The Rudolf Steiner Archive

15. Higher Worlds and their Connection to Ours

Notes from the lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday, reference was made to two methods of initiation: the mystical path and the path of ecstasy. Both, however, were appropriate to the state of development in ancient times. Today, the inner states of human beings are different, and a new form of initiation is necessary. The Rosicrucian initiation, properly understood, is the one that fully corresponds to present-day conditions. To gain a reasonably accurate understanding of what takes place in the human soul in this context, it is better first to familiarize oneself with the processes associated with the states of wakefulness and sleep, of life and death. We will therefore examine these states in greater detail in our discussion today.

[ 2 ] People generally do not give the alternation of waking and sleeping enough thought. It is such an everyday occurrence to them that they hardly give it a second thought. As a result, the mystery inherent in these processes completely eludes them. If one were to ask what happens to a person when they fall asleep, the answer would be: Consciousness fades, the tired brain falls into a state of numbness and no longer takes in sensory impressions from the outside world. This is correct insofar as it refers to what is perceptible to the physical eye. If, however, we ask the clairvoyant what he perceives, he will tell us that something quite significant is taking place. He sees how, from the resting physical body, the inner, astral human being lifts itself up and pours into the astral world body, the macrocosm. And in the morning, upon awakening, he sees how that which has flowed into the universe contracts again and is absorbed by the physical body, the microcosm. A dual existence is revealed to his gaze, which the human being leads in the world on a large scale and in the world on a small scale.

[ 3 ] We must now ask ourselves: What significance does sleep actually have for human beings? What happens to them? Why do they leave their bodies? And how can the body live without the soul? — The true, inner human being, whose material expression and instrument is the outer, physical body, notices when falling asleep how the entire external world fades from their perception, how they gradually become insensitive to all the sensory impressions they received during the day, and how all emotional feelings—joy and pain—fade away completely. We must realize that the inner human being, who perceives through the physical senses, is at the same time the bearer of pleasure and pain, of hatred and love, and not the physical body. We might now object: If this is the case, why is it that when this inner human being leaves the body, he does not retain the sensations of pain or joy attached to him in the astral world? The reason lies in the fact that in order to perceive the facts of his inner life, he must be in the physical body, which, like a mirror, reflects his emotional movements and brings them to consciousness. Upon leaving the mirror, the image of the impressions fades, and the person does not become aware of them again until he has withdrawn into the body once more. There is thus a constant interaction between the inner and outer human being.

[ 4 ] It is interesting to compare what the exact sciences have to say on this subject; the picture is quite similar. As we fall asleep, we notice how the expenditure of energy during the day results in the fatigue of the entire organism, how the limbs gradually cease to move, how the sense of voice, smell, taste, and sight fade away, and finally hearing, the most spiritual of the senses; and upon waking, we feel that new strength and freshness have been bestowed upon all our limbs and senses. But where do these forces come from, which during the day reflect the inner human being to the outer? We draw them at night in our spiritual home, the macrocosm, and bring them with us in the morning into the physical world, in which we could not survive without this nightly immersion into the inner life of the world. Sleep is necessary because without it, disturbances in the life of the soul would occur. It is sleep that bestows spiritual strength upon us.

[ 5 ] We have seen what we gain in the spiritual world for the physical world, and can now ask the second question: But what do we carry over from the waking state into the sleeping state at night? The answer to this is provided by human life between birth and death. We see how it undergoes a process of development through the ever-growing accumulation of external experiences that must be processed individually. Each of us perceives things individually. Take, for example, a historical event: Each person judges it according to the maturity of their soul; some remain unaffected and know not how to draw a lesson from it, while others allow it to fully affect them and become wise. In such a person, the experience has been transformed into spiritual powers.

[ 6 ] This process can be illustrated even more clearly by the following example. Let’s think of a child learning to write. How many failed attempts did it have to make before the first characters came out right, how much paper and how many pencils did it have to use up, how many punishments did it have to endure for smudges and poor handwriting: and this went on for years, until it was finally able to write well. Everything this child went through has, in a sense, coalesced within it into the ability to write.

