The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eleventh Lecture

[ 1 ] It was, after all, somewhat uncharted territory that we ventured into last time, when we turned our attention to certain entities that certainly exist within our reality as spiritual beings, but which, in a certain sense, fall outside the regular course of evolution—and whose very significance lies precisely in the fact that they fall outside of evolution in this way. It was the realm of the elemental beings. We have considered the elemental beings, whom the enlightened mind of our present age naturally regards as the height of superstition, but who, precisely because of the position they occupy in the cosmos, will play a significant role in the not-too-distant future of our spiritual development. We have seen how such elemental beings are formed, in that they are, as it were, irregular, offshoots of group souls. We need only recall what we said at the end of our last meditation, and we will immediately have the nature of such elemental beings before our mind’s eye. We have pointed out one of the most recently formed types of these elemental beings. We have pointed out how each animal form—or, to speak in broad terms, a group of similarly formed animal beings—corresponds to a group soul. We have said that these group souls play, so to speak, the same role in the astral world as our human soul—insofar as it is endowed with an “I”—does in the physical world. In fact, the human “I” is a group “I” that has descended from the astral plane to the physical plane. Through this, it has become an individual “I.” Animal “I’s” are still regularly present on the astral plane today, and what we have here on the physical plane as individual animal beings possesses only a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body on the physical plane, while the “I” resides in the astral world—but in such a way that animals of the same form are, as it were, the members of the group “I” of these animals. This also allows us to imagine how what we call birth and death in human life does not have the same meaning for animals. For when a single animal dies, the group soul or the group “I” remains alive. It is exactly as if—assuming it were possible—a human being were to lose a hand and have the ability to regrow it. His “I” would not say, “I have died because of the loss of my hand”—but would feel that it had renewed a limb. In the same way, the group “I” of the lions renews a limb when a single individual lion dies and is replaced by another. Thus we can understand that birth and death do not have the same significance for the group soul of animals as they do for human beings in the present cycle of evolution. The group soul of animals experiences transformations, metamorphoses; it experiences, so to speak, the severing of limbs that then extend into the physical world, the loss of these limbs, and their renewal.

[ 2 ] We have said, however, that there are certain animal forms that go too far in their separation, that are no longer capable of sending back to the astral plane everything they bring down to the physical plane. For in the case of a dying animal, that which falls away must be completely absorbed into the surrounding world. In contrast, that which spiritualizes and animates the animal must flow back into the group soul, so that it may then be extended anew and grow into a new individual. Now, there are certain animal forms that cannot send everything back to the group soul, and these remaining elements—which have been severed and torn away from the group soul—then lead an isolated existence as elemental beings. And since our evolution has passed through the most diverse forms and stages, and such elemental beings have been severed at every stage, you can well imagine that we have a large number of such species of elemental beings around us in what we call the supersensible world that surrounds us.

[ 3 ] For example, if an enlightened person says: “People speak to us of elemental beings called sylphs or lemures; such things do not exist!” — one would have to give them a response that sounds admittedly strange and paradoxical: “You do not see these things because you close yourself off from the development of those organs of perception that would lead you to recognize these beings. But just ask the bee—or, in other words, the soul of the beehive! It could not remain oblivious to the existence of sylphs or lemures! For the elemental beings designated by these names dwell in very specific places, namely where a certain interaction between the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom takes place—and even then, not just anywhere, but in places where this interaction occurs under certain conditions. When an ox eats grass, there is indeed an interaction between the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom; but this is, so to speak, a sober, regular one that lies entirely within the normal course of evolution. On an entirely different level of world evolution lies the interaction that takes place between the bee and the flower, precisely because the bee and the flower are much further apart in their organization and subsequently come together again, and because—though this is visible only to the occultist—a truly wondrous force is developed during the interaction between the bee and the flower. It belongs—if one may use the expression, though we have so few apt terms for these subtle things—to the interesting observations of the spiritual-supernatural worlds: that peculiar auric sheath that always arises when a bee or another such insect sips from a flower. The peculiar, unique experience that the little bee has when it sips from the flower is not confined merely to its chewing apparatus or to its body; rather, what arises there as an exchange of flavors between the bee and the flower radiates something like a small ethereal aura. Every time the little bee sips, such a small ethereal aura is present, and whenever something like this arises in the supersensible world, the beings who need it come near. They are drawn to it; for they find there—to put it crudely once again—their nourishment.

