The Destiny of Individuals and of Nations
GA 157
20 April 1915, Berlin
11. Etheric Man within Physical Man
Dear friends, once again let us first of all remember those who are out there at the front, in the great arena of present-day events:
Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.
And for those who because of those events have already gone through the gate of death:
Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard in the spheres.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.
May the spirit we are seeking as we work towards spiritual knowledge, the spirit who has gone through the Mystery of Golgatha for the good of the earth, for the freedom and progress of man, be with you and the hard duties you have to perform.
Dear friends, I want to begin today by reminding you of something I have told most of you, I think, on previous occasions. If the soul of man develops in the way I have clearly enough described in my public and other lectures, we arrive at a different image of the world. The essential point is that the soul takes the path, as it were, from the sense-perceptible into the spiritual world.
As the development of the soul progresses the physical world will gradually change in our eyes into the spiritual world. We might say that the peculiar features of the physical, sense-perceptible, world gradually disappear and the forms, entities and realities of the spiritual world makes their appearance within the horizons of our conscious awareness. Something important comes to conscious awareness in this way, something I might describe as follows: We ourselves become different—as far as our vision is concerned, of course—we ourselves become different, and the world which is around us to be beheld With our senses then also becomes different. Let us stay with what is nearest to us to begin with: the world that is our earth. Basically spealung, people know really very little of the world beyond this earth during their life on this planet, at least if we persist in the way in which W have grown together with our earthly life. As we advance into the spiritual world—in which case we are outside our bodies—we shall find, as we look back on the body, or the whole of our physical life, or the whole human being, that basically it is growing richer and richer. This human being is all the time gaining in content, is expanding into a world. Man is actually growing and becoming a whole world as we look back on him. That is the reality of words we often hear stressed—in that through spiritual development man grows identical with the world. He sees a new world, a world he normally Is within, and sees it as though arising out of himself. He expands into a world. As far as the earth is concerned, on the other hand, all that is solid in it, all we are used to seeing as its mountains, rivers and so on, disappears. It vanishes and we gradually come to feel ourselves within the earth—please note I am saying within the earth—as though within a great organism. We have left our own world and this inner world, this inner reality, becomes a wide world, whilst the earthly world that was spread out around us now becomes an entity, a being, we must imagine ourselves to be within. As we grow out of ourselves our human world expands into a wide world; at the same time we grow into the earth organism and feel ourselves to be within it just as our finger, say, would feel itself to be part of the organism if it were to have conscious awareness.
That is the experience human beings will have, an experience quite frequently brought to expression by more poetic natures. It is very common for instance for people to compare their awakening in the morning with the awakening of nature around them, their life in the course of the day with the ascent of the sun, and dusk with the need for sleep that develops as we get tired. Such comparisons arise with the feeling men have of being part of earthly nature. They are not worth much, however, for they do not touch on what really matters. As I have said on a number of previous occasions, if we want to choose a comparison that is really in accord with the facts we cannot compare what goes on when we go to sleep and wake up with the processes occurring in nature outside. Instead, we must compare 24 hours in our life with the seasonal cycle of the year. We must take the whole cycle of the seasons to make a fair comparison with what happens in us in a single waking-and-sleeping cycle of 24 hours.57See, for example, the lectures Rudolf Steiner gave (a) in Augsburg on 14 March 1913 and (b) in Stockholm on 8 June 1913, both in Die Welt des Geistes and ihr Hereinragen in das physische Dasein (GA 150). In English as (a) ‘The Interactivity of the Good Progressive Powers and of the Retarding Forces—The Significance of These Truths for Teachers’ in Anthroposophical News Sheet 16:45-8 (NSL 398) (tr. not mentioned); and (b) ‘Nature and Spirit in the Light of Spiritual Scientific Knowledge’ in Anthroposophical News Sheet 3:42-4 (NSL 147) (tr. not mentioned). It is quite wrong to compare the period during which a person is awake—between waking up and going to sleep—to summer for instance. This waking state has to be compared to winter in ouside nature whilst summer has to be compared to the sleeping state in man. Making the comparison we would therefore say: The human being goes to sleep and this means he enters into the summer of his personal existence, and in waking up he progresses into the winter of his personal existence. The waking state would approximately correspond to late autumn, winter and early spring. Why would this be in accord with the facts? Because, in evolving into part of the whole earth organism in the way I have indicated, we would indeed have to note that the spirit of the earth is asleep in summer. The earth is then truly asleep; the great conscious awareness of the earth's spirit is dimming. As spring comes the earth's spirit begins to go to sleep. It wakes up again in autumn when the first frosts come. Then it is thinking, it is awake and thinking. That is how a day for the earth's spirit corresponds to the cycle of a year.
Looking back upon a sleeping person we can indeed see how his going to sleep means that ego and astral body are leaving the body. A kind of plant-type activity does actually develop in the organism when astral body and ego have departed from it. Their departure initiates a particular activity in the inner man. We really experience the first stages of sleep as the onset of a vegetative process, and sleep progresses in such a way that to the clairvoyant eye the body is pervaded with vegetative growth processes that are genuinely apparent to imaginative perception. This vegetation has a different way of growing from that of the earth's vegetation, however. These things can be told and they can be much meditated on and in this way we continue to make progress.
The plants of the earth grow upwards from the soil. It is different when we observe this ‘plant growth’ in man. The plants have their roots outside and grow into the human being. This means that we have to look for the flowers inside the human being. The human betng is very beautiful when seen asleep by someone who has grown Clairvoyant. He is like a whole earth shooting and sprouting, with vegetation growing into it. The picture is to some extent marred, however, for we get the impression at the same time that the astral body is gnawing away at the roots. That is how the progress of sleep presents itself. The animal world consumes, eats up, the plants that grow in summer. And we find that our astral body acts like the animal world except that it gnaws at the roots. If this did not happen we would not able to develop that core which we take through the gate of death. what the astral body makes its own in this way is the harvest of life which we do, in truth, take with us through the gate of death. I am describing things the way they appear to clairvoyant awareness. And just as winter comes upon the fruits of the earth and its frosts kill those fruits of the earth, so the entry of our astral body and ego into the etheric and physical body is like a frost coming to kill the vegetation, the spiritual plant growth, that has come up in the organism during the night.
The entity I have called the earth's spirit is indeed an individual entity, just as we are, except that it has a different form of existences with a year being a day for it. Within the earth's spirit we are able to perceive everything I have said of the impulse of Golgotha,58This is a subject frequently referred to, e.g. in the following lectures: (a) Nuremberg, 23 June 1908, in Die Apokalypse des Johannes (GA 104); in English as The Apocalypse of St. John (tr. Johanna Collis) (London) Rudolf Steiner Press 1977; (b) Kassel 6 and 7 July 1909 in Das Johannes¬Evangelium im Verhaltnis zum den drei anderen Evangelien, besonders zu dem Lukas-Evangelium (GA 112); in English as The Gospel of St. John in Relation to the Other Three Gospels, Particularly to the Gospel of St. Luke (tr. S. and L. Lockwood) Anthroposophic Press, New York and Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1948. for within it we find the life-giving energy that was not in the earth prior to Golgotha. In it we find ourselves secure, accepted by the spirit which has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha. We become aware of this when we are able to enter fully into the state where the earth has become a being, an entity, of which we are part of the way a finger is part of our organism. It is inevitable therefore that when modern man enters deeply into the world in an occult way there is also a touch to this of religious immersion in the divine element that streams through the world, filling it with spirit. It is a fact that genuine perception of the spiritual world will never deprive man of religious feeling but rather make such feeling more profound.
I wanted to give an indication of what it really looks like when we enter into the world of images of spiritual reality. What we seem to be to ourselves in our ordinary everyday physical awareness is mere semblance, is only an inner core. Yet at the same time it has to be said that this is not correct, for it is not easy to find the words for these significant truths. What we seem to be to ourselves is always at our periphery when we are outside the body with our soul element. It is therefore not correct to say it is a core, for a fruit has its shell or peel on the outside and its valuable part inside. But many things are the other way round when it comes to the spirit, and the valuable Part of man is outside and the shell or peel equivalent is inside. The inner part is shell-like by nature and the spiritual part is what may be called the shell-like part in terms of space. We come to see when we take the path into the spiritual world that the human being is far from simple and indeed very complex. Something we have already made our own to quite an extent is the knowledge that man bears within him something through which he takes part in all the worlds that are accessible to him. Through our physical body we are part of the physical world, through the soul element within us we are part of the soul world, and, through our spirit, of the spiritual world. We extend into these three worlds. We know that when a human being takes the path into the spiritual world he will in fact experience himself in a kind of multiple reproduction. This is what causes enxiety. Our comfortable feeling of being of one piece is broken up and one does indeed get the feeling of belonging to several worlds. This may be presented from many different points of view. Today I shall take one particular point of view, drawing your attention again to what has been the basis of my recent lectures.
Considering the life of man in its inner aspects we must think of it as based on a number of principles, and when we step outside the body man will indeed be found to be divided into four principles. First of all there is the power on which our memory is based. Through memory we raise into consciousness the things we experienced earlier on in life. Memory creates a context for our life, making this life between birth and death a whole. A second principle is the one we call thinking, the forming of ideas. I cannot define it in detail here, for that is not the point, but the activity of forming ideas takes place in the present. And moving further ahead we come to feeling and yet further on to will activity. Looking into ourselves, our own inner life apppears in the activities of remembering, thinking, feeling and exerting our will. Now we may ask: ‘What is the essential difference between these four functions of the soul?’ Psychologists will merely list these functions as a rule, making no further distinction between them. We shall arrive at the truth only by going into the essential nature of these four functions of the soul. We shall then find that will activity is more or less the baby among our soul functions; feeling activity is older, thinking still older, and the activity performed in remembering is th‘old man’, the oldest of our soul functions. You will understand this more clearly if I present the matter to you from the following point of view.
