The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] To address the objectives of this short lecture series, we need mental images such as those we gained yesterday, as well as a few others that we simply must have if we are to characterize what was hinted at the day before yesterday in the programmatic lecture.

[ 2 ] You will find that wherever initiation is discussed in literature or elsewhere, the mystery that is so close to everything human is touched upon in some way: the mystery of death. And you will find that in all that might be called accounts, it is pointed out that the initiate, at a certain stage, must undergo something in a somewhat different form than the passage through the gate of death itself. For the occultist, these accounts are indeed based on truth. For the experiences to be undergone during the ascent into the spiritual worlds touch upon the very same experiences that a human being must undergo during the natural transition from life in the physical body to that different kind of life that takes place in a completely different form between death and a new birth. If one wishes to truly grasp what is at stake here, one must first ask: What does the human being actually perceive itself to be in ordinary life? It may not be particularly interesting to raise such an abstract question, but to understand the process of initiation, it is necessary to consider this question: What does the soul perceive itself to be?

[ 3 ] The soul does not know what it is during sleep, for either sleep occurs in a state of unconsciousness, or dreams intrude upon it—dreams that must first be interpreted through occultism if one wishes to understand them properly. When asking: What is a human being, what is their soul in ordinary sensory existence? — only the question of daily life can be considered. Now we know that there are, first of all, those gateways we call our sense organs, through which the world of colors and light, the world of sound, the world of smell, warmth and cold, and so on, flow into our soul; and what we call our world in sensory life is, after all, merely a summary of everything that flows in through the gateways of our senses. Then we have the instrument of our intellect, our feelings, and our will; with these we process what confronts us in the outer world. Desires, wishes, aspirations, satisfactions, dissatisfactions, joys, disappointments, and so on arise in our soul, and when we actually take in the full scope of what a human being knows of themselves, it is all of this. If one wishes to recognize, in the context of ordinary life, what the inner world is, one can actually cite nothing other than the sum of what has now been characterized. In doing so, a person can also observe themselves from the outside. They can observe their body. Through the most varied facts—which need not be elaborated upon in detail here—they become aware that they must regard their body as their instrument for waking daily life during the span between birth and death. Longings that we have already touched upon play a role in this life; the longing to know what a human being actually is within the bounds of birth and death plays a role, as does the longing to emerge from what one might call the darkness of life. But beyond that, a human being has nothing at first, has no experiences in the ordinary sense of perception. His experiences are such that the rising and falling drives, desires, sensory perceptions, mental images, intellectual combinations, and so on fill waking daily life. Let us now connect this to what we encountered at the end of yesterday’s lecture.

[ 4 ] We have pointed out how, when a person reaches the boundary between the sensory realm and the spiritual realm, they must change their mental images; how they must leave behind what they have thought about ugly and beautiful, about true and false, about good and evil, because these concepts take on a completely different meaning and a value pointing in entirely different directions when one enters the spiritual worlds. From this alone we can gain an idea of how we must transform ourselves if we wish to enter the spiritual worlds. Now, having observed what a human being knows of themselves in waking daily life between birth and death, we can ask ourselves, in relation to what was said yesterday: What can a human being take with them across the threshold where the Guardian of the Threshold stands, of all that they know of themselves? What can they take with them across the threshold where the Guardian of the Threshold stands—of all the drives, desires, and passions they experience in their sensory existence, of their feelings and mental images, of the intellectual concepts and judgments they go through? — Yes, it is one of the first steps of initiation that a person learns: of all that one can cite as constituting one’s own being, one can take absolutely nothing with them! And it is not an exaggeration or a paradox, but a literal truth, when one says: Of everything one can actually speak of in the sensory realm, one can take absolutely nothing with one into the spiritual world; rather, one must leave everything behind at the threshold where the Guardian of the Threshold stands.

