The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday, it was my task to point out how, within the human organism, something akin to a re-transformation of forces actually takes place—forces that have developed to the point of condensing into the physical body. As an example, I pointed out that a kind of etherization of the coarse physical substance of the blood is constantly emanating from our blood and heart system, so that in fact the blood is constantly transforming, in its finest parts, into the very substance of which the human etheric body is composed. And we have seen that these etheric particles flow up from the heart in very special currents through our brain, and furthermore, that it is in fact dependent on the flow through our brain of these, so to speak, newly formed parts of our etheric body that we can develop a knowledge, an insight, which goes beyond the entirely egoistic awareness of what is happening within ourselves, of what is taking place within our organism. I have tried to make it clear to you that if these etheric currents did not rise from the heart to the brain, only those ideas, concepts, and feelings could find expression through the instrument of the brain that have to do with our own body, with our physical constitution. What I have explained to you in this way is connected with the entire process of becoming, with the entire development of the human being. Let us note once again that our Earth evolution began in such a way that it was preceded by the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, that these produced a result, and that this result of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions led, so to speak, to an etheric human being in the pre-Lemurian period of Earth’s formation. Before humanity entered the Lemurian stage of development, it was, even in terms of its physical powers, merely an etheric form. A physically dense human being such as we have today—with physically dense blood, nervous system, skeletal system, and so on—did not yet exist in the pre-Lemurian era. All the forces that are present in the physical body today were still in their etheric form at that time. This etheric form of the human being was thus, in relation to the later human being, in a certain sense shadowy and ghostly; it was, as it were, merely a hint of what later crystallized as the more dense human being. It was only through the Lemurian, Atlantean, and post-Atlantean periods that the densification of the human being took place.

[ 2 ] In order to fully understand the wonders of the world, the trials of the soul, and spiritual revelations, we must now take a closer look at the development of the human being and see how humanity gradually took shape from the original shadow-like form. Let us today sketch out a symbolic picture of what the human being was like in the pre-Lemurian era. There we would have a kind of shadow figure, only hinting at the later human form. Into this shadow figure of the human being would flow the most manifold currents; the beings of the higher hierarchies would work within it. At that time, human beings did not walk on the earth with their feet, but rather floated around the earth as a shadow figure; only later did they, so to speak, descend to the earth. The earth itself was still in a more ethereal state. Everything that the higher hierarchies worked upon the human being flowed into the human being in all manner of currents. While the human being lived on Earth in this way as a shadow image, the Earth itself also developed; it is by no means that dense piece of matter as which geologists, mineralogists, or physicists describe it. To describe the Earth as physicists and mineralogists do is roughly like trying to describe a human being solely by its skeletal framework. Everything that physical science describes is only a part—it is the Earth’s framework. Entirely different forces and entirely different substantial entities are connected to the Earth, which make the Earth an organism in which we are embedded. The Earth, then, continued its evolution, and from the Earth itself, ever-changing forces continually flowed to humanity in the course of the Lemurian, Atlantean, and post-Atlantean periods. Let us now take a closer look at these forces.

[ 3 ] First, we must consider certain forces that, through the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies, belong, as it were, to the subterranean current I mentioned yesterday. These forces flowed into human beings; to describe it in spatial terms, they flowed upward from below, from the earth. In the course of Earth’s evolution, human beings are permeated from below by the forces of the higher hierarchies; and if we wish to speak in relation to the external aspects of science, including spiritual science, we can say nothing other than that the forces which flowed into human beings primarily during the Lemurian epoch, but then also continued to flow into them and contributed to their formation, are forces that, so to speak, permeated the very essence of the Earth. Everywhere on the surface of the Earth, wherever one may go, these forces are present. These forces, which also had other effects on the Earth’s development, we shall first make vivid to ourselves by pointing to the beings of another realm in whose formation these forces were primarily active.

