The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Twelfth Lecture

[ 1 ] These reflections, which we have now been engaging in over the course of several branch meetings, are intended to supplement or expand upon various topics that have occupied us throughout the winter. It may therefore go without saying that these reflections include the occasional remark that takes on an aphoristic quality. After all, our aim in these reflections is to supplement and round out this or that thought, this or that idea that has been stirred within us.

[ 2 ] In our recent reflections, we have focused primarily on the presence of all manner of spiritual beings that exist, so to speak, between the sensory-physical realms of nature that surround us. In particular, in our last reflection we saw how, where beings from different realms of nature come into contact—where the plant clings to the stone as it does to a spring, where the ordinary stone clings to the metal as it does underground in numerous cases, where there is a communion such as that between the bee and the flower— —it is there that forces are developed everywhere which draw into earthly existence various types of beings that we have called elemental beings. And in connection with these elemental beings, we have been concerned with the fact we called the severing of certain beings from their greater context. We have seen that such elemental beings—which in spiritual science are referred to, for example, by the name “salamander”—originate in part from severed portions of animal group souls that have, so to speak, ventured too far into our physical world, and which then could no longer find their way back to reunite with the group soul of that animal after the dissolution of its physical body. For we know that in the regular course of life, the beings of our Earth—the beings of the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom—possess their own—if we may call them that—“I-souls”; in essence, they possess I-souls just like human beings, differing from the human I-soul only in that the I-souls of these other beings reside in other worlds. We know that human beings are the beings in our evolutionary cycle who possess an individual “I” here on the physical plane, at least during waking hours. We also know that the beings we call animals are in such a position that, roughly speaking, animals of the same kind have a group soul or a group “I,” and that these group “I’s” are in the so-called astral world, furthermore, that the beings we call plants possess only a dreamless, sleeping consciousness in relation to the physical world here, but that they have group-I’s dwelling in the lower regions of the Devachanic world, and that, finally, stones—the minerals—have their group souls in the upper regions of the Devachanic world. A person who moves clairvoyantly through these worlds—the astral and the devachanic worlds—interacts there, so to speak, with the animal souls, which are group souls there, with the plant souls, and with the mineral souls, just as he interacts here in the physical world during waking hours with human souls or human “I’s.”

[ 3 ] Now we must realize that human beings are, in many ways, very complex and multifaceted beings—beings whose complexity we have already discussed at length in our various reflections. But the more we delve into the connection with the great cosmic realities, the more and more complicated human beings will appear to us. To understand that human beings are not the entirely simple beings that a naive perspective might take them to be, we need only consider that at night—from the moment of falling asleep until waking—human beings in the present cycle of evolution are entirely different beings than they are during the day. Lying in bed are their physical body and their etheric body; separated from this physical and etheric body is the “I” with the astral body. Let us consider both—first the physical body and the etheric body. They lie there, and—if we disregard the transitional state of dream-filled sleep—they possess what we call a contentless, perceptionless, and dreamless state of sleep consciousness. But that which is separate from the physical and etheric bodies—the “I” with the astral body—also possesses this dreamless sleep consciousness in human beings at their present stage of development. The consciousness that here in the physical world is associated with the spreading vegetative cover is possessed by the sleeping human being both in those parts that remain here in the physical world and in those parts that are in the astral world during sleep. Now, however, we must consider these two separate parts of the sleeping human being a little more closely.

[ 4 ] We know from other considerations that the human being of the present day has come into being slowly and gradually. We know that in an incarnation of our Earth situated in the distant past—which we refer to as the Saturn state—he received the first beginnings of the physical body. We know that during the Earth’s second incarnation, the Sun stage, he acquired the etheric body—or life body—in addition to the physical body; that during the Earth’s third incarnation, the Moon stage, he acquired the astral body; and that on Earth, the planet’s present incarnation, he acquired what we call the “I.” Thus, the human being has developed very slowly and gradually. This physical body, as the human being bears it today, is in fact the oldest and the part of the human being that has undergone the most transformations. It has been transformed four times. The first rudimentary form on ancient Saturn, which humanity received and which has since been perfected three times—once on the Sun, a second time on the Moon, and finally on Earth—is expressed in the sense organs that humans possess today. They were entirely different organs on ancient Saturn; but at that time they were present in their earliest form, and the other human body did not yet exist. We can regard the ancient Saturn as a single being consisting entirely of sense organs, completely covered with them. On the Sun, the etheric body is added. The human physical body is transformed, and the organs we now call glands come into being. At that time, they were still very imperfect, but they were present in their earliest form; the sense organs were becoming more perfect. Then, on the Moon, those organs were added which we today—after the physical body has been transformed a third time through the imprinting of the astral body—call the nervous organs. And finally, the blood system as we know it today develops on our Earth; for this is the expression of the “I,” just as the nervous system is the expression of the astral body, the glandular system is the expression of the etheric body, and the sensory system is the physical expression of the physical body itself.

