The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] This series of lectures will focus in particular on examining the wisdom of the Eastern world, that is, the ancient teachings of humanity as a whole, in such a way that they are illuminated by the light that can be kindled by the knowledge of the Christ impulse and by the knowledge of everything that has gradually developed in the Western world over the centuries as wisdom arising from this Christ impulse. If spiritual science is to be something living, it cannot consist in taking views and opinions about the higher worlds that already exist in humanity from history and then teaching them; rather, it must be a matter of making everything that we can experience in the present about the nature of the higher worlds the object of our consideration. ^{1It can be seen that I have never regarded spiritual science as a borrowing of historically handed-down views, but have presented it as knowledge to be gained directly in the present. The reason why the terminology of earlier times is sometimes used is because the modern age, which is far removed from spiritual scientific knowledge, does not have such terminology, and it is still easier to understand the old terminology than one that has been freely invented.} People who are able to turn their gaze upward into the spiritual worlds and see there as human beings otherwise see with their physical eyes in the outer world, as they comprehend the outer world with their intellect, have not only existed in ancient times, but have existed at all times in the development of humanity, and they exist today as well; and at no time is humanity dependent on teaching and contemplating truths that have been handed down historically; nor is humanity dependent on receiving these teachings about the higher worlds from any particular physical location. The source of higher wisdom and higher knowledge can flow everywhere in the world. Just as it would not be reasonable for us to teach mathematics or geography in our schools today based on ancient writings, it is equally unreasonable to consider only the historical, the merely historical, and the ancient in relation to the great mysteries of the supersensible worlds. It will therefore be our task in this series of lectures to approach the things of the higher worlds, the beings of the supersensible realms themselves, to allow the familiar, the less familiar, and the completely unknown to come before our souls as they appear in the higher worlds, and then to ask ourselves: What did the people of earlier times, the people of ancient times, have to say about these things? In other words, we want to let Western wisdom come before our souls and then ask ourselves: How does what we recognize as Western wisdom correspond to what we can come to know as Eastern wisdom? What is at stake here is that the truths of the supersensible worlds can be understood by every human being through reason when they are told to them. I have often emphasized this: only unbiased reason is needed to understand the facts of the higher worlds. Although this unbiased reason is a very rare ability in the present day, it does exist; and those who wish to practice it can understand everything that is said about the research results of so-called clairvoyant science. However, these facts of the higher worlds can only be gained and researched through so-called clairvoyant research, only by ascending into these higher worlds through people who have prepared themselves for this. Since beings dwell in these higher worlds which, in relation to us humans, can be called spiritual, the exploration of the higher worlds is, in one sense, the interaction of the clairvoyant or the initiated with these spiritual beings. What is in the higher worlds can therefore only be explored when the clairvoyant person ^{2By “clairvoyant” we do not mean here, as can be seen, the usual so-called dreamlike pathological state, but a state of knowledge that can be attained in full consciousness, in which the soul is in a condition that corresponds entirely to that of mathematical conception. It is precisely the opposite of the dreamlike pathological state.} climbs the steps that lead him to communication with a spiritual world.

[ 2 ] Much has already been said about these things in this or that lecture cycle; today we want to bring the essentials to the forefront of our minds. The first thing that is necessary for the person who is becoming clairvoyant in order to ascend to the higher worlds is nothing less than the ability to see, to recognize, to experience without the help of the outer senses, that is, without the help of those tools that are built into our bodies as eyes, ears, and so on, but also without the tools that serve our intellect and our understanding in particular. Just as one cannot see the supersensible worlds with the physical eyes or hear in them with the physical ears, so one cannot recognize anything of them through the mind, insofar as it is bound to the instrument of the physical brain. Man must therefore free himself from the activity he exercises while making use of his physical senses and his physical brain.

