The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] If we want to keep the relationships between the world, the earth, and human beings in mind during the coming conflicts, then it will be necessary for us to consider certain things today that will provide us with a kind of foundation for this. We must remember that if we only use our outer senses and the intellect that is bound to the senses, then we can, in essence, see very little. This applies to the earth as well as to human beings, and even more so to the universe. We must be clear that a large part of what is most essential remains hidden from the outer senses and from outer intellectual observation. Therefore, we will first point out some things that are hidden in the beings surrounding us. In doing so, we will have to mention many things that are already familiar to many of you, but in order to follow the whole great actual connection, it is necessary that we first bring all these things before our minds once again. First of all, we must look around us at the world body that we initially inhabit and that will be the focus of our consideration: our Earth.

[ 2 ] Yesterday we looked at a part of our Earth's development in connection with the whole development of the Earth; we saw how, in the course of this development, beings have been active in ever-changing ways, from the time when the Earth and the Sun still formed one body, up to our own time. And we have seen how, in the post-Atlantean era, human beings repeat in their knowledge and religious consciousness everything that the whole Earth has gone through in the course of its development. But now we must go deeper and deeper into this earth. In the visible world, we are first surrounded by what we call the four kingdoms of nature: the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, and the human kingdom. But human beings are not merely the material, physical beings that our outer senses tell us about, that the intellect of outer science describes and explains to us. Rather, they are complex beings composed of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. We all know this.

[ 3 ] If we now cast our gaze over the other beings of the earthly realms, we must above all be aware that these terms — physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I — are not meaningless for the other beings, but that, on the contrary, they have their proper meaning. If we remain in the physical realm, we can initially only attribute an I-being to human beings among all earthly beings. Here in this physical world, only human beings have a self-conscious I. With animals, the relationship is completely different; animals do not have their I in the physical world in the same way as human beings. When we consider animals in their difference from humans, we must first say that while every human being has an I as an individual, enclosed within their skin, individual animals do not have an I. Rather, certain groups of animals of the same kind always have an I together. For example, all lions or all bears together have an I, and we therefore call such an I in the animal world a group I. We encounter the human ego in the physical world; even though we cannot see it with our eyes, it is present in every human being, so to speak, within their skin. This is not the case with animals; we do not encounter the group ego in the physical world. To give you an idea of such a group ego, imagine that there is a wall in front of me with ten holes in it. I stick my ten fingers through the holes and move them. Now you can see my ten fingers, but you cannot see me, and you will readily say that these fingers do not move by themselves, but that there must be something hidden that causes the movement; in other words, you suspect a being that belongs to the ten fingers. This comparison leads us to the group-like, soul-like aspect of animals. The many lions here on the physical plane are beings that also hide something from us in a certain sense. Just as the central being hides behind the wall from the ten fingers, so here too something is hidden that is common to all lions, namely because it does not exist at all in the physical world. The same I-being that exists in the physical world in humans is found in the astral world in animals: animals have their group I in the astral world. If we want to imagine schematically the relationship of the animal to its ego, we must think of a boundary between the physical and the astral world; in humans, the ego is below in the physical world, whereas in animals only the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body are in the physical world. The fourth member, the I, is not in the physical world as it is in humans. Each individual animal extends into the astral world, and there these extensions come together and form the garment, the shell for the animal group I, let us say for the lion I. This group I lives as an individual personality on the astral plane, just as the human individual I lives here on the physical plane. Schematically expressed: when the clairvoyant enters the astral plane, he encounters the animal “I's” there as individual entities that extend their limbs into the physical world. Now, of course, you must not imagine this merely schematically, but you must accustom yourself to imagining it in its actual reality. You must be clear that we do not have to go to another region to enter the astral world, for this astral world permeates our physical world; it is only a matter of being able to look into it with our astral senses open.

[ 4 ] Now we ask: How does the clairvoyant see the group egos of animals? — The clairvoyant perceives the group ego of one of the higher animal species, for example, by seeing something like a brightly shining strip along the spine of the animal. In fact, our air circle is not only permeated by the material currents we know, but is also permeated on all sides by real currents of an astral nature. When his spiritual eye is open, the clairvoyant sees our earth permeated by many kinds of currents, and in these currents he learns to recognize the group egos of animals.