It has been said on a number of occasions that man's development has not been on this earth only but that his present evolution was preceded by evolution on the Old Moon, the Old Sun and on Old Saturn. Man did not just come into being on this earth. To become what he is now he needed to go through evolution on Saturn, Sun and Moon. Now, you see, any will activity we develop is a product of man's earth life. Will evolution is not yet complete, in fact, and it is entirely a product of earth evolution. During Moon evolution man was not yet endowed with an independent will. Angels willed for him. Will activity may be said to have radiated in only with earth evolution. Feeling on the other hand was already acquired during Moon evolution, thinking during Sun evolution and remembering during Saturn evolution. If you now take this together with the thoughts expressed in my Cosmic Memory and Occult Science,59Steiner, Rudolf: Aus der Akasha-Chronik, 1904 (GA 11); in English as Cosmic Memory: Atlantis and Lemuria (tr. Karl E. Zimmer) Rudolf Steiner Publications, New York 1971. Die Geheiniwissenschafi im Umriss, 1910 (GA 13); in English as Occult Science: An Outline (tr. G. and M. Adams) Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1969. you will discover an important connection. During Saturn evolution the first beginnings of man's physical body arose; during Sun evolution those of man's ether body; during Moon evolution those of man's astral body; and now, during earth evolution, the human ego is evolving.
Let us now take a separate look at the process we call remembering. What is this? The soul retains something of the image of an event we have experienced just as a book we are reading has within it something of the thoughts of the person who wrote it. When you have a book before you, you are able to read and to think—not always perhaps, but I'll ignore that—everything thought by the person who wrote the book. Remembering is a subconscious reading process; the record consists in signs the ether body has engraved into the physical body. If something happened to you years ago, you went through the experiences to be gained from that event. What remains of this are impressions made by the ether body in the physical body. When you recall the event now, the act of remembering is a subconscious reading process.
The hidden processes in the organism which enable the ether body to engrave the signs on which memory depends were in-formed into it during Old Saturn evolution. It is a fact that our organism holds within it this hidden Saturn organism. This may be perceived as a genuine entity into which the ether body is able to enter the signs which record the experiences that come from outside, to recall them again in the process of remembering. Essentially, man owes this subconscious recording faculty to the fact that his body, and specifically the element within the physical body which is to receive those imprints, is still pliable during the first seven years of life. It is therefore important not to subject children to forced memory training. I have drawn attention to this in The Education of the Child.60Steiner, Rudolf: ‘Die Erziehung des Kindes vom Gesichtspunkte der Geisteswissenschaft’ (1907) in Lucifer-Gnosis: Grundlegende Aufsatze zur Anthroposophie aus den Jahren 1903–1908 (GA 34): in English as The Education of the Child In the Light of Anthroposophy (tr. M. and G. Adams) Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1975. During the first seven years the still pliable organism should be left to its own elementary powers and we should not use coercion. We should tell children as much as we can but not attach too much value to artificial memory development, rather leaving the child to itself where memory development is concerned. This is a point where spiritual science is of tremendous importance in educational life.
The ability to remember is thus one of the oldest elements in human nature. The activity on which thinking is based is part of what may be said to have evolved on the Sun. It, too, is relatively ancient. The Sun-forces contain a principle which organizes man's ether body in such a way that it is able to perform this specific function of thinking, of forming ideas. So you see that it is necessary to go far, far back in the cosmos in order to answer the question: Why is man able to remember, and why is he able to think? It is necessary to go back as far as the Saturn and the Sun stages of evolution.
To consider man's ability to feel we need only go back as far as the Moon, and for will activity to earth evolution. This will make many things clear to you. Certain individuals bear a particularly strong imprint of earlier incarnations; they are not pliable but clear cut. Much will imprint itself upon their organism. These are people with an almost automatic memory who however cannot be very creative in their thinking.
The faculty of remembering thus relates predominantly to the physical body; the ability to think to the ether body; man's feelings and emotions to the astral body; and his will activity above all to the ego. Man is only able to refer to himself as T because he is a creature of will. If he were only able to think, life would proceed as in a dream. All this means that we are an organic complex of soul functions which were imprinted into our soul life in the course of evolution. I have said that our will activity only evolved during earth evolution and that spiritually higher hierarchies, the Angeloi, willed for man on the Moon. The result was that during Moon evolution all will activity in man was such that if we recall it to clairvoyant consciousness we will indeed see it to have been at a higher level, yet it was involuntary will activity in man, as we see it in animal evolution on earth today. Animals will of necessity follow whatever seethes and boils up within them for they live within the common will of the species.
During Moon evolution, therefore, spiritual entities of a higher kind, the Angeloi, did our willing for us. Now, the spiritual entities of a higher kind are active in determining our karma from one incarnation to the next. The Angeloi are no longer active in our will but in the ongoing stream of our karma. During Moon evolution man did not feel his will to be his own; in the same way we do not, living on earth, believe that we make our own karma. It is controlled by spirits from the higher hierarchies. Only at times when our will is for once able to be still, as it were, will it be possible to have a glimmer of the progress of karma even for nonclairvoyant consciousness, a progress that normally stays hidden.
Please hold on to the fact I have stated—that a core forms in man which enters into the spiritual realm through the gate of death. This core is the vehicle for our karma. Karma has today already determined what each of us will be doing tomorrow. We would be able to see through our karma if it were not our mission on earth to develop the will. We would be able to see through it to the effect that we could under certain circumstances foresee our immediate future. But the will irrupts into the karmic stream and this obscures the prospect, say, of what will happen to us tomorrow. The will has to be completely silent; only then will it be possible for something to come through of what will happen not through us but to us.
As an example, let me give you a story told of Erasmus Francisci.61von Schubert, Gotthelf Heinrich: Die Symbolik des Traumes (Leipzig 1840) S. 10 f This is based on the truth. As a young man Erasmus Francisci lived with his aunt. On one occasion he dreamed that a man whose name was shouted out to him in his dream was going to take a shot at him, but that he would not be killed, for his aunt would save his life. That was his dream. The next day, before anything had actually happened, he told the dream to his aunt. She got rather worried, telling him that someone had been shot dead quite recently in the neighbourhood. She strongly advised her nephew to stay at home so that nothing might happen to him. She gave him the key to the apple loft so that he might go up at any time and get himself some apples. The young man went up to his room and sat at his desk to read something. Yet what he had been reading was of less interest to him at the moment than the key to the apple loft which his aunt had given and which was in his pocket. He decided to go up there. Hardly had he got up from his chair when a shot rang out and the bullet went exactly to the place where his head had been. If he had not got up the bullet would have gone straight through him. A servant in the house next door—whose name was indeed the one called out to Erasmus Francisci in his dream, a name not known to him before—this servant had not known that the two guns he was supposed to clean were loaded and the gun went off as he started to handle it. If Francisci had not got up to go the the apple loft at that very moment, his aunt having given him the key, he would without doubt have lost his life. His dream therefore had shown exactly what was to happen the following day.
An event occurred of which we are able to say that the will was in no way involved, for Francisci would not achieve anything with his will. He could in no way protect himself; something irrupted into the karma of this individual to the effect that this life was to continue. The spirit controlling his karma had already had the idea that would save his life. The dream represented the pre-vision of the spirit guiding the young man's karma, perceiving what was to happen the next day. Francisci's state of soul was such that a certain depth had already been achieved through natural meditation as it were, and as a result something occurred which I might also compare with something in external life. I think you will agree that man's gift of prophesy with regard to external life on earth is rather limited. In a certain sense we are all prophets for we all know that dawn will come at a certain time tomorrow and so on, or someone walking across a field today will be able to say what that field is going to look like tomorrow. He will not be able to foretell whether rain is going to fall on that field the next day and so on. It is the same with regard to the inner life. Man lives according to his will, and his karma lies within that will. It is possible to develop a certain sense for what is coming next, and in the same way there are certain people whose inner soul has been deepened and for whom an inner point of light may arise for events where the will has to fall silent. It is important in the pursuit of spiritual science to consider such things on occasion, for we then see that there certainly is something alive within man that points to the future, something man is not able to encompass in his ordinary state of consciousness. Karma emerges through a will that has fallen silent.
All the things brought before our soul in this way through spiritual research are able to show us that what we call the great illusion consists predominantly in man being unable to perceive the full picture, in his ordinary consciousness, of what he is—that man is part of the whole world whilst his ordinary consciousness really only shows him the shell, as though he were enclosed within his skin, and so on. Yet what he is shown within this enclosedness is merely a fraction of what man really is, for he is as big as the whole world. We really only look back on man from the outside in ordinary life. In becoming fully aware of these things we can gradually develop a feeling for the presence in man of what is known as his ether body. It is indeed possible to make observations in ordinary life that show at least this second human being, the etheric man, within the physical human being. Imagine you are having a nice lazy lie-in one morning, not feeling inclined to get up as yet; you'd like to stay in bed and it is difficult to find the resolution to get up. If you depend entirely on what is within you it will be difficult to reach the point of getting up. But now imagine there is something in the next room which you have been waiting for during the last few days. The thought occurs of something out there and you will find that this thought can bring about a minor miracle. You will find that once you enter into this thought for a bit you will actually leap from your bed! What has happened? As you woke up, entering again into the physical body, you felt whatever the physical body made you feel and this was not likely to give rise to the thought of getting up. Your ether body then came to act independently, because you engaged it in something outside yourself. There you can see how you have been opposing your ether body to the physical body and how the ether body took hold of you and lifted you out of bed. You arrive at a very specific feeling regarding yourself, the feeling of being an onlooker and making distinction between two kinds of human actions which we perform. There are the actions we perform in the ordinary run of life and those where one is aware of inner activity coming to the fore. These are rather subtle observations and it is, of course, always possible to deny them. We have to attune our observations to life and really see through life and the way it presents itself. Then man's whole inner perception will move in the right direction. It has to be clearly understood that the path to the spiritual world cannot be achieved all at once. It gradually leads out of the world so that we ascend to the point I have just referred to, where what used to be the world for us loses its deadness and itself becomes a living entity.