[ 4 ] Zoologists, those who study the external natural world, will one day be quite astonished when they see the intricate ways in which everything has been shaped from the spiritual world—things they now present so simply in their family trees, which are, from a certain perspective, quite accurate, yet appear so abstract and, I might say, cute in their books. What they consider to be closely related may, under certain circumstances, have come into being from the most diverse spiritual aspects through the most complex spiritual currents. In fact, we must by no means portray what we call mammals in zoology in the way that an external Darwinian zoology would like to do so today. We must by no means believe that a straight line can be drawn from the simplest mammals all the way up to the most complex ones. In two different mammalian species, entirely different formative forces are at work. Everything that exists among the mammals around us and is in a certain way related to all that we call our ruminants—animals which, as you know, belong primarily to our domesticated animals—was subject to entirely different spiritual conditions in the course of evolution than, for example, those belonging to the cat-like or lion-like animals. We must imagine it in such a way that the spiritual forces acted specifically upon the group souls and thereby also upon the physical form. What belongs to the lion-like animals only began to act upon the Earth toward the Atlantean epoch and specifically during the Atlantean epoch, coming to the Earth as if it had forced its way up to the surface from the Earth’s interior. But everything that acted upon human beings themselves during the Lemurian epoch is related to what had a formative influence on our ruminant animals and what esotericism summarizes in the image of the bull. This is everything that also began to shape its influence on human beings during the Lemurian epoch, intervening at that time as if working from the Earth’s interior toward the surface into the human form. It should not seem particularly shocking to you, my dear friends, when I say: If nothing else had acted upon human beings in the distant past, then human beings would have become bull-like in their outward form. For these forces acted in such a way that, had they acted alone upon human beings, they would have shaped them in this manner. — But gradually other forces intervened in the human organism from within the Earth. These are the same forces that exerted their particular influences on the other mammalian lineages, and in esotericism they are grouped under the name of the lion. These forces intervened somewhat later in the Earth’s development. If the earlier forces had not existed, but only these forces had acted upon human beings, the outer form of the human being would have become lion-like, with all the characteristics of the lion’s constitution. The complex form of the human being came about only because not a single current acted upon him, but because various currents acted upon him in succession.

[ 5 ] And now you can begin to understand why the bull-like animals remained bull-like and the lion-like animals became lion-like. This is because the archetypal or shadow forms underlying them were not organized in the same way as the pre-Lemurian shadow forms of the humans of that time. These archetypal forms were organized through their preceding Saturn, Sun, and Moon developments in such a way that they always waited for the right times, allowing the most diverse successive currents to act upon them, in order to paralyze one current through the other and thereby also harmonize them in a higher sense. A Taurus would not remain a Taurus if the nature of the Lion were to act upon it and transform the Taurus form. Humanity arrived on Earth in such a way that it was able to allow all these currents to influence it. And it was only during the Atlantean epoch that something else occurred which, once recognized and made fruitful for external science, will shed infinite light on our zoology.

[ 6 ] During the Atlantean epoch, entirely different conditions arose. Please note that I said: these Taurus forces, these Leo forces acted as if they were working from the Earth’s interior toward the surface, as it were, streaming out from the Earth’s interior. - The forces that joined with these forces streaming out from the Earth during the Atlantean epoch now came from the outside, as it were from the surrounding space, so that during the Atlantean epoch forces intervened that we must conceive of as reaching into and shaping the human being from below, while other forces flowed into the human being from the outer space, moving from above downward. Thus, that form or shadow of the human being was once again exposed to other forces, which now, however, acted upon the human being from a different, entirely opposite direction.

[ 7 ] To get an idea of these forces, we must ask ourselves: In which beings on Earth did these forces—which flowed down to Earth as if from the heavens—primarily take effect, undeterred by other forces? Here, too, we can identify certain beings in our surroundings of whom we can say: in them, the bull forces and the lion forces—which come from the Earth’s interior—were as minimally effective as possible, as weakly effective as possible. In contrast, the forces acting upon them were almost exclusively those flowing down from outer space onto the Earth and into the Earth’s substance. These beings belong to the bird kingdom. And our abstract zoology will one day be quite astonished when it will have to admit: The forces that primarily act upon the bird kingdom—and, in a broader sense, upon everything that reproduces by laying eggs externally—are of a completely different nature than those acting upon mammals. In all beings, therefore, where reproduction occurs in this way—but especially in the bird kingdom—currents penetrating from outer space have a fundamental effect on form. Esoterically, these forces are summarized under the name “Eagle.”

