The Rudolf Steiner Archive

14. The Nature of Man

Notes from the lecture

[ 1 ] Last year I had the privilege of delivering several lectures on the subject of theosophy here at this very venue, and it gives me great satisfaction that, during my visit to Rome this spring, I am able to give three lectures here with the permission of our most esteemed Princess. These three lectures are intended to shed light on what is called, in theosophical terms, the “spiritual knowledge of the world,” from a perspective that is even more inward than was the case—and, I believe, quite rightly so—in the introductory course last year.

[ 2 ] Theosophy, or what might also be called “spiritual science,” is something that is still widely misunderstood in our time by various groups, especially by those who adhere to a particular religious creed. Now, spiritual science is in no way intended to oppose this or that religious creed. Its sole purpose in relation to religions can only be to lead to a deeper understanding of religious truths. So that one may well say: No one in the world can have even the slightest bit of their religious convictions taken away by the insights of spiritual science. It is so often misunderstood that spiritual science is fundamentally based on a completely different foundation than any religious creed. It is based on the foundation of purely spiritual science.

[ 3 ] This touches upon another form of resistance that is frequently directed against spiritual science today, and which is expressed in the claim that it is unscientific, fanciful, and dreamy. However, anyone who has given even a little thought to the current trend in spiritual science will soon realize that spiritual science deals with a completely different realm than external science. While the latter deals with the things of the external, sensory world, which can be grasped by the physical senses and the intellect, the task of spiritual science is to explore the realm of the spirit that lies beyond the sensory world and is closed to our normal consciousness. The mode of thinking, the ideas, and the concepts with which the exact sciences approach the sensory world and spiritual science approaches the spiritual world are exactly the same. Spiritual science differs in principle from the other sciences for only two reasons. First, because it is comprehensible to every human soul, in that it considers things about which every human heart must actually inquire at every hour of the day. The subjects of spiritual science are entirely universal to humanity, and there is likely no question in the human soul to which spiritual science would not have an answer. In thousands upon thousands of cases, human beings need as comfort what spiritual science has to offer them as comfort, and they need as hope and confidence for this life and for the future what spiritual science has to offer them as hope and confidence.

[ 4 ] The other reason is that, while the other sciences require the acquisition of prerequisites, the humanities know how to speak in a way that is understandable to everyone, provided they make an effort to understand its language. And if it is so often said that it is difficult to understand, it is only because people approach it with prejudices and self-imposed obstacles. The difficulty lies not in its language, but in our way of thinking.

[ 5 ] These three lectures will address the following topics: today, the nature of the human being itself; tomorrow, the nature of the higher worlds and their connection to our own; and the day after tomorrow, the course of human evolution and the intervention of the great spiritual beings who are involved in our spiritual life.

[ 6 ] The nature of the human being can only be understood if one is able to grasp it from the perspective of the spirit. For just as the human being, in terms of his or her external, physical form, is constituted from the sensory world, so too is he or she, as a spiritual and soul-being, formed and constituted from the supersensory world. Thus, only a science that looks into the realms of the spiritual world can penetrate to the true nature of the human being, and we must agree from the outset on how such knowledge of higher worlds can be attained.

[ 7 ] This can only be briefly touched upon here as an introduction. With the senses and the intellect on which human beings rely for their external life, we can never truly come close to the spiritual world—no closer than a blind person comes to light and color. But just as a world of light and color bursts into the soul of a person born blind who has undergone a successful operation, so too is it possible that the spiritual organ of perception, the spiritual senses, may open, and that a person may experience the great moment which, on a higher level, signifies the same as the moment just described for the person born blind. It is possible that soul and spiritual powers, which lie dormant in ordinary consciousness, may be awakened, and that spiritual powers—which, as it were, constitute a spiritual eye or a spiritual ear—may be brought forth. At the moment the higher senses awaken, a world of spiritual facts and spiritual beings bursts into our soul, just as light and color burst forth before the man born blind who has come to see. We call such people, who are able to see the spiritual worlds and explain the reasons for our existence from them, “awakened” or “initiated” people. They can then communicate what they perceive to others, and if they have correctly understood their task, they communicate it in such a way that everyone’s reason and intellect can understand it. For the understanding of spiritual science or theosophy does not involve spiritual research itself, but only the experience of it.

