The Rudolf Steiner Archive

14. The Physical World as an Expression of Spiritual Influences and Beings

[ 1 ] Now we must shed some light on the conditions of our physical world in relation to the spiritual world described yesterday, through which human beings pass between death and a new birth. For those who are open to spiritual scientific truths, it is self-evident that everything that happens in the physical world is the expression of spiritual influences, facts, and beings, so that the underlying causes of all our physical events are to be found in the spiritual world, in Devachan. Now you may ask me: Is there also an influence from our physical world into the spiritual world? Yes, and we will understand these relationships best when we consider human life. Threads are spun here in the physical world from soul to soul, as they arise from the manifold circumstances of life, bonds of friendship, love, and so on are formed. And everything that is thus connected from person to person has not only meaning and substance for this physical world, but is also important for the spiritual world. In fact, one can say that the more spiritual the relationships have been here, the more meaningful they are for the devachanic world. When a person dies, everything that is physical in these relationships of love and friendship falls away, and only the soul-spiritual remains. This is the case, for example, in the relationship between mother and child. Initially, a relationship develops between these two from the basis of nature, and this gradually becomes spiritualized. Indeed, over the course of time, this original basis of nature becomes something that has actually only provided an opportunity to weave a bond between soul and soul. When a person dies, this basis of nature falls away, but what has become intertwined as a bond between soul and soul remains. And if you place before your soul the entire human race on earth, all the existing bonds of friendship and love, you must imagine these connections as a great net, as a vast web, and this web really exists in Devachan. And when the clairvoyant looks down on earth from the perspective of Devachan, he sees this web of spiritual connections. The human being finds this web of spiritual connections again when he enters Devachan after death. He is placed within all the spiritual connections that he himself has woven. This also answers the question: Do we see our loved ones again in Devachan? Yes, we see them again, freed from all the obstacles of space and time that lie like a veil over all these soul relationships here below. In Devachan, souls stand face to face with one another. The relationship between soul and soul is much more inner than in the physical world and much more intimate. In Devachan, there can never be any doubt as to whether one recognizes the other when one enters Devachan earlier and the other much later after a long interval. Recognizing one's loved ones there is not particularly difficult, for there, so to speak, everyone has their spiritual inner being written on their spiritual face. They speak their own names in a much more appropriate way than is possible here, as their own fundamental tone—as it is called in occultism—which is also their true self in the spiritual world. Such undisturbed togetherness of lovers is only possible when both are in Devachan. However, the disembodied person is not unconscious of those who are still on earth; they can even follow their actions. Of course, those in Devachan cannot see earthly physical colors and forms, since they no longer have physical organs in Devachan. But everything in the physical world has its spiritual counterpart in the spiritual realm, and this is what the departed perceive. Every movement of the hand in the physical world, because it is preceded by a will, conscious or unconscious, every change in the physical human being has a spiritual counterpart that he can perceive in Devachan. Being in the spiritual realm is not a kind of dream or sleep, but a conscious life. Imagine that human beings receive predispositions and impulses in Devachan in order to remain in closer contact with their loved ones and to find them again on earth in a later incarnation. This is often the meaning of incarnation on earth: to form ever closer bonds. Life together in Devachan is at least as intimate as any life here. Empathy in Devachan is much more energetic and intimate than on earth; you experience pain there as your own pain. On earth, more or less personal happiness is possible at the expense of others, but in Devachan this is impossible. There, the unhappiness that one causes another in order to be happy oneself would rebound on oneself, and one could not really be happy at the expense of others. This is the balance that emanates from Devachan. You bring with you from there the impulses to realize brotherhood on earth. What is a self-evident law in Devachan is to be realized on earth as a task.

[ 2 ] There is much more to say about the connection between the spiritual world and the earth. You can now think it through and then answer many questions for yourselves about seeing your loved ones again and being together with them in Devachan.

