The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday, at the conclusion of our discussion of the true, deeper mystical path of the human being, we had to point out the main danger associated with this mystical path for those who would have walked it in ancient times without guidance—in times when the methods of initiation that exist today, and which we will discuss later, had not yet been developed. To give you a more precise indication of how great these difficulties were, I would like to mention the following. We have seen that the difficulties arise mainly from the fact that when a person descends into their own inner being, they are almost completely filled by their egoistic nature, by their selfish ego, so that this ego awakens with a strength that would place everything else a person perceives, everything else they can recognize, at the service of the ego, and would see everything only in the light cast by this intensified light of the egoistic soul. Precisely for this reason, in the ancient initiation, the strength of the sense of self and of self-consciousness had to be completely subdued, and the self had to be, so to speak, transferred to the spiritual guide, as we described yesterday. This toning down of the ego was initially achieved in such a way that, through the power emanating from the spiritual guide, the ego-consciousness of the person to be initiated was reduced to one-third of its usual strength. That is already a great deal, for we can say that our consciousness in the sleeping state, unless we are in a very deep sleep, is reduced to about one-third. In the ancient Egyptian mysteries, this lowering was taken even further. That one-third of consciousness was reduced once more to one-quarter, that is, lowered to one-twelfth of normal consciousness, so that the person in question was ultimately truly in a death-like state. To the outside observer, he was completely like a dead person.

[ 2 ] What I would like to point out, however, is that these eleven-twelfths of consciousness did not simply vanish into nothingness. That was by no means the case. On the contrary, it was only then, through spiritual perception, that one could see how intense human egoism is, for with every twelfth part of human ego-consciousness, something emerged spiritually from the human being that was a powerful fragment of their egoism. And as strange as it may sound to you, it was nevertheless so: in order to keep these egoisms flowing out of the human being in check—to keep the human being spiritually grounded, so to speak, when his ego was subdued—twelve assistants were necessary for the leader. This is one of the secrets of the higher initiations of antiquity. It is mentioned here only to show what a person finds when he descends into his inner self. If left to his own devices, a person would, without further ado, be led into his inner self and would indeed behave in such a way that he would acquire qualities twelve times worse than those he possesses in ordinary life. These qualities of the human being, which in ordinary life are suppressed or concealed by convention, customs, habits, or laws, were kept in check during initiation into the ancient Egyptian mysteries by the assistants of the priest of Hermes. This was meant, as I said, to be merely a passing remark to reinforce what was mentioned at the end yesterday.

[ 3 ] Today it is up to us to show the other path that a person can take if they do not descend into their inner self—that is, if they do not experience the moment of awakening by looking within—but instead consciously experience the moment of falling asleep and remain in that state in which a person is when they are given over to sleep. We have seen in the previous lectures that the human being has then, as it were, flowed out into the macrocosm, whereas during their waking state they have immersed themselves in their own being, in the microcosm. It has also been mentioned that what a person would experience if their ego were to pour itself out into the macrocosm, into the great world, would be so blinding, so overwhelming for them, that it must indeed be described as a wise arrangement that, when falling asleep—at the very moment when, if their consciousness were to remain awake, they would be dazzled by the macrocosm— forgets everything and himself—that is, that his consciousness actually ceases. As for what a human being can experience when a certain degree of consciousness is retained, we have described this in that merging into the macrocosm which we have called ecstasy. But we have at the same time shown that this ecstasy is something through which the ego is, as it were, absorbed, much like a drop of liquid mixed with a great quantity of water. Through ecstasy, a person would enter a state that could be described as being out of oneself, existing outside one’s ordinary being. Thus, this ecstasy can by no means be described as something desirable for a person to enter the world of the macrocosm, for the person would then lose themselves; their ego would cease to govern them. Nevertheless, in earlier times, particularly in European regions, there was certainly a state comparable to ecstasy into which the person to be initiated into the mysteries of the macrocosm was placed—a state that was, after all, similar to ecstasy. Today this is no longer the case, but in earlier times, particularly in the northern and western regions of Europe, including our own region, it was entirely appropriate to the development of the people living in these areas to be introduced to the mysteries of the greater world through a kind of ecstasy. But this also exposed them to what one might call a loss of the self. Yet this state was not so dangerous for the people of that time, because they were endowed with a certain original, elemental, healthy strength and were not yet as weakened in terms of their original soul powers as present-day humanity is due to its highly developed intellectuality. Just as these people were, they were able to experience all these heightened feelings—the hopes of spring, the exultation of summer, the melancholy of autumn, the deathly shivers of winter—and yet retain their sense of self to a certain degree. However, provision had to be made for those who were to become teachers for today’s humanity, so that the initiation—the introduction into the macrocosm—could still take place in a different way. You will be able to understand what is at stake if you imagine that the main point of this living out into the macrocosm is the loss of the ego. The ego grows weaker and weaker; the human being eventually reaches a state where they lose themselves as a human being.

