Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature
GA 136
4 April 1912, Helsinki
Lecture II
Yesterday I tried first of all to point out the way which leads the human soul to the observation of the spiritual world hidden directly behind our material physical world; and then to draw attention to two classes or categories of spiritual beings, perceptible to occult vision when the veil of the sense-world has been drawn aside.
To-day we shall speak of two other forms or categories of nature-spirits. The one is disclosed to trained occult sight when we observe the gradual fading and dying of the plant world in the late summer or autumn, the dying of nature-beings in general. As soon as the plant begins to develop fruit in the blossom, we can allow the fruit to work upon the soul in the manner described in our last lecture; and in this way, we receive in our imagination the impression of spiritual beings concerned with the fading and dying of the beings of nature. We were able to describe yesterday, that in spring the plants are, so to speak, drawn out of the earth by certain beings which are subject to perpetual metamorphosis, and we can likewise say that when, for instance, the plants have finished this development, and the time has come for them to fade, other beings then work upon them; beings of whom we cannot even say that they too are continually changing their forms, for, strictly speaking, they have no form of their own at all. They appear flashing up like lightning, like little meteors; now flashing up, now disappearing; they really have no definite form, but flit over our earth, flashing and vanishing like little meteors or will-o'-the-wisps.
These beings are primarily connected with the ripening of everything in the kingdoms of nature; the ripening process comes about because these forces or beings exist. They are only visible to occult vision when it concentrates on the air itself, indeed, on the purest air possible. We have described the second sort of nature-beings by saying that to perceive them we must allow falling water, or water condensed into cloud-formation or something of a like character to work upon us. Now air as free from moisture as possible, played upon by the light and warmth of the sun, must work upon the soul, if we are to visualize in our imagination these meteor-like, flashing, and disappearing beings, which live in air free from moisture, and eagerly drink in the light which permeates the air and which causes them to flash and shine. These beings then sink down into the plant-world, or the animal world, and bring about their ripening and maturity. In the very way we approach these beings we see that they stand in a certain relation to what occultism has always called the elements.
What we described in the last lecture as the first class of such beings, we find when we descend into the depths of the earth and penetrate the solid substance of our planet; our imagination is then confronted with beings of a definite form, and we may call these the nature-spirits of solid substance, or the nature-spirits of Earth. The second category which we then described are to be found in water that collects and disperses; so that we may connect these spiritual beings with what in occultism has always been called the Fluid or Watery Element. In this element they undergo metamorphosis, at the same time doing the work of drawing forth from the earth everything that grows and sprouts. The beings of whom we have just spoken, stand, on the contrary, in connection with the Element of Air, air when it is as free from moisture as possible; so that we may now speak of nature-spirits of earth, of water, and of air. There is a fourth category of such spiritual beings with which occult vision can become familiar. It must wait until a blossom has brought forth fruit and seed, and then observe how the germ gradually grows into a new plant. Only on such an occasion can this be done with ease, otherwise it is difficult to observe this fourth kind of being, for they are the protectors of all the germs, of all the seeds in our kingdoms of nature. As guardians they carry the seed from one generation of plants or other nature-beings, to the next. We can observe that these beings, which are the protectors of the seeds or germs, make it possible that the same beings continually re-appear on our earth, and that these beings are brought into contact with the warmth of our planet—with what from early times had been called the Element of Fire or Heat. That is why the forces of the seed are also connected with a certain degree of heat, a certain temperature. If occult vision observes accurately enough, it describes that the necessary transmutation of the warmth of the environment into such heat as is needed by the seed or germ in order to ripen, the changing of lifeless warmth into a living heat, is provided for by these beings. Hence they can also be called the nature-spirits of Fire, or of Heat. So that, to begin with (more details will be given in the subsequent lectures), we have become acquainted with four categories of nature-spirits, having a certain relation to what are called the elements of earth, water, air, and fire.
It is as though these spiritual beings had their jurisdiction, their territory, in these elements; just as man himself has his in the whole planet. Just as that is his home in the universe, so have these beings their territory in one or other of the elements mentioned. We have already drawn attention to the fact that for our earthly physical world, for the earth as a whole with its various kingdoms of nature, these different beings signify what the etheric body or life-body, signifies for individual man. Only we have said that in man this life-body is a unity, whereas the etheric body of the earth consists of many, many such nature-spirits, which are, moreover, divided into four classes. The living cooperation of these nature-spirits is the etheric or life-body of the earth. Thus it is no unity, but multiplicity, plurality.