[ 3 ] Yesterday it was said that when a person has developed his spiritual archetype in Devachan, he receives the impulse to descend again to the physical plane, much as when a thought is ripe and you feel the urge to put it into action. But that is still said in a rather abstract way. What is it that actually causes the soul to descend back into the physical world, what is it that gives it the impulse to do so? During the Kamaloka period, when the soul gradually weans itself from its attachment to physical life, it continually receives impulses from its experiences that ignite its will to remove obstacles to its development. It experiences for itself the pain and harm it has caused others. In this experience of the pain of others, the impulse arises in her: You must make amends! - a provisionally indelible impulse. Thus, step by step, the soul takes with it from Kamaloka to Devachan the impulses for correcting its mistakes. In the higher worlds, there is even more possibility that what arises will be preserved in the appropriate manner. When, after the Kamaloka period, the human being lays down the astral body as its third corpse, everything that the I has not yet worked on dissolves. But something like a web remains in the astral world from what the human being itself has placed in the world as obstacles to its development. Human beings really pave their own way through the world with all the forms that express the harm they have caused to others. Once human beings have completed their archetype in Devachan and woven into it everything they have taken with them as an extract of their etheric body from their last incarnation, a kind of fertilization takes place. The archetype is fertilized by the fabric of one's own unbalanced deeds. So the first thing that happens to the soul after it has matured in Devachan is that it experiences fertilization with what we call karma. And this gives it the impulse to descend back to earth in order to compensate as much as possible for the damage it has caused in the past. At the end of Devachan, the soul is fertilized with the consequences of its own deeds. Only then is it completely ready to descend to a new earthly existence.

[ 4 ] The clairvoyant sees such souls everywhere in the astral world, wanting to incarnate. However, the spatial and temporal conditions of the astral world are different from those of the physical world. Such a soul can move at tremendous speed in astral space, and it is driven by special forces to the place where a physical and etheric body correctly constructed for that soul is created. A distance such as that between Budapest and New York is irrelevant. Time relations are only relevant insofar as they enable the earthly possibilities for the best conditions of embodiment to be achieved. From the earth, this soul, which looks like a bell shape spreading from top to bottom as it flies through astral space, is met by the physical, which is created from the line of inheritance.

[ 5 ] Now we need to discuss a little more about what attracts the soul down there and what wants to incarnate. You know that reproduction corresponds to a certain sum of emotional impulses, more or less spiritual impulses of love, love sympathy. The process of reproduction is preceded by a love sympathy, which the clairvoyant perceives as a swaying back and forth of astral forces, a back and forth play of astral currents between man and woman. Something lives there that is not otherwise present when the human being is alone; the coexistence of the souls themselves is expressed in the ebb and flow of the astral currents. But every act of love is individual. Every act of love proceeds from a particular individuality in a back-and-forth interplay. And now, before any earthly fertilization, before the physical act, the individuality, the nature of the being that descends back to earth is reflected in the love desire, in this astral back-and-forth interplay. This is what makes each act of love special. So we can say that before physical fertilization, what descends from the spiritual world already begins to have an effect; the bringing together of man and woman is co-determined by the spiritual world. Here, forces from the spiritual world play together in an intimate and wonderful way. And that which descends, which sinks down, is generally bound from the beginning to the result of fertilization. It is by no means the case that only after a certain time does some individuality connect with it. From the moment of fertilization, this descending individuality is connected to the result of physical reproduction. However, there are exceptions. In the first days after fertilization, this spiritual individuality that descends does not yet influence the development of the physical human being, but it is, so to speak, already present; it is already connected to the developing embryo. The intervention takes place around the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first days after fertilization; at that point, what has descended from a higher world is already working with the developing human being. Thus, from the very beginning, the fine, intimate organic tissue that is necessary for the human individuality to use the physical body as an instrument is prepared according to its earlier abilities. The fact that the human being is a unity stems from the fact that the smallest organ corresponds to the whole organism, that is, even the smallest must be of a certain kind so that the whole can be as it is, so that it can happen that already from the eighteenth to the twenty-first day the I participates in the formation of the physical and etheric bodies.

