The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] If we wish to keep the relationships between the world, the Earth, and humankind in mind during the coming debates, then it will be necessary for us to reflect today on certain things that provide us with a kind of foundation for this. We must bear in mind that if we rely solely on our external senses and the intellect bound to those senses, we can, in essence, comprehend very little. This applies equally to the Earth and to human beings, and to an even greater extent to the universe. We must be clear that a large part of what is most essential remains completely hidden from the external senses as well as from external intellectual observation. Therefore, let us first point out some of what exists in secret among the beings that surround us. In doing so, we will have to mention various things that are already familiar to many of you, but in order to grasp the entire, vast, actual context, it is necessary that we first bring all these things to mind once more. Above all, we must first take a look around the world-body that we currently inhabit and that will be the focus of our consideration: our Earth.

[ 2 ] Yesterday we considered a phase of Earth’s evolution in the context of Earth’s overall evolution; we saw how, in the course of this evolution, beings have been active in ever-changing ways, from the time when the Earth and the Sun still formed a single body, right up to our own time. And we have seen how, in the post-Atlantean era, human beings repeat in their knowledge and religious consciousness everything that the entire Earth has gone through in the course of its evolution. But now we must delve ever deeper into this Earth. In the visible world, as far as our Earth is concerned, we are first and foremost surrounded by the totality of what we call the four kingdoms of nature: the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and the human kingdom. But the human being is not merely the material-physical being of which our external senses give us knowledge, which the intellect of external science describes and explains to us; rather, the human being is a complex entity composed of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. We know all this, of course.

[ 3 ] If we now let our gaze wander over the other beings of the earthly realms, we must first and foremost be aware that these terms—physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I—are by no means meaningless for these other beings; on the contrary, they have their own significant meaning. If we remain within the physical realm, we can, at first, attribute an “I” entity only to human beings among all earthly beings. Here in this physical world, only human beings possess a self-conscious “I.” With animals, the situation is quite different; animals do not have their “I” in the physical world in the same way as human beings do. When we consider the animal in its distinction from human beings, we must first say: While every human being, as a single individual enclosed within their own skin, has their own “I,” the individual animal does not have its own “I”; rather, it is the case that certain groups of animals of the same kind always share a single “I.” For example, all lions or all bears together share a single “I,” and we therefore call such an “I” in the animal world a “group-I.” The human “I” is present in the physical world; even though we cannot see it with our eyes, it is present in every human being, so to speak, within their skin. This is not the case with animals; the “group-I” is not present in the physical world. To give you an idea of such a “group-I,” imagine that there is a wall in front of me with ten holes in it. I extend my ten fingers through the holes and move them. Now you can see my ten fingers, but not me, and you will readily conclude that these fingers do not move on their own, but that there must be something hidden causing the movement; in other words: you suspect a being that belongs to the ten fingers. This analogy leads us to the group aspect, to the soul-like quality in animals. The many lions here on the physical plane are beings that, in a certain sense, also conceal something from us. Just as the central being behind the wall is hidden from the ten fingers, so too is something hidden here that is common to all lions—precisely because it does not exist at all in the physical world. The same “I”-being that exists in humans in the physical world is located in the astral world in the case of animals: the animal has its group “I” in the astral world. If we wish to visualize schematically the animal’s relationship to its “I,” we must imagine a boundary between the physical and astral worlds; in humans, the “I” is down in the physical world, whereas in animals, only the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body are in the physical world. The fourth member, the “I,” is not in the physical world as it is in humans. From each individual animal, an extension reaches into the astral world, and there these extensions converge to form the garment, the shell, for the animal group “I”—let us say, for the lion “I.” This group “I” lives as an individual personality on the astral plane, just as the human individual “I” does here on the physical plane. To put it schematically: When the clairvoyant enters the astral plane, he encounters there the animal “I’s” as individual entities that extend their limbs into the physical world. However, you must not, of course, imagine this merely schematically, but must accustom yourselves to envisioning it in its actual reality. You must be clear that we do not have to go to another region to enter the astral world, for this astral world permeates our physical world; it is simply a matter of being able to look into it with our astral senses open.

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[ 4 ] Now let us ask: How does the clairvoyant perceive the group-I of animals? — The clairvoyant perceives the group-I of one of the higher animal genera, for example, by seeing something like a luminous strip running along the animal’s spine. Indeed, our atmosphere is permeated not only by the material currents we are familiar with, but also, in all directions, by actual currents of an astral nature. When the clairvoyant’s spiritual eye is open, he sees our Earth permeated by many kinds of currents, and in such currents he learns to recognize the group-selves of the animals.