[ 5 ] In our previous lectures, we have seen that, in the development of the Earth, the blood system was actually the first to emerge. Today, we look at the physical body and ask ourselves: Why does blood flow through the blood vessels in its present form? What does this blood express? — We say: This blood is the expression of the “I.” — In doing so, let us immediately address a possible misunderstanding, namely, that human beings actually misunderstand the modern physical human body. This modern physical human body is, so to speak, only one form that the physical human body can take. It existed on the Moon, on the Sun, on Saturn—but always in a different form. On the Moon, for example, the natural kingdom that we today call the mineral kingdom of the Earth did not yet exist; on the Sun, there was no plant kingdom as we understand it, and on Saturn, no animal kingdom as we understand it; rather, there was merely the human being in his earliest physical form. When we consider this, we must realize that the human body of today is actually not merely a physical body, but a physical-mineral body; that in addition to the laws of the physical world—which is why it is the “physical” body—it has assimilated the laws and substances of the mineral kingdom, which now permeate it. On the Moon, this physical human body had not yet assimilated the laws of the mineral kingdom; if it had been burned at that time, there would have been no mineral ashes. For minerals, in the modern earthly sense, did not yet exist at that time. So let us bear in mind: being physical and being mineral are two entirely different things. The human physical body is physical because it is governed by exactly the same laws as stones; at the same time, the human physical body is mineral because it has become imbued with mineral substances. On Saturn, the first germ of the physical body was present. But there were neither solid bodies nor water nor gases there. On Saturn, there was nothing but heat—only this state of heat. Today’s physicists are unfamiliar with this state of heat because they believe that heat can only occur in gases, water, or solid bodies. But this is a mistake. This human physical body, which has now assimilated the mineral kingdom, was on Saturn a system governed by physical laws. These are physical laws that operate in lines and forms—what you learn as laws in physics. Externally, this physical human body manifested itself on Saturn solely as a being that lived in warmth. Thus, we must clearly distinguish between the mineral aspect and what is actually the physical principle of the human body. These are the physical laws that govern the physical body. For example, it is part of the physical principle that our ear and our eye are shaped in such a way that they perceive sound and light in a very specific manner. The mineral aspect of the ear and the eye consists of those substances that are imbued with this framework of physical laws.

[ 6 ] Now that we have clarified this and focused our attention specifically on how the sense organs, glands, nerves, and blood are expressions of the fourfold human being, let us return to our consideration of the sleeping human being. In bed, the sleeping human being’s physical body and etheric body lie within, while the astral body and the “I” are outside. But let us now consider that the astral body is the principle of the nervous system and the “I” is the principle of the circulatory system. Thus, during the night, the astral body has left behind in the physical body that of which it is, so to speak, the cause—namely, the nervous system. For it was only when the astral body integrated itself into the human being on the Moon that the nervous system could come into being. The astral body thus callously abandons that which belongs to it, that which it is actually meant to care for within the human being; and in the same way, the “I” abandons that which it has brought into being. The principles of the circulatory system and the nervous system are outside the sleeping physical body and the sleeping etheric body. They are now entirely on their own. But no material or physical entity can ever exist in the form in which it was brought into being by a spiritual principle without that spiritual principle. That is completely out of the question. A nervous system can never function without astral beings acting upon it, nor can a circulatory system function without “I”-beings acting upon it. Thus, every night you all leave your nervous system and circulatory system behind in your “I” and astral body and entrust them to other beings of an astral nature. Beings of the same nature as your I now, so to speak, enter your organism. Every night, in fact, the human organism is occupied by such beings who are suited to sustain it. The physical body and etheric body of the person lying in bed are then simultaneously permeated by these astral and I-beings, who are actually within the physical body. We could call them intruders, but that is not always accurate. In many cases, we should call them guardian spirits; for they are the preservers of that which the human being so carelessly leaves behind at night.

