The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] When speaking about the spiritual worlds in the manner done here in this lecture series, it is necessary to bear in mind that the clairvoyant consciousness to which the human soul can develop does not alter the nature and essence of the human being in any way, since everything that enters into this consciousness was already present in human nature beforehand. By recognizing something, one does not create it, but merely learns to perceive what already exists as a fact. As self-evident as this is, it must nevertheless be emphasized, because one’s thoughts should be directed toward the fact that the essence of the human being lies in the hidden depths of existence, and that it is brought up from these hidden depths of existence only through clairvoyant perception. For it follows from this that the real, true nature of the human being can be brought to light by nothing other than clairvoyant consciousness. No kind of philosophy can reveal what a human being actually is, except through such knowledge as is based on clairvoyant consciousness. For as far as observation in the sensory world and the intellect bound to the sensory world are concerned, the essence of the human being—the true, genuine essence of the human being—lies in hidden worlds. Now, when this clairvoyant consciousness—from whose perspective the worlds beyond the so-called threshold are to be viewed—first crosses this threshold, then entirely different demands are placed upon it, so that it may perceive and recognize, than in the sensory world. And this is the main point: that the human soul must, so to speak, accustom itself to the fact that there is not only one way of looking and perceiving that is the right and healthy one for the sensory world.

[ 2 ] I will refer here to the first world that the human soul enters—once it has crossed the threshold and become clairvoyant—as the elemental world. Only those who wish to carry the conventions of the sensory world into the higher, supersensory worlds can demand that a uniform nomenclature be chosen for all perspectives from which the higher worlds are viewed. I will point out, both at the end of this lecture series and in the book that will be available here in the coming days under the title “The Threshold of the Spiritual World,” the relationship between the naming conventions chosen here—such as the term “elemental world”— and the terms used in the descriptions given as the soul world, the spiritual world, and so on in my *Theosophy* and in my *Outline of Esoteric Science*, so that one may not lightly seek contradictions where in reality none exist. Entirely new demands are placed upon the life of the soul when it crosses the threshold into the elemental world. If the human soul were to attempt to enter the elemental world with the customs and habits of the sensory world, two outcomes could occur: either a haze or complete darkness would spread within the sphere of consciousness, within the field of vision, or the other outcome would occur: the human soul, if it were to attempt to enter the elemental world unprepared for its customs and demands, would be cast back into the sensory world. The elemental world is entirely different from the sensory world. In the sensory world, the situation is such that when you move from being to being, from event to event within this world, you do indeed have these beings and these events before you and can observe them; yet in your observation, you retain quite clearly your self-contained being, your personal self, before every event and every being. You know at every moment that you are the same person you were in relation to another event or another being when you encounter a new one, and you can never lose yourself in that event or that being. You stand before them, you stand outside of them, and you know that wherever you may wander in the sensory world, you remain the same. This changes immediately when one enters the elemental world. In the elemental world, it is necessary to adapt the entire inner life of one’s soul to a being or a process to such an extent that one transforms oneself, through one’s soul life, into that being or that process itself. There is no other way to perceive anything in the elemental world than by approaching the beings in such a way that one becomes someone else within each being, and indeed becomes highly similar to the being and the process itself.

[ 3 ] One must possess this as a characteristic of one’s soul in relation to the elemental world: the ability to transform one’s own being into other beings. One must possess the capacity for metamorphosis. One must, as it were, be able to submerge oneself and become the beings themselves, and one must be able to lose that consciousness which one must always have in the sensory world if one wishes to remain mentally healthy there—the consciousness: ‘You are so-and-so.’ In the elemental world, one comes to know a being only when one, in a certain sense, becomes one with its soul life inwardly. Thus one must proceed through the elemental world, once one has crossed the threshold into it, by transforming oneself with every step into every single process, by, as it were, crawling into every being. What in the physical world contributes to the health of the soul—namely, maintaining one’s own essential being while traversing the sensory world—is entirely impossible in the elemental world; there, this would either lead to a darkening of the horizon or cast one back into the sensory world.

