The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Human Beings as Reflections of Spiritual Beings and Spiritual Forces

[ 1 ] I am truly delighted that, following the two events in Ilkley and Penmaenmawr that were so rewarding to me, I am now able to present this lecture here at our London branch as well.

[ 2 ] In earlier reflections on this subject, I have mentioned how human beings, as they go about their daily work here on Earth—day by day, year by year—draw upon what is physically given to them as their physical body and through which they are physically connected to earthly existence. As long as one considers everything that surrounds us in the physical world here in earthly existence, and what is incorporated into physical existence through our own work, one must, of course, focus one’s primary attention on the time that a human being spends here in earthly existence while awake. But as I have already mentioned, what is even more important for human existence—even for what a human being can be during earthly life—is what happens to the human being during the times he or she spends asleep.

[ 3 ] When we look back at what we can remember from any point in our earthly existence, we actually always exclude the times we spent asleep, and we string together everything we accomplished or experienced during the day while awake, forming, as it were, a coherent whole.

[ 4 ] But that would never exist if it weren’t for the states of sleep that intervene. And it is precisely when one wants to come to know the true nature of the human being that one must pay attention to these states of sleep. For a person could easily say: “I know nothing of what happens during sleep.” As plausible as this may seem to the outer consciousness, it is actually untrue in reality. For if we were to look back on a life that were never interrupted by sleep, we would be automatons. We would indeed be spiritual beings, but we would be automatons.

[ 5 ] Even more important than the varying sleep states from day to day, for what I am about to say, are the periods during which we sleep through the night as very young children, for the effects of this sleep remain with us for our entire lives, and we merely add, in a sense, what we gain mentally each night during the later sleep states. We would be automatons if we were to enter the world as children while awake, if we remained awake and never slept; and not only would we be automatons, but we would also be incapable of doing anything consciously within this automatic state. We would not even recognize as our own what happened automatically through us. For when we think we do not remember what we went through while asleep, that is not entirely correct. When we look back in this way and the states of sleep always fall out of our memory, we actually see—by looking back at nothingness—at those points in time when we were asleep, in one way or another, the events we experienced while awake. In fact, however, when we look back, at those moments in time when we were asleep, we see nothingness. If you have a white wall and there is a spot where there is no color—but rather a black circle—then you also see nothingness: you see darkness; or, for that matter, if it is not a black circle but a hole with no light behind it, you also see the hole. You see darkness. That is how you see darkness in your life when you look back. The times you slept through appear to you as darknesses in life. And to these darknesses in life, to these shadows of life, you say “I.” You would have no sense of the “I” if you did not see these darknesses. It is not because you have always worked from morning till night that you can say “I” to yourself; you can say “I” to yourself because you have slept. For the “I,” as we refer to it in earthly existence, is first and foremost the darkness of life, the emptiness, the non-existence. And if we look at our lives in the right way, then with regard to our self-awareness, we must not say that we owe it to the day, but that we owe it to the night. Thus, it is actually only through the night that we become what constitutes the real human being, whereas otherwise we would be mere automatons.

[ 6 ] It is true that when we look back to earlier periods of human development on Earth, we see that although people were not automatons—because they already had certain distinctions between waking and sleeping—their actions, their entire earthly life, were much more automatic than the lives of people in this present era on Earth in which we now live, since their states of sleep were more or less already present in their ordinary daily consciousness.

[ 7 ] And so we can say: Our true, inner self—we do not actually bring it with us from the spiritual world into this physical earthly world. We always leave it in the spiritual world. It was in the spiritual world before we descended into earthly existence. It returns to the spiritual world between falling asleep and waking up. It always remains in the spiritual world. When we have our present consciousness as human beings during the day and call ourselves an “I,” this word “I” refers to something that does not exist in this physical world, something that has only its image in this physical world.

[ 8 ] And we do not see ourselves correctly when we say, “I am this robust human being on Earth; I stand here with my true being,” but rather we see ourselves correctly when we say, “Our true being is in the spiritual world.” What belongs to us here on earth is an image—truly a reflection—of our true being. — The most accurate view is not to regard what is here on earth as the real human being at all, but rather as the image of the real human being.

