The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] In the course of these reflections I have now been making, I would like to make it increasingly clear how human beings belong not only, by their very nature, to the earthly world and earthly existence, but also to cosmic existence—the existence of the world of the stars. I have already elaborated on some of what needs to be said in this regard. To avoid any misunderstandings, I would like to preface the following reflections with a remark. One may always be open to the accusation that one is inclined toward the amateurish astrology still widely practiced today when speaking of the connection between human beings and the world of the stars. One need only grasp what is presented in this regard in the correct manner, and then the enormous difference will become apparent between what is meant here and all the forms of dilettantism that are so prevalent today in connection with old astrological traditions.

[ 2 ] We say that, between birth and death, human beings are beings connected to the Earth and its processes. What do we mean by this? We mean that between birth and death, a human being’s existence is based on the fact that, first of all, they take in the substances of the Earth as food through their metabolic system and process them within their organism; and that, through their breathing and the processes that follow breathing internally, they are furthermore in a relationship with the Earth—that is, with the Earth’s atmosphere. We also speak of the fact that human beings perceive the external things of the Earth through their senses—and indeed, even perceive a reflection of the extraterrestrial, a reflection which, incidentally, is far more earthly than is commonly believed. So that, on the whole, one can say that human beings take in earthly existence through their senses, through their rhythmic organization, and through their metabolic organization, and they carry within themselves the continuation of those processes that are stimulated by earthly existence and its processes. But in the same way, the continuation of cosmic, extraterrestrial processes is also present in human beings. However, one must not believe that when it is said that an influence is exerted on human beings by, say, the Moon, Venus, or Mars, this is to be understood as if only certain rays or the like were being sent down from Mars, Venus, or the Moon and the human being were permeated by them. When it is said, for example, that human beings are subject to the influence of the Moon, this must be understood entirely by analogy to what is meant when one says that human beings are subject to the influence of the substances of the Earth.

[ 3 ] If a person walks past an apple tree, picks an apple, and eats it, one could say that the apple tree has an influence on the person; but one would not imagine this in such a straightforward way as to think that the apple tree actually sent its rays toward the person. Or if a person happens to walk past a pasture where there is an ox, and eight days later eats the meat of that ox, one would not imagine so directly that the ox exerted an influence on the person. So, of course, one must not imagine too simplistically what can be said about the influence of the starry world on human beings. The relationship between the world of the stars and human beings, and between human beings and the world of the stars, is nevertheless a real one—just as the relationship between a person and the ox they pass by and whose meat they then eat.

[ 4 ] Today I would like to speak about certain relationships that exist between human beings and the world—both earthly existence and extraterrestrial existence. If we once again turn our attention to how human beings live through the alternating states of wakefulness and sleep, we must first be clear that it is actually during the waking state that the human being’s relationship to earthly substances and earthly forces is primarily established. Human beings perceive through their senses while awake. They do not perceive through their senses while asleep. People also generally eat and drink only while awake during the day, although some might wish to do so even while asleep. Only the process of breathing and the process associated with breathing—the blood circulation—are the kinds of processes—like rhythmic processes in general—that take place in human beings in both the waking and sleeping states. However, they do differ from one another in the waking and sleeping states. I will speak more about this later—for example, what the difference is between breathing while awake and breathing while asleep. But let us first bear in mind that, while awake, a person is in relationship with the external world through their senses and also through their metabolism—initially only in relation to those things that everyone knows; thus, nothing other than something familiar is to be stated here.

[ 5 ] Well, let’s assume that a person takes in food from the outside world while awake. During wakefulness, internal activity also occurs within the person under the influence of the digestion of food. But it must not be overlooked that, while awake—after food has been ingested and under the influence of that food—internal physical and etheric activity takes place within the human being, and that the human organism, both physical and etheric, is permeated by the human ego and astral nature.

[ 6 ] It is also true that, while awake, the human ego and astral being take full control of what takes place in the physical and etheric bodies following the intake of food. But what takes place there under the influence of the ego-entity and the astral human does not occur during the state of sleep. During the state of sleep, an activity, an influence, is exerted upon the physical body and the etheric body of the human being—an influence that originates not from the Earth, but from the cosmic sphere surrounding the Earth, from the world of the stars.

[ 7 ] One might say—and this, too, is not merely a figure of speech, but has a real meaning—that by day, human beings consume the substance of earthly materials, and by night, they take into themselves that which the stars and their processes bestow upon them. So, in a sense, by being awake, a person is bound to the earth; and, in a sense, they are taken away from the earth, and—if I may put it this way—celestial processes take place within them while they sleep, specifically celestial processes in the physical and etheric bodies.