[ 4 ] I have said on another occasion that the question—which might be raised by someone asking, “Where do all these entities you speak of come from?”—shouldn’t really concern us at all. — Wherever the opportunity arises for certain entities, they are always there. When a person spreads evil, terrible feelings of their own accord, then these terrible, evil feelings are also something that lives around them and attracts entities that are there, just waiting for them, much like a physical being waits for food. I once compared it to the fact that there are no flies in a clean room; but if there are all kinds of food scraps in the room, then they are there. So it is with the supersensible beings: one need only provide them with sustenance. The little bee that sips from the flower emits a small ethereal aura, and such beings are drawn to it—especially when a whole swarm of bees settles on a tree somewhere and then departs, so to speak, carrying within them the sensation of taste that was present there. Then the entire swarm of bees is enveloped in this ethereal aura, but also completely permeated by these spiritual beings, which are called sylphs or lemures. Especially in such border regions where, so to speak, different realms come into contact with one another, these beings are present, and they truly play a role. For they are not only present when this subtle ethereal aura described above arises; rather, I would say that they do not merely satiate themselves, but they also feel hunger, and they express this hunger by guiding the animals in question to the relevant locations. They are, so to speak, their guides in a certain sense.

[ 5 ] Thus we see that such entities, which have, so to speak, severed their connection with other worlds to which they were formerly bound, have thereby taken on a new role. They have become entities that can be put to good use in other worlds. However, when they are used in this way, a kind of organizational structure is established: they are subject to higher beings.

[ 6 ] As was stated at the beginning of today’s discussion, human knowledge will, in the not-too-distant future, very certainly need to be aware of these entities. In the not-too-distant future, science will take a peculiar turn. Science will become more and more, so to speak, sensory-physical, limiting itself solely to a description of external physical and sensory facts. Science will confine itself to the grossly material, even though a peculiar transitional state still prevails today. There has, after all, been a time of true gross materialism in science. It is not long past. Today, this crude materialism is regarded as a possibility at most by those who hold the most layman-like views, although only a few thinking minds are making an effort to replace it with something else. We see a whole host of abstract theories emerging here, in which there are veiled allusions to the supersensible and to what lies beyond the physical body. But the course of events and the force of external, sensory facts will completely overturn precisely these strange, fantastical theories, which are currently being put forward by those dissatisfied with physical science; and one day, scholars will find themselves in a peculiar situation with regard to these theories. All the fanciful speculations about the universality of existence and the universal animacy of this or that world—all these speculations—will be swept aside, and people will have nothing left to hold onto but the purely physical and sensory facts in the fields of geology, biology, astronomy, and so on. The theories being put forward today will be the most short-lived; and for anyone capable of glimpsing even a little into the specific course of science, it becomes clear that the most absolute ode to the purely physical horizon will be found there.

[ 7 ] But then the time will also have come when a greater number of humanity’s representatives will be ready to acknowledge these supersensory worlds, which are spoken of today in spiritual science or the theosophical worldview. A phenomenon such as that of the life of bees, in connection with what can be known from the supersensible worlds, offers a marvelous answer to the great mysteries of existence. And from yet another perspective, these matters are of great importance: it will become increasingly essential for humanity to comprehend the nature of the group souls. For recognizing this nature of group souls will also play a major role in the purely external development of humanity. — If we go back thousands and thousands of years in the course of time, we find that human beings themselves were still beings belonging to a group soul. For the development of the human being on our Earth is the progression from group-soul existence to the individual soul. Humanity advances more and more as the soul, endowed with an “I,” descends into the physical realm, where it has the opportunity to become individual. We can examine various stages in human evolution. There we will see how the group soul gradually becomes individual.