[ 3 ] Now you all know that in normal human life there is a state in which the human being is outside the instruments of his physical body; it is the state of sleep. We know that of the four members of human nature, the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I, the last two members, the I and the astral body, attain a certain independence. ^{3These expressions are used here only as they are explained in my books. They cannot, of course, be criticized from a point of view that associates them with entirely different ideas (such as those of trivial mysticism), as is so often the case. During waking life, the physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I are intimately connected. During sleep, these four members are so separated that, on the one hand, the physical body with the etheric body remains lying in bed, while on the other hand, the astral body and the ego live freely in another world. Thus, in the normal course of his life, within twenty-four hours, man is always in a state where he does not have the instruments built into his physical body; but he must pay for this liberation from the physical body in a certain way with a darkening of consciousness; during sleep he sees nothing in the world around him in which he then finds himself.}

[ 4 ] Now, the organs that human beings need when they want to look into the spiritual world, where they are with their ego and astral body during the night, can of course only be built into the astral body, or into the ego. And the difference between the so-called normal human being of today and the clairvoyant researcher is none other than that in the evening, when the ego and the astral body lift themselves out of the physical body and etheric body, in normal human beings the astral body and the ego are in a certain sense unstructured, without organs for seeing; in clairvoyant researchers, however, organs of the same kind, albeit of a different nature, are formed in this astral body, or in the ego, as the eyes and ears are for the physical body. The first task that anyone who wants to become a clairvoyant researcher must therefore set themselves is to do everything possible to build spiritual eyes, spiritual ears, and so on into their initially unstructured astral body or ego.

[ 5 ] But that is not the only thing that is necessary. Let us suppose that someone has succeeded, by means of those methods which we will briefly mention later, in equipping his astral body and his I with spiritual eyes, spiritual ears, and so on. He would then have a different astral body from the normal human being; he would have a structured, organized astral body. However, they would still not be able to see anything in the spiritual world; at least they would not be able to reach certain levels of vision. Something else is necessary for this. If, under present conditions, human beings really want to ascend to clairvoyance, to conscious clairvoyance, it is necessary that not only the spiritual eyes and spiritual ears be developed in their astral body, but also that everything that is plastically formed in this astral body is imprinted in the etheric body, like a seal is imprinted in sealing wax. Actual conscious clairvoyance begins when the organs, that is, the spiritual eyes, the spiritual ears, and so on, which are developed in the astral body, are imprinted in the etheric body.

[ 6 ] Thus, the etheric body must help the astral body and the I if clairvoyance is to arise. This means that all the members of human nature must work together: the I, the astral body, and the etheric body, with the sole exception of the physical body, which nevertheless has the task, after experiencing the supersensible world, of bringing this knowledge into full harmony with the sensory-rational knowledge acquired through it. bring this knowledge into full harmony with the sensory-rational knowledge acquired through it.

[ 7 ] Now, there is a greater obstacle to cooperation for the etheric body than for the astral body. The astral body and the I are, in the course of twenty-four hours, always once — one might say in the fortunate position of being free from the physical body. As long as they are stuck in the physical body from the morning when the human being wakes up until the evening when the human being falls asleep, the astral body and the I are bound to the forces of this physical body; and these forces prevent the astral body and the I from developing their own organs. The astral body and the ego are fine spiritual-soul entities; through their own elasticity, so to speak, they follow the forces of the physical body and take on its form. Therefore, even at night, normal human beings still have these forces of the physical body within them as after-effects; and, as we shall hear, it is only through special measures that the astral body and the ego can be freed from the after-effects of the physical body, so that the astral body can develop its own form, that is, its spiritual eyes, its spiritual ears, and so on. But at least we are in the fortunate position of having the astral body free for twenty-four hours; we therefore have the possibility of acting upon this astral body in such a way that it does not continue to follow the elasticity of the physical body during the night, but follows its own elasticity.

[ 8 ] The preparatory exercises undertaken by the clairvoyant researcher consist essentially in performing spiritual activities during waking hours that have such an effect on his astral body and his ego that when they leave the physical body and the etheric body at the moment of falling asleep, they are still under the after-effect of what the person has done in special preparation for clairvoyant research.