[ 6 ] To what extent does that which is physically transmitted, i.e., what the parents give—the female and male elements—influence the formation of the developing human being? Well, if you engage with what lies occult-spiritually behind the physical, then much will become understandable to you. Here, of course, only the essentials can be outlined. If only the female element were involved in human reproduction—we will hear that in earlier times, before the separation of the sexes, reproduction took place without the involvement of the male—if that were still the case today, what would happen? To what extent, then, is the female involved as female? Let us now examine this. If only the female element were at work, then further development would have taken place in such a way that the child would be extremely similar to its ancestors. Only beings of exactly the same form would ever come into being. The general, the similar, comes from the female element. It is only through gender separation that human individuality has been able to develop. For what causes the offspring to differ from its ancestors is the influence of the male. The male element specializes; in the female, the species is preserved, it reproduces what is similar; the male gives individuality.

[ 7 ] Therefore, it was only when dual sex arose on earth that incarnations or reincarnations could take place one after the other. Only then did human beings have the opportunity to somehow embody on earth what was the result of what had gone before. The fact that what takes place down here on earth and what must develop and enrich itself from incarnation to incarnation, what is individual, fits together, stems from the interaction of the male and female elements. The human ego would no longer find a suitable body today if the general principle of humanity were not modified by the male element, that is, if the general type did not develop into the individual. The etheric body essentially works from the female element. The driving force of the female element is found in the etheric body, where the permanent tendencies lie. Anchored in it is that which is general, that which belongs to the species. In the etheric body of women today, there is still the counterimage of what we find outside as the soul of the people, as the spirit of the race. The soul of the people and the spirit of the race are similar to each other. If we now consider what lies at the basis of fertilization as something spiritual, we must say: Fertilization itself is nothing more than a kind of killing of the living forces of the etheric body. Already at the moment of fertilization, death is woven into the human body. It is something that hardens the etheric body, which would otherwise multiply infinitely, killing it, so to speak. That which comes from the female nature, the etheric body, which would otherwise only form copies, is condensed by the male influence and thereby becomes the formative force of the new human individuality. Procreation consists in the production of a copy of the female etheric body; by being hardened, killed, in a certain sense, through fertilization, it is at the same time individualized. And hidden in the killed etheric body lies the formative force that brings forth the new physical human being. Thus, fertilization and reproduction come together. We see, therefore, that two kinds of fertilization take place: below, physical, human fertilization, and above, the fertilization of the archetype by its own karma. We have already said that from the eighteenth to the twenty-first day, the I works on the embryo; but much later, after six months, other forces begin to work on the embryo, forces which we can call the forces that determine the karma of the human being. We can express this by saying that the tissue woven from karma begins to take effect. Gradually these forces intervene. But there are exceptions here too, so that in later times a replacement of the ego can occur. We will talk about that later. The very first thing that intervenes in the formation is the ego.

[ 8 ] If we want to form a rough picture of what is found in the spiritual worlds and descends down here, we must say: the individual who is incarnating brings the lovers together. The archetype that wants to incarnate has attached itself to the astral substance, and this astral substance now works into the passion of love, into the feeling of love. What surges here and there on earth as astral passion reflects back the astral nature of the descending being. Thus, the astral feeling of the lovers meets the astral substance from above; it is influenced by the substance of what descends to incarnate. If we think this thought through to its conclusion, we must say: The reincarnating human being is definitely involved in the choice of his parents. Depending on what he is, he is drawn to the parents in question. The objection is cheap, that with such a justification for the choice of parents, one loses the feeling of being reborn in one's children, and that the love based on having given the children their very essence is thereby diminished. This is a groundless fear, for this motherly and fatherly love is understood in a much higher and more beautiful sense when we see that the child in a certain sense loves its parents beforehand, even before fertilization, and is thus drawn to them. Parental love is therefore the response to the love of the child; it is reciprocal love. Thus we have an explanation of parental love as a reproduction of what is given as childlike love before the physical origin of humanity.