Gaining in insight, man thus grows together with the spiritual world. He grows together with what we may call his portion which remains when he has put away from him everything gained through the instrument of the physical body, everything which essentially made up his life between birth and death. In going through the gate of death we grow into a world very similar to the one I have just spoken of as the one revealed to higher perception. And then we shall discover something that is very important. In the world we enter on passing through the gate of death, if we want to make ourselves at home in it in the right way, we shall just as we need a light to illumine a dark room—need whatever we have been able to develop within our innermost souls whilst here on earth. Earth life is not something to be regarded merely as a dungeon, a prison cell. It is certainly Part of the natural progress of evolution that man has to go through the gate of death. And he can of course live the life between death and rebirth. But life as a whole exists in order that every part of us adds something that is necessary, something new. As we go through the present cycle, life here is to give us something that ignites like a torch, so that we are not merely alive in this life of the spirit but gain insight and live so as to illumine the whole of this life. The light which illumines us is the one thing we gain between birth and and death that shall remain for our life between death and rebirth.
This is the one thing of which we must say again and again that as many people as possible must come to understand it, particularlY in the present time. All we come to understand of the spiritual world whilst here in the physical world in our physical bodies shall be as a flame to illumine the life of the spirit. In a certain sense all the difficult things the most developed part of mankind has to go through in the present time serve as a reminder that we need to deepen the life of the soul, and it will have to come about that from the depths of the human soul a longing is brought forth for the worlds of which man is part because of his soul. Let us hope that the present time will cause a longing to arise in which every soul says to itself: Man is something quite different again from what he appears to be in so far as he wears the garment of a body. May the events we are experiencing serve to remind us of the need to deepen our soul life, to let the soul become immersed in spiritual perceptiveness, spiritual vision.
Out of our awareness for this need to enter deeply into spiritual science in the present time, and the awareness that the difficulties of the present time are intended as a warning, let us again conclude the way we have always concluded these meetings. I hope it will be possible to continue in the not too distant future. For today let us conclude with the words:
Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.
Elfter Vortrag
Wir gedenken wiederum zuerst derjenigen, die draußen auf den großen Feldern der Ereignisse der Gegenwart stehen:
Geister eurer Seelen, wirkende Wächter,
Eure Schwingen mögen bringen
Unserer Seelen bittende Liebe
Eurer Hut vertrauten Erdenmenschen,
Daß, mit eurer Macht geeint,
Unsre Bitte helfend strahle
Den Seelen, die sie liebend sucht.
Und für diejenigen, die infolge dieser Ereignisse schon durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen sind:
Geister eurer Seelen, wirkende Wächter,
Eure Schwingen mögen bringen
Unserer Seelen bittende Liebe
Eurer Hut vertrauten Sphärenmenschen,
Daß, mit eurer Macht geeint,
Unsre Bitte helfend strahle
Den Seelen, die sie liebend sucht.
Der Geist, den wir durch unsere erstrebte Geist-Erkenntnis suchen, der Geist, der zu der Erde Heil, zu der Menschheit Freiheit und Fortschritt durch das Mysterium von Golgatha gegangen ist, der sei mit euch und euren schweren Pflichten!
Meine lieben Freunde, zunächst möchte ich Sie heute erinnern an etwas, was ich wohl zu der größten Zahl von Ihnen in gelegentlichen früheren Betrachtungen schon ausgesprochen habe. Wir kommen, wenn die Seele des Menschen sich in dem Sinne entwikkelt, der ja auch durch die öffentlichen Vorträge hinlänglich angedeutet wurde, zu einer anderen Art von Weltbild. Das Wesentliche ist, daß wir mit unserer Seele gleichsam den Weg aus der Sinnenwelt hinein in die geistige gehen.
Indem wir mit unserer Seele uns vorwärts entwickeln, verwandelt sich für unseren Anblick die physische Welt allmählich in die geistige Welt. Man könnte sagen, nach und nach verschwinden die Eigentümlichkeiten der sinnlich-physischen Welt, und es treten auf innerhalb unseres Bewußseinshorizontes die Gebilde und Wesenheiten und Tatsachen der geistigen Welt. Nun könnte man ein Wichtiges, das in dem, was so aufsteigt, an unser Bewußtsein herantritt, in der folgenden Weise bezeichnen: Wir selbst werden andere - selbstverständlich für unser Anschauen -, wir werden selber andere, und die Welt, die für das sinnliche Anschauen um uns herum ist, wird nun auch eine andere. Bleiben wir zunächst einmal bei dem, was uns am nächsten liegt, bei der Welt unserer Erde. Im Grunde genommen weiß der Mensch von der Welt außerhalb der Erde innerhalb des irdischen Lebenslaufes wahrhaft recht wenig, wenn wir stehenbleiben innerhalb der Art und Weise, wie wir mit unserem Erdenleben zusammengewachsen sind. Da stellt sich beim Vordringen in die geistige Welt - wir sind ja dann außerhalb unseres Leibes -, da stellt sich heraus, wenn wir auf unsern Leib oder unser ganzes physisches Leben oder überhaupt unseren ganzen Menschen zurückblicken, daß er im Grunde genommen immer reicher und reicher wird; er wird immer inhaltsvoller, dieser Mensch, er erweitert sich zu einer Welt. Es wächst geradezu der Mensch selber zu einer Welt aus, indem wir so auf ihn zurückblicken. Das ist die Wahrheit dessen, was oftmals betont wird: daß der Mensch, indem er geistig sich entwickelt, identisch wird mit der Welt. Er sieht eine neue Welt, eine Welt, innerhalb welcher er sonst steht, wie aus ihm selber hervorkommend. Er erweitert sich zu einer Welt. Von der Erde dagegen verschwindet das Feste oder dasjenige, was uns im gewöhnlichen physischen Anschauen als die Berge, Flüsse und so weiter erscheint. Das verschwindet, und wir lernen uns allmählich fühlen innerhalb der Erde, ich sage ausdrücklich innerhalb der Erde, wie in einem großen Organismus drinnen. Aus unserer eigenen Welt sind wir heraus, und diese Innenwelt, diese innere Wirklichkeit wird zu einer weiten Welt, und das, was uns als irdische Welt umgeben hat, wird wesenhaft, wird zu einem Wesen, in dem wir uns darinnen befindlich denken müssen, uns vorstellen können. Während wir aus uns herauswachsen, erweitert sich zugleich unsere Menschenwelt zu einer weiten Welt; sogleich wachsen wir dann hinein in den Erdorganismus und fühlen uns darinnen so, wie, sagen wir, wenn unser Finger Bewußtsein bekäme, er an unserem Organismus sich fühlen würde.
Diese Erfahrung macht der Mensch, und sie kommt bei etwas tiefer fühlenden Menschen, bei poetisch veranlagten Naturen sehr häufig einmal zum Ausdruck. So vergleicht der Mensch sehr häufig sein Aufwachen am Morgen mit dem Aufwachen der Natur draußen, selbst sein Leben am Tage mit dem Hinaufgehen der Sonne, die Abenddämmerung mit dem Bedürfnis zum Schlafen, das mit Müdigkeit eintritt. Solche Vergleiche kommen aus dem Gefühl heraus, daß der Mensch darinnensteht in der irdischen Natur. Aber solche Vergleiche sind nicht viel wert, denn sie treffen das Eigentliche nicht. Ich habe deshalb schon öfters ausgesprochen, daß, wenn wir einen Vergleich wählen wollen, der wirklich den Tatbestand ausdrückt, wir einen anderen wählen müssen als den, bei welchem wir mit dem Verlauf der Natur draußen den Verlauf beim Einschlafen und Aufwachen vergleichen. Wir müssen vielmehr unser Leben binnen vierundzwanzig Stunden vergleichen mit dem Jahreslauf der Erde. Nur dann, wenn wir den ganzen Jahreslauf nehmen, ist das ein berechtigter Vergleich mit dem, was in uns vorgeht durch einmaliges Wachen und Schlafen im Verlaufe von vierundzwanzig Stunden. Und es ist falsch, den Wachzustand des Menschen vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen etwa mit dem Sommer zu vergleichen; sondern man muß gerade diesen Wachzustand in der Erdennatur draußen vergleichen mit dem Winter und muß den Sommer vergleichen mit dem Schlafzustand des Menschen. So daß wir sagen könnten, wenn wir den Vergleich anstellen: der Mensch schläft ein, das heißt er geht in den Sommer seines persönlichen Daseins, und indem er aufwacht, entwickelt er sich in den Winter seines persönlichen Daseins; und der Wachzustand würde ungefähr entsprechen dem letzten Herbst, dem Winter und dem ersten Frühling. Warum würde das den Tatsachen entsprechen? Weil, wenn wir uns auf die angedeutete Weise wirklich hinentwickeln zu einem Gliede des ganzen Erdenorganismus, wir in der Tat zu beachten haben, wie im Sommer das, was der Geist der Erde ist, schläft; das ist der wirkliche Schlafzustand der Erde, da tritt das große Bewußtsein des Geistes der Erde zurück. Mit dem Frühling beginnt der Erdgeist einzuschlafen, und er wacht auf im Herbst, wenn die ersten Fröste sind; er denkt dann, er hat seinen wachen Denkzustand. Das ist der Gang des Tages des Erdgeistes durch das Jahr hindurch.
