The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] It was an insight that goes back to the spiritual sources of existence, the teaching proclaimed by the holy rishis in the first cultural period of the post-Atlantean era. And the significance of this teaching, of this research at the dawn of our post-Atlantic era, is that it penetrated so deeply into all natural processes that it was able to recognize the spiritual effectiveness in these natural processes. Basically, we are always surrounded by spiritual events and spiritual beings. Everything that happens materially is only the expression of spiritual facts, and all things that confront us materially are only the outer shell of spiritual entities. When the aforementioned ancient sacred teaching spoke of the phenomena surrounding us, which we perceive in our environment, it always pointed to one phenomenon in particular, to the most important, the most significant natural phenomenon that surrounds man on earth. And this most significant natural phenomenon was considered by that spiritual science to be the fact of fire. In all explanations of what happens on earth, spiritual research into fire was the main focus. But if we want to understand this, we can say, eastern teaching about fire, which was so far-reaching in ancient times for all knowledge and also for all life, if we want to understand this teaching about fire, then we have to look around a little among the other natural phenomena and natural objects, as they were viewed by that ancient teaching, which is still valid for spiritual science today.

[ 2 ] There everything in the physical world that surrounds man was traced back to the so-called four elements. These four elements are no longer respected by our modern materialistic science. You all know that these four elements are: earth, water, air and fire. But where spiritual science flourished, the term 'earth' was not understood to mean what it means today. Earth was used to describe a state of material existence, the state of solidity. Everything we call solid today was called earth in spiritual science. So, whether we have solid arable soil or a piece of rock crystal, a piece of lead or gold, everything that is solid was called earth. Everything that is liquid, not only today's water, was called watery or water. So if you have iron for my sake, and you bring it to a glowing heat so that it gradually melts and runs out through the heat, that which runs out as iron is water for spiritual science. All metals, when they are liquid, were called water. Everything we call air today, this state, which we also call gaseous today, was called air, regardless of what substance was considered, whether oxygen gas, hydrogen gas or other gases.

[ 3 ] Fire was regarded as the fourth element. Today's science, as those who remember the basic concepts of physics know, does not see fire as a thing that can be compared to earth or air or water, but today's physics sees only a state of motion in it. Spiritual science sees in warmth or fire nothing more than something that has an even finer substantiality than air. Just as earth or the solid transforms into the liquid, so for spiritual science the air-like gradually changes into the fire state, and fire is such a fine element that it permeates all the other elements. Fire permeates the air and warms it, as it does the water, as it does the earth. So while the other three elements are, so to speak, distributed, we see the element of fire permeating everything, everything.

[ 4 ] Now, the old and the new spiritual science said: There is yet another, a considerable difference between what we call earth, water, air and what we call fire or warmth. How can we perceive earth or solidity? Well, we can say, by touching it. We perceive solidity by touching it and it exerts a resistance. It is the same with the watery element. This gives way more easily, the resistance is not so great, but we still perceive it as something external to us, as a resistance. And so it is with the element of air. We also perceive it only externally. It is different with warmth. Something must be emphasized here that today's world view does not consider significant, but which must be considered significant if one wants to look into the real riddles of existence. We also perceive warmth without touching it externally. That is the essential point: we can perceive warmth by touching a body that has a certain degree of warmth; we can perceive warmth externally like the three other elements, but we also feel warmth in our own inner states. Therefore, the ancient science, already with the Indians, emphasized: Earth, water, and air are the only elements you perceive in the outside world, but warmth is the first element that can also be perceived internally. So warmth or fire has two sides, so to speak: an external side that shows itself to us when we perceive it externally, and an internal side when we feel ourselves in a certain state of warmth. A person feels his inner state of warmth, he is hot, he is cold; on the other hand, he is not consciously aware of what is in him in the form of air, water and solid substances, what is in him in the form of air, water and earth. He only begins, so to speak, to feel himself in the element of warmth. The element of warmth has an inner and an outer side. Therefore, the old spiritual science and with it the new spiritual science says: warmth or fire is where the material begins to become soul. We can therefore speak in the true sense of the word of an outer fire, which we perceive like the other elements, and an inner, soul fire in us.