[ 8 ] If we now conceive of these forces—which are expressed most prominently in the form of the bird world—as harmonized with the lion and bull forces within the human being, so that all of this fits into the original schematic or shadow form, then in this harmonization we have provided what ultimately yields the present human form. If you consider the entirely different nature of the bird world, you will not be able to doubt for long that the entire bird form is something essentially different from the form of mammals, for example. I do not wish to go into the other beings of the animal kingdom today. There is something in the structure of birds that also imposes itself upon the clairvoyant gaze in a very special way. Whereas in mammals, wherever we may look with our clairvoyant vision, we find the astral body developed with particular power, in the world of birds the etheric body stands out most prominently to the clairvoyant eye. It is the etheric body—the etheric body stimulated from the outside by the forces of the cosmos—that gives expression, for example, to the feathers of birds, the plumage. All of this is shaped from the outside, and a bird’s feather can only come into being because the forces that act down from outer space onto the Earth and contribute to the formation of the bird’s feather are stronger than the forces that come from the Earth. That which underlies the feather—what one might call the shaft of the feather—is, however, subject to certain forces that come from the Earth. But then it is the forces acting from outer space that attach what is joined to the shaft of the feather and what constitutes the bird’s outer plumage. The situation is quite different with beings covered in hair. Here, the forces acting into the hair are primarily those that move outward from the earth—that is, in the opposite direction compared to the bird’s feather. And because the forces from outer space can act on the hair of animals and humans only to a lesser extent, the hair cannot become a feather, if I may use this paradoxical expression. It corresponds entirely to reality, and one could, if one wanted to continue the paradox, say: Every bird feather has the tendency to become a hair, but it is not a hair because the forces of outer space act upon the bird feather from all sides. And every hair has a tendency to become a feather, and the hair does not become a feather for the reason that the forces acting upward from the earth are stronger than the forces acting in from the outside. — If one really considers such paradoxes seriously, one arrives at certain fundamental mysteries in the constitution of our universe.

[ 9 ] Let us suppose that a person with ancient clairvoyance had not wanted to portray the human being who actually conceals the various currents that have flowed into him by harmonizing them and revealing them only in their interaction, but rather that he had wanted to make precisely these various currents visible. Then he would have had to say: Underlying the human being is something that cannot be seen physically: the original schematic or shadow form, which today only manifests itself in the outer physical form because the human being has harmonized what are called the eagle, bull, and lion currents. — Anyone who considers the human being in terms of its development would have to regard the original schematic or shadow form of the human being as supersensible; to do so, however, they would have to separate what has flowed together in the human being—that is, they would have to conceive: underlying the entire process of human becoming is an ethereal schematic form, and flowing into this, mixing in such a way that they can no longer be distinguished in the fully formed human being of the present, are a bull, a lion, and a bird element.

[ 10 ] Let us now suppose that a cultural epoch such as that of ancient Egypt had sought to present the Incarnation to humanity—the great enigma of the Incarnation—then the actual human being, the original human form that emerged as a result of the development of Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon, would have had to remain invisible. But out of the invisible, a composite figure would have had to emerge, formed from the figures of the bull and the lion and with wings, such as the eagle has, such as birds in general have. If you recall the figure of the Sphinx in its broadest sense, which is meant to represent the great mystery of human becoming, then you actually have what a clairvoyant culture—one that knew inwardly the state of humanity—has set before this humanity. What appears separately in the Sphinx is intimately woven into human nature. And one can say that, to the clairvoyant gaze, the human form reveals itself in a very peculiar way. For when one allows such a sphinx—which is indeed composed of a lion’s form and a bull’s form with bird’s wings—to act upon the clairvoyant sense, and supplements it with what stands behind it as a human phantom or shadow figure, and intimately weaves these together, then the human form arises before us; then what we have before us today as a human being comes into being. Therefore, the clairvoyant consciousness cannot look upon a sphinx—which at first glance is not at all human-like—without saying to itself: You are myself.

