modern human beings.

[ 4 ] Now we must determine which of these human members is the most highly developed, the most perfect. Some of you have already heard me explain that—given the state of human development today—the physical body is the most highly developed, the most perfectly developed member. One must not, however, confuse “most highly developed and most perfectly formed” with “of a higher order.” Certainly, the etheric body and the astral body are, in terms of their order, of a higher nature than the physical body, but the etheric body and the astral body will only attain the perfection of their development in the future. In its own kind, the physical body is today the most perfect member of the human being. Whoever studies the physical body—not merely anatomically and physically, but with a heart and mind that truly penetrate it—will stand in awe before the immense wisdom built into the physical body. Our physical body reveals to us, in every one of its smallest parts, a perfectly wise structure. If, for my sake, you were to take just a piece of the femur—the upper part of the thigh bone—you would find that it is not a solid mass, but a wise structure, wonderfully assembled from small beams. If you study how the fine beams are joined together, you will find that everything is built in such a way that it produces the greatest amount of strength with the least amount of material, so that the upper body can be supported by these two columns of the femur. Even the most advanced engineering of today cannot construct a bridge or any structure with such wisdom, where such a great amount of strength is developed with such a small amount of material. Human wisdom lags far, far behind the wisdom with which the human physical body is constructed. So it is with all parts of the physical body. When you consider the brain with the nervous system, it is a marvel of construction. And when you consider the human heart, which is only on the path to its perfection, which will attain much, much higher degrees of perfection—it is something wonderful! If you compare this perfection of the physical body with the astral body and its drives, instincts, and passions, we must say: Although it will one day stand higher than the physical body, it is still today at a relatively subordinate level. In everything that human beings develop today in terms of cravings for pleasure, they launch hundreds and hundreds of attacks on the physical body. Everything that human beings desire and satisfy through the pleasures they procure for themselves—such as alcohol and all manner of other things—are, in essence, nothing short of poisons for the heart, with which they continually launch attacks on the wisdom and marvelous structure of their physical body. It will require a long period of development before the astral body catches up to the level of perfection that the physical body already possesses today.

[ 5 ] From the theory of evolution as presented by our theosophical cosmology, you know that the physical body was already in the making on ancient Saturn and underwent further stages of perfection through the development of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth. You know that on the second stage, on the ancient Sun, the etheric body was added; it is thus today one degree lower in development than the physical body. You know that on the ancient Moon the astral body was added; it has only the lunar evolution behind it and the part of the Earth’s evolution that we have undergone so far. The ego was only added on Earth; it is the “baby” among the four members of human nature. In fact, that wisdom we spoke of yesterday, which pervades the group souls of the animal kingdom, is imprinted upon the human physical body; it has passed over into the individual human physical body, which is built with wisdom. The human etheric body is only on the path to its completion; in the course of its earthly development, it will take in everything it needs for its completion.

[ 6 ] When the Earth has reached its goal, it will pass into the astral state and then into even higher states, and will later transform into a planet that will succeed the Earth and which we call Jupiter. Then the etheric body of the human being will be perfected in its kind, just as the physical body of the human being is perfected in its kind on Earth. In the next incarnation of the Earth, which we are accustomed to calling the future Venus, the human astral body will have reached its perfection; it will then stand at the stage where the physical body stands today and where the etheric body will stand in the next planetary state. And finally, when the Earth has reached the volcanic state, then our I will have reached its perfection. So that we can actually say: On Earth, it is first the physical body of the human being that is human; in the next planetary state of our Earth, it is the etheric body of the human being that becomes human; then it will be imbued with what the Earth is able to give to the human being: with love.

[ 7 ] The characteristics that the human physical body possesses today are owed to the ancient Moon. In occultism, the ancient Moon is called the Cosmos of Wisdom. Back then, on the ancient Moon, what you now find in the human physical body was gradually prepared. And just as what our physical body is was permeated with wisdom on the Moon, so too is what you will find in the Earth’s later Jupiter state being prepared through the Cosmos of Love: the etheric body completely permeated by the element of love. And just as we today admire a bone of the physical body for its wisdom, so—if we may speak in comparative terms—the Jupiter people will admire the etheric body because it is imbued with love just as the physical body on Earth is shaped by wisdom.

