The Threshold of the Spiritual World
GA 17
XIV. Concerning Man's Real Ego
[ 1 ] When the soul experiences itself in its astral body and has living thought-beings as its environment, it knows itself to be outside both the physical and etheric bodies. But it also feels that its thinking, feeling, and willing belong but to a limited sphere of the universe, whereas in virtue of its own original nature it should embrace much more than is allotted to it in that sphere. The soul that has become clairvoyant may say to itself within the spiritual world: “In the physical world I am confined to what my physical body allows me to observe; in the elemental world I am limited by my etheric body; in the spiritual world I am restricted by finding myself, as it were, upon an island in the universe and by feeling my spiritual existence bounded by the shores of that island. Beyond them is a world which I should be able to perceive if I were to work my way through the veil which is woven before the eyes of my spirit by the actions of living thought-beings.” Now the soul is indeed able to work its way through this veil, if it continues to develop further and further the faculty of self surrender which is already necessary for its life in the elemental world. It is under the necessity of still further strengthening the forces which accrue to it from experience in the physical world, in order to be guarded in supersensible worlds from having its consciousness deadened, clouded, or even annihilated. In the physical world the soul, in order to experience thoughts within itself, has need only of the strength naturally allotted to it apart from its own inner work. In the elemental world thoughts, which immediately on arising fall into oblivion, are softened down to dreamlike experience, i.e. do not come into the consciousness at all, unless the soul, before entering this world, has worked on the strengthening of its inner life. For this purpose it must specially strengthen the will-power, for in the elemental world a thought is no longer merely a thought; it has an inner activity, or life of its own. It has to be held fast by the will if it is not to leave the circle of the consciousness. In the spiritual world thoughts are completely independent living beings. If they are to remain in the consciousness, the soul must be so strengthened that it develops within itself and of itself the force which the physical body develops for it in the physical world, and which in the elemental world is developed by the sympathies and antipathies of the etheric body. It must forgo all this assistance in the spiritual world. There the experiences of the physical world and the elemental world are only present to the soul as memories. And the soul itself is beyond those two worlds. Around it is the spiritual world. This world at first makes no impression upon the astral body. The soul has to learn to live by itself on its own memories. The content of its consciousness is at first merely this: “I have existed, and now I am confronting nothingness.” But when the memories come from such soul-experiences as arc not merely reproductions of physical or elemental occurrences, but represent free thought-experiences induced by those occurrences, there begins in the soul an exchange of thought between the memories and the supposed nothingness of the spiritual environment. And that which arises as the result of that intercourse becomes a world of conceptions in the consciousness of the astral body. The strength which is needful for the soul at this point of its development is such as will make it capable of standing on the shore of the only world hitherto known to it, and of enduring the facing of supposed nothingness. This supposed nothingness is at first an absolutely real nothingness to the soul. Yet the soul still has, so to speak, behind it the world of its memories. It can, as it were, take a firm grip of them. It can live in them. And the more it lives in them, the more it strengthens the forces of the astral body. With this strengthening begins the intercourse between its past existence and the beings of the spiritual world. During this intercourse the soul learns to feel itself as an astral being. To use an expression in keeping with ancient traditions, we may say, “The human soul experiences itself as an astral being within the cosmic Word.” By the cosmic Word are here meant the thought-deeds of living thought-beings, which are enacted in the spiritual world like a living discourse of spirits; but in such a way that the discourse exactly corresponds in the spiritual world to deeds in the physical world.
