The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] From the various considerations we have made, it should be clear to you that, even if it may not be outwardly apparent, there is a deep connection between a being—the principal being that inhabits a planetary world-body at a certain time—and that world-body itself. One can view this connection between the human being and the whole of earthly life—as we might say—and everything that belongs to it from a wide variety of perspectives. Today we want to approach the matter from a single perspective in order to form ideas about the true nature of the human being from that vantage point.

[ 2 ] We know, of course, that human beings live out their earthly lives through successive incarnations. These successive incarnations bring them into a deeper connection with the planet Earth itself than the periods that lie between death and a new birth. The periods a person spends between death and a new birth are times of a more spiritual existence for them. During such times, they are more detached from the Earth itself than during the periods between birth and death.

[ 3 ] To be more detached from the Earth, or to be in a more intimate connection with it, always also means, in each case, to be in a certain relationship with other beings. For what we call externally perceptible realms of the world is, after all, merely an expression of certain connections between spiritual beings. Even if, at first glance, our Earth appears to the physical eye as geologists imagine it—that is, as, so to speak, merely a mass of rock surrounded by an atmosphere—this is, in essence, only an outward appearance. What actually appears there as this mass of rock is, after all, merely the physical form of certain spiritual beings. And again: what appears to us as existing outside the Earth—what appears to us so far outside the Earth that it shines down upon this Earth as the world of the stars—is, in turn, just as it appears to us: merely the outer, sensory expression of a certain interconnection of spiritual beings, of hierarchies. Through that which appears to us as the heavy Earth—which comes closest to us primarily because it is, so to speak, the solid foundation upon which we develop our lives between birth and death, and which thus appears to us as the sensory, outer Earth—it is through this that we primarily develop our lives between birth and death. Through all that which shines upon us from outer space, which glows before us as the world of the stars—with which we seem to have so little connection—we have a connection more closely related to the period between death and a new birth. One can indeed say that it is more than a mere image—that it is a reality of profound significance—when we say: Human beings descend from the starry worlds to physical birth in order to fulfill their existence between birth and death. — But we must not imagine that the form we perceive as the radiance of the universe—the radiance of the cosmos—when we speak here on Earth of the world of the stars, is also the vision that unfolds before our supersensible gaze between death and a new birth. What appears outwardly to human beings living on Earth as the world of the stars presents itself in its inner essence, in its spiritual nature. We are dealing with the inner aspect of what is the outer aspect of our earthly existence here. Essentially, we must tell ourselves: Whether we look down, as it were, toward the Earth, or look up toward the cosmos, what we perceive with our physical senses is always a kind of illusion, and we arrive at the truth only when we go back to the beings that underlie this appearance with their various degrees of cosmic self-consciousness.

[ 4 ] It is, I would say, an illusion, whether one looks up or down. The truth, the essence, lies behind this appearance. But the fact that this appearance presents itself to us both above and below is connected to the fact that in our lives—between birth and death on the one hand, and also between death and a new birth on the other—there is always the danger of straying from the path of full humanity. Both here on Earth, between birth and death, we can become too closely related to this Earth—we can, so to speak, develop within ourselves the impulse, the instinct, to become too closely related to the Earthly forces—just as we can also, between death and a new birth, develop the impulse to become too closely related to the cosmic forces outside the Earth. For here on Earth we stand too close to the outer, pictorial expression, to the being shrouded in sensory materiality; here we stand, as it were, alienated from inner spirituality. When we develop between death and a new birth, we stand fully within spirituality; we experience spirituality firsthand, and there, in turn, we face the danger of sinking into this spirituality, of dissolving into it. While here on Earth we are exposed to the possibility of hardening in physical existence, between death and a new birth we are exposed to the possibility of drowning in spiritual existence.

[ 5 ] These two possibilities stem from the fact that, in addition to the powers one cites when speaking of the normal order of the hierarchies, there are other beings. Just as the elemental beings are found in the three kingdoms of nature, just as human beings are found, and just as the higher hierarchies are found—of which, when speaking of these beings in the sense of genuine spiritual science, it is said that they exist according to their “cosmic times”—there are, alongside these beings, others who, so to speak, unfold their nature out of sync with the cosmic order. These are the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings of whom we have often spoken, and of whom you will surely have already formed the idea that the Luciferic beings are essentially those who, as they now manifest themselves, should actually have lived in an earlier cosmic epoch. In contrast, the Ahrimanic beings are those who, as they now manifest themselves, should live in a later cosmic epoch. The Luciferic entities are cosmic beings who have arrived late; the Ahrimanic entities are cosmic beings who have arrived too early. The Luciferic beings have spurned, so to speak, the course of time that was set before them; they have not reached this stage because they refused to participate fully in the process of evolution. Thus, when they reveal themselves today, they appear to have remained at an earlier stage of existence.