[ 9 ] This imagery becomes all the clearer when one imagines the following. Let’s imagine ourselves asleep. The “I” is separated from the physical body and the etheric body; the astral body is separated from the physical body and the etheric body. But the “I” is active in the blood and in the movements of the human being. These cease because the “I” is absent during sleep; but what is in the blood continues to act—the “I” is not involved at all. We need only look at this physical body, and we must ask ourselves: What actually happens to it when we sleep? Then the blood must surely be interwoven in some way by something, just as it is interwoven by the “I” during the day when we are awake. The same applies to the astral body, which is always present within the entire breathing process. It leaves this respiratory process during the night, but the respiratory process continues! So there must be something else present that, just as in daily life, functions as the astral body. We leave behind those organs within us—such as the respiratory organs—along with our astral body during every period of sleep. We leave behind the pulsating forces of our blood along with our “I.” What do they do during the night? Well, it is the case that when a person remains lying in bed and their “I” has withdrawn from the pulsating forces of the blood, then beings of the first higher hierarchy draw into these pulsating forces: then Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai dwell in these very same organs in which, during the day while awake, the “I” dwells. And in the respiratory organs, which we have left behind because our astral body has gone out from us, the beings of the next higher hierarchy are at work there during the night: Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes.

[ 10 ] So the situation is this: when we fall asleep in the evening and our “I” and our astral body withdraw from our physical body, angels, archangels, and higher spiritual beings enter us and continue to animate our organs—while we are outside the body—from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up. And as for the etheric body, we are not even capable, while awake during the day, of doing what needs to be done within it. That must be fulfilled by the beings of the highest hierarchy—the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones—even when we are awake; they remain within it at all times.

[ 11 ] And then there is our physical body! If we had to manage all the magnificent, powerful processes taking place within our physical body ourselves, not only would we do a poor job of it, but we wouldn’t know what to do with it at all, for in that regard we are completely helpless. What external anatomy tells us about the physical body would not even be able to set a single atom of it in motion. That requires entirely different forces.

[ 12 ] These powers are none other than those that have been called, since time immemorial, the powers of the Supreme Trinity—the powers of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—the very Trinity that dwells within our physical body.

[ 13 ] Thus we can say: Throughout our entire earthly life, our physical body is not our own; it would not undergo its development through us alone. It is, as the ancients said, the true temple of the Deity, the Deity who manifests in three forms. Our etheric body is the dwelling place for the hierarchy of the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; our organs, which are assigned to the etheric body, must also be cared for by the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. And what we possess in the way of physical and etheric organs—and what is left behind by the astral body at night—must be sustained by the second hierarchy: the Kyriotetes, Dynamis, and Exusiai. And what we possess in the way of organs that are left behind by the “I” must be sustained during the night by the third hierarchy: the Angeloi, Archangeloi, and Archai.

[ 14 ] Thus, there is a continuous activity within the human being that does not originate solely from within him. He dwells, so to speak, only as a temporary resident in his own organism while he is awake. This organism of his is at the same time the temple and dwelling place of the spirits of the higher hierarchies.

[ 15 ] If we consider this, we can say to ourselves: We actually see the outer form of the human being correctly only when we recognize that it is an image—an image of the workings of all the hierarchies. They are there within. And when I look at this humanly formed head with all its details, and at the rest of this humanly formed body, I am not looking at it correctly if I say it is this or that being, but rather when I say it is an image of the invisible, supersensible activity of all the hierarchies. Only when one looks at things in this way can one speak accurately in detail about what is otherwise always discussed only in highly abstract terms.

[ 16 ] It is said that this physical world is not reality; it is Maya, and reality lies beyond it. But that doesn’t tell us much. It is merely a general truth, just as when one says: Flowers grow in the meadow. — Just as one can only make sense of that statement once one knows what kinds of flowers grow in the meadow, so too can one only make sense of knowledge about the higher world once one can point out in detail how this higher world is at work in that which appears to us externally as an image, as Maya, as a reflection, as a manifestation in the sensory-physical realm.