[ 11 ] In the course of this discussion, we have now said something very curious. We have, after all, examined the fourfold nature of the human being from a different perspective. A schematic or shadow figure, which is esoterically referred to as the human being, emerges as the result of the ancient Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions. In the course of the densification of this schematic or shadow figure, the currents known esoterically as the Lion, the Bull, and the Eagle currents are at work. Here we have those four esoteric symbols that actually constitute the human being and are most deeply and significantly connected to human evolution. Now we have mentioned that in the course of human evolution on Earth, forces from outside, from outer space, intervened both within these human beings themselves and within other beings, namely the beings of the bird world. In fact, this took place during the Atlantean epoch, so that one can say that into those parts of the human organism—to which normal human consciousness, however, no longer extends—a current entered the human being that came down from outer space. This current was present in the Atlantean epoch and, of course, also in the post-Atlantean epoch. This was the current that came from the realm I referred to yesterday as the higher gods, who in a certain sense are the counterparts of the underground gods, the chthonic gods. These are beings who confronted those students of the Greek mysteries who had to grapple with the great riddle of the Sphinx. They had to perceive the subconscious part of the human being in such a way that, through self-knowledge, they had also come to understand the fourfold nature of humanity in this regard. Now, that which had been flowing into the human subconscious from outer space since Atlantean times—which, one might say, penetrated it even in regard to its lower aspects—now flowed into the earthly development of the human being, in regard to its highest, purified aspects, at the baptism of John on the Jordan. This is indeed a significant event. For now, in the purest sense, those forces that had been continuously working upon our Earth and human form since Atlantean times as a current from outer space flowed in—not only into the subconscious part of the human being, but in such a way that the conscious part of the human being could increasingly be encompassed. Hence the image had to emerge that is indeed present among the great symbols handed down to us through occult and religious writings: the symbol we find in the Gospels.

[ 12 ] How, then, could one depict this influx from above, from outer space, in its purest form? We know what took place at the time of the baptism of John, that at that time the threefold body of Jesus of Nazareth—which had been prepared by the two Jesus-children, as you will find in the booklet *The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and of Humanity*—was left by his I, which was the I of Zarathustra. This I flowed upward, and into this I flowed, as it departed, the purest part of that stream which was already flowing continuously from outer space, but only into the parts of the human being that are today subconscious. That is why a bird form is given as a true symbol—the form of the pure white dove, which represents, as it were, the purest essence of what was the eagle-like or cherubic aspect of the ancient sphinx figure. And it is essentially part of the perfection of humanity on Earth that this cosmic, this world-stream flows into the conscious part of the human being. In the image of Jesus of Nazareth at the Jordan, with the dove above him, we indeed find expressed the mystery that had now reached a certain conclusion.

[ 13 ] Yesterday we were able to trace this current flowing in from outer space a little in its history, its cosmic history. Why was this current flowing in from outer space able to take shape in such a way that it became that Christ force, that Christ impulse which, by continuing to work further and further on Earth, will completely fill and permeate the human being? As the human being takes this impulse into their inner being, they will indeed fulfill more and more the truth of Paul’s words within themselves: Not I, but Christ in me. — In contrast to the other three currents that existed as a result of earlier development, the new current—which is the most purified current from above—will increasingly take hold of the human being, increasingly encompass him, and increasingly detach him from what binds him to the earth. We characterized the historical development of this current yesterday by saying that it could actually only have become what it has become because it had already prepared itself on the old sun.