[ 5 ] A second question then arises: Do lower beings, such as plants, also have something of an I? Yes, they too have an I. When the clairvoyant examines a plant, he finds the following: What exists in the physical world is nothing more than a combination of the physical and etheric bodies. Let us imagine that we have here the surface of the earth (it is drawn); here the root of a plant, the stem, the leaves, and the flower. What grows out of the physical world does not have, as the human being does, a physical, etheric, astral body, and ego, but only a physical body and an etheric body. The animal still has its astral body in this world, but the plant does not. But you must not conclude from this that what fills you as astral and is also active in animals is not active in plants. To the open eye of the clairvoyant, the plant is surrounded and radiated, and preferably radiated by astral substances. And it is these substances that also contribute to the formation of the flower. So while the plant grows from leaf to leaf through the influence of the etheric body, it is completed at the top in the flower by being bathed in astral substance.

[ 6 ] The clairvoyant sees every plant that grows upward as being surrounded by this astral substance. But there is something else present in this plant—the I. If we want to grasp the I of the plant, we must seek it at the center of the Earth. All plants have their I there; this is an important and essential truth. So while we see the I's of animals circling the Earth, in order to perceive the plant I, we must direct our gaze to the center of the Earth. And indeed, when the clairvoyant gaze penetrates to such a view of the plant, the Earth, which otherwise appears to humans only as a material structure, expands into an organism that has its I in the center; and this I consists of all the plant I's together. The earth is animated with an I, and just as your head has hair that grows out of your being, so plants grow out of the being of the earth and belong to the entire earth organism. And when you pull a plant out of the earth by its roots, it hurts the entire earth; the plant soul feels pain. That is a fact. On the other hand, you must not believe that it hurts the earth when you pick a flower; the opposite is true. For example, when you see the reaper cutting the corn in autumn, clairvoyant vision sees whole streams of well-being flowing over the earth. You must not raise any moral objections. You might say, for example: Is it a lesser sin for a child to tear up all kinds of plants for no good reason than for someone to transplant a plant carefully and with good intentions? — The facts remain the same. If you uproot a plant, it hurts the earth; if you cut a plant, it does the earth good. For the earth gladly gives what it bears on the surface, and when animals walk over the ground and graze on the plants, it feels a sense of well-being, similar to what a cow feels when her calf suckles at her breast. This is definitely an occult fact. What grows out of the earth as a plant and is surrounded by the astral body above is the same for the earth as the milk given by animal beings. These are not mere comparisons, but real facts. However, those who can see into the astral world with clairvoyant vision do not yet see anything of the plant's I. This requires a higher form of clairvoyance that is able to see into the devachanic world. We must therefore say that the group I's of animals are in the astral world, while the I of the plant is in the devachanic world.

[ 7 ] And now the question arises: What about the mineral world? What about so-called dead rock? Does it also have something like an ego or higher members? When we look at a stone, we find that it has only a physical body in this world. The etheric body of the mineral surrounds the mineral and envelops it on all sides. If you take a rock crystal, for example, you must imagine that its entire form is hollow, like an ethereal cavity, and that only where the physical substance ends does the ethereal begin; just as the plant is surrounded by the astral above, so the mineral is surrounded on all sides by the ethereal. This etheric substance is at home in the astral world; note well: here we have an etheric substance that is at home in the astral world. Things are actually more complicated than one usually thinks. It is not the case that everything in the astral world is astral; that is just as little the case as everything in the physical world is physical. For example, on the physical plane, in the physical world, you have the etheric body, the astral body, and even the human ego. In the same way, the clairvoyant sees the etheric body of minerals in the astral world.

[ 8 ] Where, then, is the astral body of minerals?