[ 17 ] Thus, when viewed as a whole—in terms of both their earthly “daytime life” and their earthly “nighttime life”—human beings are not only connected to what physically and sensually surrounds them here in their earthly existence, but they are also connected to the world of higher spirituality. And just as that which acts here on Earth through the realms of nature—the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms—as a certain, one might say, lower spirituality, so too does that which acts upon human beings from a higher spirituality act through the world of the stars. Just as human beings, viewed as whole beings, are related to plants and animals, to water and air here on Earth through their physical existence, so too are they, as whole beings, related to the world of the stars, which is, after all, merely an image, a revelation of what actually exists in reality. And in reality, it is precisely those beings of the higher hierarchies who are present. When human beings look up at the stars, they are, in essence, looking up at the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies, who allow only a kind of symbolic light of their existence to shine down upon them, so that even physical existence may receive a hint of that which, in essence, fills the universe everywhere as the spiritual.

[ 18 ] And just as we here on Earth feel a certain longing to get to know the mountain, the river, the animal, and the plant, so too should we actually feel a longing to learn to recognize the world of the stars in its true nature. And in its true nature, the world of the stars is spiritual. Over in Penmaenmawr, I touched on the spiritual nature of the Moon, just as it now shines down upon us from outer space during this particular phase of Earth’s evolution.

[ 19 ] Just as, when we look at the moon, we never actually see the moon itself—at most a faint hint of it as a continuation of the illuminated crescent—since we always see only the reflected sunlight and never the moon itself—so, in general, it is only the cosmic forces reflected by the moon that reach us here on Earth, not that which lives within the moon itself. The fact that the Moon reflects sunlight back to Earth is only a part—and indeed the smallest part—of what the Moon is. In truth, it reflects back to us, like a mirror, all the physical and spiritual impulses that act upon it from the cosmos. And just as one cannot see the back of a mirror, so one never sees the interior of the Moon; yet within this interior of the Moon there is a real spiritual population with high guiding powers. These high guiding powers and the rest of the Moon’s population were once here on Earth; they withdrew from Earth to the Moon—albeit at a time that lies more than fifteen thousand years in the past. Before that, the Moon also looked physically different. It did not simply send sunlight down to Earth, but blended its own essence into that sunlight. Well, that need not concern us so much. But what should concern us is that the Moon today is like a fortress in the universe. And within this fortress dwells that population which completed its human destinies more than fifteen thousand years ago and which withdrew to this Moon together with the leaders of humanity.

[ 20 ] There were once advanced beings here on Earth who did not take on a physical human body in the same way as people do today; they lived more in an etheric body, but were nonetheless truly great teachers and educators for the people on Earth at that time.

[ 21 ] These great teachers and educators of humanity, who once brought primordial wisdom to humankind on Earth—that lofty, admirable primordial wisdom of which the Vedas and Vedanta are but echoes—live today within the Moon and radiate down to Earth only that which exists in the universe beyond the Moon.

[ 22 ] Something of those lunar forces has indeed remained on Earth; but these are merely the physical reproductive forces of humans and animals. Only the most external physical aspects have remained, just as in the ancient Atlantean era, when the great teachers of humanity followed the Moon after it had already withdrawn from the Earth.

[ 23 ] Thus, when we look up at the Moon, we perceive its reality only when we understand that there are high spiritual beings—who were once connected to the Earth—whose task today is to radiate back to Earth not what they carry within themselves, but rather what is conveyed through the physical and spiritual forces of the universe. Therefore, anyone who strives for initiatory wisdom today must, above all, also seek to incorporate into that wisdom what these lunar beings have to say to him through their higher powers.

[ 24 ] Well, in a sense, that is a form of life out there in the cosmos—a colony, a settlement; others are just as important, namely those that belong to our planetary system. I would say that, at the other pole—at the other extreme in terms of this importance—for us Earthlings lies the population of Saturn.

