The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. On the Path to Enlightenment

[ 1 ] Now that the Pforzheim branch has opened, we are gathered here together again for the first time, and we will make the best use of our time by immediately turning our attention to a spiritual topic—one that can show us that through anthroposophy, a person not only absorbs teachings and ideas, but is also enriched, calmed, and reassured in their emotional and sensory life. We must not imagine that teachings, ideas, and thoughts are unimportant for our emotional life. It is true that, especially in our time, people will say to themselves: There are enough thoughts and enough science in the world, and one need only pick up this or that book—one intended to teach us about the world of the stars or other subjects—to obtain enough science for the intellect. Theosophy, however, is meant to be something for the soul or the emotional life. This is certainly true, and it is also true that science, as it is presented to us through popular lectures and works, has little to offer the soul and the heart. But one must not conclude from this that teachings, views, and insights are worthless in general.

[ 2 ] Insights from the spiritual sciences are different from the teachings of the external sciences. If we allow them to take effect within us properly, they are transformed within us into feelings, emotional impulses, and attitudes; and there is no other way for us to gain peace, security, and strength in life than by immersing ourselves in these insights. It is one thing to merely know the external, sensory things and processes and to understand how things happen, and quite another to penetrate beyond the sensory things to the spiritual processes. Through these spiritual processes—when we allow them to work within our soul—we become warm, healthy, and strong. We recognize the connection between ourselves and that which, as spirit and soul, permeates the entire world, from which all phenomena flow. And so let us first concern ourselves with the relationship between the external sensory world outside—the sensory things—and our soul. When we look into our own soul, we will find, so to speak, those things that concern us most closely—suffering, joy, pain, and pleasure—and the question may arise: If spiritual science tells us that everything in the world is imbued with spirit, then perhaps it could speak of how suffering and joy, pleasure and pain are also present in the things around us—even in those things that otherwise appear to human beings as unfeeling, painless, and insensitive. - Through anthroposophy, we must learn to think about the things around us in the right way.

[ 3 ] For example, we see all around us the various plants, animals, and minerals of the Earth. Not only do animals, like us, experience joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain—no one doubts that. When it comes to plants and the seemingly lifeless world of stones, we might begin to doubt whether they, too, contain feelings, pleasure, joy, and pain. This is precisely what we must come to understand as our perception of the entire world around us: that all beings are not only physically connected to us, but are connected to us in such a way that they, too, possess spiritual content, just as we do. We simply need to delve deeply, in the right way, into what spiritual research and spiritual insight have to say about this. Even those with a more sensory way of thinking in our time understand that there is something spiritual in a plant; indeed, one might be inclined to admit that there could be something spiritual even in a seemingly lifeless stone. Upon reflection, however, one can easily fall into error if one does not take the research of spiritual science into account; for one might easily be led to say: If I cut into a human being’s physical body, it hurts him—and the same is true for an animal; if I cut a plant, will it also hurt? —And one might further think that if one breaks a stone, it must also feel pain. Precisely because people, when they reflect on these things, tend too much to believe that everything in other beings must be exactly as it is in human beings themselves—precisely because people believe this—they find it so difficult to grasp the insights of spiritual science. Spiritual science allows us to recognize something entirely different about the soul nature of, for example, plants and stones. When we observe a plant, it appears that, although parts of the plant growing upward from the earth may have been damaged, the plant does not experience a sensation of pain; it does not hurt the plant—quite the opposite is true. That which is the actual plant soul feels pleasure—even joy—when the parts of the plant above the earth’s surface are destroyed. Pain only begins for the plant soul when we tear the plant out of the ground—when we uproot it—and the plant soul then experiences a pain similar to what we feel, for example, when we pull out the hair of a human being or an animal. This is something that only those who walk the so-called path of knowledge can gradually experience in their own souls.

[ 4 ] These things can be experienced through one’s own self only if we transform our soul in such a way that the genuine powers of insight lying dormant within it are awakened. Then the possibility arises for this soul to empathize not only with other human beings, but also with the rest of nature, and then the rest of nature becomes comprehensible in a wondrous way.

