The Rudolf Steiner Archive

On the ego-feeling and the capacity for love of the human soul and its relationship to the elemental world

[ 1 ] When the human soul consciously enters the elemental world, it finds itself compelled to change some of the ideas it has acquired within the sensory world. If the soul strengthens its powers accordingly, it also becomes capable of this change. Only if it shies away from acquiring this reinforcement can it be afflicted by the feeling that on entering the elementary world it will lose the firm ground on which it must build its inner life. The ideas which are acquired in the physical-sensory world are only an obstacle to entering the elementary world as long as one wants to hold on to them exactly as one has acquired them in the sensory world. But there is no other reason for such clinging than the habituation of the soul. It is also quite natural that the consciousness, which at first only lives together with the sense world, gets used to taking the form of its ideas as the only possible one, which is formed in this sense world. And it is even more than natural; it is necessary. The life of the soul would never attain its inner unity, its necessary firmness, if it did not develop a consciousness in the sense world that lived in a certain respect in rigid ideas strictly imposed upon it. Through everything that living together with the sense world can give the soul, it is then in a position to enter the elementary world in such a way that it does not lose its independence, its self-contained being in it. The strengthening, the empowerment of the soul's life must be acquired so that this independence is not only present as an unconscious soul characteristic when entering the elementary world, but can also be clearly retained in consciousness. If the soul is too weak for the conscious experience of the elementary world, its independence disappears on entering it, just as a thought disappears which is too weakly impressed on the soul to live on in clear memory. In truth, the soul cannot then enter the supersensible world with its consciousness at all. It is always thrown back into the sensory world by the entity that lives within it, which can be described as the 'guardian of the threshold', when it attempts to enter the supersensible world. And if it has, as it were, nibbled at this world, so that after sinking back into the sensory world it retains something of the supersensible world in consciousness, such a prey from another realm often causes confusion in the life of imagination. - It is quite impossible to fall into such confusion if the healthy power of judgment, as it can be acquired in the sense world, is cultivated in an appropriate way. - Through such strengthening of the faculty of judgment, the correct relationship of the soul to the processes and entities of the supersensible worlds is developed. In order to live consciously in these worlds, an instinct of the soul is necessary which cannot develop in the sensory world to the same extent as it does in the supersensible worlds. It is the instinct of devotion to that which one experiences. One must immerse oneself in the experience, one must be able to become one with it; one must be able to do this to such a degree that one sees oneself outside one's own entity and feels oneself inside the other entity. There is a transformation of one's own entity into the other with which one has the experience. If one does not have this ability to transform, then one cannot experience anything truthful in the supersensible worlds. For all experience is based on the awareness that you are now transformed in "this particular way", that is, you are living together with a being whose nature transforms yours in "this" way. This self-transformation, this empathy with other beings is life in the supersensible worlds. Through this inner life you get to know the beings and processes of these worlds. In this way one realizes how one is related to one entity in this or that way, how one is distant from another through one's own nature. Gradations of soul experiences occur which - especially for the elementary world - must be described as sympathies and antipathies. For example, through the encounter with an entity or a process of the elemental world, one feels in such a way that an experience arises in the soul which can be described as sympathy. In this sympathetic experience one recognizes the nature of the elementary being or process. But one should not imagine that the experiences of sympathy and antipathy are only considered in relation to their strength, their degree. In the case of the experiences of sympathy and antipathy in the physical-sensory world, it is in a certain sense the case that one speaks only of a stronger or weaker sympathy or antipathy. In the elementary world the sympathies and antipathies are not only to be distinguished by their strength, but in the same way as, for example, the colors in the sensory world are to be distinguished from one another. Just as one has a multi-colored sensory world, one can experience a multi-colored sympathetic or antipathetic elemental world. This also comes into consideration, that "antipathic" for the realm of the elementary does not have the connotation that one inwardly turns away from it; one must simply designate by antipathic a property of the elementary being or process that relates to a sympathetic property of another process or being in a similar way, such as the blue to the red color in the sensory world.

[ 2 ] We could speak of a "sense" that man is able to awaken for the elemental world in his etheric body. This sense is capable of perceiving sympathies and antipathies in the elemental world, just as the eye perceives colors and the ear perceives sounds in the sensory world. And just as in the sensory world one object is red, the other blue, so the entities of the elemental world are such that one radiates this kind of sympathy, the other that kind of antipathy into the spiritual vision.

[ 3 ] This experience of the elemental world through sympathies and antipathies is again not something that arises only for the supersensibly awakened soul; it is always present for every human soul; it belongs to the essence of the human soul. For the ordinary life of the soul only the knowledge of this essence of man is not developed. Man carries within him his etheric body; and through this he is connected in a hundred ways with entities and processes of the elementary world. At one moment of his life he is interwoven in a certain way with sympathies and antipathies into the elemental world; at another moment in a different way.