[ 25 ] The inhabitants of Saturn were not connected to Earth in the same way as the inhabitants of the moons. You can see from my Outline of Esoteric Science that a connection did exist. But the beings of Saturn are not connected to the Earth in the same way as the lunar beings; rather, these Saturn beings do not reflect back anything that exists in outer space. We hardly receive any physical sunlight reflected back from Saturn. Like a lonely, dimly glowing hermit, Saturn moves slowly around the Sun. But what external astronomy has to say about Saturn is the very, very least of it. What Saturn means for the people of Earth occurs every night, but only symbolically—and especially during the life between death and a new birth, when the human being passes through the spiritual world and thus through the world of the stars, as I have already explained in one of the lectures in this branch here.

[ 26 ] Human beings do not, of course, encounter Saturn itself at this stage of human development, but they do come into contact with the beings of Saturn through a roundabout way. I do not wish to describe that roundabout way today. But the point is that within Saturn dwell beings of very high perfection—extremely exalted beings—beings who stand in a direct inner relationship to the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones; for them, the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones are actually the closest beings, the beings of their next hierarchy.

[ 27 ] These beings, this population of Saturn, do not actually radiate anything from Saturn to Earth, nor do they give humanity anything that exists in the outer physical world. Instead, the Saturn beings preserve the cosmic memory, the cosmic recollection. Everything the planetary system has undergone in terms of physical and spiritual events, everything that beings within our planetary system have experienced—the Saturn beings faithfully preserve all of this in their memory. The Saturn beings always look back in remembrance upon the entire life of the planetary system. Just as we look back in memory upon our entire, limited earthly life, so—collectively in their effects—the Saturn beings possess the cosmic memory of all that the whole planetary system and every single being within it has undergone. And all the forces that live within this memory are active for human beings because, between death and a new birth—and, in a sense, every night as well—they enter into a relationship with these Saturn beings. Through this, the forces emanating from these Saturn beings—which actually represent the deepest inner core of the planetary system—take effect within the human being. For just as memory is our deepest inner self on Earth, so what lives in Saturn is, in fact, the deepest inner cosmic “I” of the entire planetary system.

[ 28 ] Because these effects are at work within human beings, processes take place in life that, for the most part, remain unconscious to us in terms of their true significance, yet play the greatest conceivable role in human life. After all, most of what happens consciously in life is only the smallest part of it.

[ 29 ] If you’ve experienced a major turning point at some point in your life—a defining event — for example, you’ve found someone with whom you’ll spend the rest of your life, or some other truly significant event — and you look back from that event, you’ll notice that it’s as if there were a plan that had long since led you to that very moment. Sometimes, when something happens between the ages of thirty and fifty, you can trace your life back and realize: Yes, I actually set out on the path toward this event when I was ten or twelve years old; everything that happened afterward unfolded in such a way that I ultimately arrived at this event.

[ 30 ] People who have grown old and look back on their lives—if they reflect on them meaningfully—find that they have already come to terms with life in such a way that they can say to themselves: There is such a subconscious connection. We are driven by unconscious forces toward this or that event.

[ 31 ] These are the forces of Saturn; these are the forces that are implanted within us because we are connected in the manner described to that inner population of Saturn.

[ 32 ] And while, on the one hand, only the physical reproductive forces from the Moon are present on Earth today—these are remnants left behind by the Moon—on the other hand, the highest forces, namely the cosmic-moral forces, are present on Earth through Saturn. And Saturn is the greatest balancing force for all earthly events. And while the lunar forces, as they now exist on Earth, are concerned only with heredity from father, mother, and so on, the Saturn forces are concerned with that aspect of our human life which lives on in karma, passing from incarnation to incarnation. And the other planets stand in between, mediating between what is physical and what is the highest moral.

[ 33 ] Between the Moon and Saturn lie Jupiter, Mars, and so on. In their own way, they convey what the Moon and Saturn—as the outermost extremes—bring into human life: the Moon through the fact that its spiritual beings have withdrawn, leaving behind only the physical aspect of earthly activity—the physical power of procreation—and Saturn through the highest moral justice of the universe. These two work together, with the other planets situated between them, interweaving one with the other. Karma, mediated by Saturn, and physical heredity, mediated by the Moon—they are what first show us how human beings, as they pass from one earthly life to the next, are connected to the Earth itself and to that which is extraterrestrial in the universe.