[ 4 ] Now you can easily create a mental image of what the soul needs to exercise this capacity for transformation, in addition to what it already possesses in the sensory world. The human soul is too weak to transform itself continuously, to adapt to every being, if it enters the elemental world in the same way it exists in the sensory world. Therefore, the powers of this human soul must be strengthened and elevated, and therefore those preparations are necessary that are described in my *Esoteric Science* and in the treatise *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*, all of which lead to the soul life becoming stronger and more powerful within itself. Then the soul can immerse itself in the other beings without losing itself in this immersion. By mentioning such things, you see at the same time how necessary it is to fully heed what is called the threshold between the sensory world and the supersensory worlds. It has already been said that, as long as a person is an earthly human being, the clairvoyant consciousness must, so to speak, continually pass back and forth: that it must observe, beyond the physical body, in the spiritual world beyond the threshold, and then return again to the physical body and exercise in a healthy way those abilities that lead to the correct observation of the physical world, the sensory world.

[ 5 ] Let us suppose that a consciousness that has become clairvoyant were to carry over into the sensory world—when it crosses the threshold back into this sensory world—that capacity for transformation which it must possess in order for the spiritual world to exist for it at all. This capacity for transformation, of which I have spoken, is a characteristic of the human etheric body, which lives primarily in the elemental world. Let us therefore assume that a human being returns from the spiritual world to the sensory world and leaves his etheric body as capable of transformation as it must be in the elemental world. What would then happen? Every world has its own particular laws. The sensory world is the world of closed forms; the spirits of form reign in the sensory world. The elemental world is the world of mobility, the world of metamorphosis, of transformation. Just as one must constantly transform oneself if one wishes to feel one’s way in the elemental world, so all beings are constantly transforming in the elemental world. There is no closed, no delimited form in the elemental world; everything is in constant metamorphosis. And one must participate in this metamorphosing existence as a soul outside the physical body if one wishes to experience oneself in the elemental world. In the physical-sensory world, one must allow one’s etheric body—which, as an etheric body, is a being of the elemental world and possesses the capacity for transformation—to be immersed in the physical body. Through this physical body, one is a specific personality in the physical-sensory world; one is this or that specific personality. The physical body imprints one’s personality; the physical body and the conditions in the physical-sensory world into which one is placed make one a personality. In the elemental world, one is not such a personality, for personality requires a fixed form. But here it is important to note that what the clairvoyant consciousness perceives in the human soul is always present. It is only through the forces of the physical body that the mobility of the etheric body is held together. As soon as the etheric body sinks into the physical body, its mobile forces are held together and fitted into the form. And the etheric body, if it were not enclosed within the physical body as if in a bag, would always have the impulse toward constant transformation.

[ 6 ] Let us now suppose that a soul that has become clairvoyant carries this impulse toward adaptability into the physical-sensory world within its etheric body. Then this etheric body, with its tendency toward mobility, is, as it were, loosely embedded within the physical body, and as a result, the human soul, through the forces of its etheric body, comes into conflict with the demands of the physical world, which seeks to shape one into a specific personality, because the etheric body, which wants to move freely, when it crosses back over the threshold from the spiritual world to the physical-sensory world in an improper manner, wants to be something different at every moment, something that may stand in contradiction to the fixed character of the physical body. To put it more precisely, by virtue of the physical body, one can be, say, a European bank clerk, but because the etheric body has carried over into the physical world the impulse to liberate itself from the physical body, one can imagine oneself to be the Emperor of China. Or, to use another example, one can, say, be president of the Theosophical Society, and, once the etheric body has become loose, imagine that one has stood before the director of the Globe. Here we see how the threshold that precisely separates the sensory and supersensory worlds must be observed in the most decisive manner; how one must grasp the demands of each world in the soul’s eye and how one must adapt to these demands; how the soul must behave differently depending on whether it stands beyond or within the threshold. This is therefore connected to the fact that it must be emphasized again and again: the customs of the supersensible worlds must not be carried back in an improper manner into the sensory world when one steps back across the threshold. If I may be permitted to put it bluntly, I can say: One must know how to behave correctly in both worlds; one must not carry over into the other world the way of observing that is correct in one world.

