The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] In our reflections, we have reached the so-called second hierarchy of spiritual beings, and yesterday we described how the human soul must conduct itself if it wishes to penetrate the essence of the second hierarchy. An even more difficult path leads to an even higher order of spiritual beings, to those beings who belong to the first, the highest hierarchy accessible to us at this stage. It has been emphasized that through a special intensification of those experiences we already have in ordinary life in compassion and love—by intensifying these experiences to the point of the occult path—one arrives at the point of, as it were, pouring one’s own being out of oneself and immersing oneself in the beings one then wishes to contemplate. Please note that the characteristic feature of this immersion consists in extending our own being as if in tentacles and pouring it into the foreign being. Yet in doing so, we still remain, in our consciousness and inner life, alongside the foreign beings. This is the characteristic feature of the second stage of clairvoyance that has been discussed. At this second stage of clairvoyance, even in every moment when we know ourselves to be one with the other beings, we still know that we are also there, that we are, as it were, present alongside the other beings. This last remnant of egoistic experience must also cease if the third stage of clairvoyance is to be attained.

[ 2 ] We must completely lose the sense that we exist as distinct beings at any point in the world. We must reach a point where we do not merely pour ourselves into the foreign entities while standing aside with our own experience, but rather we must actually perceive the foreign entities as our own self; we must step completely outside of ourselves and lose the feeling that we stand apart from the foreign entities. When we then immerse ourselves in this way in the other beings, we come to regard ourselves, as we were before, as we are in ordinary life, as a foreign being. Let us say, for example, that we immerse ourselves in this way, at the third stage of clairvoyance, into some being of the natural kingdoms; then we do not look at this being from our own perspective, we do not merely immerse ourselves as we do at the second stage of clairvoyance, but we know ourselves to be one with this being and look back at ourselves from this being. Just as we otherwise view the foreign being outside of ourselves, so now, on the third stage of clairvoyance, we view ourselves from the perspective of the foreign being as a foreign being. That is the difference between the third stage and the second stage. Only when this third stage is reached do we come to perceive, in addition to the already characterized beings of the third and second hierarchies, other beings in our spiritual environment.

[ 3 ] The spiritual beings we then perceive belong, in turn, to three categories. We perceive the first category primarily when, as has just been described, we immerse ourselves in the nature of other human beings or higher animals and thereby educate ourselves. What is essential is not what we perceive in other human beings or in higher animals, but rather that we thereby educate ourselves and perceive, behind human beings and animals, the spirits belonging to one category of the first hierarchy: the spirits of the will or, as Western esotericism says, the Thrones. We then perceive beings whom we can characterize in no other way than by saying: They do not consist of flesh and blood, nor of light or air, but they consist of that which we can perceive only within ourselves when we become aware that we have a will. In terms of their lowest substance, they consist solely of will.

[ 4 ] Then, when we train ourselves to immerse ourselves in the manner described—now also in lower animals—and to observe their lives with the occult gaze, or even when we immerse ourselves in plant life, but do not merely observe it as we characterized it yesterday—through gesture and facial expression—but rather when we become one with the plants and view ourselves from the perspective of the plants, then we are led to an experience, a profound insight, for which there is actually no proper comparison within the world we otherwise inhabit. At most, we gain a comparison for the qualities of those beings to which we then rise as the beings of the second category of the first hierarchy; we gain a way to characterize them when we truly allow that which serious, dignified people have attained—people who have devoted many stages of their lives to gathering wisdom within themselves, who after many years of rich experience have accumulated so much wisdom—to take effect upon our own minds, so that we say to ourselves: When such people pass judgment, it is not a personal will speaking to us, but rather the life that has accumulated within them over years and decades, through which they have, in a certain sense, become impersonal. People who make such an impression on us that their wisdom appears impersonal, that their wisdom appears like the blossom and fruit of a mature life, evoke in us—even if only a vague sense—of what acts upon us from our mental, from our spiritual environment, when we rise to that level of clairvoyance of which we must now speak here. In Western esotericism, this category is called the Cherubim. It is extraordinarily difficult to characterize the beings of these higher categories, for the higher we ascend, the more impossible it becomes to draw upon characteristics of ordinary life to evoke a sense of the height, greatness, and sublimity of the beings of these hierarchies. The spirits of the will—that is, the lowest category of the first hierarchy—we can still characterize by saying that we make clear to ourselves what will is, for will is the lowest substance of which they are composed. But it would be impossible, if we were to look only at the will as it presents itself to us in human beings or animals in ordinary life, if we were to look only at the ordinary feelings and thoughts of human beings; it would be impossible to characterize the beings of the second category of the first hierarchy using what is drawn from ordinary human thinking, feeling, and willing. We must turn to exceptional individuals who have accumulated an overwhelming power of wisdom in their souls in the manner described. When we feel this wisdom, we feel something akin to what the occultist feels when facing the beings we call cherubim. Such wisdom, which is not gathered over decades like the wisdom of outstanding human beings, but rather such wisdom gathered over millennia, over millions of years of the world’s evolution—this wisdom flows toward us in sublime power from the beings we call Cherubim.

