The Rudolf Steiner Archive

23. Stages of Development of Humanity

[ 1 ] If we look at the human being as we know him, his physical body is, so to speak, only a crystallized solid mass. The physical body is surrounded by the so-called aura in a kind of egg shape. Overall, this is always larger than the physical body itself. It is smallest in the undeveloped human being, and it is all the larger the more developed the person is, so that the aura of a highly developed person can extend six times the length of the person. You have to imagine that you would only get the whole person if you were to plot his height three times upwards and three times downwards.

[ 2 ] We have to distinguish three things in this aura: First, the so-called astral body. This is the body that objectively contains for the seer's eye what a person otherwise only senses within himself: his urges, desires and passions. In this astral aura, the seer can distinguish exactly whether a person has pure or ugly passions such as greed, compassion, benevolence and the like. Then, a little larger, the mental aura. It contains what we subjectively feel as our intellect, our power of reason, our lower mind. These two auras dissolve after death, just as the physical body dissolves. The astral aura dissolves in Kamaloka, and the mental aura in lower Devachan. They are still to be counted among the perishable parts of man. The permanent entity of man is objectively visible in the third aura. This is the aura of the causal body, that body, therefore, which passes through all incarnations. In undeveloped people who understand little of the permanent, the causal body is only hinted at. When you look at the auras of an undeveloped person, you will find little of the causal body. Those people who pursue deeper truths develop this causal aura. The more a person develops, the more this causal aura develops. A kind of radiation system then integrates itself, so that the more highly developed person emits rays that can be seen in his causal aura. When we have the aura of an adept, it is much larger than a house, so that the whole person appears infinitely larger than the physical person to the physical eye. The causal aura, which we can see in the highly developed, is also indicated in the undeveloped, and not as a small body, but also large, but it does not yet shine. In the undeveloped, it is a faint glow that becomes more and more luminous as the person develops. Rays enter through the fact that the person becomes more and more substantial. The more a person develops within himself that which is lasting, that which will reappear, the more luminosity he has within himself. It is the objectively visible that a person carries over from one incarnation to another.

[ 3 ] First, I will look at the human being with his astral aura; we can observe him in three successive states. The first state would be that in which the actual power of imagination is still very little developed. This is the case with the third root race and at the beginning of the fourth, that is, from the middle of the Lemurian to the first half of the Atlantean period. The Lemurians and the first Atlanteans did not think from imagination, but purely from memory. It was only in the fourth root race that the power of imagination was gradually developed; the aura also changed. In the third root race and in the first half of the fourth, the astral aura developed in such a way that it surrounded the human body. It was somewhat larger than his skin, and it was much mistier than it was afterwards, it was as if it were permeated by dark masses of mist, and through the passions of men it was much more violent and stormy. Only the first rudiments of the mental aura were present at that time. The development continued until our present root race, so that today a certain peak has been reached. This is the second stage, in which the mental aura is developed to a certain degree.

[ 4 ] The third stage is that of an advanced human being who develops what is known as astral vision. They are able to see this aura as well. They can see not only what is present in the physical world, but also what is present in the astral world. In such people, the astral aura looks slightly different. In Atlanteans and post-Atlanteans, wheel-shaped figures appear within the astral aura. Such figures are in the aura of every modern human being; in the Lemurians, they were hardly noticeable. When these “wheels” are in motion in today's humans, seeing occurs. When they are still, astral seeing is suspended. These are the three states.

[ 5 ] The physical body is permeated by the nervous system. Every nerve center is connected to an astral center, so that, for example, the optic nerve is surrounded and enveloped by an astral optic nerve, by an astral substance that belongs to the optic nerve. Now, how does seeing come about? Light enters the eye and passes through the nerve to the brain. But you do not yet see anything; it is still only a physical process of movement. Now the astral optic nerve starts to vibrate. These vibrations cause the image that you see to appear. Without the astral body being set in motion, it is impossible to see. It is the same with thinking. The astral body is the actual agent. If you now imagine what it is like for the seer, it is not impressions that come through the ear or the eye, but impressions that come through his astral organization itself, without the mediation of the physical brain and the nervous center. This occurs when the chakrams, the lotuses, begin to move. This means that the astral body is an organism that has sensory organs.

[ 6 ] When a person is in the normal state of sleep, the astral body is usually outside the physical body. The more highly developed a person is, the further away the astral body can go. Complete psychic development consists of leaving the body behind and walking around freely in the astral. There are further stages. The astral body can make the strangest wanderings while you are sleeping, but you do not remember these nocturnal wanderings. You can be aware of them during the night, but not bring them into the day. The highest stage is when you are aware of the astral consciousness both in your sleep and in your physical body. You can visit familiar people during the night, but you will not be able to have experiences similar to those in the physical. For example, you will not be able to find out what a person in Asia is doing now – you cannot experience that. But if you want to learn something from him, you can, if you take it completely over into your waking consciousness. The chela could not find out whether a master in Asia is writing or not writing, or whether he eats and drinks and what. But he can be taught in the astral space and consciously take it over into the waking consciousness.

[ 7 ] When you see such an astral body, you have the physical body with its nerve centers in one place, which looks to the physical eye as it does during the day, and you have the astral body with its sensory organs somewhere, so that you can see: the optic nerve belongs to this center [of the astral body] and the auditory nerve belongs to this center.