Wenn wir auf den schlafenden Menschen zurückschauen, dann sehen wir in der Tat, wie dieses Einschlafen des Menschen bedeutet, indem er mit dem Ich und dem astralischen Leib herausgeht, ein wirkliches Entstehen einer Art pflanzlicher Tätigkeit im Organismus, aus dem der astralische Leib und das Ich herausgegangen sind. Das fängt an, im Innern des Menschen eine Tätigkeit hervorzurufen. Wir empfinden wirklich die ersten Zustände des Schlafes wie den Beginn eines vegetativen Prozesses, und der Schlaf verläuft so, daß sich der Körper gleichsam für den hellseherischen Anblick durchsetzt mit einem Pflanzenwachstum, das wir wirklich dann durch imaginative Erkenntnis sehen. Nur wächst diese Vegetation anders als die Vegetation der Erde. Solche Dinge können erzählt werden, und man kann viel darüber meditieren und man kommt dann immer weiter.
Bei der Erde wachsen die Pflanzen vom Boden herauf. Anders ist es, wenn wir dieses «Pflanzenwachstum» beim Menschen beobachten. Da wachsen die Pflanzen so, daß sie die Wurzeln draußen haben, und sie wachsen in den Menschen hinein; die Blüten also müssen wir suchen innerhalb des Menschen. Dieser Mensch ist wirklich sehr schön, ich meine so, wie ihn der hellsehend Gewordene im Schlafe sieht. Er ist gleichsam eine ganze Erde, die sprießt und sproßt, in die hinein eine Vegetation wächst. Dasjenige, was den Anblick beeinträchtigt, das ist, daß wir zu gleicher Zeit den Eindruck haben, daß der Astralleib die Wurzeln benagt. Und das stellt sich als der Verlauf des Schlafes dar. Während die Tierwelt dasjenige, was während des Sommers wächst, verbraucht, aufzehrt von oben herunter, finden wir, daß unser Astralleib in der Tat wie die Tierwelt wirkt, nur benagt er die Wurzeln. Würde das nicht sein, so würden wir jenen Kern nicht entwickeln können, den wir durch die Pforte des Todes hinüberführen. Das, was sich der Astralleib auf diese Weise aneignet, stellt dasjenige vor, was wir als Erträgnis des Lebens in Wahrheit durch die Pforte des Todes tragen. Ich beschreibe die Dinge, wie sie vor dem hellsichtigen Bewußtsein auftauchen. Und geradeso wie der Winter über die Erdenfrüchte kommt und diese Erdenfrüchte hinwegfrostet, möchte ich sagen, so ist das, wenn der Astralleib und das Ich untertauchen in den ätherischen und physischen Leib, ein Wegfrosten desjenigen, was während der Nacht an Vegetation, an geistigem Pilanzenwachstum in unserem Organismus aufgetreten ist.
In dem, was ich als den Erdgeist bezeichnet habe, der wirklich eine solche persönliche Wesenheit ist wie wir selber, nur daß er ein anderes Dasein führt — denn für ihn ist ein Jahr ein Tag -, innerhalb dieses Erdgeistes wird uns alles das anschaulich, was ich auseinandergesetzt habe von dem Impuls von Golgatha, denn da drinnen findet man die belebende Kraft, die vor dem Mysterium von Golgatha nicht in der Erde war; in ihr findet man sich geborgen, aufgenommen durch den Geist, der durch das Mysterium von Golgatha gegangen ist. Und man bekommt dadurch die Gewißheit, daß dieser Geist wirklich ausgeflossen ist in die Erde durch das Mysterium von Golgatha. Das wird uns bewußt, wenn wir uns wirklich versenken können in den Zustand, in dem für uns die Erde ein Wesen ist, dem wir selber angehören, wie ein Fingerglied unserem Organismus angehört. So kann es gar nicht anders sein, als daß für den Menschen unserer Zeit die okkulte Vertiefung in die Welt einen Zug annimmt religiöser Versenkung in das, was als das Göttliche die Welt durchströmt und durchgeistigt. Daher ist es so, daß wirkliche Erkenntnis der geistigen Welt niemals das religiöse Fühlen nehmen, sondern im Gegenteil nur vertiefen kann.
Ich wollte eine Andeutung geben von dem, wie es wirklich aussieht, wenn man in die Bilderwelt des Geistig-Realen hineinkommt; denn das, als was wir uns im alltäglichen, physischen Bewußtsein erscheinen, ist nur ein Scheinbild, ist nur ein innerer Kern. Aber ich werde gleich schon sagen müssen, daß dies falsch ist, weil Worte ja nicht leicht zu prägen sind für diese bedeutsamen Tatsachen, und das, als was wir uns erscheinen, ist immer an uns, wenn wir mit unserem Seelischen außerhalb unseres Leibes sind. Deswegen ist es nicht richtig, zu sprechen: es ist ein Kern, weil eine Frucht die Schale außen, und das, was wertvoll ist, darinnen hat. Aber wie es so vielfach beim Geistigen umgekehrt ist, so ist beim Menschen das Wertvolle draußen, und was Schale ist, das ist innen: das Innere ist das Schalenhafte, und das Geistige ist das, was man räumlich als das Schalenhafte bezeichnen kann. Man erfährt, wenn man den Weg in die geistige Welt hinein geht, daß der Mensch nicht ein einfaches Wesen, sondern ein kompliziertes Wesen ist. Das haben wir uns schon hinlänglich angeeignet, daß der Mensch mit dem, was er in sich trägt, teilnimmt an allen Welten, die dem Menschen zugänglich sind. Mit unserem physischen Leib gehören wir der physischen Welt an; mit dem Seelischen gehören wir der seelischen Welt an; mit unserem Geiste der geistigen Welt. Wir reichen in die drei Welten hinein. Wir wissen, daß, wenn der Mensch den Weg in die geistige Welt hinein macht, er sich in der Tat wie in einer Art Vervielfachung erlebt. Das ist das Beängstigende, daß die bequeme Einheit sich verteilt, daß man tatsächlich eine Empfindung dafür empfängt, man gehöre mehreren Welten an. Nun kann man die verschiedensten Gesichtspunkte geltend machen. Ich will heute einen besonderen Gesichtspunkt geltend machen, indem ich Sie noch hinweise auf das, was meinen letzten Vorträgen wiederholt zugrunde gelegt worden ist.
Wenn wir das menschliche Leben nach innen hin anschauen, so müssen wir es uns gegliedert denken, und wenn wir heraustreten aus dem Leibe, so zeigt sich der Mensch wirklich in die vier Glieder auseinandergelegt. Da ist zunächst die Kraft, die unserer Erinnerung zugrunde liegt. In der Erinnerung lassen wir dasjenige auferstehen vor unserem Bewußtsein, was wir in früheren Zeiten schon erlebt haben. Diese Erinnerung bringt in unser Leben einen Zusammenhang hinein, so daß dieses Leben zwischen Geburt und Tod eine Einheit ist. Ein Zweites ist dann dasjenige, was wir unser Denken, was wir Vorstellen nennen. Ich kann hier diese Begriffe nicht weiter auseinandersetzen, darauf kommt es jetzt nicht an; aber was Vorstellungstätigkeit ist, ist das, was in der Gegenwart verläuft. Und wenn wir noch weiter vorrücken, so bekommen wir das Fühlen, und noch weiter das Wollen. Indem wir in uns hineinschauen, erscheint uns unser eigenes Innere als Erinnern, als Denken, als Fühlen, als Wollen. Nun können wir die Frage aufwerfen: was ist der wesentliche Unterschied zwischen diesen vier Verrichtungen der Seele? Die gewöhnliche Psychologie zählt diese Verrichtungen der Seele auf, und sie unterscheidet nicht weiter. Aber auf die Wahrheit kommt man erst dann, wenn man auf das Wesen dieser vier Seelenverrichtungen eingehen kann, und da kommt man darauf, daß das Wollen gewissermaßen das Baby unter unseren Seelentätigkeiten ist; das Fühlen ist schon älter, das Denken ist noch älter, und die Tätigkeit, die in der Erinnerung ausgeübt wird, ist der Greis, ist das Älteste unter unseren Seelentätigkeiten. Sie werden noch klarer das einsehen, wenn ich Ihnen den folgenden Gesichtspunkt geltend mache.
Wir haben wiederholt davon gesprochen, wie der Mensch sich nicht nur entwickelt hat auf der Erde, sondern wie dieser Entwickelung vorangegangen sind die alte Mondentwickelung, die alte Sonnenentwickelung und die alte Saturnentwickelung. Der Mensch ist nicht erst auf der Erde entstanden, er hat gebraucht, um das zu werden, was er jetzt ist, diese Entwickelung durch Saturn, Sonne und Mond hindurch. Nun sehen Sie, dasjenige, was wir in unserem Wollen entwickeln, so wie wir diesen Willen jetzt kennen, das ist Erdenprodukt für den Menschen, das ist eigentlich noch nicht einmal abgeschlossen in seiner Entwickelung, das ist vollständiges Erdenprodukt. Während der Mondentwickelung war der Mensch noch nicht ein selbständig wollendes Wesen; Engel haben für ihn gewollt. Das Wollen hat gleichsam erst eingestrahlt seit der Erdenentwickelung. Dagegen ist das Fühlen schon angeeignet worden während der Mondentwickelung, das Denken während der Sonnenentwickelung und die Erinnerung während der alten Saturnentwickelung. Und wenn Sie das, was ich jetzt sage, mit anderem zusammenbringen, was in der «Akasha-Chronik» und in der «Geheimwissenschaft» ausgedrückt ist, so wird sich Ihnen ein wichtiger Zusammenhang ergeben. Während der Saturnentwickelung ist die erste Anlage entstanden zum physischen Leib des Menschen, während der Sonnenentwickelung zum menschlichen Ätherleib, während der Mondentwickelung zum menschlichen Astralleib, und während der Erdenentwickelung bildet sich das menschliche Ich aus.