If we wish with occult vision to discern this etheric body of the earth, then—as was previously described—we must allow the physical world to influence us morally, thereby drawing aside the veil of the physical world. Then the etheric body of the earth which lies directly behind this veil becomes visible. Now, how is it, when one also draws aside this further veil, described as the etheric body of the earth? We know that behind the etheric body is the astral body, as the third principle of man—that body which is the bearer of our desires, wishes and passions. Thus, if we disregard the higher principles of man's nature, we may say that we have first of all in the human being the physical body, behind this the etheric body, and behind that the astral body. It is just the same in external nature; if we draw aside the physical, we come certainly to a plurality, but this represents the etheric body of the whole earth, with all its kingdoms of nature. Now can we also speak of a sort of astral body of the earth, something which, in relation to the whole earth and to all its kingdoms, corresponds to the astral body of the human being? It is certainly not so easy to penetrate to this astral body of the earth as to the etheric body. We have seen that the etheric body can be reached if we allow the phenomena of the world to work upon us not merely through the sense impressions but morally. If we wish, however, to penetrate further, deeper occult exercises are necessary, such as you will find described in part—in so far as they can be in an open publication—in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and How to Attain It. At a definite point of esoteric or occult development—as you may read there—a man begins to be conscious, even at a time when he is usually unconscious, namely during the time between his falling asleep and waking.
We know that the ordinary unconscious condition, the ordinary sleep-condition of man, is caused by the fact that he leaves his physical and etheric bodies lying in the bed, and draws out the astral body and the rest of what belongs to it; but the normal man is then unconscious. When, however, he devotes himself more and more to those exercises which consist of meditation, concentration, and so on, and further strengthens the slumbering hidden forces of his soul, then he can establish a conscious condition of sleep. Thus when he has drawn his astral body out of his physical and etheric bodies, he is no longer unconscious, but has then around him—not the physical world, not even the world just described, the world of the nature-spirits—but another and still more spiritual world. When the time comes that a man, after he has freed himself from his physical and etheric bodies, feels his consciousness flash up, he then perceives quite a new order of spiritual beings. The next thing which strikes the occult vision thus far trained, is that the new spirits man now perceives have as it were command over the nature-spirits. Let us be quite clear as to how far this is the case. I have told you that those beings which we call the nature-spirits of the water, work especially in the budding and sprouting plant-world. Those which we may call the nature-spirits of the air, play their part in late summer and autumn, when the plants prepare to fade and die. Then these meteor-like air-spirits sink down over the plant-world and saturate themselves, as it were, with the plants, helping them to fade away in their spring and summer forms. The disposition that at one time the spirits of the water, and at another the spirits of the air should work in this or that region of the earth, changes according to the different regions of the earth—in the northern part of the earth it is naturally quite different from what it is in the south. The office of directing, as it were, the suitable nature-spirits to their activities at the right time, is carried out by those spiritual beings which we learn to know when the occult vision is so far trained that, when we have freed ourselves from our physical and etheric bodies, we can still be conscious of our environment. There are spiritual beings, for instance, working in connection with our earth, with our earth-planet, who allot the work of the nature-spirits to the seasons of the year, and thus bring about the alternations of the seasons for the different regions of the earth, by distributing the work of the nature-spirits. These spiritual beings represent what we may call the astral body of the earth, into which man plunges with his own astral body at night when he falls asleep. This astral body, consisting of higher spirits which hover round the earth-planet and permeate it as a spiritual atmosphere, is united with the earth; and into this spirit-atmosphere man's astral body plunges during the night-time.
Now to occult observation there is a great difference of nature-spirits, the spirits of Earth, Water, etc., and those beings which on the other hand, direct these nature-spirits. The nature-spirits are occupied in causing the beings of nature to ripen and fade, in bringing life into the whole planetary earth-sphere. It is different with those spiritual beings which in their totality can be called the astral body of the earth.
These beings are such that when man can become acquainted with them by means of his occult vision, he perceives them as beings connected with his own soul—with his own astral body. They exert such an influence upon the astral body of man—(as also upon the astral bodies of animals), that we cannot speak of a mere life-giving activity; their activity resembles the action of feeling and thought upon our own souls. The nature-spirits of water and air can be observed; we may say they are in the environment; but we cannot say of these spiritual beings of which we are now speaking, that they are in our environment; we are in fact always actually united with them, as if poured into them, when we perceive them. We are merged into them, and they speak to us in spirit. It is as though we perceived thoughts and feelings from the environment; impulses of will, sympathy and antipathy come to expression in what these beings cause to flow into us as thoughts, feelings, and impulses of will. Thus in this category of spirits we see beings already resembling the human soul. If we turn back again to what has been stated, we may say that all sorts of regulations in time, of divisions in the relations of time and space, are also connected with these beings. An old expression has therefore been preserved in occultism for these beings, which in their totality we recognize as the astral body of the earth, and this in English would be, “Spirits of the Rotation of Time.” Thus, not only the seasons of the year, and the growing and the fading of the plants, but also the regular alternation which, in relation to the earth-planet, expresses itself in day and night, is brought about by these spirits, which are to be classed as belonging to the astral body of the earth. In other words, everything connected with rhythmic return, with rhythmic alternation, with the repetitions of happenings in time, is organized by spiritual beings which collectively belong to the astral body of the earth and to which the name “Spirits of the Rotation of Time,” of our planet, is applicable. What the astronomer ascertains through calculation about the rotation of the earth on its axis, is perceptible to occult vision, because the occultist knows that these spirits are distributed over the whole earth, and are actually the bearers of the forces which rotate the earth on its axis. It is extremely important that one should be aware that in the astral body of the earth is to be found everything connected with the ordinary alternations between the blossoming and withering of plants and also all that is connected with the alternations between day and night,—between the various seasons of the year, and the various times of the day, etc. Everything that happens in this way calls up in the observer who has progressed so far that he can, with his astral body, go out of his physical and etheric bodies and still remain conscious—an impression of the spiritual beings belonging to the Spirits of the Rotation of Time.