[ 14 ] While the divine beings above the earth—who, in our modern sense, are the manifestations of the other divine beings— wished to live only in the finer elements—the element of warmth, the element of light, the chemical element, and the element of life—this being, who later descended through the baptism of John in the Jordan, took with it, out of innermost wisdom, the forces to which our development had already advanced at that time during the ancient solar evolution. We know from spiritual science that during the ancient solar evolution, the condensation of the element of warmth—which was still the most essential element on ancient Saturn—had already taken place, transforming into the element of air. While the other beings of the super-earthly worlds of the gods did not choose to take anything air-like with them when they stepped out of the overall development into outer space, this being took the element of air with it, so that it remained related to the Earth; thus, throughout all future development out in outer space, there was continually an element related to the Earth through this being: that which had already condensed into air or gas on the ancient Sun. — When we look out into outer space toward the Sun, as if with the eye of the ancient Zarathustra, we must first see in it a remnant of the ancient Sun, as it were the revived ancient Sun, which in the present, as it were, imitates that which was on the ancient Sun. We must therefore view the Sun, from a secret-scientific perspective, as the dwelling place—or at least a part of the dwelling place—of the higher divine beings we mentioned yesterday as one current of the divine world; our other planets also belong to this dwelling place. But if you look at this entire sun with a clairvoyant gaze, everything that these higher gods are is present in the sun only in an ethereal form, rising from the heat elements upward as heat-ether, light-ether, chemical ether, and life-ether. But the Sun, as it floats out there in outer space today, is not merely present as an ethereal form to the clairvoyant eye; rather, it exists as a gaseous sphere, condensed to the point of airiness. The Sun would never have been condensed to the substance of air if, during the ancient development of the Sun, that being of whom I spoke yesterday—and who descended again with the dove at the baptism of John in the Jordan—had not separated from the Sun in an air body and not merely in an etheric body. So when we look at the sun, we must say: What in the sun are impulses of warmth, light, and chemistry—what are life impulses—is also connected to the other beings, who are merely the representations of the lower divine forms. What is gaseous in the sun is, in fact, the body of Christ.

[ 15 ] In it, our present-day, so materialistic science will one day rediscover the ancient teachings of Zarathustra and will have to admit: The Sun as a ball of gas out in outer space is not merely what our astrochemistry seeks to make of it, nor merely what our spectral analysis discovers; rather, the Sun as a ball of air or gas out in outer space is the original body of Christ, who, in union with the other higher gods, was a divine figure akin to earthly beings. — This is what Zarathustra sensed when he expressed the mystery of Christ in the sun with the words: Aura or Ahura Mazdao, the great wise Spirit, the great Wisdom, the great Aura. - Indeed, that which had previously existed only in the sun, akin to the earthly being, took possession of the physical, etheric, and astral bodies of Jesus of Nazareth at the mysterious moment of John’s baptism in the Jordan. And in this body of Jesus of Nazareth, the purified, refined current from the cosmic space of the worlds first united on our Earth with the newly emerging etheric body flowing from the human heart to the brain. During the baptism of John in the Jordan, that which entered from outside the cosmos as a real current, also permeated by airy substance, united with the ethereal current that continually flows as the finest etheric particles from the blood from the heart to the head. This marked the beginning of the possibility, ever since, for every human soul to be permeated by that element from outer space which is presented to us in the symbol of the dove at the baptism of John in the Jordan. A correspondence was indeed established between the entire universe, insofar as it is accessible to us, and its purest essence, which had previously—one might say provisionally—contributed to what is esoterically called the eagle current. It was a communication, an interaction between all that constituted the Earth’s current—which shaped the human body from below—and that which acted upon humanity from the outside as the macrocosmic current. You can see from this that one can indeed delve ever deeper into the Mystery of Palestine. The further we ourselves advance in our understanding of what the world is, the more we also come to grasp the mystery of Palestine.