[ 5 ] Even more difficult to characterize are those beings that constitute the first, the highest category of the first hierarchy, and which are called Seraphim. It would only be possible to form a mental image of the impression that the Seraphim make on the occult eye if we were to draw on the following comparison from everyday life. Let us continue the comparison we just used. We consider a person who, over decades, has accumulated experiences that have brought him to overwhelming wisdom, and we form the mental image that such a wise person, from whom the most impersonal wisdom of life speaks, from his most impersonal wisdom of life, permeates his entire being as with an inner fire to such an extent that he need not say anything to us, but only needs to stand before us and place into his gaze what decades have given him in wisdom, so that the gaze can tell us of the sufferings and experiences of decades, and we can gain an impression from the gaze that this gaze speaks like the world itself that we experience. When we have a mental image of such a gaze, or when we imagine that such a wise person has come to the point of not merely speaking words to us, but of imprinting, through the sound and the peculiar timbre of his words, the mark of rich life experiences, so that we hear something like an undertone in what he says, because he endows it with a certain “how,” and from this “how” we perceive a world of life experiences, then we in turn get a feeling like that of the occultist when he ascends to the seraphim. Like a gaze that has matured through life, and from which decades of experience speak, or like a sentence uttered in such a way that we do not merely hear his thoughts, but that we hear: the sentence, by being uttered with such a tone, has been won through the pains and experiences of life; it is no theory, it has been fought for, it has been suffered, it has entered the heart through life’s battles and victories—when we hear all this in an undertone, then we gain a sense of the impression that the trained occultist has when he soars up to the beings we call Seraphim.

[ 6 ] We were able to characterize the beings of the third hierarchy by saying: What is perception in human beings is, for them, the revelation of their self; what is inner life and waking consciousness in human beings is, for them, spiritual fulfillment. We were able to characterize the beings of the second hierarchy by saying: What is a revelation of the self for the beings of the third hierarchy is, for them, self-realization, self-creation, the imprinting of their own being; and what is spiritual fulfillment for the beings of the third hierarchy is, for them, the stirring of life, so that an inner stirring of life arises in the process of separation, in the objectification of the self. Now, what is self-creation for the beings of the second hierarchy also appears to us in the beings of the first hierarchy when we view them with the occult eye, but there is still a difference. The difference lies in the fact that what the beings of the second hierarchy objectify—what they create from within themselves—remains in existence as long as these beings remain connected to what they have created. So, mind you, these beings of the second hierarchy can create something like an image of themselves, but this remains connected to them and cannot separate from them. It remains connected to them in a certain way. With the beings of the first hierarchy, it is the case that they also objectify themselves, that they imprint their own being, separating it as in a skin, in a shell, which is, however, an imprint of their own being. This now separates from them and remains present in the world, even when they separate from it. Thus, they do not carry their creation with them, but this creation remains, even when they move away from it. Through this, a higher degree of objectivity is achieved than that attained by the second hierarchy. Where the beings of the second hierarchy create, they must remain with what they have created so that it does not perish. The creation would be dead and would disintegrate if they did not remain connected to it themselves. It has an independent, objective existence, but only as long as the being remains connected to it. That which is separated from the beings of the first hierarchy—these beings of the first hierarchy can walk away from it, and yet it remains as something self-acting and objective.