[ 8 ] If you keep this in mind, you will come to the realization that it is only the human physical body that is truly human, that truly stands on the human level. The human etheric body is not yet at the human level; it is still at the level of the animal kingdom, and the human astral body is still at the level of the plant kingdom. When you sleep at night and your astral body is lifted out, the physical and etheric bodies sink into dreamless sleep; this is the state that the plant is constantly in. The human astral body, in terms of its state of consciousness, is at the level of the plant kingdom. The ego is only at the level of the mineral kingdom. The state of consciousness of the ego-human is entirely at the level of the mineral kingdom. Try to examine yourself in light of this truth to see what insights you might gain; try to recognize it correctly. What, then, can human beings understand? They can understand the physical laws of the mineral kingdom, according to which they can build machines and factories, erect structures, and so on. All of this occurs according to the physical laws of the mineral kingdom. Even when it comes to plants, human beings rightly say that they cannot grasp life itself with the intellect. The time will come when man will understand plants just as he understands minerals today; then he will also be able to construct plants, just as he builds his domes, houses, and machines today according to the laws of the mineral kingdom. These are all laws of the mineral kingdom, of which the I is permeated.

[ 9 ] Science is waiting for its ideal to be realized: to one day create living beings in the laboratory. It will not be able to do so unless humanity has reached a certain necessary stage of moral development. It would be terrible if humanity were already capable of doing so today. Just as we now manufacture a clock according to the laws of minerals, or build a house, so will humans in the future create living beings according to the laws of life. But then they will have to be capable of imprinting life itself upon the living being. Whoever stands at the laboratory table then will have to be able to transmit—on their own initiative—those—let us call them: vibrations—that are in their own etheric body to that which is to be enlivened. If they are a good person, they transmit the good; if they are a bad person, they transmit the bad. But there is a saying in occultism: The knowledge of the White Lodge, which is called the secret of the creation of life, will not be revealed to humanity until man has learned the secret of sacramentalism.

[ 10 ] “Sacramentalism” is an expression of the fact that human action must be imbued with moral perfection, with holiness. Only when the laboratory bench where a person carries out his work becomes an altar for him, and his action a sacred one, will he be ready to receive this knowledge. Consider people today with all their materialism—how far is their laboratory bench today from an altar!

[ 11 ] You can see how human consciousness is elevated from mineral consciousness to plant consciousness. Again, this is an occult statement: Human beings will only attain the state of plant consciousness when they are no longer able to separate their own well-being from the well-being of all other human beings. As long as the individual seeks his own well-being at the expense of others, the condition has not yet arisen in which consciousness could be raised to a higher level.

[ 12 ] Thus, it is only with the physical body that we stand on the level of the true human being; with the etheric body, we are still on the level of animality; with the astral body, on the level of plant life; and with the I, on the level of the mineral. Of these truths, let us hold fast to this one: With our etheric body, we stand on the level of the animal. — In the course of our earthly existence, the etheric body transforms itself more and more into the human level. More and more, it becomes imbued with that love which can no longer separate the well-being of the individual from the well-being of others. Just as we first developed the physical body and raised it to the level of the human being, so now the etheric body—and later also the astral body and the ego—will rise to the human level. The ego still stands on the mineral level; it has only been incorporated into the human being on Earth.

[ 13 ] Let us now consider the relationship between our soul—that is, our soul of feeling, our soul of intellect or emotion, our soul of consciousness, and the Spirit-Self or Manas contained within the soul of consciousness—and our etheric body. Our etheric body itself stands at the level of the animal. Below (it is written on the board—see diagram: from bottom to top) at the level of the human being, we have the physical body. We will leave out the etheric body for now (see points in the diagram). Our astral body, within which is enclosed the feeling soul—that is the first member of our soul—is situated at the level of the plant; then we have the intellectual or emotional soul. All of this is situated at the level of the plant. Further up we then have the I or the conscious soul, which encompasses the Spirit-Self or Manas, insofar as it can already be found in human beings today.

Mineral				Consciousness Soul/I/Spirit-Self or Manas
			Intellectual Soul
Plant		Astral Body, Sensitive Soul
...
Human	Physical Body

[ 14 ] We initially omitted the etheric body at the animal level. Now we must be clear that, in a certain sense, each member of the human being expresses the other members. Thus, the physical body of the human being initially expresses within itself the manifestation of the physical body itself. We find the physical principle expressed in the physical body when we consider the sense organs. Thus, in the eye you have a kind of photographic camera, in the ear a kind of piano. In short, the physical principle expresses itself in the sense organs. When we look at the human glands, we find the etheric body expressed within them; in the nervous system we have the expression of the astral body, and in the blood we have the expression of the ego. “Blood is a very special fluid!” Whoever has the blood has the human ego. If the devil has a person’s blood, he has the ego.

