The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. The Different Kinds of Soul Life in the World Around Us

[ 1 ] As I said yesterday in my introductory remarks, this cycle of lectures is intended to give an overview of the theosophical worldview. It will be necessary to mention many things that are already familiar to most of those present. But only by learning these truths from their foundations will it be possible for us to rise to higher realms in the later lectures. Before I enter into the actual presentation, I would first like to raise a question of extraordinary importance: Why must we actually concern ourselves with theosophical ideas and theories before we can experience anything in the spiritual world ourselves? Some will say: We are told the results of clairvoyant research, but I myself cannot yet see into it. Would it not be more correct if, instead of clairvoyant research results, we were told above all how we ourselves can develop clairvoyance? Then everyone could go through the further development themselves afterwards. Those who are outside occult research may believe that it would be good if such things and facts were not spoken of beforehand. But there is a very specific law in the spiritual world, the full meaning of which we will clarify with an example. Suppose that in any given year, a randomly selected, properly trained clairvoyant perceived this or that in the spiritual world. Now imagine that ten or twenty years later, another equally trained clairvoyant perceives the same thing, even though he knew nothing about the results of the first clairvoyant. If you believed that, you would be greatly mistaken, because in truth, a fact of the spiritual world that has once been discovered by a clairvoyant or an occult school cannot be researched a second time if the person who wants to research it has not first received the information that it has already been researched. So if a clairvoyant researched a fact in 1900 and another clairvoyant in 1950 is ready to perceive the same fact, he can only do so if he has first learned and experienced that someone else has already found and researched it. Thus, even facts already known in the spiritual world can only be seen if one decides to receive them through ordinary channels and to get to know them. This is the law that establishes universal brotherhood in the spiritual world for all time. It is impossible to enter any field without first connecting with what has already been researched and seen by the older brothers of humanity. In the spiritual world, it is ensured that no one can become a so-called loner and say: I don't care about what already exists, I research for myself alone. All the facts communicated today in Theosophy could not be seen even by the most highly educated and advanced individuals if they had not been informed of them beforehand. Because this is so, because one must connect with what has already been researched, the Theosophical Movement had to be founded in this form.

[ 2 ] In a relatively short time, there will be many people who will be clairvoyant; they would only be able to see the insubstantial, but not the truth in the spiritual world, because they would not be able to see what is important and has already been researched in the spiritual world. First one must learn these truths as they are given in Theosophy, only then can one perceive them. So even the clairvoyant must first learn what has already been researched, and then, with conscientious training, he can see the facts for himself. One can say: the divine beings fertilize a human soul only once, for a first glimpse, and once this unique, virgin fertilization has taken place, it is necessary for others to first direct their gaze to what this first human soul has acquired in order to have the right to acquire the same and to see it. This law establishes at its core a universal brotherhood, a true human brotherhood. From epoch to epoch, the wisdom has thus been passed down through the occult schools and faithfully preserved by the masters. And we too must help carry this treasure and maintain brotherhood with those who have already achieved something if we want to reach the higher realms of the spiritual world. What is strived for as a moral law on the physical plane is therefore a natural law of the spiritual world.

[ 3 ] Theosophy teaches us that everything physical and sensory is born out of the spiritual. But in our time, we must not be content with this awareness of a spiritual world. That it is essential that behind everything sensual, everything physical, there is something spiritual, is an abstract awareness of the spirit. It is necessary to acquire certain concepts and ideas of what the spiritual realm looks like in its individual areas. Today, the only way to guide someone to this is to let them conscientiously take all the steps from the outer world into the spiritual world.