[ 9 ] Let us take two cases: the ordinary person in normal life, who from morning to evening is given over to impressions from the outside world, to what affects the outer senses and the intellect. In the evening he falls asleep, and his astral body leaves the physical body. This astral body is then completely devoted to what has been experienced during the day; it follows the elasticity of the physical body, not its own. But it is something else when, through meditation, concentration, and other exercises done for the purpose of higher knowledge, a person experiences strong effects on their soul, that is, on their astral body and I, during their daily life, if he has certain periods of time which he sets aside from his ordinary daily life, during which he does something completely different from what he does in his ordinary daily life; if, at special times, he does not give himself over to what the outer world can tell him through his senses and his intellect, but gives himself over to what is a message and a result of the spiritual worlds. If, therefore, he spends even a short part of his waking life in meditation, concentration, and other exercises, this has such an effect on his soul that the astral body, when it leaves the physical body at night, experiences the effects of this meditation, concentration, and so on, and thereby follows different elasticities than those of the physical body. The methods for attaining clairvoyant research therefore consist in the teachers of this research applying all the knowledge that has been tried and tested over thousands of years of human life in exercises, meditations, and concentrations that must be carried out during the day so that they then have their after-effects in the night life in such a way that the astral body reorganizes itself.

[ 10 ] This is the great responsibility assumed by those who impart such exercises to their fellow human beings. Such exercises are not pulled out of thin air; they are the result of precise spiritual work. What these exercises prescribe is known to have such an effect on the soul that when this soul leaves the physical body in the evening as it falls asleep, it develops its spiritual eyes, its spiritual ears, its spiritual thinking in the right way. If something is done wrong, if wrong exercises are done, then of course this also has an effect; the effects do not fail to appear, but then absurd — if we want to use an expression from the sensory world — unnatural forms are built into the astral body. What does it mean that unnatural forms are built into the astral body? Forms are built in that contradict the great whole of the world. It would then be just as if organs were built into our physical body that could not hear external sounds or see external light in the right way, that would not correspond to the external world. Through incorrect meditation and concentration, the human being would thus be placed in contradiction to the world in relation to his astral body and in relation to his I, and instead of receiving organs through which this spiritual world can gradually shine in, he would be shattered by the influences of the spiritual world. He would not experience these influences of the spiritual world as something that promotes him, as something that enriches him, but as something that inhibits his thinking.

[ 11 ] I ask you, because we will need this concept very much in the next few days, to pay attention to the fact that we are at a point where it can become clear to us that something that is outside in the external world—and we are now talking about the spiritual external world—can be highly beneficial for human beings and, conversely, highly detrimental, depending on how they relate their own being to this external world. Let us imagine that a person with an improperly developed astral body exposes himself to the spiritual environment. This environment has an effect on him. Whereas if he had developed the right organs, this spiritual environment would flow into him and enrich him with the secrets of the world, this same external world will cause him to wither spiritually if he has poorly developed his organs. It is the same external world that sometimes lifts people up to the highest heights and at other times holds them back, the same external world that people will one day say is a divine, beneficial world if they themselves carry the right things within them, and which they will say is a world of obstacles if they themselves have an incorrectly developed inner life. These words hold much of the key to understanding the good, the fruitful, and the evil, the destructive in the world. And you can see from this that the effect that any entities in the environment have on us is not decisive for the nature of this world itself. Depending on how we relate to the external world, the same entity can be beneficial or harmful, the same entity can be God or the devil for our soul organization. Please keep this in mind, for we will need it for many things in the coming days.

[ 12 ] We have thus prepared our souls for clairvoyant research in relation to the astral body and the I. And we have had to emphasize that we humans are in a fortunate position in a certain respect, because at least for a certain period of time during the twenty-four hours of the day, we have the subtle astral body and the I outside of the physical body and the etheric body. However, we do not have the etheric body outside the physical body at night; it remains connected to the physical body. We know from the various lectures that have been given here over the years that only at death does the moment occur when the physical human body remains on its own and the etheric body, together with the astral body and the I, lifts itself out of the physical body. We need not mention today the path these three members of human nature subsequently take between death and a new birth; we only want to clearly understand that with death comes the moment when the human being is free from the physical body and from everything that is built into this physical body, free from the physical sense organs, free from the brain, the instrument of the physically active intellect. There, the I, the astral body, and the etheric body are together in their proper form; there they can work together. That is why, from the moment of death, a real clairvoyance occurs in relation to the previous life, even if only for a short time at first. This has been mentioned frequently in these lectures. In order for such cooperation, as can normally only occur at the moment of death, to take place, the ego, the astral body, and the etheric body must be given the opportunity to bring about complete clairvoyance. The etheric body must therefore be able to be freed from the state into which it is bound during normal life; it must also be able to use its elasticity and become independent of the elasticity of the physical body, as the astral body is at night. To this end, higher, more intensive, and more strenuous exercises are necessary in a certain sense. In the next few days, we will be able to point to some of these in the appropriate contexts; but today we want to make it clear that this is necessary. It is not enough for the human being to have done those preparatory exercises that have a lasting effect on his astral body in order to develop the spiritual eyes and ears; exercises are also necessary that give the etheric body independence and freedom from the physical body. Today, however, we want to consider in a certain connection the result that must then occur. You can already gather this, in essence, from what has been said.