[ 5 ] Thus, for spiritual science, fire always formed the bridge between the external material and the soul, which is only perceived inwardly by man. Fire or warmth was placed at the center of all natural observation because fire is, so to speak, the gateway through which we penetrate from the outside in. This fire is really like a door in front of which one can stand; one looks at it from the outside, opens it and can look at it from the inside. Such is fire among natural phenomena. You touch an external object and get to know fire, which flows in from the outside like the other three elements; you perceive inner warmth and feel it as something that belongs to you: you stand within the gate, you enter into the soul. This is how the science of fire was expressed. But that is also why people saw something in fire where soul and material interact.

[ 6 ] What we now want to place before our soul is truly an elementary lesson of the first human wisdom. The teachers said something like this: Look at a burning object that is consumed by fire! You see two things in this burning object. One of them was called smoke in those ancient times, and could still be called that today, and the other was called light. For these two natural phenomena occur before us when an object is consumed by fire: light on the one hand, smoke on the other. So the student of spiritual science saw fire standing in the midst between light and smoke. The teacher said: Just as light is born out of the flame on the one hand, so smoke is born out of the flame on the other.

[ 7 ] But now we must clearly visualize a very simple but far-reaching fact in relation to the light that is born of fire. It is highly likely that if you were to ask a great many people, “Do you see the light?” they would answer, “Well, of course I see the light!” But this answer is as wrong as possible, because in truth no physical eye sees the light. It is absolutely incorrect to say that you see the light. Through the light you see the objects that are solid, liquid, or gaseous, but you do not see the light itself. Imagine the whole of outer space illuminated by light, and the source of the light is somewhere where you could not see it, behind you, and you are now looking into the illuminated outer space. Would you see the light? You would see nothing at all. You would only see something when some object is placed in the illuminated space. You do not see the light, only solids, liquids and gases through the light. So in truth, physical light is not seen at all with the physical eyes. This is something that presents itself with particular clarity to the mind's eye. That is why spiritual science says: Light makes everything visible, but light itself is invisible. And that is an important sentence: light is imperceptible. It cannot be perceived by the external senses. We can perceive solids, liquids and gases, and just about the last element that can be perceived externally is warmth or fire; but even that can begin to be perceived inwardly. But light itself can no longer be perceived externally. If you believe that when you see the sun you see light, then you are wrong: you see a flaming body, a burning substance, from which the light emanates. If you were to examine it, you would see that you have something gaseous, fluid, and earthy. You do not see the light, but what burns.

[ 8 ] So when we ascend – so says spiritual science – we pass from earth through water, through air to fire and then to light; we pass from the externally perceptible, visible, into the invisible, into the ethereal-spiritual. Or, as it is also said: Fire stands at the boundary between the externally perceptible, material, and that which is ethereal-spiritual, which is no longer externally perceptible. So what does a body that has been consumed by the flame, that is, by the fire, do? What happens when something burns? When something burns, on the one hand we see light being created. The first imperceptible thing on the outside, that which has an effect on the spiritual world, which is no longer merely externally material, so to speak, gives warmth when it is so strong that it becomes a source of light. It gives something to the invisible, to that which can no longer be perceived externally, but it has to pay for it through the smoke. It must allow the previously transparent to become opaque, to develop the smoky. And so we see how heat or fire actually differentiates, divides. It divides into light on the one hand, and thus opens a path into the supersensible world. In order for it to send something up into the supersensible world as light, it must send something down into the material world, into the world of the opaque but visible. Nothing arises in the world one-sidedly. Everything that arises has two sides: when light arises through warmth, on the other side there arises opacity, dark matter. This is an ancient spiritual teaching.