[ 7 ] The first thing to note, then, is that the soul’s fundamental capacity for self-experience—for sensing itself—in the elemental world is its ability to transform. However, the human soul could never live permanently in this state of transformability; the etheric body could no more belong permanently to the elemental world in a state of transformability than a human being could remain awake continuously in the physical world. In the physical world, a human being can perceive it only when awake; when asleep, they do not perceive it. Nevertheless, a human being must alternate the waking state with the sleeping state. Something similar is also necessary for the elemental world. Just as it is not appropriate for the physical world to be constantly awake—just as life must, as it were, oscillate in the physical world between waking and sleeping—so something similar is also necessary for the life of the etheric body in the elemental world. There must, as it were, be a counterpole, a counterforce to the capacity for transformation that leads to perception in the spiritual world. That which makes one capable of transformation for the spiritual world is the human life of mental images; it is the ability to make imagination and thinking flexible, so that through this flexible thinking one can immerse oneself in the beings and processes there. For the other state, which can be compared to sleep in the sensory world, human volition must be developed and strengthened. Thus, for the capacity for transformation—that is, thinking or a mental image—and for the other state—volition.

[ 8 ] We will understand this if we consider that, in the physical-sensory world, the human being is a self, an “I.” Because the physical-sensory body provides what is necessary for this, as long as the human being is awake, he feels himself as a self, as an “I.” The forces of the physical-sensory body are such that, when a human being immerses themselves in the physical-sensory body, it supplies them with the forces that allow them to perceive themselves as a self, as an “I.” This is not the case in the elemental world. There, the human being must, to a certain extent, perform for themselves what the physical body performs in the physical-sensory world. One cannot develop a sense of self in the elemental world unless one exerts one’s will, unless one wills oneself. This, however, requires overcoming human complacency—a complacency that is immensely deeply rooted. The will to be oneself is necessary for the elemental world; and just as sleeping and waking alternate in the physical-sensory world, so must the state of transforming oneself into beings in the elemental world alternate with this sense of self strengthened by the will. Just as one becomes tired in the physical-sensory world through the work of the day, just as one’s eyes eventually close there, in short, just as one is overcome by sleep, so there come moments in the elemental world for the etheric body when it feels: I cannot transform myself continuously now; I must now exclude everything that pertains to other beings and processes. I must drive all of that out of my field of vision; I must disregard all other beings and processes and will myself, my self, to live once completely, completely within myself and know nothing of the other beings and processes of the elemental world. This would correspond to sleep in the physical world: this will to oneself with the exclusion of other beings and processes.

[ 9 ] It would be a mistake to form a mental image of the world in which the alternation between the capacity for transformation and a strengthened sense of self exists in the elemental world just as waking and sleeping do in the physical-sensory world. To the clairvoyant consciousness—and it is perceptible only to this—it is all arbitrary; it does not transition of its own accord, as waking does into sleep, but rather, after having lived in the state of transformation for a more or less extended period, one feels within oneself the need to now experience once more, to unfold, as it were, the other swing of the pendulum of elemental life. Thus, in a far more arbitrary manner than waking and sleeping in the physical-sensory world, the capacity for transformation and inner life with a strengthened sense of self alternate in the elemental world. Indeed, consciousness can bring about a situation where, as it were, through a certain elasticity of this consciousness, both states are simultaneously present under certain conditions—so that one transforms oneself, as it were, on the one hand, yet holds certain parts of one’s soul together and remains at rest within oneself. One can, in the elemental world, simultaneously wake and sleep—something one should not undertake in the physical-sensory world for the sake of the soul’s life. Thus we see that even in this elemental world such a pendulum swing of the soul’s life is necessary, just as waking and sleeping are necessary in the physical world.

[ 10 ] One must also take into account that when thinking develops the capacity for transformation—that is, when it becomes attuned to the elemental world—this very thinking, just as it is healthy and proper in the physical-sensory world, is not needed in the elemental world. What, then, is this thinking like in the physical-sensory world? Consider for a moment what it is like. One experiences thoughts within one’s soul. One knows that one internally grasps, generates, connects, and separates these thoughts. One feels oneself to be the master of these thoughts within the soul. These thoughts behave, as it were, passively; they can be connected and separated, created and then removed again. This life of thought must develop one step further in the elemental world. In the elemental world, one is not in a position to face such passive thoughts as in the physical-sensory world. When one truly immerses oneself in the elemental world with a clairvoyant soul, it is as if thoughts were not things one controls, but rather the thoughts become like living beings. Imagine for a moment that your thoughts were not such that you create them, connect them, and separate them, but rather that in your consciousness each thought began to lead a life of its own, an essential life. You would, as it were, place your consciousness into a realm where you cannot have thoughts in the same way as in the physical-sensory world, but where thoughts are living beings. I cannot help but use a grotesque image; but this image can make us a little aware of how different thinking must become in the elemental world compared to the physical-sensory world. Imagine you stuck your head into an anthill, and thinking ceased. Instead, you would have ants in your head instead of your thoughts. That is how thoughts become when you immerse your soul in the elemental world: they connect and separate on their own, leading a life of their own. Now, truly, one needs a stronger power of the soul to face living thought-beings with one’s consciousness than the passive thoughts of the physical world, which let one do with them as one pleases, which even tolerate not only being connected and separated sensibly, but sometimes quite foolishly as well. These thoughts of the physical-sensory world are patient things; they put up with everything from the soul. It is quite different when one, so to speak, plunges the soul into the elemental world. There the thoughts live their independent lives. There one must hold oneself upright and assert oneself with one’s soul life—not in the face of passive thoughts, but in the face of an active, self-generating life of thought. It is certainly true that one can think something quite foolish in the physical-sensory world; that usually does no harm. In the elemental world, it can very well happen that if one commits foolish acts with one’s thinking there, what crawls about there as independent beings will cause one real harm, inflict real pain.