[ 7 ] In the third hierarchy, we have revelation and spiritual fulfillment; in the second hierarchy, self-creation and the stirring of life. In the first hierarchy, which consists of the Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim, we have a kind of creation in which the created is set apart; here, instead of self-creation, we have world-creation: What emerges from the beings of the first hierarchy becomes a separate world, a world so independent that it manifests phenomena and facts even when the beings are no longer present.

[ 8 ] We may now ask ourselves: What is the nature of the life of this first hierarchy? The life of the beings of the first hierarchy consists in their perceiving themselves by allowing such objective, independent, and self-separating beings to emerge from within themselves. In the act of creation, in the process of making beings independent, lies the inner state of consciousness of these beings of the first hierarchy, their inner experience. We can say that they look upon what they create and what the world becomes, and it is not by looking within themselves, but by looking out upon the world, upon their creatures, that they have themselves. Creating beings—that is their inner life. Creating other beings, living in other beings—that is the inner experience of these beings of the first hierarchy. Creating the world is their outer life; creating beings is their inner life.

[ 9 ] Over the course of these days, we have pointed out how the various beings of the individual hierarchies have offspring—beings that split off from them—whom they send down into the realms of nature, and we have learned that the offspring of the third hierarchy are the nature spirits, and that the offspring of the second hierarchy are the group souls. The beings of the first hierarchy also have such offshoots, and in fact I have already described these beings—who are the offspring of the first hierarchy—to you from another perspective. I described them to you in the very first lectures, when we ascended to the so-called spirits of the cycles, to those spirits who arrange and direct what occurs in the natural realms in rhythmic succession and repetition. The beings of the first hierarchy split off from themselves those beings who govern the alternation of winter and summer, so that plants sprout and then wither again; that rhythmic sequence whereby, for example, members of a certain animal species have a specific lifespan within which they develop from birth to death. But also everything that follows rhythmically and repetitively in the natural realms, such as day and night, the changing of the seasons, the four seasons—everything that follows in this rhythmic manner, everything based on repetitive events—is governed by the spirits of the cycles of time, by the descendants of the beings of the first hierarchy. One can characterize these spirits of the cycles from one perspective, as we did a few days ago, and one can now characterize them according to their own lineage, as we did today. Thus, we can summarize the nature of these three hierarchies as follows:

First Hierarchy	World-Creation	Being-Creation	Spirits of the Cycle
Second Hierarchy	Self-Creation	Life-Stimulation	Group Souls
Third Hierarchy	Revelation	Spiritual Fulfillment	Nature Spirits

[ 10 ] If we now wish to proceed with the task set before us, we must familiarize ourselves with mental images to which the trained eye of the occultist gradually rises—mental images that are, admittedly, somewhat difficult at first when one first encounters them. But we will already set these mental images and ideas before our souls today, and in doing so, we will gain the opportunity, in the coming lectures where the entire life and essence of the natural kingdoms and the celestial bodies will be presented to us, to become increasingly accustomed to the way in which the characterized beings are connected to the natural kingdoms and the celestial bodies. In this way, we will be able to gain increasingly clear mental images in this direction.

[ 11 ] When we speak of human beings, we do so in a way that characterizes them as they appear to the occult eye; you can see this in theosophical writings, for example in my *Theosophy* and in my *The Secret Science*. When we view the human being through the occult gaze, we say: That which is initially the outermost aspect of the human being perceptible to the eyes and the senses in general is his physical body. So we regard the human physical body as the first human member. As the second human member, we then regard something supersensible, something already invisible to normal consciousness: the etheric body. As the third member, we regard the astral body. Once we have these three members, we have roughly the nature of the human sheaths. We then come to even higher members. These are of a soul-like nature. In ordinary life, we perceive them as inner soul life, and just as we speak of a threefold outer shell, so we can speak of a threefold soul: the feeling soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul. These aspects of human nature, from the physical body up to the soul of consciousness, are essentially already present in every human being today. Added to this is a glimmer of the next member, which we call the Spirit-Self or, as many of you may be accustomed to calling it, Manas. Then we have the next member, which in the future will actually be developed in the right measure for human beings; we call this the Life-Spirit or the Buddhi. And then we have what we call the actual Spirit-Man or Atma, which is indeed the innermost human nature, but which still slumbers within the human being for the sake of their consciousness today and will only shine forth within consciousness in future earthly ages as the actual center of consciousness. These aspects of human nature are such that we speak of them as units. In a certain sense, we have a unity in the physical body of the human being, we have a unity in the etheric body of the human being, and so on in the other aspects of human nature. The whole human being is a unity consisting of the combination and interaction of these various aspects.