[ 5 ] The second question that arises is: Do even the lower beings, such as plants, possess something of a “self”? — Yes, they, too, have a “self.” When the clairvoyant examines a plant, he finds the following: What exists in the physical world is nothing other than a combination of the physical and etheric bodies. Let us imagine that here we have the surface of the earth (it is drawn); here the root of a plant, the stem, the leaves, and the flower. What grows there in the physical world does not, like a human being, have a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and a “I,” but only a physical body and an etheric body. In this world, the animal still has its astral body, but the plant does not. However, you must not conclude from this that what fills you as the astral and is also active in the animal is not active in the plant. To the open eye of the clairvoyant, the plant is surrounded by a glow and a radiance—and is primarily surrounded by astral substances. And it is these very substances that contribute to the formation of the flower. Thus, while the plant grows from leaf to leaf under the influence of the etheric body, it is completed at the top in the flower by being enveloped in astral substance.

[ 6 ] The clairvoyant sees every plant that grows upward as being surrounded by this astral substance. But there is something else present in this plant—the “I.” If we wish to grasp the plant’s “I,” we must seek it at the center of the Earth. That is where all plants have their “I”; this is an important and essential truth. So while we see the “I”s of animals circling the Earth, in order to perceive the plant’s “I,” we must direct our gaze toward the center of the Earth. And indeed, when the clairvoyant gaze penetrates to such a view of the plant, then the Earth—which otherwise appears to human beings merely as a material formation—expands into an organism that has its “I” at its center; and this “I” consists of all the plant “I’s” combined. The Earth is animated by an “I,” and just as your head bears hair—which thus grows out of your being—so do the plants grow out of the being of the Earth and belong to the entire Earth organism. And when you pull a plant out of the ground by its roots, it causes pain to the entire Earth; the plant soul feels pain. That is a fact. On the other hand, you must not believe that it hurts the Earth when, for example, you pick a flower; in that case, the opposite occurs. When, for example, you see in the fall how the reaper cuts through the stalks of grain, the clairvoyant eye sees whole streams of bliss sweeping across the Earth. You must not raise any moral objections to this. You might say, for example: Is it a lesser sin for a child to tear off all kinds of plants completely needlessly than for someone to transplant a plant carefully and with good intentions? — The facts remain the same. If you uproot a plant, it hurts the earth; if you cut a plant down, it does the earth good. For the earth gladly gives up what it bears on the surface, and when animals walk across the ground and graze on the plants, it feels a sense of well-being, similar to what a cow feels when her calf suckles at her udder. This is certainly an occult fact. That which grows out of the earth as a plant and is enveloped from above by the astral body is, for the earth, the same as the milk given by animal beings. These are not mere comparisons, but real facts. However, anyone who can look into the astral world with clairvoyant vision still sees nothing of the plant’s “I”; this requires a higher form of clairvoyance capable of looking into the Devachanic world. We must therefore say that the group-I’s of animals are in the astral world, while the plant’s “I” is located in the Devachanic world.

[ 7 ] And now the question naturally arises: What about the mineral world? What about so-called “dead rock”? Does it, too, have something like a “self” or higher aspects? — When we look at a stone, we find that in this world it has only a physical body. The mineral’s etheric body surrounds the mineral and envelops it on all sides. If, for example, you take a rock crystal, you must imagine that its entire form is hollow, like an ethereal cavity, and that the ethereal begins only where the physical substance ends; just as the plant is enveloped from above by the astral, so the mineral is surrounded on all sides by the ethereal. This etheric is at home in the astral world; take note: here we have an etheric that is at home in the astral world. Things are actually more complicated than one usually thinks. It is not the case that everything in the astral world is astral; that is just as little the case as it is that everything in the physical world is physical. For example, on the physical plane, in the physical world, you have the etheric body, the astral body, and even the human “I.” In the same way, the clairvoyant sees the etheric body of the mineral in the astral world.

[ 8 ] So where is the astral body of the mineral?

