The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] We spoke last time about the way in which the method called Rosicrucian establishes its relationship to man and to all of culture. Although all knowledge of the higher worlds can only be gained through the seer, through the higher developed spiritual powers of man, the method of the Rosicrucians works towards making it possible to understand what comes to light in the Rosicrucian theosophy by applying ordinary logic. These insights are discovered through the developed sense of the seer, but ordinary human logic is sufficient for comprehension. But one must not believe that what can be said in a single lecture is already able to withstand every supposed criticism. This is only the case if one examines the matter, taking into account all the reasons that can be logically applied. And we have already emphasized another quality in the last lecture, namely that the Rosicrucian method works to bring spiritual science out into practical life. Therefore, all things are presented here in such a way that they can be integrated into real life. But here too you must have patience; at first some of it will not appear as though it could penetrate into practical life. But when you can see the whole, you will see that the details are so arranged that they can be incorporated into everyday activities. The Rosicrucian method of research can provide a wisdom that can be used in life.

[ 2 ] At first we shall occupy ourselves with an overview of human nature. We shall become acquainted with the individual members of human nature. Only if we advance properly from step to step and lose sight of nothing, we shall see how everything is organically structured. Then we will consider the fate of the human soul after death, and we will consider the waking, the sleeping, and the dead human being in relation to the structure of human nature. We will have to examine what the human being does from death to the new birth. It is a widely held view that the human being is inactive in the period after death. This is not the case. On the contrary, he has much work to do and create, and he has to accomplish a task that is significant in the cosmos. Then we will have to show what is called reincarnation and karma, the destiny, in connection with the development of man, how humanity has developed in the past and how the perspective of human development is in the future.

[ 3 ] Today, it is now incumbent upon me to characterize the essence of man a little. When we speak of the essence of man, we must be aware that, in the eyes of someone who approaches the study of man with developed spiritual organs of perception, human nature appears much more complicated than in the ordinary sensory perception, which is permeated by the human mind and can only observe a very small part of the whole human being. Seen from the occult point of view, it is wrong — as we have already indicated — to call what is before us the physical body. The physical body, as it stands before us, is already permeated by the etheric body and the astral body. It is a union of these three bodies, and only if one could extract the other bodies would one have the real physical human body before one. This physical body is the link of the human being that it has in common with all of physical nature surrounding the human being, with minerals, plants and animals.

[ 4 ] We can only properly consider this physical human body if we say that it extends as far as the relationship between man and the mineral kingdom around him. You must realize, however, that this aspect of human nature can least of all be considered separately from the rest of the cosmos. The forces that work in the physical body work in from the cosmos. Those who see through the matter experience this in the same way as they experience the nature of a rainbow. For a rainbow to occur, there must be a very specific constellation of sunlight diffusion, rain clouds and so on. You cannot take away the rainbow if the constellation between rain clouds and sunshine is a corresponding one. So the rainbow is a kind of consequence, a phenomenon that is pushed together from the outside. In the same way, the physical body is a kind of mere phenomenon. You have to look for the forces that hold the physical body together in the rest of the world around you. The question now arises as to where these forces, in their true form, that cause our physical body to appear as it does, actually lie? We are led up into higher worlds, because in the physical world one can only see the phenomenon of the physical body. The forces that compose this phenomenon lie in a very high spiritual world. We must therefore take a closer look at the worlds that exist beyond our physical one.

[ 5 ] When the occultist speaks of higher worlds, these are worlds that surround us at every moment; the senses must only be opened to them, just as the eye must be opened to the world of colors. When certain psychic senses are opened, senses that are one degree higher than the physical senses, then the world around us is permeated by a new phenomenon, which is called the astral world. Rosicrucian theosophy calls this world the imaginative world, whereby however, imaginative is something much more real than one usually understands by the term. You see a rising and flowing of images. The color that is otherwise tied to the objects is in a diverse transformation within the astral world. We will get to know this in more detail. In the popularized Rosicrucian method, in the movement that has joined the Rosicrucians, this world is also called the elementary world, so that these three expressions, imaginative world, astral and elementary world, mean the same in the Rosicrucian sense.