[ 4 ] What had to happen to prevent human beings from losing their way? They had to be given precisely the power known as the power of the “I.” The power that was growing weaker within their own souls—the power of the “I”—had to be supplied from outside. And this came about because these Nordic mysteries always proceeded in such a way that the one who was to be initiated received the support of assistants who aided the spiritual guide performing the initiation. A spiritual guide had to be present, but there also had to be assistants who supported this spiritual guide. And these assistants came about in the following way. People were specially educated, specially prepared in such a way that one person, for example, experienced particularly intensely those inner experiences and feelings that one undergoes when one surrenders oneself entirely to what might be called the sprouting nature of spring. It has been said before that the initiate cannot do this to a sufficiently strong degree on their own. Therefore, people were specially trained who had to place all their soul powers in the service of these Nordic mysteries in such a way that they renounced everything else—that is, what autumn, summer, and winter allow one to experience. They were to use all their soul powers to experience the unique character of the sprouting nature of spring through their feelings. Others, in turn, were led to experience the full life of summer; others were led to experience the full life of autumn; and still others, that of winter. Thus, what a single person might experience over the course of a year was distributed among various individuals. As a result, there were people who had tempered and strengthened their ego in the most diverse ways. Because they had strengthened this ego in a one-sided manner, they possessed an abundance of ego-force. And now, according to certain rules, they were brought into contact with the one who was to be initiated in such a way that they gave their surplus ego-force to him, so that it flowed into him. So that the initiate, who was to undergo the course of the year, lived through the year in such a way that he was led up to certain higher insights into the macrocosm, while the ego-forces of the initiating priest and his assistants flowed into his ego. What the others could give him poured into the soul of the initiate. If one wishes to understand such a process, one must, however, be able to grasp the devotion and self-sacrifice with which the work of the Mysteries was carried out in those ancient times. There is little of that devotion, of that self-sacrifice, to be found in today’s exoteric world. In the past, people willingly devoted themselves unilaterally strengthen their ego so that they could impart the power of this ego to the one who was to be initiated and then learn from him what he had experienced by ascending into an ecstasy—which, however, was no longer an ecstasy because foreign ego-forces had flowed into him, but rather a conscious ascent into the macrocosm. Twelve people were necessary—three spring, three summer, three autumn, and three winter types—who sent variously developed ego forces to the initiate, who thus lived his way up into the higher worlds and who could then, based on the experiences he had there, describe what the higher worlds are like. Such a college of twelve people, who worked together with their power to bring forth an initiate growing into the macrocosm, existed in the Mysteries, and the memory of it still exists in many societies today—societies that are, of course, in a state of decadence—which, as a rule, also feature a community of twelve members who have certain functions. But all of this is now merely a final and, moreover, misunderstood remnant of what existed in the Nordic Mysteries during the initiations of ancient times.