[ 13 ] We can say that normally it is only at the moment of death that the possibility exists for the I, the astral body, and the etheric body to work together freely, free from the physical body. For clairvoyant research, therefore, something must occur that can be compared solely with what otherwise happens to human beings at the moment of death. That is, if a person wants to become clairvoyant in a conscious sense, they must reach a stage of development in their life where they are as independent of their physical body and the use of the limbs of the physical body as they are independent of them at the moment of death.

[ 14 ] We ask ourselves: through what means — we will answer the question today in abstracto, in the next few days we will do so in concreto — can a person attain such independence from the physical body, through what means can he place himself in a state that is similar to the moment of physical death in terms of knowledge? He can put himself into such a state solely by developing certain sensations and nuances of sensation which so seize the soul that, in a certain relationship, these sensations and nuances of sensation, through their power, grasp the etheric body and lift it out of the physical body. So, there have to be really strong feeling impulses, thought impulses, and will impulses working in the soul to create an inner force that frees the etheric body from the physical body for a few moments. But you can't do this through external physical measures in our time of human development. Anyone who believes that such things can be brought about by physical measures would be indulging in a tremendous delusion. They would want to enter the spiritual worlds and yet remain with the manipulations and facts of the physical world, which means they would not yet have arrived at a real belief in the power of the spiritual worlds. It must be solely inner processes, processes of the strong, energetic soul life, that bring about this state. that they refer only to soul processes that have as little to do with a transition into the pathological-organic as mathematical formulations, and that they are nevertheless not merely formal in nature like the latter, but correspond to a spiritual reality. They relate to ordinary clairvoyance as the positive relates to the negative. And if we remain in the abstract, we can say for the time being that the most essential factor in bringing about such a state is that the individual experiences a transformation, a reversal, as it were, of his sphere of interest. In ordinary life, human beings are equipped with certain interests. You know that these interests play a role from morning to night. Human beings — and they are quite right to do so, because they have to live in this world — are interested in what affects their eyes, their ears, their physical intellect, their physical sensations, and so on; they are interested in what what confronts them in the outer world; they are more interested in some things than in others; they devote more attention to some things than to others; that is only natural. And in these fluctuating interests, which bind them with certain forces of attraction to the carpet of the outer world, human beings live, indeed, the vast majority of people today live truly alone.

[ 15 ] There is only one way in which human beings can, without losing the freshness and vitality of these external interests, bring about moments in their lives when these external interests have no effect whatsoever; when, to put it radically, the entire external sensory world becomes absolutely indifferent to them; when they kill off all the forces of interest that bind them to this or that in the sensory world. It would be wrong for humans not to reserve this killing of interest in the external world for certain holiday moments in life, but to extend it to their entire lives. Such a person would become incapable of cooperating with the external world; but we are called upon to participate in the external world and its work in our lives. We must therefore reserve and save for moments of celebration the ability to let all external interests in our environment die within us, and we must, so to speak, conquer this dual nature so that, on the one hand, we are able to participate vividly and freshly in everything that unfolds outside us in joy and pain, pleasure and displeasure, in blossoming sprouting and dying life, and to add our other interests to this. We must keep alive the freshness and originality of our interest in the outside world for our life on earth; we must not become strangers on earth, for then we would act out of egoism and rob the scene to which our energies should be devoted within our present stage of development. But on the other hand, in order to ascend to the higher worlds, we must develop the other side of nature, which consists in killing, in letting die, our interests in the external world during the holiday moments of life. And if we have patience and perseverance, if we have the energy and strength to practice this killing of interest in the environment for as long as our karma demands, if we practice it sufficiently, then ultimately, through this killing of interest in the external world, a strong, energetic force will be released within us. What we kill off in the outer world in this way lives on to a higher degree in the inner world. We experience a whole new kind of life, we go through that moment when we can say to ourselves: what we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears is only a part of the whole of life. There is a completely different life, a life in the spiritual world; a resurrection in the spiritual world, a stepping out beyond what we otherwise call life, a stepping out so that death does not occur, but a higher life results.