We have now, as it were drawn aside the second veil, the veil woven of the nature-spirits. We might say that when we draw aside the first veil, woven of material physical impressions, we come to the etheric body of the earth, to the nature-spirits, and we can then draw aside a second veil and come to the Spirits of the Rotation of Time, who regulate everything subject to rhythmic rotation. Now we know that in our own astral body is embedded what may be called the higher principles of man's nature, which at first we understand as the ego embedded in our astral body. We have already said that our astral body is plunged into the region of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time; that it is immersed in the surging sea, as it were, of these spirits; but as regards the normal consciousness our ego is still more asleep than the astral body. A man who is developing occultly and progressing esoterically becomes aware of this, because in the spiritual world into which he plunges and which consists of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time, he first learns to penetrate into the perceptions of the astral body. In a certain respect this perception is really a dangerous reef in esoteric development, for the astral body of man is, in itself, unity; but everything in the realm of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time is, fundamentally, multiplicity, plurality. And since, in the way described, man is united with and immersed in this plurality, if he is still asleep in his ego and awake in his astral body, he feels as if he were dismembered in the world of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time. That must be avoided in a properly ordered esoteric development. Hence those who are able to give instruction for such development, see that the necessary precautions are taken that the man should not if possible allow his ego to sleep when his astral body is already awake, for he would then lose inner cohesion and would, like Dionysos, be split up into the whole astral world of the earth, consisting of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time. In a regular esoteric development precautions are taken that this should not occur. These consist in care being taken that the student, who through meditation, concentration, or other esoteric exercises is to be stimulated to clairvoyance, should retain two things in the whole sphere of clairvoyant, occult observation. In every esoteric development it is specially important that everything should be so adjusted that two things that man has in ordinary life should not be lost—which he might however very easily lose in esoteric development if not rightly guided. If rightly guided he will not lose them. First, he should not lose the recollection of any of the events of his present incarnation, as ordinarily retained in his memory. The connection with memory must not be destroyed. This connection with memory means very much more in the sphere of occultism than it does in the sphere of ordinary life. In ordinary life we only understand by memory, the power of looking back and not losing consciousness of the important events of one's life. In occultism a right memory means that a man only values with his perceptions and feelings what he has already accomplished in the past, so that he applies no other value to himself or to his deeds than the past deeds themselves entitle. Let us understand this quite correctly, for this is extremely important. If a man in the course of his occult development were suddenly driven to say to himself “I am the reincarnation of this or the other spirit,”—without there being any justification for it through any action of his—then his memory in an occult sense would be interrupted. An important principle in occult development is that of attributing no other merit to oneself, than what comes from one's actions in the physical world in the present incarnation. That is extremely important. Any other merit must only come on the basis of a higher development, which can only be attained if one first of all stands firmly on the ground that one esteems oneself for nothing but what one has accomplished in this incarnation. This is quite natural if we look at the matter objectively; for what we have accomplished in the present incarnation is also the result of earlier incarnations; it is that which Karma has, so far, made out of us. What Karma is still making of us we must first bring about; we must not add that to our value. In short, if we would set a right value on ourselves, we can only do so, at the beginning of esoteric development, if we ascribe merit only to what is inscribed in our memory as our past. That is the one element which we must preserve, if our ego is not to sleep while our astral body is awake.
The second thing which we as men of the present day must not lose is the degree of conscience we possess in the external world. Here again is something which it is extremely important to observe. You must have often experienced that someone you know has gone through an occult development, and if it is not guided and conducted in the right way, you find that, in relation to conscience, your friend takes things much more lightly than he did before his occult training. His education, his social connection guided him before, so that he did this thing or that, or dared not do it. After beginning an occult development, many people begin to tell lies who never did so before, and as regards questions of conscience, they take things more lightly. We ought not to lose an iota of the conscience we possess. As regards memory, we must only value ourselves according to what we have already become; not according to any reliance on the future, or on what we are still going to do. As regards conscience, we must retain the same degree as we acquired in the ordinary physical world. If we retain these two elements in our consciousness: a healthy memory which does not deceive us into believing ourselves to be other than our actions prove us to be, and a conscience which does not allow us morally to take things more lightly than before,—indeed if possible we should take them more seriously—if we retain these two qualities, our ego will never be asleep when our astral body is awake.