[ 34 ] You can understand that today’s physical science, which deals only with earthly existence, actually knows very little about human beings. It certainly has much to say about hereditary forces, but it fails to recognize that these are residual lunar forces; it does not know how to relate them to their extra-terrestrial activity, and knows absolutely nothing of what is now at work in life as karma, as destiny, which passes from one earthly life to the next and is essentially permeated—just as we, as physical human beings, are permeated by the pulsation of the blood—by the beings who carry within themselves the great memory of the entire planetary system and its events. Let us look within ourselves: We are human beings only because we have a memory. Let us look at the planetary system with all its physical and spiritual processes; if we wish to approach the wisdom of initiation, we must say to ourselves: This entire planetary system would in fact be nothing inner if it were not for the inhabitants of Saturn, who continually preserve the memory—the past—of this planetary system, and who also constantly infuse into humanity the forces that spring from this preservation of the past, so that all these human beings live within a living spiritual and moral causal connection from one earthly life to the next.

[ 35 ] In earthly life, a person’s relationships with others are strictly limited by what he or she consciously accomplishes. But when a person considers what they go through between death and a new birth, their relationship with other people—who are then also disembodied, no longer in their physical bodies—unfolds within broader spheres. It is true that between death and a new birth, a person is—one might say—at certain times more closely influenced by the effects of the Moon, at other times more by the effects of Saturn, Mars, and so on; but one type of force always extends across the spaces between worlds to influence the other. And just as we here can only interact from person to person within narrowly defined earthly spaces during our earthly existence, so too do interactions occur from planet to planet between death and a new birth. It is, in fact, the universe that becomes the arena of human activity and also of the relationships between human beings. One human soul may be within the sphere of Venus, another within the sphere of Jupiter between death and a new birth, but there are interactions there of greater intimacy than are possible to any limited extent on Earth. And just as worlds of vast expanse are summoned into the arena of human activity between death and a new birth, so too do the spirits of the higher hierarchies act through such vast expanses. And therefore, we can speak there not only of the influence of individual entities—say, the population of Venus or the population of Mars—but we can also speak of a relationship between the population of Venus and the population of Mars, of a continuous relationship, a continuous back-and-forth flow of forces between the populations of Mars and Venus within the universe.

[ 36 ] And what is taking place in the universe between the inhabitants of Mars and the inhabitants of Venus—the ongoing interplay between them, what lives in the cosmos, in the spiritual cosmos, as the mutually enriching actions of Mars and Venus—all of this, in turn, is related to human beings. Just as the Saturn memory is related to human karma, and just as the residual, physical lunar forces are related to the outer reproductive force, so too is that which continually takes place in the hidden realm of the spiritual between Mars and Venus related to what appears here on Earth in human beings as human speech. We would not be able to speak through mere physical forces. This power of speech is also radiated outward from that aspect of the human being which carries out its existence from one earthly life to the next—the life that exists between death and a new birth. And while we live as spiritual beings between death and a new birth, we also enter into the mode of action of what takes place in a fruitful interplay between Mars and Venus, between the Martian population and the Venusian population. These forces radiating back and forth, this interplay, affect us during the life between death and a new birth. This then manifests itself in the physical form. This is what flows from the innermost essence of human becoming into the organs of speech and song.

[ 37 ] We would not be able to speak with our speech and singing organs if they were not physically stimulated by those forces that we absorb into ourselves from the depths of our being—between death and a new birth—from what flows back and forth in the cosmos between Mars and Venus.

[ 38 ] Thus, in our daily activities, we are influenced by those forces that we admire only as their signs when we gaze up at the stars. Only those who know that the stars, which shine toward us from space, are in fact merely the characters of the universe—of the most universal spiritual process that lives within us and of which we are the image—are able to look up at the stars in the right way.