[ 7 ] Now, it is not so bad that a person leaves their bodies every night. I have already told you that the astral body and the “I” are constantly active during the night. They remove from the physical body the wear and tear accumulated during the day—what we broadly refer to as fatigue. A person is refreshed and rested in the morning because, during the night, their astral body and their “I” have removed the fatigue that had accumulated during the day as a result of the impressions of daily life. This is a fact observable through clairvoyance: the activity of the astral body, perceptible throughout the night, in removing the substances that cause fatigue. From the outside in, the “I” and the astral body work on the physical body and the etheric body. However, in the present cycle of their development, human beings have not yet reached the stage where they can carry out such activity entirely on their own. They can perform it only under the guidance of other, higher beings. Thus, every night, so to speak, the human being is received as if into the bosom of higher beings, who bestow upon him the ability to work properly on his physical and etheric bodies; and these are at the same time the very beings—which is why we must not call them intruders—who, during the night, provide spiritual nourishment to his blood and nervous systems in the proper manner.

[ 8 ] As long as no abnormalities occur, the interaction of spiritual beings with human beings during the night is perfectly normal. But such irregularities can very well occur, and here we come to a chapter of spiritual science that is extraordinarily important for practical human soul life—and one that one would hope would not only be known theoretically by the widest possible audience, but would also, to the greatest extent possible, serve as the foundation for certain activities of human soul life. People usually do not realize that the facts of soul life have a far-reaching, far-reaching effect. In certain contexts, I have already drawn your attention to how the facts of soul life find their proper explanation only when viewed in the light of spiritual science. We all know the profound meaning of the saying: From the perspective of spiritual science, a lie is a kind of murder. — And I have told you that, in fact, a kind of explosion takes place in the astral world when a person tells a lie—in a certain sense, even when they merely think it—that something occurs in the spiritual world when a person lies, which has a far more devastating effect on the spiritual world than any misfortune in the physical world. But such things, which are also mentioned at a certain level of spiritual scientific inquiry and characterized to the extent that is already possible there, become increasingly clear and well-founded as one progresses in spiritual scientific knowledge.

[ 9 ] Today we will learn about another effect of lying and slander, although the words “lying” and “slander” are not meant here in the crude sense in which they are usually used. But even when a person, in that more subtle sense—for example, out of convention or for all sorts of social or partisan considerations—tints this or that aspect of the truth, we are dealing with a lie in the spiritual-scientific sense. In many cases, a person’s entire life is permeated—if not by lies, then by manifestations colored by falsehood. The materialistically enlightened person may, at most, acknowledge that it has an effect on his physical body when someone strikes him on the skull with an axe. At most, he also recognizes that it has an effect on his physical body when his head is run over by a train, or when he develops an ulcer on any part of his body, or even when germs invade it. In such cases, the enlightened person will find it understandable that effects are exerted upon the physical body. The fact that human beings, as spiritually constituted beings, are a unity—that what takes place in the higher aspects of their physical nature, in the astral body and in the “I,” must certainly be regarded as extending its effects all the way down to the physical part of their physical nature—is usually not considered at all. For example, it is not considered that uttering lies and untruths—indeed, even untruthful behavior in one’s life circumstances—has real effects on the human physical body. Through clairvoyance, we can observe the following: If a person, let us say, has told a lie during the day, the effect of that lie remains within the physical body and can be seen by clairvoyant perception while the person is asleep. Now let us suppose that a person is a habitual liar, accumulating lies. Then they have many such effects in their physical body. All of this hardens in a certain way during the night, and then something very significant happens. These inclusions, these hardened areas in the physical body, are very incompatible with those beings who must take possession of the physical body at night—beings who, as we have seen, perform from other worlds those functions in the physical body that the astral body and the “I” perform during the day. The consequence of this is that, in the course of life, through such a body—one might say, a body permeated by lies—parts of those beings that settle within the human being during the night are cut off. Here again we have processes of severance. These lead to the fact that, when a person dies, their physical body does not merely follow the paths it would take in the regular course of development, but that certain entities remain behind—entities that have been generated, so to speak, by the effects of lying and slander within the physical body and are severed from the spiritual world. Such entities, cut off in this roundabout way, now also flit about in our world. They belong to the class of entities we call “phantoms.” In them we find a certain group of elemental beings related to our physical body—initially invisible to the physical eye—that multiply through lies and slander. In fact, lies and slander populate our earthly realm with such phantoms. In this way, we come to know a new class of elemental beings.