[ 15 ] Thus, every other member expresses itself in the human physical body to the extent that it extends into it. The blood pulses unconsciously because the ego, insofar as it is active within it, is unaware of its physical processes. Just as the nature of the other members is expressed in the physical body, so too is the nature of the other members expressed in the etheric body; only there it does not express itself “humanly,” but rather “animally,” and specifically in the form of certain animals, in a form that bears a certain resemblance to our external animal forms. Thus, what lies beneath the etheric body—the physical body—is expressed as a shadow image; this part of the etheric body, in which the physical member of the human being is expressed, is called the “human being” (it is written on the board). The astral body, the soul of feeling that expresses itself in the etheric body, is called the “lion” because of the similarity of its etheric form; the intellectual soul, which expresses itself in the etheric body, is called the “Taurus” or the cow, and the consciousness soul, together with the Spirit-Self, is called the “eagle” because of the resemblance it has in its etheric form to the clairvoyant gaze.

Mineral				Consciousness Soul/I/Spirit-Self or Manas
			Intellect Soul
Plant		Astral Body, Sensitive Soul
Etheric Body (Animal)	Human	Lion	Taurus	Eagle
Human	Physical Body

[ 16 ] Here (in the diagram) you have the four symbols of the Apocalypse—man, lion, bull, and eagle—as the four expressions of the constituent elements of the human etheric body. From this you can see that those of our ancestors who conceived these profound symbols—these animal allegories for the human being—did not create them out of their imagination, philosophy, or speculation, nor out of any kind of cleverness, but rather from the world of facts, from the occult world of facts.

[ 17 ] However, we must be clear that these four expressions do not manifest equally in every person; one expression predominates in one person, another in another. Of course, we must consider all of humanity in its development. If you consider where the physical body itself expresses itself most strongly, we find the strongest expression in the declining, red race—among the Native Americans—in the particular structure of the skeletal system that predominates there. If you wish to see where the etheric body is particularly expressed physically, you must look for it in another human race: in the black race, in the formation of the glands. In carbon excretion, you will find an expression of the plant nature. [Notes here are incomplete.] The people in whom the nervous system is particularly strongly expressed on the physical plane—and thus also the sensitive aspect—are found in the Malayan race, and the race in which the blood system is particularly expressed is the Mongolian race. The group of people who are beginning to develop the principle of Manas can be found in the Caucasian race. Thus you have derived the classification of human races from occult truths; what is found in modern humans is distributed throughout all of humanity, with one or the other predominating or receding in a particular human group.

[ 18 ] Such differences can also be found in the etheric body of human beings. When the clairvoyant gaze observes the etheric body, just as the physical gaze observes the physical body, it finds human beings divided into human-humans, lion-humans, bull-humans, and eagle-humans. Their group-I is of an astral nature. The clairvoyant finds the human group-I situated on the astral plane between the animal group-I and the human individual-I. The further back in time we go, the more we find that human beings, in terms of their etheric body, assume one of these four forms, and we attribute to each of these four soul groups a human group soul: to one a human group soul, to another a lion group soul, to the third a bull group soul, and to the fourth an eagle group soul. You would only get a false mental image of this if you were to take these names, which are derived from physical animal forms, too literally. The etheric body of the lion-people is much more similar to the group soul of the lions than to the individual lion here on the physical plane. Christianity, based on the evangelists, had in its mental image that their souls are not like ordinary human souls but encompass entire groups of people, and compared Matthew to the human, Mark to the lion, Luke to the bull, and John to the eagle according to the inner character of their souls. This stems from the similarity that Christian esotericism attributed to the souls of the individual evangelists. We will understand this even more clearly when we see that humanity is, on the one hand, in a process of descent and, on the other hand, in a process of ascent. Here on Earth, at the lowest point of materialism, humanity acquires the potential for the individual soul. Humanity has descended from ancient times, when the individual group souls were distinguished more precisely: the human-human, the lion-human, the bull-human, the eagle-human. When humanity ascends again in the future, they will retain their individual soul and, on a higher level with higher consciousness, will once again develop what they previously had only in a dim consciousness: the four group souls. This is why these characteristics are attributed to the evangelists in Christianity.