[ 2 ] If the soul now wishes to step over into the super-spiritual world, it must efface, by its own will, its memories of the physical and elemental worlds. It can only do this when it has gained the certainty, from the spirit discourse, that it will not wholly lose its existence if it effaces everything in itself which so far the consciousness of that existence has given it. The soul must actually place itself at the edge of a spiritual abyss and there make an act of wiII to forget its willing, feeling, and thinking. It must consciously renounce its past. The resolution that has to be taken at this point may be called a bringing about of complete sleep of the consciousness by one's own will, not by conditions of the physical or etheric body. Only this resolution must not be thought of as having for its object a return, after an interval of unconsciousness, to the same consciousness that was previously there, but as if that consciousness, by means of the resolution, really plunges into forgetfulness by its own act of will. It must be borne in mind that this process is not possible in either the physical or the elemental world, but only in the spiritual world. In the physical world the annihilation which appears as death is possible; in the elemental world there is no death. Man, in so far as he belongs to the elemental world, cannot die; he can only be transformed into another being. In the spiritual world, however, no positive transformation, in the strict sense of the word, is possible; for into whatever a human being may change, his past experience is revealed in the spiritual world as his own conscious existence. If this memory existence is to disappear within the spiritual world, it must be because the soul itself, by an act of will, has caused it to sink into oblivion. Clairvoyant consciousness is able to perform such an act of will when it has won the necessary inner strength. If it arrives at this, there emerges from the forgetfulness it has itself brought about the real nature of the ego. The super-spiritual environment gives the human soul the knowledge of that real ego. Just as clairvoyant consciousness can experience itself in the etheric and astral bodies, so too can it experience itself in the real ego.
[ 3 ] This real ego is not created by clairvoyance; it exists in the depths of every human soul. Clairvoyant consciousness simply experiences consciously a fact appertaining to the nature of every human soul, of which it is not conscious.
[ 4 ] After physical death man gradually lives himself into his spiritual environment. At first his being emerges into it with memories of the physical world. Then, although he has not the assistance of his physical body, he can nevertheless live consciously in those memories, because the living thought-beings corresponding to them incorporate themselves into the memories, so that the latter no longer have the merely shadowy existence peculiar to them in the physical world. And at a definite point of time between death and rebirth, the living thought-beings of the spiritual environment exert such a strong influence that, without any act of will, the oblivion which has been described is brought about. And at that moment life emerges in the real ego. Clairvoyant consciousness, by strengthening the life of the soul, brings about as a free action of the spirit that which is, so to speak, a natural occurrence between death and rebirth. Nevertheless, memory of previous earth-lives can never arise within physical experience, unless the thoughts have, during those earth-lives, been directed to the spiritual world. It is always necessary first to have known of a thing in order that a clearly recognisable remembrance of it may arise later. Therefore we must, during one earth-life, gain knowledge of ourselves as spiritual beings if we are to be justified in expecting that in our next earthly existence we shall be able to remember a former one.
[ 5 ] Yet this knowledge need not necessarily be gained through clairvoyance. When a person acquires a direct knowledge of the spiritual world through clairvoyance, there may arise in his soul, during the earth-lives following the one in which he gained that knowledge, a memory of the former one, in the same way in which the memory of a personal experience presents itself in physical existence. In the case, however, of one who penetrates into spiritual science with true comprehension, through without clairvoyance, the memory will occur in such a form that it may be compared with the remembrance in physical existence of an event of which he has only heard a description.
Von dem «wahren Ich» des Menschen