Nun betrachten wir einmal für sich das, was wir die Erinnerungstätigkeit nennen. Was ist das Erinnern? In der Seele bleibt ebenso irgend etwas von dem Bilde eines Ereignisses, das wir durchlebt haben, wie in dem Buch, das wir lesen, etwas bleibt von dem, was der gedacht hat, der das Buch geschrieben hat. Wenn Sie ein Buch vor sich haben, so können Sie alles lesen, alles das denken - manchmal auch nicht, aber das rechne ich jetzt nicht —, was der gedacht hat, der das Buch geschrieben hat. Das Erinnern ist eine unterbewußte Lesetätigkeit; was bleibt, sind Zeichen, die der Ätherleib in den physischen Leib eingegraben hat. Wenn Sie vor Jahren ein Erlebnis gehabt haben, so haben Sie das, was in dem Erlebnis zu erfahren war, durchgemacht. Was bleibt, sind Eindrücke, die der Ätherleib in den physischen Leib hinein macht; und wenn Sie sich jetzt erinnern, so ist das Erinnern ein unterbewußtes Lesen.
Die geheimen Vorgänge, die im Organismus vor sich gehen, damit der Ätherleib die Zeichen eingraben kann, die der Erinnerung zugrunde liegen, die sind hineingebildet worden während der alten Saturnentwickelung. Es ist in der Tat so, daß wir in unserem Organismus eben diesen geheimen Saturnorganismus tragen; der lebt sich so aus, daß wir in ihm eine Wesenhaftigkeit sehen können, in welche der Ätherleib das einzutragen vermag in Zeichen, was er äußerlich an Erlebnissen hat, um es dann wieder herauszuholen in der Erinnerung. Daß der Mensch diese unterbewußte Schreibetätigkeit ausübt, das hat er im wesentlichen davon her, daß in seinen ersten sieben Lebensjahren der Körper, gerade dasjenige im physischen Leib, was die Einprägungen empfangen soll, noch geschmeidig ist. Deshalb soll man nicht, wie ich zum Beispiel in meiner Schrift über «Die Erziehung des Kindes» aufmerksam gemacht habe, das Kind dadurch malträtieren, daß man sein Gedächtnis ausbildet. In den ersten sieben Jahren handelt es sich darum, daß der geschmeidige Organismus seinen eigenen, elementaren Kräften überlassen bleibt, daß wir ihn da nicht malträtieren. Wir sollen daher dem Kinde möglichst viel erzählen, aber nicht einen allzu großen Wert darauf legen, daß das Kind jetzt schon künstlich das Gedächtnis ausbilden soll, sondern sich selbst überlassen bleibt in bezug auf die Gedächtnisausbildung. In dieser Weise wird Geisteswissenschaft für das pädagogische Leben von ungeheurer Wichtigkeit sein.
Ebenso wie die Erinnerungsfähigkeit zu den ältesten Bestandteilen der Menschennatur gehört, so gehört die Tätigkeit, die dem Denken zugrunde liegt, zu dem, was man das auf der Sonne Gebildete nennen kann. Das ist verhältnismäßig auch alt. Die Sonnenkräfte enthalten das, was im Menschen den ätherischen Leib so organisiert, daß er diese eigentümliche Tätigkeit des Denkens, des Vorstellens ausüben kann. Sie sehen daraus, daß man weit, weit in den Kosmos zurückgreifen muß, wenn man die Frage beantworten will: warum kann der Mensch sich erinnern, und warum kann er denken? Man muß zurückgreifen bis in die Saturn- und Sonnenentwickelung.
Wenn man die Gefühlstätigkeit des Menschen ins Auge faßt, braucht man nur zurückzugreifen bis zur Mondentwickelung und bei der Willenstätigkeit bis zur Erdenentwickelung. Sie werden dadurch manches verstehen. Menschen, welche ganz besonders geprägt sind von ihren früheren Inkarnationen her, nicht geschmeidig sind, sondern scharf geprägt sind, bei denen wird sich viel hineinpressen in den Organismus. Es werden Menschen sein, die ein fast automatisches Gedächtnis haben, aber produktiv werden sie nicht viel aus ihrem Denken heraus entwickeln. Während Sie also vorzugsweise mit dem physischen Leib zusammenbringen müssen die Erinnerungstätigkeit des Menschen, mit dem ätherischen Leib die Denktätigkeit, mit dem astralischen Leib die Gefühlstätigkeit des Menschen, werden Sie daher mit dem Ich zusammenbringen müssen vorzugsweise die Willenstätigkeit des Menschen. Der Mensch sagt nur dadurch zu sich Ich, daß er ein Willenswesen ist. Wenn er nur denken würde, so würde das Leben doch nur wie ein Traum ablaufen. Nun sind wir auf diese Weise, ich möchte sagen, ein organischer Zusammenhang von inneren Seelenbetätigungen, die sich im Laufe der Entwickelung in unser Seelenwesen hineingeprägt haben. Ich sagte mit Bezug auf unser Wollen, es habe sich erst während der Erdenentwickelung herausgebildet, auf dem Monde haben noch die geistigen höheren Hierarchien für den Menschen gewollt, die Angeloi. Dadurch war das ganze Wollen des Menschen während der Mondentwickelung ein solches, daß man, wenn man es wiederum in das hellseherische Bewußtsein zurückruft, zwar eine höhere Stufe erblickt, aber doch ein unwillkürliches Wollen beim Menschen, wie wir auf der Erde es bei der Tierentwickelung haben. Das Tier folgt notwendig dem, was in ihm kocht und brodelt, es ist in dem gemeinsamen Willen seiner Gattungswesenheit darinnen.
Wie während der Mondentwickelung geistige Wesen höherer Art, also die Angeloi, für uns gewollt haben, so wirken jetzt die geistigen Wesen höherer Art, indem sie unser Karma von einer Inkarnation zur anderen bestimmen. Nicht in unserem Willen wirken die Angeloi, wohl aber wirken sie im fortgehenden Strom unseres Karma. Geradeso wie der Mensch der Mondentwickelung den Willen nicht als den seinen gefühlt hat, sondern als den des Engels, so leben wir nicht als Menschen der Erde in der Meinung, daß wir unser Karma machen: geregelt wird es von den Geistern der höheren Hierarchien. Nur dann, wenn unser Wille gewissermaßen einmal schweigen kann, dann kann es vorkommen, daß etwas durchscheint auch für das nicht hellseherisch gewordene Bewußtsein von dem, was sonst verborgen bleibt von dem Gang des Karma.
Halten Sie das fest, was ich ausgeführt habe, daß sich im Menschen ein Kern bildet, der durch die Pforte des Todes in das geistige ' Reich eingeht: dieser Kern ist der Träger unseres Karma. Was jeder von uns morgen tun wird, das ist karmisch schon heute in ihm bestimmt. Wir könnten, wenn wir nicht auf der Erde die Aufgabe hätten, den Willen zu entwickeln, unser Karma durchschauen. Wir würden es so weit durchschauen können, daß wir unter Umständen für die nächste Zeit unser Leben voraussehen könnten. Aber indem in den karmischen Strom der Wille hineinschlägt, verdunkelt uns der den Ausblick auf das, was mit uns, sagen wir, am nächsten Tage geschieht. Nur dann, wenn der Wille vollständig schweigt, dann kann es sein, daß etwas durchblickt von dem, was nicht durch uns, sondern mit uns geschieht. Ein Beispiel will ich dafür anführen, das von Erasmus Francisci erzählt wird und auf Wahrheit beruht. Erasmus Francisci wohnte als junger Mensch bei seiner Tante; und da träumte ihm einmal, daß ein Mann, dessen Name ihm auch im Traume zugerufen wurde, auf ihn schießen werde, aber er werde nicht erschossen, sondern seine Tante werde ihm das Leben retten. So träumte er. Am nächsten Tage, bevor irgend etwas geschehen war, erzählte er den Traum seiner Tante. Diese beunruhigte sich sehr über diesen Traum, sagte ihm, daß ganz kürzlich erst wirklich jemand in ihrer Nachbarschaft erschossen worden sei, und riet ihrem Neffen dringend, lieber zu Hause zu bleiben, damit ihm nichts zustoße. Sie gab ihm noch den Schlüssel zur Apfelkammer, damit er jederzeit hinaufgehen könne, sich Äpfel zu holen. Er ging nun zu seiner Stube hinauf und setzte sich an seinen Tisch, um etwas zu lesen. Das, was er da gelesen hatte, war jedoch etwas, was ihn in diesem Momente weniger interessierte als der Schlüssel zur Apfelkammer in seiner Tasche, den ihm seine Tante gegeben hatte. Er entschloß sich, hinaufzugehen zur Kammer. Kaum war er aber aufgestanden, als ein Schuß krachte, der gerade so gerichtet war, daf3 die Kugel die Stelle traf, an der sein Kopf sich befunden hatte, während er las. Wäre er nicht aufgestanden, so wäre die Kugel mitten durch ihn durchgegangen. Der Diener des benachbarten Hauses, dessen Name tatsächlich so lautete, wie er dem Frasmus Francisci im Traum zugerufen worden war, und der ihm unbekannt war, dieser Diener wußte nicht, daß die zwei Gewehre, die er zu behandeln hatte, geladen waren, und als er anfing herumzuhantieren, ging das Gewehr los, und wäre Francisci nicht in jenem Augenblick aufgestanden, um zur Apfelkammer zu gehen, deren Schlüssel ihm seine Tante gegeben hatte, wäre er unfehlbar erschossen worden. Der Traum ist also absolut eine Wiedergabe desjenigen, was sich am nächsten Tage abgespielt hat.