[ 11 ] Thus we see how the customs of the soul life must necessarily change when one crosses the threshold from the physical-sensory world into the supersensory world. If one were to bring the habits one applies to the living thought-beings of the elemental world over into the physical-sensory world, cross the threshold and return, and were then not to develop healthy thinking with passive thoughts, but instead to cling to the behavior suited for the elemental world, then one’s thoughts would constantly run through one’s mind; one would chase after one’s thoughts; then one would become a slave to one’s thoughts.

[ 12 ] When one enters the elemental world with a clairvoyant soul and develops the ability to transform, one then immerses oneself, transforming one’s inner life as one encounters this or that being. — What does one experience there when one immerses oneself in this way? You see, when one immerses oneself in this way, when one transforms into one being or another, one experiences something that could be called: sympathies and antipathies, which well up as if from the depths of the soul and manifest as experiences in the soul that has become clairvoyant. One experiences very specific kinds of antipathies or sympathies by transforming into one being or another. By proceeding from one transformation to the next in this way, one continually experiences different sympathies and antipathies. And just as in the physical-sensory world one characterizes, describes, recognizes, and perceives beings and things by seeing them through the eye in colors and hearing them through the ear in sounds, so too, if one were to describe them within the spiritual worlds themselves, one would describe them in terms of specific sympathies and antipathies. However, two things must be noted here: First, when speaking in terms of the physical-sensory world, one usually distinguishes only degrees of sympathies and antipathies—stronger and weaker sympathies and antipathies. This is not the case in the elemental world; there, sympathies and antipathies differ not only in degree but also qualitatively, so that there are different kinds of sympathies and antipathies. Just as the colors yellow and red are different kinds of colors, qualitatively different, so too are the manifold sympathies and antipathies experienced in the elemental world qualitatively different, not merely that one is stronger and the other weaker. Therefore, it would not be a correct description to say, based on the conventions of the physical-sensory world, that when one immerses oneself in one being one feels greater sympathy, and when one immerses oneself in another, lesser sympathy. No, the sympathies are different!

