The Rudolf Steiner Archive

On beings of the spiritual worlds

[ 1 ] When the soul enters the supersensible world with supersensible consciousness, it gets to know itself in this world in a way of which it can have no idea in the sense world. It finds that through its capacity for transformation it learns to recognize beings who have a greater or lesser degree of kinship with it; but it also becomes aware that in the supersensible world it encounters beings with whom it is not only related, but with whom it must also compare itself in order to get to know itself. And she further observes that these beings in the supersensible worlds have become what she herself has become through her experiences in the sensory world. In the elementary world the human soul is confronted by beings who have developed powers and abilities within this world which the human being himself can only develop by the fact that he still carries the physical body in addition to his etheric body and the other supersensible members of his being. The beings referred to here have no such physical-sensory body. They have developed in such a way that through their etheric body they have a soul entity which the human being has through the physical body. Although they are to a certain extent similar to human beings, they differ from them in that they are not subject to the conditions of the sensory world. They have no senses of the kind that man has. Their knowledge is similar to human knowledge; but they have not acquired it through the senses, but through a kind of ascent of their ideas and their other soul experiences from the depths of their being. Their inner life is, as it were, placed in them; and they bring it up from the depths of their souls, just as man brings up his memories from the depths of his souls.

[ 2 ] In this way man gets to know beings who have become within the supersensible world what he can become within the sense world. In this respect, these beings are one level higher than man in the world order, even though they can be called of the same nature as man in the manner indicated. They form a realm of beings above man, a hierarchy above him in the hierarchy of beings. Their etheric body is - despite the similarity - different from the etheric body of man. While man is interwoven into the supersensible life body of the earth through the sympathies and antipathies of his etheric body, these beings are not bound to the earth with their soul life. -

[ 3 ] When man observes what these beings experience through their etheric body, he finds that they have similar experiences as he has in his soul. They have a mind; they have feelings and a will. But they develop something through the etheric body that man can only develop through the physical body. Through their etheric body they come to a consciousness of their own essence. Man would know nothing of a supersensible entity if he did not carry up into the supersensible worlds that which he acquires of powers in the physical-sensible body. - The supersensible consciousness learns to know these entities by becoming able to observe with the help of the etheric human body. This supersensible consciousness lifts the human soul up into the world in which these beings have their dwelling place and their field of activity. Only when the soul experiences itself in this world do images (ideas) appear in its consciousness which convey a knowledge of these beings. For these beings do not intervene directly in the physical world and therefore also not in the physical-sensual human body. They are not present for the experiences that can be made through this body. They are spiritual (supersensible) beings who do not, so to speak, enter the sensory world. - If the human being does not observe the boundary between the sensory and supersensory world, then it can happen that he forces supersensory images into his physical-sensory consciousness, which are not the true expression of these beings. These images arise through an experience of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic entities, which are indeed similar to the supersensible entities just described, but which, in contrast to them, have moved their dwelling place and their field of activity into the world which man perceives as the sensory world.

[ 4 ] When man observes the Luciferic and Ahrimanic entities through the supersensible consciousness from the supersensible world, after he has learned through the experience with the "Guardian of the Threshold" to correctly observe the boundary between this world and the sensory being, then he learns to know these beings in their truth. He learns to distinguish them from the other spiritual beings who have remained within the field of activity appropriate to their nature. It is from this point of view that spiritual science must describe the Luciferic and Ahrimanic entities. In the case of the Luciferic beings it is then shown that their appropriate field of activity is not the physical-sensual, but in a certain respect the elementary world. When that which rises within this world as images from its floods penetrates into the human soul, and these images have a vitalizing effect in the etheric body of man without assuming an illusory existence in the soul, then the Luciferic being can be present in these images without its actions violating the world order. This Luciferic being then has a liberating effect on the human soul; it raises it above being merely interwoven with the sensory world. But when the human soul draws into the physical-sensual world the life that it should only unfold in the elemental world, when it allows the feeling within the physical body to be influenced by antipathies and sympathies that should only prevail in the etheric body, then the Luciferic being gains an influence through this soul that rebels against the general world order. This influence is present wherever something else is at work in the sympathies and antipathies of the sense world than that love which is based on compassion for the life of another being present in the sense world. Such a being can be loved because it confronts the lover with these or those qualities, in which case nothing of a Luciferic element can interfere in the love. Love that has its reason in the qualities of the loved being that emerge in the senses keeps itself away from Luciferic influence. Love that has its reason not in this way in the loved being, but in the one who loves, tends towards the Luciferic influence. A being that one loves because it has qualities to which one is inclined by nature as a lover, one loves with that part of the soul which is accessible to the Luciferic element. - One should therefore never say that the Luciferic element is evil under any circumstances. For the human soul must love the processes and entities of the supersensible worlds in the sense of the Luciferic element. The world order is only violated when the kind of love with which one should feel attracted to the supersensible is directed towards the sensible. Love for the supersensible rightly evokes a heightened sense of self in the lover; love that is sought in the sensual world for the sake of such a heightened sense of self corresponds to a Luciferic enticement. Love of the spiritual, when sought for the sake of the self, has a liberating effect; love of the sensual, when sought for the sake of the self, does not have a liberating effect; rather, through the gratification it brings about, it creates fetters for the self.

[ 5 ] The ahrimanic entities affect the thinking soul in the same way as the luciferic entities affect the feeling soul. They bind the mind to the sensory world. They distract it from the fact that all thoughts only have meaning when they assert themselves as a part of the great thought order of the world, which cannot be found in the senses. In the world in which human soul life is interwoven, the ahrimanic element must be present as a necessary counterweight to the luciferic element. Without the Luciferic element the soul would dream away its life in the observations of sensual existence and feel no impulse to rise above it. Without the counteraction of the ahrimanic element, the soul would fall prey to the luciferic element; it would disregard the importance of the sensory world, even though it has a part of its necessary conditions of existence within it. It would not want to know anything about the sensory world. The ahrimanic element then has the right meaning in the human soul when it leads to a living in the sense world which corresponds to this world. If one takes it for what it is and can do without it in everything that must be temporary in it because of its nature. - It is quite impossible to say that one does not want to fall prey to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements by eradicating them within oneself. For example, if one were to eradicate the Luciferic element within oneself, one could no longer strive with one's soul towards the supersensible; if one were to eradicate the Ahrimanic element, one could no longer do justice to the sense world in its full significance. One brings oneself into the right relationship with one of these elements if one creates the right counterbalance in the other. All the harmful effects of these world entities stem solely from the fact that they come into their own here or there without restriction and are not brought into the right harmony by the opposing force.