[ 8 ] Materialistic thinking holds that when a person falls asleep, only the substances they have ingested activate their own forces within them, whereas in fact—regardless of whether a person ingests these or those substances—during sleep these substances are processed within them by the forces of the Earth’s environment and by cosmic forces. Let us say, for example, that we consume protein. This protein is bound to the Earth solely because, while awake, we as human beings are permeated by our soul and spirit—namely, by our astral being and our I-being. During sleep, the entire planetary world—from the Moon to Saturn—and the world of the fixed stars act upon this protein. And a chemist who wishes to study human beings with regard to their inner processes during sleep would not only have to be familiar with earthly chemistry, but would also have to be familiar with spiritual chemistry, for the processes are then different from those that occur during waking hours.

[ 9 ] The same is true of the human ego and astral being, which are separated from the physical and etheric bodies during sleep. Although these are not directly connected to the world of the stars, they are connected to those beings whose physical images are the sun, the moon, and the stars—that is, to the beings of the higher hierarchies. So one could say: While asleep, a human being is a duality. His “I” and his astral body—I could also say his spirit and his soul—are devoted to the spiritual beings of the higher realms. His bodies, the physical body and the etheric body, are devoted to the physical reflection, the physical image, the cosmic-physical image of these higher beings. — By recognizing himself as an earthly being, the human being, under the influence of intellectualism, has in fact become more and more of a materialistic philistine. Just as one might call the modern era the age of intellectual and scientific progress, one could just as well call it the age of the progress of philistinism—materialistic philistinism. For human beings are not aware that they depend on anything other than the sensory impressions of the Earth, the rhythmic processes triggered within them by earthly processes, and the metabolic processes also brought about within them by earthly forces. Therefore, human beings are not aware of how they actually stand within the universe. And this place within the universe is something immensely complex. As soon as one—I might say—lifts the veil that is always spread before human beings, so that they see only the sensory world and not the spiritual realm lying beyond it—as soon as one lifts this veil, life becomes an extraordinarily complex matter. It becomes apparent, first of all, that it is not only those beings and their physical reflections—the stars—that can be directly observed and that influence human beings, but that within earthly existence itself there are supersensible beings who are related to the star beings but who, so to speak, have established their abodes in the earthly realm.

[ 10 ] You know that the people of the Old Testament worshiped Yahweh. Their worship was directed toward a real entity. This entity is connected to what manifests itself in the physical world as the moon. Of course, it is always more or less figurative—yet at the same time, in a figurative sense, it is real—to say that this Yahweh entity has its dwelling place in the moon. And everything that belongs to this Yahweh entity is connected with the lunar existence.

[ 11 ] But there are beings who, when the Moon separated from the Earth, refused—if I may put it that way—to make the journey to the Moon with the Yahweh beings, and who remained in the earthly realm. So that, in a sense, we can sense the proper Yahweh beings when we look at the Moon. We can say: This is the outer physical reflection of everything that rightfully participates in the world order as a Yahweh being. — But when we come to understand what is taking place within the Earth’s surface—both in the solid Earth and in the watery realm—we find beings who have spurned the opportunity to take up residence on the Moon and who have unlawfully established their dwelling on Earth.

[ 12 ] Now there are helpers of those beings whom I would therefore like to call lunar beings. These helpers belong to Mercury and Venus just as the lunar beings belong to the Moon, so that, in a sense, the lunar beings, the Venusian beings, and the Mercurian beings form a kind of trinity. The rightful beings of this kind in the universe belong precisely to these stars. But both in the Earth’s earthly realm and in its watery realm, there are beings who certainly belong to the same category but—one might say—to a different age; they did not keep pace when the Earth’s earthly realm became cosmic through the Moon, Venus, and so on. These beings now exert just as much influence on the sleeping human being as the cosmic beings themselves, but their influence is pernicious. Their pernicious influence can be characterized, for example, as follows: When a person falls asleep—that is, is in the state of sleep, between falling asleep and waking up—these illegitimate lunar, Venusian, and Mercurian beings approach him and set themselves the task of telling him, of persuading him—all of this takes place between falling asleep and waking up in the unconscious state—that evil is good and good is evil.