[ 16 ] When this purely spiritual power within us has become strong enough, we can gradually experience moments when we become rulers and masters of our etheric body, when this etheric body does not take on the form imposed on it by the tensile forces of the lungs and liver, but rather the form we impose on it from above through our astral body. Then we imprint on our etheric body the form that we first imprinted on the astral body through meditation and concentration and so on; then we press the plastic form of the astral body into the etheric body, and we rise from the preparation for enlightenment to the next stage of clairvoyant research. The first stage, through which we transform our astral body so that it acquires organs, is also called purification or refinement, because this astral body is purified of the forces of the outer world and submits to inner forces. The stage at which this astral body succeeds in imprinting its form on the etheric body is connected with the fact that it becomes spiritually bright around us, that the spiritual world around us becomes apparent, that enlightenment occurs.

[ 17 ] What I have just described to you is connected with certain experiences that human beings go through, which are typical, which are the same for everyone, and which everyone who goes through the path experiences at the moment when they are ready for it and when they turn their attention to certain things and processes that lie beyond the senses. The first experience that occurs through the organization of the astral body, which thus occurs as an effect of meditation, concentration, and so on, could be expressed as an emotional experience, as a sensory experience, as an experience that, if one wants to describe it, could best be called a fully conscious splitting of our entire personality that takes place within ourselves. ^{5What is referred to here as a “split personality” must be strictly distinguished from what is meant by this expression or by “double ego” by thinkers who have pathological or dreamlike phenomena in mind. The split characterized here is carried out in full deliberation only in the soul, is so completely understood that clear consciousness within the ordinary ego is in no way impaired. This “I” loses none of its inner strength and unity.} At the moment when one experiences this, one says to oneself: Now you have actually become something like two personalities; you are like a sword in its sheath. Before, you could compare yourself to a sword that is not in its sheath, but is worked into one with its sheath, consisting of one piece; you felt as one with your physical body; but now it is as if you are inside your physical body like the sword in its sheath, yet you are a being that feels itself to be something outside the sheath of the physical body in which it is enclosed. - One feels oneself in one's physical body, but not grown together with it, not consisting of one piece with it. This inner liberation, this inner feeling of oneself as a second personality that has stepped out of the first, is the great experience on the path to clairvoyant perception of the world. It must therefore be emphasized that this first experience is a sensory, emotional experience. One must feel oneself stuck in one's old personality and yet feel free and mobile within it. Of course, this is only a comparison with a sword and its sheath. For the sword feels constrained on all sides by the walls of its sheath; but the person who has this sensation has a high feeling of inner mobility, as if he could break through the boundaries of his physical body at all points, could break out, could make forays through the skin of his physical body, could extend spiritual feeling horns into a world that is still dark to him, but which becomes perceptible to him and, in the darkness — one might say — tangible, recognizable. This is the first great experience that man has.

[ 18 ] The second consists in the fact that the second personality, which is hidden within the first, gradually acquires the ability to truly step out of this first personality in a spiritual sense. This experience is already expressed in the fact that the human being now has the experience, albeit often only for a short time, of seeing himself, as if he had his own double standing before him. This second experience, however, has a much greater significance than the first. For this second experience is connected with something that is, one might say, very difficult for the human being to bear. One must remember that in normal life the human being is enclosed in his physical body. What is enclosed within it is the astral body and the I, and what is enclosed within the physical body as the astral body and the I adapts itself to the forces of the physical body; it nestles into it, so to speak. It takes on the form of the liver, the form of the heart, the form of the physical brain, and so on. And so it is with the etheric body as long as it is contained within the physical body. It takes on the form of the physical brain, the form of the heart, and so on. Consider what is meant by the terms brain, heart, and so on, what wonderful, perfect instruments and organs they are, what wonderful, perfect creations. Ask yourself what all human art, all human creativity means in comparison to that creativity, to that art and technology that are necessary to build such a marvelous tool as the heart, the brain, and so on. What can human beings, at their present stage of development, achieve in art and technology compared to the divine art and technology that built our physical bodies and therefore also protect us as long as we are enclosed in them? In our daily lives, we are therefore devoted to the creation of the gods with our physical bodies. Our etheric body and our astral body are fitted into forms created by the gods. When we become free and independent, the situation is different. Then we free ourselves from the miraculous tools of divine creation. We do not leave the physical body as something we can look down on as imperfect, but as the temple that the gods built for us, in which we otherwise dwell during our waking life. What are we then?