[ 5 ] One might now say: Yes, what good is research in the humanities to us, as long as we ourselves cannot feel such things? — That would be an incorrect objection if we believed that anthroposophy had no significance in the meantime. It already has great value as an account of spiritual and psychological realities. And when such insights speak, for example, of the relationship between plant suffering and plant joy, then we should reflect on these insights and allow such thoughts to take effect within us. Simply by reflecting on them, the forces within us are drawn out, and we will soon feel that it is truly as spiritual science says. But by looking into the wisdom of nature, we learn how the plant soul experiences pleasure when we pick the plant. We can get a sense of this when we consider what would happen if the plant were capable of feeling pain in that moment. Just think of how a large portion of the beings on our Earth must feed on plants, and how pain would then spread across the Earth through the nourishment of humans and animals. That is not the case, however; instead, pleasure and joy flow across the Earth when an animal grazes in a pasture. And anyone who has insight into this can feel whole streams of pleasure flowing across the earth when the sickle cuts through the stalks of grain in the fall. When a young animal suckles its mother’s milk, this does not mean pain, but rather a certain feeling of pleasure. We thus gain insight into the wisdom of nature when we experience this.

[ 6 ] One must never object to such things by saying: “Yes, but in some circumstances it may seem gentler to dig up a plant by its roots and transplant it rather than pluck off the flower.” Certainly, but that does not change the fact that this uprooting causes the plant’s soul actual pain. Willfully plucking off the flowers can, of course, be criticized from a certain point of view. But even that does not change the fact that it brings pleasure to the plant’s soul. Everything simply looks different from different points of view. From the standpoint of beauty, for example, a person might think they should pluck out their first gray hairs, and that may be entirely justified, but it still hurts them. But our attention is drawn to something else when we take seriously the comparison that plucking flowers is like plucking human hair. We will then understand what it means when spiritual science, in this context, does not consider individual plants but rather, so to speak, takes the plant life of the entire Earth into account. Just as hair belongs to the whole human being, so do plants form a unity with the Earth; and we also understand—and can conceive—that what we in spiritual science call the “I” in human beings is not to be found in the individual plant, but at the center of the Earth. The plant is therefore not an individual being at all, but becomes part of a great living being that consists of many individual living beings, all of which, however, have their “I” at the center of the Earth.

[ 7 ] No one here should ask the question: “But is there really room for all these ‘I’s’?”—Certainly, for they are spirit, and as such they can interpenetrate one another. In this way, our Earth becomes a living being. In this way, every single plant becomes something that grows out of a great supersensible living being, and what appears on the surface is what nails or hair are to a human being. And when we take such a thing seriously, we no longer speak merely in dry, intellectual terms of a physical planet on which we live, but we feel that not only are we ourselves living beings, but that we are connected to a great living being that is our planet itself. We learn to pay attention to the spiritual aspect of this living being, and we learn that it is more than just a comparison when the sap flowing through a plant is seen as analogous to the blood flowing through the human body. We learn to transform this into a feeling by perceiving things spiritually.

[ 8 ] When we touch a plant, we perceive the spiritual-soul aspect and feel secure within it. And then it will gradually become possible for us to reflect on what is said in spiritual science: This Earth has undergone manifold transformations. If we go back to the distant past, we find that this Earth looked quite different—that, for example, solid rock as we know it today, such massive rock formations, did not exist. There was a time when the Earth consisted initially only of air and water and a certain state of warmth. Only gradually did a solid mass emerge from what was liquid and soft. And when we consider this entire development, it appears to us as if, in fact, the entire evolution of the Earth were a process of growth and flourishing. Once the Earth was young; one day it will be old and senile.

[ 9 ] We may apply all the concepts we use to understand ourselves to our Earth as well; then we will understand that there have been certain particularly important points in the development of our Earth. We will be able to bring such important points in the Earth’s development to the forefront of our consciousness if we consider the following: We have already recognized from the growth of plants on our Earth that, when viewed as a whole, the Earth is a living being. The various other celestial bodies that stand in a certain relationship to us are living beings just like this. Let us first consider our Sun and our Moon. Let us consider the Sun. You all know what we owe to the Sun. You all know that when you have rested at night, when you were in that state of consciousness brought about in human beings by the astral body and the I leaving the physical body and the etheric body—you know that when the astral body and the I return, they are then met, so to speak, by everything that the Earth owes to the Sun. What would the Earth be without the Sun? It is the Sun that endows all earthly matter around us with warmth and light. But in such an interaction between one celestial body and another, we must not think merely of something physical and material; we must be clear that this Sun is not merely the physical body floating there in outer space, but that this Sun is populated by spiritual beings, and that with every ray of sunlight, not only physical light but also spiritual influences flow toward us.

[ 10 ] There has always been a spiritual exchange between the Sun and the Earth; however, it has changed significantly in the course of Earth’s evolution. While, on the physical plane, no particular difference has arisen in the interaction between the Sun and the Earth over many, many millions of years, a significant shift has occurred in this interaction precisely on the spiritual plane. It is high beings who live in the light and warmth of the Sun and who, from there, exert their influence upon the Earth, allowing light and warmth to flow to us.