[ 9 ] It has already been mentioned that higher beings are involved in the incarnation of the new human being. You will understand this when you consider that there is never a complete correspondence between what descends from above for incarnation and what it takes on as a shell down below. This complete correspondence between the higher and the lower can only take place when the human being has reached the goal of his development, when he has attained the Atma. When he has transformed his physical body into Atma, his etheric body into Buddhi, and his astral body into Manas, then man stands at the point of evolution where he chooses his last incarnation with completely free will. Before that, a real matching is impossible. Consider this: as humans are today, they have only transformed part of their astral body, part of their etheric body, and part of their physical body. And they are only masters of this. But that which they have not yet transformed must be crystallized for them from outside. Other beings must attach this to them. There are two different kinds of beings involved in this process: those who attach the etheric body to the human being and those who bring it to the parents. At the present stage of their development, human beings are not yet able to attach the etheric body to themselves. The forces lying in the etheric body give rise to the moment of the “front of the face” which we spoke about yesterday. When the human being has the etheric body and the astral body, and the physical body is then attached, the moment comes when the face must disappear; the etheric body must fit into the physical body. The etheric body is not only the carrier of memory, but of everything temporal: memory and foresight. But when it enters the physical body, it is bound to the physical laws, and these laws cancel out its power in a certain respect. Just as the human being, through the influence of the physical body, can only develop his memory to a certain degree, whereas after death, when the etheric body is free again, he reconstructs the entire picture of his memory, so it is with foresight: looking into the future is limited in the physical world by the physical body. This is the normal course of incarnation. The soul receives the shock mentioned earlier through an abnormal preview of difficult circumstances in its later life.

[ 10 ] Now we have reached the moment when the actual human being, the I itself, begins to work on what has been given to it and with what it has been brought together in the physical world. The forces of the various spiritual members of the human being, which have to work in the time before birth, now work initially through the corresponding members of the mother's being. In the first period before birth, the human being can only live by being completely enclosed by the mother's shell. The human being pushes this physical maternal shell away at birth. At first, only the physical body becomes free, the etheric body — the clairvoyant sees that it remains surrounded by an etheric maternal shell; it remains protected and sheltered by it until the physical body changes teeth. This is an important point in human development, when the maternal etheric shell is shed and a second birth takes place. Then, when the etheric body has shed its mother's shell, the individual etheric body is born and becomes free. This is very important for human development. Until the change of teeth, it is still possible for human forms to remain elastic and change in one direction or another; from this time on, they only grow larger. Essentially, the forms are complete with the change of teeth. This is important to know. Therefore, everything that has a formative influence on the physical body from outside, everything that is to remain with it, must be carefully considered and formed until this time of the change of teeth. However, everything external that influences the human being also forms the finer limbs and organs, such as light and color. All of this essentially forms the human being until the age of seven. It is therefore not irrelevant what color the child is surrounded by, what environment it has, and what you let it do. If you never used your hand, it would atrophy. It is the same with all organs. Even the finer ones are formed through activity. Red, for example, has a different effect on the finer organs in the human being that are just developing than blue does; and so, depending on the color that surrounds the child, the effect is different. The organs are formed through work. The eye sees habitually, certainly, but what it sees has an effect on the whole human nature. It is not all the same for the development of the child whether the eye sees red or blue. This is where theosophy will prove itself in the most eminent sense in the not too distant future. Why do we practice theosophy? We practice it out of love for humanity, because it allows us to intervene usefully in such subtle connections.

[ 11 ] At the age of seven, therefore, the etheric body becomes free. It is the carrier of memory. The most important thing now with regard to the child's memory is that it should not be trained by educational means before the age of seven. Only from the age of seven onwards is the time when true education should influence the formation of memory. Some people object to this, saying that nature itself ensures that children practice their memory long before the age of seven. That is true, but this is merely the preparatory work that nature carries out. The child's eye is also already complete in the womb before birth, but what would happen if you allowed sunlight to shine on the embryo's eye? It is precisely so that sunlight can later act properly on the eye that nature must prepare the eye before birth. The same is true of the other organs before physical birth. Nature prepares them in advance, but they are protected by the outer covering of the mother's womb. And so nature must also work on the child's memory until the age of seven, so that it can then be properly developed from the age of seven onwards. And how should one influence the child's memory from then on? In the same way that nature influences it until the child is physically born.