[ 19 ] Let us assume that we could leave this physical body at any moment without further preparation; that some magician would help us to leave this physical body so that it remains alone, that the etheric body goes with the astral body, so that we pass through an experience that can be compared to the moment of death. Let us assume that we could do this without the preparation we have spoken of: what would we be then, when we are out there, when we stand before ourselves? We would be what we have become in the course of world evolution, from life to life. As long as we are stuck in our physical body from morning to evening, the divine creation of the temple of our physical body corrects what we have organized ourselves from embodiment to embodiment in the course of our earthly life; but now, when we step out, our astral body and our etheric body have what they have acquired from life to life without correction; now they look as they must look according to what they have made of themselves. When a person steps out of their physical body in such an unprepared state, they are not a being of a higher, nobler, purer form than the one they had in their physical body, but a being with all the imperfections they have loaded onto their karma. All this remains invisible as long as the body mold absorbs our etheric body, astral body, and ego. It becomes visible the moment we step out of the physical body with the higher members of our being. If we become clairvoyant at that moment, we see before our eyes all the inclinations and passions that we still have from what we were in previous earthly lives. Let us suppose that we will go through many more of these in the course of our future earthly lives; we will do this or that, accomplish this or that. Many of the things we will accomplish are already present in our inclinations, drives, and passions; we have developed them through incarnations in earlier times. Everything that a person is capable of accomplishing in this or that thing in the world, everything that he has done wrong against this or that person — what he has to pay back to this or that person in the future — all of this is embodied in the astral body and etheric body when he steps out of the physical body. We stand before ourselves, as it were, spiritually naked, if we are clairvoyant when we step out; that is, we stand before our spiritual eye in such a way that we now know how much worse we are than we would be if we had attained the perfection that the gods had, enabling them to create the marvelous structure of our physical body. At that moment, we see how far below that perfection we stand, which must remain before us as our ideal for future development. At that moment, we know how far we have descended below the world of perfection.

[ 20 ] This is the experience connected with enlightenment; this is the experience called the encounter with the guardian of the threshold. That which is real becomes neither more nor less real because we see it or do not see it. The form we see at this moment, which has just been described, is also there otherwise, is also completely within us; but because we have not yet stepped out of ourselves, because we do not stand opposite ourselves, but because we are stuck inside, we do not see it. In ordinary life, what we see at the moment when we step out of ourselves clairvoyantly is the guardian of the threshold. He protects us from that experience which we must first learn to endure. We must first have that strong force within us that enables us to say to ourselves: There is a world of the future before us, and we look without fear or horror at what we have become, for we know quite certainly that we can compensate for all this again. The ability we must have in order to experience this moment without being overwhelmed by it is something we must acquire during our preparation for clairvoyant research. This preparation consists—again, we are speaking in abstract terms today; we will have to go into the concrete details later—in making the active, positive qualities of our soul strong and energetic, in increasing our courage, our sense of freedom, our love, our energy of thought, our energy of clear-sighted intellect as much as we can, so that we emerge from our physical body not as weak but as strong human beings. But if there is too much of what we know in ordinary life as fear and anxiety in a person, they will not be able to survive this experience without feeling oppressed.