[ 6 ] The Ahrimanic beings, if we may put it this way, cannot wait until a later stage of cosmic evolution to become what is inherent in them. They want to be that way right now. Therefore, they harden in their present existence and reveal themselves to us now in the form they were actually meant to assume only at a later stage of cosmic life’s development.

[ 7 ] When one looks out into the vastness of the cosmos, and what appears to one—I would say—is the ensemble of stars; what is this sight? Why do we have this sight? — We have this particular sight—the sight of the Milky Way, the sight of the star-studded sky—for the very reason that it is the revelation of the Luciferic nature of the world. What surrounds us, so to speak, in a luminous, radiant way, is the revelation of the Luciferic nature of the world; it is that which is now as it is because it has remained behind at an earlier stage of its existence. And when we walk upon the earth’s surface—the rigid earth’s surface—this rigid earth’s surface derives its rigidity, its hardness, from the fact that the Ahrimanic beings are, so to speak, concentrated within it—those beings who should actually have reached the stage they are now artificially assuming only at a later point in their development.

[ 8 ] Therefore, there is also the possibility that, by indulging ourselves in this way in the sensory world, we make ourselves more and more Luciferic through the sight of the heavenly aspect. So, if in life between birth and death we have this inclination to surrender to the sight of the celestial aspect, this does not actually signify anything immediate or direct; rather, it signifies something that remains with us as an instinct from the time we spent before birth or before conception in spiritual worlds, where we lived among the stars. There we formed too strong a connection with the cosmic worlds. There we became too similar to these cosmic worlds, and therefore we have retained from those worlds the inclination—which, admittedly, does not manifest as a particularly strong inclination in humanity—to become especially absorbed in the sensory vision of the starry worlds. We develop this inclination when, through our karma—which we, of course, always attract between birth and death—we spend too much of the time between death and a new birth in a state of deep slumber, failing to develop sufficient inclination to maintain full consciousness there.

[ 9 ] The other, on the other hand—the merging into earthly life—is what we develop directly here between birth and death. This is the true Ahrimanic potential in human life. The Luciferic potential is thus actually connected to what we acquire through our affinity with the illusory spiritual world; and the Ahrimanic affinity we acquire stems from the fact that, between birth and death, we develop an excessive inclination toward what surrounds us as the sensory external world. If we become too deeply immersed in this earthly realm—if, so to speak, we grow up so deeply within it that our soul’s disposition is not directed toward the supersensible as we grow up in the earthly realm—then the Ahrimanic affinities arise within us.

[ 10 ] Now, all of this has a deeper significance for the entire development of the human being. By sinking, as it were, into the spiritual world between death and a new birth—and through what we then become if we do not find the right balance here between the spiritual and material worlds—that is, by developing too strong a connection with the non-earthly, we can—as such things accumulate more and more and we fail to find the appropriate balance between the spiritual and the material in this incarnation—gradually come to lead an earthly existence—and now, in this age, such matters are at a decisive juncture—and under certain circumstances, as early as the next incarnation, come to lead such an earthly existence in which, so to speak, we cannot age. This is one possibility that may lie ahead of us as a certain danger: the inability to age. We may be reborn, and the Luciferic forces may, so to speak, hold us back at the childhood stage; they may impose something upon us so that we do not mature. Those people who indulge too much in a certain kind of enthusiasm, a nebulous mysticism; who have a certain aversion to rigorous, well-defined thinking; who spurn forming clear ideas about the world— as well as those who refuse to develop inner spiritual diligence and inner vitality of the soul—in other words, those who more or less drift off into daydreams—expose themselves to the danger of being unable to age in their next incarnation, of remaining childlike in the worst sense of the word. It is a Luciferic influence that will enter humanity in this way. As a result, these people would not fully immerse themselves in earthly life in their next incarnation. They would, so to speak, not step out of the spiritual world sufficiently to enter earthly life. The Luciferic forces, which once formed a connection with our Earth, strive to kindle such instincts in human beings that human development on Earth will eventually reach a stage where people remain children, where people do not age. The Luciferic forces would like to bring things to the point where there are no longer any elderly people walking the Earth, but rather people who spend their lives in a kind of delusion of youth. In this way, these Luciferic forces would lead the Earth to become, more and more, a single body as a whole planet and to possess a common soul in which the individual souls would blur together. A collective soul-ness of the Earth and a collective physicality of the Earth—that is what Lucifer strives for in the development of humanity: to make the Earth, so to speak, a great organic being with a collective soul in which individual souls lose their individuality.