[ 19 ] Let us hold on to this concept of the group souls of human beings for a while longer. These group souls existed much more in time, in succession, than in space, side by side. When we consider animal group souls—for example, a group of lions or a group of whales—we say that they have their collective group soul on the astral plane, existing side by side. But when we consider human group souls, we must focus more on time. A human group soul is born in the etheric, so to speak, at the boundary between the physical and astral planes at a certain time and transforms again at a certain time. These four types of group souls we have discussed are only the four main types; there are, however, countless intermediate stages. We have only indicated the most characteristic forms—human, lion, bull, and eagle—which can occur in all possible combinations.

[ 20 ] Let us consider a group of people, say, for example, a tribe; let us take any of the ancient Central European tribes, for instance the Cherusci. Such a tribe comes into being at some point, and it passes away. The materialist observer sees in what the Cherusci tribe is, in reality, only something abstract, a concept that holds them together. But that is something unreal. The occultist sees in the Cherusci tribe a group soul that comes into being, “is born,” at the time when the Cherusci tribe enters history; it grows as the power of the Cherusci grows, and it “dies” when the Cherusci disappear from history. Behind the developing Cherusci tribe, the occultist sees a developing etheric entity. Now there is a difference between an etheric entity and a physical entity here on Earth. A physical entity is born on the physical plane, grows, reaches the peak of its life, and then dies. Birth and death are the defining characteristics of entities on the physical plane. This is not the case with the entities that live on the higher planes. If we trace the animal group souls on the astral plane through the millennia, their coming into being and passing away cannot be expressed at all by the words “birth” and “death.” Something quite different underlies this. Transformation, metamorphosis, underlies it. If you encounter an animal group soul on the astral plane today with clairvoyant powers and recall one of its previous incarnations—such as how this animal group soul was 1,500 years ago—it will not appear to you as it would if you were observing a younger person. You do, however, see the group soul pass through youth, middle age, and old age, but it does not relinquish its consciousness in old age; it does not die. It is constantly transforming without passing through death. You can trace the animal group soul back to time immemorial—you encounter only metamorphosis, not birth and death.

[ 21 ] Something similar is true of group souls such as that of the Cherusci tribe. When the Cherusci tribe appears on the physical plane as a group of physical human beings, the Cherusci soul has just come into being; but it has not been born; rather, it has been transformed from another time. It grows with the power of the Cherusci, reaches its zenith when the Cherusci tribe reaches its zenith, and when the Cherusci tribe degenerates and disappears from history on the physical plane, the Cherusci soul is reborn in youth to become the soul of another tribe; it metamorphoses. There is no physical birth or physical death when we consider souls on higher planes. Birth and death, as we know them, exist only on the physical plane, not on the higher planes. Occult wisdom has expressed this well, taking great care with numbers. Attempts have been made to establish an average figure for when a group soul—as it belongs to a specific human community—arises, metamorphoses out of another, grows, and reaches its peak, only to undergo a descending development and then transform into another group soul. If we take the average human lifespan to be 75 years—assuming this figure in lunar years—and multiply it by 7, we arrive at the lifespan of a human group soul in its four types, up to its next transformation. Here, 7 refers to generations. Taking into account that we are dealing with lunar years, this amounts to approximately 500 years. And so it was said in occultism: The life of a group soul lasts 500 years; after 500 years, it becomes another; it is reborn without losing its consciousness.

[ 22 ] When we consider the “I” of such a group soul and seek a means of expression for the “I” in the physical world, it is, of course, the blood. For the occultist, blood is the expression of fire—a substance glowing with fire. Just as the human physical body is the expression of earth, the etheric body the expression of water, and the astral body the expression of air, so the I, which is not yet bound to egoism, is the expression of fire. We therefore say—we will discuss this further tomorrow—that blood has met its death through egoism. The human ego “consumes itself in its own fire,” through itself. This is an occult expression. Only when a person overcomes selfishness does he attain immortality. The human group ego consumes itself in its own fire. When 500 years have passed, it burns up and creates a new form out of itself. In occultism, this was depicted as the group ego generally living for 500 years, then burning up and being reanimated from its own fire, and this was called the “Phoenix.” The beautiful legend of the Phoenix has its actual background here. The Phoenix is the Group-I with the characteristics of the four types, which burns itself up and restores itself after seven generations—a generation calculated as 75 lunar years of age.