[ 9 ] It looks like rays of a very peculiar shape. Imagine such rays piercing into the etheric body like spikes; imagine such formations of light that grow wider and wider, and then, so to speak, pierce into the mineral’s etheric body. Thus you have astral ray formations radiating from every mineral. You will find no end to them, for these formations radiate out into the infinite expanse of space. So when you look at a rock crystal, you first see the space that is physically filled; clairvoyantly, you see the physical form surrounded by the light of the etheric body, and then, as if bored into it, all manner of ray formations that extend infinitely outward in all directions into space. Here, your gaze is expanded from every point in space—which is filled with some mineral substance—out into infinity. No point in space exists apart from the universe. It is as if every single entity in our world were suspended by thousands upon thousands of spiritual threads of light—threads of light that extend out into infinite space—and you can imagine how, as this expands more and more, all these lights must flow into one another. And indeed, when you observe a mineral clairvoyantly, this is the sight that presents itself to you: You see the physical body surrounded by the luminous forms of the etheric body; then you see rays expanding farther and farther out into the cosmos; you see them disappearing as if into a hollow sphere; from every mineral you can imagine the center of such a hollow sphere, and these are present everywhere, throughout the entire world. Such hollow spheres are nested within one another, and if we imagine that our clairvoyant faculty rises higher and higher until it reaches the point where these rays converge, we arrive at the place where the “I’s” of the minerals shine toward us from all sides of the cosmos. These “I’s” reveal themselves to the clairvoyant faculty when it enters the higher regions of the Devachanic plane. While the rays themselves—and thus the astral body as well—are in the lower regions, the “I” is in the highest Devachanic world.

[ 10 ] So we now have an overview of the various kingdoms. The human “I” is on the physical plane, the animal “I” on the astral plane, the plant “I” on the lower levels of the Devachanic world, and the mineral “I” on the highest Devachanic levels.

[ 11 ] In a certain sense, therefore, the minerals here on Earth are in the opposite situation to that of human beings. Human beings have their “I” inside them, enclosed within their skin; each human being, on their own, is a center—a human center. Plants form yet another center; together, they form an Earth center, and the minerals, in their “I,” form the circumference of our world sphere. Therefore, the human “I” is the center wherever a human being stands; the mineral “I” is everywhere on the circumference—exactly the opposite of what is true for human beings. And now you will find it understandable when I say that the mineral, as a soul, is in a completely different situation than, for example, the human or animal soul. If you shatter a mineral, it does not feel pain, but rather, on the contrary, pleasure and delight, and whole streams of delight flow from a quarry when the rock is shattered and split apart. On the other hand, it would cause immense pain if you were to try to put all the shattered pieces, all the fragments, back together again. You can observe this in another process. Imagine a glass of warm water; you throw a piece of salt into it. As the salt dissolves, not only does matter dissolve, but a sense of well-being fills the warm water—sensual pleasure in the tearing apart of the mineral particles as they dissolve. But if you now cool the water so that the salt recrystallizes, then this process is associated with a sensation of pain. The Initiates have always known such things, and they have always told people about them. People simply need to learn to understand this. One of the great initiates has just spoken significantly on this very subject. Let us imagine what it was like in the early days of Earth’s formation. Today we walk upon solid ground; but that was not always the case. If we trace the Earth’s development back, we find that it became increasingly softer, eventually liquid, and even vaporous. Everything that is solid and mineral today crystallized out of the once-liquid Earth. In order for human beings to walk upon this Earth, what was soft and liquid had to solidify. For human existence to be possible, the Earth, in its mineral nature, had to endure infinite suffering, for infinite suffering was linked to this solidification of the Earth’s mass. That is why Paul says, referring to this fact: “All creation groans in labor pains, waiting to be adopted as children.” That is to say, the earth had to solidify through pain, and the mineral foundation had to form, so that human beings could be accepted as children of God,

[ 12 ] The writings that originate from true initiates are such that a person need not lose respect for them in the least once he truly comes to know them; every line of the inspired biblical text will fill him with deep awe when he recognizes its meaning through spiritual wisdom. In a statement such as, “All creation groans in labor pains,” the secrets of the universe lie hidden. However, such truths will only bear fruit for humanity again once they have penetrated the heart. They must not be grasped merely in the abstract, through the intellect, but must be internalized, penetrating into true knowledge. Let us consider once more the plant, how the physical body grows outward, enveloped above by the astral body, with its “I” at the center of the earth. Let me once again point out the essence of the matter. What, then, does this astral body, which envelops the flower from the outside, actually do? It truly performs a function that is significant in the life of the plant, and we will understand this if we look a little deeper into the spiritual structure of our earthly existence. We saw yesterday that there was a time when the Earth and the Sun still formed a single body. Human beings already existed back then, albeit under conditions quite different from those of today; they possessed a dim, clairvoyant consciousness; their organism was such that they could live within this Earth-Sun mass. Today, they are organized in such a way that when a sunbeam reaches them and enters their eye, they then see that sunbeam. That is to say, he sees the sunbeam approaching him from the outside, or he sees through the sunbeam. But it was not like that when human beings were still with the Earth in the Sun. Then they saw the sunbeam, so to speak, from within; they saw the soul forces that permeated the sunbeam—and do you know what these soul forces were? The sunbeam is permeated by the same force that we have in our own astral body. Physical light is merely the outer body of the astral light that radiates from the sun, and in truth, what glows around the plant body up there is intimately connected, on an astral level, with the astral forces emanating from the sun. You have a desire, a will, because you have an astral body. Here is desire, will, feeling—what washes over the plant’s blossom above. What does that which washes over the blossom want? It wants to draw in and absorb the soul of the sunbeam—and with the soul, the purest essence, the “I”—and it is the continuation of the sunbeam that passes through the plant to the center of the Earth. In this activity of the spiritual content of the sunbeam, which passes through the plant to the center of the Earth, the activity of the plant’s “I” is expressed. Thus, spirit, plant, and sun work together. Indeed, the spiritual forces contained in the sun are continually channeled to the earth—and through what? Through those astral bodies that surround the plant’s blossom, which yearn for the soul of the sunbeam, thirstily absorb it, and channel it downward through their bodies into the earth. What takes place externally in the physical world through the influence of the sun’s rays is only one side of the story; the other side, however, is what works soulfully within the plant and what yearns eagerly for the soul of the light that flows toward the Earth in the sun’s rays.