[6] Furthermore, if still higher senses are developed, an even higher world can be found. It is the world of the harmonies of the spheres, which penetrates into the world of images and of the beings of color. It is called the world of Devachan or also the mental world, or the world of Rupa-Devachan; in the language of the Rosicrucians, the world of the harmonies of the spheres or the world of inspiration, because sound is the inspiration when the senses have opened to it. This world has also been called the heavenly world in the movement that has joined the Rosicrucian one. The lower or Rupa-Devachan world, the devachanic world, the inspiring world and the heavenly world are in turn the same.

[ 7 ] Then, finally, we have an even higher world, which opens up even higher senses. The Rosicrucian method describes it as the world of true intuition, where intuition is something much higher than one would think from the trivial application of the word in human life: a merging, a creeping into beings, so that one recognizes beings from within. In the movement that has joined the Rosicrucians, this world of intuition is called the world of reason. This world is so highly exalted above the ordinary world that it casts only a shadowy image in the world of man. The concepts of reason are weak silhouettes compared to what is real in this world.

[ 8 ] Thus, in addition to our physical world, we have to enumerate three other worlds if we want to understand the world in its true form. Behind the forces that hold the physical world together, we must seek the forces in the highest, in the intuitive world. Compared to the beings you can find there, what the physicist finds in the physical world appears as weak silhouettes. If you were to ascend to the highest of the worlds, you would find living beings for every concept you have of a crystal or an eye. What is a concept here is a shadow image of beings in this highest of the worlds. So our physical world is composed of forces that appear in their true form, as they say in theosophical terms, in the Arupa-Devachan.

[ 9 ] We can get an even clearer idea if we ask ourselves what lies in such a contemplation of the mineral kingdom for us. Man has a sense of self-consciousness. We call a mineral unconscious. But it is only unconscious if we remain on the physical plane. If we ascend to the higher worlds, it is no longer unconscious. However, if you enter the elemental world, you will not yet find the ego of the mineral world, because you will only find the ego consciousness of the mineral in the highest of the worlds we have just enumerated. Just as the finger has no consciousness, but you have to go from the finger to your ego if you want to find its consciousness, so the mineral leads to the ego through the currents that can be traced up to this highest realm of world existence. A nail on the finger belongs to the whole human organism; you find your consciousness in the I. When we look at a nail, it relates to our organism in the same way that the mineral relates to the highest spiritual world. Thus there is an I in the whole organism, and like the mineral, the nails are an extreme expression of the hardened in this life. The human physical body still has this in common with minerals, that a consciousness up in the spiritual world belongs to the physical body, insofar as it is purely physical. Insofar as man is endowed with a mere physical consciousness, without his knowing it, insofar as he has a physical body that has its consciousness up there, man is so disposed that from above there is an effect on the physical body. You have no control over what shapes the physical body. Just as it is your ego when you move your hand, you are influenced by a higher world with regard to your physical body, and so the ego-consciousness of the physical body brings about the physical processes of the body in you. Only the initiate who rises to intuition attains control over his physical body, so that no nerve current passes through his nerves without him knowing it. Only in this way can he become a comrade of those beings who live up there and direct his physical body.

[ 10 ] The second link of human nature is still common to man with the plant and animal world, it is the etheric or life body. It presents itself to the occult seer as having roughly the same form as the physical body. It is a body of force. If you could imagine the physical body away, this ether body would remain as a body of force, a body, traversed by lines of force that have built up the physical body. The human heart could never arise in the form that it has if there were not an ether heart in the ether body that permeates the physical body. This etheric heart contains certain forces and currents, and these are the builders, the architects, the formers of the physical heart. It is as if you imagine you have a vessel of water; if you cool this water, hardenings and ice formations arise in it. What is ice is water, only hardened, and the forms that the ice formations have were present in the water as lines of force. So the physical heart is formed out of the etheric heart, it is only a hardened etheric heart, and the currents of force in the etheric heart have given the physical heart its form.

[ 11 ] If you could imagine the physical body away, you would see the etheric body, especially in the upper parts, quite similar to the physical body. But this similarity only goes to the middle of the body, because the etheric body is very different from the physical body. You will understand this when I tell you that the etheric body is female in man and male in woman. Without this knowledge, much will remain incomprehensible in practical life. Otherwise, it appears as a luminous form and extends everywhere, in all parts, but only a little, beyond the physical body. This etheric body is shared by humans with the plant world.