[ 9 ] But the process as we have described it now is only the outside, only the physical-material process. This physical-material process is now based on something essentially different. When you have mere warmth before you, something that does not yet shine, then in a certain respect warmth itself is present, which you perceive, the external physical, but there is also something spiritual in it. When this warmth now becomes so strong that a glow arises and smoke forms, then some of the spiritual that was in the warmth must pass into the smoke. And this spiritual essence, which was in the warmth, passes into the smoke, into something air-like, thus into something that is under the warmth, is now enchanted in the smoke, in what appears as a cloudiness. Spiritual entities that are with the warmth must, so to speak, allow themselves to be enchanted into the smoke, into what becomes dense. And so, everything that precipitates out of warmth as a kind of cloudiness, as a kind of materialization, is associated with an enchantment of spiritual beings. We can put this even more crudely. Let us imagine that we can liquefy air, which is already possible today. Air itself is nothing other than condensed warmth; it arises out of warmth by forming smoke. That which belongs to the spiritual has been magically drawn into the smoke, which actually wants to be in the fire. Spiritual beings, which are now also called elemental beings, are enchanted in all air, and they are banished even further, so to speak, to an even lower existence when the air is converted into water. Therefore, spiritual science sees in everything that is outwardly perceptible something that has emerged from a primal state of fire or warmth in such a way that it first became air or smoke or gas, with warmth condensing into gas, gas into liquid, and liquid into solid. “Look back,” says the scientist; ‘look at anything solid. It was once liquid; it has become solid only in the course of evolution. And the liquid was once gaseous, and the gaseous formed as smoke out of fire.’ But with this condensation, with this becoming gaseous and solid, there is always an enchantment of spiritual entities.

[ 10 ] If we now look at our environment, at the solid stones, the streams of water that run down, we see that which evaporates into water, rises as mist, we see the air, we see everything that is solid, liquid, aerial and fire: basically, we have nothing but fire. Everything is fire, only condensed fire. Gold, silver, copper is condensed fire. Everything was once fire, everything is born out of fire - but in all this condensation, everywhere is a spiritual essence, enchanted and resting within!

[ 11 ] So how do the spiritual-divine beings that are around us manage to create a solid, as it is on our planet, or a liquid, as it is in the air? They send their elemental spirits, which live in fire, down and lock them into air, water and earth. These are the messengers, the elemental messengers of the spiritual, creative, forming beings. First you have these elemental spirits in fire. In fire they feel, if we speak figuratively, still comfortable, and now they are, so to speak, damned to live in enchantment. And we look around us and say to ourselves: These entities, to whom we owe everything that is around us, have had to descend from the element of fire; they are enchanted in things.

[ 12 ] Can we as humans do something for these elemental spirits? This is the big question that the holy Rishis raised. Can we do something to release what is enchanted? Yes, we can do something! Because what we humans do here in the physical world is nothing more than the outward expression of spiritual processes. Everything we do also has its significance in the spiritual realm. Let us assume the following: a person stands in front of a piece of rock crystal, a piece of gold or something similar. He looks at it. What happens when a person simply stares at some external object with his physical eye? There is a continuous interplay between the bewitched elemental spirit and the person. That which is enchanted in matter and man have something to do with each other. Now, let us assume that the person only stares at the object, so that he only notices what comes to his eye; something of these elemental beings always goes into the person. Continuously something of the enchanted elemental beings goes into the person, from morning till night. As you observe, a host of elemental beings, enchanted and continually enchanted by the world's processes of condensation, is constantly leaving your surroundings and entering you. Let us now assume that the person who gazes at the objects in this way would not have the inclination to reflect on the objects, to let something of the spirit of the things live in his soul. He makes himself comfortable, just goes through the world, but does not process it spiritually, not with ideas, not with feelings, with nothing at all. He remains, so to speak, a mere observer of what materially confronts him in the world. Then these elemental spirits enter him and now sit within him, are inside him and have gained nothing in the world process except that they have entered from the outside world into the human being. But let us assume that the human being is one who processes the impressions of the external world spiritually, who uses his ideas and concepts to form images about the spiritual foundations of the world, who does not simply stare at a piece of metal, but reflects on its essence, feels its beauty, spiritualizes his impression; what does he do? He redeems, through his own spiritual process, the elemental essence that overflows from the outer world to him; he elevates it to what it was, he frees the elemental essence from its enchantment. Thus, through our own spiritualization, we can release the elemental beings that are enchanted in air, water and earth. We can either imprison them in our inner being without changing them, or we can free them, redeem them, by spiritualizing ourselves more and more, and thus lead them back to their element. Throughout his life on earth, man allows elemental spirits to flow into him from the outside world. To the same extent that he merely gazes at things, to the same extent he simply lets these spirits enter into him and does not change them; to the same extent that he seeks to process the things of the external world in his mind through ideas, concepts, feelings of beauty and so on, to the same extent he redeems and frees these spiritual elemental beings.