[ 12 ] If we are to make further progress in our considerations, you must now create a mental image of beings that are superior to human beings and that are so far above human nature that they do not consist of parts that we can describe as a physical body, an etheric body, and so on, but rather that the parts of these beings are themselves, in turn, beings. While human beings, then, have as their individual members what we cannot regard as entities but merely as unified members, we must ascend to such entities that do not have a physical body as a part of themselves, but which, just as human beings have their physical body as a part, have as a part of themselves what we have now called in our considerations the spirits of form. When we say: There is an entity of a higher category which, unlike the human being, does not have a physical body as its limb, but which has an entity itself as its limb, a Spirit of Form, then we gain a mental image of an entity that we have not yet characterized, but which we now wish to characterize. If we wish to characterize it, we must make use of the mental images to which we have risen in the course of our reflections.

[ 13 ] As I said, it is difficult to arrive at these mental images, but you will be able to rise to the level of the mental images we need here by means of an analogy. Consider a beehive or an anthill, and take the individual beings—the individual bees of the hive—and be clear that the beehive has a real collective spirit, a real collective being, and that it has its parts in the individual bees, just as you have your parts in your individual limbs. There you have an analogy for even higher beings than those we have considered so far, who do not have in their members something that we would call merely a physical body, as in humans, but rather what we ourselves must call a being, a spirit of form. Just as we live in our physical body, so do beings of higher sublimity live in such a way that they have the spirits of form—or, for my sake, a spirit of form—as their lowest limb. We humans have the etheric body; instead of that, these beings have spirits of movement as their second member; instead of the human astral body, these beings have spirits of wisdom; instead of what we humans have as the feeling soul, these beings have thrones, or spirits of will, as their fourth member; instead of our intellectual soul, these beings have cherubim as their fifth member; as their sixth, just as we have the conscious soul, they have seraphim. And just as we look up to that which we will gradually acquire in future earthly days, so these beings look up to that which towers above the being of the hierarchies. Just as we speak of our Manas, Buddhi, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man, so does this being, as it were, look up from its seraphic member—just as we look up from our consciousness soul—toward a primal spirituality. Only then do these beings possess something analogous to what we call our inner spiritual life. It is extraordinarily difficult to form mental images of what exists up there above the hierarchies, as it were, as the spiritual entity of the highest spirits themselves. In the course of human evolution, the various religions and worldviews have therefore, one might say, refrained with a certain reverent caution from speaking in clear mental images reminiscent of the sensory world about what still exists up there above the hierarchies. If, in order to evoke a mental image such as that which lives in the soul of the occultist when he looks upon the Seraphim, we had to resort to such means as those that meet us only in analogies in people with rich life experience, even all that which we encounter in such people as a pure expression of their lives is no longer sufficient to characterize the Trinity that figures, as it were, above the Seraphim as the highest being, as their Manas, Buddhi, Atma.