[ 12 ] The case of the etheric body is similar to that of the physical body: the forces that hold the etheric body together are found in the world we call the inspiring or the world of Rupa-Devachan, the heavenly world. All the forces that hold the etheric body together are one step lower than those that hold the physical body together. Therefore, you must also look at it in such a way that you seek the ego-consciousness of the plants in this world of inspiration, of the lower devachan, and in this world of the harmonies of the spheres, where the ego-consciousness of the plant world is, there is also the ego-consciousness that permeates the human etheric body and lives in you without you knowing it.

[ 13 ] Now we come to the third link of the human being, to the astral body, or, in Rosicrucian terms, to the soul body. This astral body is something that humans have in common only with animals. Wherever sensation arises, pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, affects and passions, there the astral body is the carrier of these inner experiences of a being; also wishes, desires, all this is, as one says, anchored in the astral body. This astral body must again be characterized in such a way that we say that it is in it what is also in the animal world. Now the animal world also has a consciousness. The astral being of man and animal is held together by forces that lie in the astral world, in the imaginative world, or as the Rosicrucians express it, in the elementary world, so that the forces that hold the astral body together and give it the form it has can be recognized in their true form in the astral world. That is why the animal also has its ego consciousness in this world. Just as we speak of an individual soul in the human being, we speak of a group soul in the animal, and this can be found on the astral plane. Only that not the individual animal that lives here on the physical plane, but the species, all lions, all tigers together, have a collective ego, which you have to look for as a group soul on the astral plane. Thus, what lives here of the animal is only understandable if you can follow it up to the astral plane. You would find strands that, for example, emanate from the lions and unite in the astral plane to form the common group ego of the individual lions living here on Earth.

[ 14 ] Just as the human being has an individual ego, so too does something of a group ego live in each astral body. This animal ego lives in the human astral body, and only when the human being becomes able to see astral phenomena does he become independent of this animal ego, only then does he become a comrade of the astral beings, when the group souls of the animals on the astral plane meet him as individual animal beings do here. There are beings wandering about who can only come down fragmented as so and so many animals on the physical plane. In the course of their lives, they come together again with the rest of this entity on the astral plane. A whole group of animals on the astral plane is a being with which one can talk to as with a single individual here. They look a little different, but it is not without reason that they are characterized in the second apocalyptic seal by being given different forms, by saying that they fall into four classes: lion, eagle, bull and man – man who has not yet descended to the physical plane. These four apocalyptic animals are the four classes of group souls that are closest to man in his individual soul on the astral plane.

[ 15 ] Now let us turn to that which man no longer has in common with the world around him, that entity which finds expression in the ego. Through this fourth link of his being, he is the crown of physical earthly creation. It is only through this fourth aspect of his nature that he has what consciousness has down here on the physical plane. Just as mineral consciousness is on the plane of the Devas of the World of Demons, plant consciousness on the plane of the Devas of the World of Angels, and animal consciousness on the astral plane, so human consciousness of the self, as the fourth aspect of his nature, is in the physical world. Only here in his I does man have something into which no other being can intrude, no other consciousness-I can enter.

[ 16 ] Now we have come to know the fourfold human being; he is a physical human being, an etheric human being, an astral human being and an I. However, all this does not yet comprise the whole of human nature. Man had these four members even in his very first incarnation here on earth, and the process of passing through the various embodiments means an upward development of man. It consists in man's working through his three aforementioned members from his ego. If you look at a person from the distant past in his first incarnation on earth, such a person follows all his affects and desires. He has his four members, including the I, but behaves like an animal. If we now compare such a person with a high idealist, the difference is that the former person, the savage, has not yet worked on his astral body from his I. The next step in the evolution of humanity is for man to work on his astral body. In such a person, this work is expressed by the fact that certain original qualities of this astral body are taken into his control from within. The average European renounces certain instincts, saying to himself, “You may follow these, but not those.” Now, in proportion as man has brought under the control of his ego that part of the life of his astral body which was originally there, we call it the spiritual self. This is the same as what has been called the manas. This manas is a product of the transformation of the astral body by the ego. In terms of substance, it is the same as the astral body. It is only a different kind of arrangement of that which was originally in the astral body and has now been transformed into the spiritual self.