[ 11 ] A solar being who, up to a certain point in time, had his home in the Sun—which, throughout long, long earthly ages, could only be seen by those who beheld the spirits of the Sun through clairvoyance—descended from the Sun to Earth at a certain point in time. This is what allows us to look deeply into the spiritual development of the Earth: Through the event we call the Mystery of Golgotha—or, in other words, through the life of Christ on Earth—the spirit that had been on the Sun until then united with the Earth. It became one with the Earth. And the reason humanity divides Earth’s history into pre-Christian and post-Christian eras is that the living being we refer to as the Earth has indeed undergone a significant development through the appearance of Christ on Earth. What was previously found only in the Sun is now to be found in the Earth’s astral body. The astral body of the Earth was transformed by the Mystery of Golgotha: at the very moment that blood flowed from the Savior’s wounds on Golgotha, at that very moment the Christ Spirit felt united with the Earth’s body.

[ 12 ] One must understand this in order to interpret correctly what is reported to us from the history of Christianity. One might ask: What was one of the most important events in terms of the spread of Christianity? When considering the spread of Christianity, one must say to oneself: Paul did more—more than even those who were physical companions of Christ Jesus in Palestine could have done—Paul, who was not a physical companion of Christ Jesus, who had even persecuted the Christians. Paul did not become a believer by participating in the life and suffering of Christ, but he became a champion for Christ through the event on the road to Damascus.

[ 13 ] There is much debate in theology about the Damascus experience. But no one can come to an understanding of the Damascus experience except through spiritual science. Try to reconcile this with the few words that will now be spoken. At the very moment when Paul’s intellectual consciousness was transformed into a higher consciousness—at that very moment—what did he see? At that moment, he saw in the astral world that Spirit who had become the Earth Spirit; he saw the living Christ, who has been united with the Earth since the event at Golgotha. One might well ask: What is the light that he saw, which could not have been seen before? — Paul first came to know the Christ who has been united with the Earth since the events at Golgotha. And so we may illustrate this important point in the Earth’s history by saying: The Earth prepared itself to become a worthy body for the Christ Spirit, and when the Earth was prepared, the Christ Spirit united with the Earth, and since that time the Christ Spirit has been at work within it. According to the Gospel of John, Christ said: “Whoever eats my bread tramples me underfoot.” The human being who walks upon the Earth tramples the Earth underfoot. “Whoever eats my bread tramples me underfoot”—this is merely an expression of the mystery inherent in this crucial point in the Earth’s development.

[ 14 ] And how infinitely profound the institution of the Lord’s Supper becomes to us when viewed from this perspective—that from that point on, the earth became the body of Christ! How significant, through this reference, become the words: “This is my body,” and what flows as sap through the plants: “This is my blood.” We learn to take literally what can only be taken literally. Thus, when we regard the earth as living, it becomes a living being that, so to speak, matures gradually, so that at the right moment it may be ready to receive the soul of Christ.

[ 15 ] Thus, from every angle, what appears to us as a physical planet appears spiritual; it appears to us as imbued with spirit. We learn to understand the connection between what we encounter in everyday life and the supersensible. And when we turn our gaze from the plant kingdom to the mineral kingdom, it is not the case that the clairvoyant consciousness would experience pain when a stone is pounded into dust; on the contrary: when stones are pounded into dust, what we might call the soul of the stone feels delight and joy. The one who possesses this insight knows that when the stone world is crushed, joy radiates from the rock. For example, when salt is dissolved in a glass of water, pleasure spreads through the water because the salt particles separate. The opposite is true when the salt recrystallizes as the solution cools; the compression of the rock particles causes pain. And once again, we look deeply into the way the initiate speaks to us when he wishes to convey such things to people.

[ 16 ] Things are not stated quite so simply. One must undergo a mental process to arrive at an understanding of the greatest religious texts. It has already been said that originally there was no solid rock layer on Earth; the Earth was liquid. Its solidity arose only when its parts contracted and solidified. What, then, do humans and animals owe to the fact that the Earth condensed in this way? The very fact that humans and animals can live on it as they do today. Without solid ground, the Earth could not have provided a foundation for humans and animals. And now let us truly imagine with our soul that this is, in fact, a spiritual process. This has been little understood when viewed solely through the mind of a physicist. Only when one traces the Earth’s development with the eye and heart of the spirit does one sense that, in what underlies the mineral kingdom, a spiritual process took place while the Earth was solidifying. Suffering and pain took place, and it is to this that humans and animals owe their ability to dwell on Earth.