[ 8 ] Let us, for example, go back to the time of the first third of Atlantic cultural development. Human life was quite different then. In the bodies in which we were incarnated at that time, our souls experienced entirely different processes. We can consider one process that plays a role in human life today—both for the individual and for humanity as a social entity—and that has undergone a tremendous change since that time: the alternation between waking and sleeping.

[ 9 ] In the ancient Atlantean times, you would not have experienced the same cycle of waking and sleeping as you do today. What, then, is the characteristic difference compared to modern humanity?

[ 10 ] When the physical and etheric bodies lie in bed and the astral body, together with the “I,” rises, that which is called “daytime consciousness” sinks into an indeterminate darkness to the same extent that the astral body and the “I” rise. In the morning, when the astral body and the I re-enter the physical and etheric bodies, the astral body and the I once again make use of the physical organs, and consciousness dawns. This state of daily waking in consciousness and nightly sleeping in unconsciousness did not exist in the past. Rather, it was the case—if we may use the expression—though it does not quite apply to the conditions of that time; we need it for the state in which the human being was connected to his physical body—it was the case that during the day, when there was daylight and he was immersed in his physical body—to the extent that this was the case back then—by no means saw the external physical entities and things within such defined boundaries as we do today; rather, they saw everything with indistinct contours that blurred outward, as when you walk through the streets on a foggy evening and see the streetlights surrounded by a misty halo. That is how it was for people of that time with regard to all things.

[ 11 ] And if that was the state of affairs during the day, what was the state like at night? When a person left their physical and etheric bodies during the night, they did not fall into a state of absolute unconsciousness. It was simply a different kind of consciousness. In those days, people still perceived the spiritual processes and spiritual beings around them—no longer exactly as in true clairvoyance, but as a final remnant of the old clairvoyance. During the day, people lived in a world with blurred, nebulous boundaries. At night, they lived among spiritual beings that surrounded them just as everyday objects do today. Thus, there was no strict boundary between day and night, and what is contained in legends and myths are not mere products of popular imagination, but memories of the experiences that ancient people had in the supersensible world in their state of consciousness at that time. Wotan, Zeus, or other supernatural, spiritual-divine beings recognized by various peoples are not figments of the folk imagination, as is claimed from the armchair of scholarship. Only someone who has never familiarized themselves with the nature of the folk imagination could make such a claim. It would never occur to the people to personify things in this way. These were experiences from ancient times. Wotan and Thor were beings with whom people interacted just as they interact with their fellow human beings today, and the myths and legends are memories of the times of ancient clairvoyance.

[ 12 ] We must, however, be clear that this immersion into the spiritual-supernatural worlds was linked to something else. In these worlds, human beings did not feel themselves to be individual beings. They felt themselves to be members of spiritual beings; they belonged, so to speak, to higher spiritual beings just as our hands belong to us. The slight sense of individuality that human beings already possessed at that time arose when they immersed themselves in their physical bodies, when they, so to speak, emancipated themselves for a short time from the circle of spiritual-divine beings. That was the beginning of their sense of individuality. This occurred at a time when human beings were quite aware that they possessed a group soul; they felt themselves submerged in the group soul when they left their physical body and entered the supersensible realm of consciousness. That was an ancient time when human beings possessed, with tremendous strength, the awareness of belonging to a group soul, to a group “I.”

[ 13 ] We are considering a second stage in human development—we will skip over the intermediate stages—the stage to which the Old Testament’s account of the patriarchs points. We have already mentioned what actually underlies this. We have mentioned the reason why the patriarchs—Adam, Noah, and so on—lived such long lives. They lived such long lives because their memory was entirely different from that of modern humans. The memory of modern humans has, in fact, become individual. People remember what they have experienced since birth—though for some, this begins much later. It was not like that in ancient times. Back then, the events the father experienced between birth and death, as well as the experiences of the grandfather and great-grandfather, were just as much a part of memory as one’s own experiences between birth and death. As strange as it may seem to modern people, it is true that there were times when such a memory existed—one that extended beyond the individual and encompassed the entire bloodline. And when we ask ourselves what external signs there are that such a memory existed, they are precisely names such as Noah, Adam, and so on. This does not refer to individual human beings between birth and death. The human being who possesses a memory confined to the period between birth and death gives a name to that individual. In the past, the naming of individuals extended as far back as memory reached through the generations—as far as the blood flowing through the generations went.