[ 5 ] When a person, with an ego-force artificially sustained within them, immersed themselves in the macrocosm in this way, they actually ascended into higher worlds. The first world they had to pass through was the one that would reveal itself to a person if they did not lose consciousness upon falling asleep. To ensure we understand this point clearly, let us now consider this moment of falling asleep just as we previously considered the moment of waking up. In fact, falling asleep is a rising into the macrocosm. In ordinary, normal life, special, abnormal circumstances can arise that enable a person to have a certain awareness of the process of falling asleep. When this happens, the following is revealed to them. They experience a kind of bliss. They can distinguish this very clearly from their waking consciousness. It is a lightening, a floating upward, like growing out of oneself. But this moment is connected with a certain tormenting feeling of recollection of the faults and weaknesses inherent in one’s character. What emerges there as a painful memory of personal faults is a very faint reflection of the feeling that a person experiences, as we have already described, when they pass by the little guardian of the threshold and perceive how imperfect they are, with their small soul, in the face of the great facts and great beings of the macrocosm. Then a kind of twitch follows. This is the emergence of the actual inner human being into the macrocosm. These are rare experiences, but nonetheless ones that some people have when they were more or less conscious at the moment of falling asleep. But the person who possesses only ordinary, normal consciousness loses this consciousness at the moment of falling asleep. All the impressions of the day—such as impressions of color, light, sound, and so on—fade from consciousness, and the person is now surrounded by pitch-black darkness instead of all the colors and other impressions of the day. If a person were now to maintain consciousness in the same way that the prepared initiate maintains it, then at the moment when the external impressions of the day disappear, they would not see nothing—that is, they would not be surrounded by black darkness—but rather they would perceive what is called in spiritual science the elemental world, the world of the elements.

[ 6 ] This world of the elements is thus what is initially hidden from the person falling asleep. Just as the inner world of the person is hidden upon waking because the person is immediately distracted by impressions from the outer world, so too, upon falling asleep, the next world to which the person belongs—the first level of the macrocosm, the elemental world—is hidden. A person learns to look into this elemental world when they truly ascend into the macrocosm in the manner described. This elemental world first gives them an awareness that everything in our surroundings—the sensory impressions that spread out there—is in fact an outflow, a revelation of the spiritual, just as the spiritual lies behind the sensory. When a person, as one undergoing initiation, perceives this elemental world—that is, not by falling asleep into the unconscious—then there is no longer any doubt for them that behind the sensory world lie spiritual beings and spiritual realities. Only as long as a person perceives only the sensory world does he dream that behind this sensory-physical world there are all sorts of further abstract sensory entities, such as whirling atoms or the like. For those who penetrate the elemental world, there can be no further talk of such swirling atoms, of such, one might say, material atoms squeezed out of ordinary sensory perceptions. It is not what materialism conceives of as matter that lies behind color, behind sound, and so on, but rather something spiritual. However, at this first stage of the spiritual world that is being entered, the spiritual does not yet reveal itself in its form as Spirit itself, but rather in such a way that the human being does not have spiritual impressions before them, but other impressions. It is not yet anything that can be called a true spiritual world into which one is entering, but rather, to a considerable degree, it is something that must be described as a kind of new veil over spiritual facts and spiritual beings.

[ 7 ] This elemental world presents itself to us in such a way that the terms chosen since time immemorial for the world of the elements are truly applicable to it. One can describe what one sees there by choosing the words: the solid, the liquid, the gaseous, and heat; or earth, water, air, and fire. But let us be clear that these words are taken from the sensory world; they are coined for the sensory world. Our language is, after all, entirely a means of expression for the sensory world. When we use any word, it signifies this or that in the sensory world. If, then, the spiritual scientist is to describe the higher worlds, he must speak in words taken from ordinary language, so that, particularly in these realms we are now entering, he can speak only in a comparative sense. He can only strive to choose words in such a way that, little by little, a conception is evoked of what is perceived there in spiritual vision. When we wish to describe this elemental world, we must not choose expressions from the limited things that surround us in daily life, but rather we must choose words based on certain properties that things in daily life possess—properties that are common to an entire range of things. Otherwise, we will not be able to make sense of it. And in daily life we have certain things that we describe as solid; we have other things that we describe as liquid, yet others that we describe as airy or gaseous, and then we also know what we perceive when we sense the surface of things or feel a draft, the warmth. When we perceive our surroundings during daily life, all things, whatever they may otherwise be, appear to us in such states: in a solid state, in a liquid state, in an airy or gaseous state, and as warmth. A body, however, can pass through all these states. Water, for example, can be solid like ice, but it can also be liquid when the ice melts, and it can be gaseous when it evaporates. All these states are permeated by what we call heat. This is essentially the case with every thing and being in the external sensory world.