[ 8 ] Let us briefly touch upon how these higher abilities are acquired in humans. One must first learn to artificially induce a specific moment that occurs naturally every day. This is the moment of falling asleep, when a person transitions into a special state of consciousness. What happens at the moment of falling asleep? We notice how all our passions, desires, and perceptions, which ebb and flow within us throughout the day, gradually fall silent; external impressions cease, and sleep sets in for normal people. Now we are no longer aware of ourselves and no longer perceive anything from the environment. At this very moment, then, when we withdraw from the external world, unconsciousness sets in. Now, the person who wishes to gradually advance toward initiation—that is, toward initiation into the higher mysteries—must learn to artificially induce this moment of the disappearance of external impressions. He must be able to evoke within himself a state that is equivalent to the impressionless state of sleep, where neither color nor warmth nor sound is perceived by the soul, and it feels neither sorrow nor joy regarding anything in the external world.

[ 9 ] Not only must the student be able to bring about this state with complete awareness, but—even though his soul is empty of all external impressions—he must be just as conscious as he is during ordinary daily life. He must now fill this emptied soul with certain ideas and feelings that do not come from outside, but are aroused within the soul itself. Through strong will and by his own power, the soul must be able to evoke certain feelings, sensations, and impulses of will that must be stronger than anything that can come from outside. This state is that of meditation. If the meditator were to develop only these two abilities within himself, he would soon experience something internally akin to an earthquake-like tremor; to avoid this, he must learn to maintain the utmost inner calm. He must be able to experience the strong inner impulses during meditation while his soul is as smooth as the sea in complete stillness.

[ 10 ] These, then, are the three conditions for the initiate: first, the soul’s freedom from all external impressions; second, the soul’s richness in inner visions; third, complete peace of mind. Whoever has the perseverance to train themselves in this way will experience a great, momentous moment—one perhaps after just a few months, another perhaps only after years. The spiritual senses will open to him, and he will exclaim: Oh, there is something entirely different in our world than I have known until now. Until now I saw only what my mind could conceive, but now I see that in the same world there are spiritual realities, spiritual beings, and that there are worlds which can be called hidden worlds.

[ 11 ] From this sublime moment onward, the student becomes an explorer of the spiritual worlds and is then able to recognize for himself what is to be outlined here regarding the nature of the human being. Today we will speak of the following states and experiences of the soul, which must be of deep interest to everyone and which we can describe as the transitional states between waking and sleeping and what is called life and death. We have already alluded to the external states of waking and sleeping and now wish to examine the inner ones more closely. It would be absurd if we were to present it as logical, even with ordinary reason, that the actual inner being of the human being disappears upon falling asleep, as soon as external impressions cease, and is, so to speak, reborn in the morning. That can never be the case, and only someone who were to indulge in absurd ideas could hold the opinion that the inner self perishes in the evening and is reborn in the morning.

[ 12 ] But is the inner, true human being what we see with our physical eyes as a sleeping body lying in bed? Surely no one would claim that. Now, anyone who observes the transition from waking to sleeping with ordinary consciousness can, of course, perceive nothing other than that the physical body gradually passes into a motionless state. But the person who has developed their spiritual eye through the means just described perceives how the inner, spiritual, true human being rises up out of the physical body. Just as the outer appearance of the person falling asleep is different for the seer than for the ordinary person, who is capable of perceiving only with the physical eye, so too is the state of sleep itself fundamentally different for the two. While the non-clairvoyant person falls into unconsciousness, the seer remains conscious as he falls asleep, for he has developed in his soul body—which rises up from the resting physical body—sense organs for perceiving the spiritual world.