[ 39 ] An earlier humanity had a perception of all this through an ancient, atavistic, instinctive clairvoyant power, but this perception gradually faded away. Humanity could not have become free if it had retained that old perception. That old perception became clouded within humanity. In its place, however, the Mystery of Golgotha entered earthly life. Although a high being from the solar realm could not immediately bring humanity the awareness of what is taking place in the starry worlds, it did provide the powers necessary to gradually acquire this awareness.

[ 40 ] This is why it came to pass that, initially—even while the Mystery of Golgotha was still unfolding—an ancient Gnostic tradition existed through which the Mystery of Golgotha was understood. But this tradition disappeared; it had already vanished by the fourth century A.D. The power that came to Earth through Christ has remained. And human beings can awaken this power within themselves if, through what modern spiritual science has to say, they once again open their eyes to the spiritual worlds.

[ 41 ] Through this glimpse into the spiritual worlds, much will become clear to modern humanity. It is, after all, a curious phenomenon that those people who have still retained something of the ancient instinctive wisdom —which is, after all, no longer in keeping with the times, in the best sense of the word, and must be replaced by a conscious wisdom—that those people over in the Orient, who have preserved something of it in various regions of Asia, who are the educated and the scholars there, actually look down on Europe and America with quite a degree of contempt. They are convinced that even in its current decadent state, their ancient Asian primordial wisdom—or rather, the fragments of it, the remnants of it—is still superior to everything that makes Western civilization so arrogant. And it is interesting, at any rate, that a book such as that by a Ceylonese Indian could be published: The Culture of the Soul among the Western Nations. In this book, The Culture of the Soul among the Western Nations, a Ceylonese Indian tells Europeans nothing less than this: Since the Middle Ages, your knowledge of Christ has died out. You no longer have any real knowledge of Christ, for only those who can look into the spiritual world can have true knowledge of Christ. Therefore, you must bring in teachers from India or Asia to teach you about Christianity. — You can read in this book how a Ceylonese Indian tells the Europeans: Bring in teachers from Asia; they will be able to tell you what Christ truly is. Your teachers in Europe no longer know this at all. Since the end of the Middle Ages, you have lost the knowledge of Christ. |

[ 42 ] And what matters is that Europeans and Americans, of their own accord, regain the courage to look toward those spiritual worlds in which the knowledge of Christ and the wisdom of Christ can once again be attained, for Christ is the Being who descended from the spiritual worlds into earthly existence, and who can only be truly understood in his innermost essence when one grasps him from the spirit.

[ 43 ] To this end, it is essential that human beings learn to truly see themselves as an image of spiritual beings and spiritual forces here on Earth. He can do this best by truly immersing himself in precisely the kinds of insights I presented to you at the beginning of today’s reflections, in which a person essentially looks at the emptiness in his temporal experiences and becomes aware that his “I” does not actually descend from the spiritual world at all, that in the physical world he is merely an image, that is, his “I” is not present in the physical world. He sees, as it were, a hole in time that actually appears dark to him. This is what he calls “I.”

[ 44 ] That is why a person should be aware of this highly significant fact: that, when recalling the past, they must look back on their life and say to themselves: “Yes, as I recall, I see the experiences of the day, but darkness always appears within them like a hole.” In ordinary consciousness, I call that which is dark the “I.” But I must become aware of something else.

[ 45 ] And I have summarized this other point in a few words that can be inscribed in the soul of every person living today as a kind of meditation for discovering the self, if we allow the words I would like to present in this way to resonate within us more and more often:

I gaze into the darkness:
Within it, light arises,
Living light.
Who is this light in the darkness?
It is I myself in my reality.
This reality of the self
Does not enter my earthly existence.
I am only an image of it.
But I will find it again,
When I,
With good will toward the Spirit,
Have passed through the gate of death.

[ 46 ] By immersing ourselves time and again in such a meditative saying, we can stand before the darkness and realize that, on Earth, we are in fact merely the image of that which never descends from our true being into earthly existence; yet in the darkness, through our good will toward the Spirit, a light can dawn within us, and we may acknowledge: This light is who we truly are.