[ 7 ] In this way, experiences are woven into spiritual forces that we carry over into the astral world every evening. Sleep then adds another layer and brings about the transformation of these forces. Most of us will know from personal experience that a poem we have memorized comes back to us more vividly after sleep. This truth has practically become a common saying: Bisogna dormirci sopra. — It follows from what has been said that we carry the experiences processed during the day over into our spiritual home in the evening and, transformed into spiritual forces, bring them back into the physical world in the morning. We now understand more clearly the purpose and necessity of alternating life on the two planes of existence and the importance of sleep, without which life here would not be possible.

[ 8 ] There is, however, a limit to this transformation of forces, and every morning as we enter our bodies, it becomes increasingly clear. It is the limit that our physical body imposes on the abilities we have acquired. We can indeed transform some things right down into the physical realm, but not everything. Take, for example, a person who, over the course of ten years, has absorbed genuine insights into the outer and the hidden world. With what he has acquired externally and scientifically, he has enriched only his intellect and his mind; the secret experiences, however—the insights that have become part of him through pleasure and suffering—are imprinted in his physicality and have altered his physiognomy and gestures.

[ 9 ] The following example illustrates the limit that the body imposes on the acquisition of abilities: Someone is born with a lack of musical ear. — For in order to be a performing musician, a delicate structure of this organ is necessary, so delicate that it eludes scientific observation. — If such a person studies music extensively, what they absorb during the day is transformed into spiritual musical power at night; however, this cannot be expressed upon entering the imperfect physical organ. This example illustrates one of the cases in which the inability to transform the physical organ sets an insurmountable barrier to the utilization of spiritual powers. In such cases, a person must resign themselves and calmly tolerate the disharmony between their body and their restrained powers. Those capable of looking more deeply know that everyone has many experiences that would completely transform them if they could incorporate them into their physical being. All these abilities that cannot manifest themselves, all this longing that bounces off the inflexible body, now accumulates over the course of a lifetime and forms a whole that is clearly visible to the clairvoyant eye.

[ 10 ] The seer perceives three things: the abilities that a person is born with; the new abilities that they have acquired and assimilated during their lifetime; and, finally, the sum of those forces that have not been able to penetrate the physical body and are awaiting unfolding. These latter forces form a kind of opposition to the outer physical body and act as a counterforce upon it. This is the most important force that is not in harmony with our life in the physical body. It gradually dissolves the body, causing it to waste away, and seeks to cast it off like a burdensome fetter; it seeks to lay it aside like a tool no longer suited to meet the rising demands. It is the cause of our body withering like a flower that loses leaf after leaf, in which nothing remains alive but a new seed. In the human being, the clairvoyant sees something similar: To his eye, it is as if, toward the second half of life, everything acquired were to contract within the human being, unable to unfold, like a seed that harbors a small germ for the coming spring. Thus the clairvoyant sees in every dying person a person in the process of being born. In each of us, deeply hidden, the seed of a new life is taking shape.

[ 11 ] We must then grasp the meaning of death with all the power of our feelings. With what different feelings will we then approach the deathbed of a loved one. This is not to say that we should suppress our grief over the separation, for the soul that no longer feels pain would wither away. Yet we should view life from the higher vantage point to which spiritual science elevates us, and we should tell ourselves: Death appears painful and cruel when viewed from below, from our earthly world, yet it presents itself quite differently to our spiritual gaze when viewed from above. Over the long years of a laborious earthly life, the soul has acquired a rich treasure of abilities that it could not utilize if it had remained bound to the same body. Death enables it to ascend to a higher level. — Just as a person, in the brief sleep of the night, assimilates the spiritual gains of the day, so death enables them to develop and transform the total gains of their life’s work in the spiritual world. There is, however, a vast difference between sleep and death. In sleep, during physical life, the normal person is unconscious because of the body’s constraints—but in death, which frees them from the body’s constraints, the person awakens.