[ 1 ] Erlebt sich die Seele in ihrem astralischen Leibe und hat sie die Gedankenlebewesen zu ihrer Umwelt, so weiß sie sich außer dem physischen und auch außer dem ätherischen Leibe. Sie erfühlt dann aber auch, wie ihr Denken, Fühlen und Wollen einem eingeschränkten Gebiet der Welt angehören, während sie ihrer ureigenen Wesenheit nach noch mehr umfassen könnte, als ihr in diesem Gebiete zuerteilt ist. Die hellsichtig gewordene Seele kann sich innerhalb der geistigen Welt sagen: In der Sinneswelt bin ich beschränkt auf dasjenige, was mir der physische Leib zu beobachten gestattet; in der elementarischen Welt bin ich durch den ätherischen Leib eingeschränkt; in der geistigen Welt bin ich dadurch begrenzt, daß ich mich gewissermaßen auf einer Welteninsel befinde und nur bis zu deren Ufern mein geistiges Dasein erfühle; jenseits dieser Ufer ist eine Welt, die ich wahrnehmen könnte, wenn ich durch den Schleier mich hindurcharbeitete, welcher mir durch die Taten der Gedankenlebewesen vor das Geistesauge gewoben wird. Die Seele kann sich durch diesen Schleier hindurcharbeiten, wenn sie die Fähigkeit der Hingabe, die ihr schon für das Leben in der elementarischen Welt notwendig ist, immer weiter und weiter entwickelt. Sie hat nötig, ihre Kräfte, wie sie ihr durch das Erleben in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt erwachsen, immer mehr zu verstärken, um in den übersinnlichen Welten vor der Abdämpfung, Trübung, ja Vernichtung des Bewußtseins bewahrt zu sein. In der physisch-sinnlichen Welt braucht die Seele nur die ihr naturgemäß, ohne ihre eigene seelische Arbeit, zuerteilte Kraft, um in sich Gedanken erleben zu können. In der elementarischen Welt dämpfen sich die Gedanken zu traumähnlichen Erlebnissen herab, die im Entstehen sogleich dem Vergessenwerden anheimfallen, das heißt überhaupt nicht bewußt werden, wenn die Seele nicht vor ihrem Eintritte in diese Welt an der Erkraftung ihres inneren Lebens arbeitet. Sie muß dazu besonders die Willenskraft verstärken, denn in der elementarischen Welt ist ein Gedanke eben nicht mehr bloß Gedanke; er hat innere Regsamkeit, eigenes Leben. Er will durch den Willen festgehalten werden, wenn er sich dem Umkreis des Bewußtseins nicht entziehen soll. In der geistigen Welt sind die Gedanken vollends selbständige Lebewesen. Sollen sie im Bewußtsein verbleiben, so muß die Seele so erkraftet sein, daß sie selbst die Kraft in ihrem Innern entfaltet, die ihr in der Sinneswelt der physische Leib entfaltet, in der elementarischen die Sympathien und Antipathien des ätherischen Leibes. Auf alles dieses muß sie in der geistigen Welt verzichten. Da sind ihr die Erlebnisse der Sinneswelt und der elementarischen Welt nur wie Erinnerungen gegenwärtig. Und sie ist selbst außerhalb dieser beiden Welten. Um sie ist die geistige Welt. Diese macht auf den astralischen Leib zunächst keinen Eindruck. Die Seele muß lernen, für sich selbst von ihren Erinnerungen zu leben. Ihr Bewußtseinsinhalt ist zuerst nur der: ich bin gewesen, und ich stehe jetzt dem Nichts gegenüber. Aber wenn die Erinnerungen aus solchen Seelenerlebnissen kommen, die nicht bloß Abbilder sinnlicher oder elementarischer Vorgänge sind, sondern von diesen angeregte freie Gedankenerlebnlsse darstellen, so beginnt in der Seele ein Gedankengespräch zwischen den Erinnerungen und dem vermeintlichen «Nichts» der geistigen Umwelt. Und was als Ergebnis dieses Gesprächs entsteht, wird Vorstellungswelt im Bewußtsein des astralischen Leibes. Die Kraft, welche die Seele in diesem Punkte ihrer Entwickelung nötig hat, ist eine solche, welche sie fähig macht, am Ufer der ihr bisher allein bekannten Welt zu stehen und zu ertragen, dem vermeintlichen Nichts gegenüberzutreten. Für das Seelenleben ist zuerst dieses vermeintliche Nichts durchaus ein wahres Nichts. Doch hat die Seele immerhin gewissermaßen hinter sich die Welt ihrer Erinnerungen. Sie vermag sich an diese Erinnerungen wie anzuklammern. Sie vermag in ihnen zu leben. Und je mehr sie in ihnen lebt, desto mehr verstärkt sie die Kräfte des astralischen Leibes. Mit dieser Verstärkung beginnt aber das Gespräch zwischen ihrem vergangenen Dasein und den Wesenheiten der geistigen Welt. Sie lernt sich in diesem Gespräch als astralische Wesenheit erfühlen. Mit einem Ausdrucke, der alten Traditionen entspricht, kann man sagen : Die Menschenseele erlebt sich als astralische Wesenheit innerhalb des Weltenwortes. Mit dem Weltenwort sind da gemeint die Gedankentaten der Gedankenlebewesen, welche wie lebendige Geistergespräche sich in der geistigen Welt abspielen. Aber durchaus so, daß diese Geistergespräche für die geistige Welt dasselbe sind, was Taten für die Sinneswelt sind.
