The Rudolf Steiner Archive

16. Mysticism and esotericism (Microcosm and Macrocosm)

[ 1 ] It cannot be my duty to promote theosophy. I believe that this does not need to be done by me in this country.

[ 2 ] What I wish to discuss with you can only take the form of a narrative—specifically, about the relationship between mysticism and what is called “esotericism” in theosophical circles. Mysticism is the understanding of the inner life. All theosophists assume that our inner life is a drop of divine substance. Mysticism is therefore, in fact, an inner deepening. Esotericism is, in a certain sense, that as well, but we become esotericists from mystics because a mystic is one who looks only within himself, whereas the esotericist perceives the entire universe within himself as well.

[ 3 ] Let’s take an example: If we had no eyes, we would have no awareness of light, of all the splendor of colors that light contains. But we also know that—looking at it from the other side—we owe our eyes to light. In earlier stages of development, in a less perfect state, the [human] being had no eyes. The faculty of sight is awakened by light; light itself brought the eye into being from the indifferent organism, drawing it forth: it is created not only for, but also by, light. There are animals known to lose their sight when confined in underground caves where no light reaches them.

[ 4 ] Through our eyes, we carry the deeds of light within us: The eye is crystallized light.

[ 5 ] In this way, we carry within ourselves the essence of the entire world. In this way, the world has given rise to our being. As long as we look within ourselves, we come to know only the organ; and only when the organ is used as an instrument do we come to know the world. We carry within us not only our physical organs. We carry within us organs in every sense, for each of our principles, including what we call the God within us.

[ 6 ] To the extent that we come to know our internal organs, we are practicing mysticism. To the extent that we use our internal organs to come to know the world, we are practicing esotericism in the fullest sense.

[ 7 ] We see in human beings what we call the physical body, and we see in nature the matter that was necessary for its formation. Human beings still share the etheric body with the plant kingdom and the astral body with the animal kingdom. Only human beings—the crown of the Earth—possess that which enables them to say “I” to themselves.

[ 8 ] Now we must be precise: We cannot see an etheric body or an astral body with the physical eye, but we must certainly seek the supersensible principles within the physical realm as well.

[ 9 ] For when we ask ourselves, “Is a mineral, a plant, or an animal merely what we perceive it to be?”, we must answer “No.” Nothing can be understood in and of itself. Everything is grounded in something else.

[ 10 ] Let us consider the animal kingdom. We can only understand it imperfectly as long as we fail to realize that, in the astral realm, the animal possesses something that is exactly the same as the “I” for human beings. But the animal has not been able to bring the “I” down into the physical realm. On the astral plane, we see [as the animal’s “I”] something entirely different from the individual “I” of a human being. There we see the group “I,” the group soul, of the animal. These group souls surround the entire Earth as currents. With astral vision, we perceive glowing lights—astral lights—running along the animal’s spine. These are the manifestations of the astral group souls. The animal is constantly permeated by such glowing astral lights.

[ 11 ] We must focus on two characteristics of the human spirit (“soul,” said the speaker): intelligence and love. A human being is human only to the extent that these two have united into one within his or her being. This is not the case with the animal group soul. Love, as we find it in the human individual, is not present in the animal group soul. Intelligence, strange as it may sound, is more abundant in the animal group soul than in the human individual. We find love in the animal kingdom only at the lowest level of the material realm, in individual animals. Wisdom and love are united in human individuality within the material realm; in animals, they are separated within the material realm. We can perceive the manifestations of the intelligence of the animal group soul descending into the animal. But to do so, we must learn to perceive and feel. Let us, for example, observe a beaver colony at work: how it builds a dam to divert the water in the opposite direction, and how this dam is constructed at a specific, fixed angle to the water—so precisely, as later human studies have shown, that no architect could have improved upon it. And let us observe the remarkable manifestations of the group soul in a beehive, in the migration of birds in the fall and spring. But the element of love is not present in the animal group soul.

[ 12 ] We find something similar in the plant kingdom. On the physical plane, the plant no longer has its astral body; this is located on the astral plane. The plant’s “I,” in turn, is found even higher—on the Devachanic plane, which is the lower mental plane.

[ 13 ] Let us be clear: If the plant consisted only of a physical body and an etheric body, repetition would always occur; for the principle of repetition is the principle of the etheric body. We observe this, for example, in the spine of the human or animal body: The spine is under a special influence of the etheric body and indeed exhibits the continuous repetition of vertebra upon vertebra, built one after the other. Where the astral intervenes as a restraining principle—where the spine merges into the head—the repetition ceases. In plants, it is clearly perceptible from the astral perspective how they are enveloped from above by an astral sheath. This opposes the repetition of the etheric body and forms the flower and the fruit from the outside. The astral currents flow from the outside into the calyxes.