[ 16 ] Now we must ask ourselves this question, my dear friends: Why is it that people today no longer perceive anything at all, no longer sense the etheric currents flowing from their hearts toward their brains? Modern science is superficial. Consequently, it also approaches history in a highly superficial manner and often regards what are ancient truths as ancient errors. If you were to study Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, you would find a remarkable theory of human nature, a remarkable depiction of the wonder of the human being. You would find there the description that the finest etheric particles flow from the heart toward the head and, as these etheric particles touch the brain, are cooled. Of course, modern science says: Aristotle was quite clever for the ancient Greeks, but today every schoolboy knows that this is an error. - But what those who speak of Aristotle in this way believe is itself a mistake. In truth, Aristotle did not possess the clairvoyant consciousness to know anything about these things himself, but he still knew, from ancient traditions, what had been observed in even earlier times through a primal, natural clairvoyance. And this awareness of the etheric currents rising from the heart to the brain was, in a certain sense, still present well into the Middle Ages, into the 15th and 16th centuries, and we find a certain awareness of it even in the works of Descartes. Except that the history of philosophy says: Well, that’s just something Descartes tells in such a fantastical way about the so-called vital spirits flowing from the heart to the brain—those are just old prejudices. How fortunate that we have moved beyond that!—But these are not old prejudices; they are old truths stemming from a time when one could perceive such things through natural clairvoyance. In later times, awareness of these things was simply lost. How, then, must we present these things from the standpoint of modern clairvoyance, of modern occult science? Perhaps, because Aristotle necessarily had to draw only from tradition—since he himself no longer possessed the ancient clairvoyant powers—it is somewhat difficult to come to terms with the way he expresses these things. But when one engages once more in the examination of the full human being through the esotericism that has been in use since the 13th century, one notices that such an etheric current does indeed flow from the heart to the head.

[ 17 ] But there is something else to note. It is not only a stream of ether that flows from the heart to the head; within what flows there as a stream from the heart to the head, there are also streams of the astral body. If one therefore looks more closely at these currents flowing from the heart to the head, it turns out that these currents contain both etheric particles—substances of the human etheric body—as well as substances of the human astral body. A substance thus flows from the heart to the head, in which there are present substantial parts of both the human etheric body and the human astral body. Now, the brain is a highly peculiar instrument of human nature; for, through the way it has formed since the last third of the Atlantean epoch, it has acquired the property of holding back what ascends as an astral current, not allowing it to pass through, while it does indeed allow the etheric current to pass through. So, mind you: as a physical instrument, the brain is something in which the current flowing upward from the heart is partially blocked. The brain is permeable to the etheric current, but not to the astral current. It is held back in our brain, so that to the clairvoyant gaze, the region of the human head appears as follows: astral currents rising from the human body spread out in the brain but are held back by it, unable to pass through the brain at all or only to a very small extent. These astral currents, however, which rise from below and are held back by the brain, exert a certain attraction toward the external astral substances that constantly surround us in the Earth’s astral substance. Therefore, this astral body of the human being, insofar as it concerns the region near the head, is as if sewn together from two astralities: from the astrality that continually flows in from the cosmos, and from that which moves upward in the human body and is attracted by the external astrality.

[ 18 ] So what we find as the astral body around the head, very close to our scalp, has, as it were, a thickening—something like a cap, if I may put it paradoxically—which we constantly wear as astral substance. We have such an astral head covering, which arises from the thickening through which the outer and inner astral bodies are, as it were, sewn together here near the head. The rays of the etheric body now penetrate through this astral hood or cap, since they are not held back by the brain, and the purer they are—that is, the less they still contain of the drives, desires, and passions, of the emotions of human nature—the brighter and more radiant they appear to the clairvoyant eye. As a result, what we call the human aura takes on a kind of wreath when viewed from the front—a wreath of astral light through which the rays of the human etheric body shine. This is the head aura, which was perceived by the ancient people still gifted with clairvoyance in such personalities in whom, through the purity of their being, this part of the etheric aura shone brightly: that which is also depicted as the halo in pictures. This is actually what is meant by the halo, and this is seen when the clairvoyant gaze perceives the head aura very clearly. So, due to the peculiar nature of the brain, there is a retention and distribution of the inner astral aura, the inner astral substance, around the head.

[ 19 ] Please pay very close attention to this process. In human beings, etheric-astral substance flows upward from below. This etheric-astral substance spreads out in the brain in such a way that it fills the brain, but is held back by the brain, just as a ray of light falling from within onto a mirror is held back and reflected back. And here you have the true nature of the reflection. As the astral substance is held back by the brain, it reflects back, and what enters there and is reflected back—that is your thoughts, that is your conscious feeling—is what you usually experience as your inner life. And only because this astral part is, as it were, woven or sewn together by the etheric particles flowing through the brain—which causes the inner astral part to seek connection with the outer astral realm—does external knowledge, an understanding of the external world, come into being. Everything we know of the outer world—all of that enters us through the fact that outer astral reality, via the astral cap or hood described to you in such paradoxical terms—which everyone wears—through this helmet, unites with inner astral reality.