[ 5 ] But let me make one thing clear to you: In all that one experiences as one’s own consciousness, there is one thing that is of the utmost importance—and indeed, it is precisely what matters most in the stages of initiation. What is attached to it is that one loves and cherishes it, and that one cannot even begin to address it by applying the ordinary, somewhat unsympathetic concept of egoism. It is not enough to say: “A person must cast off their egoism, and then they will enter the realm of the spiritual world selflessly.” That is, if one may speak trivially, easier said than done. But this egoism is, in the more secret, finer structures of one’s being, intimately connected with what we not only consider valuable in life out of egoism, but must consider valuable because it is through this that we are human beings in the world in which we must live. We are human beings because we can hold together what we experience and because we can, in a certain way, reflect on the fact that we are able to experience. Through all of this, we are the human beings we are. And whatever we are able to accomplish in ordinary life, we accomplish by valuing our ability to hold together within our personality, within our individuality, what we experience. And if we did not value what we experience, we would become idlers or sluggish people in life and achieve nothing for the ordinary world. It would therefore be superficial to say: Egoism must be regarded as something harmful under all circumstances. For in its finer structure, it signifies the force that drives the human being forward in the world in which he is now incarnated. And yet: all of this must be cast aside; it must be left behind, must be left behind for the simple reason that it is unsuitable for the world we must enter. Just as our physical body is unsuitable for an iron bath at 900°C, so too is what we call our self—along with what we love in the ordinary world—unsuitable for the spiritual world. And one must leave it behind for this reason: because something similar would happen to us as would happen to our physical body if we were to plunge into a bath of molten iron at 900°C—we would not be able to remain in it, we would perish within it.

[ 6 ] Now a thought will occur to you that is quite natural, one that simply needs to be grasped and felt in its depth: If I were to lay aside everything that I am—everything that can even be spoken of in terms of sentient existence—what would actually remain for me? Can I still enter the spiritual world myself if I must first shed myself? — This is precisely why a human being cannot take anything of what they know themselves to be into the supersensible worlds, and why everything they can take into these worlds is something of which they know nothing in the ordinary world. These are the hidden elements of existence lying in the depths of the soul, which are within the human being, of which he knows nothing. And these must be so strong that the human being brings into the spiritual worlds what is necessary from that of which he knows nothing, when he must lay aside everything of which he is aware. To grasp this thought—or rather, this feeling—thoroughly, connect what has just been said with the ordinary idea of death. It is only natural for ordinary sensory life that a person loves everything that defines who they are. And because they know nothing more about themselves, their longing for immortality is a longing to retain what they love in their sensory existence. That is why the dread can become so great and a sense of fear can arise toward the spiritual world, because the thought must arise: You are entering into a formless, indeterminate realm; you do not know whether you can preserve yourself within it, for that which you know is lost to you!

[ 7 ] Now, part of the initiation process involves bringing up to consciousness, even during the life of the senses, those elements of existence that lie hidden in the depths of the soul. This occurs in part through the methods described in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, whereby experiences are raised from the depths of the soul into consciousness, emerging, as it were, as a condensed, intensified soul life. And this condensed, intensified soul life, of which one otherwise knows nothing, can pass over into the spiritual world. Therefore, through meditation, concentration, and what is called in The Guardian of the Threshold the “thought-filled conduct of the soul,” one prepares oneself to take something with one into the spiritual world, to be able to be something there. But what happens to what one has left behind?