[ 12 ] In full consciousness, he reaps the fruits of his past life and works out on the spiritual plane what he was unable to utilize on the physical plane. And so he moves on into a new incarnation, for which he seeks a suitable body that will enable him to put his acquired abilities to good use. For example: Someone who has acquired musical knowledge will seek out parents who have an ear structure conducive to music. As a result, his life in the new incarnation experiences an elevation that could not have taken place in the old body. And so this elevation continues from incarnation to incarnation, depending on the extent of the newly acquired abilities, until complete spiritualization is achieved. Then the human being no longer needs to remain bound to a physical shell, and the chain of incarnations comes to an end. If we have grasped the full significance of what has been said, we must conclude that death, despite all its pain, is a beneficial necessity, and that the ego would have to desire the creation of death if it did not exist. That there is nothing hostile to life, no asceticism, and no fear of life in this view becomes clear when we strive to elevate this life and to increasingly refine and spiritualize both the outer and the inner self. The question: How do we flee from life? —can only arise from an imperfect and false understanding of the doctrine of death and reincarnation. Everything here on the physical plane, and likewise after death on the spiritual plane, is merely work and preparation for a new incarnation on Earth. We thus see the same interrelationships on a grand scale as we could observe on a small scale in the alternation of day and night.

[ 13 ] Yesterday, two paths were mentioned for reaching the spiritual worlds: the mystical path and the path of ecstasy. It was also emphasized that the ancient methods of initiation no longer fit our times and that today’s stage of development requires new means, which in turn will have to give way to other means in the future. From approximately the 12th to the 14th century, the Rosicrucian method became necessary, and it will gain even greater significance in the near future. Anyone who is engaged in spiritual life and whose ascent from incarnation to incarnation is pursued ever higher knows that today’s spiritual science is adapted to our circumstances, and that after millennia, people will look back on it as something outdated. People will rely even more on fully conscious forces than they do today. As we have seen, modern humans receive these forces during sleep, when they are in an unconscious state. Gradually, in the course of evolution, this process will increasingly enter their consciousness and come under their will.

[ 14 ] The ancient forms of initiation required a descent into one’s own inner self, which resulted in a strengthening of all egoistic forces and was a true temptation for the student. Everything within him—both the instincts that were still active and those he had already overcome—was brought to the surface in this process. For example, if immediately upon waking we shut off our senses to all the external impressions pressing upon us and immerse ourselves within, the true inner self would not reveal itself to our gaze at that moment; yet if we remained conscious, our sense of self would escalate into boundless egoism. In ecstasy, on the other hand, as we have seen, when a person consciously dissolves into the macrocosm, their ego grows ever weaker, and the student needs the support of a guru so as not to fall into complete powerlessness.

[ 15 ] The Rosicrucian initiation unites the two paths and provides the aspirant with the proper balance, which protects him from the dangers mentioned above and at the same time grants him enough independence that he no longer requires the supervision of an initiator. It first leads him into the inner world, to which it opens the door through the outer world, which the student must observe faithfully in all its forms. Everywhere he must learn to discern the symbolic until he realizes that the entire physical world is a parable. This is not to say that the botanist, poet, or painter sees incorrectly; they, too, see correctly. However, for the Rosicrucian student, it is essential that he direct his attention to the symbolic aspect of form, since his purpose lies deeper than that of the other observers.

[ 16 ] When he sees a rose, for example, he recognizes in it a symbol of life and says to himself: Clear green sap rises up through the stem, flowing from leaf to leaf, but at the top, in the blossom that crowns the plant, it transforms into the red sap of the rose. — Then he turns his gaze away from the flower and looks at the human being and says to himself: If I observe the plant next to the human being, it appears to me at first glance to be far lower than he is; it has neither movement nor feelings nor consciousness. Man, too, is permeated by the red sap, yet he moves freely wherever he wills; he perceives the external world and experiences its impressions as pleasure and pain, and is conscious of his existence. The plant, however, has one advantage: it cannot err as he does; chaste and pure, harming no one, it lives on. The red blood is the expression of higher spirituality and stands above the green plant sap, which is symbolically colored red at the top of the flower; yet the blood is at the same time the bearer of desires, of passions, of error and mistakes. The rose is indeed a subordinate being, but it is like an ideal for humanity. One day, humanity will become master of itself, and its true self will rise above the everyday self. It will ennoble and purify itself, and its blood will become chaste and pure like the green sap of the plant. And I see this purified blood of the spiritualized human being symbolized in the red blood of the rose.

