The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture XXVII

[ 1 ] The course of development in the world presents itself to us in three stages: in consciousness, life, and form. Consciousness in its various forms is expressed in the seven planets: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. On each planet, it passes through seven life pools, and each life realm passes through seven states of form.

[ 2 ] Our physical Earth is such a state of form, the fourth state of form or globe in the fourth realm of life of the fourth planet or state of consciousness. We now think of the Earth as it is now and ask ourselves: What are we doing here? We take the objects outside in space, first in the mineral kingdom, and form works of art from them. We combine; we form a whole out of details. This is creation within form. Now, something new can also arise in another way, namely in a similar way to how, for example, stems, leaves, and flowers arise from a plant root. This flower is not assembled like a machine, through combination, but must grow out of what is already there. This is a process within life. Something new is created from what is already there.

[ 3 ] In the third type of creation, that which arises from consciousness, something emerges in such a way that we can say: basically, there was nothing there before — a void.

[ 4 ] Let us place ourselves at the very beginning of such a planetary development, at the very beginning of Saturn's development. What do we observe there? There was no physical planet yet, not even in the finest arupa form was a planet present, but we are still before the moment when Saturn first came into being. Nothing of our planetary chain exists yet; but the entire fruit of the previous planetary chain is there, similar to when we wake up in the morning, have done nothing yet, and only the memory of what we did the previous day is contained in our mind. So when we place ourselves at the very beginning of Saturn's development, we have in the revealing spirits the memory of a previous planetary chain, of what has been before.

[ 5 ] Now let us place ourselves at the end of the planetary chain, at the time when the volcanic stage is coming to an end. During the planetary chain, what was present at the beginning gradually came to light as creation. So first we have an outflow of consciousness; from the content of the past, from memory, consciousness creates the new. So at the end there is something that was not there at the beginning: namely, all experiences. What was there at the beginning has flowed out into all kinds of things and beings. A new consciousness has emerged at the end with new content, a new content of consciousness. It is something that has come out of nothing, out of experiences. When we consider renewal in life, we must tell ourselves that there must be a seed that makes this possible. But the new content of consciousness at the end of a planetary development has actually emerged from nothing, from experiences; no foundations are needed for this, it creates something that arises from nothing. When one personality looks at another, one cannot say that it has taken something from the other if it subsequently carries the memory of the other personality within itself. This memory has emerged from nothing. This is a third type of creation: out of nothing. The three types of creation are therefore as follows:

Combining existing parts (form)
Allowing new structures with new content to emerge from existing foundations (life)
Creating out of nothing (consciousness).

[ 6 ] These are three definitions of entities that produce a planetary chain, which underlie a planetary chain. They are called the three Logoi. The third Logos brings forth from the combination. When something else emerges from one substance with new life, it is the second Logos that brings it forth. But wherever we have something emerging from nothing, we have the first Logos. Therefore, the first Logos is often called that which is hidden in things themselves, the second Logos the substance resting in things, which creates living things from living things, and the third Logos that which combines everything that exists, composing the world from things.

[ 7 ] These three Logoi always pass through and into each other in the world. The first Logos also experiences inner wisdom and will. In the creation of the first Logos there is experience, that is, gathering thoughts from nothingness and then creating again according to the thoughts from nothingness. However, creation from nothing does not mean that nothing existed before, but rather that experiences are gained in the course of development and that new things are created in the course of becoming, that what is there melts away, as it were, and new things are created from experience.

[ 8 ] This creation happens comparatively as follows: Someone looks at another person and remembers the image. If he were creatively gifted like the first Logos, he could say to himself: Yes, I have seen NN and I also know the concept of the reverse NN. I can also form a negative image of him: So instead of where there is black, there is white and vice versa. In this way, he has created a completely new entity from the experience of the object and its negative. He could bring this to life. It would be a new entity that did not exist before. Now let us assume that someone does this with many people and the many people would perish, then the observer would be able to create a new world based on his experiences.