[ 13 ] Let us now attempt to briefly describe this spiritual world into which the clairvoyant ascends. The perceptions he has are initially limited to the time when his physical body is asleep. With constant practice, however, he will reach the point where, at any moment of the day, as soon as he wishes, he can shut down his physical senses and see spiritually without leaving his body. A great difference becomes immediately apparent when we look at this bouquet of roses, for example, with the eyes of a seer. We can then suddenly no longer say: The bouquet of roses is in front of me, I am here and it is there—as we can say in the normal waking state. In the spiritual world, the spatial distinction, the here and there, completely loses its meaning, and we are no longer with our consciousness in front of the bouquet of roses, but inside it. Spiritual consciousness feels itself in that world in the essence, in the fact; the clairvoyant pours himself into the object he perceives. His inner being, as it were, penetrates the skin of our physical body and becomes one with all that it beholds around itself in the spiritual world. What, then, is that which pours out into the environment at night and feels bound during the day within the confines of the physical body? It is that which we summarize in the little word “I,” of which the human being says in normal daytime consciousness: It lives in my body. - Clairvoyant consciousness perceives this “I” as pouring out into the entire external world that it can reach. We may ask: Where is it, then? — There is only one answer to this: The seer’s “I” is, in essence, everywhere it perceives.

[ 14 ] This path into the spiritual world is the same one that every non-clairvoyant takes when falling asleep, except that they lose consciousness in the process. Thus, each of us lives alternately awake in the physical body, confined within the microcosm, and asleep, expanded into the vastness and united with the great world around us, the macrocosm.

[ 15 ] Why, we might ask, must we fall into unconsciousness?—The reason is that modern human beings are not yet ready for this, and their ego could not bear to consciously flow out into the universe. We can make the process somewhat clear to ourselves through a visual image: Let us imagine a large basin of water into which we drop a small drop of a colored liquid. There we see how the drop dissolves into the water surrounding it, and how it becomes increasingly invisible the further it spreads. Something similar happens to the human being in his ego, which, like a droplet, must expand into the entire spiritual world. Modern man could not bear to dissolve himself in this way consciously and must pay for this acceptance into his spiritual home with unconsciousness. What would happen to them if, without occult preparation, they were to expand into the spiritual world in full consciousness? We can best visualize this by imagining the ego equipped with only as much power as is necessary for limited perception on the physical plane. As it expands beyond the physical limits, it loses strength, just as a drop loses its consistency, and its perceptions would fade more and more the further it expands, until it would finally have the dreadful feeling of floating over a bottomless abyss in the deepest darkness. We must conceive of the ego not merely as a force, but as a feeling and sensing being, and can therefore form a faint idea of the impression of being lost in nothingness. Therefore, one of the most important preparations for those who wish to advance to clairvoyant consciousness is to cultivate fearlessness, and it is certainly part of the spiritual researcher’s training that many opportunities be created for them through which they can test their equanimity and steadfastness. The person who has not had a thousand and a thousand opportunities to say to himself with a calm soul, in the face of events that would otherwise terrify others and make them turn pale: “I am facing the most terrible danger, but I know that my fear does not make my situation any safer, whereas courageous action does”—such a person is not yet sufficiently prepared. In the ancient mysteries, of course, it happened that the initiate, even if his ego had not yet attained full strength, was consciously led out into the macrocosm; however, the initiator had to be with him at all times to be able to help him in time. This type of clairvoyance, as it was achieved in the ancient mystery schools of Europe, is called ecstasy. For our present stage of development, this method is no longer suitable, and another has taken its place, which we will now discuss. It is the Rosicrucian method.

[ 16 ] As was just mentioned, in the ancient mysteries the initiate was under the supervision of his teacher, whose task was to prevent the emerging ego from completely dissolving and falling into a state of powerlessness. This ecstatic absorption was achieved through the strictly regulated cultivation of certain feelings that one also experiences in everyday life. The ancient method was to link these feelings to those that people still experience today—albeit to a far lesser degree—during the changing of the seasons. For example, when the student stepped out into the fresh spring landscape and saw the young grass and the first flowers sprouting from the melting snow, when he saw all around him the awakening from winter’s slumber, when he felt the frozen earth thawing beneath his feet and saw the dry, bare trees sprouting new buds under the awakening touch of the warm sunlight, then he had to feel this resurgent life within himself and surrender to it with his whole soul in the deepest meditation.