[ 13 ] And so what happens to these elemental beings, which have entered the person from the things, so to speak, what happens to them? They are in the person to begin with. Even the redeemed ones must remain in the person to begin with, but only until the person's physical death. When the person passes through the gate of death, a distinction arises between those elemental beings that merely wandered in and that the person did not lead back up to a higher element, and those that the person, through his own spiritualization, has brought back to their former element. The elemental beings that man has not changed have gained nothing by migrating from the material world to the human being; but the others have gained the ability to return to their original world with the death of the human being. In his life, man is a point of passage for these elemental beings. And when man has passed through the spiritual world and is reborn in a next embodiment, then, when man is re-embodied, as he passes through the portal of birth, all the elemental beings that the man has not freed before, come back into the physical world; but those that he has freed, he does not bring back with him when he descends, they have returned to their original element.

[ 14 ] Thus we see how it is in the hands of man, through his development, through the way he relates to external nature, to either free the elemental beings that are necessary for the creation of our earthly existence or to bind them even more to the earth than they were before. What does a person do when he looks at some external object and, by explaining it, releases the elemental spirit from it? Spiritually, he does the opposite of what happened earlier. While smoke was formed from fire, so to speak, man spiritually forms fire from smoke again; he only releases this fire after his death. Now imagine how infinitely deep and how infinitely spiritual ancient sacrificial customs are when you look at them in the light of ancient-holy spiritual science: Imagine the priest at the altar of sacrifice in those times when religion was based on the actual knowledge of spiritual laws, imagine that the priest ignites the flame and smoke rises, and now the rising of the smoke is made into a sacrifice, that is, accompanied by prayers. What happens then? What happens to such a sacrifice at all? The priest stands at the altar where smoke is produced. Where the solid goes out of the warmth, a spirit is enchanted, but at the same time, because man follows the whole process with prayers, this spirit is received into the human being as such, so that after death it rises again into the higher world. What did the follower of the ancient wisdom say to those who were meant to understand? He said: If you look at the outside world in such a way that your spiritual process is not a clinging to the smoke, but a lifting up of the spiritual to the fire element, then after death you will free the spirit enchanted in the smoke. — And now the man who understood this spoke of the spirit that had passed into man, enchanted by the smoke: If you have left the ghost as it was in the smoke, then it must be reborn with you, and after your death it cannot return to the spiritual world; but if you have liberated it, if you have led it back to the fire, then after your death it will go up into the spiritual world and need not return to earth with your birth.

[ 15 ] And now you have part of these profound sentences from the Bhagavad Gita, which were quoted in the previous lecture. There is no mention of the human ego; it is about those natural entities, those elemental beings that enter man from the outside world, and it is said: See the fire, see the smoke! What man, through his spiritual processes, makes into fire, these are spirits that he releases with his death. What he leaves as it is in the smoke must remain united with him at his death and must be reborn when he is born. The fate of the elemental spirits is thus initially characterized for us: Through wisdom, which man develops within himself, man continually frees elemental spirits at his death; through unwise behavior, through mere material attachment to the sense appearance, he clings to elemental spirits and forces them to go with him into this world again and again, to be born with him again and again.