[ 13 ] This is indeed the shocking, the terribly painful aspect of initiation: that through it one comes to know things beyond the threshold of ordinary consciousness that are by no means harmless to human beings. In our outward, materialistically oriented existence, we simply cannot imagine what a person is exposed to between falling asleep and waking up. A person is truly exposed to these beings who, while he is asleep, thoroughly convince him that good is evil and evil is good. For the earthly moral order is bound to the human etheric body, and when a person sleeps, they essentially leave their moral achievements behind in bed. They do not initially enter the state of sleep equipped with their moral qualities.

[ 14 ] In every area, the natural sciences are already encroaching upon those topics that must necessarily be addressed in the spiritual sciences. You may have recently read an interesting report in the newspapers, one that was compiled statistically and is entirely based on truth. It was reported that criminals in prisons actually enjoy the soundest sleep; if they are true, hardened criminals, they are by no means tormented by nightmares or the like while they sleep. Such things only resurface when they sink into their etheric body—that is where the moral qualification comes into play. It is precisely those who strive to be moral who are much more likely to carry over something into their astral body due to the moral constitution of their etheric body—and are then tormented by dreams even over relatively minor acts of immorality. But in any case, it is true that what a person acquires as their moral constitution during their earthly existence is not carried over into the state of sleep at all, or only with little intensity; however, during sleep they are exposed, for example, to those beings of which I have just spoken.

[ 15 ] These entities are identical to those entities that I otherwise always classify as Ahrimanic entities. Their task is to keep human beings on Earth for as long as possible. You know from the description in my Outline of Esoteric Science that the Earth will one day dissolve and transition into the Jupiter state. These beings want to prevent this. Specifically, they want to prevent humanity from developing in tandem with the Earth until the very end and then transitioning in a normal way into the Jupiter state; they want to preserve the Earth in its current existence; they want to sustain the Earth and keep humanity on the Earth. Therefore, these beings are constantly striving with the utmost intensity to do the following. These are processes—I would say behind the scenes of existence—that have been unfolding as real events ever since the Earth has had a human race. The human being enters the state of sleep in his or her ego-being and in his or her astral being. These lunar, Venusian, and Mercurian beings—who dwell on Earth unlawfully—now attempt to provide human beings with an etheric body from the Earth’s ether during virtually every sleep state. They almost never succeed. In rare cases, which I will discuss later, they have succeeded, but they almost never succeed. Yet they do not give up trying, for it seems possible to these beings, time and again, that they might succeed—when a person sleeps, having left their etheric body behind in bed—in surrounding and permeating that person with an etheric body drawn from the Earth’s ether. That is what these beings desire.

[ 16 ] If such an Ahrimanic being were truly able to gradually instill a complete etheric body into a human being—as the person sleeps again and again—then after death, while in their etheric body, the human being would be able to sustain themselves within that etheric body. Otherwise, the etheric body dissolves within a few days. But human beings would be able to sustain themselves in their etheric bodies, and an etheric human race would gradually emerge. This is what is intended from this side of the spiritual world. Then the Earth could be preserved through this process. In fact, within the solid and aqueous structure of the Earth, there is such a host of beings who would like to gradually turn humanity—right up until the end of the Earth—into nothing but ghosts, into ethereal ghosts, so that the goal—the normal goal of Earth’s evolution—could not be achieved. Meanwhile, these beings are by no means losing heart. They continue to believe that their attempt might succeed.

[ 17 ] One must simply be clear about this: we humans do, after all, possess a reasonable degree of intellect; especially in this current age of increasing philistinism, this intellect has undergone a troubling development. So humans can certainly boast of a certain degree of intelligence, but this intelligence does not even remotely come close to the intelligence of those far higher beings who wish to carry out what I have just told you. Humans should therefore not say: “Yes, but these beings must be terribly stupid.” — No, they are not foolish at all. Moreover, by directing their actions solely toward sleeping human beings, they are in no way deterred from the belief that they might yet succeed, before the end of the Earth, in preventing a large portion of the human race from fulfilling its future destinies, which are connected with the Earth’s incarnation as Jupiter.

[ 18 ] But anyone who, so to speak, looks behind the scenes of sensory existence can see that these beings do indeed sometimes become disheartened and disappointed. And the disappointments these beings experience do not occur at night, but rather during the day. One can see how they experience these disappointments when one encounters these Ahrimanic beings, for example, in hospitals. For certainly, the illnesses that afflict human beings have one aspect that calls upon us to do everything we can to contribute to their healing under all circumstances. But on the other hand, we must ask: How do human states of illness rise up from the dark bosom of natural existence? — Those illnesses that do not arise from external influences, but emerge from within the human being, are precisely connected to the fact that when the Ahrimanic beings have almost succeeded in causing a person to assume an etheric body outside of their ordinary etheric body, these people—who thus already carry the laws of the etheric body into their physical body and their ordinary etheric body upon waking—carry within themselves the causes of disease. Through these causes of illness, the legitimate beings of Venus, Mercury, and the Moon protect themselves against the harmful influence of the illegitimate ones. Indeed, if a person were not to contract this or that illness from time to time, he would be exposed to the very danger I have just described. His body breaks down through some illness so that he can, if I may use the expression, “sweat out” what he has absorbed in the form of illegitimate etheric processes through the Ahrimanic influence.