[ 14 ] A plant is like the reverse of a human being: a human being has its head (the origin) at the top and its reproductive organs at the bottom, while a plant has its reproductive organs at the top and its origin—the roots—at the bottom.

[ 15 ] For the occultist, there is not really a single plant. He knows them only as hairs on the collective organism of the Earth, which must be conceived as concentrated at its center. The plant, with its roots, seeks this center. And in a certain sense, we can conceive of the entire plant world concentrated at the center of the Earth. But the plant world then becomes something entirely different for us: we then experience the whole vast Earth as a being with its own pulse, its own joy, and its own pain. And we can experience this if we do not remain within barren mysticism, but rather direct our gaze outward and allow mysticism to serve esotericism.

[ 16 ] The awareness that a person gains when first becoming acquainted with the higher worlds can have a very confusing and unsettling effect on them, and it is therefore not advisable to undertake this exercise without the guidance of someone more experienced. First, one passes through the regions of the animal group souls—a cold region, a veritable ice field—and then enters the regions of the plant group souls, where it becomes warm again. We can perceive it in this way if we open up not only our intellect but also our feelings; through philosophizing and speculation alone, one enters only a world that lies directly adjacent to our own.

[ 17 ] Based on the concept explained above, one can imagine that pulling up an entire plant, roots and all, causes pain to the plant—that is, to the earth. If one picks a flower or a plant, this causes the plant a feeling of pleasure that can best be compared to the feeling a cow experiences when her calf sucks the excess milk from her. One can perceive whole streams of overflowing pleasure when the grain is harvested in the fields in late summer. Everywhere in nature, one sees streams of life, joy, and pain. (We then also learn to see things differently and understand them better—for example, how pain is one of the great creative forces in the world.)

[ 18 ] The stone, after all, has its “I” in the higher mental realm. When we observe the stone, we realize that its essence—its “I”—is primarily an impulse of will. When the occultally sharpened gaze observes how workers break off stones in the quarries, it perceives, in what might be called the soul of the stone, entire streams of the greatest pleasure. It sounds strange to us, but it is a truth that breaking, detaching, or dissolving a mineral—whether we break it with a pickaxe or dynamite—awakens feelings of pleasure. Streams of pleasure are released when a piece of salt is thrown into a glass of lukewarm water, where it melts—that is, is dispersed into the finest possible form. When the salt recrystallizes, this is accompanied by feelings of pain.

[ 19 ] It is interesting to view the Earth’s evolution from this perspective. In earlier geological eras, we consistently find higher temperatures, until we reach a point at which even the minerals were dissolved, like salt in water. Throughout all these periods, a process of cooling and crystallization took place from the primordial substance. This involves a continuous process of densification, which is accompanied by constant pain.

[ 20 ] We owe the fact that our form can be as it is to this preceding process of crystallization, which was accompanied by pain. And when our Earth disintegrates once more on the material plane, the Earth will share in this bliss in the spirit realm. These are always the same two phases in every process of development: first suffering and pain, and when everything disintegrates again, then joy and bliss once more. If we draw all this from occultism and then consider the ancient religious traditions, much becomes clear to us.

[ 21 ] When we immerse ourselves in the vast cosmos in this way, we first see in the human realm—in the individual—pleasure and pain, specifically in the surrender and renunciation of impulses of the will. Then, in the animal kingdom, we find pleasure and pain, depending on whether the impulses of the astral sparks from the group soul are supported or hindered. We also find the plant world and the mineral kingdom permeated by pleasure and pain.

[ 22 ] We find the human soul throughout all of nature. We carry the entire divine nature within us; we see how human beings are an essence of everything that exists around them. Just as our eye was brought forth from matter by the light of the sun, so our entire human being is brought forth from matter by the divine light. Thus, our soul is an organ created from the world around us. Thus, the microcosm is the organ created from the macrocosm, so that the macrocosm might be reflected in the microcosm.

[ 23 ] To see, we must use our eyes, and so we must use our inner organ to see creation. We must not stop in our development as mystics. We must become esotericists: we must come to know the light from which we were born. When we grasp things in their concreteness, then we also understand much of what great figures have said: “Before the eye can see, it must wean itself from tears.”

[ 24 ] This means: As long as the eye exists for its own sake, as long as it finds itself in pain, it is not a suitable organ for perceiving the light. The same is true of the inner self.