[ 8 ] In the elementary world, it is not the case that we have objects there as they appear to us in the sensory world; here, what are merely properties in the sensory world are actually present. We perceive something there that one cannot, so to speak, touch. One could describe it something like this: With “solid,” there is something before me—be it a being or a thing—into which I cannot penetrate; I can only observe it by walking around it; it still has an interior and an exterior. Such beings and things of the elemental world are called “earthy.” Then there are things and beings of the elemental world that can be described with the word “fluid.” Here, one can, to a certain degree, see right through them in the elemental world. One penetrates into the interior; one has a feeling similar to the one one has in the physical world when one dips one’s hand into water. One can immerse oneself into the interior of these things and beings, whereas with “earth” one encounters something one bumps against as if it were hard. This is what is referred to in the elemental world as water. When books on spiritual science speak of earth and water, they mean what I have just described to you, not physical water. Physical water is merely an external metaphor for what one sees once one has reached this stage of development. In the elemental world, water is something that, so to speak, pours forth, something one can pass through—not, of course, with the physical senses, but with the higher senses of the initiate, with the spiritual faculty of perception.

[ 9 ] Then there is something comparable to what in the physical world are gaseous or air-like substances; this is referred to as “air” in the elemental world. And then there is what is called heat or fire. When speaking of elemental fire, you must again realize that what is called “fire” in the physical world is merely a metaphor. What is called fire in the elemental world is actually easier to describe than the other three states. The other three states of the elemental world can really only be described by saying that water, air, and earth are metaphors for these three states. The fire of elemental life is easier to describe, for it is related to what humans know as inner soul warmth—that peculiar feeling of warmth one perceives, for example, when one is with a loved one. The warmth that pours into the soul there—the glow of enthusiasm or joy—must of course be distinguished from the ordinary fire that burns one’s fingers when one reaches out. Even in ordinary life, people feel that physical fire is a kind of metaphor for this fire of the soul. This fire of the soul, which, when it truly seizes us, kindles our enthusiasm, is thus something we already know better than the other states. And if you now imagine a kind of comparison between the external fire that burns the fingers and this fire of the soul—something, so to speak, that stands midway between the two—then you will get an idea of what is called elemental fire. When the human being, as one to be initiated, rises up into the elemental world, he indeed feels as if something were flowing toward him from certain regions, something that kindles him from within, permeates him with fire from within; and from another place in the elemental world, he has the impression that it fills him less with fire. He has the feeling that he is immersed in the being in question that sends him the fire; he is united with it; he feels his inner fire as the fire of the elemental being.

[ 10 ] So you see that the human being enters a higher world that gives him impressions he certainly did not know before in the sensory world. It is this elemental world, then, before which the gate closes, so to speak, when one falls asleep in ordinary, normal consciousness. And this must be so for the reason that, as we have seen, the human being flows out entirely into this elemental world; he is present in everything within it. But by flowing out into this world, he carries his own being into it. He loses his ego; it pours out into this world. That which is not the ego—his astral qualities, his desires or passions, his sense of truth or falsehood, all his soul qualities—the human being carries into this world; his ego he loses. Yet it is precisely the ego that restrains us in ordinary life, that brings order and harmony to our astral nature. As the ego is lost, all manner of disordered drives, desires, and passions that the human being still harbors in the soul assert themselves and now penetrate into those beings the human being encounters in the elemental world. The human being not only imbues himself with all that he experiences out there, but he actually carries into the beings of the elemental world that which he himself possesses in his soul. This carrying over is a reality; it is not merely a matter of the human being imagining it, but rather, when the human being has, for example, a bad quality, he truly transfers this bad quality to a corresponding being in the elemental world; it is then present within that being. If a person has a particular bad quality, then they are drawn to a being in the elemental world that is specifically attracted to that quality. Through the loss of the ego, a person would thus, in pushing out into the macrocosm, pour their entire astral being into such entities that permeate the elemental world as evil beings. And the consequence of this would be that, because the human being comes into contact with these beings but is weaker than they are—for he has lost his ego, whereas they possess a strong ego—he provides them with nourishment through his qualities, for which they would reward him in a negative sense. He literally feeds them from his astral being, but they give him what is particularly characteristic of his own qualities; and the fact that he has lived within them becomes evident when, upon awakening, his ego returns, in a heightened tendency toward the bad, toward evil.