We shall carry the connection with our ego into the world in which we awaken with our astral body, if we can, as it were, remain awake in our sleep, preserve our consciousness and carry it with us into the condition in which with our astral body we are freed from the physical and etheric bodies. Then, if we awake with our ego, not only do we feel our astral body to be connected with all the spiritual beings we have to-day described as the Spirits of the Rotation of Time belonging to our planet, but we feel in a quite peculiar way, that we actually no longer have a direct relation to the individual who is the bearer of the physical body and etheric body in which we usually live. We feel, so to speak, as if all the qualities of our physical and etheric bodies were taken from us. Then too we feel everything taken from us which can only live externally in any one country of our planet. For that which lives on a particular territory of our planet is connected with the Spirits of the Rotation of Time. Now, however, when we waken with our ego, we feel ourselves not only poured out into the whole world of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time, but we feel ourselves one with the whole undivided spirit of the planet itself; we awaken in the undivided spirit of the planet itself. It is extremely important that we should feel ourselves as belonging to the whole of our planet. For example, when our occult vision is sufficiently awakened, and we are so far advanced that we can awaken our ego and astral body simultaneously, then our common life with the planet so expresses itself that, just as during the waking hours in the sense-world, we can follow the sun as it passes over the heavens from morning till night, so it no longer now disappears when we fall asleep. When we sleep the sun remains connected with us; it does not cease to shine but takes on a special character, so that whilst we are actually asleep during the night, we can still follow the sun. Man is of such a nature that he is connected with the changing conditions of the planet only in so far as he lives in his astral body. When however, he becomes conscious of his ego, he has nothing to do with them. He then becomes conscious of all the conditions which his planet can go through. He then pours himself into the whole substance of the planetary spirit. When I say that a man becomes one with the planetary spirit, that he lives in union with this planetary spirit, you must not suppose that this implies an advanced degree of clairvoyance; this is but a beginning. For when a man awakens in the manner described, he really only experiences the planetary spirit as a whole; whereas it consists of many, many differentiations—of wonderful, separate, spiritual beings—as we shall hear in the following lectures. The different parts of the planetary spirit, the special multiplicities of this spirit, of these he is not yet aware. What he realizes first of all, is the knowledge: “I live in the planetary spirit as though in a sea, which spiritually laves the whole earth planet and itself is the spirit of the whole earth.” One may go through immensely long development in order further and further to experience this unification with the planetary spirit; but to begin with, the experience is as has been described. Just as we say with regard to man: “behind his astral body is his ego ”—so do we say that behind all that we call the totality of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time is hidden the Spirit of the Planet itself, the Planetary Spirit. Whereas the Spirits of the Rotation of Time guide the nature-spirits of the elements in order to call forth the rhythmic change and repetitions in time—the alterations in space of the earth-planet—the Spirit of the Earth has a different task. It has the task of bringing the earth itself into mutual relation with the other heavenly bodies in the environment, to direct it and guide it, so that in the course of time it may come into the right relations to the other heavenly bodies. The Spirit of the Earth is, as it were, the great sense-apparatus of the earth, through which the earth-planet enters into the right relationship with the Cosmos. If I were to sum up the succession of those spiritual beings with whom we on our earth are first of all concerned, and to whom we can find the way through a gradual occult development, I must say:—As the first external veil we have the sense-world, with all its multiplicity, with all we see spread out before our senses and which we can understand with our human mind. Then, behind this sense-world, we have the world of nature-spirits. Behind this world of nature-spirits we have the Spirits of the Rotation of Time, and behind these the Planetary Spirit.
If you wish to compare what is known to the normal consciousness concerning the structure of the cosmos, with the structure of the cosmos itself, you may make that clear in the following way. We will take it that the most external veil is this world of the senses, behind that is the world of the nature-spirits, and behind that the Spirits of the Rotation of Time and behind that the Planetary Spirit. Now we must say that the Planetary Spirit in its activity, in a certain respect penetrates through to the sense-world; so that in a certain way we can perceive its image in the sense-world; this also applies to the Spirits of the Rotation of Time, as well as to the nature-spirits. So that if we observe the sense-world itself with normal consciousness, we can see in the background as it were, the impression, the traces, of those worlds which lie behind; as if we drew aside the sense-world as the outermost skin, and behind this we had different degrees of active spiritual beings. The normal consciousness realizes the sense-world by means of its perceptions; the world of nature-spirits expresses itself from behind these perceptions as what we call the Forces of Nature. When science speaks of the forces of nature, we have there nothing actually real; to the occultist the forces of nature are not realities but Maya, they are the imprints of the nature-spirits working behind the world of sense.