[ 20 ] Yes, my dear friends, cultural history, too, will be further enriched by occultism. I remind you that in ancient times people did indeed perceive such things, and what was still visible in those days—the auric aspect—was imitated in their clothing. People wore helmets because they shaped them in the likeness of the astral cap or hood that every human being wears. All outer garments originated in their original form in such a way that what a person has around them in the etheric or astral realm was imitated in the garment. And if we wish to understand the ancient garments, particularly the priestly vestments, if we wish to know why a particular design came about in a certain way, then we need only look clairvoyantly at the things surrounding human beings, whether as an etheric aura or an astral aura. For the forms of the etheric or astral aura were imitated in the ancient vestments and are still imitated in the vestments associated with any cult or ritual. It is therefore—I note this only in parentheses—entirely fitting for an age so steeped in materialism that it denies the aura to also no longer want garments that have emerged from the imitation of what the human being carries within themselves. And if the fad of nudism appears in our present day, it stems from the fact that the materialistic mindset no longer wants to know anything about those higher etheric and astral aura formations that surround the human being and from which the forms of their clothing were derived. In earlier times—though not so very long ago—the colors of the aura were still reflected in people’s clothing. And if you look at the paintings of the older masters, you can discern a consciousness—one might say—still emerging in its ancient remnants, in which the auric is expressed in the colors of the garments. Look at the paintings: how Mary is usually depicted with very specific colors for her undergarment and very specific colors for her outer garment, and how, for example, Mary Magdalene is portrayed with different colors! The old painter could not use the yellow color of Mary Magdalene’s robe for Mary’s. Why not? Because the aura of Mary Magdalene is different from that of Mary. The old painter still fully expressed the awareness that the garment is an expression of what the human being carries around with them in a supersensible way, like a kind of garment. And if you look specifically at what the Greek deities wear—not just as garments, but as helmets or similar items—such as what Pallas Athena wears, this depends on how the Greek artist had to conceive of the aura of the ancient deities according to these premises.

[ 21 ] You see, then, that the person who advances toward a true spiritual understanding of human nature must indeed say to himself: Everything you see around you is, at first, merely a very external, superficial expression of true essence. When a person feels this consciousness at work within them, knows it is at work within them, then they must say to themselves: This consciousness actually encompasses only the very smallest part of human nature. Something entirely different is constantly at work within me. — And here we can add to what we have said regarding the brain.

[ 22 ] If we again follow the human being clairvoyantly as regards his other regions, we find something most peculiar. While the etheric and astral parts of the aura ascend as far as the brain—where the astral part is held back and the etheric part emerges like a corona—we see that the human ego, as an inner aura, is already held back in the region of the heart. The actual inner ego-aura is already held back in the region of the heart, rises only as far as the region of the heart, and connects with one of the outer parts of the aura corresponding to the macrocosmic parts of the aura. In the heart, two elements do indeed intertwine: the one element that enters from the macrocosm and is linked with the ego-aura, which rises from below but is already blocked at the heart, already held back at the heart. Just as the astral aura is held back in the brain, so the ego-aura is held back in the heart and comes into contact there with an outer ego-aura element. Therefore, the actual ego-consciousness of the human being does not, in fact, come into being in the brain. What I have told you about the ancient Atlantean human, that his ego has been drawn in, we must imagine even more precisely as a drawing-in of the outer macrocosmic ego, which since the ancient Atlantean time has now advanced as far as the heart, where it has connected with another ego-current flowing upward from below, and which converge in the heart, so that we have established in the heart the place where, through the medium of the blood, the actual human ego, as it appears in our consciousness, comes into being.