[ 14 ] “Adam is nothing more than a name that lasted as long as people could remember. Anyone who does not know that naming used to be entirely different will not be able to understand the nature of these things at all. In those ancient times, there was simply a completely different, mediating fundamental consciousness. Imagine that the forefather had two children, each of whom had two in turn, the next generation two again, and so on. For all of them, memory extends all the way back to the forefather, and they felt at one in that memory, which, so to speak, converges at a single point up there. The people of the Old Testament expressed this by saying—and this applied to every single follower of the Old Testament—“I and Father Abraham are one.” There, the individual felt secure in the consciousness of the group soul, in “Father Abraham.”

[ 15 ] The consciousness that Christ bestowed upon humanity goes beyond this. In its consciousness, the “I” is directly connected to the spiritual world, and this is expressed in the sentence: “Before Abraham was, the ‘I’—or the ‘I Am’—was.” This is where the impulse to awaken the “I Am” fully enters the individual.

[ 16 ] Thus we see a second stage in human development, the era of the group soul, which finds its outward expression in the blood ties between generations. A people that has developed this particularly strongly places great emphasis on always stressing: as a people, we have a shared national group soul. This was certainly the case for the people of the Old Testament. That is why the conservatives within this Old Testament people resisted the emphasis on the “I am,” the individual “I.” Anyone who reads the Gospel of John can grasp this with their hands—with their spiritual hands—and see that it is so. One need only read the account of Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. It is explicitly pointed out there that Christ Jesus also goes to those who are not related by blood, who do not belong together through blood ties. Read how remarkably this is pointed out: “For the Jews had no fellowship with the Samaritans.” Whoever can truly go through this step by step—and meditatively—will see how humanity has progressed from the group soul to the individual soul.

[ 17 ] History, as it is practiced today, is certainly driven by external factors. Today, this history is often a “fable convenue,” for it is written based on documents. Imagine if something had to be described today based on documents, and the most important documents were lost! Then reports would be based on whatever random, haphazardly gathered documents happened to be available. For things rooted in spiritual reality, no documents are needed; for they are inscribed in the faithful and unalterable Akashic Records. However, it is difficult to read the Akashic Records, because external documents actually serve as an obstacle to reading spiritual “writings.” But we can see how, even in times very close to our own, that evolution from the group soul to the individual soul took place.

[ 18 ] Anyone who considers history from a spiritual perspective will have to recognize the early Middle Ages as a highly significant period. Before that, people were still—albeit only outwardly—integrated into various groups. To a far greater extent than people today can even imagine, in the early Middle Ages people still derived their significance and standing—including with regard to their labor—from kinship and other social ties. It followed quite naturally, so to speak, that a son would do the same work as his father. Then came the age of great inventions and discoveries. The world placed ever greater demands on people’s purely personal abilities, and people were increasingly torn away from their old social ties. We see evidence of this throughout the Middle Ages in the founding of cities, which followed one and the same model across all of Europe. Even today, we can still distinguish the cities formed according to this model from those that developed according to a different one.

[ 19 ] In the middle of the Middle Ages, there was once again such a progression from the group soul to the individual soul. And when we look into the future, we must realize that human beings are emancipating themselves more and more from everything related to the group soul; they are becoming increasingly isolated. If you could look back on earlier phases of human development, you would see that those cultures—for example, the Egyptian and Roman—are as if cast from a single mold. Today, such a unified culture exists only to a very limited degree. Humanity has now deteriorated to the point where not only are customs and traditions individual, but even opinions and beliefs are individual, and there are already people among us who regard it as a lofty ideal for every person to have their own religion. Indeed, some entertain the idea that there must one day be a time when there can be as many religions and truths as there are people.