[ 21 ] Thus we see that there are certain conditions for looking into the spiritual worlds, which in a certain sense offer the highest that can be thought of for the life of the present stage of human evolution, and which at the same time make it necessary for the human being to achieve a complete transformation and reversal of his being for the festive moments. The greatest benefit in our present time will be gained by those who, before they proceed to this experience, allow themselves to be told what those who have experienced the higher worlds have seen; what can then be grasped and understood when it is told, without one's own insight into these worlds. Research can only be done if one looks in for oneself. But by striving more and more with the intellect to comprehend what the clairvoyant researcher says, one comes more and more to say to oneself: When I consider all that life brings, I must say that the result of supersensible research is quite reasonable after all. If you first try to gain an overview in this way, if you first want to become understanding and then clairvoyant, then you have done the right thing in relation to the present stage of humanity. First you must thoroughly familiarize yourself with spiritual science. If you do that, then the great, comprehensive, strengthening, encouraging, and refreshing ideas and thoughts of this science of the soul are not just theory; they give the soul qualities of feeling, will, and thinking that strengthen it. Then, when the soul has gone through this, the moment of encounter with the guardian of the threshold becomes something different than it would otherwise have been. Fear and anxiety are overcome in a completely different way if one has previously gone through the stories of the higher worlds than if this has not happened.

[ 22 ] But then, when a person has had this experience of facing themselves, of encountering the guardian of the threshold, the world begins to become something completely different for them; then, in a certain sense, all things in the world take on a new form. And the judgment that says something like this is justified: Until now I knew what fire was; but that was only an illusion; for what I have hitherto called fire is to its reality, to what I now know as fire, about what the impressions made by the wheels of a carriage on the road are to the carriage itself, if I were to regard those impressions as the only reality and refuse to say to myself: there must have been a carriage with a person sitting in it passing over the road. I say that these ruts are the signs, the external expression of the car that drove over them and in which a person was sitting. When it has passed, I see nothing of it; but it is the cause of the ruts, it is the essential thing. And anyone who would believe that the ruts left by the wheels are something self-contained, something essential, would take the external impression for the thing itself. — So what we see in outer life as the glowing fire is, in relation to its reality, to the spiritual entity behind it, like the ruts in the road to the person who sat in the car that drove along the road. In the fire we have only an external expression. Behind what the eye sees as fire and what we feel as heat is the true spiritual entity, which has only its external expression in the external fire. Behind what we breathe in as air, behind what enters the eye as light, behind what is sound in our ears, lie the active divine-spiritual beings, which have only their outer garment, as it were, in fire, in water, in what surrounds us in the various realms of the world.

[ 23 ] In the so-called secret doctrine, in the mystery teachings, this kind of experience is called passing through the elemental worlds. Whereas previously one believed that what one perceives as fire is a reality, one now experiences that behind fire there are living beings. One becomes acquainted, more or less intimately, with fire as something completely different from how it appears in the sensory world; one becomes acquainted with the fire beings, with what stands behind fire as soul. Just as our soul stands behind our body, so the soul and spirit of fire stand behind the fire that is perceptible to the outer senses. One enters a spiritual realm when one experiences the soul and spirit of fire; and this experience, which says: the outer fire is not truth, it is mere appearance, it is merely a garment, I am now among the fire gods, as I was before among human beings in the physical world — this experience is called life in the element of fire, when one speaks in the secret scientific sense. The same is true of what we breathe in. At the moment when what we breathe in as external air becomes merely a garment for the living beings behind it, we live in the element of air.