[ 9 ] It appears as strangely shaped rays. Imagine such rays piercing the etheric body like spikes, imagine such light formations becoming wider and wider and then, so to speak, piercing the etheric body of the mineral. Thus you have astral ray figures radiating from every mineral. You will not find an end to them, for these figures radiate out into the indefinite space of the universe. So when you look at a rock crystal, you first see the space that is physically filled; clairvoyantly, you see the physical form surrounded by the light of the etheric body and then, as if drilled into it, all kinds of ray formations that extend infinitely in all directions into space. Here, your view is expanded from every point in space filled with some mineral substance into infinity. No point in space is disconnected from the universe. It is as if every single thing in our world were suspended by thousands upon thousands of threads of light of a spiritual nature, threads of light that extend out into infinite space, and you can imagine how, as this expands more and more, all these lights must flow into one another. And indeed, when you look at a mineral clairvoyantly, this is what you see: You see the physical body surrounded by the light figures of the etheric body; then you see rays that expand more and more, going out into the world space; you see them disappear as if into a hollow sphere; from every mineral you can imagine the center of such a hollow sphere, and these are everywhere, throughout the whole world. Such hollow spheres are embedded in one another, and when we imagine that the clairvoyant faculty rises higher and higher until it reaches the point where these rays unite, we arrive at the place where the I's of the minerals shine toward us from all sides of the universe. These I's reveal themselves to the clairvoyant faculty when it enters the higher regions of the devachanic plane. While the rays themselves are in the lower parts, and thus also the astral body, the I is in the highest devachanic world.

[ 10 ] Thus we have an overview of the different realms. The I of the human being is on the physical plane, the I of animals on the astral plane, that of plants on the lower levels of the devachanic world, and the I of minerals on the highest devachanic levels.

[ 11 ] In a certain sense, therefore, minerals here on Earth are in the opposite position to human beings. The human being has its I within, enclosed within the skin; each human being is a center, a human center. Plants already form another center; all together they form an earth center, and minerals form the circumference of our world sphere in their I's. Therefore, the human I is the center wherever the human being stands; the mineral I is everywhere in the circumference: exactly the opposite of the human being. And now you will understand when I say that the mineral soul is in a completely different position than, for example, the human or animal soul. When you smash a mineral, it does not feel pain, but on the contrary, pleasure and lust, and whole streams of lust flow out of a quarry when the rock is smashed and shattered. On the other hand, it would cause immense pain if you tried to put all the fragments, all the pieces that had been split off, back together again. You can observe this in another process. Imagine a glass of warm water; you throw a piece of salt into it. As the salt dissolves, not only does matter dissolve, but a feeling of well-being fills the warm water, a lust in the tearing apart of the mineral particles as they dissolve. But if you now cool the water so that the salt recrystallizes, this process is associated with a feeling of pain. The initiated have always known such things, and they have always told people about them. People just have to learn to understand it. One of the great initiates has just said something significant about this. Let us think for a moment about how it was when the earth came into being. Today we walk around on solid ground, but that was not always the case. If we trace the earth back in its development, we find that it became softer and softer, finally becoming liquid and even vaporous. Everything that is solid and mineral today has crystallized out of the once liquid earth. In order for human beings to walk on this earth, what was soft and liquid had to solidify. For human existence, it was necessary that the earth, in its mineral nature, went through infinite pain, for infinite pain was connected with this solidification of the earth's mass. That is why Paul says, referring to this fact: “All creation groans in pain, waiting to be adopted as children.” This means that the earth had to solidify in pain, the mineral foundation had to be formed, so that human beings could be accepted into God's childhood.

[ 12 ] The writings that come from true initiates are such that human beings need not lose respect for them when they really get to know them; every line of the inspired Bible will fill them with deep awe when they recognize its meaning through spiritual wisdom. In such words as “All creation groans in pain,” world secrets are hidden. However, such truths will only become fruitful for humanity again when they have penetrated into the feelings. They must not only be understood abstractly, with the intellect, but must be incorporated, penetrate into real knowledge. Let us consider once again the plant, how the physical body grows out, surrounded at the top by the astral body, with its ego at the center of the earth. Let me point out once again the essence of the matter. What does this astral body, which envelops the flower from outside, actually do? It does something that is truly significant in the life of the plant, and we will understand this if we look a little deeper into the spiritual structure of our earthly existence. Yesterday we saw that there was a time when the earth and the sun still formed one body. Human beings already existed then, albeit under very different conditions than today; they had a dull clairvoyant consciousness; their organism was such that they could live in this earth-sun mass. Today they are organized in such a way that when a ray of sunlight reaches them and falls into their eyes, they see this ray of sunlight. That is, they see the sunbeam coming toward them from outside, or they see through the sunbeam. But that was not the case when humans were still with the Earth in the Sun. Then they saw the sunbeam, so to speak, from within; they saw the soul forces that permeated the sunbeam — and do you know what these soul forces were? The sunbeam is permeated by the same force that we have in our own astral body. Physical light is only the outer body of the astral light that radiates from the sun, and in truth, what surrounds the plant body up there is intimately connected with what comes from the sun in the astral realm. You have a desire, a will, because you have an astral body. Here is desire, will, feeling, which surrounds the blossom of the plant above. What does that which surrounds the blossom want? It wants to suck in, to absorb the soul of the sunbeam, and with the soul the purest, the I, and it is the continuation of the sunbeam that goes through the plant to the center of the earth. In this activity of the spiritual content of the sunbeam, which passes through the plant to the center of the earth, the activity of the plant's I is expressed. Thus, spirit, plant, and sun work together. The spiritual forces that lie in the sun are indeed continually supplied to the earth, and by what means? By those astral bodies that surround the blossoms of plants, which long for the soul of the sunbeam, which they eagerly absorb and sink down through their bodies into the earth. What happens externally in the physical world through the influence of the sun's rays is only one side of the coin; the other side is what works spiritually in the plant and what thirsts for the soul of light that flows into the earth through the sun's rays.