[ 4 ] Now, however, the soul cannot live continuously as an ethereal entity in such a way that the sympathies and antipathies are active in it in a clearly expressed way. Just as in the senses the waking state must alternate with the sleeping state, so in the elemental world the experience of sympathies and antipathies must be opposed by another state. The soul can withdraw from all sympathies and antipathies and only experience itself, only observe and feel its own being. Indeed, this feeling can reach such a strength that one can speak of a "wanting" of one's own being. This is a state of the soul's life that is not easy to describe, because its pure, intrinsic nature is such that nothing else in the sense world is similar to it than the soul's strong, pure sense of self. For the elementary world, the state can be described by saying that the soul, in contrast to the necessary devotion to the experiences of sympathy and antipathy, feels the urge to say to itself: I also want to be only for myself, only in myself. And through a kind of unfolding of the will the soul snatches itself from the state of devotion to the elementary experiences of sympathy and antipathy. For the elemental world, this life within oneself is, so to speak, the state of sleep; while devotion to the processes and entities is the waking state. - When the human soul is awake in the elementary world and develops the will to experience itself, i.e. feels the need for "elementary sleep", it can achieve this by returning to the waking state of sense experience with a fully developed sense of self. For this experience in the sensory world, saturated with a sense of self, is precisely elementary sleep. It consists in the tearing away of the soul from the elementary experiences. It is literally true that for the supersensible consciousness the life of the soul in the sensory world is a spiritual sleep.

[ 5 ] When the awakening in the supersensible world occurs in the correctly developed human spiritual vision, the memory of the soul's experiences in the sensory world remains present. This memory must remain present, otherwise the other entities and processes would be present in the clairvoyant consciousness, but not one's own entity. One would then have no knowledge of oneself; one would not live spiritually oneself; the other entities and processes would live in the soul. Considering this, one will understand that properly developed clairvoyance must attach great importance to the development of a strong sense of self. In this sense of self, clairvoyance does not develop something that only enters the soul through clairvoyance; one only learns to recognize that which is always present in the depths of the soul, but which remains unconscious to the ordinary life of the soul in the sensory world.

[ 6 ] The strong "I-feeling" is not present through the etheric body as such, but through the soul, which experiences itself in the physical-sensual body. If the soul does not bring it from its experience in the sensory world into the clairvoyant state, it will show that it is not sufficiently equipped for the experience in the elementary world.

[ 7 ] It is essential to human consciousness within the sense world that the soul's sense of self (its ego-experience), although it must be present, is muted. This enables the soul to experience the training for the noblest moral power, for compassion, within the sensory world. If the strong sense of self were to interfere with the soul's conscious experiences within the sense world, the moral instincts and ideas could not develop in the right way. They could not bring forth the fruit of love. Devotion, this natural instinct of the elemental world, is not to be regarded in the same way as what is called love in human experience. Elementary devotion is based on an experience of self in the other being or process; love is an experience of the other in one's own soul. In order to bring this experience to fruition, a veil must be drawn in the soul over the sense of self (ego-experience) present in its depths; and in the soul, which is dampened in relation to its own powers, the inner feeling of the sufferings and joys of the other being arises as a result; love germinates, from which genuine morality arises in human life. Love is the most significant fruit of experience in the sensory world for human beings. If we penetrate the nature of love and compassion, we find in them the way in which the spiritual in the sense world lives out its truth. It has been said here that it is part of the nature of the supersensible to transform itself into something else. When the spiritual in the sensual-physical living human being transforms itself in such a way that it dampens the ego-feeling and comes to life as love, then this spiritual remains true to its own elementary laws. One can say that with the supersensible consciousness the human soul awakens in the spiritual world; but one must also say that in love the spiritual awakens within the sense world. Where love, where compassion stir in life, one hears the magic breath of the spirit permeating the sense world. - Therefore, properly developed clairvoyance can never blunt compassion and love. The more correctly the soul immerses itself in the spiritual worlds, the more it perceives the lack of love, the lack of compassion as a denial of the spirit itself.

[ 8 ] The experiences of the consciousness that becomes seeing show very special peculiarities in relation to the above. While the ego-feeling - which is, however, necessary for the experience in the supersensible worlds - is easily dampened, often behaving like a weak, extinguishing thought of memory, feelings of hatred, of unkindness, immoral impulses become strong experiences of the soul just after entering the supersensible world; they present themselves before the soul like reproaches that have come to life, become ghastly images. In order not to be tormented by these images, the supersensible consciousness often resorts to the expedient of looking around for spiritual forces which weaken the impressions of these images. In this way, however, the soul becomes imbued with these forces, which have a pernicious effect on the clairvoyance acquired. They drive it away from the good areas of the spiritual world and direct it towards the bad ones.

[ 9 ] On the other hand, the true love, the right benevolence of the soul are also such soul experiences which strengthen the powers of consciousness in the sense necessary for the entry into clairvoyance. When it is said that the soul needs preparation before it can have experiences in the supersensible world, it may be added that the manifold means of preparation also include the true ability to love, the inclination for genuine human benevolence and compassion.

[ 10 ] An excessively developed sense of self in the sensory world works against morality. An ego-feeling that is too weakly developed causes the soul, which is actually buffeted by the storms of elementary sympathies and antipathies, to lack inner security and unity. These can only exist if the etheric body, which remains unconscious to ordinary life, is affected by a sufficiently strong sense of self from the sensory-physical experience. For the development of a genuinely moral mood of soul, however, it is necessary that this ego-feeling, although it must be present, is attenuated by the inclinations to compassion and love.