[ 12 ] A person carries an astral mother's shell with them until the age of fourteen or fifteen, until they reach sexual maturity. Then they cast it off, and the astral body becomes free: a third birth takes place, so to speak. The astral body is the bearer of human judgment, of human criticism. We should move away from the view that children should come to independent judgment as early as possible. From the seventh to the fourteenth year, it is necessary to gather a wise store of memories for life, in order to create as mature and rich a soul content as possible during the time when the astral body is being born. Only then should judgment begin. The old method of simply memorizing the multiplication table in school: 1 x 1 = 1 and so on, is, since it is purely based on memory, significantly preferable to the current abstract method of “proving” the multiplication table with red and white balls on a so-called calculating machine. This is decidedly harmful. The same applies here as with small children; they understand language long before they can speak themselves. So we should not allow them to judge until they have acquired a good store of memory for the etheric body and developed certain lasting inclinations and habits. It is very important to develop the child's emotional life: gratitude, reverence, and holy awe are feelings that manifest themselves later in life as the power of blessing and of radiant love for humanity. The strongest impulses are given to the etheric body through religious experiences, through feeling connected to something divine and spiritual, to the whole world. Abstract judgment should only be developed later, when what flows from the etheric body has been made so soft and pliable that the danger of becoming accustomed to abstract and irreverent thinking has been averted. The more pictorial and symbolic the knowledge is presented to the child, the better. The emotional world develops through parables and symbols, especially through everything that is presented from the history of characteristic human beings, and through immersion in the mysteries and beauties of nature. The way questions are answered to the child is of great importance here. For example, as an explanation for the origin of human beings, for death and birth, the emergence of the butterfly from the chrysalis. This is an image of the soulfulness of the human being striving out of the physical body. But of course, when you tell this to the child, you must believe it yourself, otherwise the child will not believe it either. Corresponding facts in nature can be found everywhere to confirm the truth of these images. The occultist knows that the image of the butterfly and the chrysalis can serve as a symbol of a much higher process. We must learn to believe again in what today is dismissed as abstract philosophy and fairy tales. Even the stork fairy tale and songs such as “Fly, little beetle, fly” can be interpreted in a meaningful way. This fairy tale was not invented in ancient times to tell children a lie, but was conceived by someone who knew that something descends from the spiritual world at birth. Later, one will be able to say just as well: It is a lie that there were people in the past who believed that when a new human being comes into being, when a new human being is born, no other process takes place than the physical union of two human beings. That is a fairy tale, the fairy tale of the 19th and 20th centuries; we know better now! — people will say in the future. And hopefully our descendants will be more understanding and forgiving of our weaknesses than we are of those of our ancestors.

[ 13 ] The symbol is the best way to influence the astral body. The idea should be cultivated until the astral body is freed, only then should judgment be passed. Why are so many people today unfortunately crippled in their souls? Why? Because they learned to say “yes” and “no” to things far too early. In the period leading up to sexual maturity, they should learn to revere the great role models and the great processes in nature; judgment should only mature between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one. There would then be fewer writers of the kind who tend to write below and above the line. The result of premature judgment by immature writers is the shallow materialism of our time. This hidden materialism is much worse than the combative, scientific kind. An opinion only has weight when it is based on soul experience. People must learn to judge; opinions are so different because they are formed far too early. It is not until the age of twenty-one that the ego is born, and only then can it be possible for people to judge the world on their own. Only then do they stand independently before the world.

[ 14 ] Furthermore, between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-eight, what is called the sentient soul develops, followed by the intellectual soul and the conscious soul, each in periods of seven years. It is therefore an occult law that before the age of thirty-five, a person is incapable of giving or achieving anything in the field of occultism. The age of thirty-five is particularly important. I remind you of Dante, his vision, his insight into the spiritual world: calculate it, he had this at the age of thirty-five.

[ 15 ] Where occult tradition was alive, it was known that such cycles also play out in individual human beings. It was known how the spiritual forces of the human being who descends work, where they come into play, and how long they need to unfold properly. It was known that all life is one, a great whole. The coexistence of human society must also be shaped by this insight. Theosophy teaches us that wisdom must be put into action, into social action and into the everyday life of the immediate world. Theosophy is all the more valuable the less it remains abstract wisdom, the more it flows through the soul into the dexterity of the hand. Manual dexterity is then a kind of physical expression of the spirit of the world, a sensual expression of the spiritual.