[ 9 ] When we look at the world, we constantly see the three Logoi interacting. Let us imagine the workings of the three Logoi in relation to human beings within our planetary system. Let us think of the point at the beginning of Saturn's development, when nothing existed yet. What happens there? Everything that existed before is, as it were, poured out. Everything that was there before is poured out. What emerges in this way would be the very first pouring out of matter from the sum of previous experiences. Everything that was previously absorbed is poured out in the form of matter. This also contains the matter from which humanity will later emerge. This matter is initially present only as matter. This outpouring must then be continuously built up and combined. This combination of the outflowing substance is a new creation. This is initially a creation of the third Logos; after the outflow of the substance, it is therefore a creation of the third Logos.

[ 10 ] What does this mean for humans? For humans, it means that first all the parts are combined to form their physical body. At that time, on Saturn, humans were true automatons. If you had spoken a word to them, they would have repeated it. Forms of beings are created. This is called the work of the third Logos and it continues into the Sun period, when human beings also receive their etheric body, their life. This is the work of the second Logos. Now we move on to the Earth period. Here, human beings themselves receive consciousness, that is, the ability to gather experiences out of nothingness. This is the work of the first Logos. Human beings on Saturn receive what is form within them from the third Logos. Human beings on the sun receive what is life within them from the second Logos. Human beings on earth receive what becomes consciousness within them from the first Logos.

[ 11 ] The concept of consciousness must become a little clearer to us. To do this, we must work out the concept of consciousness on a specific plane. Man is conscious, but the question is to know where his consciousness is. Man is now conscious on the physical plane, when we speak of waking consciousness. But waking consciousness could also be on the astral plane. If a creature's life is on the physical plane and its consciousness is on the astral plane, then it is an animal.

[ 12 ] In humans, consciousness is located in the head. In animals, for example in tigers, consciousness is on the astral plane. It creates a certain point of attack outside the head through which it acts on the tiger. When the tiger feels pain, the pain is also transferred to the astral plane. The organ for this in the tiger is located in front of the head, where the forehead is in humans. In humans, this point is already enclosed in the head and filled with the forebrain; consciousness has been captured by the brain and the front of the skull and is therefore on the physical plane. In the tiger, and in all animals in general, the junction of consciousness is located in front of the head, in the astral plane, where it enters the astral world. In plants, it is different again. If we could follow their consciousness, we would always end up at the tip of the root, going from top to bottom. If we then follow the line of growth, we would arrive at the center of the earth. This is the gathering point of all sensations, the absorption point of plant consciousness. It is directly connected to the mental world. The entire plant world has its consciousness in the mental realm.

[ 13 ] In the entire mineral world, consciousness is in the highest realms of the mental world, on the Arupa plane. Stones have their consciousness in such a way that if we wanted to find the point, we would find it as a kind of solar atmosphere. When we work with the mineral world on earth, chipping stones, every single action has a certain relationship to this solar atmosphere. There, one can sense what human beings are working on here. So we have a series of beings on the physical plane whose consciousness, however, lies on different planes.

[ 14 ] Humans and animals differ in that they have their consciousness on different planes. There are also other beings besides minerals, plants, animals, and humans. There are beings who have their consciousness in the physical and their bodies in the astral. Such a being is, so to speak, the reverse of an animal. Such beings really exist; they are the elemental beings. To understand them, let us clarify what belongs to the physical plane.

[ 15 ] Physical means: first, solid earth; second, water; third, air; fourth, ether (heat ether, light ether, chemical ether, life ether). Let us stick to the four lower forms of our physical plane and separate the etheric world from it.

[ 16 ] Consciousness can reside in all four forms of the physical plane, while the body of such a being resides in the astral plane. Imagine consciousness in the solid earth and the body in the astral plane; or a being whose consciousness is in water and whose body is in the astral plane; then one with consciousness in the air and the body in the astral; and one with consciousness in fire and the body in the astral. Today's humanity does not know much about these beings; in our time, they are known only through poetry. Miners, however, know such beings very well. A gnome is only perceptible to those who can see on the astral plane, but miners sometimes possess such astral vision; they know that gnomes are real. Thus, there are actually consciousnesses present in our earth, and what natural scientists today call laws of nature are the thoughts of beings who think on the physical plane but have their bodies on the astral plane. When physics refers to a law of nature, we can say to ourselves: these are the thoughts of a being that has its body on the astral plane. The forces of nature are creative beings, and the laws of nature are their thoughts.