[ 11 ] Thus we see that it is a wise arrangement that a person loses consciousness when entering the elemental world, that they do not enter this world with their ego, but are protected from it during normal sleep. For this reason, those who were led into the elemental world in the ancient mysteries had to be carefully prepared beforehand, with strength being imparted to them by the initiator’s assistants before they entered this world. Preparation for this world took place by imposing severe trials on the individual in question beforehand, through which they were specifically enabled to develop the moral strength to overcome them. Particular emphasis was placed on this. Just as the quality of humility was valued in the aspiring mystic, so too was special emphasis placed on the fact that the one who wished to live out into the macrocosm was strong in the power of inner overcoming. Therefore, a person who was to be admitted to such a mystery initiation was subjected to trials through which he was to overcome all possible adversities of life already in his physical existence. Great dangers were placed in his path, and by overcoming these dangers he was to strengthen his will. He was to become a conqueror, one of strong soul, prepared so that when these beings confronted him, he would be strong enough not to experience temptation, to be able to repel them, and not to lose himself to them. He who was to be admitted to such mysteries was brought up in fearlessness and in the spirit of overcoming.

[ 12 ] Let me interject here once more to say that no one need be alarmed by the description of these mysteries, for the fact is that these practices are no longer followed today, nor are they necessary anymore, since other paths are possible. But we will understand the full significance of the modern method of initiation much better if we first describe what many, many people in the past went through in order to immerse themselves in the macrocosm, to become, in this sense, initiates of the macrocosm.

[ 13 ] Then, once the individual, through having had such experiences over a long period of time, had become able to realize that everything he can perceive in the external sensory world—earth, water, air, and fire— are manifestations of spiritual beings that lie behind them—once he had learned to distinguish these things and to find his way in the elemental world—then he could be led a step further, guided to now learn what lies behind these elements of the elemental world. And there the initiate was then led into the actual spiritual world. In the spiritual world that lies beyond the elemental world, in this spiritual world into which one matures, after having become acquainted with the elemental world for a time in such a way that one has gained the ability to distinguish within it, one now experiences—and this, of course, can only be described as a recounting of the initiates’ experiences—that there are indeed beings who stand behind our sensory world and behind the elemental world. But these beings, into whose world one enters, are quite unlike the beings we know as our fellow human beings. While human beings on Earth live together in social orders, in specific social conditions—whether perfect or imperfect—the initiate immerses themselves in a spiritual world inhabited by spiritual beings who, of course, have no physical bodies, but are spiritual beings who relate to one another through order and harmony. And now the initiate is shown that he can only understand the order and harmony that exist in this spiritual world if he regards the world of the stars—namely, the movements of the planets in our solar system—as an external expression of what the spiritual beings do. The way the planets are positioned in relation to the Sun and how they relate to one another in their movements and positions—through this they express what the beings of the spiritual worlds do.

