The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Gospel of John II

[ 1 ] Spiritual science divides the human being, as it appears to us, into seven parts. The physical body perceptible to our sense organs is only one part of the human being. Man shares this physical body with all of the mineral nature that surrounds us. The forces at work in our physical body are the same as those in the seemingly inanimate natural world.

[ 2 ] This physical body is, however, still permeated by higher forces, much as a sponge can be permeated by water. The difference between inanimate and animate bodies is as follows: in inanimate bodies, the substances that form them merely follow physical and chemical laws. In the living body, on the other hand, the substances are interlinked in a very complicated way, and only under the influence of the ether body can they maintain this unnatural grouping. At every moment, the physical substance wants to group according to its nature, which means the disintegration of the living body. At every moment, the ether body fights against this disintegration. When the etheric body withdraws from the physical body, the substances of the physical body group together in their natural way, and the body decays and becomes a corpse. The etheric body is thus the perpetual fighter against the decay of the physical body.

[ 3 ] Every organ has this etheric body as its basic power. Man has an etheric heart, an etheric brain and so on to hold the respective physical organs together. It is easy to be tempted to imagine the etheric body in material terms, as a very fine mist, for example. In reality, the etheric body is a sum of currents of force. To the clairvoyant, certain currents of great importance appear in the etheric body of a person. For example, a current rises from the left foot to the forehead, to a point between the eyes about one centimeter deep in the brain, then returns to the other foot, from there to the opposite hand, from there through the heart to the other hand and from there back to its starting point. In this way, a pentagram of energy currents is formed.

[ 4 ] This flow of energy is not the only one in the etheric body, but there are still many more. It is to this flow of energy in particular that the human being owes its upright position. Animals are bound to the earth with their front limbs, and we do not see such a current in animals. Regarding the shape and form and size of the human etheric body, it can be said that the upper parts of it are a complete reflection of the physical body. It is different with its lower parts, which do not correspond to the physical body. The relationship between the etheric body and the physical body is based on a great secret that shines deep into human nature: the etheric body of a man is female and that of a woman is male. This explains the fact that we find a lot of femininity in every man's nature and a lot of masculinity in every woman's nature. In animals, the etheric body is larger than the physical body. So the clairvoyant sees, for example, in the horse above the head, the ether head in the form of a cap protruding.

[ 5 ] There is something in man that is much closer to him than blood, muscles, nerves and so on. These are the sensations of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, in short, everything that man calls his inner self. In the occult science, this is called the astral body, which man has in common only with the animal.

[ 6 ] Just as a man born blind has only an incomplete knowledge of the world around him and has no sense of the world of colors and light, so the average person is in the same position with regard to the astral world. It is just as present, permeating and surrounding the physical world, but it is not perceived by him. When the astral sense is opened in a person, the astral world becomes visible to him. The significance and importance of this moment in human evolution is even greater than when a blind person acquires the use of his eyes through an operation. But each of us knows this astral world, even if only imperfectly, because our astral body is transported into this world every night. We rest in the astral world to restore the harmony of the astral body, because fatigue, from a spiritual point of view, is only disharmony in the physical and astral bodies. A parable could shed light on the relationship between the physical and astral bodies. Take a sponge, cut it into a thousand pieces and let the contents of a glass of water be absorbed by these small pieces, and we have a parable for the waking average person. If we squeeze out the little sponges and collect the water back into its container, it coalesces into a uniform mass. Thus the human astral bodies, which were individualized during the day like the absorbed water drops, enter the common astral substance and strengthen and invigorate themselves in it. This can be recognized in the morning by the fact that the fatigue is gone. As long as a person is not a seer, his astral body that has emerged during sleep mixes with the other astral bodies. For the seer, however, the situation is different.

[ 7 ] The individual plants do not have their own astral body, but the whole plant world possesses a common astral body, that of the earth. The earth is a living being, the plants are its limbs.

[ 8 ] The fourth link in the human being is the I. Man can only speak the word “I” to himself. This word can never sound to our ears from outside to designate us. When this I resounds in a being, then the God in him speaks. The animal, plant and mineral worlds are in a different situation with regard to the I. An animal, for example, can say “I” to itself just as little as a finger of our hand can say “I” to itself. If the finger wanted to designate its ego, it would have to point to the human ego; similarly, the animal would have to point to an ego belonging to an entity living in the astral world. All lions, all elephants, and so on, have a common group ego, that is, a lion ego, an elephant ego, and so on.

[ 9 ] If the plant wanted to point to its self, it would have to point to a collective self at the center of the earth, in the mental world. It is well known that when you sting an animal, that animal feels pain. It is different with plants, and the seer can tell us that picking flowers or cutting corn means the same pleasant feeling for the earth as taking milk from a cow while suckling. But if the plant is pulled out by the root, it is as if a piece of flesh were cut out of an animal. This uprooting is felt as pain in the astral world.

[ 10 ] If one were to ask: Where is the I of the mineral world? – then one would no longer be able to find such a center-forming being in the spiritual world. As the power of the whole cosmos is everywhere spread, the I of the minerals is to be found in the super-spiritual world, the Devachan world, which is called higher in Theosophy.

[ 11 ] In the Christian Secret Doctrine the world in which the animal ego resides is called the world of the Holy Spirit, the astral world; the world in which the plant ego is found is called the world of the Son, the spiritual or devachanic world. When the seer begins to sense in this world, the “Word” speaks to him, the Logos. The world of the mineral I, the supersensible world, is called the world of the Father-Spirit in the Secret Doctrine.

[ 12 ] Man is a being in a state of constant evolution; we have now become acquainted with all four aspects of his nature. They are what Pythagoras in his school called the lower tetrad. The savage, the civilized man, the idealist, the saint: all have these four parts. But the savage is the slave of his passions; the civilized man no longer follows his impulses and desires indiscriminately; the idealist does so even less, and the saint has become completely master of them.

[ 13 ] The I works on the astral body and divides off a part of it. This part becomes larger and larger in the course of human evolution, while the inherited part becomes smaller and smaller. In a Francis of Assisi, the entire astral body has been worked through and transformed by the I. This astral body, transformed by the I, forms the fifth limb of human nature: the spiritual self or manas.

[ 14 ] But the I can also become master of the etheric body or life body. The part of the etheric body transformed by the ego is called the spirit of life or buddhi. The impulses of art and religion have a transforming effect on the etheric body, the latter to a particularly strong degree because they are repeated daily; and repetition is the magic power that transforms the etheric body. In this sense, conscious work in the esoteric schooling has the strongest effect, and meditation and concentration are the means used here. The speed with which the etheric body and the astral body are transformed is similar to the way in which the hour hand moves in relation to the minute hand on a clock. If we succeed in changing the slightest thing in our temperament, which depends on the conditions of the etheric body, this is worth more than acquiring any number of ingenious theories.

[ 15 ] The greatest power is needed to consciously transform the physical body. The means for this are given only in the school of initiation. It can only be hinted that the regulation of breathing forms the beginning of this transformation. The physical body consciously transformed by the I is called the spirit man or Atma. The power for the transformation of the astral body flows to us from the world of the Holy Spirit. The power for the transformation of the etheric body flows to us from the world of the Son or the Word. The power for the transformation of the physical body flows to us from the world of the Father Spirit or the Divine Father.