[ 24 ] And so, once they have encountered the guardian of the threshold, human beings can ascend to experience the beings in the so-called elements, in the elements of fire, water, air, and earth. These four types of spirits that live in the elements exist, and human beings who have reached the stage just described interact with the spiritual beings of the elements. They live in the elements, they live through earth, water, air, and fire. What we refer to in ordinary life with these words is only the outer garment, the outer expression of the spiritual beings behind them. Certain divine-spiritual beings live in what we encounter as solid matter or earth — in the spiritual-scientific sense — as liquid matter or water — in the spiritual-scientific sense — as expansive matter or air, and as warm, fiery matter or fire. But these are not yet the highest spiritual beings. Once we have worked our way through the experience of the elemental world, we ascend to those beings who are the creative beings for those spirits that live in the elements. Now consider the following: when you look at your surroundings, your physical surroundings, you see that they consist of what are the four outer members of the actual elemental world. Whether you see plants or animals or stones on the physical plane, you can say that they consist either of the solid, that is, the earthy — in occult terms — or of the liquid, that is, of water — in occult terms — of the gaseous or the air, and of the fiery, the warm. These are the elements that make up the things that exist physically in the world of stones, plants, animals, and humans. And behind what is physical, as creative forces, as fertilizing forces, are those forces that flow to us for the most part from the sun. The sun brings forth from the earth the sprouting, budding life. The sun therefore sends those forces, initially in the physical sense, to the earth which make it possible for us to see with our physical senses what lives in fire, air, water, and earth. We see the sun physically because it spreads physical light. Physical light is stopped by physical matter. Man sees the sun from sunrise to sunset, and he does not see the sun when physical earth matter covers it; from sunset to sunrise he does not see it. Such darkness as prevails in physical life from sunset to sunrise does not exist in the spiritual world. At the moment when the clairvoyant has attained what has been described, at the moment when he sees behind the fire the spirits of fire, behind the air the spirits of air, behind the water the spirits of water, and behind the earth the spirits of earth, at that moment he sees behind these spiritual beings their higher rulers, their higher guides, that which relates to these elemental beings, just as the warming and illuminating, benevolent sun relates to the sprouting and budding physical life on our earth. This means that the clairvoyant struggles his way from the observation of the elemental beings to the observation of the higher spiritual beings, which are in the spiritual realm what can be symbolically compared in the physical realm to the sun in relation to the earth. The human being then sees behind the elemental beings a high spiritual world: the spiritual sun. When what is otherwise darkness becomes light for the clairvoyant, when he attains enlightenment, then he advances, as the physical eye advances toward the sun, toward the spiritual sun, that is, toward the spiritual beings. And when does he advance toward these higher spiritual beings? He advances when, as it were, spiritual darkness is at its height for human beings. When a person is free in relation to their astral body and their ego, that is, from the moment they fall asleep until they wake up, they live surrounded by darkness because they cannot see the spiritual world that surrounds them. This darkness gradually increases, reaches a peak, and then decreases again until morning, when they wake up. It reaches, so to speak, a highest degree. This highest degree of spiritual darkness can be compared to what we call midnight in the outer life. Just as the outer physical darkness is normally strongest at midnight, increasing until then and then decreasing, so there is a highest degree of spiritual darkness, a midnight. At a certain stage of clairvoyance, during the time when spiritual darkness rises for the unspiritual, one sees elemental spirits; the same happens when the darkness recedes. If one has only reached a low level of clairvoyance, one first experiences certain elemental spirits, so to speak, but just when one wants to experience the highest spiritual moment, the midnight hour, another eclipse occurs, and only then does enlightenment follow. But when one has reached a certain level of clairvoyance, what can be called the midnight hour becomes all the brighter. During this time ^{6It must be clearly understood that this “midnight hour” does not refer to a moment coinciding with the external passage of time, but to an inner state.} one experiences the sight of those spiritual beings who, in relation to the elemental spirits, are like the sun to the physical earth; one experiences the higher, creative, solar beings, and that moment occurs which is technically called the vision of the sun at midnight.

[ 25 ] Such are the stages that must be passed through today, as at all times, by those who wish to rise to clairvoyant research, who wish to look behind the veil that covers the true world in the earthly elements. These stages that have now been described, feeling free from one's second personality, like a sword in its sheath, feeling oneself outside the physical body, as if one had drawn the sword from its sheath; the encounter with the guardian of the threshold; the experience of the elemental beings, that is, the experience of that great moment when the fire, air, water, and earth beings become entities among which one walks, with which one now interacts as in ordinary life with human beings; and then the experience of that moment when one experiences the primordial being of these elemental beings—these are the stages that could be passed through at any time, that can still be passed through today, These are — in other words, this has often been described before, for there are many ways to describe it, and it always remains an imperfect description! — the stages that lead up to the spiritual worlds. We had to bring them before our souls in order to see what human beings must do at all times in order to recognize spiritual beings. And we will now have to bring before our souls what human beings experience in these spiritual worlds; we will have to bring before our souls some of the concrete tasks that human beings must perform in order to encounter spiritual beings. And when we have brought this matter before our souls in the way that can be achieved through Western initiation, then we will compare what we have thus gained from the matter itself with what has been handed down to humanity in the Eastern tradition, in ancient wisdom. This is what can be understood as the falling of the Christ light upon the wisdom of pre-Christian times.