[ 11 ] If you recall that, as I have often explained, what matters in the evolution of the Earth does not lie in the mineral, plant, or animal kingdoms—which are, after all, essentially byproducts of evolution—but rather that what matters actually takes place within the confines of the human skin, and that within the human organism lie the forces that constitute the evolutionary forces of our planet, then you will understand that what the Earth will ultimately become cannot be discerned by forming physical concepts; these physical concepts are of only limited interest to us. We can only form concepts of what the Earth may become if we know the human being itself. This human being, however, can enter into a connection—a kinship of forces—with the Luciferic power that has bound itself to the Earth; and then the Earth can, so to speak, come to bear beings that are insufficiently individualized; it can become more of a collective being, an indeterminate collective entity with a shared soul-like quality. This is what the Luciferic powers strive for. If you take the image that some vague mystics conjure up of a future state they desire—which they always describe as wanting to merge into the cosmos, or, at most, to vanish into some pantheistic whole—then, in this sense, you will already perceive something of how this Luciferic tendency lives within some human souls.

[ 12 ] The other point is that Ahrimanic beings have also formed a connection with our Earth. They have the opposite tendency; they act above all through those forces that, as it were, draw our organism toward themselves between birth and death, that permeate our organism entirely with spirituality—that is, that make us more and more intellectual, that permeate us more and more with the intellect. For our waking intelligence does, after all, depend on the connection between the soul and the physical body, and when it becomes hypertrophied—when it grows too strong—we become too much like physical existence, and we lose our balance. Then the tendency arises that prevents human beings from alternating properly in the future between earthly life and spiritual life, between death and a new birth.

[ 13 ] This is what lies at the heart of Ahriman’s endeavor: to prevent human beings, so to speak, from passing through the coming earthly era in the proper way—through earthly lives and supersensible lives. Ahriman wants to prevent human beings from undergoing future incarnations. He wants to ensure, even now in this incarnation, that they experience everything they can possibly experience on Earth. One can do this only intellectually; one cannot do it as a fully human being. But there is, of course, the possibility that a person may become so wise that, through their wisdom, they can form ideas about everything that may still exist on Earth. This, after all, is also an ideal that some people have: to truly grasp in their minds a conception of all that may still exist on Earth. But one cannot bring into this life the experiences one will have in future lives; one can only bring in the images—the intellectual images—which then solidify in the physical body. And then one develops a deep aversion to participating in future incarnations. Then one actually sees a kind of bliss in no longer wanting to appear on Earth.

[ 14 ] Among the decadent people of the East—I have often explained to you how Eastern culture has fallen into decadence—Ahriman in particular can bring about this deviation. While the people of the East are, however, inwardly more dominated by Luciferic forces, Ahriman can approach their very being and, precisely because they are taken over by Luciferic forces, can instill in them the inclination to want to bring their earthly life to a close in a particular incarnation—to no longer wish to appear within a physical body. Then certain teachers of humanity, who work in the service of Ahriman, may even present as an ideal the notion that human beings should strive, in a particular incarnation and before the Earth itself has reached its goal, to bring their earthly existence to a close and no longer have to enter into a physical existence.

[ 15 ] Among all the ideas that appear in certain theosophical teachings—which are slavishly borrowed from today’s decadent Orient—there is one that has never in any way been adopted into our anthroposophical view: the notion that it is even a special degree of human perfection to no longer appear in earthly life. This is an Ahrimanic impulse. This Ahrimanic impulse essentially gives rise to something terrible. Through this Ahrimanic impulse, the Earth could end up not becoming a unified, great organism with a unified soul-life—which is what Lucifer seeks to make of it—but rather the Earth could end up becoming overly individualized. Human beings would eventually reach a stage of Ahrimanic development at which they would indeed die; but the terrible consequence would be that, after dying, they would become as earth-like as possible, remaining as closely attached to the Earth as possible, so that the Earth itself would become merely an expression of the individual human beings. In a sense, the Earth would be a colony of individual human souls.

[ 16 ] This is something Ahriman strives to achieve with the Earth: to make the Earth entirely an expression of this intellectuality, to intellectualize it completely. Today, humanity must fully realize that the Earth’s destiny depends on human will itself. The Earth will be whatever humanity makes of it. The Earth will not be whatever physical forces make of it. These physical forces will fade away and will have no significance for the Earth’s future. The Earth will be whatever humanity makes of it.