[ 17 ] Through constant repetition, he was able to allow this feeling to swell to unimaginable strength. “You must,” the initiator told him, “be able to kindle this joy, this confidence, and this vitality within yourself so powerfully and so vividly that the earth itself would feel them if it had consciousness.”

[ 18 ] Likewise, in the fall, the student had to learn to feel melancholy; he had to let the dying off of nature all around him take its toll on him; he had to feel how forests and meadows lose their leafy adornment and how life withdraws into the bosom of the earth. Together with her, he had to be able to mourn for her children. Likewise, he had to experience the other seasons, and especially the winter and summer solstices, within himself.

[ 19 ] It may seem as though this is merely something hidden within everyday life, and yet this is not the case, for the esotericist of both ancient and modern times must create these feelings within his innermost being through complete stillness of the soul, while shutting out all external impressions. Those who had learned to feel in this way experienced, after prolonged practice—and this is still the case today—what was called in the ancient mysteries: the vision of the sun at midnight. - The Earth became transparent, and through its fading physical form one saw the spiritual reality underlying it; instead of the physical sun, one beheld the great spiritual sun, that primal, powerful Being of which the physical sun was merely the material body.

[ 20 ] Faced with this overwhelming sight, however, the ego of the disciple, who had just regained his sight, was in danger of sinking into a state of helplessness, and his guru, his teacher, had to stand by his side to help him. Today, the guru could no longer exert the same power over the disciple as in the past, since the relationship between teacher and disciple has changed, and modern human nature—due to a different upbringing—would be incapable, despite all good intentions and willing submission, of suppressing the rebellious forces within it.

[ 21 ] In addition to this path of ecstasy, there was also the so-called mystical path to initiation. It consisted of the meditator delving ever deeper into his own inner self. Within himself, he then experienced what the ecstatic individual experienced upon stepping outside. But this path, too, had its great dangers. While the ecstatic was threatened by the powerlessness of the dissolving ego, the mystic’s ego contracted within itself into unimagined strength, and egoism swelled within him to monstrous proportions. “I want to be everything, I want to have everything”—this was the unbridled desire that possessed the ego.

[ 22 ] How, then, did one bring about this deepening within oneself? Let us consider the process of waking up. What happens then? The “I,” which was previously spread out widely in the macrocosm, contracts and sinks into the physical body. If the external world did not exist—setting a limit to this contraction with its impressions—one would indeed descend into one’s inner self. What, then, is there to learn? One must learn to wake up without allowing external impressions to affect one. As a result, the “I” can concentrate unhindered within the innermost core of the human being. The experiences one then has amidst egoistic desires escalating into the boundless are what all mystics refer to as “temptation.” To avoid succumbing to this danger, virtue and love, humility and devotion must therefore be developed to a high degree beforehand. Thus equipped, the meditator can calmly embark on this path. For the great mystics, the ego could no longer will of its own accord; they could no longer be themselves at all; they were able to surrender themselves unreservedly to Christ and allow him to think, feel, act, and will within them. Paul therefore says: “It is not I who do it, but Christ in me who wills.”

[ 23 ] "We also find this method in other ancient mysteries, such as the Egyptian ones; however, during the initiation, the guru was always present to protect the aspirant from egoistic forces from the outside.

[ 24 ] The changed circumstances of our present age necessitate a new approach. Human beings have become more independent, and they must be provided with the necessary means to enter the path to the inner and higher worlds without the direct intervention of a teacher. The Rosicrucian initiation, as it is practiced today, combines both methods, and this training, which leads to clairvoyance in the spiritual worlds, eliminates the dangers mentioned earlier to which the ancient ecstatics and mystics were exposed.

[ 25 ] Tomorrow we will go into this in more detail and describe how the Rosicrucian student develops spiritual organs of perception within his soul body in order to explore the spiritual foundations of the universe.