[ 19 ] And another factor that is brought about as a reaction, so that human beings do not succumb to this Ahrimanic influence, is the possibility of error. And a third is egoism. Human beings should not be ill, should not fall into error, and should not be egoistic in an exaggerated sense. Egoism, as such, is in turn a clinging of the human being to the normal course of earthly development, as opposed to the tearing away of the human being by the Ahrimanic beings.

[ 20 ] This is one kind of being that one discovers behind the scenes of ordinary sensory existence. One can form a conception of the other kind of being by realizing that it is not only the Moon, Venus, and Mercury that exert an influence on human beings from the cosmos, but also Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, which lie beyond the Sun.

[ 21 ] You know from the lectures I have given here in the so-called French Course that the Moon is primarily the physical reflection of those beings who bring human beings into the physical world. Saturn is the physical reflection of those beings who carry human beings out again from the physical world of the Earth. The Moon brings human beings down to Earth. Saturn, in turn, first carries them out into the vastness of the cosmos and from there into the spiritual world. Just as the Yahveh moon deity has the Venus-Mercury beings as helpers, so too does Saturn have Jupiter and Mars as his helpers in guiding the human being out into the vastness of the cosmos and into the spiritual world. These, in turn, are influences that act upon human beings in a manner opposite to the influences associated with the lunar being.

[ 22 ] The fact is that, up until our seventeenth or eighteenth lunar year, we humans are primarily influenced by the Moon, Venus, and Mercury. Later on, once we have passed our twentieth and twenty-first years, we are primarily influenced by Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—though Saturn’s influence only grows later to lead us out of earthly existence into the spiritual world. Indeed, the inner constitution of the human being depends on this—I would say—transition from the inner planets to the outer planets. For example, up until our seventeenth or eighteenth year, we as human beings are primarily dependent on the systemic circulation, which flows through the entire body. Later on, we become more dependent on the pulmonary circulation. But these are matters we must leave for later lectures. Now we should focus on the following: just as illegitimate lunar, Venusian, and Mercurian beings have their abodes in the solid and liquid components of the Earth, so too do illegitimate Martian, Jovian, and Saturnian beings have their conditions of existence—figuratively speaking, their abodes—in the warmth and the air that surround the Earth. And these beings, in turn, exert a great influence on human beings during their sleep. But their influence works in the exact opposite direction.

[ 23 ] These entities wish to turn human beings into moral automatons, if I may put it that way—in such a way that, while awake, a person should not listen at all to his instincts, his drives, or the language of his blood; that he should spurn all of that; that he should obey only the promptings of these very illegitimate beings from Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn beings, and thus become a moral automaton with no prospect of ever attaining freedom. That is what these beings want, and their influence is a strong one—an extraordinarily strong one. It is they who, so to speak, would like to induce human beings every night to absorb the influence of the starry world and never return to absorb the influence of the earthly world. They would like to lift human beings entirely away from earthly existence. They want—and, incidentally, they have wanted this since the very beginning of the human race on Earth—for human beings to spurn the Earth, so that on Earth, where alone they can awaken to freedom, they do not awaken to freedom, but remain moral automatons, just as they were during the previous metamorphosis of Earth’s formation, during the Moon phase of Earth’s existence.

[ 24 ] I would like to say: right in the midst of these two cosmic camps—one of which is situated in the elements of heat and air, the other in the elements of earth and liquid—right in the midst of these two opposing cosmic camps, human beings actually stand. What he is in his physical body veils from him the fact that a terrible battle is being waged in the cosmos over his very being. And human beings today must consciously enter into this knowledge, which concerns them as human beings, for it is precisely through this that they are human: that forces from the spiritual world are at work around them. It is important that human beings today acquire an understanding of where they actually stand as human beings.