[ 8 ] Now the question arises: what is the connection between the astral body and the physical body, what chains the astral ear to the physical ear? And why does the astral body, [which is separated from the physical body during sleep], return again? Interesting questions could be raised. Let us suppose, for example, that a person felt terribly unhappy. Now he is in his astral body during the night. The suffering has its origin in the physical. He could now make the decision not to return [with his astral body], and then what would be called an astral suicide would be carried out.

[ 9 ] So what connects the astral body to the physical body and its organs, and what leads it back again? There is a kind of band, a connection that is an intermediate matter between physical and astral matter. And that is called the kundalini fire. If you have a sleeping person, you can always follow the astral body in the astral. You have a glowing strip up to where the astral body is. It can always be found. When the astral body moves away, the kundalini fire becomes thinner and thinner to the same extent. It is an increasingly thinner and thinner trace; it becomes more and more like a thin fog. If you now take a close look at this kundalini fire, you will see that it is not uniform. In the same, certain places will be more luminous and dense, and these are the places that lead the astral back to the physical. The optic nerve is thus connected to an astral nerve by a denser kundalini fire.

[ 10 ] Leadbeater did not want to go into whether such an astral suicide is possible [in his book 'The Astral Plane']. The Kundalini fire cannot be completely lifted out of the physical body with the astral body. If it were to happen that a person makes the decision not to come back, the Kundalini fire would continually pull him down; it is as if he still belonged to the physical body. It is the trace of the Kundalini fire that he follows. If the vital force is not exhausted, it is very difficult to lift the astral body out of the physical body. It is very difficult if a person is attached to the physical body that he can no longer use. In this respect, the fate of the suicide and that of the accident victim is not significantly different.

[ 11 ] Now, in the case of the more highly developed person, when the chakrams move, another process takes place. He has the ability to withdraw the Kundalini fire from the organism at will; at the same time, opposing currents open up from within: what used to flow in only from the outside can now be regulated at will from within; the whole process can now be brought about at will.

[ 12 ] Now man has attained complete control over the astral body. I would ask you to note that this state occurs more and more in human development. Today it is the psychically developed who have such an astral body, but man in general is rushing towards such a state. He will have the possibility to use his astral body in the sixth race. He will have a physical body and within it an astral body, which he can use in this way. In the next round, however, people will no longer have a physical body, but only an astral body, which they can then use freely, just as we people use the physical body today. The physical body will then no longer be there; the lowest body will then be the astral body.

[ 13 ] Something similar to astral centers can be found in the mental body. The astral body has individual sense centers: there is an astral center corresponding to the optic nerve, the auditory nerve, the olfactory nerve, and so on. The mental body no longer has such individual senses. It has only one sense, and it is imbued with mental perception, so that it is able to perceive mentally with its only sense. Therefore, it is able to relate everything to each other.

[ 14 ] The shadow of the mental sense is the intellect. When you hear a bell being struck, you turn around to perceive through the face as well. The astral senses are also connected to the mental sense by a kind of kundalini fire. The kundalini fire is thus the intermediate substance that connects the individual states.

[ 15 ] Now I would like to prepare some ideas about the development of the rounds. If you want to follow the development of the rounds, you have to realize that a person essentially consists of three parts: body, soul and spirit. To understand the rounds, it is important to call these parts differently. We can call the body: human genus; the soul: human personality; the spirit: human individuality. If you realize this, you will see that people differ little from each other in terms of genus; there is a universal equality there. But people differ greatly from each other in terms of personality. The personal is considered the distinguishing factor. But the individual is regarded as the general, as the general human spirit. Species: essentially the physical; personality: essentially the soul; individuality: essentially the spirit.

[ 16 ] We will first follow the first two, that is, genus and personality. Personality was prepared in the lunar epoch. What comes from the lunar epoch is personality. What we carry within us as genus, the way we look now, the physical form, is essentially an earthly imprint, an earthly formation. The entire evolution of the earth since the pralaya is there to gradually bring the human body form to the point where, on the one hand, the personality can connect with this form, and these two together can become the seat of the spirit, of individuality.

[ 17 ] It is now particularly useful to follow each one separately, and one therefore does well to follow genus, personality and individuality separately.

[ 18 ] The first is the genus. Imagine a pralaya, a state of twilight. From this, a sphere first emerges, but it is not really a sphere yet, it only contains the power to be a sphere. Within this sphere are the powers of form – archetypes, not yet figures, nebulae. From this the first sphere stands out. Within this sphere, the human species live in archetypes. This sphere is now becoming denser; and now thoughts are being formed in this sphere of human kind. Now the thoughts walk around in this sphere. This is the second state, [the Rupa state]. The third state is that the same transforms into an astral sphere.

[ 19 ] What used to be only thought forms in archetypes becomes astral forms. So the third sphere is where the astral human species live. The fourth sphere is already physical. For the first time we have the human species, [still] without the ability to grow, but with physical density, hardness, if you were to touch it. While this is happening, other kingdoms of nature have developed in the same way as species: 'animal species, plant species, mineral species are present as forms; but they cannot yet live. Imagine a plaster cast being taken of yourself and then filled in; that is more or less what it was like. On the fifth sphere everything will again become astral in transformed form, on the sixth everything will become thought again, and on the seventh sphere everything will be transformed again into a formless, monadic state. And then there is a pralaya.