The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Of the astral body and of Luciferic entities and of the nature of the etheric body

[ 1 ] Another kind of spiritual entities, which, from the spiritual realm, are observed in the sense world (and also in the elementary world) as being active on their assumed scene, are those who want to free the sentient soul completely from the sense world; in other words, they want to spiritualize it, so to speak. Life in the sense world belongs to the world order. By living in the sense world, the human soul undergoes a development in it which belongs to the realm of its conditions of existence. The fact that it is interwoven into this realm of the senses is a result of the activity of entities that we come to know in the upper world. The entities that want to tear the sentient soul away from the conditions of sense effectiveness work against this effectiveness. These entities are here called the Luciferic entities.

[ 2 ] So the Luciferic entities stand in the sensory world, sensing, as it were, everything that is soulful (sentient) in it, in order to pull it out of this sensory world and incorporate it into a world realm of their own, which is similar to their nature. Seen from the upper world, the activity of these Luciferic entities is also noticeable in the elemental world. Within it they strive for a realm of forces which, according to their intentions, should not be touched by the gravity of the sensory world, even though it is predestined by the beings of the upper world to be interwoven into this sensory world. Just as the Ahrimanic entities remained within their circle if they only brought about the temporary annihilation of existence based on the world order, so the Luciferic entities did not transgress the territory of their own realm if they imbued the sentient soul with forces in which it repeatedly feels the impulse to rise above the coercions in the sense world and to feel itself as an independent, free being in the face of these coercions. However, the Luciferian beings transcend their territory by wanting to create a special realm of the spirit in relation to the general order of the upper world, to which they want to transform the spiritual entities in the sensory world.

[ 3 ] You can see how the effect of the Luciferic entities in the sense world pushes in two directions. On the one hand, it is thanks to these beings that man is able to rise above the mere experience of the sensually real. He draws his joy, his elevation not only from the sensory world. He can enjoy and elevate himself in that which lives merely in appearance, which goes beyond the sensual as a beautiful appearance. It is from this side that the Luciferic activity has contributed to the most significant cultural blossoms, above all the artistic ones. Man can also live in free thinking, he need not merely describe sensory things and reproduce them in thought like a portrait; he can develop creative thinking beyond the sensory world; he can philosophize about things. - On the other hand, the excessive tension of the Luciferic forces in the souls becomes the source of many raptures and confusions that want to unfold in spiritual activities without adhering to the conditions of the higher world order. Philosophizing without the foundations of solid integration into the world order, stubbornly spinning oneself into arbitrary ideas, exaggeratedly insisting on the assumed, cherished personal opinion: all these are the dark sides of Luciferian activity.

[ 4 ] The human soul belongs to the upper world with its "other self". But it also belongs to the being in the lower world. The supersensible consciousness, when it has undergone the appropriate preparation, experiences itself knowingly in the upper world. But no fact changes for the supersensible consciousness, but only the knowledge of this fact is added to that which is a fact for every human soul. - Every human soul belongs to the upper world and, if the human being lives in the sense world, is assigned to a sense body which is subject to the processes of this sense world; it is also assigned to a subtle, etheric body which lives within the processes of the elementary world. The forces of the ahrimanic and luciferic entities work in the sensory body and in the etheric body. These forces are of a spiritual, supersensible nature.

[ 5 ] In so far as the human soul lives in the upper (spiritual) world, it is - to use this expression - an astral entity. Among the many reasons which justify this expression is the fact that the astral entity of man as such is not subject to the conditions which are effective within the earth. Spiritual science recognizes that it is not the natural laws of the earth that are effective within the astral being of man, but those laws which are relevant to the processes of the starry world. Therefore the naming of the astral being can appear justified. In addition to the recognition of the physical-sensual body of man and the etheric, subtle body, the third, the astral body, is also recognized. However, the following must be taken into account: With regard to its very own essence, the astral human body is rooted in the upper world, in the actual spiritual realm. Within this realm it is an entity which is of the same nature as other entities which have the scene of their activity in this spiritual world. Inasmuch as the elemental and the sensory world are reflections of the spiritual world, the etheric and the physical-sensory human body must also be regarded as reflections of the astral entity of the human being. But in this etheric and in the physical-sensual body forces are at work which originate from the Luciferic and Ahrimanic entities. Since these entities are of spiritual origin, it is natural that one finds a kind of astral entity of the human being in the area of the sensory-physical and the etheric body itself. A spiritual view that only accepts the images of the supersensible consciousness and is not able to understand their meaning correctly can easily take the astral impact of the physical and etheric body as the actual astral body. But this "astral body" is precisely that part of the human being which in its activity is directed against the lawfulness which is truly due to man in the world order. - Confusion and confusion in this area are all the more easily possible because for the ordinary human consciousness knowledge of the astral nature of the soul is at first quite impossible. But even for the first stages of supersensible consciousness this knowledge is not yet attainable. This consciousness is attained when the human being experiences himself in his etheric body. In this body, however, he sees the mirror images of his "other self" and of the upper world to which he belongs. He thus sees the etheric reflection of his astral body and sees it with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic entities contained in it. - It will be shown in the later aphorisms of this writing that the "I", which man addresses as his entity in his ordinary life, is not the "true I", but the reflection of the "true I" in the physical-sensual world. For the etheric view, the etheric reflection of the astral body can thus become the illusion of the "true astral body".

[ 6 ] In the further course of settling into the upper world, the supersensible consciousness also comes to gain a true view of the nature of the reflection of the upper world in the lower world in relation to the human being. Above all, it becomes apparent that the ethereal, fine body, as man carries it in his present earthly existence, is not in truth a mirror image of that which corresponds to him in the upper world. It is a mirror image, changed by the activity of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic entities. The spiritual archetype of the etheric body cannot be completely reflected in the earthly human being due to the nature of the earthly entity in which the aforementioned entities are active. If the supersensible consciousness pursues its path beyond the earth to an area where a perfect reflection of the archetype of the etheric body is possible, it sees itself transported back into a distant past beyond the present earthly state, indeed even beyond the lunar state that preceded it. It comes to understand how the present earth has developed out of a lunar state, but the latter out of a solar state. Why the name solar state is justified can be found in more detail in my "Secret Science". So the earth was once in a solar state; it developed from this into a lunar state and then became "earth". During the solar state the etheric body of man was a pure reflection of the spiritual processes and entities of the world in which it has its origin. It is evident to the supersensible consciousness that these entities consist entirely of pure wisdom. Thus it can be said that during the solar period of the earth in the distant past man took into himself his etheric body as a pure reflection of the cosmic wisdom beings. During the following moon and earth time, this etheric body then changed and became what it is today in the human being.