Again the imprint of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time is what is usually known to ordinary consciousness as the Laws of Nature. Fundamentally all the laws of nature are in existence because the Spirits of the Rotation of Time work as the directing powers. To the occultist the laws of nature are not realities. When the ordinary natural scientist speaks of the laws of nature and combines them externally, the occultist knows that these laws are revealed in their reality when, in his awakened astral body, he listens to what the Spirits of the Rotation of Time say, and hears how they order and direct the nature-spirits. That is expressed in Maya, in external semblance, as the laws of nature, and the normal consciousness, as a rule, does not go beyond this. (See Figure 1) It does not usually reach the imprint of the Planetary Spirit in the external world. The normal consciousness of present-day humanity speaks of the external world of perception, of the facts that can be perceived; speaks of the forces of nature, light, warmth, magnetism, electricity, and so on; of the forces of attraction and repulsion, of gravity, etc. These are the beings of Maya, behind which, in reality, lies the world of the nature-spirits—the etheric body of the earth. External science also speaks of the Laws of Nature; that again is a Maya. Underlying these laws is what we have to-day described as the world of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time. Only when we penetrate still further do we come to the stamp or imprint of the Planetary Spirit itself in the external sense-world. Science to-day does not do this. Those who still do so are no longer quite believed. The poets, the artists do; they seek for a meaning behind things. Why does the plant-world blossom? Why do the different species of animals arise and disappear? Why does man inhabit the earth? If we thus inquire into the phenomena of nature, and wish to analyze the meaning, and to combine the external facts as even a deeper philosophy still sometimes tries to do, we then approach the imprint of the Planetary Spirit itself in the external world. To-day, however, nobody really believes any longer in this seeking after the meaning of existence. Through feeling, one still believes a little, but science no longer wishes to know of what could be discovered about the laws of nature by studying the passage of the phenomena.
If we still seek a meaning as to the laws of nature in the things of the world perceptible to our senses, we should be able to interpret this meaning as the imprint of the Planetary Spirit in the sense-world. That would be the external Maya. In the first place the sense-world itself is an external Maya, for it is what the etheric body the earth, the substance of the nature-spirits, drives out of itself. A second Maya is what appears to man of the nature-spirits in the forces of nature. A third Maya is that which appears as the laws of nature, coming from the Spirits of the Rotation of Time. A fourth Maya is something which, in spite of its Maya-nature, speaks to the soul of man because, in the perception of the purpose of nature, man at any rate feels himself united with the Spirit of the whole planet, with the Spirit which leads the planet through cosmic space, and gives meaning in fact to the whole planet. In this Maya lies the direct imprint of the Planetary Spirit itself.
Thus we may say that we have to-day ascended to the undivided Spirit of the Planet. If again we wish to compare what we have now discovered for the planet, with man, we may say: “The sense-world corresponds to the physical body of man; the world of nature-spirits to the etheric body, the world of the Spirits of the Rotation of Time to the astral body, and the Planetary Spirit to the ego of man.” Just as the ego of man perceives the physical environment of earth, so does the Planetary Spirit perceive everything in the periphery, and in cosmic space as a whole outside the planet; it adjusts the acts of the planet and also the feelings of the planet, of which we shall speak tomorrow, according to these perceptions of cosmic space. For what a planet does outside in space when it passes on its way in cosmic distances, and what it effects its own body, in the elements of which it consists, that again is the result of the observations of the Planetary with regard to the external world. Just as the individual human soul lives in the world of the earth side by side with other men, and adjusts himself to them, so does the Planetary Spirit live in its planetary body, which is the ground on which we stand; but this Planetary Spirit lives in fellowship with other planetary Spirits, other Spirits of the heavenly bodies.
Zweiter Vortrag
Gestern abend versuchte ich zunächst, den Weg zu zeigen, der die menschliche Seele hinführt zur Beobachtung jener geistigen Welt, die unmittelbar hinter unserer sinnlich-physischen Welt verborgen ist, und ich versuchte aufmerksam zu machen auf zwei Klassen, auf zwei Kategorien von geistigen Wesenheiten, welche der okkulte Blick findet, wenn er in der gestern geschilderten Art den Schleier hinweghebt von der Sinneswelt. Es sollen zunächst heute noch zwei andere Arten, Kategorien von Naturgeistern besprochen werden. Die eine Art, also eine besondere Kategorie, ergibt sich für den okkult geschulten Blick dann, wenn man beobachtet das allmähliche Hinwelken und Absterben, sagen wir, der Pflanzenwelt im Spätsommer oder im Herbst, überhaupt das Absterben der natürlichen Wesenheiten. Schon wenn die Pflanzen beginnen, Früchte zu entwickeln in ihren Blüten, kann man dieses