The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Being, Life, and Consciousness I

[ 1 ] What we need to understand precisely are the relationships between the concepts of being, life, and consciousness. What is meant by this in mystical terms? Let us imagine a child learning to write, and all the circumstances that occur during the process of learning to write, each on its own: the writing teacher, the materials with which everything is prepared, but not the child itself. If we imagine this as the first thing that belongs to writing, we have imagined the first aspect of being. Now [let us think of] all the activities, the movements that the child acquires, in isolation: life separated from being. Now let us leave the first and second aside and take the aspect that arises when the child has finished with the activities. The only thing that comes into consideration is what gave the child the power to write: consciousness. — Everywhere we find the three aspects: being, life, and consciousness.

[ 2 ] Now let us define these terms precisely, because when one speaks in theosophy of being (form), life, and consciousness, one often introduces false ideas. The point is that being interacts with life, and the result is consciousness. Now let us apply the concepts [evolution, involution] that we gained in yesterday's lesson. When we consider the interaction of being with life, we see that being passes into life, life takes up being. What is taken up in this way by life into being envelops itself again in involution, passes into consciousness. So we can say: every consciousness is the evolution of an involuted life and being. When we examine a consciousness, we ask: what kind of life is involved in this consciousness, what kind of being is involved in this life?

[ 3 ] Let us now take our consciousness, this consciousness that we now have — self-consciousness. When we examine it, we will characterize it as I attempted to do in the book [Theosophy] in connection with Jean Paul: Self-consciousness is — I am I.

[ 4 ] Now let us seek what is involved in it: the life of this consciousness must be involved in it. This consciousness, which is now self-consciousness, must have been a conscious life in the past, and this conscious life is involved in it. Let us think away from that: I am I — the “I,” then this consciousness does not say: I [am consciousness], but: I am life. Consciousness first developed from it. But since we are at the stage of self-consciousness, we have conscious consciousness instead of living consciousness. Before, we had being consciousness: I am being.

[ 5 ] Let's translate it properly.

[ 6 ] “I am the I” is easy to translate: the given fact that man experiences.

[ 7 ] We must take a closer look at “I am life.” When we do so, we will find that we go beyond the mere ‘I’ to the foundation and must ask ourselves how “I am life” developed. There must be interaction between being and life. Being is involved in life. When we consider this, we gain an understanding of the human being itself, for what lives in the concept “I am life” is the human being before it became “I.” “Human being” is the general, ‘I’ is the particular. The human being is involved in the “I,” evolves in the “I.” If we utter the sentence [“I am life”] at this lower level, we must say: “I am a human being.” When we say this sentence, we draw from our innermost being what is occultly woven into it, and understand what we are no longer, but once were, and what is involved in us.

[ 8 ] Third sentence: “I am being.” When we take this, we must realize that this is a sum of external circumstances that have now slipped completely into the innermost core, as the third layer, hidden deep within us.

[ 9 ] I am I = what is given today; I am life = [Lükke]; I am consciousness: we address the entire external world at the level of consciousness; we have the essence as such, which underlies us, for before there was no consciousness and no life, but circumstances, circumstances that have accumulated and become our innermost essence. Then we must translate the sentence into: “I am an element.” For that is the elementary.

[ 10 ] So we have these three levels of consciousness that we can pursue within ourselves:

1. I am I
2. I am a human being
3. I am an element.

[ 11 ] If we continue, we would lose the thread of our three concepts, but it always repeats itself. It becomes “being” again by connecting with others.

[ 12 ] The fourth is therefore union. So that when we ascend, we come to the statement: I am in union. Then the I behaves like the earlier facts that have united to find their way into life. The ego consciousness is thus taken back into being. Likewise, being was already consciousness in the past. So that in the first being, a previous consciousness is already involved. - If we now go back from the sentence: I am a being, an element, we come to the sentence: I am a pre-consciousness. This pre-consciousness can also be expressed as follows: I am a Dhyan Chohan. In Christian esotericism, it is expressed as follows:

I am a God
I am a glory (element)
I am a power (human being)
I am a force (principality)

[ 13 ] We have previously referred to the same thing:

All-consciousness (now preconsciousness)
Life consciousness (or plant consciousness, i.e., the elemental)
Human-animal consciousness or dream consciousness (I am human, human consciousness)
(now attained) intellectual consciousness: (self-consciousness).

[ 14 ] So once again we have the microcosm in its chain.

[ 15 ] Let us think that it is now breaking through to the next level. In union, the I becomes an element again.

I am a Dhyan Chohan = preconsciousness
I am an element = being<
I am a human being = life
I am I = consciousness – self-consciousness

Being = psychic consciousness
Life = hyperpsychic consciousness
Consciousness = spiritual consciousness

[ 16 ] Now self-consciousness is elevated to being. So what we grasp today in thought becomes being, so that we may one day have consciousness of all humanity by extending our ego over all people. This is then called psychic consciousness. - The next stage will be the one where the ego of everyone else becomes alive in us: hyperpsychic consciousness. - At the highest stage, we take the whole world into our consciousness: everything is within us: spiritual consciousness. (Everything that is outside is already inside: divine consciousness.)

[ 17 ] Let's imagine [demonstrated with a sheet of paper]: the surface of the paper is preconsciousness. Now it narrows:

[ 18 ] 1. I am an element

[ 19 ] Now it narrows into something that is already less:

[ 20 ] 2. I am a human being

[ 21 ] Then:

[ 22 ] 3. I am I

1. The I then becomes itself
2. Being and steps outward.
3. It also outshines life.
4. It outshines the whole elemental existence and then comes back out into what it was.

[ 23 ] If we recapitulate, we find that there is a conceivably strong involution in the I, that it contains the complete triad involuted; its essence contains this I completely hidden in darkness. If we examine what entered into this darkness, it was life; it illuminated this darkness, it shone into it. And before that, being shone into life, and in being was involved preconsciousness. The revelation of preconsciousness is now again the Word. — So that we can say: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. The same was with God in the beginning. All things were made through it, and without it nothing was made that has been made. In it was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it."

[ 24 ] The I must shine outwardly what it is inwardly, occult. No outward appearance may harm the I; the I must become powerful. What it has within itself must emerge in outward power. What does it find? That which evolved earlier, the tempter, the serpent, writhing out there. The ego must overcome the serpent, and now we must be clear that this is the sign that someone has given birth to the living Christ within themselves when they overcome the deadly, the tempter, death, the prince of this world.

[ 25 ] (Mark 16:17-18): And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.

[ 26 ] If you are light within, your eye will be single. (It will let the light through.) But if you are a rogue, there will be darkness within you. But if there is darkness within you, how great must the darkness be?

State before the year 30:
I-superhuman I-Christ
I-human chela I-Jesus: Palestine
I-human chela I-John the Evangelist: Alexandria
State after 30: Christ in Jesus; Jesus in John

[ 27 ] What matters in the Testament are the facts behind the words; in the other holy books, it is the teachings. (The Old Testament is an involution in relation to the New Testament. It is the macrocosm in relation to the microcosm.)