[ 14 ] Throughout human evolution, there has been—and one might even say, unfortunately—much controversy surrounding the tentative intuitions with which the human spirit has spoken of what lies above in the spiritual realms. “Unfortunately!” one may say, because it would be far more fitting for the human spirit not to attempt to characterize beings of such a high order using mental images that it has cobbled together from ordinary life through all manner of analogies and comparisons; it would be far more fitting for human beings to seek, with deep reverence, to learn more and more in order to gain approximate mental images of what lies above. Religions and worldviews have attempted to provide approximate mental images of what lies above by drawing upon ambiguous and evocative terms—terms that, in a sense, gain a special significance precisely because they transcend the individual human life and extend beyond the external sensory world. Of course, such concepts cannot even begin to characterize the sublime being in question here, but they can, in a sense, evoke a mental image of what cannot be put into words, but must be shrouded in a sacred secret, in a sacred mystery. For one should not approach these things so readily with human intellectual concepts derived from the external world. Hence, in successive religions and worldviews, people have attempted to characterize these things approximately, intuitively, by drawing upon that which transcends the human being and is already mysterious in nature, using it as a characteristic or, let us say, as a basis for naming.

[ 15 ] The ancient Egyptians drew upon the concepts of child or son, mother, and father—that is, what transcends the individual human being—when naming their deities. Christianity has sought to name this Trinity through the sequence of Holy Spirit, Son, and Father. Thus, we can say: We would have to place the Holy Spirit in the seventh position, the Son in the eighth, and the Father in the ninth. So when we look up to a being whose highest essence vanishes into a spiritual mystery, and we refer to it suggestively as Spirit, Son, and Father—when we regard such a being with the occult gaze, we say to ourselves: Just as we relate to human beings by looking at them externally, just as we regard their physical body as their lowest member, so with such a being, when we regard it in a way analogous to our regard for human beings, we have before us the Spirit of Form—that is, a Spirit that gives itself a form, a formed Spirit. We would therefore have to be able to look at that which, in these beings, is analogous to, or similar to, the physical body of a human being—at something formed.

[ 16 ] Just as we have something formed in the physical body of the human being as its lowest member, and just as in this formed thing—which, in truth, as it appears to us, is of course a maya, but in which precisely that which is the Spirit of Form lives—so too is that which appears to us when we cast our gaze out into space and behold a planet — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter —, the outer form of the spirit of form, that which belongs to this being of which we have just spoken, just as the physical body of the human being belongs to the human being. When a human being stands before us, this form expresses to us what lives within the human being as higher members—the etheric body, the astral body, the feeling soul, and so on; when we see a planet, this form expresses to us what constitutes the form of the Spirits of Form. And just as behind the human form, behind the physical body, lie the etheric body, the astral body, the soul of feeling, and so on, so too behind the planet, as belonging to it, lies that which we refer to as the spirits of movement, of wisdom, of will, the Seraphim, the Cherubim, and so on. So if we wish to hold before us the complete being of a planet in the sense of Spiritual Science, then we must say: In the vastness of space, the planet appears to our perception as its physical form—bestowed upon it by the Spirit of Form—shines out toward us, while it conceals, just as the human being conceals its higher members from physical sight, that which reigns within and around the planet as beings of the higher hierarchies. We therefore correctly form a mental image of a planet such as Mars or Mercury when we first imagine it in terms of its physical form and conceive of it as surrounded and permeated by a spiritual atmosphere that extends into infinity, which has its physical form—the creation of the spirits of form—within the physical planet itself, and which encompasses the beings of the other hierarchies within its spiritual sphere. Only then do we have the complete planet, when we view it as having the physical as a core at its center and, surrounding it, spiritual envelopes consisting of the beings of the hierarchies. This will be examined in greater detail in the coming lectures. However, so that we may, as it were, indicate the direction of our consideration today, the following should first be stated as a communication based on the findings of occult research.