Entwickeln der Früchte so auf die Seele wirken lassen, wie wir es gestern geschildert haben. Und auf dieselbe Weise, wie das gestern geschildert worden ist, erhält man dann für seine Imagination den Eindruck von geistigen Wesenheiten, welche etwas zu tun haben mit dem Absterben, mit dem Hinwelken der natürlichen Wesenheiten. So wie wir gestern schildern konnten, daß die Pflanzen im Frühling gleichsam herausgezogen werden aus der Erde von gewissen Wesenheiten, die einer fortwährenden Metamorphose unterliegen, so können wir sagen: Wenn die Pflanzen zum Beispiel sich allmählich heranentwickelt haben und wiederum die Notwendigkeit beginnt, daß sie welken, dann greifen andere Wesenheiten ein, Wesenheiten, von denen wir nicht einmal sagen können, daß sie ihre Gestalten fortwährend verwandeln, denn wir können eigentlich von ihnen nur sagen, daß sie keine rechte Gestalt haben. Blitzartig aufleuchtend, wie kleine Meteore aufleuchtend und wieder verschwindend, so erscheinen sie uns, wieder aufblitzend und wieder verschwindend, so daß sie eigentlich gar keine bestimmte Gestalt haben, sondern wie über unsere Erde hinhuschend, meteor- oder irrlichtartig aufleuchtend und verglimmend sind. Diese Wesenheiten hängen zunächst zusammen mit dem Heranreifen alles dessen, was in den Reichen der Natur vorhanden ist. Damit Wesenheiten in den Naturreichen reif werden können, sind diese Kräfte oder Wesenheiten vorhanden. Für den okkulten Blick sind diese Wesenheiten eigentlich nur dann wahrnehmbar, wenn er sich einzig und allein auf die Luft selber richtet, und zwar auf eine möglichst reine Luft. Wir haben die zweite Art von Naturwesenheiten gestern so schildern müssen, daß wir das versprühende oder sich wieder sammelnde Wasser auf uns wirken lassen, das in den Wolkengebilden oder sonstwie unserer Betrachtung sich darbietet. Möglichst wasserreine Luft, die vom Sonnenlicht und von der Sonnenwärme durchspielt wird, muß auf die Seele wirken, wenn man die Imagination von diesen meteorisch aufleuchtenden und wieder verglimmenden Wesenheiten erhalten will, welche gleichsam unsichtbar in der wasserreinen Luft leben und gierig einsaugen das Licht, von dem die Luft durchdrungen ist und das sie aufglänzen und aufleuchten läßt. Diese Wesenheiten sind es, die sich dann niedersenken zum Beispiel auf die Pflanzenwelt oder auch auf die tierische Welt und das Reifen besorgen.
Wir sehen schon aus der Art, wie wir zu diesen Wesenheiten kommen, daß sie in einer gewissen Beziehung stehen zu dem, was man im Okkultismus von altersher die Elemente nennt. Was wir gestern als die erste Art solcher Wesenheiten geschildert haben, findet man ja, wenn man in die Tiefen der Erde hinuntersteigt, wenn man in das Feste unseres Planeten eindringt; da ergeben sich für unsere Imagination Wesenheiten von einer bestimmten Form, so daß wir diese Wesenheiten auch nennen können die Naturgeister des Festen oder die Naturgeister der Erde. Die zweite Kategorie, die wir gestern schilderten, fanden wir im sich zusammenziehenden und auseinanderstiebenden Wasser; daher können wir diese geistigen Wesenheiten in Zusammenhang bringen mit dem, was der Okkultismus von altersher das flüssige oder Wasserelement nennt. Darinnen metamorphosieren sie sich, übernehmen gleichzeitig die Rolle, alles das, was wächst, was hervorsprießt, aus dem Erdboden herauszuziehen. Und mit dem Element der möglichst wasserfreien Luft stehen diejenigen Wesenheiten in Zusammenhang, von denen wir heute sprechen konnten. So daß wir reden können von Naturgeistern der Erde, des Wassers und der Luft.
Noch eine vierte Kategorie von solchen geistigen Wesenheiten können wir ins Auge fassen. Der okkulte Blick kann sich bekannt machen mit dieser vierten Kategorie, wenn er wartet, bis eine Blüte es zur Frucht und zum Keim gebracht hat, und dann beobachtet, wie der Keim allmählich heranwächst zu einer neuen Pflanze. Nur bei dieser Gelegenheit kann man leicht — sonst ist es schwierig — die vierte Art dieser Wesenheiten beobachten, denn die vierte Art, das sind die Bewahrer aller Keime, aller Samen innerhalb unserer Naturreiche. Sie tragen als die Hüter den Samen von einer Generation von Pflanzen oder auch anderen Naturwesen hinüber zu der nächsten Generation. Und beobachten können wir, daß diese Wesenheiten, welche die Bewahrer der Samen oder der Keime sind und es dadurch möglich machen, daß immer wieder dieselben Wesen auf unserer Erde auftauchen, daß diese Wesenheiten zusammenleben mit der Wärme unseres Planeten, mit dem, was man von altersher genannt hat das Element des Feuers oder das Element der Wärme. Deshalb sind auch die Samenkräfte verbunden mit einem bestimmten Wärmegrad, mit einer bestimmten Temperatur. Und wenn der okkulte Blick ganz genau beobachtet, dann findet er eben, daß die nötige Umwandlung der Wärme der Umgebung in eine solche Wärme, wie sie der Same oder der Keim braucht, um heranzureifen, daß diese Umwandlung der leblosen Wärme in die lebendige Wärme besorgt wird von solchen Wesenheiten. Daher kann man diese Wesenheiten auch als die Naturgeister der Wärme oder des Feuers bezeichnen. So daß wir nun zunächst — das Genauere werden wir schon in den nächsten Vorträgen hören — vier Kategorien von Naturgeistern kennengelernt haben, welche eine gewisse Beziehung haben zu dem, was man die Elemente Erde, Wasser, Luft und Feuer nennt, gleichsam als ob diese geistigen Wesenheiten ihren Bezirk, ihr Territorium hätten in diesen Elementen, wie der Mensch selber seinen Bezirk, sein Territorium auf dem ganzen Planeten hat. Wie er da heimisch ist gegenüber dem Weltenall, so haben diese Wesenheiten ihr Territorium je in einem der genannten Elemente.