[ 23 ] This is the real background to the legend of the phoenix. Here you have further proof that ancient legends such as that of the Phoenix are drawn from the deepest occult realities. The aim here is not to speculate, but to demonstrate what has been taught in occult schools throughout the centuries, and what constitutes a genuine, actual experience, expressed through occult signs and seals.

[ 24 ] Time and again, when we hear such expressions of occult truths and compare them with what humanity has preserved for us in its signs and symbols, we are reminded of how much human consciousness had already created before it became intellectual consciousness. People are so fond of believing that we have already come a long way today. But with its intellect, humanity lags behind the creative consciousness of the pre-world, which, admittedly, only the initiates possessed, and they have hidden it within the legends. The symbols of the four animals are not invented; thought is not the starting point, the origin of them, but rather vision.

[ 25 ] When I say that the Group Soul is in the etheric realm at the boundary between the physical and astral planes, you must not create a mental image of a dividing line. If we start from the physical plane, we have here (as shown in the diagram) seven subdivisions of the physical plane; then there would be seven subdivisions of the astral plane. Of these, the three lowest coincide with the three highest of the physical plane. We must view the astral plane as merged with the physical plane in such a way that the three uppermost parts of the physical plane are simultaneously the three lowest parts of the astral plane. We can speak of a border zone; this is the one that our souls cannot leave after death if they are still bound to the earth by desires. It is called Kamaloka.

[ 26 ] Thus, in the occult signs, symbols, and seals that we have chosen here as our first examples, we must certainly see something derived from the depths of occult reality, and you would be entirely mistaken if you were to misjudge the profound wisdom of antiquity in the occult schools or to consider it in any way superseded by our modern wisdom. Where the wisdom of occult teachings confronts you in signs or symbols, it always reveals itself in such a way that it is confirmed by direct occult observation. An example of how the teaching of occultism has worked in relatively recent times is that symbolic meanings were imbued into names and words, but in such a way that these were based on a real meaning: facts of the higher world. We will not go back to the origin of word formation in the philological sense; what I am about to say is not something you could verify through philology. Even if philology were to find it incorrect, the word symbolism would still be correct.

[ 27 ] The further you ascend from the physical plane through the astral world into the Devachan world, the more everything appears to you as a mirror image of the physical plane, which you must first learn to interpret. This is easiest for the student to learn through numbers. Suppose you have the number 543 here on the physical plane; on the astral plane, this number is to be read as a mirror image, that is, 345. Likewise, all other things and events are to be read as mirror images. I will choose a striking example right away: Here on the physical plane, you observe how the old hen lays the egg and the young chick develops from the egg. If you observe the same event on the astral plane, you must go backward: there you first have the young chick, the chick becomes smaller and smaller, and finally enters the egg. Time, too, moves backward. You can see how immensely confusing this must be for the student at first glance. You see the passions emanating from the human being as in a tableau; they radiate from the center. The reflected passions appear as if a swarm of animals were rushing toward you. Human beings perceive the lower passions as all manner of wild creatures—mice, rats, and so on—surrounding them. If the student has not learned this, and this is their first experience of it—when they see their own passions rushing toward them as mice and rats—then pathological conditions such as paranoia and the like can easily arise.

[ 28 ] What I have just stated as a fact regarding the relationship between the higher worlds and the lower worlds was symbolically expressed in evolutionary theory through a play on words. When human beings began their existence on Earth, they passed from a spiritual state into a sensory state—through Eve. In Eve, one saw that state in which spiritual humanity became physical, and thus also sinful. If humanity is now to be led back up to the spiritual, and if the contrast is to be expressed to the woman who brought the mortal into the world, then that which is to bring the immortal back into humanity must be expressed in reverse; the name must be reversed. That is why the angel of God addresses Mary with the words “Ave, Maria!”—Eve becomes Ave; this reversal has a symbolic character. Whatever a more or less misguided philology may say to the contrary, that is not what matters. What matters is to show how, in occultism, the symbolic can work through the arrangement of words. The intention behind this word order was that, by uttering the words, the human being would become aware of the occult fact that the physical and spiritual worlds have opposite directions in their currents.

[ 29 ] This has a very profound meaning. Do not see anything arbitrary in it. The best you can see in this is that people were guided to recognize the occult laws in their language. By having people perform such exercises to recognize the occult laws in language, they are consciously or unconsciously working on their occult training. The principle of symbolism is at the same time a principle of training.