[ 8 ] This is something of extraordinary importance. To begin with, if one were to describe it vividly and figuratively, one could truly say: whatever one can speak of in the realm of the senses, whatever one knows, one leaves behind at the threshold with the Guardian of the Threshold, as if one were to take off one’s clothes and cross over into the spiritual world—in regard to everything soul-related—without them. Figuratively speaking, this is quite correct. But initiation makes it necessary that not only this happens, but that something else happens as well: that while one lays aside one’s self and everything that is part of oneself, one nevertheless takes something of it with one; otherwise, one loses all connection with the being of which one previously knew only and exclusively. So one must take something with one after all! We are faced here with a contradiction, which is, however, a very easily resolvable one: that we are to leave everything behind and yet take something of what is left behind with us. You will easily understand it if I compare what it is for the soul when it goes through this process to a phenomenon of ordinary life. There is also a similar process in life that we can compare to this other one, although it is much more intense, much more vehement. This is the process when we recall something we have experienced in life. What you experienced yesterday, you have left behind, but you have taken it with you in your memory. What matters is that through the preceding meditations, concentrations, and so on, one has prepared oneself so that, when crossing the threshold into the spiritual worlds, one has the power to hold fast in a supersensory memory what one has left behind. If one is not prepared in the appropriate way, one does not have this power to remember it. Then, however, one is a nothing in terms of one’s consciousness, because one knows nothing of oneself. This is what it means: that through supersensible memory, when one is within the spiritual world, one recalls what one has left behind. Otherwise, one can take nothing with one except these memories, and the fact that one takes them with one preserves what one might call the continuity, the preservation of the self. Even in ordinary life, the coherence of consciousness—and with it the true self—is lost when one must simply erase from one’s consciousness things one ought to remember—let us say, much of one’s life—and has pathologically forgotten them. Much in ordinary life depends on continuous memory. Everything that makes the first steps of initiation possible depends on memory in the supersensible life—the preservation of the memory of ordinary life. This memory is indeed possible, and it comes about through initiation, and from it you can once again draw the thread across to the mystery of death. When a person passes through death, they do not possess the same powers they acquire through initiation, but in a certain sense they do receive powers when they shed their body, as other beings of the supersensible world assist them. They gain the ability to preserve the memory of what they have forgotten by shedding their body. And now you have the opportunity in reality to answer the question: What remains of my soul experiences once I have passed through the gate of death? How does the soul live on? That is the most important question of all. And through the experience of the initiates, you have the answer: The soul lives on because in the deep, hidden depths of the soul there are forces that can hold fast in memory what has been experienced. To be immortal means to have the power to preserve in memory the life that has been lived, the past existence. That is the true definition of human immortality. Through initiation, the proof is provided—the proof of experience—that forces live within the human being which [enable one] to remember, after shedding the physical body, everything that the human being has experienced in sensory life and in general. Thus the human being preserves itself through the future; thus it experiences its former existence as memories in its future existence. Feel the full power of the thought that arises through initiation and that could be expressed in the words: The human being is of such a nature that, through the powers of supersensible memory, it carries its own being through future times. When you feel this thought—feeling it into the vastness of the universe in such a way that you create a mental image of the soul carrying itself through the ages—then you have a far better definition of what is called a monad than any philosophical concept could provide. For then you feel what a monad is: a self-contained, self-sustaining being. After all, these things can only be grasped as mental images through the experiences of initiation.

[ 9 ] This is only one aspect of what I have to describe to you. We must examine the first steps of initiation even more closely if we wish to intuitively grasp what our mental images of initiation can offer us. Let us suppose that a person, through the power of thought in his soul—or, to use a foreign term, through meditation—has reached a point where he can perceive outside his physical body; that is, he can initially perceive in his elemental or etheric body. This perception is experienced in that body which is more closely bound in its individual parts to the brain, and less closely, for example, to the hands; the feeling of entering into the elemental body is experienced through the sensation: You are expanding, you are becoming broader, flowing out into the boundless expanses of the world. — Such is the subjective feeling. But it is not the case that one rushes out into the formless and indefinite; rather, there is concrete life everywhere. One lives oneself into pure concreteness, and at the same time one gains very specific experiences in this expanding of oneself. One can easily acquire a particular feeling, and—unless very special circumstances exist—no one undergoing the first steps of initiation will be spared from having this experience. It is the experience of anxiety, of fearfulness, the experience of feeling as if one were in the vastness of the universe with no ground beneath one’s feet, a sense of oppression in the soul. These are the inner experiences one goes through in the process. But then there is something even more important.

[ 10 ] In everyday life, when one thinks, when one has a mental image, when one thought leads to another, one adds one thought to another; one might then incorporate feelings, desires, intentions, and so on; and in a healthy spiritual life, one will always have the ability to say: I think this, I feel that. — For it would indeed be an interruption, a disturbance of a healthy soul life, if one did not have the ability to speak in this way. As one grows into the elemental or etheric body, one expands, but at the same time, the thoughts expand. One loses the feeling of being within oneself when one thinks, and one gets the feeling: one is growing into the elemental world, and that world is permeated by thoughts, and these thoughts think themselves. This occurs as an experience. It is as if one were erased and as if thoughts were thinking themselves, as if the feelings one has oneself or that things have were felt, as if one could not will oneself, but as if all of this were awakening within one to will. Being surrendered to objectivity, to the world—that is a feeling one has. But it is usually the case—and this is again an experience during the first steps of initiation—that another feeling joins in. To the same extent that one expands, that thoughts think themselves, that sensations feel themselves, consciousness becomes weaker and weaker, increasingly subdued; knowledge becomes numb.