[ 17 ] In the Middle Ages, alchemists tried to make spirits serve them. Goethe knew this quite well; Faust wants to have fire air; this is where the salamander, which has its body on the astral plane, is supposed to emerge. So we have beings around us who actually have their consciousness in fire, and we cause them pain when we light a fire, because this causes a certain change in the body of the being on the astral plane. When you light a light, you change this astral being. Similarly, when you bring about changes in other areas of the elements and forces of nature, you change something in these astral beings. We constantly populate the astral plane with beings by doing this or that. If we think this through clearly, we understand the meaning of church ceremonies: namely, not to do arbitrary things on the physical plane, but things that are meaningful, thereby creating meaningful beings on the astral plane. For example, when one burns incense, one is doing something purposeful; one burns certain substances and creates beings of a certain kind. When one swings a sword through the air in four directions, one creates a certain being. Similarly, when a priest makes certain hand movements while uttering certain sounds, such as 0, i, u, reinforced by repetition: Dominus vobiscum. The sound is arranged in a regular pattern, the air is set into specific vibrations, which are reinforced by making certain hand movements, and a sylph is conjured up. The signs, gestures, and words of the Freemasons also produce certain structures that express a lawfulness in the physical world. Through the deliberate use of these words, one creates a bond from one to the other, enveloping oneself in astral matter created by signs, gestures, and words.

[ 18 ] Of course, humans do all this continuously in everyday life, but they do so unsystematically, creating contradictory entities. The art lies in working upwards from the physical plane to higher harmonies. In cult ceremonies, certain actions are intended to create harmonious entities rather than contradictory ones. At first, humans are incapable of bringing these things into harmony. But for everything that humans create on the astral plane, there are certain directing entities. Thus we have a world of elemental beings around us with a king. The Indians name the king of the gnomes: Kshiti, the highest gnome; the highest being among the undines: Varuna; the highest being among the sylphs: Vayu; and everything that has consciousness in fire is directed by the king of fire: Agni. In all fire and water activities and so on, we are dealing with these particular devas. All the fire we have here on earth is the substance woven from the beings that belong to Agni. Ceremonial magic is the lowest form of sorcery and consists of acquiring certain skills on the physical plane in order to create certain structures and beings on the astral plane. There are schools where ceremonial magic is still practiced today. Such practices cause a great inclination toward the astral world and very often lead to suicide, because the person is then almost exclusively active in the astral world and has lost the ability to appreciate the physical world for its own sake. They have developed an inclination toward the other world, and the physical body then often becomes a hindrance to them.

[ 19 ] Now you will also understand the connection with the fire service that has emerged in the history of religion. The followers of Zarathustra attempted to actually create certain structures on the astral plane through the fire sacrifices of the priests. On the globe, everything now takes place physically. But from what has been said, we can see that astral beings are constantly being formed under the influence of our actions. All actions are accompanied by astral beings. These are our skandhas, which carry out our karma. But all physical facts also leave astral beings behind in the astral world. For example, Cologne Cathedral corresponds to a very specific being on the astral plane. Through everything that happens on Earth, when all physical matter has been reworked and the Earth dissolves, the next astral globe is formed automatically. It is simply there as the astral beings, as the effects of all previous physical processes. That is why human beings must constantly work on their karma. They must rectify the grotesque astral beings they have botched in their next life, otherwise these would be there as meaningless creatures for the next sphere. This is karma that human beings must repair. What happens on a large scale on Earth also happens on a small scale in human beings. Think of a child. It is brought up wrongly, spoiled with treats and so on. This not only has consequences for the physical body, but is also constantly communicated to the astral body, so that the astral body is actually changed as well. What is taught to the infant physically is transferred to its astral body, where it exists in the form of certain structures. However, what has been worked into it is gradually worked out again. In old age, the sins committed against the child take their revenge. These sins remain throughout the entire lifetime and are of great importance, especially for the last stage of a person's life. After the middle point of life, a kind of reversal takes place; the astral then works into the physical plane. In childhood, the human being lays the foundation in the astral for what he will have in old age. If the human being realizes what sins have been committed against him and then works on himself, he can eradicate the damage in the astral body; otherwise, he will collapse in old age under the same weaknesses of his childhood. However, only what one consciously works into the astral body has a balancing effect on it. If one does not consciously bring forth the opposite qualities later on, one cannot overcome one's faults.