[ 16 ] But such elemental beings are not only associated with fire and everything related to it. Such elemental beings are the messengers for the higher divine-spiritual beings in everything that happens externally through the senses. For example, the interplay of those forces that have brought about day and night could never have occurred in the world if such elemental beings had not worked in great flocks to roll the planets around in the world in the appropriate way, precisely so that this change of day and night would happen. Everything that happens is brought about by hosts of spiritual beings, both lower and higher, in the spiritual hierarchies. We are dealing here with the most subordinate beings, the messengers. When night turns into day and day turns into night, elemental beings also live in this process. And so it is that man is now once again in an intimate relationship with the beings of the elemental realms, who also have to work with day and night. If a person is lethargic and lazy, if he lets himself go, then he affects these elemental beings, who have to deal with day and night, differently than if he is creative, hardworking, industrious, productive. If a person is lethargic, then he connects with very specific elemental beings, just as he does when he is industrious, but in a very peculiar way. Those of the second class of elemental beings that I am now mentioning, who unfold their life during the day, who, so to speak, roll around during the day, are in turn in their higher element. But just as the elemental beings of the first class of fire are bound in air, water and earth, so certain elemental beings are bound by darkness, and day could not be separated from night if these elemental beings were not, so to speak, imprisoned in the night. That man can enjoy the day, he owes to the fact that the divine-spiritual entities have driven out the elementary beings and have bound them in the night time. When man is now lethargic, then these elementary beings flow continually into him, but he leaves them as they are. The elementary entities that are chained to darkness at night are left as they are by man's laziness; but the elementary entities that move into him when he is industrious and hardworking, when he is doing something, these he leads back spiritually to the day. So he is constantly releasing these second-class elemental beings. Throughout our lives, we carry within us all the elemental beings that have moved in during our state of inertia and that have moved in during our state of diligence. When we pass through the gate of death, the beings that we have brought back during the day can go to the spiritual world again; the beings that we have left during the night due to our laziness remain chained to us, and we bring them back with our new reincarnation. That which we allow to flow into us through mere delusion of the senses in the form of external elemental beings, and that which we allow to flow into us through laziness and indolence from the night beings, that is reborn with our re-embodiment. And now you have the second point in the Bhagavad Gita. Again, it is not the human ego, but this kind of elemental being, which is referred to in the words: Look at day and night; what you yourself redeem by transforming it from a night being to a day being through your diligence : that which emerges from the day when you die enters the higher world; what you take with you as a night being, you condemn to be reborn with you.

[ 17 ] And now you can probably guess how the story continues. As with the phenomena that have just been discussed, it is the same with more comprehensive natural phenomena, for example with what our 28-month days produce, the change in the waxing and waning moon. A whole host of elemental beings had to work together to set the moon in motion in such a way that our lunar time could arise, that everything connected with the change of the moon could really unfold on our visible earth. And for this, certain entities had to be bewitched, damned, bound by the higher beings. It is always apparent to the clairvoyant eye that when the moon waxes, spiritual entities from a lower realm always come into a higher realm. But in order for there to be order, other spiritual elementary entities must also be bewitched down into subordinate realms. These elementary beings of a third kingdom also interact with man. When man is cheerful, when he is content with the world, when he understands the world in such a way that he embraces all things in a cheerful mind, then he continually releases the entities that are bound by the waning moon. The elemental beings enter into him and are continually liberated through his calmness, through his inner contentment, through his harmonious world feeling and world view. Those elemental beings that enter a person when he is discontented, when he is grumpy, when he is not satisfied with anything, when he is upset by everything, remain in the state of enchantment in which they were through the waning moon. Oh, there are people who, because they have come to a harmonious world-feeling, are cheerful in mind, and have an infinitely liberating effect on a very large number of elemental beings, who have come into being just as has been described. Through a harmonious world-feeling, through inner satisfaction with the world, man is a liberator of spiritual elemental beings. Through his grouchiness, his ill humor, his discontent, man fetters elemental beings, which could be freed through his cheerfulness. So you see how a person's emotional state is not only important for that person himself, how a person's cheerfulness or grouchiness is something that radiates from his being as liberation or as fetter. What a person does through his mere moods of mind goes out into the spiritual in all directions. So we have the third point of that important teaching of the Bhagavad Gita: Notice when a person acts in such a way through his mood that he frees spirits, as spirits are freed during the waxing moon. If a person, through his or her moroseness or hypochondria, summons the spirits around him or her and leaves them as they are, as they had to be, so that the order of the moon can be brought about, then these spirits remain bound to him or her and must be reborn when he or she enters a new existence. Thus, we have a third level of elemental spirits that are either released with the death of the person, return to their homeland, or have to be reborn in this world with the person.