[ 20 ] Humanity will not follow this course of development. It would follow it if it continued to pursue the impulse that stems from materialism today. That would lead to disharmony and to the fragmentation of humanity into isolated individuals. However, humanity will only avoid such a course of development if a spiritual movement such as that of spiritual science is embraced by humanity. For what will happen? The great truth, the great law, will be fulfilled: that the most individual truths, found in the most intimate way, are at the same time the most universally valid ones.

[ 21 ] I have already pointed this out: Today, there is general agreement only on mathematical truths; for these are the most trivial of all. No one can say that they discover mathematical truths through external experience; rather, they are discovered by internal insight. If one wishes to show that the three angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees, one does so by drawing a parallel line through the vertex to the base and arranging the three angles in a fan shape; then angle a = d, b = e, and c is equal to itself; and thus the three angles are equal to a straight line segment, equal to 180 degrees. Anyone who has once grasped this knows that it must be so once and for all, just as one knows, once one has grasped it, that three times three is nine; and I do not believe that this could be discovered by induction.

[ 22 ] These most trivial of all truths—the arithmetic and geometric ones—were discovered within, and yet people do not argue about them. There is absolute agreement on this, because people today have reached the point where they can understand these things. There is no consensus only as long as pure truth is clouded by passions, by sympathy and antipathy. A time will come—even if it is still very far off—when humanity will be increasingly gripped by the recognition of the inner world of truth. Then, despite all individuality—and even though each person will find the truth within themselves—consensus will prevail. If mathematical truths were not so readily apparent today, passions would still stand in the way of their acceptance in many respects. If greed had its way, perhaps many a housewife would still vote that two times two equals five, not four. These things are simply so transparent, so simple, that they can no longer be clouded by sympathy and antipathy. Ever larger spheres will be encompassed by this form of truth, and ever more peace will be able to come to humanity as a result, if truth is grasped in this way. Humanity has outgrown the group soul, and is increasingly emancipating itself from it. If we consider the groups rather than the souls, we have family ties, tribal and national ties, and finally, related human races. Each race corresponds to a group soul. All these group connections of pre-humanity are ones from which humanity is growing out of, and the more we progress, the more the concept of race loses its significance.

[ 23 ] Today we stand at a turning point, and little by little, the concept of race will disappear entirely, to be replaced by something entirely different. Those who once again grasp the spiritual truth, as it has been characterized, will be brought together through free will. These are the conditions of the future. The social structures of earlier times were such that a person was born into them—into their people, into their race. Later, we will live in communities that people create themselves by grouping together according to certain principles, forming communities while fully preserving their freedom and individuality. Understanding this is essential for a proper understanding of an institution such as the Theosophical Society. The Theosophical Society is intended to be a first example of such a voluntary association, although we acknowledge that we have not yet reached that stage today. An attempt should be made to create such a community in which people come together regardless of their former group-soul nature, and there will be many such communities in the future. Then we will no longer speak of racial communities, but rather of communities formed on the basis of intellectual, ethical, and moral criteria.

[ 24 ] When people voluntarily allow their feelings to converge, something is formed that goes beyond the merely emancipated human being. The emancipated human being has his or her individual soul; once attained, it is never lost again. But by coming together in voluntary associations, people group themselves around focal points. The feelings that thus converge on a focal point now in turn prompt beings to act as a kind of group soul—but in a completely different sense than the ancient group souls. All earlier group souls were beings that made human beings unfree. These new beings, however, are compatible with complete freedom and the preservation of human individuality. Indeed, we may say that, in a certain sense, they derive their existence from human unity; and it will be up to the souls of human beings themselves whether they give as many of these higher souls as possible the opportunity to descend to humanity, or whether they do not. The more humans become fragmented, the fewer exalted souls will descend into the realm of humanity. The more connections are formed, and the more a sense of community develops alongside complete freedom, the more exalted entities will descend to humanity, and the faster the Earth plane will become spiritualized.