Sie sehen, hier liegt ein Ergebnis vor, von dem wir sagen können, daß bei demselben der Wille gar nichts zu tun hat, denn mit dem Willen konnte Francisci nichts tun; er konnte sich nicht selber schützen, es brach etwas herein, das in das Karma des Menschen so hineinfällt, daß der Mensch weiterleben sollte. Da war es so, daß der das Karma bewirkende Geist schon den rettenden Gedanken hatte. Es ist der Traum die Voraussicht des das Karma lenkenden Geistes, der hinschaut auf das, was am nächsten Tage geschieht, und weil bei diesem jungen Menschen eine solche Seelenanlage da war, daß gleichsam durch natürliche Meditation die Seele schon eine bestimmte Vertiefung erfahren hatte, trat dadurch etwas ein, was ich vergleichen könnte mit etwas im äußeren Leben. Nicht wahr, der Mensch ist ja nur im eingeschränkten Maße ein Prophet in bezug auf das äußere irdische Leben. In gewissem Sinne sind wir alle Propheten, denn Sie alle wissen, daß es morgen zu einer bestimmten Zeit hell werden wird und so weiter, oder daß jemand, der heute übers Feld geht, voraussagen kann, wie es morgen über diesem Felde aussehen wird; aber was er nicht voraussehen wird, ist, ob es zum Beispiel morgen regnen wird auf diesem Felde und so weiter. So ist es auch mit Bezug auf das Innere. Der Mensch lebt gemäß seinem Willen, und das Karma steckt in diesem Willen darinnen. Wie man sich aneignen kann eine empfindende Erkenntnis für das Nächste, so kann bei gewissen Menschen, die eine innere Vertiefung der Seele erleben, ein solcher Lichtpunkt für das Innere gerade für diejenigen Ereignisse eintreten, wo der Wille zu schweigen hat. Für das Studium der Geisteswissenschaft ist es wichtig, manchmal den Blick auf solche Dinge hinzuwerfen, weil es uns zeigt, wie im Menscheninnern durchaus etwas lebt, was in die Zukunft hineinweist und was der Mensch nicht überschauen kann mit dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein. Durch den schweigenden Willen kommt das Karma durch.
Alle die Dinge, die uns auf diese Weise durch die geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung vor die Seele treten können, sind geeignet, uns zu zeigen, wie das, was man die große Täuschung nennt, vorzugsweise darin besteht, daß der Mensch mit seinem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein nicht überschauen kann das, was er ist: daß der Mensch der ganzen Welt angehört, während durch das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein ihm eigentlich nur die Schale wie eingeschlossen gezeigt wird innerhalb der Haut und so weiter. Aber was da innerhalb dieser Eingeschlossenheit ihm gezeigt wird, ist nur ein Ausschnitt dessen, was der Mensch in Wahrheit ist, und das ist so groß wie die Welt. Und eigentlich schauen wir auf unseren Menschen schon im gewöhnlichen Leben von außen zurück. Wir können uns, wenn wir uns solche Dinge klar zum Bewußtsein bringen, ein Gefühl allmählich aneignen, wie das im Menschen vorhanden ist, was man den Ätherleib des Menschen nennt. Und wirklich, schon im gewöhnlichen Leben lassen sich Beobachtungen anstellen, welche uns zeigen, wie wenigstens dieser zweite Mensch, der ätherische Mensch im physischen Menschen darinnensteckt; nur müssen wir das Leben feiner beobachten, als es gewöhnlich beobachtet wird. Denken Sie sich einmal, Sie liegen morgens so recht faul im Bett, sind noch gar nicht geneigt aufzustehen, sondern Sie möchten liegen bleiben, und es kommt Sie schwer an, den Entschluß zu fassen, aufzustehen. Wenn Sie das nur zu Hilfe nehmen, was in Ihnen ist, so kommt es Sie schwer an, aufzustehen. Denken Sie aber, es fiele Ihnen ein, daß in dem anderen Zimmer etwas liegen könnte, was Sie seit ein paar Tagen erwarten. Es tritt ein Gedanke an etwas auf, was draußen ist: da werden Sie sehen, daß dieser Gedanke ein kleines Wunder wirken kann. Sie werden sehen, daß, wenn Sie sich diesem Gedanken etwas hingeben, Sie sogar herausspringen aus dem Bett! Was ist da geschehen? Indem Sie aufwachend untergetaucht sind in den physischen Leib, empfinden Sie das, was der physische Leib Sie empfinden läßt — das ist nicht geeignet, den Aufstehegedanken in Ihnen zu erzeugen; der Ätherleib ist in eine selbständige Verrichtung gekommen, da Sie ihn durch etwas Auswärtiges engagiert haben: da können Sie in der Tat sehen, wie Sie ihrem physischen Leib den ätherischen Leib entgegengestellt haben, und wie der Ätherleib Sie faßt und heraushebt aus dem Bett. Man kommt zu einem ganz besummten Gefühl gegenüber sich selbst, nämlich zu dem Gefühl, zuzuschauen und zu unterscheiden zwischen zwei Arten von menschlichen Verrichtungen, die man durchmacht. Es sind die Verrichtungen, die man im gewöhnlichen Trödel des Lebens tut, und solche Verrichtungen, bei denen man spürt, daß innere Aktivität sich geltend macht. Das sind feinere Beobachtungen, die man natürlich, wenn man will, immer ableugnen kann. Man muß seine Beobachtungen dem Leben anpassen und das Leben wirklich durchschauen in der Art, wie es sich stellt: dann wird das ganze Empfinden des Menschen in die rechte Richtung gedrängt. Man muß sich klar sein, daß der Weg in die geistige Welt hinein nicht auf einmal geschehen kann, sondern allmählich aus der Welt herausführt und wir so aufsteigen zu dem, was ich eben angeführt habe, wo für uns das, was uns früher Welt war, sein Totes verliert und selbst zu einer Wesenheit wird.
Auf diese Weise wächst der Mensch erkennend mit der geistigen Welt zusammen. Er wächst zusammen mit demjenigen, von dem wir sagen können, daß es seinTeil ist, wenn er von sich abgelegt hat das, was er durch das Instrument des physischen Leibes hat und was im wesentlichen sein Leben ist zwischen Geburt und Tod. Wir wachsen, indem wir durch die Todespforte schreiten, hinein in die Welt, die sehr ähnlich ist derjenigen, von der jetzt eben gesprochen worden ist als der, die sich der höheren Erkenntnis ergibt. Und dann merken wir das eine unendlich Wichtige: Wir brauchen in dieser Welt, die wir betreten, wenn wir durch die Pforte des Todes schreiten, wenn wir in diese Welt uns in der richtigen Weise einleben wollen - so, wie wir in einem finsteren Zimmer, um es zu erhellen, ein Licht brauchen -, wir brauchen dort dasjenige, was wir im intimsten Innengrunde unserer Seele hier auf der Erde entwikkeln können. Das Erdenleben ist nicht etwas, was wir bloß als ein Gefängnis, als einen Kerker zu betrachten haben. Gewiß, es gehört zum naturgemäßen Fortgang der Entwickelung, daß der Mensch durch die Pforte des Todes schreitet. Leben kann der Mensch selbstverständlich in dem Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt; aber das Gesamtleben ist dazu da, daß jeder Teil von uns etwas Notwendiges, etwas Neues hinzugibt, und, indem wir durch diesen Zyklus hindurchgehen, der jetzt da ist, soll uns das Leben hier dasjenige geben, was wie eine Fackel sich entzündet, wodurch wir nicht nur leben in diesem Leben des Geistes, sondern wodurch wir erkennen und dieses Leben durchleuchtend leben. Das Licht, das uns erleuchtet, das ist dasjenige, was von uns gleichsam als das Bleibende erobert wird zwischen Geburt und Tod für das Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt.
Das ist es, wovon immer gesagt werden soll, daß gerade in unserer Zeit möglichst viele Menschen es begreifen sollen: daß für das geistige Leben wie eine erleuchtende Flamme dasjenige sein muß, was man hier von der geistigen Welt begreift in der physischen Welt, im physischen Leib. In gewisser Beziehung sollte gerade alles das Schwierige, was in der Gegenwart der entwickeltste Teil der Menschheit durchzumachen hat, eine Mahnung sein zur Vertiefung des seelischen Lebens, und es muß das sein, daß aus den Tiefen der menschlichen Seele herausgeholt wird eine Sehnsucht nach den Welten, denen der Mensch als Seele angehört. Möge in der Zeit, in der wir jetzt leben, vorbereitet werden jene Sehnsucht, wodurch jede Seele sich sagt: der Mensch ist noch etwas ganz anderes, als was er uns erscheint dadurch, daß er von einem Leibe umkleidet ist. Möge das, was erlebt wird, als eine Mahnung dastehen für die Vertiefung, für die Versenkung der Seele zum geistigen Empfinden, zum geistigen Sehen. Und auch wiederum aus diesem Bewußtsein der Notwendigkeit geisteswissenschaftlicher Vertiefung in unserer Zeit und aus dem Bewußtsein, daß die Schwierigkeit unserer Zeit eine Mahnung sein soll, soll auch heute geschlossen werden mit dem, womit wir immer geschlossen haben, bevor wir auseinandergehen. Hoffentlich werden wir diese Betrachtungen in nicht allzu ferner Zeit wiederum hier fortsetzen können, heute seien sie beschlossen mit den Worten:
Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassener,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht —
Lenken Seelen geistbewußt
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.
Eleventh Lecture
Once again, we first remember those who stand outside in the great fields of present events:
Spirits of your souls, active guardians,
May your wings bring
The pleading love of our souls
Protect the people of Earth who trust you,
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may shine helpfully
Upon the souls that seek it lovingly.
And for those who have already passed through the gates of death as a result of these events:
Spirits of your souls, active guardians,
May your wings bring
The pleading love of our souls
Your protection, trusted beings of the spheres,
That, united with your power,
Our plea may shine helpfully
Upon the souls that seek it lovingly.