[ 11 ] Now, when such experiences occur in the soul, it is necessary to allow something very specific to enter the soul. It is necessary that these things be grasped as precisely as possible by the soul. That is why I have compiled, if not the exact same things, then at least similar ones that point in the same direction, in the book A Path to Self-Knowledge for Humanity, and you will be able to gain much from it if you connect the lectures with this book. A very specific state of mind, which one brings about oneself, must then arise, similar to what I described yesterday. One must, in fact, practice self-reflection; one must try, relentlessly and without regard for one’s feelings, to hold up before oneself the rather gross errors that one knows one has, so that it becomes clear to one’s soul how little one actually corresponds to the great ideal of humanity. One must empathize with this lack of conformity to the great ideal of humanity: quite meditatively, quite forcefully bringing one’s moral or other weaknesses to mind. When one does this, one actually becomes stronger as a result. And what has already begun to fade, what has already presented itself as if it were about to vanish as in a spiritual faint, becomes brighter again. One begins to see it again. But one experiences something else on this occasion, which can be put into simple words, but which is oppressive and even disconcerting in the first steps on the path to initiation. All these are words meant for the life of the soul, not for the life of the body, for the one who is properly introduced into the spiritual world has also received such instruction that one cannot speak of external physical dangers. Such a person, if they truly and faithfully follow the good advice, can remain outwardly the same person in life, even though inwardly they are tossed about by all manner of tormenting and painful experiences, by disappointments, and perhaps also by glimpses of bliss. But one must go through such things, for in them lie the seeds of higher vision, of higher insight. One learns to recognize something: one learns by observing, perceiving, and experiencing outside the physical body—that is, by coming to live in the elemental body—so that one grows into the elemental world in the manner described. But then, when one does what has just been described, one comes to understand the reason why this elemental world vanishes as if in a kind of fainting spell—which one might express in dry terms by saying: This world does not like you; it feels that you do not fit in. And this fading away, this vanishing, is simply the expression of that: it does not let you in. But by then reproaching oneself for one’s faults, one becomes stronger, and so what had first disappeared brightens up again. But this gives you the distinct feeling: a supernatural world of an elemental nature surrounds you, but you are only allowed to enter it to a certain extent. To the extent that you make yourself morally and intellectually stronger and stronger, it lets you in; otherwise, it does not; and it shows this by disappearing from your sight.

[ 12 ] That is what is exciting, what is oppressive, or sometimes even what is exhausting or consuming—the struggle, so to speak, for the spiritual world, and the awareness of how unworthy one is of it. And by vigorously continuing self-reflection and the soul’s thought-filled activity—that is, meditation, concentration, and imbuing oneself with moral impulses—one can, in this way, enter more and more deeply into the elemental world. But this entry into the elemental world is actually only the first stage of initiation. If one wishes to discuss the next stage, one must draw attention to a highly peculiar phenomenon for which there is actually nothing quite equivalent in ordinary sensory perception.

[ 13 ] The entity in which a person lives once they are able to perceive the elemental world is their elemental body. But they already possessed this body before. The only difference between the elemental body before and after supersensible observation is that the elemental body is, as it were, awakened through initiation. Whereas it was, so to speak, asleep before, it is now awakened. That is actually the most apt expression one can use for this matter. But one thing should be noted. If, through certain measures taken in one’s inner life, one has acquired the ability to see one or another fact or one or another being of the elemental world—well, then one sees precisely that one being. Now suppose you have taken your preparations so far that you see one being or a second being. You will then probably see this one or the second being again and again, provided you maintain the same concentration. That is no difficulty. But you do not easily see anything else. If you take a break for a while and then return, you will still see the same thing again. In short, the elemental world is not like the sensory world. Once the eyes are attuned to the latter, they see all manner of things; once the ears are attuned, they hear everything immediately. It is not so in the elemental world. There you must continually attune the parts of your elemental body anew, piece by piece, from one kind of being to another. There you must search the whole world; there you must awaken the etheric body again and again for every single being. For you establish a relationship, an affinity, only with what you have once seen, for which you have once awakened the etheric body, and you must constantly awaken new relationships. The etheric body cannot do this on its own. It cannot control itself; it can only return to the same being again and again, or it can wait until it is prepared to see other beings. A person who has taken the first steps on the path to initiation and has come to see this or that being, this or that process, cannot yet orient themselves in the spiritual, supersensible world; they cannot, because they do not have free access to the beings, freely compare one being with another. If one is to find one’s bearings—if one is not merely to observe, but to state with certainty: this or that is a being, this or that is a process—then one must be able to compare it with other beings and processes in the supersensible world. One must be able to make the transition from one to the other; one must be able to find one’s bearings. This ability to find one’s bearings must also first be learned. One learns it by feeling, through continuous meditation and moral self-discipline, that one is growing in strength, which one perceives in its activity as something quite remarkable. And when one wishes to describe this, one must return to the fact that although the elemental body is present for ordinary life, it is constantly dormant, and that one must first awaken it for supersensible perception. But one must possess the powers within the soul to awaken it. What one does there is experienced in a very special way. I can only make this clear through a comparison. |