[ 2 ] Will nun die Seele in die übergeistige Welt übertreten, so muß sie durch ihren eigenen Willen ihre Erinnerungen aus der physischen und der elementarischen Welt austilgen. Sie kann das nur, wenn sie aus dem Geistergespräch die Sicherheit gewonnen hat, daß sie ihr Dasein nicht völlig verlieren werde, wenn sie alles das in sich vertilgt, was ihr bisher das Bewußtsein dieses Daseins gegeben hat. Die Seele muß in der Tat sich vor einen geistigen Abgrund stellen, und an demselben den Willensimpuls fassen, ihr Wollen, Fühlen und Denken zu vergessen. Sie muß auf ihre Vergangenheit in ihrem Bewußtsein verzichten. Man könnte diesen Entschluß, der hier notwendig ist, ein Herbeiführen des vollständigen Bewußtseinsschlafes durch den eigenen Willen, nicht durch Verhältnisse des physischen oder des ätherischen Leibes, nennen. Nur muß man diesen Entschluß so denken, daß er nicht das Ziel hat, nach einer Pause der Bewußtlosigkeit dasselbe Bewußtsein wieder herbeizuführen, das vorher da war, sondern so, daß durch ihn dieses Bewußtsein wirklich sich zunächst durch den eigenen Willensentschluß in das Vergessen eintaucht. Man muß bedenken, daß dieser Vorgang weder in der physischen noch in der elementarischen Welt, sondern nur in der geistigen Welt möglich ist. In der physischen Welt ist die Vernichtung möglich, welche als Tod auftritt; in der elementarischen Welt gibt es keinen Tod. Der Mensch , insoferne er der elementarischen Welt angehört, kann nicht sterben; er kann sich nur in eine andere Wesenheit verwandeln. In der geistigen Welt ist im strengen Sinn des Wortes auch keine entschiedene Verwandlung möglich; denn in was immer sich das Menschenwesen auch verwandeln mag, in der geistigen Welt offenbart sich die erlebte Vergangenheit als eigenes bewußtes Dasein. Soll dieses Erinnerungsdasein innerhalb der geistigen Welt hinschwinden, so muß es von der Seele durch einen Wiilensentschluß selbst in die Vergessenheit versenkt werden. Das übersinnliche Bewußtsein kann zu diesem Willensentschluß kommen, wenn es sich die nötige Seelenstärke erobert hat. Kommt es dazu, dann taucht ihm aus dem selbst hervorgerufenen Vergessen die wahre Wesenheit des «Ich» auf. Die übergeistige Umwelt gibt der Menschenseele das Wissen von diesem «wahren Ich». So wie sich das übersinnliche Bewußtsein in dem ätherischen und in dem astralischen Leibe erleben kann, so kann es sich auch in dem «wahren Ich» erleben.
[ 3 ] Dieses «wahre Ich» wird durch die Geistes-Anschauung nicht erzeugt; es ist für jede Menschenseele in deren Tiefen vorhanden. Das übersinnliche Bewußtsein erlebt bloß wissend, was für jede Menschenseele eine nicht bewußte, aber zu ihrer Wesenheit gehörige Tatsache ist.