[ 13 ] And now you will understand how these things can become a reality. Imagine a person in the distant future who feels, toward every single plant, what has just been said about the plants’ longing to absorb the soul of the sun. This person, on a higher, spiritual level, will possess something that an animal on a lower level possesses when it walks through a pasture, picking only the plants that suit it and leaving the others behind. An unconscious instinct—which is, in reality, higher spirits—guides the animal. Consciously, the human being of the future will approach the plants that are suitable for him; not as today, when he ponders what provides the best nourishment for his body, but he will have a living connection to every single plant, for he will know that what the plants have absorbed passes into him as such. Eating will not be a menial activity for him, but something accomplished with soul and spirit, because he will know that everything he consumes is the outer form of something spiritual. For our time, for our transitional age, when people cannot know so much about the living spiritual connections between themselves and the world, all manner of substitutes had to be created. Why have the initiates throughout the ages urged people to pray before eating? Prayer should be nothing other than a documentation of the fact that something spiritual flows into the human being during eating. Thus we see the world of sensations and feelings transform when a person takes true wisdom into themselves. With a certainty comparable to that of an animal’s instinct at a lower level, a person will know with radiant, clear lucidity what they are doing; they will know it because they will recognize the soul of that with which they are uniting. Even down to this level, we can see the practical value that spiritual science holds for the future.

[ 14 ] And so we now view the world with entirely different feelings. We no longer view the Earth merely as a celestial body illuminated by the sun’s rays, but rather as a living being that draws in the soul of the sun through the astral plant sheath; and we see that the entire universe is permeated by the “I”s of the minerals—everything is animated and imbued with spirit.

[ 15 ] But we can go even further. We have identified the four kingdoms: the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms. But that is not the end of the story. These are only the kingdoms that human beings can perceive in their normal state of development. We have pointed out before that, for example, during the Atlantean era, human beings were companions of beings whose densest form was an etheric body. What has remained as a memory in the legends of the peoples—the figures of Zeus and Apollo—were real figures for the ancient Atlanteans; during sleep, they lived together with them. Such beings certainly exist who have not descended to the level of physical embodiment. And so we can look up from the human realm to higher realms, and there are initially three realms that interest us. In the sense of Christian esotericism, we call the realm that immediately adjoins the human realm the realm of the angels or Angeloi; they are also called the spirits of twilight. Then there is a second, higher realm above the angels: the realm of the archangels, or Archangeloi, also known as the fire spirits; and finally, an even higher realm—that of the primordial forces, primordial beginnings, or Archai, also called the spirits of personality. These, then, are three realms above the human being, and now let us gain some clarity regarding the life of these realms. They certainly play a role in our lives: just as the human being plays a role in the life of plants when cultivating the earth, so do these higher realms play a role in the human realm. We can best understand this by considering the following: At present, human beings have an “I,” an astral body, an etheric body, and a physical body. How, then, does further development take place? Through the human being’s increasing work on themselves. Today, in many respects, the human “I” is still powerless in relation to the other aspects of their being. Just think of how modern human beings are often unable to control their passions and are instead controlled by them—that is, by their astral body. There is a great difference among human beings in this regard. One person is completely devoted to his astral forces, his passions. Consider the savage who devours his fellow human beings, and compare him to the modern European civilized person; and then consider a person striving for lofty ideals, such as Schiller or Francis of Assisi. You see, it is a process of evolution that consists in human beings learning more and more to control their astral body from the ego. And a time will come when the “I” will fully control the astral body, permeating and infusing it. Then human beings will have developed a higher member, which we call Manas or the spiritual self. It is nothing other than the astral body transformed by the “I.” When we consider modern human beings, we must say that their astral body actually consists of two parts: that which they have already transformed—which is under the dominion of the ego—and that which their ego cannot yet control. This latter part is still filled with other, lower forces and drives, and when the ego drives these out, it adds all manner of forces to the astral body. However, in order for the astral body to be preserved at all—so that it is not destroyed by the lower forces—it must still be permeated and interwoven with higher beings who can control it today just as human beings will one day do when they have reached the goal of their development. These beings, whose task is to control the part of the human being’s astral body that is not yet under human control, stand one level higher than human beings; they are the angels or spirits of the twilight. In fact, such a higher spirit, which has power over the astral body, watches over every human being, so to speak, and speaking of guardian angels is not merely a childish notion but a profound wisdom. These guardian angels have a great task.