[ 25 ] One day, people on Earth will be far more justified in looking down on our current dark, materialistic understanding—in light of what humanity will come to know in the future about the spiritual realm that lies beyond the physical—than we are today in saying: “Oh, what childish scientific insights the Greeks still had!” They were mere children, after all; we’ve come a wonderfully long way! — Above all, we’ve come a wonderfully long way in philistinism, and people will have far more grounds for such criticism when they can speak with full knowledge about these struggles that are taking place regarding the very nature of human beings on Earth.

[ 26 ] But there are also signs that, in our time, knowledge of these things must begin to spread. However, for most people today, what I have told you today—about the struggles between Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings that take place in the cosmos over the essence of the human being—still lies hidden in the dark twilight of their existence. But these struggles make their way into what humanity very much does perceive, into the very midst of which it consciously stands. And today one must be able to discern the first waves surging in from the spiritual world from the directions I have described to you, if one does not wish to develop a state of slumber within the life of our civilization.

[ 27 ] These two camps—the Luciferic one in the Earth’s thermal and atmospheric conditions, and the Ahrimanic one in the Earth’s terrestrial and aquatic conditions—send their waves surging into our cultural life. Today, the Luciferic host infects, above all, outdated theology, and we see as an outgrowth of this Luciferic power in the very heart of cultural life those assertions that seek to reduce Christ to a myth. For Christ descended to Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha as a real being. This, of course, is something that runs counter to all the intentions of those beings who wish to turn human beings into moral automatons rather than free beings. Hence: deny the real being of Christ—Christ is a myth! And you can trace in nineteenth-century literature how ingeniously the hypotheses of theologians—such as David Friedrich Strauss, Kalthoff, and so on—or of their followers—or rather, their parrots—such as Arthur Drews, are put forward, how this view is advocated everywhere: Christ is a mythological figure, a mere image that has taken hold of people’s powers of imagination. — Oh, much more will yet come crashing in from this camp! But this is the first wave that has struck.

[ 28 ] The other first wave, coming from the Ahrimanic camp—the camp that dwells within the solid and earthly conditions and within the watery conditions of the Earth—brings the opposite view: there, Christ is rejected, and only the “simple man from Nazareth”—Jesus as the physical personality—is accepted—yet another theological peculiarity!

[ 29 ] The transformation of Christ into a myth: purely Luciferic; the transformation of the One who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha into a mere human being—albeit one endowed with all manner of qualities: purely Ahrimanic. But this approach is simply not very successful; one must constantly disregard the historical accounts and traditions in order to piece together this “simple man from Nazareth”! Yet this particular aspect of theology clearly reveals the impact of the Ahrimanic wave on human culture.

[ 30 ] If one wishes to judge these things correctly, one must be able to trace them all the way behind the scenes of ordinary earthly existence. Otherwise, if humanity were unwilling to turn its gaze toward what can be said today from the spiritual world, it would become increasingly unable to assess such phenomena, and as a result, these phenomena would take hold of humanity in the unconscious. But it is becoming ever more dangerous for humanity to surrender to the unconscious. Clear, lucid prudence, looking at what is, a sense of reality—that is what humanity will need more and more.

[ 31 ] And perhaps one can feel most keenly where this clear-headedness, this sense of reality, must be directed when one sees how such strange phenomena—namely, that theology, on the one hand, denies Christ, and on the other, turns Christ into a myth—are making themselves felt today. Such phenomena, which will continue to spread more and more, show precisely that humanity must gain a clear and sure understanding of the spiritual influences on the physical world—namely, on human beings themselves—if these influences are not to lead people to their ruin.

[ 32 ] Well, I think I’ve said this here before: Once upon a time, there were two people who found a shaped piece of iron. One of them said, “What a fine horseshoe!” “I’m going to use it to shoe my horse.” — The other said: “That won’t work; that’s a magnet, after all—you can use it for something completely different than shoeing a horse!” — “I don’t see anything that looks like a magnet,” said the first; “you’re a crazy fellow if you say there are invisible, magnetic forces inside it. Shoeing a horse! That’s what it’s good for.”

[ 33 ] That is more or less how people are today—they do not want to accept the things that are spoken of from the spiritual world. If I may put it figuratively, they want to shoe the whole world’s horses because they refuse to acknowledge the supersensory forces at work within them; shod horses—not just doing anything that makes use of the magnetic forces present there. But of course there was a time—not so long ago—when people actually used that specially shaped iron for shoeing horses. Only, today that is no longer possible.

[ 34 ] A time will come, then, when human beings will need messages from the spiritual world even in their ordinary social interactions. We must bear this in mind. Then anthroposophy will not merely enter the intellect—which is of little significance—but above all will enter the will. This is of great significance. And we want to think about this more and more.