[ 14 ] Imagine you fall asleep and know: Your body lies in bed; you cannot move it, but you are aware that it is there! But you enter a spiritual world and return after some time to wake this body again. — This can happen consciously. But just as it happens to people in ordinary life, it happens unconsciously. What I have just described to you is what a person experiences; they become awake and asleep in relation to their physical body, and it is they themselves who awaken; only they have no awareness that it is they who awaken their physical body. Once one has taken the first steps toward initiation, then one has this awareness. Therefore, it is indeed the case that one knows: There you have your elemental body. — One stands before it in such a way that one feels: this is the more tightly bound part corresponding to the brain, this the more freely moving part corresponding to the hands, this — though it may now seem paradoxical — the fully mobile part corresponding to the feet. One knows all this, but it lies dormant within one. And as one continues to develop, makes the necessary inner spiritual preparations, and reaches the spiritual world, this is a continuous process of awakening. Sometimes one awakens this part, another time a different part; sometimes one ignites this movement, another time a different one. In short, it is a conscious awakening of the elemental body, so that one could speak of a state of sleep in which the elemental body usually resides, and of a state of wakefulness into which one brings it through initiation. This is the difference between sleeping and waking in the physical body and in the elemental body: in the physical body, sleeping and waking are alternating states; they occur one after the other; in the elemental body, such a sequence does not occur; there it is simultaneous. Thus, on the path to initiation, one may, through the initial measures, awaken much in the elemental parts of the head, while everything corresponding to the hands or feet remains in deep sleep. While the physical body alternates between sleeping and waking, in the elemental body the waking and sleeping parts exist side by side. And the progress consists in the sleeping parts being made more and more into waking ones. That is what one actually does.

[ 15 ] If human beings were not spiritual beings, what I have cited as an example could not happen; they could not have their physical body lying in bed and perceive how they awaken it. But the soul is still something independent of everything that is being awakened. What awakens this bit by bit is not the elemental body. It is something else. And if you grasp the concept that there is something in your soul that exercises an active dominion over the elemental body, so that it awakens it bit by bit, then you have a concrete and accurate mental image of what is called the astral body. And to live in the astral body, to experience oneself in the astral body, means first of all: to feel oneself as a kind of inner being of power, which is capable of gradually, bit by bit, awakening the sleeping elemental body to conscious life. There is, therefore, a state that can be described as follows: one now experiences oneself outside the physical body, but one experiences oneself not only in the elemental body, but in the astral body.

[ 16 ] To gain a clear understanding of this stage of initiation, it is necessary to develop the ability to distinguish what one can experience only inwardly when entering one’s elemental body. I have described to you what one experiences when one enters the elemental or etheric body: one expands, one flows out. That is the concrete sensation. But that is also the primary general sensation one has: that one pushes out of the physical body, becomes wider and wider, and pours out into the vastness of the world. Immersing oneself in the astral body and consciously living within what gradually awakens the elemental body is linked to something else: a leaping out of oneself and grasping something that was already outside; not an expansion of what already is. When one is in the elemental body, one knows: the physical body still belongs to it. But when one lives into the astral body, one knows: You are, as if you had first lived within yourself, stepped out of yourself and into something else, and now your physical body—and perhaps also the elemental body—is something outside of you; you are something you were not part of before, and now your physical body has become an object, no longer your subject; you look at it from the outside.