[ 10 ] However, it is not only lies and slander present in the soul, but also other aspects of the soul’s life that exert an influence on the human physical body. It is precisely lies and slander that affect the physical body in such a way that they cause it to become a vessel for phantoms. Other factors, in turn, affect the etheric body in a similar way. Do not be astonished by such manifestations of soul life; in spiritual life, one must be able to view things with complete composure. Examples of such factors that have a harmful effect on the etheric body include bad laws or poor social institutions within any community. Everything that leads to discord, for example—any negative social structures that exist in human interactions—exerts an influence through the atmosphere it creates in human coexistence, so that the effect extends all the way into the etheric body. And what accumulates in the etheric body as a result of such soul-related factors, in turn, creates constrictions from these spiritually acting entities that are now also present in our surroundings. They are called “spectres”; in German, one would say “ghosts.” We see these entities, which exist in the etheric world and in the world of life, emerging from human life. Thus, some among us may walk about, and their physical body—to those who are spiritually capable of perceiving these things—is, so to speak, riddled with phantoms, their etheric body riddled with spectres or ghosts; and all of this, so to speak, generally scatters and populates the world after a person’s death or some time thereafter.

[ 11 ] Thus we see how subtly the spiritual events of our lives—such as lies, slander, and poor social institutions—continue, and how they deposit their creations spiritually among us here on our Earth. Now, however, you can also understand that while in normal human daily life the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I belong together—and, so to speak, the physical body and the etheric body must even allow other beings to penetrate them or let them do something to them—the astral body and the I are not in the normal state of their present cycle. However, they are in a somewhat different situation compared to the physical body and the etheric body. While a person sleeps, the physical body and the etheric body possess the same consciousness that plants have. But plants, in turn, have their “I” up in Devachan. Therefore, the physical body and etheric body of the sleeping human must also be cared for by such beings who unfold their consciousness from Devachan. Now, although the astral body and the “I” of the human are one world higher, the human also sleeps dreamlessly, just like plants. The fact that plants have only a physical body and an etheric body, whereas a human being, in the sleeping state, still possesses an astral body and a “I,” makes no difference with regard to the nature of plants. Although the human being has ascended into the spiritual world, into the astral world, he has not yet ascended so far with his “I” that it would not be justified for him to sleep. The consequence of this is that even in the sleeping human being, beings must penetrate the astral body. And so it is: influences from the Devachanic world continually penetrate the human astral body. These influences need not be abnormal at all; they can be influences from what we call the human being’s higher Self. For the human being gradually ascends into the Devachanic world by moving ever more toward spiritualization; and what is being prepared there already influences him today during the state of sleep.

[ 12 ] But these normal influences are not the only ones at work. That would only be the case if people fully understood among themselves what it means to value and respect the freedom of one another’s souls. Yet humanity today is still very far from that. Just think for a moment how the soul of today still, for the most part, seeks to dominate its fellow souls, how it cannot bear it when another soul thinks or loves differently, how one soul seeks to dominate the other and exert influence over it. In everything that acts from soul to soul in our world—from the unjustified advice that is given to all those means people employ to subdue souls—in everything that does not allow one free soul to stand before another free soul, but instead, even if only in the slightest way, employs coercive means of persuasion, means of coercion through persuasion are employed—where the aim is not merely to awaken what already slumbers in the other soul—everywhere there forces are at work from human soul to human soul that in turn influence these souls in such a way that this is expressed at night in the astral body. The astral body becomes imbued with inclusions, and through this, beings from other worlds are cut off, who now in turn swarm through our world as elemental beings. These beings belong to the class of “demons.” They are present in our world solely because intolerance of thought and the violation of thought have been practiced in it in the most varied ways. The host of these demons has entered our world in this way.

[ 13 ] Today, once again, we have come to know entities that exist just as truly as the things we perceive through our physical senses, and that certainly exert their influence on human life. Humanity, for example, would have progressed quite differently if people did not, through intolerance, create these demons that pervade our world and constantly exert their influence on human beings. They are, at the same time, the spirits of prejudice. Thus, one comes to understand life in its subtleties by becoming acquainted with these interconnections between the spiritual world in the higher sense and our human world. All these beings, as I said, are there, and they swarm through the world in which we live.

[ 14 ] Now let us recall something else that has already been mentioned. We have pointed out that among the people of the last third of the Atlantean era—the people who lived before the Atlantean Flood—the relationship between the human etheric body and the physical body was quite different from what it had been in earlier times. Today, in the human head, the physical and etheric parts of the head essentially coincide. This was different in ancient Atlantis. There, the etheric part of the head protruded significantly, particularly in the forehead region. Now we have a central point in both the etheric body of the head and the physical body of the head, roughly between the eyebrows. These two points coincided during the last third of the Atlantean era and now coincide. As a result, human beings have become capable of saying “I” to themselves and of perceiving themselves as independent individuals. Thus, the etheric body of the head and the physical body of the head have merged. This happened so that human beings could become the sensory beings they are within our physical world, so that they might enrich their inner life through what they take in via the impressions of the physical senses—through smell, taste, sight, and so on. All of this is incorporated into their inner being so that they may one day possess it and use it for the further development of the entire cosmos. This acquisition could not be achieved in any other way. That is why we have always said that we must not view spiritual science in an ascetic sense, not as an escape from the physical world; rather, everything that happens here is drawn from the physical world, and it would be lost to the spiritual world if it were not gathered here.