[ 14 ] In the previous discussion, we said that one could view the world of our solar system as a giant cosmic clock. Just as one can infer from the position of the hands on a clock that something is happening outside the clock—to which the hands point—so too can one infer from the relative positions of the stars that there is something behind them. Anyone who looks at a clock and says it is such-and-such a time is, of course, not interested in the position of the hands, but rather in what the position of the hands points to—for example, the time of day when something is happening in Vienna right now, or whether it is time to go to work. The position of the clock hands is thus an expression of something that lies behind them. In the same way, we can also see in the solar system—this mighty cosmic clock—the expression of spiritual processes and of the spiritual beings that lie behind them. The initiate now comes to know the spiritual beings and their deeds. This real world of the spirit, which lies behind our sensory world, is best understood when described using terms taken from the order of our solar system, for this provides an external analogy for this spiritual world. For the elemental world, the analogies must be drawn from the earthly world, from earthly things that surround us—air, water, and so on. For the world of the spirit, however, other analogies must serve, analogies that we draw down from the starry heavens. And you can see that the comparison with the clock is not at all so foolish, even in a deeper sense. Just as physical water is a metaphor, an expression of what we call “water” in the elemental world, so our solar system is an expression of the activity of spiritual beings, whom we designate by the names of our planets and the constellations of the zodiac. Take the twelve constellations of the zodiac and observe the course of the seven planets—the others will also be discussed later—how one stands before this constellation, another before that one; then we see in the course of the planets the deeds of the spiritual beings and in the twelve constellations of the zodiac the spiritual beings themselves. Just as we distinguish in the solar system between the planets that move and the constellations that stand behind them as if at rest, so can we imagine the world of spiritual beings and their deeds as twelve groups of beings whose activity is expressed in the movement of the planets. But we must not view this from an external perspective. When describing the constellations of the zodiac, we must not take the constellations themselves as the spiritual beings; for then we would still remain on the surface. The constellations themselves are, in turn, merely an expression of the higher worlds and the high beings active within them. These beings express themselves through the number twelve, and that which relates to their deeds is expressed through the number seven. The names of the twelve zodiacal constellations alone are not sufficient for the spiritual beings behind them. These beings, whose names have varied across different countries and eras, are designated in Christian esotericism as Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, and as Dominions, Powers, Authorities, or Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai. That makes six; then come the primal forces or spirits of personality, the Archai, followed by the archangels and the angels. The tenth level is humanity at its current stage of development. However, humanity will continue to develop and eventually reach levels that other beings have already attained. These would need to be added, so that we would have twelve levels of beings. Therefore, if one wishes to describe the spiritual world, one must attribute the creation of the world to twelve beings in their mutual interaction. If one wishes to describe what these spiritual beings do, this must be done using terms derived from the spatial relationships of the zodiac constellations and the movements of the planets, for the orbits of the planets signify the actions of these spiritual beings.

[ 15 ] These beings now interact within time. Suppose the spirits we call the spirits of the will, or the Thrones, interact with the spirits of personality; in that case, they bring about what we call the Old Saturn. Through the interaction of yet other beings, what we call the Old Sun comes into being; through still others, what we call the Old Moon. In this way we express the deeds of these beings. If we wish to describe this as it appears to one who lives into the macrocosm, we must first describe the beings of the spiritual world—the hierarchies—second, their deeds, which are expressed through the course of the planets, and thirdly, we must also consider how they reveal themselves in the elemental world, which we have described using terms derived from the physical-sensory world: fire, air, water, earth. This is also called planetary evolution.

[ 16 ] If you open the chapter “World Evolution and Humanity” in my book *The Secret Science*, you will find this process described in detail. There you have described the beings, the spiritual hierarchies, which find their likeness in space in the images of the zodiac; using terms linked to the planets, you have described their deeds, and you have described their influence on the elemental world. Herein lies the deeper reason why this chapter is written as it is. But one must not believe that simply by describing a metaphor—for example, by speaking of the zodiac signs instead of the hierarchies—one has thereby accomplished anything. The one who truly wishes to describe something must go back to the beings themselves. For merely describing the celestial space with the constellations would be the same as describing the exterior of a clock. But to describe what lies behind this as the spiritual world—that is, to translate it into spiritual science—is to describe it exactly as it has now been characterized for you. With this, I have attempted to give you a kind of guide for any description of the spiritual world written in the true style, as it is encountered through a genuine journey into the macrocosm.