The spirit we seek through our striving for spiritual knowledge, the spirit that has come to the earth to bring salvation, freedom, and progress to humanity through the mystery of Golgotha, may it be with you and your difficult duties!
My dear friends, first of all, I would like to remind you today of something I have already said to most of you in occasional earlier reflections. When the human soul develops in the sense that has been sufficiently indicated in the public lectures, we arrive at a different kind of worldview. The essential point is that with our soul we are, as it were, making our way out of the sensory world and into the spiritual world.
As we develop forward with our soul, the physical world gradually transforms into the spiritual world before our eyes. One could say that, little by little, the peculiarities of the sensory-physical world disappear, and the structures, beings, and facts of the spiritual world appear within the horizon of our consciousness. Now, something important that comes to our consciousness in what arises in this way can be described as follows: We ourselves become different—of course, from our point of view—we ourselves become different, and the world around us that we perceive with our senses also becomes different. Let us first stick to what is closest to us, the world of our earth. Basically, human beings know very little about the world outside the earth within the course of earthly life if we remain within the way in which we have grown together with our earthly life. As we advance into the spiritual world – we are then outside our bodies – it becomes apparent, when we look back on our bodies or our entire physical life or even our entire human being, that it is actually becoming richer and richer; this human being is becoming increasingly meaningful, expanding into a world. The human being himself grows into a world when we look back on him in this way. This is the truth of what is often emphasized: that as human beings develop spiritually, they become identical with the world. They see a new world, a world within which they otherwise stand, as emerging from themselves. They expand into a world. On the other hand, what is solid, or what appears to us in ordinary physical perception as mountains, rivers, and so on, disappears from the earth. That disappears, and we gradually learn to feel ourselves within the earth, I say expressly within the earth, as if inside a great organism. We are out of our own world, and this inner world, this inner reality, becomes a wide world, and what surrounded us as the earthly world becomes essential, becomes a being in which we must think of ourselves as being, as we can imagine ourselves. As we grow out of ourselves, our human world expands into a vast world; at the same time, we grow into the earth organism and feel ourselves within it as, say, if our finger became conscious, it would feel itself within our organism.
This is the experience of human beings, and it is very often expressed by people who feel more deeply, by poetically inclined natures. Thus, human beings very often compare their awakening in the morning with the awakening of nature outside, even their life during the day with the rising of the sun, and dusk with the need for sleep that comes with tiredness. Such comparisons arise from the feeling that human beings are part of earthly nature. But such comparisons are not very valuable, because they do not capture the essence of the matter. I have therefore often said that if we want to choose a comparison that truly expresses the facts, we must choose one other than that in which we compare the course of nature outside with the process of falling asleep and waking up. We must rather compare our life within twenty-four hours with the annual cycle of the earth. Only when we take the entire annual cycle is it a valid comparison with what happens within us through waking and sleeping once in the course of twenty-four hours. And it is wrong to compare the waking state of human beings from waking up to falling asleep with summer, for example; rather, one must compare this waking state in the nature of the earth outside with winter, and one must compare summer with the sleeping state of human beings. So that we could say, if we make the comparison: the human being falls asleep, that is, he enters the summer of his personal existence, and as he wakes up, he develops into the winter of his personal existence; and the waking state would correspond approximately to the last autumn, the winter, and the first spring. Why would that correspond to the facts? Because if we really develop in the manner indicated into a member of the whole earthly organism, we must indeed observe how in summer that which is the spirit of the earth sleeps; that is the real state of sleep of the earth, when the great consciousness of the spirit of the earth recedes. With spring, the earth spirit begins to fall asleep, and it awakens in autumn when the first frosts come; it then thinks it has its waking state of consciousness. This is the course of the earth spirit's day throughout the year.
When we look back at the sleeping human being, we see that this falling asleep, in which the human being leaves with the ego and the astral body, actually means the emergence of a kind of plant activity in the organism from which the astral body and the ego have departed. This begins to cause activity within the human being. We really perceive the first stages of sleep as the beginning of a vegetative process, and sleep proceeds in such a way that the body, as it were, asserts itself to clairvoyant vision with a plant growth that we then actually see through imaginative knowledge. Only this vegetation grows differently from the vegetation on earth. Such things can be told, and one can meditate on them at length and then go further and further.
On earth, plants grow up from the ground. It is different when we observe this “plant growth” in human beings. Plants grow in such a way that their roots are outside, and they grow into the human being; so we have to look for the flowers within the human being. This human being is really very beautiful, I mean as seen by someone who has become clairvoyant in sleep. He is, as it were, a whole earth that sprouts and shoots, into which vegetation grows. What disturbs the view is that we have the impression that the astral body is gnawing at the roots. And this represents the course of sleep. While the animal world consumes what grows during the summer, eating it from the top down, we find that our astral body actually acts like the animal world, only it gnaws at the roots. If this were not so, we would not be able to develop that core which we carry through the gate of death. What the astral body acquires in this way represents what we actually carry through the gate of death as the fruit of life. I am describing things as they appear to clairvoyant consciousness. And just as winter comes over the fruits of the earth and freezes them, so, I would say, when the astral body and the I submerge into the etheric and physical bodies, there is a freezing away of what has occurred during the night in terms of vegetation, in terms of spiritual plant growth in our organism.
In what I have called the Earth Spirit, which is truly a personal being like ourselves, only that it leads a different existence — for it, a year is a day — within this Earth Spirit, everything that I have explained about the impulse of Golgotha becomes clear to us, for there one finds the life-giving power that was not in the earth before the Mystery of Golgotha; there one finds oneself secure, taken up by the spirit that has passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. And through this one gains the certainty that this spirit has truly flowed into the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. We become aware of this when we can truly immerse ourselves in the state in which the earth is a being to which we ourselves belong, just as a finger belongs to our organism. It cannot be otherwise than that for people of our time, occult deepening into the world takes on the character of religious immersion into that which, as the divine, flows through and permeates the world. That is why true knowledge of the spiritual world can never take away religious feeling, but on the contrary can only deepen it.
I wanted to give an indication of what it really looks like when one enters the world of images of the spiritual-real; for what appears to us in our everyday physical consciousness is only an illusion, only an inner core. But I must say right away that this is wrong, because words are not easily formed for these significant facts, and what appears to us is always with us when we are outside our bodies with our souls. Therefore, it is not correct to say that there is a core, because a fruit has a shell on the outside and what is valuable is inside. But as is so often the case with the spiritual, the valuable is outside in humans, and what is the shell is inside: the inner is the shell-like, and the spiritual is what can be described spatially as the shell-like. When one enters the spiritual world, one learns that humans are not simple beings, but complex beings. We have already sufficiently understood that human beings, with what they carry within themselves, participate in all worlds accessible to them. With our physical body, we belong to the physical world; with our soul, we belong to the soul world; with our spirit, we belong to the spiritual world. We extend into the three worlds. We know that when human beings make their way into the spiritual world, they actually experience themselves as if in a kind of multiplication. This is what is frightening, that the comfortable unity is distributed, that one actually receives a feeling of belonging to several worlds. Now, one can assert the most diverse points of view. Today I want to put forward a particular point of view by referring you to what has repeatedly been the basis of my last lectures.
When we look inward at human life, we must think of it as structured, and when we step outside the body, the human being truly reveals itself as divided into four parts. First, there is the power that underlies our memory. In memory, we bring back to consciousness what we have already experienced in earlier times. This memory brings a connection into our life, so that this life between birth and death is a unity. A second thing is what we call our thinking, what we call our imagination. I cannot go into these concepts further here, that is not important now; but what the activity of imagination is, is what takes place in the present. And if we go even further, we arrive at feeling, and further still at willing. When we look within ourselves, our own inner being appears to us as memory, as thinking, as feeling, as willing. Now we can ask the question: what is the essential difference between these four activities of the soul? Ordinary psychology lists these activities of the soul and makes no further distinction. But the truth can only be arrived at when one can go into the essence of these four activities of the soul, and then one comes to the conclusion that the will is, in a sense, the baby among our soul activities; feeling is older, thinking is even older, and the activity exercised in memory is the old man, the oldest of our soul activities. You will understand this even more clearly when I present the following point of view to you.
We have repeatedly spoken of how human beings have not only developed on Earth, but how this development was preceded by the ancient Moon development, the ancient Sun development, and the ancient Saturn development. Human beings did not first come into being on Earth; in order to become what they are now, they needed to go through this development through Saturn, Sun, and Moon. Now you see that what we develop in our will, as we now know this will, is an earthly product for human beings; it is not even complete in its development; it is a complete earthly product. During the Moon evolution, human beings were not yet independent beings with their own will; angels willed for them. Willing, as it were, only began to shine in since the Earth's evolution. In contrast, feeling was already acquired during the lunar evolution, thinking during the solar evolution, and memory during the ancient Saturn evolution. And if you connect what I am saying now with other things expressed in the Akashic Chronicle and in The Secret Science, an important connection will become clear to you. During the Saturn evolution, the first basis for the physical body of the human being was formed; during the Sun evolution, the etheric body; during the Moon evolution, the astral body; and during the Earth evolution, the human I is being formed.
Now let us consider for a moment what we call the activity of memory. What is memory? Something of the image of an event we have experienced remains in the soul, just as something of what the author thought remains in the book we read. When you have a book in front of you, you can read everything, think everything—sometimes not, but I am not counting that now—that the author thought. Remembering is a subconscious act of reading; what remains are signs that the etheric body has engraved in the physical body. If you had an experience years ago, you went through what was to be experienced in that experience. What remains are impressions that the etheric body makes in the physical body; and when you remember now, remembering is a subconscious act of reading.