Wir haben schon gestern darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß diese verschiedenen Wesenheiten für unsere gesamte Erde mit ihren Naturreichen, also für unsere irdische, physische Welt, dasjenige bedeuten, was für den einzelnen Menschen der ätherische Körper oder Lebenskörper oder Lebensleib bedeutet. Nur, haben wir gesagt, ist dieser Lebensleib eine Einheit, während der Ätherkörper der Erde aus vielen, vielen solchen Naturgeistern besteht, die noch dazu in vier Kategorien zerfallen. In dem lebendigen Zusammenwirken dieser Naturgeister besteht der ätherische oder Lebensleib der Erde. Der ist also keine Einheit, sondern der ist eine Vielheit, eine Mannigfaltigkeit. Wenn man diesen ätherischen Körper der Erde erkennen will mit dem okkulten Blick, dann muß man, wie es gestern geschildert worden ist, die physische Welt moralisch auf sich wirken lassen und dadurch den Schleier der physischen "Welt hinwegziehen. Dann wird gleichsam das, was unmittelbar unter diesem Schleier liegt, dieser ätherische Leib der Erde, sichtbar.
Wie ist es nun, wenn man auch das hinwegzieht, was als solcher ätherischer Leib der Erde zu bezeichnen ist? Wir wissen ja, daß als drittes Glied der menschlichen Wesenheit hinter dem ätherischen Körper der astralische Leib, der astralische Körper ist, der Körper, welcher der Träger unserer Begierden, unserer Wünsche, unserer Leidenschaften ist. So daß wir, wenn wir von den höheren Gliedern der Menschennatur absehen, sagen können: Wir haben zuerst am Menschen den physischen Leib, dann hinter dem physischen Leib den ätherischen und hinter dem ätherischen den astralischen Leib. Geradeso ist es bei der äußeren Natur: Wenn wir das Physische hinwegziehen, kommen wir allerdings auf eine Vielheit, aber diese stellt uns dar den ätherischen Leib unserer gesamten Erde mit allen ihren Naturreichen. Können wir nun auch von einer Art astralischem Leib der Erde sprechen, von etwas, was in bezug auf die ganze Erde, in bezug auf alle Reiche unserer Erde dem astralischen Leib des Menschen entspricht? Man kann allerdings nicht so leicht zu diesem astralischen Leib der Erde vorrücken wie zu dem ätherischen Körper. Wir haben gesehen, daß man einfach zu dem ätherischen Leib vorrückt, wenn man die Erscheinungen der Welt nicht bloß durch die Sinneseindrücke, sondern moralisch auf sich wirken läßt. Will man aber weiterdringen, dann sind für den Menschen tiefere okkulte Übungen notwendig, wie Sie sie zum Teil, soweit sie in einer äußeren Publikation mitgeteilt werden können, beschrieben finden in meiner Schrift «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» Bei einem bestimmten Punkt der esoterischen oder okkulten Entwickelung, wie Sie dort nachlesen können, beginnt ja der Mensch auch in der Zeit, in welcher er sonst bewußtlos ist, nämlich vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen, bewußt zu werden. Wir wissen ja, daß der gewöhnliche bewußtlose Zustand, der gewöhnliche Schlafzustand des Menschen darauf beruht, daß der Mensch im Bette liegenläßt seinen physischen Leib und Ätherleib und den astralischen Leib und das andere, was zu ihm gehört, herauszieht: aber dann ist der Mensch auch für den normalen Zustand bewußtlos. Wenn er immer mehr und mehr sich jenen Übungen hingibt, die in Meditation und Konzentration und so weiter liegen, wenn er die schlummernden verborgenen Kräfte seiner Seele immer kräftiger macht, dann kann er einen bewußten Schlafzustand herstellen, so daß der Mensch nicht bewußtlos ist, wenn er seinen astralischen Leib aus dem physischen und Ätherleib herausgeholt hat, sondern daß er dann um sich herum hat allerdings nicht die physische Welt, auch nicht die Welt, die bisher geschildert worden ist, die Welt der Naturgeister, sondern eine andere, eine noch spirituellere, eine geistigere Welt als die bisher geschilderte. Wenn der Augenblick eintritt für den Menschen, daß er sein Bewußtsein aufleuchten fühlt, nachdem er sich freigemacht hat von seinem physischen und seinem ätherischen Leib, dann nimmt er eine ganz neue Art von geistigen Wesenheiten wahr.