[ 17 ] This is the underlying reality when Paul, who was able to gain insight into these matters after his initiation, utters the words: “All creation groans and suffers under the pain of gradual solidification; all creation groans, awaiting spiritualization.” With these profound words, he directs our attention to the inner life, to the soul of the earthly being. Thus, everything becomes imbued with spirit when we view it in the light of spiritual science, and only by perceiving soul and spirit in all things do we gradually come to understand the world and everything around us more and more. We then come to understand that the world as we experience it around us is like a physiognomy—the outward expression of inner life. Then we will learn to grasp that the world, in general, appears exactly as it first appears to human beings. Furthermore, we come to understand that behind everything physical lies the soul-spiritual realm, which must also be the origin of all that is physical, and that when the spiritual researcher leads us back, he shows us how, in the distant, primeval past, everything gradually developed out of the spiritual realm. Human beings, above all, have gradually descended from the spiritual world into the physical world, and we must not imagine this descent into the physical world in such crude terms as a materialistic view does today; rather, we must ask ourselves: Where does this material world, which extends all around us, actually come from?

[ 18 ] There was a time when human beings were thoroughly spiritual, when they were embedded in the soul-spiritual realm. Human beings have developed out of this soul-spiritual realm, and this has happened gradually. If we look back even a relatively short time—though the time periods are long, they are still considered short from the perspective of the spiritual researcher—we find that our Earth did not always look as it does today, but has indeed changed its appearance, above all through the event of the Flood, which in spiritual science is known as the Atlantean Flood. By this Atlantean Deluge, we must understand that the face of the Earth was completely transformed by the forces of air and water. Previously, human beings lived in a region of the Earth where the Atlantic Ocean is today. There was land there; that is where our souls actually once lived in their previous incarnations in Atlantean bodies. If we consider human beings from the very beginning of these Atlantean times from a spiritual scientific perspective, their souls appear to us quite different from what they are today. In the early Atlantean times, they perceived everything quite differently than they did later. Today, when a person looks around during the waking hours of the day, they perceive the objects around them in terms of color and light. When, in the evening, the physical and etheric bodies are left by the ego and the astral body, this world disappears. This is called unconsciousness.

[ 19 ] This was not the case during the first Atlantean epoch; at that time, unconsciousness did not spread around a person when he passed into another state during the night. Back then, everything that constitutes the soul and spirit of the physical world appeared. For example, a person might have seen flowers before falling asleep. In sleep, they perceived what was spiritual-soul-like in the flower within the spiritual-soul world. In contrast, what we today call physical—the external objects—was not as sharply separated as it is today; rather, people saw them as if through a mist and surrounded by colored halos. Thus we see how the soul, too, has gradually changed its perception. And if we go back even further, we will find that the soul saw only the spiritual, because the physical had not yet condensed out of the spiritual.

[ 20 ] Now, so to speak, a crucial stage in human evolution was reserved for our Earth, and it occurred precisely in the middle of the Atlantean era. In the middle of the Atlantean era, if a certain event had not occurred beforehand, human beings would not have ceased to perceive the spiritual world through their nocturnal consciousness. If a certain event had not occurred, human beings in the middle of the Atlantean era would not, for example, have seen an object—such as a flower—as yellow, but rather the spirit of the plant would have appeared to them. The fact that things turned out differently stems from the fact that human beings had already allowed themselves to be influenced by Lucifer and his hosts at an earlier stage. They would, so to speak, have been unconscious of the outer physical world; it would have appeared transparent to them. They would have seen the spiritual world everywhere behind it.

[ 21 ] What happened, then, when the physical world did not spread out over the spiritual world like a transparent crystal canopy, but instead became opaque? Because the spiritual world was veiled, the possibility arose for yet another influence to be exerted: the influence of Ahriman, or, as Goethe calls him, Mephistopheles. As a result, the spirit known as Ahriman was able to penetrate, so that at a certain point in time, error and illusion set in. What we call Maya—illusion—was able to intermingle with the perception of the world. Thus, behind everything that exists in the physical world stands what the Bible calls the prince of this world. His influence is interwoven everywhere. Without this influence, matter would appear transparent and would reveal the spiritual behind it. Now, however, all these processes have also brought about a tremendous change within the human soul. When we consider how humanity has developed on Earth, we see how, at one time, the Luciferic influence prevailed, and at another time, the Ahrimanic influence.

