The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Of the etheric body of man and of the etheric world

[ 1 ] When the clairvoyant consciousness comes to life in the elemental world, it finds beings there who can unfold a life in it that man only acquires within the sense world. These beings do not feel their self - their I - in the same way as man feels it in the sense world; they permeate this self much more than man with their will; they want themselves. They perceive their existence as something that they give themselves through their will. On the other hand, they do not have the feeling towards their thinking that they produce their thoughts as man produces them; they feel all their thoughts as inspirations, as something that is not in them but in the world, and that radiates from the world into their being. Thus there can never be any doubt for these beings that their thoughts are the reflection of the order of thoughts poured out upon the world. They do not think their thoughts; they think the thoughts of the world. With their thinking, these beings live in the thoughts of the world; but they want themselves. Their emotional life is shaped in accordance with their willing and thinking. They feel themselves as a member of the world whole; and they feel the necessity to will themselves in a way that corresponds to this world whole.

[ 2 ] When the spirit-seeing soul settles into the world of these beings, it comes to the natural conception of its own thinking, feeling and willing. These human soul abilities could not unfold within the elemental world in the etheric human body. Human volition would remain only a weak, dreamlike force in the elemental world; human thinking would be a blurred, scurrying world of imagination. A sense of self would not come into existence at all. For all this, being clothed in the physical body is necessary for the human being.

[ 3 ] When the clairvoyant human soul ascends from the elemental into the actual spiritual world, it experiences itself in conditions that are even further removed from those of the sensory world than the elemental. In the elemental world many things still remind us of the sense world. In the spiritual world we are faced with completely new conditions. You can do nothing there if you only have the ideas that you can gain in the sense world. Nevertheless, as a human soul one must strengthen the inner life in the sense world in such a way that one brings over from this world into the spiritual world that which makes the stay in it possible. If one did not bring such a strengthened soul life into the spiritual world, one would simply fall into unconsciousness in it. One could then only be present in it in the same way as a plant is present in the sense world. As a human soul one must bring into the spiritual world all that which is not present in the sense world, but which proves to be present within it. One must be able to form ideas in the sense world to which it certainly stimulates, but which do not correspond directly to any thing or process in it. Everything that depicts this or that thing in the sensory world, or that describes this or that sensory process, is meaningless in the spiritual world.

[ 4 ] What one could perceive with the senses, what one could describe with the concepts that can be applied in the sensory world, does not exist in the spiritual world. When entering the spiritual world, one must, so to speak, leave behind everything to which sensory concepts can be applied. But ideas which one has formed in the sense world in such a way that they do not correspond to any sensual thing or process are still present in the soul when it enters the spiritual world. Naturally, among these conceptions there may be those which are erroneously formed. If these are present in the consciousness when it enters the spiritual world, then they prove to not belong there through their own existence. They act in such a way that they impress upon the soul the urge to return to the sensory or elementary world in order to replace the erroneous ideas with the correct ones. But what the soul brings into the spiritual world in terms of right ideas, a relative strives towards in this world; the soul senses in the spiritual world that beings are present there, which are with their whole inner being as only thoughts are within themselves. These beings have a body which can be called the thought body. In this thought body these beings experience themselves as independent, just as the human being experiences himself independently within the sense world. Of the ideas which the human being acquires, certain thoughts imbued with feelings are initially suitable for strengthening the soul life in such a way that it can receive an impression of the beings of the spiritual world. If the feeling of devotion, as it must be developed for the ability to transform in the elementary world, is intensified in such a way that in this devotion the foreign being into which one transforms oneself is not only felt sympathetically or antipathically, but in such a way that it can come to life with its peculiarity in the soul that devotes itself, then the ability to perceive the spiritual world occurs. One spiritual being then speaks to the soul in this way, the other in another. And a spiritual communication arises which consists of a language of thought. One experiences thoughts; but one knows that one experiences beings in the thoughts. To live in beings who do not merely express themselves in thoughts, but who are present in the thoughts with their own being, is to live with the soul in the spiritual world.

[ 5 ] In relation to the beings of the elementary world, the soul has the feeling that these beings have the world thoughts radiating into their own being, and that they want to live in accordance with this world thinking radiating into them.

[ 6 ] In contrast to the beings who do not need to descend to the elementary world in order to achieve what man first achieves in the sense world, but who already reach this stage of existence in the spiritual world, the human soul has the feeling that these beings consist entirely of thought substance, that the world thoughts not only radiate into them, but that the beings themselves live with their own being in this weaving of thoughts. They allow the world thoughts to live in them completely. Their life proceeds in the perception of the world thought language. And their will consists in the fact that they can express themselves thoughtfully. And this being of their thoughts has an essential effect on the world. Thoughts, which are beings, speak with other thoughts, which are also beings.

[ 7 ] The human thought life is the mirror image of this spiritual thought being life. In the time that passes for the human soul between death and a new birth, it is interwoven into this thought being life in the same way as it is interwoven into the physical existence in the sense world. When the soul enters the sensory world through birth (or conception), the thought-permanent being of the soul works in such a way that it shapes and inspires the destiny of this soul. In the human destiny, that which has remained of the soul from the earth lives preceding the present works in the same way as the pure thought beings work in the world.

[ 8 ] When the supersensible consciousness enters this - spiritual - world of thought beings, it feels itself in a completely new relationship to the sense world. This sense world stands opposite it in the spiritual world as an "other world", just as the spiritual world stands opposite it in the sense world as another. But this sense world has lost everything for the spiritual vision that can be perceived by it within the sense being. How vanished are all the qualities that are perceived through the senses or the mind bound to the senses. On the other hand, from the point of view of the spiritual world, it is evident that the true, intrinsic nature of the sense world itself is spiritual. For the soul's vision, which looks from the spiritual world, spiritual beings appear instead of the former sense world, which unfold their activities, and in such a way that through the confluence of these activities the world arises which, seen through the senses, becomes precisely the world which man has before him in his own sense being. Seen from the spiritual world, the qualities, forces, substances, etc. of the sense world disappear; they reveal themselves as mere appearances. From this world one has only entities before one. True reality lies in these entities.

[ 9 ] It is similar with the elementary world. From this world, too, everything that is not essence itself disappears for the view from the spiritual world. And the soul feels that in this world, too, it has to do with entities which, by letting their efficacies flow together, make an existence appear which, through the organs of sympathy and antipathy, appears as elementary.

[ 10 ] An essential part of entering the supersensible worlds consists in the fact that entities take the place of the states and qualities which consciousness has around it in the sensory world. The supersensible world ultimately reveals itself as a world of entities; and what is still present apart from these entities, as an expression of the deeds of these entities. But the sense world and the elementary world also appear as the deeds of the spiritual beings.