[ 13 ] That is one thing to keep in mind. The other is that one cannot carry over the attitudes of sympathy and antipathy—which are entirely natural in the physical-sensory world—into the elemental world. In the physical-sensory world, one is drawn to sympathies and repelled by antipathies; one moves toward beings who are sympathetic to one, one wants to be with them; from beings and things that are antipathetic to one, one flees, one wants nothing to do with them. This cannot be the case with the sympathies and antipathies of the elemental world, that—if I may put it grotesquely—the sympathies are sympathetic and the antipathies are antipathetic; this must not occur in the elemental world. That would be just as if, in the physical-sensory world, someone were to say: I can only stand the blue and green colors, but I don’t like the red and yellow colors; I run away from them as fast as I can. — For a being to be antipathetic in the elemental world means that it possesses a certain quality of this elemental world that one must simply describe as antipathetic. And one must relate to this antipathy in the same way one relates to blue and red in the sensory world—not that one finds one more agreeable and the other more disagreeable. Just as in the physical-sensory world one approaches all colors with a certain composure, because they express what things are, and only if one is a nervous person does one shy away from one color or another, or, if one is a Taurus, cannot stand the color red—just as one accepts the colors with equanimity in the physical-sensory world, so must one be able to observe the sympathies and antipathies in the elemental world as characteristics of that world with complete equanimity. For this, it is necessary that the soul’s disposition—as it naturally is in the physical-sensory world—that this disposition of the soul, which feels drawn by sympathies and repelled by antipathies, become something entirely different. That state of mind, that emotional disposition which corresponds to the sympathies and antipathies in the physical-sensory world, must be replaced in relation to the elemental world by what one might call serenity of soul, peace of mind. With an inwardly centered soul life, with a spiritually peaceful soul life, one must immerse oneself in the beings and then, upon immersing oneself—by transforming into them—feel the qualities of these beings emerge from the depths of one’s own soul as sympathies and antipathies. Only then, when one is able to do all this, when the soul can relate in this way to sympathies and antipathies, is this soul capable of allowing the experience of feeling oneself as sympathetic or antipathetic toward the things of the elemental world to emerge before one’s mind in a pictorially accurate way. That is to say: only then is one able not merely to feel what it is to sense in sympathies and antipathies, but to actually see the experience of oneself, transformed into another being, springing up as this or that colored image or this or that sound image of the elemental world. You can also become aware of how sympathies and antipathies play a role in relation to the soul’s experience in the spiritual world if you follow, with a certain inner understanding, the chapter in my *Theosophy* that deals with the soul world. There you will see that the soul world is built up precisely from sympathies and antipathies.

[ 14 ] From my description, you have seen that what is known in the physical-sensory world as “thinking” is actually only the outer, shadowy imprint—brought about by the physical body—of that thinking which lies in the occult depths and which can truly be called “living beinghood.” As soon as we move with our etheric body in the elemental world, thoughts become—I would say—more dense, more alive, more independent, and truer in their essence. What is experienced as thinking within the physical-sensory body relates to this truer element of thinking like a shadow on the wall relates to the objects from which it is cast. It is, in fact, the shadow of the elemental life of thought that is cast into the physical-sensory world through the constitution of the physical body. We think, as it were, within the shadow of the thought-being when we think in the physical-sensory world. Here, the supersensible, the clairvoyant perception, opens a view into the true nature of thought. No philosophy, no external science, however ingenious it may appear, can discover anything true about this true nature of thinking; only knowledge based on clairvoyant consciousness can perceive the truth.

[ 15 ] The same is true of the will. The will must grow stronger, because life in the elemental world is not as comfortable as it is in the physical-sensory world, where the sense of self is provided by the forces of the physical body. One must will this sense of self oneself; one must experience in the elemental world what it means to be filled in the soul with the content of consciousness: I will myself. — One must experience that it is of the utmost importance that, at the moment when one is not strong enough to unfold not the thought but the actual act of will: I will myself —, one feels as if falling into a state of powerlessness. If one does not hold oneself in the elemental world, one falls into a state of powerlessness in this world, as it were. There one looks into the true nature of willing, which in turn cannot be given by external science, by external philosophy, but only through clairvoyant knowledge. What we call the will in the physical-sensory world is a shadow of that strong, essential will which unfolds in such a way that it sustains the self out of its own volition, unsupported by external forces. Everything becomes more volitional—so we may say—in this elemental world when we live ourselves into it.

[ 16 ] Above all, when one leaves the physical body and finds oneself surrounded by the elemental world in one’s etheric body, the urge for transformation arises from the very nature of the etheric body. One wants to immerse oneself in the beings. But just as waking in the day gives rise to the need for sleep, so too does the need arise in the elemental world to be with oneself, to shut out everything into which one might transform. Then again, however, once one has felt at home in the elemental world for a while, once one has developed that strong sense of will for a while: I want to—, then something occurs that one might call a terrible sense of loneliness, a feeling of abandonment, which evokes the longing to awaken, as it were, from this state of merely wanting oneself back to the capacity for transformation. In physical sleep one rests, and the forces ensure that one wakes up without one having to do anything. In the elemental world, once one has placed oneself in the sleep-like state of merely wanting oneself, one must, through the prompting of the feeling of abandonment, return oneself to the state of transformability—that is to say: want to wake up. From all this you can see how different the conditions of self-experience, of feeling oneself, are in the elemental world from those of the physical-sensory world. And you can appreciate how necessary it is to bear in mind again and again that the clairvoyant consciousness, which passes back and forth from one world to the other, truly adapts itself correctly to the demands of the respective world and does not carry the customs of one world over into the other when crossing the threshold. The strengthening and invigoration of the soul life therefore belongs to the preparations for experiencing the supersensible worlds that we have often mentioned. The strengthening and invigoration of the soul life.