[ 23 ] All of this shows you how human beings are situated within the great, macrocosmic world. All of this is us; all of this is within us. All of this takes place within us, and of all this, the normal consciousness of modern human beings encompasses only what every person knows—what lies on the surface. When you see that the wonder of the human world contains such immense things, you can also assume that what surrounds us in the three realms of nature contains the most manifold, the most complex currents, and that the knowledge we have of this world for our consciousness is only a small, superficial fragment. When one becomes aware of this fact, one must stand before the world and say: With what constitutes the content of our soul, our consciousness in ordinary life, we are given only the outermost surface of things, and through normal consciousness one knows only the smallest part of the human being.

[ 24 ] What I have just expressed in a simple, plain sentence will one day become a piercing, harsh, and profound realization for the person who strives toward a higher, supersensory understanding. Then it suddenly dawns on them: Yes, with what you have known up to now, you have actually veiled and concealed things from yourself more than you have revealed them. The human being stands there in all their human weakness before the wonders of the worlds. That he does not faint in the face of this awareness, that he finds within himself the confidence—characterized yesterday—to persevere nonetheless: this encompasses the scope of all that must be called trials of the soul. Strong, powerful energy, hope, and trust carry the soul through every trial, for through them the soul confronts all that we may call the wonders of the world. And the world presents us with more and more wonders the further we penetrate into the supersensible worlds. But since with every new wonder of the world we are confronted with ever new unknowns, we are also constantly faced with new trials of the soul. In small, ordinary life, it would be a trial if, for example, we had known a person for a while and believed him to be exactly as he appeared to us, and if he then suddenly revealed himself to be something entirely different. Then we could either turn away from him or we could guide our soul beyond this point and remain faithful even then. Then we would have passed the test of friendship in a certain sense. These tests also exist in relation to the wonders of the world. With all that our soul has acquired in terms of ideas and feelings regarding the wonders of the world, as we advance we do not, however, face a world that changes; but because we look deeper and deeper into this world, something different always stands before us, and we must say to ourselves again and again: What we have seen so far is Maya. — Here doubt may arise in us. Above all, the feeling may arise that we say to ourselves: You have advanced too quickly, just as Johannes Thomasius must say to himself in the penultimate scene of the second Rosicrucian drama, “The Trial of the Soul.” Up to this point, in accordance with his soul’s development, he has formed a certain image of Lucifer. But that is only an image, a phantom. As he advances further, however, Lucifer appears to him as far more substantial, and he must turn back again to get to know him in his fullness, not as a phantom as before.

[ 25 ] And so even those who have, in a certain sense, advanced to what is for them a higher stage of clairvoyance can go even further and say to themselves: What I have achieved so far is merely a shadow, an image; it must become more concrete. — Because we ourselves are advancing, we are faced with ever-new forms of the world. We can carry the powerful forces of the soul into these new forms. Then our soul will pass the tests and be able to receive ever new spiritual revelations from this world. Every time a new spiritual revelation comes, a test of the soul will have to be passed. New tests arise from every stage of development, and we must see the very impulse for all higher development in the fact that our soul never needs to come to an end, but can always undergo higher and perhaps even more difficult tests. But whenever the soul passes these tests, spiritual revelations never fail to follow—revelations that, perhaps only after a long time, give the soul that to which it must ascend through its trials.

[ 26 ] Thus we see how such trials serve as an impetus for upward striving, just as spiritual revelations are always that which comes to meet us from above as a source of satisfaction. Therefore, we must by no means hastily regard what can be attained at one stage—and what, for example, has been depicted in our first Rosicrucian Mystery—as a conclusion. We would be mistaken if we regarded it as a conclusion. A person may, for example, have advanced very far in the vision of images of the higher worlds, and yet one day come to realize that they have seen only images, not realities. Then he faces the harsh trial of the soul that Johannes Thomasius still faces as the second Rosicrucian drama draws to a close. Then he realizes that it was an image, that he has not yet come to know reality sufficiently on the physical plane to fill his image with reality. Then such trials come upon the soul that this soul must ask itself: How do I develop the strong forces within me to give substance to what is at first merely an image? — Thus we must be clear that we must not shy away from trials of the soul, for with every new configuration of the world that confronts us, we must once again pass trials, and to escape these trials would be the death of true spiritual life. We must admit to ourselves that we must not shy away from the trials of the soul, because they make us strong enough to ascend into the spiritual world.