[ 16 ] Let us consider the course of a human life on Earth in its entirety. We know that it passes through many incarnations. At a certain point in Earth’s evolution, the human being begins to live on Earth as a soul-self in its first incarnation. Then they die; there is an interval, followed by a new incarnation, and so it continues from incarnation to incarnation, and this will only come to an end at a distant point in human evolution. By then, the human being will have passed through all incarnations, and will also have attained the ability to fully master their astral body. He cannot do this until he has passed through all incarnations—at least not in the course of normal development. Such a higher spirit now follows the innermost essence of human nature, which extends from incarnation to incarnation, and guides the human being from incarnation to incarnation so that he may truly fulfill his earthly mission. It is indeed as if, from the very beginning of their earthly journey, human beings could look up to a sublime spirit who serves as their model—one who can fully master his astral body and who tells them: “This is how you must be when you one day step out of this earthly evolution.” — This is the task of the so-called spirits of the angelic realm: to guide human incarnations. And whether one says that a person looks up to his or her higher self, to which he or she is meant to become ever more like, or whether one says that he or she looks up to his or her angel as his or her great role model, this is, in essence, spiritually quite the same thing.

[ 17 ] And then, as human beings continue their work, they will transform the etheric body into buddhi, or the spirit of life; they will one day do this consciously, but even today they are already working toward it unconsciously. All the more reason, then, for higher spiritual realms to be at work in all human etheric bodies today, and it is the fire spirits who carry out this work. However, the etheric bodies of humanity are not as individually distinct as the astral bodies. Every person has their own particular virtues or vices, but with regard to what pertains to the etheric body, a certain uniformity prevails; we see this in the characteristics related to race and ethnicity. And that is why we also see that, with regard to their etheric bodies, not every individual has their own archangel, but rather tribes and races are guided by higher and lower fire spirits. The peoples and races of our Earth are, in fact, collectively guided by those spirits known as archangels or fire spirits. Here your perspective broadens to encompass something that is quite abstract for many people, but which represents something very concrete for those who look into the spiritual worlds. When someone today speaks of the national spirit or the national soul, they regard it as some kind of abstraction. For the occult observer, this is not the case. There, the entire people are, as it were, collectively embedded in a spiritual substance, and this spiritual substance is the body of a fire spirit. And just as our Earth has been guided and directed from ancient times down to the present, from people to people, from race to race, so too are there—so to speak—fire spirits striding across the course of evolution, who have their bodies in the souls of the peoples and who thus direct the course of Earth’s evolution.

[ 18 ] And then there is something else that is independent of communities such as the nation and race. Let us consider our present age and see how much is independent of such communities; and let us look back, for example, to the times of the 12th century. There we see how certain spiritual matters unfold in the same way among all the peoples of Europe; we see something that transcends the national spirits—the term “Zeitgeist” has been coined for this. But this Zeitgeist actually exists, and it is the body for even higher beings; it is the body of the spirits of personality, of the primordial beginnings.

[ 19 ] And now we see how our Earth is, as it were, embedded in a spiritual atmosphere. It causes plants to sprout from mineral formations, and animals and humans walk upon it; but it is itself as if enveloped by sublime spiritual beings: by spirits who guide individual human beings; by spirits who are the leaders and guides of national and racial communities; and by those who steer the spirit of the age from one epoch to the next.

[ 20 ] So today we have attempted to gain an overview of what our Earth—indeed, what our world—is in a spiritual sense, and how human beings are connected to all of this. And in doing so, we have laid the groundwork for truly gaining insight into what we will have to say about the relationship between the world, the Earth, and human beings.