[ 17 ] This act of transcending oneself, of becoming one’s own observer and comprehending oneself, is the transition to existence in the astral body. When one crosses over there, when one has made this leap and knows: this is who you are now, you are looking at it as you once looked at a plant or a stone—then one first has a feeling that, one might say, no initiate on the first steps will be spared; it is the sensation: Now you are in the supersensible world, there it spreads out, into infinity. One cannot even say “in all directions,” for it has far more dimensions and entirely different ones than the ordinary world. But one is alone within it. One is there with one’s life in the astral body—and everywhere the world, infinite expanse, nowhere a being, oneself alone! And one is overcome by what one might call: the most intensely heightened sense of loneliness.

[ 18 ] What matters is that one endures such feelings, that one can work through them, for in overcoming these feelings, the powers emerge that carry one forward, powers that become the powers of vision. And what I tried to convey in just a few lines in the drama The Guardian of the Threshold becomes very real—where Mary leads John into the endless ice fields, where the human soul is lonely, utterly lonely. And once one is within this solitude, then one must wait, wait patiently. Much depends on whether one can wait, on whether one has acquired enough moral strength to wait. For then something comes that one can describe like this: Yes, now you are all alone within infinities, but something rises within you like pure memories that are, after all, not memories. I say, “like a multitude of memories that are, after all, not memories,” because all memories of ordinary life are such that one remembers what one once faced, what one once experienced. But imagine that you were standing there with the innermost part of your soul, and mental images arose that demand that you relate them to something. But you have never experienced them. You know these mental images relate to beings, but you have never faced those beings. This inner rising of a world that is unknown to you, yet of which you know: you carry it within you; they are all images—this is the next thing that belongs to the experiences on the path to initiation.

[ 19 ] And then one has a strange experience: the experience that one can form a relationship with the mental images that arise, that one can love and hate what arises, that one can feel awe toward one thing and arrogance toward another. It is not merely a sum of mental images that awakens, but something like surging, ebbing and flowing, supernatural feelings and sensations. One is completely alone with oneself, alone with one’s inner world as it emerges. At first, one knows nothing oneself except for some vague darkness, yet one is filled with a sense of connection to these things. Let us take a characteristic example. Something that emerges as an image instills love within one. Now one is faced with a powerful temptation. A terrible temptation arises, for one now loves something that is within oneself. One is exposed to the temptation to love the thing because it belongs to oneself, and one must now strive with all one’s strength to ensure that one does not love this being because one possesses it, but because it is this or that despite being within oneself. To treat selflessly that which is within the self—that becomes the task. And this is a difficult task, a task with which nothing in the ordinary sensory world can be compared. In ordinary sensory existence, it is not at all possible for a human being to love completely selflessly what is within them. But they must do so if they are to ascend to that realm. By outshining the being with the power of love, it itself radiates power, and one now realizes through this: this wants to come out of one. And one further realizes: The more one can apply love oneself, the more it itself gains the power to break through something that is like a shell within one and to push out into the world. If one hates it, it gains power just the same; it then strains you, presses you, and forces its way through, as if the lungs or the heart were trying to push through the skin of the body. This goes through everything with which one enters into a relationship through love and hate. But the difference between the two experiences is this: what one loves selflessly goes away, but one feels it taking one along; one makes the journey through that which it itself goes through. What one hates or toward which one is haughty tears through the shell and goes away, leaving one alone, and one remains in solitude. One notices this difference very strongly at a certain stage: one is taken along or left behind. And when one is taken along, one has the opportunity to reach the being one has experienced in its image. One gets to know it. And through the fact that the images of beings one does not yet know arise within one, and one establishes relationships with them, one steps out of oneself and comes into contact with the entire population one gets to know in a second spiritual world. One enters into a world that is usually called the devachanic world, the actual spiritual world, not the astral world. For it is a complete absurdity that a person should enter the astral world through their astral body—which I have described as the awakener of the elemental body—but rather one enters the actual spiritual world, what is called the “land of spirits” in my Theosophy, and stands face to face with purely spiritual beings.

[ 20 ] How to learn more about them, how they are graded, and how they become what is described as the world of the higher hierarchies—from the Angeloi up to the Seraphim—we will continue discussing this tomorrow.