[ 17 ] In a sense, we are living in a decisive moment in the Earth’s evolution, in which people can say three different things to one another. One is to live in nebulous mysticism, in a dreamlike state, in physical and sensual preconceptions and preoccupations—that is, in a state of idling away—and life in sensuality is, after all, nothing but idling away—to live in a drowsy state in which one does not participate in life with clear concepts. That is one thing that, in a sense, can become a human inclination.

[ 18 ] The second thing that can become a human inclination is to immerse oneself entirely in intellect and reason—to gather together, as it were, everything that reason can possibly gather—to despise everywhere that which poetry and the products of the imagination pour out over earthly existence, and to look only at the mechanical, at the pedantic and wig-like. People today face the choice of either becoming intellectual hedonists who are completely lost in their own existence—for it makes no difference whether one is lost in one’s own existence through nebulous mysticism or unbridled sensuality, since these are, at the root of it, merely two sides of the same coin—or of thinking soberly about everything, schematizing everything, to classify and categorize everything. These are the two possibilities.

[ 19 ] The third possibility is to seek a balance, an equilibrium, between the two. One cannot speak of this equilibrium in as specific a way as one can of one extreme or the other. One must strive for this equilibrium by having both—I would say, on the right and on the left—in the appropriate manner, and by not being drawn too strongly toward either one, but rather by moving through the balance of life with both, allowing one to be regulated by the other, allowing one to be ordered by the other.

[ 20 ] This cosmic moment of decision now confronts the human soul. Humanity can choose either to follow the Luciferic temptations and prevent the Earth from reaching completion—to leave the Earth as the old Moon was—to turn the Earth, I might say, into a caricature of the old Moon, to let it become something like a great organism with an individualized, dreamlike soul in which human souls are contained as in a shared nirvana, or to over-intellectualize and over-individualize themselves, to abandon the Earth’s communal nature, to desire nothing in common, but rather to sclerotize the body, to ossify it, by pouring too much intellect into it. Human beings can decide whether to turn the body into a sponge through nebulous mysticism and sensuality, or into a stone through over-intellectualization and excessive self-assertion. And humanity today gives the impression of not wanting a balance between the two, but of wanting one or the other.

[ 21 ] On the one hand, we see Western instincts unfolding more and more—instincts that lead to intellectualism and self-absorption, to pedantry—which seek to judge everything in such a way that human beings force intellectualism too strongly into physicality. On the other hand, we see another danger looming from the East: that people will burn through their physical bodies. We see this in the views of the decadent Orient, and we see it in the developments in Eastern Europe—in the terrible social upheavals occurring there, which are merely the other side of the same coin. The hour of decision for humanity has already come once today. Humanity must resolve today to find equilibrium. And the task that humanity actually faces today can only be recognized from the depths of spiritual scientific insight. We must acquire those concepts that can make us aware of the possibilities of development that lie before humanity on both sides. On the one hand, we have the merging into Nirvana, which has indeed already become a “sacred teaching of the East,” but is far removed from the ancient interpretation of Nirvana, which was actually a striving for equilibrium rooted in ancient clairvoyance. What the decadent Easterners still imagine today when they think of Nirvana is the Luciferized world. On the other hand, what is emerging more and more from Western endeavors—from the endeavors developing out of modern civilization, insofar as this modern civilization is not permeated by insights from the spiritual sciences—is the mechanization of the world; it is, increasingly, the striving to make the processes of human existence mechanical. Ahrimanization on the one hand, Luciferization on the other.

[ 22 ] If what I described last time—from a certain point of view—as the chaotic, disoriented life of recent times were to continue, then the Ahrimanization of humanity would undoubtedly occur. This Ahrimanization can only be held back if the view of the spiritual world is introduced into the super-intellectual life—into the overly individualized existence of human beings, which is entirely permeated by egoism. We need this view of the spiritual world everywhere. Above all, we need these spiritual impulses to enter the individual sciences; otherwise, it will gradually come to pass that the individual sciences will reign over humanity as an abstract authority, and that humanity will be completely Ahrimanized by these individual sciences, which clasp it with authoritative force. Especially in the present day, when the mysteries of social life are having such a profound impact on human development, it is important to lift our gaze to that which represents the connection between the human being and planetary life.