[ 17 ] However, this expansion into the macrocosm can go even further. For the macrocosm is not yet exhausted by all that has just been described as the spiritual world; one can ascend to even higher worlds. Of course, the higher one ascends, the more difficult it becomes to convey a conception of these higher worlds; and it is therefore necessary, if we wish to convey a conception of an even higher world, to do so in yet another way. You can form a conception of the even higher world, into which one can then ascend once one has transcended the spiritual world, in the following manner. If we describe human beings as they stand before us, we can say: Human beings could only have come into being because these other worlds exist. — Only a fanciful materialist could believe that human beings could ever have assembled themselves from the Kant-Laplacean cosmic nebula. Nothing but a human automaton could have emerged from that. The way human beings are has only become possible because they have developed out of the entire world—not only out of the physical-sensory world, but above all out of the spiritual world. Humanity was born out of the spiritual world. When we consider the worlds around us, we first have our physical-sensory world. Just as we perceive this, so too do we perceive the physical body of the human being. We got to know it from the inside in a certain way yesterday. With ordinary consciousness, one perceives it only from the outside. In this sense, the human physical body certainly belongs to the world we see with our eyes, the world we perceive externally with our senses. To which world, then, does that which lies deeper within the human being belong—the invisible members of human nature? Everything that constitutes the invisible members of human nature belongs to the higher worlds. And just as, when one looks at a human being, one sees only the sensory exterior, so too does one see in the great outer world only the sensory exterior and not those supersensory worlds, of which two—the elemental and the spiritual worlds—have now been described. But the human being is also structured from these worlds through his inner organization. Now, however, everything that is at all part of the human being, including his outward physical body, has become possible only because certain invisible spiritual elements are at work within him. It is not merely an etheric or life body that works on the human physical body. If only an etheric body were at work in him, then the human being would be a plant, for the plant has, in its physical body as we see it, a physical body and an etheric or life body. But since the human being is not a plant, he has not only an etheric or life body and a physical body, but also a third, the astral body. But animals have that as well. If human beings had only these three members, they would be animals. Because human beings also have their ego, they rise above these lower creatures of the three kingdoms of nature—the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. But all that which constitutes the higher members of human nature, in turn, works upon the human physical body. The human physical body could not be as it is if it did not have these higher members. A plant would be a mineral if it had no etheric or life body. Human beings would have no nervous system if they had no astral body, and human beings could not be beings with an upright gait and a thinking brain if they did not have an “I.” If human beings did not have their invisible constituents from higher worlds, they could not stand before us as the beings they are.

[ 18 ] Now, however, the various constituents of the human organism are formed from different spiritual worlds. If we wish to understand this, we do best to recall a beautiful saying by Goethe, born of profound worldly wisdom: “The eye is formed by light for light.” — There is a philosophy today that draws on Schopenhauer, and also on Kant, which seeks to explain the entire world as a human concept, specifically emphasizing that without eyes we would not perceive light, that without eyes there would be darkness around us. Certainly, this is true; but it is not merely a matter of a thing being true, but rather that the truths we encounter in life are always one-sided truths, and if we do not add the other side—which is what makes them a full truth—then we are sometimes led most astray precisely by our own truths. For that is not the worst thing when a person errs, when he says something that is not correct; the world will set him straight on that. But if he regards a one-sided truth as an absolute and clings to it, then he allows himself to be led astray by the truth. Thus it is a truth, but a one-sided one, that without eyes we cannot see light. But it is equally true that if the world had always been filled with darkness, an eye would never have come into being. For the eye is something that has been drawn out of the still undifferentiated physicality. We can see this from the reverse process. In certain animals that had to live in dark caves, the eyes atrophied; the animals lost their sight. On the one hand, it is true that without eyes we cannot see light, but on the other hand, it is equally true that the eye is truly formed by light for the sake of light. With truths, it always depends on not merely viewing them from one side, but also from the other. And most philosophies suffer precisely from this error—not that they say anything false; many cannot be refuted because they do indeed speak the truth—but that they state one-sided truths, viewed only from one side and not from the other. If you take the statement in its proper sense—that the eye is formed by light for light—then you will be able to say to yourself: There must therefore be something in light that first brought the eye into being from an organism that had no eyes yet. Behind the light, then, something higher is hidden; the eye-forming power, so to speak, is contained within every ray of sunlight.

[ 19 ] This was said so that we might realize that hidden within everything around us is, in fact, that which created us. For just as our eyes are made of something that lies within the light, so too are all our organs formed from something that underlies all things, of which we see only the outer surface.