[ 13 ] And now you will understand how these things can become practical. Imagine a person in the distant future who feels toward every plant what has just been said about the longing desires of plants to absorb the sun soul. This person will have, on a higher, spiritual level, something that animals have on a lower level when they walk across a pasture and pick the plants that suit them, leaving the others standing. An unconscious instinct, which is in reality a higher spirit, guides the animal. The human being of the future will consciously approach the plants that are good for him; not as today, where he thinks about what is best for his body, but he will have a living relationship with each individual plant, because he will know that what the plants have absorbed will also pass into him as such. Eating will not be a lowly occupation for them, but something accomplished with soul and spirit, because they will know that everything they consume is the outer form of something spiritual. For our time, for our intermediate age, when people cannot know so much about the living spiritual relationships between themselves and the world, all kinds of surrogates had to be created. Why have the initiated at all times urged people to pray before eating? Prayer should be nothing more than a documentation of the fact that something spiritual flows into the human being when he eats. Thus we see the world of sensations and feelings change when the human being takes real wisdom into himself. With a certainty like the instinct of an animal at a lower level, people will know in radiant, bright clarity what they are doing; they will know because they will recognize the soul of what they are uniting with themselves. Even down to this level, we can see what practical value spiritual science has for the future.

[ 14 ] And so we now view the world with completely different feelings. We no longer see the earth as merely a world body illuminated by the rays of the sun, but as a living being that draws in the soul of the sun through the mantle of the astral plant shell; and we see that the entire universe is permeated by the “I” of the minerals, that everything is animated and spiritualized.

[ 15 ] But we can go even further. We have found the four kingdoms: the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms. But that is not the end of it. These are only the kingdoms that human beings can see in their normal development. We have already pointed out that, for example, in the Atlantean epoch, human beings were companions of beings whose densest form was an etheric body. What has remained as memory in the legends of the peoples, the figures of Zeus and Apollo, were real figures for the ancient Atlanteans; during their sleep they lived together with them. Such beings definitely exist who have not descended to physical embodiment. And so we can look up from human beings to higher realms, and there are initially three realms that interest us. In the sense of Christian esotericism, we call the realm that immediately adjoins the human realm the realm of the angels or Angeloi; they are also called the spirits of twilight. Then there is a second, higher realm above the angels, the realm of the archangels or archangeloi, or also the fire spirits; and finally, an even higher realm, that of the primal forces, primal beginnings or archai, also called the spirits of personality. So there are three realms above man, and now let us clarify a few things about the life of these realms. They play a definite role in our lives: just as man plays a role in the life of plants when he cultivates the earth, so these higher realms play a role in the human realm. We can best understand this by considering the following: At present, human beings have an ego, an astral body, an etheric body, and a physical body. How does further development take place? Through human beings working more and more on themselves. Today, the human ego is still powerless in many respects in relation to the other members of its being. Just think of how modern humans are often unable to control their passions and are dominated by them, that is, by their astral body. There is a great difference between people in this respect. Some are completely devoted to their astral forces, their passions. Consider the savage who eats his fellow human beings, and compare him with the cultured European of today; and then consider a person who strives for high ideals, such as Schiller or Francis of Assisi. You see, there is a further development, which consists in the fact that human beings are learning more and more to control their astral body from the ego. And a time will come when the ego will completely control the astral body, permeating and infusing it. Then human beings will have developed a higher member, which we call manas or the spirit self. It is nothing other than the astral body transformed by the ego. When we look at human beings today, we must say that their astral body actually consists of two parts: that which they have already transformed, which is under the control of the ego, and that which the ego cannot yet control. This part is still filled with other, lower forces and impulses, and when the ego drives these out, it adds all kinds of forces to the astral body. However, in order for the astral body to be preserved at all, so that it is not destroyed by the lower forces, it must still be permeated and interpenetrated by higher beings who can control it today, as humans will do when they reach the goal of their development. These beings, whose task it is to control the part of the astral body that is not controlled by man, stand one step higher than man; they are the angels or spirits of twilight. In fact, such a higher spirit watches over every human being, so to speak, and has power over his astral body, and it is not merely a childish idea but a profound wisdom when one speaks of guardian angels. These guardian angels have a great task.