[ 15 ] But now humanity is drawing ever closer to a new state. In the post-Atlantean era, we have passed through various cultural epochs: the ancient Indian, the ancient Persian, then the one we have designated as the Babylonian-Assyrian-Chaldean-Egyptian epoch, then the Greek-Latin epoch, and we are now in the fifth cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean era. Ours will be succeeded by a sixth and a seventh cultural epoch. While, in the course of this period up to the present day, the structure of the etheric body and the physical body has become increasingly solidified, growing ever more internally firm and bound together, humanity is moving toward a future period in which the etheric body will gradually loosen again and become independent. The path is being retraced. There are already people today who have much looser etheric bodies than others. This loosening of the etheric body is only right for a person if, through the various incarnations during those cultural epochs we have spoken of, they have absorbed so much within themselves that their etheric body, when it emerges again, takes with it true fruits from the physical-sensory earthly world, fruits that are suitable to be incorporated into the etheric body, which is becoming ever more independent. The more spiritual the ideas a person finds here within the physical world, the more they take with them into their etheric body. Everything a person absorbs in our present earthly existence in the way of utilitarian ideas, of mechanical and industrial concepts that serve only external necessities, only external life, is unsuitable to be incorporated into the etheric body. But everything they take in—concepts of the artistic, the beautiful, and the religious—and everything can be immersed in the sphere of wisdom, art, and religion—all of this endows their etheric body with the ability and potential to organize itself independently. Because this can be foreseen, it has often been emphasized here that a spiritual-scientific worldview must send its effects and impulses into practical life, and that spiritual science must never remain a mere form of entertainment for tea parties or an intellectual pursuit detached from ordinary life, but must instead work its way into our entire cultural life. Once people come to understand the ideas of spiritual science, they will once again understand how everything that fills our time must be permeated by spiritual principles. Some minds, such as Richard Wagner, foresaw such a permeation with spiritual principles in certain fields. One day people will understand how to build a train station so that it radiates wisdom just as a temple does, provided it is truly and expressively adapted to what lives within it. There is still much to be done in this regard. These impulses must take effect, and they will take effect as the ideas of spiritual science are understood more and more. I still vividly remember how, about twenty-five years ago, during a speech at the university rectorate, a prominent architect spoke about architectural style and uttered this wonderful sentence: “Architectural styles are not invented; architectural styles grow out of spiritual life!” — And at the same time, he demonstrated why our age, even when it revives architectural styles, revives only old ones and is incapable of finding a new architectural style, because it lacks an inner spiritual life as such. When the world once again gives rise to spiritual life, then everything will be possible. Then we will experience that, in everything that looks upon us, the human soul shines out toward us, just as in a medieval city the spirit expressed itself in every door lock and every key. Only then is theosophy understood, when it meets us everywhere in this way, crystallized in its forms. But then, too, one human being will live with another as spirit lives with spirit. But then, too, the human being will increasingly prepare something for himself that he will take with him when he ascends once more into the spiritual world, when his etheric body becomes independent. Thus must human beings immerse themselves in the spiritual world if evolution is to proceed in the appropriate manner.

[ 16 ] Nothing symbolizes the interpenetration of the “I” with the Spirit as beautifully as the account of the miracle of Pentecost. How prophetically this points—if you consider it—to that permeation and interpenetration of the world with spiritual life through the descent of the “tongues of fire.” Everything must be spiritually revitalized. Even that abstract, conceptual, and intellectual relationship that people have to the upcoming feast must become concrete and alive once more. Let us try, with a thought such as might arise from today’s reflection, to engage our soul with this very idea during the time we call the season of Pentecost. Then such a festival—which, after all, was instituted for spiritual reasons—will once again hold living significance for human beings when their etheric body matures for spiritual creation. But if a person does not receive the Spirit of Pentecost, then the etheric body emerges from the physical body and, above all, is not strong enough to overcome what has been created before—those worlds of spectres, phantoms, and demons that the world creates as its byproducts. But how evolution is advanced by the spirit—and what we can say prophetically about this—will be the subject of our next reflection.