[ 22 ] When we look back to the time when human beings were still spiritual, when the solid had not yet crystallized, we see that the forces of nature and humanity were not yet as separate as they are today. They were still much closer to one another at that time, when the Earth was still permeated with the watery element. When the Earth was still softer and humankind was still more spiritual, human thought and feeling still exerted an influence on the forces of nature. If we go back beyond the Atlantean era, we find that as the human will turned toward evil, it exerted a very specific influence on fire; and a large part of the Earth was once destroyed because humans, under the influence of Lucifer—to whom humanity owes its freedom and independence in other respects—developed evil instincts. Thus, what we call the forces of nature were connected to human feeling during the Atlantean era. What has now come to pass is that, after human beings had become independent, so to speak, through the Luciferic influence, they were deprived of the ability to influence the forces of nature through their will. Humanity was gradually deprived of its influence over the forces of nature. This went hand in hand with the influence of Ahriman, which veiled the spiritual world from humanity. If humanity could still see the spiritual world, it would still have influence over the forces of nature. This influence was taken away from the individual human being, but not from humanity as a whole. Even today, the individual human being actually has very little direct influence over the forces of nature; humanity as a whole, however, does. And when we consider humanity as a whole, we will see accordingly that, in addition to the karma of the individual, there must also be a karma of the entire Earth—of all humanity on Earth.

[ 23 ] This is a consequence of the fact that there was once a Luciferic influence and once an Ahrimanic influence. For this being, whom we call Ahriman, stands in a mysterious connection with the fire forces of the Earth, which have withdrawn from the direct influence of the individual human being. These fire forces of the Earth are a life element of the Ahrimanic spirits, and through Ahriman’s influence, the collective karma of the entire human race is linked in a certain way to Ahriman’s karma. When certain spiritual dispositions and events occur in the course of human development, the connection between humanity and Ahriman makes itself felt once again; and what human beings were once able to do themselves—exert an influence on natural events—is now accomplished through Ahriman and his spiritual companions.

[ 24 ] Whenever Ahriman stirs, it indicates nothing other than that something has taken place in human history that has attracted Ahriman, something that has thrown him into turmoil and rage. Something is happening in the souls of human beings—for example, a large portion of humanity is succumbing to materialism. This enables Ahriman to stir in his element—he has a vital element—for he prefers human materialism to people becoming spiritual. Ahriman stirs up storms, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes. Here again we see how nature and spirit are interconnected. Nothing happens on Earth that is not connected to spirit. Our soul, with its good and evil deeds, is connected to what is taking place within the Earth. When the Earth rages in judgment through earthquakes, we must never say that this depends on the karma of individual people; rather, it is the karma of all humanity. Everyone can search their own heart and say: “It is also my individual karma; that individual had to perish here because it was precisely here that the Earth’s valve had to open.” In the future, he will be repaid for this. — A materialistic worldview will say that this is superstitious, but whoever says such a thing does not realize how childish their words are. Just as no flower grows without a spiritual reason—without being an expression of spirit and soul—so too is there no earthquake, no volcanic eruption, without a spiritual reason, without a spiritual cause. If, as I said, we consider karma, then it applies to the whole of human life.

[ 25 ] Only when we fail to bring the teachings of the spiritual sciences to life do they appear cold and calculated solely for the intellect. But if we allow our feelings, our attitudes, and our sensibilities to be completely permeated by it, then we will see the Earth as a living being, imbued with soul and spirit; we will see that spiritual beings of the most diverse kinds are connected to this earthly body, and that a momentous event has taken place, the effects of which are only just beginning: the appearance of Christ on Earth. Through Christ alone will the consequences of Ahriman’s power be dispelled. As spiritual science permeates human hearts with that Christ-spirit, the spirit of humanity as a whole, spreading across the Earth, will itself be able to lead the Earth—even in its natural elements—to peace and harmony.

[ 26 ] When all human hearts truly experience the Spirit of Christ, the power that flows from it will be so strong that it will pacify fire and water. Then the Spirit of Christ will bring peace and harmony into the elements of nature, and the Earth itself will be an expression of the Spirit. The Earth’s body, which is a living being, will become gentle and mild so that it may ascend, together with the human spirit and soul, toward its spiritualization. The Earth will ascend to a higher spiritual existence. One may regard this as a lofty, distant ideal, but we can allow it to permeate us at every moment. No moment is lost to the development of humanity if it is used in such a way that people imbue themselves with the insights and impulses of the spirit.