[ 4 ] Nach dem physischen Tode lebt sich der Mensch allmählich in die geistige Umwelt ein. Innerhalb derselben taucht zunächst sein Wesen mit den Erinnerungen aus der Sinneswelt auf. Er kann da, obwohl er die Unterstützung des physisch-sinnlichen Leibes nicht hat, doch bewußt in diesen Erinnerungen leben, weil sich in dieselben die ihnen entsprechenden Gedankenlebewesen einverleiben, so daß die Erinnerungen nicht mehr das bloße Schattendasein haben, welches ihnen in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt eigen ist. Und in einem bestimmten Zeitpunkte zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt wirken die Gedankenlebewesen der geistigen Umwelt so stark, daß dann ohne Willensimpuls das geschilderte Vergessen herbeigeführt wird. Und mit demselben taucht das Leben in dem «wahren Ich» auf. Das hellsichtige Bewußtsein führt durch Erkraftung des Seelenlebens dasjenige als freie Geistestat herbei, was für das Erleben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt gewissermaßen ein naturgemäßes Ereignis ist. Jedoch kann innerhalb des physisch-sinnlichen Erlebens nie eine Erinnerung an vorhergehende Erdenleben eintreten, wenn nicht innerhalb dieser Erdenleben die Vorstellungen auf die geistige Welt gelenkt worden sind. Man muß ja stets von etwas vorher gewußt haben, an das später eine deutlich erkennbare Erinnerung auftauchen soll. So muß man auch in einem Erdenleben sich ein Wissen erwerben von sich als einem geistigen Wesen, wenn man mit Recht erwarten will, daß man in einem nächsten Erdenleben an ein vorhergehendes sich erinnern könne. Doch braucht dieses Wissen nicht durch Hellsichtigkeit erworben zu sein. Wer durch Hellsichtigkeit sich ein unmittelbares Wissen von der geistigen Welt erwirbt, in dessen Seele kann in den Erdenleben, welche auf dasjenige folgen, in dem er dieses Wissen erlangt, eine Erinnerung an das vorige so auftreten, wie im Sinnessein die Erinnerung an etwas Selbsterlebtes sich einstellt. Wer mit Verständnis in die Geisteswissenschaft auch ohne Geistes-Anschauung eindringt, für den tritt diese Erinnerung so ein, daß sie einer solchen im Sinnessein sich vergleichen läßt, welche man von einem Ereignis bewahrt, von dem man nur eine Schilderung angehört hat.
On the "true self" of the human being
[ 1 ] When the soul experiences itself in its astral body and has the thought beings as its environment, it knows itself to be outside the physical and also outside the etheric body. But then it also senses how its thinking, feeling and willing belong to a limited area of the world, while according to its very nature it could encompass even more than is allotted to it in this area. The clairvoyant soul can say to itself within the spiritual world: In the sense world I am limited to that which the physical body allows me to observe; in the elementary world I am limited by the etheric body; in the spiritual world I am limited by the fact that I am, as it were, on an island of the world and only feel my spiritual existence as far as its shores; beyond these shores is a world which I could perceive if I worked my way through the veil which is woven before my spiritual eye by the deeds of the thought beings. The soul can work its way through this veil if it continues to develop the ability of devotion, which is already necessary for life in the elementary world. It needs to strengthen its powers more and more, as they arise through experience in the physical-sensual world, in order to be protected in the supersensible worlds from the dulling, clouding, even destruction of consciousness. In the physical-sensual world the soul only needs the power naturally given to it, without its own spiritual work, in order to be able to experience thoughts within itself. In the elementary world, thoughts diminish to dream-like experiences which, as they arise, are immediately forgotten, that is, they do not become conscious at all if the soul does not work on the strengthening of its inner life before entering this world. To do this it must especially strengthen its willpower, for in the elementary world a thought is no longer just a thought; it has inner activity, its own life. It wants to be held by the will if it is not to escape the sphere of consciousness. In the spiritual world thoughts are completely independent living beings. If they are to remain in consciousness, the soul must be so fortified that it unfolds within itself the power which the physical body unfolds to it in the sense world, and the sympathies and antipathies of the etheric body in the elementary world. In the spiritual world it must do without all this. There the experiences of the sense world and the elementary world are only present to it like memories. And it is itself outside these two worlds. Around it is the spiritual world. At first this makes no impression on the astral body. The soul must learn to live for itself from its memories. At first its content of consciousness is only this: I have been, and I am now facing nothingness. But when the memories come from such soul experiences that are not merely images of sensory or elementary processes, but represent free thought experiences stimulated by them, then a thought conversation begins in the soul between the memories and the supposed "nothingness" of the spiritual environment. And what arises as a result of this conversation becomes the world of imagination in the consciousness of the astral body. The power that the soul needs at this point in its development is such a power that enables it to stand on the shore of the world it has hitherto only known and to endure facing the supposed nothingness. For the life of the soul, this supposed nothingness is at first a true nothingness. However, the soul still has the world of its memories behind it, so to speak. It is able to cling to these memories. It is able to live in them. And the more it lives in them, the more it strengthens the powers of the astral body. With this strengthening, however, the conversation between her past existence and the beings of the spiritual world begins. In this conversation she learns to feel herself as an astral being. With an expression that corresponds to old traditions, one can say: The human soul experiences itself as an astral entity within the world word. The world word refers to the thought acts of the thought beings, which take place in the spiritual world like living spirit conversations. But certainly in such a way that these spirit conversations are the same for the spiritual world as deeds are for the sense world.