[ 17 ] Above all, those experiences of the soul that might be described as higher moral experiences—experiences that express themselves in a state of mind characterized by strength of character, inner security, and calm—must become strong and powerful. Inner courage and strength of character must above all be cultivated in the soul, for weakness of character weakens the entire life of the soul, and one enters the elemental world with a weak soul life. But one must not do this if one wishes to experience the elemental world correctly and truly. Therefore, no one who takes experiencing the higher worlds truly seriously will ever fail to emphasize that among those forces ‘which must strengthen the soul life so that it may enter the higher worlds correctly’ is the strengthening of the moral powers of the soul. And it is one of the saddest delusions presented to humanity when one attempts to say that clairvoyance should be acquired without regard for the strengthening of the moral life. It must be emphatically stated that what I have characterized in the treatise “How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?” as the formation of lotus flowers, which crystallize, as it were, in the spiritual body of the developing clairvoyant, that this formation of lotus flowers can indeed take place—but should not take place—without regard for the moral strengthening agents.

[ 18 ] These lotus flowers must be present if a person is to possess the capacity for transformation; for this capacity consists in the lotus flowers unfolding their petals away from the person and embracing the spiritual world, nestling against it. What one develops as the capacity for transformation is expressed, to the clairvoyant eye, in the unfolding of the lotus flowers. What one cultivates as a strengthened sense of self is inner firmness, which one might call an elemental backbone. Both must be developed accordingly: lotus flowers, so that one can transform oneself, and something akin to a backbone in the physical world—an elemental backbone—so that one can develop one’s strengthened self in the elemental world. Just as it was mentioned yesterday that what—when developed spiritually—can lead to high virtues in the spiritual world, if allowed to flow down into the sensory world, can lead to the strongest vices, so it is also with regard to the lotus flowers and the elemental backbone. It is also possible to awaken the lotus flowers and the elemental backbone through certain practices without seeking moral steadfastness, but no conscientious clairvoyant would recommend this. For it is not merely a matter of achieving this or that for the higher worlds, but of taking everything into account that is relevant.

[ 19 ] The moment one crosses the threshold into the spiritual world, one comes into contact with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings we have already spoken of in a manner entirely different from how one encounters them in the physical-sensory world. And one experiences something peculiar as soon as one has crossed the threshold—that is, as soon as one has lotus flowers and a spine—in that one immediately sees the Luciferic forces approaching. These forces strive to seize the petals of the lotus flowers. They stretch out their tentacles toward our lotus blossoms, and one must have developed in the right way so that one can use these lotus blossoms to grasp spiritual processes, and so that they are not seized by Luciferic forces. However, preventing them from being seized by Luciferic forces is only possible if one ascends into the spiritual world with a firm foundation of moral strength.

[ 20 ] I have already indicated that in the physical-sensory world, the Ahrimanic forces approach human beings more from the outside, while the Luciferic forces approach them more from within the soul. In the spiritual world, it is the reverse: there the Luciferic beings come from the outside and seek to seize the lotus flowers, while the Ahrimanic beings come from within and take firm hold in the elemental backbone. And now, if one has not ascended into the spiritual world through morality, the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers form a strange alliance with one another. If one has ascended with ambition, vanity, lust for power, and pride, then Ahriman and Lucifer succeed in forming an alliance with one another. I will indeed use an image to describe what Ahriman and Lucifer then do, but this image corresponds to reality, and you will understand me. What I am hinting at through this image actually happens: Ahriman and Lucifer form an alliance, and together Lucifer and Ahriman bind the petals of the lotus flowers to the elemental backbone. All the petals of the lotus flowers are bound together with the elemental backbone; the human being is tied up within themselves, bound within themselves by their developed lotus flowers and by their elemental backbone. And the consequence of this is that a degree of selfishness and a degree of love of deception arise that are completely unthinkable if the human being remains only in the physical world. So this is what can happen if clairvoyant consciousness is not developed in the proper way: Ahriman and Lucifer form an alliance through which the petals of the lotus flowers are bound to the elemental spine. And so one becomes bound within oneself by one’s own elemental or etheric faculties. These are all things one must know if one wishes to attempt to penetrate the real spiritual world with discernment.