[ 17 ] We must bring the lower part of ourselves under our control; we must master everything that stands in the way of our ascent and transform it into pure forces. In the symbol of the Rose Cross—the dead, black wood of the cross upon which living roses bloom—we see ourselves. The dark wood is our lower nature, which is subject to death and must be overcome; the red roses are our higher nature, dedicated to life, which springs victoriously from the dying, impure substance.

[ 18 ] The Rosicrucian should allow such symbols to take full effect upon him; he should seek them everywhere in the surrounding nature, form them in his mind, and meditate upon them. In this process, what matters is not so much the truth as what is right—what is symbolically correct. Especially in the meditation on the Rosicrucifix, the entire feeling, the whole heart and soul, must be involved; it must live through us and burn within us before the image of the transformation of our nature. The student must intensify this impression to such a degree and then repeat it constantly, so that it no longer fades from him and is carried over in the evening by his astral body into the spiritual world. The Rosicrucian student then feels how the unconsciousness into which he used to fall during sleep gradually fades; it is as if a slow soul-fire were kindled within him. He carries it within himself like a lamp that shines into the darkness of the night and makes visible to him what was previously veiled by darkness. He has become a being in the beyond. A light-giving, active eye has opened within him, in contrast to the physical, passive eye, which has no light source within itself but perceives only through external light.

[ 19 ] Once the Rosicrucian has trained himself in this way, he perceives external reality only where he can transform it into symbols that enable his inner self to convert into light the meditative abilities he has acquired.

[ 20 ] In this way, the student’s “I” is protected from hardening into egoism, as well as from powerlessness, and he enters the higher worlds without danger. To the right degree, he acquires the strength of mysticism and employs it in ecstasy. Through serious practice, he eventually reaches the point where he beholds the sun at midnight, as it was called in the ancient occult schools; that is, he sees the spirit simultaneously behind the physical form.

[ 21 ] In our brief discussion, this could only be briefly touched upon in principle. Further details can be found in my book *How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?*. This topic cannot be discussed in greater depth in public, as the predispositions of the majority do not yet permit occult development. Little is publicly known about the ancient paths of initiation, and what little is known has not been personally experienced by those who have written about it. Every epoch exhibits changes appropriate to its circumstances, as the leaders have always had to introduce new elements into human life.

[ 22 ] Tomorrow we will see what constituted the work of one of their greatest figures, Gautama Buddha, who was a forerunner of the one for whom humanity had been prepared for millennia and from whom it was to receive the greatest impulse: Christ Jesus. We will also see that it is only in our time that his powerful impulse is beginning to make itself felt, and that it will extend more and more to all of humanity in the future. And there will be mention of a successor, the Maitreya Buddha, who will take up the Christ impulse in a new form.

[ 23 ] Let us now, in conclusion, take stock of what has been said and keep clearly in mind that our life here is enriched by the Spirit in sleep and in death, and that all our striving and all the gains of our earthly existence would be in vain and lie unused if we remained forever bound to this physical body. The transitional stage of death alone enables us to reap the fruits of life, so that we may then return to this world enriched, having ascended a step higher on the path to perfection. Let spiritual science enter our lives, and we shall share in the treasures of comfort, hope, and strength that it contains.

[ 24 ] What spiritual science brings to our awareness today was already known to the greatest minds of the past. A poet once said:

Just as on the day you were given to the world,
The sun stood in greeting to the planets,
You immediately began to flourish, and continue to do so
According to the law by which you came into being.
This is how you must be; you cannot escape it!
So said the Sibyls, so said the prophets,
And no time, no power can break apart
A formed shape that develops with life!