[ 25 ] Thus we see that if human beings are to gain any understanding at all of future development, they must thoroughly understand the nature of group soulhood; otherwise, if their individual souls remain emancipated on Earth for too long, they may fail to connect with the group, miss the connection, and thereby become a kind of elemental being themselves; and these elemental beings, which arise from human beings, would be of a very harmful kind. While the elemental beings that arose from earlier kingdoms are very useful to our natural order, human elemental beings will lack this quality entirely.

[ 26 ] We have pointed out that such isolated entities arise in certain border regions, and they also arise at the boundary, at the transition from group soulhood to free group associations through aesthetic, moral, and intellectual connections. Wherever such connections arise, such group entities are present.

[ 27 ] If you could observe certain places—for example, springs where there is rock at the bottom and moss grows over it, forming a sort of wall between the plant and the rock, and then the water seeps over it—which is also necessary—you would see that what are called nymphs and undines are something very real; this manifests itself there with particular intensity. And where metals and the rest of the earth come into contact, there are whole clusters of those beings called gnomes. A fourth type are the salamanders. They are, so to speak, the youngest generation in the lineage of all these elemental beings; yet they are nevertheless abundant. For the most part, they are beings who owe their existence to a process of separation from animal group souls. Such beings also seek opportunities to find nourishment, and they find it especially where the human realm enters into relationships with the animal realm that are sometimes not entirely normal, but rather abnormal. Anyone familiar with such matters knows that elemental beings—and quite benign ones at that—develop through the familial bond between a rider and his horse. In particular, the emotional bonds certain people form with groups of animals give rise to feelings, thoughts, and soul impulses that provide good nourishment for such salamander-like elemental beings. This can be observed particularly in the coexistence of the shepherd with his flock of sheep—and indeed among all herders who live alongside their animals. In the feelings that develop through this intimacy between human and animal, certain salamander-like elemental beings find their nourishment and dwell wherever such conditions exist. These are also quite intelligent beings who possess a thoroughly natural wisdom. Through these feelings, the shepherd develops abilities that allow these elemental beings to whisper to him what they know; and many of the recipes that stem from such sources have their origin in what has just been explained. It is entirely possible that a person may find themselves in circumstances where they are surrounded by subtle spiritual beings who endow them with a knowledge that our modern-day intellectuals cannot even begin to imagine. All these things have their good reason and can certainly be observed through the methods that occult wisdom can teach.

[ 28 ] Finally, I would like to point out another phenomenon that can show you how certain things—for which we today have only a very abstract explanation—in many ways stem from a deeper wisdom. I mentioned earlier that those ancient people of the Atlantean era, when they left their bodies at night, lived among those spiritual beings whom they called the gods. These people were on the path toward immersing themselves in physical embodiment. Those beings, however, whom they worshiped as gods—for example, Zeus and Wotan—follow a different course of development. They do not descend into physical bodies; they do not touch the physical world. But even there, certain transitions occur. After all, human beings came into being through the hardening of their entire soul and spirit into their physical body. In the case of human beings, the entire group souls have descended onto the physical plane, and the human physical body has become an imprint of the group soul. Let us suppose that a being like Zeus—who certainly corresponds to a reality—has, so to speak, only touched the physical plane a little, only extended into it a little. It is as if you were to dip a ball into water so that it is just barely moistened at the bottom. In the same way, certain beings in the Atlantean era were only touched by the physical world. The physical eyes do not see what remains as spiritual, as astral-etheric. Only the small part of it that extends into the physical is seen. The symbolism in mythology arose from such perceptions. If Zeus has the eagle as his symbol, it stems from the fact that his eagle-like nature is the small tip where a being of the higher world touched the physical world. A large part of the bird world consists of severed parts of such evolving beings from the supersensible world. And just as with the ravens of Wotan or the eagle of Zeus, so it is wherever symbolism is rooted in occult facts. Much will become clearer to you if you consider the beings, their workings, and the development of the group souls in this way across various fields.

[ 29 ] I wanted to add this today to our previous remarks in order to establish a comprehensive foundation for such considerations.