[ 23 ] Within the ancient creeds, human conceptions of the connection between human nature and the spiritual world have atrophied in a wide variety of ways. The Protestant creed, for example, is in danger of withering away into a mere abstract intellectual creed, while the Roman creed has withered away into an external principle of power. These are, after all, merely different expressions of that which tentatively approaches human beings. What is necessary, however, is for human beings to find their inner orientation, to gain an inner impulse that allows them to see clearly out toward what connects them to their planet and, through their planet, to the entire cosmos. Human beings must once again realize: geology is not the study of the Earth. The sight of a colossal rock mass, upon which lie oceans of water and which is surrounded by air—that is not the Earth; and what surrounds us—the Milky Way and the suns—is not the universe. The universe consists of Ahrimanic beings below and Luciferic beings above, which appear through the outer sensory appearance, and beings of the normal hierarchies to which human beings ascend when they penetrate both sensory appearances to reach the truth; for the actual beings do not appear in the outer sensory appearance—they reveal themselves only through this outer sensory appearance.

[ 24 ] This is what people today must recognize: I can look upon the Earth. If I am able to interpret what appears to me on the Earth below as an outflow of spiritual beings, then I perceive that which lives in the Cherubim, Seraphim, and Thrones. But if I am unable to spiritually conceive of what lives on Earth, if I surrender to the illusion of what appears to me through my senses on Earth, then I remain a geologist; then I cannot rise to become a geosophist; then my being becomes Ahrimanized. And if I look up at the starry worlds and form ideas only about what I perceive with my senses, then I become Luciferized. If I am able to interpret the spiritual through what appears to me in outward appearance, if I am able to say to myself: Yes, stars appear to me, the Milky Way appears to me, suns appear to me; they reveal to me Kyriotetes, Exusiai, Dynamis—wisdom, powers, forces—then I find equilibrium.

[ 25 ] It is not a matter of speaking of cosmic beings as something superior to earthly beings, but rather of penetrating everywhere through the appearance of the senses to the true essence—to that essence with which we, as human beings, are actually connected. The appearance of the senses as such does not deceive us. If we interpret the appearance of the senses correctly, then the spiritual beings are there; then we have them. The appearance of the senses as such is not deceptive; only our perception of it can be deceptive—on the one hand, because of our excessive attachment to the earthly realm between birth and death, and on the other hand, because of our excessive attachment to the non-earthly realm as we pass through it between death and a new birth.

[ 26 ] People today hardly learn anything about such ideas if they look only at what has gradually developed within our civilization. I would say that this civilization has completely forgotten that things were once different. People today even read with a certain eagerness what was written about natural phenomena in the 12th and 13th centuries, but they do not read it with sufficient discernment. If they were to read it thoughtfully, they would see that the way of thinking we have today is actually only a few centuries old, that people thought differently about the things of the outer world as recently as the 11th, 12th, 13th centuries—even as late as the 14th century—that people did not see stone as merely stone, nor earth as merely earth, but rather the body of the Divine-Spiritual. And in the stars, they certainly did not see what we see today, but rather the revelation of the Divine-Spiritual. It is only in the last few centuries that humanity has come to have merely a geology and a cosmology, but not a geosophy and a cosmosophy! Under cosmology, humanity would become Luciferized; under geology, it would become Ahrimanized—unless it found salvation through an equilibrium achieved by geosophy and cosmosophy. For, fundamentally, since humanity is born out of the entire universe, it is only the combination of all these elements that constitutes anthroposophy. Anthroposophy consists of these individual “sophies”—cosmosophy, geosophy, and so on. We can only truly understand human beings if we know how to place them in a spiritual context with the entire universe. Then we will not seek them out one-sidedly only in their kinship with light—which would be an indulgence of the Luciferic forces— nor will we seek them one-sidedly merely in their relationship to heaviness, which would be an indulgence of the Ahrimanic forces; rather, we will strive to instill within their will the impulse that enables them to take up within themselves the equilibrium between light and heaviness, between the inclination toward the earthly and the inclination toward the Luciferic. Human beings must attain this balance, and they can only do so by adding the supersensible to their sensory concepts.

[ 27 ] Now, something quite paradoxical: Consider what has just been said—that human beings must know this in order to make a decision in this world age; suppose that human beings would actually have to speak of the possible Ahrimanization or Luciferization of the world. So take to heart that this is a matter of great importance to humanity, and then consider what you read today in popular literature, what is presented to you in lecture halls and other educational institutions as “spiritual life,” and observe the vast gulf between them; and you will see what is necessary for people to move from today’s way of life—from this decadence—toward what is urgently needed. Serious work in the spiritual realm—that is what is urgently needed. This is possible only if one resolves to take seriously concepts such as those we have discussed again today. Tomorrow we will continue this discussion.