[ 4 ] The first thing we observe in the physical realms surrounding us is the mineral kingdom, the world of rocks. Anyone who looks at this only with their senses will say: The mineral kingdom differs from the human kingdom in that, for example, when a person hits another person hard, the latter feels pain. Outwardly, it does not appear that a mineral feels pain when struck. From this, the conclusion is drawn that humans have a soul that feels pleasure and pain, whereas minerals do not. We do not want to say from the outset that minerals also have a soul; no, we must first examine the results of clairvoyant research more closely. The stone, as it initially lies before us, has nothing soul-like about it. But what is important in a spiritual worldview is that one begins one's observation at the right place and not at the wrong one. Imagine a small animal that would look at a human being and be able to see only his fingernails. It would say that these are objects in themselves, because the little animal cannot see that the nails belong to an organism. Only when it sees the whole picture, when it rises up to look at the whole, can it come to a correct observation. It is the same for the spiritual researcher with the world of rocks. If you look at a stone as something in itself, you are in the position of the little animal that considers fingernails or teeth to be the whole human being, to be independent beings. Take the rocks of the earth: they are inconceivable without having grown out of the whole organism. But where is the being of which all these are parts, to which all these belong? There are spiritual beings to which our entire mineral world belongs. They feel joy and pain, pleasure and suffering like the human soul, so that we can actually speak of a mineral soul. However, you must not judge from mere analogies, otherwise you might think that when a stone is broken, the mineral soul feels pain. That is not the case. On the contrary, when a human being injures a finger, they feel pain; in a similar case, the mineral soul feels joy and pleasure. The greatest pleasure for the being that belongs to the mineral is when the stones are broken; on the other hand, it causes the mineral pain when the stones, the individual parts of it, are put back together again. Because everything in the external world proceeds in such a way that mineral parts are constantly being dissolved and reassembled, pleasure and pain arise continuously in the souls of beings belonging to the mineral kingdom, as you will understand. Imagine that we have salt and a glass of warm water. What happens when we sprinkle the salt into the water? When viewed clairvoyantly, not only do the salt particles dissolve in the water, but feelings of lust arise, and real pleasure can be seen as they gradually permeate the entire glass. Then, when the water cools down again and a cube of salt crystallizes out of it, this happens amid pain and suffering for the mineral soul. This is what happened in the mountains where the rocks were formed. And when crystals form in the earth, this is accompanied by suffering and pain for the beings underlying the mineral.

[ 5 ] When a planet is formed, clumps together, and condenses, this happens with feelings of pain and suffering on the part of the corresponding spirit beings. A planet like our Earth is formed through suffering and pain. Now you may ask me: Where are the beings that cannot be seen by the eye, that endure suffering and pain and feel pleasure and joy when, for example, stones are broken by workers in a quarry? Where are these beings? In a relatively high spiritual world. What the eye sees as a mineral is actually only a shadow image of them. These beings are in the world we call the world of formlessness. Spiritual beings live throughout our entire mineral world, and according to occult research, they are in the world of formlessness. Why do we call this world that? You will understand this immediately when we ascend to the world of plants. Plants are also the expression of certain soul beings. Here, too, let us consider the results of clairvoyant research. It reports that when, for example, the grain is mowed in autumn and the scythe cuts through the stalks in the fields, the souls whose bodies are the plants do not feel any suffering. Oh no, you must not believe in suffering; whole streams of joy and bliss flow over them. The same is true when an animal grazes in a meadow and eats the grass: this is bliss for the plant soul, not pain. It can be compared to the feeling a mammal experiences when its young suckle milk from their mother; it is a certain feeling of bliss. What our planet provides on its surface as food for its inhabitants is, as it were, the milk of the beings that belong to the planet and actually dwell in the center of the Earth. You may ask me: Yes, but is there room for all of them there? Certainly, they all get along well there, thanks to the law of interpenetration, of permeability. It is this surrender, when a certain state of maturity is reached, that is bliss for the plant soul. Pain means for them everything that is torn from the ground. You may now say: Yes, but when useless boys and girls tear the flowers off uselessly, how can that be a pleasure for the plant soul? Wouldn't it be much better to weed them carefully? How can that hurt them? From the point of view of the physical world, you are probably right. But we must not forget that these points of view are not always decisive for the spiritual worlds. Someone may look more beautiful when they pull out their first gray hairs, but it still hurts them. It depends on your point of view, and we cannot fight against the laws of the occult world with moral objections. Plants also contain beings, souls, to which the plant world gives a body. Let us now try to imagine how pleasure and pain work in the world of plants.

[ 6 ] The plant world is a shadow of the spiritual world. Where are the beings that belong to it? In the world of form. They are also called by other names. So the spiritual beings of the mineral kingdom live in a spiritual kingdom, the kingdom of formlessness, and those of the plant kingdom live in the kingdom of form.

[ 7 ] The kingdom of formlessness, Arupa or upper Devachan.

[ 8 ] The realm of form, Rupa or lower Devachan.

[ 9 ] The souls of the mineral kingdom belong to a specific area of the spiritual world, namely its upper parts. This should not surprise you, for the more souls hide themselves, the less they can express themselves, the higher they are to be found in the spiritual world. Why is one area called a realm of formlessness and the other a realm of form?

[ 10 ] When a crystal is broken, only its form is destroyed; but this form can be formed again elsewhere, independently of the destroyed one. When a salt crystal is formed in nature, it is not necessary for it to arise from another. It can also arise solely from the substance of salt and disappear again as a form: this is the peculiarity of formless substance. In plants, form cannot arise in the same way from substance, from the formless. It must develop from a parent plant, and this is the characteristic feature of plants. Form must be passed on from the parent to the offspring. Where we have the souls of beings in the realm of form, reproduction takes place through the transmission of form. Only form, and nothing else, is contained in the seed.