[ 20 ] Now, human beings possess something that can be called reason. Human beings have reason, intelligence. In physical life, they can make use of this reason, this intelligence, because they have a tool for it: the brain. Just as they have eyes for seeing, so they have a tool for developing their reason in the physical world, for being able to think. Mind you, we are now speaking of thinking in the sensory-physical world, not of what becomes of our thinking when we are freed from our body through death, but of how we think here on earth through the instrument of the brain. When we wake up in the morning, we see the light through the eye; behind the light there is something that our eye has formed. We think through the instrument of the brain; therefore, there must be something in the world that first formed this brain so that it could become a tool for thinking in the physical world. This is precisely what we wish to hold before our soul. The brain is an organ of thought for the physical world, but it first had to become such an organ through the power that manifests itself externally in our intelligence. Just as the light we perceive with the eye is an eye-forming force, so there is something that forms our brain, something that is a brain-forming force. Our brain is built out of the spiritual world. The initiate comes to know that if only the elemental and the spiritual worlds existed, what the human organ of intelligence is could never have come into being. True, the world of the spirit is a high, a significantly high world. But from an even higher world must the forces flow to humanity that have formed its physical organ of thought here in the physical world, so that what we call reason and intelligence may then manifest itself outwardly in the physical world.

[ 21 ] Spiritual science is not wrong to describe the boundaries of the spiritual world—which we have just described as the world of hierarchies—using the metaphor of the “zodiac.” For if only these worlds existed, we would have humanity before us only to the extent that it is not yet an intelligent being—so to speak, at the animal stage. In order for humanity to become this being that walks upright, thinks with the brain, and develops intelligence, the inflow of higher forces was necessary—forces that lie in a world still higher than the one described as the spiritual world. And there we ascend into a world which, in spiritual science, is designated by a word that is completely misused today; but in earlier times—one need not go very far back—it still had its original meaning. What human beings develop here in the physical world when they think is called intelligence. What lives as forces, as realities in a world even higher than the spiritual one, what flows down through the spiritual and elemental worlds to shape our brain—this has always been called the “world of reason” in spiritual science. It is that world in which there are spiritual beings who, through their powerful force, can work down into the physical world to bring forth a shadow image of the spiritual in the physical world through the intellectual activity of human beings.

[ 22 ] You can see how impoverished our language has become. The word “reason” has been completely misused in this age of materialism. Before this time, no one would have used the word “reason” to describe thinking in the physical world. One would have spoken of “intelligence” or “understanding.” One spoke of reason when the initiates, through the spiritual world, ascended into an even higher world and there directly perceived a higher realm that lies above the spiritual world. In the German language, “Reason” is related to “perception,” that is, to what is directly perceived from a world higher than the spiritual world. In this way, we have, in a special sense, ascended to a world even higher than the one we could call the spiritual world. With this, we have exhausted what we still have a parable for in the human being. We have a very shadowy likeness of the world of reason in the human intellect. We must seek, as it were, the master builders, the architects of our intellectual organ, in the world of reason. If we wish to ascend to an even higher world, we can speak of it at all only if we elevate ourselves to an even higher spiritual faculty, a spiritual faculty that transcends the sensory-physical intellect. Just as we have seen that the power coming from the world of reason has built up the organ of the intellect, the brain, in human beings, so we may now ask: But we know that human beings possess an even higher faculty than the intellect, namely the capacity for clairvoyant consciousness; must not this capacity also be an expression or likeness of powers that come from corresponding, even higher worlds? In the spiritual scientific method, which we will discuss in greater detail, the first stage of this consciousness—which can be developed as clairvoyant consciousness—is called imaginative consciousness. It is a kind of pictorial consciousness. This pictorial consciousness, this imaginative consciousness, remains mere imagination, mere fantasy, as long as the organ for this pictorial consciousness, for the imaginative consciousness, is not actually formed from a higher world, just as the brain has been formed from the world of reason as the organ for human thinking. The moment we say that there is clairvoyant consciousness in the world, we must also say: Therefore, there must also be a world from which the forces flow for the clairvoyant organ. In spiritual science, this world is called the world of archetypes. What can appear before us as imagination is a reflection of the world of archetypes.

[ 23 ] Thus we have four higher worlds to which we can ascend step by step: the elemental world, the spiritual world, the world of reason, and the world of archetypes. Starting tomorrow, we will describe these higher worlds, specifically the world of reason, and then move on to a description of the method that must be applied in the context of our modern education if the forces from the world of archetypes are truly to be brought down to bring about, in the context of our modern spiritual life, what is called clairvoyant consciousness.