[ 18 ] And finally, we have a fourth kind of elemental spirit. These are the ones that have to help bring about the course of the sun throughout the year, so that the sun of summer can shine down on the earth, awakening and fertilizing everything that thrives from spring to fall. To do this, certain spirits must be bound during the winter, must be enchanted during the time of the winter sun. And in the same way, as described earlier, people work for the other levels of spiritual beings in the elemental realm. Imagine a person who enters the winter season, who says to himself: the nights are getting longer, the days are getting shorter, we are coming to the part of the annual course of the sun where, so to speak, the sun draws its fertilizing powers from the earth. The outer earth dies, but with this dying earth I feel all the more obliged to come to spiritual life. I must now, so to speak, absorb the spirit more and more into myself. Let us take a person who, towards Christmas, absorbs an increasingly pious festive mood into himself, who learns to understand Christmas in the sense that the outer sensual world is most dead, and the spirit must live most for it; let us assume that the person lives through the winter time until Easter, he remembers that the revival of the external is connected with the death of the spiritual, he lives through the Easter festival with understanding. Such a person does not merely have an external religion, but an understanding of religion for natural processes, for the spirit that reigns in nature, and through this kind of piety, this spirituality, he frees that fourth class of elemental beings that are always flowing in and out of people and are connected to the course of the sun. And a person who is irreligious in this sense, who denies or does not feel the spirit, who wallows in materialistic chaos, is flooded by the elemental spirits of this fourth level and remains as they are. And through death, it now happens that these elemental spirits of the fourth stage are either released into their element or remain chained to the person and must reappear when he proceeds to a new embodiment. Thus, when man unites with the winter spirits without elevating them to summer spirits, without redeeming them through his spirituality, he will condemn these spirits to be reborn, whereas otherwise they would not be reborn, would not have to return with him.

[ 19 ] Behold the fire and the smoke! If you connect yourself with the outer world in such a way that your spiritual-soul process is something like when fire and smoke arise, that you yourself spiritualize things in your process of recognition or perception, then you help certain spiritual elemental beings to ascend. If you connect with the smoke, you condemn them to rebirth. If you connect with the day, you in turn free the corresponding spirits of the day. Look at the light, look at the day, look at the waxing moon, at the sunny half of the year: If you act in such a way that you lead the elemental beings back to the light, to the day, to the waxing moon, to the summer time of the year, then you free these elemental beings, who are so necessary to you, with your death, they ascend to the spiritual world. If you connect with the smoke, if you just stare at the solid, if you connect with the night through laziness, if you connect with the spirits of the waning moon through your bad temper, if you connect with the spirits that have been bound in the winter solstice through your godlessness or lack of spirit, then you condemn these elemental beings to having to be reborn with you.

[ 20 ] Now we know what this passage of the Bhagavad Gita is actually talking about. He who believes that it is about human beings does not understand the Bhagavad Gita; but he who knows that all human life is a continuous interplay between him and spirits that live enchanted in our environment and must be disenchanted, he sees a rising or re-embodiment of four groups of elemental beings. The secret of this lowest form of hierarchy has been preserved for us in this passage from the Bhagavad Gita. Indeed, when we have to extract from the ancient world wisdom what has been handed down to us in the great religious documents, we realize how great these religious documents are and how wrong those are who understand them superficially or do not want to understand them in their depth. One can only relate to them correctly if one says to oneself: No wisdom is high enough to fathom what is secretly contained in them. Only then do these documents imbue themselves with the magic touch of truly pious feelings, only then do they become, in the true sense of the word, what they are supposed to be: a means of human development that ennobles and purifies itself. They often still point us into tremendous abysses of human wisdom. And only what can flow from the sources of the secret schools and the mysteries into general humanity from now on will make these reflections – for that is what they are, after all – of primeval world wisdom appear in their greatness and in their light.

[ 21 ] We had to show, by means of a relatively difficult example, how in ancient world wisdom the interaction of all those spirits was known that surround us, that are everywhere, that flow out of and into people, and how it was also known that a person's actions represent an interaction between the spiritual world and their own inner world. Only when we become aware that we affect an entire cosmos with everything we do, even with our own inner disposition, only then does the human riddle become important to us, that our small world has an infinitely far-reaching significance for all becoming in the macrocosm. The intensification of our sense of responsibility is the most beautiful and significant thing we can gain from spiritual science. It teaches us to grasp life in its true sense and to take it so seriously that the life we have to throw into the stream of life's development is thrown in as something meaningful.