[ 2 ] If the soul now wants to pass over into the super-spiritual world, it must eradicate its memories from the physical and elementary world through its own will. It can only do this if it has gained the certainty from the spirit conversation that it will not completely lose its existence if it eradicates everything within itself that has so far given it the consciousness of this existence. The soul must indeed place itself in front of a spiritual abyss and seize the impulse of will to forget its willing, feeling and thinking. It must renounce its past in its consciousness. One could call this decision, which is necessary here, a bringing about of the complete sleep of consciousness through one's own will, not through conditions of the physical or etheric body. But this decision must be thought of in such a way that it does not have the aim of bringing about again, after a pause of unconsciousness, the same consciousness that was there before, but in such a way that through it this consciousness really first plunges into oblivion through its own volitional decision. It must be remembered that this process is possible neither in the physical nor in the elementary world, but only in the spiritual world. In the physical world annihilation is possible, which occurs as death; in the elementary world there is no death. Man, in so far as he belongs to the elementary world, cannot die; he can only transform himself into another entity. In the spiritual world, in the strict sense of the word, no decisive transformation is possible either; for whatever the human being may transform himself into, in the spiritual world the experienced past reveals itself as its own conscious existence. If this memory existence is to disappear within the spiritual world, it must be sunk into oblivion by the soul itself through a willful decision. The supersensible consciousness can come to this decision of will when it has conquered the necessary strength of soul. If it comes to this, then the true essence of the "I" emerges from the self-induced oblivion. The super-spiritual environment gives the human soul the knowledge of this "true self". Just as the supersensible consciousness can experience itself in the etheric and in the astral body, it can also experience itself in the "true I".
[ 3 ] This "true I" is not created by the spiritual view; it is present for every human soul in its depths. The supersensible consciousness merely experiences knowingly what is an unconscious fact for every human soul, but which belongs to its essence.
[ 4 ] After physical death, the human being gradually settles into the spiritual environment. Within it, his being first emerges with the memories from the sensory world. Although he does not have the support of the physical-sensory body, he can still live consciously in these memories, because the thought beings corresponding to them incorporate themselves into them, so that the memories no longer have the mere shadowy existence that is characteristic of them in the physical-sensory world. And at a certain point in time between death and a new birth the thought beings of the spiritual environment have such a strong effect that the described forgetting is then brought about without an impulse of the will. And with this, life emerges in the "true self". The clairvoyant consciousness brings about that as a free act of the spirit through the empowerment of the soul life, which is to a certain extent a natural event for the experience between death and new birth. However, a memory of previous earthly lives can never occur within the physical-sensual experience if the ideas have not been directed towards the spiritual world within these earthly lives. One must always have known about something beforehand if a clearly recognizable memory is to emerge later. Thus one must also acquire knowledge of oneself as a spiritual being in one earthly life if one wants to rightly expect that one can remember a previous one in a next earthly life. But this knowledge need not be acquired through clairvoyance. Whoever acquires a direct knowledge of the spiritual world through clairvoyance, a memory of the previous one can occur in his soul in the earthly lives that follow the one in which he acquires this knowledge, just as the memory of something self-experienced occurs in the senses. For those who penetrate spiritual science with understanding, even without spiritual contemplation, this memory occurs in such a way that it can be compared to that which one retains in the mind of an event of which one has only heard a description.