[ 11 ] It is a superficial view of science to believe that there is no great difference between plant seeds and animal seeds. In animal seeds, it is the form and life that are passed on from the ancestor to the offspring: life is passed on. In lily seeds, nothing is preserved except the form, and this is transferred to the new lily. In minerals, the forces that shape the form, so to speak, arise from the higher Devachan. In crystals, formlessness shoots into form before our eyes, so to speak. We must therefore say that the entire planet on which plant life unfolds is surrounded by a total life in which lies the impulse that the life of the plant can arise from it, and from the seed only the form of the plant. Nothing from the life of the old lily passes into the flower bed or the flower pot in which the seed rests. The fact that the new lily is brought to life stems from the fact that the seed has been absorbed into the universal life of our earth.

[ 12 ] This already creates the transition to the animal kingdom. Only the form is inherited through the seed; life enters because the seed has been taken up into the universal life of our earth. The soul nature of animals is obvious, so it is natural for us to speak of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow in animals. If we want to understand what pleasure and pain mean in the plant kingdom, we must turn our attention to other beings. For pleasure and pain are felt outside the individual plants; the whole organism of the earth feels this within our earthly sphere in the same way as when you cut your finger, it does not actually hurt in your finger: the pain arises because it is transferred to the whole organism. If you want to understand the pain of a plant, you must turn to the whole earth in order to grasp the soul of the plant there. The essential distinction is this: when you hurt an animal, the pain is located within the animal's skin, just as it is in humans in relation to their animal nature. Here we are approaching individualization: the further the development of the natural kingdoms rises, the more we come to beings that have their center within themselves, that feel pleasure and pain within themselves. We can only truly understand plants when we consider them in relation to the whole earth. Animals have souls and indeed feel pleasure and pain within their skin. You cannot see this soul; it is in the realm we call the astral realm. Beings that have a center within themselves, whose souls live in the astral realm. You see that we have a certain structure in our idea of the world: minerals hide their souls very well, plants less so, animals even less; they have their center within themselves, that is, where the invisible is. We must look for the souls of animals in a world other than the physical world.

[ 13 ] We therefore distinguish four realms. First: the realm where the visible is found in minerals, plants, and animals; the physical world. Second: the realm where the invisible is found in animals, the astral realm. Third: the realm of plants, whose souls are hidden in the lower Devachan. Fourth: the realm whose souls are hidden in the upper Devachan.

[ 14 ] This distinction is already apparent to us from our observation of the external world. Now let us turn to the results of clairvoyant research. In the space occupied by the mineral itself, there is nothing of the soul. This space is empty, black, but around it, something begins to glow, and a little further away, this glow becomes even stronger. What is this? It is the etheric body of the mineral, which exists in the cosmos and has left a part of the ether empty where the mineral itself is not. And the soul-cosmic forces of the mineral feel pleasure and pain in the space where the etheric body of the mineral is left out: there it begins to ache, or joy flies ahead of the splinter of stone from the quarry, like a spiritual ray of light. The etheric body of the mineral is what surrounds the physical body. Where the mineral is, one could say that the etheric body has condensed to such an extent that it has become physical. The difference between minerals and plants arises from the fact that the etheric body is inside the plant, that all its parts are permeated by it, that it penetrates them completely. Everything that pervades the plant as green is precisely the substance that we previously described as the etheric body of the mineral, outside of it.

[ 15 ] But if this were the only case in the plant, if it were only permeated by the etheric body, it would not bloom, but would always produce only green leaves. When the plant begins to bloom, clairvoyant consciousness sees something spreading above the plant, surrounding it: this is the astral life, which brings forth this crowning glory of growth. The green plant grows, and at the end something new spreads over it, the astral, which, however, never enters into it.

[ 16 ] Animals have within themselves what surrounds plants. When what surrounds plants is inside the skin, then it is an animal. What floats above plants, the astral, surrounds the entire earth. This is the total astrality of the earth, which floats like smoke above plants when they begin to bloom. Inside, in the plant itself, there is no pleasure or pain; these are felt by the earth. The animal itself has pleasure and pain within itself; what is spread out inside the animal as the astral body weaves in our total earth astrality. The mineral kingdom is embedded in an etheric world and has its etheric body around it. The plant is permeated by the etheric body, and because the plant world is embedded in an astral body that corresponds to the entire astrality of the earth, pain and pleasure are outside the plant. And the being that is not only surrounded by the astral, but can also take it into itself, is the animal.

[ 17 ] We have thus gained an overview of the three realms of the world around us in their connection with the higher worlds.

[ 18 ] The human being is now a small world unto himself. We must build him up from all that surrounds him. What we have found today, we will then use tomorrow to understand the structure of the human being.