The secret processes that take place in the organism so that the etheric body can engrave the signs that form the basis of memory were formed during the ancient Saturn evolution. It is indeed the case that we carry this secret Saturn organism within our organism; it lives out its life in such a way that we can see in it a substance into which the etheric body can inscribe in signs what it experiences externally, in order to then retrieve it again in memory. The fact that human beings carry out this subconscious writing activity is essentially due to the fact that during the first seven years of life, the body, specifically that part of the physical body which is intended to receive impressions, is still supple. That is why, as I pointed out in my book on child education, we should not mistreat children by training their memory. During the first seven years, it is important that the supple organism be left to its own elementary forces and that we do not mistreat it. We should therefore tell the child as much as possible, but not place too much emphasis on the child artificially training its memory at this stage, but rather leave it to its own devices in this regard. In this way, spiritual science will be of immense importance for educational life.
Just as the ability to remember is one of the oldest components of human nature, the activity that underlies thinking belongs to what can be called the sun-formed element. This is also relatively old. The forces of the sun contain that which organizes the etheric body in the human being in such a way that it can carry out this peculiar activity of thinking and imagining. You can see from this that one must go far, far back into the cosmos if one wants to answer the question: Why can human beings remember, and why can they think? One must go back to the Saturn and Sun evolutions.
If we consider human emotional activity, we need only go back to the Moon evolution, and for volitional activity, to the Earth evolution. This will help you understand many things. People who are particularly influenced by their previous incarnations, who are not flexible but sharply defined, will have a lot pressed into their organism. These will be people who have an almost automatic memory, but they will not develop much productively from their thinking. So while you must preferably bring together the physical body with the memory activity of the human being, the etheric body with the thinking activity, and the astral body with the feeling activity of the human being, you must therefore bring together the ego with the will activity of the human being. Human beings only say “I” to themselves because they are beings with a will. If they only thought, life would be nothing but a dream. Now, in this way, we are, I would say, an organic connection of inner soul activities that have been imprinted on our soul being in the course of evolution. I said with reference to our will that it only developed during the Earth's evolution; on the Moon, the higher spiritual hierarchies, the Angeloi, still willed for human beings. As a result, the entire will of human beings during the Moon's development was such that when we recall it in clairvoyant consciousness, we see a higher stage, but still an involuntary will in human beings, as we have on Earth in the development of animals. Animals necessarily follow what is boiling and seething within them; they are caught up in the common will of their species.
Just as spiritual beings of a higher order, the Angeloi, willed for us during the lunar evolution, so now spiritual beings of a higher order work by determining our karma from one incarnation to another. The angeloi do not work in our will, but they do work in the continuing stream of our karma. Just as the human being of the lunar evolution did not feel the will as his own, but as that of the angel, so we do not live as human beings on earth in the belief that we make our karma: it is regulated by the spirits of the higher hierarchies. Only when our will can, so to speak, remain silent for a moment, can something shine through, even to the non-clairvoyant consciousness, of what otherwise remains hidden from the course of karma.
Hold fast to what I have explained, that a core forms within the human being which passes through the gate of death into the spiritual realm: this core is the bearer of our karma. What each of us will do tomorrow is already determined karmically within us today. If we did not have the task of developing our will on earth, we could see through our karma. We would be able to see it through to such an extent that we could possibly foresee our life for the next period of time. But because the will strikes into the karmic stream, it obscures our view of what will happen to us, let us say, on the next day. Only when the will is completely silent can something shine through of what happens not through us but with us. I will give an example of this, which is told by Erasmus Francisci and is based on truth. Erasmus Francisci lived with his aunt as a young man, and once he dreamed that a man, whose name was also called out to him in the dream, would shoot him, but he would not be shot, because his aunt would save his life. That was what he dreamed. The next day, before anything had happened, he told his aunt about the dream. She was very alarmed by this dream and told him that someone had recently been shot in her neighborhood and urged her nephew to stay at home so that nothing would happen to him. She gave him the key to the apple cellar so that he could go up and get apples at any time. He went up to his room and sat down at his desk to read. However, what he was reading was of little interest to him at that moment compared to the key to the apple cellar in his pocket, which his aunt had given him. He decided to go up to the cellar. But no sooner had he stood up than a shot rang out, aimed so precisely that the bullet hit the spot where his head had been while he was reading. If he had not stood up, the bullet would have passed right through him. The servant from the neighboring house, whose name was indeed the same as the one called out to Frasmus Francisci in his dream, and who was unknown to him, did not know that the two guns he was handling were loaded, and when he began to fiddle with them, the gun went off, and if Francisci had not stood up at that moment to go to the apple chamber, the key to which his aunt had given him, he would undoubtedly have been shot. The dream is therefore an absolute reproduction of what happened the next day.
You see, here we have a result of which we can say that the will has nothing to do with it, because Francisci could do nothing with his will; he could not protect himself, something broke in that falls so much into the karma of man that man should continue to live. It was the case that the spirit causing the karma already had the saving thought. The dream is the foresight of the spirit guiding the karma, who looks at what will happen the next day, and because this young man had such a soul disposition that, as it were, through natural meditation, the soul had already experienced a certain deepening, something occurred that I could compare with something in outer life. Isn't it true that human beings are only prophets to a limited extent when it comes to external earthly life? In a certain sense, we are all prophets, for you all know that tomorrow at a certain time it will be light, and so on, or that someone walking across a field today can predict what it will look like tomorrow; but what he cannot foresee is whether it will rain on that field tomorrow, and so on. It is the same with regard to the inner life. Human beings live according to their will, and karma is contained in this will. Just as one can acquire a sensitive awareness of what is coming next, so, in certain people who experience an inner deepening of the soul, such a point of light for the inner life can arise precisely for those events where the will must remain silent. For the study of spiritual science, it is important to sometimes cast our gaze on such things, because it shows us how something lives within the human being that points to the future and that human beings cannot comprehend with their ordinary consciousness. Through the silent will, karma comes to the fore.
All the things that spiritual scientific research can reveal to our souls in this way are suitable for showing us how what is called the great deception consists primarily in the fact that human beings, with their ordinary consciousness, cannot see what they are: that human beings belong to the whole world, whereas ordinary consciousness actually shows them only the shell enclosed within the skin and so on. But what is shown to him within this enclosure is only a fragment of what man really is, and that is as big as the world. And actually, we already look back on our human beings from outside in ordinary life. When we bring such things clearly to consciousness, we can gradually acquire a feeling for what is present in human beings, what is called the etheric body of the human being. And indeed, even in ordinary life, observations can be made that show us how at least this second human being, the etheric human being, is contained within the physical human being; only we must observe life more finely than it is usually observed. Imagine that you are lying lazily in bed in the morning, not at all inclined to get up, but wanting to stay in bed, and it is difficult for you to make the decision to get up. If you rely only on what is within you, it is difficult for you to get up. But suppose it occurs to you that there might be something in the other room that you have been expecting for a few days. A thought arises about something that is outside: you will see that this thought can work a small miracle. You will see that if you give yourself over to this thought, you will even jump out of bed! What has happened? When you wake up and are immersed in your physical body, you feel what the physical body makes you feel — this is not conducive to generating the thought of getting up in you; the etheric body has come into independent action because you have engaged it through something external: you can actually see how you have set your etheric body against your physical body, and how the etheric body grasps you and lifts you out of bed. You come to a very buzzing feeling about yourself, namely the feeling of watching and distinguishing between two kinds of human activities that you are going through. These are the activities that one performs in the ordinary drudgery of life, and those activities in which one senses that inner activity is at work. These are finer observations, which one can of course always deny if one wants to. You have to adapt your observations to life and really see life as it is: then your whole sense of being is pushed in the right direction. One must be clear that the path into the spiritual world cannot happen all at once, but leads gradually out of the world, and that we thus ascend to what I have just mentioned, where what was previously the world for us loses its deadness and itself becomes a being.
In this way, human beings grow together with the spiritual world in a conscious way. They grow together with that which we can say is part of them when they have cast off what they have through the instrument of the physical body and what is essentially their life between birth and death. We grow by passing through the gate of death into the world that is very similar to the one just mentioned as the one that yields itself to higher knowledge. And then we realize something infinitely important: in this world we enter when we pass through the gate of death, if we want to settle into this world in the right way — just as we need light to illuminate a dark room — we need there what we can develop in the innermost depths of our soul here on earth. Earth life is not something we should regard merely as a prison, as a dungeon. Certainly, it is part of the natural course of development that human beings pass through the gate of death. Human beings can, of course, live in the life between death and new birth; but the whole of life is there so that each part of us may contribute something necessary, something new, and as we pass through this cycle that is now here, life here should give us that which lights up like a torch, whereby we not only live in this life of the spirit, but whereby we recognize and live this life in a way that illuminates it. The light that illuminates us is that which we conquer, as it were, as something lasting between birth and death for the life between death and new birth.
This is what must always be said, that as many people as possible should understand this, especially in our time: that for spiritual life, what one understands here of the spiritual world in the physical world, in the physical body, must be like an illuminating flame. In a certain sense, all the difficulties that the most developed part of humanity has to go through at present should be a warning to deepen our spiritual life, and it must be that a longing for the worlds to which the human being belongs as a soul is brought forth from the depths of the human soul. May the time in which we now live prepare that longing through which every soul says to itself: human beings are something quite different from what they appear to be when clothed in a body. May what is experienced stand as a reminder for the deepening, for the sinking of the soul into spiritual feeling, into spiritual seeing. And again, out of this awareness of the necessity of spiritual scientific deepening in our time, and out of the awareness that the difficulties of our time should be a warning, we should conclude today with what we have always concluded with before we part. Hopefully, we will be able to continue these reflections here again in the not too distant future. Today, let us conclude with the words:
From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the forsaken,
From the sacrifices of the people
The fruits of the spirit will grow —
Souls guided by spiritual awareness
Will direct their minds to the realm of the spirit.