[ 17 ] We have already hinted at this: When we consider what constitutes the physical form of a planet, it is a creation of the Spirit of Form. Our Earth’s form, too, is a creation of the Spirit of Form. But you know, first of all, that our Earth is not static in itself, that this Earth is subject to constant inner change and movement. You will all recall from the descriptions in the Akashic Records that the outer face of our Earth looks different today than it did, for example, during the period of Earth’s development that we call the Atlantean era. In this ancient Atlantean era, the area of our globe that is now flooded by the Atlantic Ocean was covered by a mighty continent, while in the place where Europe, Asia, and Africa are today, continents were barely beginning to form. Thus, the mass, the substance of the Earth, has been transformed through inner movement. The planet is in a state of constant inner movement. Just consider, for example, that what is known today as the island of Heligoland is only a small part of what still jutted out into the sea from this island of Heligoland in the ninth and tenth centuries. Even if the periods during which rearrangements and internal changes in the Earth’s surface occur are relatively long, without going into these matters in detail, anyone can say that the planet is in a state of constant internal movement. And indeed, if one counts not only the solid earth but also water and air as part of the planet, then everyday life teaches us that the planet is in a state of inner movement. In cloud formation, in the formation of rain, in all weather phenomena, in the rising and falling of water—in all of this, the planetary substance reveals its inner movement. This is the life of the planet. Within this life of the planet, just as the etheric body acts in the life of the individual human being, there is at work what we call the spirits of movement. So that we can say: The outer form of the planet—the spirits of form as creators. The inner vitality is governed by the beings we call the spirits of movement.

[ 18 ] For the occultist, however, such a planet is indeed a real entity—an entity that governs what takes place within it according to its own will. Not only is there an inner vitality, as just described, present within the planet, but the planet as a whole also possesses consciousness, for it is, after all, an entity. And this consciousness, which corresponds to human consciousness insofar as the lower form of consciousness—the subconscious—is located in the astral body, is governed on the planet by the Spirits of Wisdom. So that we can say: The lowest consciousness of the planet is governed by the Spirits of Wisdom. If we characterize the planet in this way, we are still remaining within the planet. We look up at the planet and say to ourselves: It has a certain form, which corresponds to the Spirits of Form; it has an inner mobility, which corresponds to the Spirits of Movement; all of this is permeated by consciousness, which corresponds to the Spirits of Wisdom. But now let us follow the planet further: It moves through space; it has an inner impulse that drives it through space, just as a human being has an inner impulse of will that drives him to take his steps, to walk through space. That which guides the planet through space, that which governs its movement in space, that which causes it, for example, to move around the fixed star—this corresponds to the spirits of will. They give the planet the impulse to fly through space. So, the planet’s movement through space corresponds to the spirits of will or the Thrones. If these spirits of will were to give the planet only the impulses of movement, then every planet in the world would go its own way. But that is not the case; rather, every planet aligns itself with the entire system. The movement is not merely regulated so that the planet moves, but order is brought into the entire planetary system. Just as order is brought about when, say, a group of people—some of whom went this way, others that way—begins to strive toward a common goal, so too are the movements of the planets ordered until they harmonize. This harmonization of the movements of one planet with another—the fact that the movement of one planet takes the others into account—corresponds to the activity of the Cherubim. Thus, the regulation of the system’s collective movement corresponds to the activity of the Cherubim. And every planetary system, with its fixed star—which stands, so to speak, as the chief leader under the guidance of the Cherubim—has its own relationship to the other planetary systems belonging to other fixed stars; it communicates with its neighboring systems regarding its place in space and its significance, just as individual human beings communicate with one another and discuss their joint actions. Just as human beings establish a social system through mutuality, so too is there a mutuality among the planetary systems. Mutual understanding prevails from fixed star to fixed star. It is through this alone that the cosmos comes into being. That which, so to speak, the planetary systems communicate with one another through space in order to become the cosmos is governed by those spirits whom we call Seraphim.

[ 19 ] And now we have, as it were, exhausted what we find in human beings up to the soul of consciousness. Just as we then come, in the human being, to his higher spiritual life—to that which gives meaning to the entire system up to the soul of consciousness—so, when we ascend beyond the Seraphim, we come to that which we attempted earlier to characterize, for now only in outline, as the supreme Trinity of world existence: We arrive there at what reigns in the universe as the all-pervading, divine, thrice-divine life that creates veils for itself in the individual planetary systems. Just as that which lives in the human being as the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, the Spirit-Man—Manas, Buddhi, Atma—creates veils in the soul of consciousness, the soul of understanding, the soul of feeling, and the astral, etheric, and physical bodies, so do the fixed stars of the planetary systems move through space as the bodies of the divine beings. And as we contemplate the life of the starry world, we contemplate the bodies of the gods and, ultimately, of the Divine itself.