[ 16 ] Let us consider the course of a human life on earth in its entirety. We know that it passes through many incarnations. At a certain point in the evolution of the earth, the human being begins to live as a soul-ego in its first incarnation on earth. Then he dies, there is an intermediate period, then a new incarnation, and so it continues from incarnation to incarnation, and this will only come to an end at a distant point in human development. Then the human being will have passed through all incarnations, and then he will also have attained the ability to completely control his astral body. He cannot do this until he has passed through all incarnations, at least not in normal development. Now, such a higher spirit pursues the innermost nature of human beings, which extends from incarnation to incarnation, and guides human beings from incarnation to incarnation so that they can truly fulfill their earthly mission. It is indeed as if, from the beginning of his earthly journey, man could look up to a sublime spirit who is his model, who can completely control his astral body, who tells him: This is how you must be when you once step out of this earthly development. — This is the task of the so-called spirits of the angelic realm, to guide the incarnations of human beings. And whether one says that man looks up to his higher self, which he is to become more and more like, or whether one says that he looks up to his angel as his great model, is basically the same thing spiritually.

[ 17 ] And then, as man continues to work, he will transform the etheric body into buddhi, or life spirit; he will do this consciously one day, but even today he is already working on it unconsciously. All the more must higher spiritual worlds work in all human etheric bodies today, and it is the fire spirits who carry out this work. Now, however, the etheric bodies of humanity are not as individually different as the astral bodies. Every human being has their own particular virtues or vices, but in relation to what is connected with the etheric body, there is a certain equality; we see this in the characteristics that have to do with race and ethnicity. And that is why we also see that, in relation to their etheric bodies, not every human being has their own archangel, but rather it is tribes and races that are guided by higher and lower fire spirits. The peoples and races of our earth are indeed guided collectively by those spirits who are called archangels or fire spirits. This broadens your view to something that is quite abstract for many people, but which is something very concrete for those who look into spiritual worlds. When someone today speaks of the spirit of a people or the soul of a people, they consider it to be some kind of abstraction. For the occult observer, this is not the case. The entire people is embedded in a spiritual substance, and this spiritual substance is the body of a fire spirit. And just as our earth has been guided and directed from ancient times to the present, from people to people, from race to race, so it is the fire spirits, so to speak, who are striding through evolution, who have their bodies in the souls of the people and who thus guide the course of earth's evolution.

[ 18 ] And then there is something else that is independent of such communities as people and races. Let us consider our present time, how much is independent of such communities; and let us look back, for example, to the times of the 12th century. There we see how certain spiritual matters unfold in the same way among all the peoples of Europe; we see something that transcends the folk spirits—the term Zeitgeist has been coined for this. But this Zeitgeist really exists, and it is the body for even higher beings; it is the body of the spirits of personality, of the primordial beginnings.

[ 19 ] And now we see how our Earth is, as it were, embedded in a spiritual atmosphere. It allows plants to sprout from mineral formations, animals and humans to walk upon it; but it itself is enveloped by sublime spiritual beings: by spirits who guide individual human beings; by spirits who are the leaders and guides of the communities of peoples and races; and by those who guide the spirit of the age from one epoch to another.

[ 20 ] Today we have attempted to gain an overview of what our Earth, indeed what our world, is in a spiritual sense and how human beings are connected to all of this. In doing so, we have laid a foundation for truly benefiting from what we have to say about the relationship between the world, the Earth, and human beings.