[ 17 ] The person who continues to develop acquires the ability to work not only on his astral body, but also on his ether body, starting from the I. Let us be clear about the difference between working on the astral body and working on the ether body. If we recall what we knew as an eight-year-old child and consider what we have learned since, it is an enormous amount. Everyone has absorbed a large number of concepts that prevent them from blindly following their affects and passions. But if you remember, for example, that you were a child with a violent temper and how far you have overcome that temper, you will find that it still comes through sometimes. Or how little you have succeeded in changing a bad memory, or how little a person transforms his character traits, the strengths and weaknesses of his conscience. I have often compared what a person transforms in temperament and so on, with the slow advance of the hour hand on a clock. That is precisely the essence of the student's initiation: what learning is is considered a mere preparation; it is much more essential and more done for the initiation when what temperament is is transformed. If one has transformed a weak memory into a strong one, transformed a violent temper into gentleness, transformed a melancholy temperament into an even-tempered one, then one has done more than if one had learned as much as one could. Therein lies a source of inner occult powers. This is the expression of the I working on the etheric body, not just on the astral body.

[ 18 ] Insofar as these tendencies express themselves, they must indeed be sought in the astral body; but if one wants to change them, one must seek them in the etheric body, and they can only be changed by working on the etheric body. The ego can transform as much of the ether body as is present in a person as is designated by the German term Lebensgeist, in contrast to the Lebensleib. In theosophical literature, this is referred to as Buddhi. The substance of the Buddhi is nothing other than the part of the ether body transformed by the ego.

[ 19 ] When the I becomes so strong that it not only learns to transform the etheric body, but also the physical body, the densest of human nature – the one that is shaped in such a way that its forces reach far into the highest of the worlds – then we say: Man develops within himself the highest limb of his present nature, that which is called Atma or the true spiritual man. The forces for the transformation of the physical body are to be sought in the highest world. One begins the transformation of the physical body with the transformation of the breathing process, because Atma means breathing. Through such a transformation, one changes the nature of the blood that works on the physical body, so that one works one's way up to the highest of the worlds.

[ 20 ] Now one must distinguish between two forms of transformation, and if one wants to express it more precisely, one speaks of an unconscious and a conscious transformation. In truth, every European has unconsciously transformed the lower limbs of his nature from his ego. Consciously, he transforms them in his present cycle of development only in relation to Manas, and he must become an initiate if he consciously wants to learn to transform his etheric body.

[ 21 ] We thus have the original three members of human nature, which every human being has, even the most primitive one on the first level of development, and in that the I. Now the transformation begins. For a long time it was unconscious; now humanity is consciously beginning to transform the astral body. The initiates are now consciously transforming the etheric body, and in the future all human beings will consciously transform the etheric and physical bodies.

[ 22 ] Thus we have the three original members of human nature: physical body, etheric body, astral body, and then the I. The I has a transforming effect; one sees the I first transforming these three members, which for the present human being is a process of the past. It has unconsciously given rise to the sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the consciousness soul as an inclination.

[ 23 ] In Rose Croix Theosophy, a distinction is made between the sentient soul, the mind soul and the consciousness soul. It is only in the consciousness soul that conscious transformation becomes apparent; it is here that the I begins to consciously work at transformation. First, the spirit self is developed in the astral body. Within the etheric body, the life spirit is developed as a counterpart to the life body, and further, in the physical body, the actual spiritual being, Atma, is developed. Thus, we have a total of nine members of human nature.

[ 24 ] For the outward appearance, two of these members of human nature, sentient soul and soul body, are, as it were, one within the other, like a sword in its scabbard. The sentient soul is contained in the soul body, so that they appear as one. Likewise, the spirit self and the consciousness soul are one, so that these nine members can be reduced to seven.

[ 25 ] Now, one can enumerate the seven members as follows:

1. Physical body
2. Etheric or life body
3. astral body, in which the sentient soul is located, and then
4. the ego and, as the higher members:
5. spirit self or manas with the consciousness soul
6. life spirit or buddhi, and as the highest
7. spirit man or atma

[ 26 ] Such is the inner connection of human nature, which in truth actually presents nine members, whereby two times two coincide. Therefore, in the Rosicrucian method, one differentiates three times three = nine members, which through this coupling together are reduced, as it were, to seven. But we must recognize the nine in the seven, otherwise we will only arrive at a theoretical contemplation.

9. Spiritual man
8. Life spirit
7. Spirit self
6. Consciousness soul
5. Mind soul
4. Sensation soul
3. astral body
2. life body
1. physical body

[ 27 ] The I shines forth in the soul, and then the work on the bodies can begin.

[ 28 ] But the transition from theory to life can only be won by truly observing the nature of things. What is hinted at here shall guide us tomorrow when we move on to the contemplation of the sleeping, waking, and dead human being.