The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Meditation

The meditator tries to form an idea of the "astral body"

[ 1 ] When one experiences a supersensible external world through the elementary body, one is less closed off from it than one is from one's physical surroundings when experiencing it in the sensory body. Nevertheless, one has a relationship to this supersensible external world which can be expressed in such a way that one says that one has certain substances of the elementary world connected with oneself as a special elementary body, just as one carries the substances and forces of the physical external world in the physical body. That this is the case is noticed when one wants to orient oneself in the supersensible world outside one's sensory body. It can happen that you have some fact or entity of the supersensible world before you; it can be there; you can see it; but you do not know what it is. If you are strong enough to do so, you can drive it away, but only by energetically reflecting on your experience in the sensory world and placing yourself back in it. But one cannot remain within the supersensible world and compare the fact or entity seen with others. Only in this way could one orientate oneself as to what what is seen means. Seeing the supersensible world can therefore be limited to perceiving details, but not being able to move freely from one to the other. You then feel stuck to the detail.

[ 2 ] You can now look for the reason for this limitation. You will only find it if, through further inner development, which strengthens the life of the soul even more, you come to the conclusion that in a particular case this limitation is no longer there. But then you will realize that the reason why you could not move from the one thing you saw to another lies in your own soul. One learns to recognize that seeing the supersensible world also differs from perceiving the sensible world in that in the latter, for example, one can see everything visible if one has properly functioning eyes. If you see one thing, you can also see the other through the same eye. This is not the case in the supersensible world. One can have trained the supersensible organ of observation of the elementary body in such a way that one can experience this or that fact; if another is to be seen, the organ for this must first be specially trained again. - Now, in the face of such training, one has a sensation that is like an awakening of the organ for a certain part of the supersensible world. One feels as if the elementary body is in a kind of sleep state in relation to the supersensible world, and as if it must first be awakened for every detail. One can really speak of sleeping and waking in the elementary world. But for this world, sleeping and waking are not alternating states, as they are within life in the sense world. They are simultaneously present as states in the human being. As long as man has not acquired the ability to experience something through his elementary body, this body is asleep. The human being always carries this body with him, but as a sleeping one. With the strengthening of the soul life, awakening begins, but initially only for a part of this body. One lives oneself more and more into the elemental world by awakening more and more of one's own elemental being.

[ 3 ] Nothing in the elemental world itself can help the soul to achieve this awakening. No matter how much can already be seen: the one thing seen contributes nothing to the fact that another can also be seen. The soul cannot attain free mobility in the supersensible world through anything that can be found in the elementary environment. If one continues the exercises in the strengthening of the soul, one attains this mobility more and more for certain areas. Through all this one becomes aware of something within oneself that does not belong to the elemental world, but which one discovers in oneself when experiencing this world. We find ourselves as a special being in the supersensible world, which appears to us like a controller of our elementary body, like a ruler of it, who gradually awakens this body to a supersensible consciousness.

[ 4 ] Once one has reached this point, the soul is overcome by a tremendous feeling of loneliness. One sees oneself in a world that is elemental on all sides; one sees only oneself within the infinite elemental expanses as a being that cannot see its own kind anywhere. - It should not be claimed that every development towards clairvoyance leads to this eerie solitude; but the one who consciously acquires the strengthening of the soul through his own power will reach it. And he who follows a teacher who gives him step-by-step guidance in order to advance in his development will - perhaps late - but one day have to learn that his teacher has left him to his own devices. At first he will find himself abandoned by him and given over to loneliness in the elementary world. Only later will he realize that he has been wisely treated by the teacher and that the teacher had to refer him to himself after the necessity for such independence had arisen.

[ 5 ] At this stage of transmigration, man appears to himself as one banished to the elementary world. Now, however, he can progress further if there is sufficient soul power in him through his inner exercises. He can begin to see - not in the elementary world, but in himself - a new world emerging, which is neither one and the same with the sense world nor with the elementary world. For such a person, a second supersensible world is added to the first. This second supersensible world is at first a complete inner world. One feels that one carries it within oneself and is alone with it. If you want to compare this state with something from the world of the senses, you can do the following. Someone has seen all his loved ones die and carries only the memory of them in his soul. They live on for him only as his thoughts. - This is how one is in the second supersensible world. One carries it within oneself; but one knows that one is closed off from its reality. But that which lives of this reality in the soul has itself a quite different reality from mere memories in the sense world. This supersensible world lives an independent existence in one's own soul. Everything that is there wants to leave the soul, wants to go to something else. Thus one feels a world within oneself, but in such a way that this world does not want to remain in the soul. This creates a feeling as if one should be shattered by every detail of this world. It can happen that these details free themselves, that they tear through something like a soul shell and escape from the soul. Then one can feel impoverished by everything that has thus torn itself away from the soul.

[ 6 ] One now learns to recognize that that which one can love from the supersensible soul content behaves in a certain way, that one loves it for its own sake and not because it is in one's own soul. That which one can love devotedly in such a way does not snatch itself from the soul; it does indeed penetrate out of the soul, but it takes this soul with it, so to speak. It leads it to where it lives in its reality. A kind of union with the real being takes place, whereas previously one only carried something like an afterimage of this being within oneself. The love meant here, however, must be one that is experienced in the supersensible world. In the sense world one can only prepare oneself for such love. But one prepares oneself if one makes the capacity for love in the sense world a strong one. The stronger the love one is capable of in the sense world, the more of this capacity for love remains in the soul for the supersensible world. This relates to the details of the supersensible world in such a way that, for example, one cannot reach those real supersensible beings that are connected with the plants of the sensory world if one does not love plants in the sensory world. However, a deception can easily occur with regard to such things. It can happen that a person in the sense world passes by the plant world without any love at all; but there can still be an unconscious inclination for this world hidden in his soul. Then this love can awaken when he enters the supersensible world.

[ 7 ] As with love, the union with beings of the supersensible world can also depend on other qualities of the soul, such as the respect or reverence which the soul can feel for a being within the supersensible world when it first feels the image of this being appear within itself. However, these qualities will always be those that are to be counted among the inner qualities of the soul. - In this way one will become acquainted with those beings of the supersensible world to which the soul itself opens access through such qualities. A safe path to orientation in the supersensible world is opened up by the fact that through one's relationship to the afterimages of the beings, one opens up access to them. In the world of the senses, one loves a being after one has gotten to know it; in the second supersensible world, one can love the image before the encounter with reality, because this image appears before that encounter.

[ 8 ] What the soul gets to know within itself in this way is not the elementary body. For it stands opposite it as its awakener. It is a being present in the soul, which one experiences as one would experience oneself if one did not become unconscious in sleep, but consciously felt oneself outside one's physical body and upon awakening felt oneself as the awakener. Thus the soul becomes acquainted with an entity existing within it, which is a third entity apart from the physical and the elementary body. This entity is called the astral body, and with this word nothing else is indicated here than what is experienced within the being of the soul in the manner described.