Das nächste, was dem okkulten Blick, der so weit geschult ist, auffällt, das ist, daß diese neue Art von Geistern, die er jetzt wahrnimmt, gleichsam die Befehlshaber der Naturgeister sind. Machen wir uns klar, inwieweit sie die Befehlshaber sind. Sehen Sie, ich habe Ihnen gesagt, daß diejenigen Wesenheiten, die wir nennen können die Naturgeister des Wassers, besonders bei der heraussprießenden, aus dem Boden hervorquellenden Pflanzenwelt wirken. Diejenigen Naturgeister, die wir nennen können die Naturgeister der Luft, spielen mehr eine Rolle, wenn im Spätsommer und im Herbst die Pflanzen verwelken, hinsterben sollen. Da senken sich die meteorartigen Luftgeister über die Pflanzenwelt herunter und ersättigen sich gleichsam an der Pflanzenwelt, indem sie diese in ihren Sommergestaltungen und Frühlingsgestaltungen hinwelken lassen. Diese Ordnung, daß in der Hauptsache einmal die Geister des Wassers, das andere Mal die Geister der Luft auf diesem oder jenem Erdengebiet wirken, diese Dinge ändern sich ja nach den verschiedenen Erdengebieten; auf der nördlichen Erdhälfte ist es selbstverständlich ganz anders als auf der südlichen. Diese Anordnung, zu dem richtigen Zeitpunkt die entsprechenden Naturgeister zu ihrer Beschäftigung gleichsam hinzudirigieren, treffen diejenigen geistigen Wesenheiten, die man erst erkennen lernt, wenn der okkulte Blick so weit geschult ist, daß der Mensch, wenn er sich von seinem Ätherleib und seinem physischen Leib befreit hat, auch noch in seiner Umgebung etwas wahrnehmen kann. So daß wir zum Beispiel sagen können: Es wirken mit unserer Erde, mit unserem Erdenplaneten im Zusammenhang geistige Wesenheiten, welche die Arbeiten der Naturgeister auf die Jahreszeiten verteilen, welche also den Wechsel der Jahreszeiten dadurch herbeiführen für die verschiedenen Gegenden der Erde, daß sie die Arbeiten der Naturgeister verteilen. Diese geistigen Wesenheiten stellen dasjenige dar, was wir nennen könnten den Astralleib der Erde. Sie sind auch dieselben, in welche der Mensch des Abends, wenn er einschläft, mit seinem eigenen astralischen Leib untertaucht. Mit der Erde verbunden ist dieser astralische Leib, der aus höheren Geistern besteht, und in das Gebiet dieser höheren Geister, die da umspielen den Erdplaneten und ihn durchdringen wie eine geistige Atmosphäre, taucht der eigene Astralleib des Menschen während der Nachtzeit unter.
Nun besteht für die okkulte Beobachtung ein großer Unterschied zwischen den zuerst beschriebenen Kategorien von Naturgeistern, den Geistern der Erde, den Geistern des Wassers und so weiter, und diesen Geistern, welche die Naturgeister wiederum dirigieren. Die Naturgeister beschäftigen sich damit, die Naturwesen reifen zu lassen, verwelken zu lassen, also Leben hineinzubringen in das gesamte planetarische Erdgebiet. Anders ist das bei diesen geistigen Wesenheiten, die wir in ihrer Gesamtheit als den astralischen Leib der Erde bezeichnen können. Diese geistigen Wesenheiten sind so, daß der Mensch, wenn er mit seinem okkulten Blick sich mit ihnen bekannt machen kann, sie schon empfindet als Wesenheiten, welche mit seiner eigenen Seele, mit seinem eigenen Astralleib etwas zu tun haben, Wesenheiten, welche so wirken auf den astralischen Leib des Menschen und auch auf den astralischen Leib der Tiere, daß wir nicht bloß von einer belebenden Wirkung sprechen können, sondern von einer Wirkung, wie die Wirkung von Gefühlen, von Gedanken auf unsere eigene Seele ist. Die Naturgeister des Wassers, der Luft, die beobachtet man und man kann sagen, sie seien in der Umgebung; diese geistigen Wesenheiten, von denen wir jetzt sprechen, von denen kann man nicht sagen, sie seien in unserer Umgebung, sondern man ist eigentlich immer mit ihnen vereint, wie in sie ergossen, wenn man sie wahrnimmt. Man geht in ihnen auf, und sie sprechen zu einem im Geiste. Es ist so, wie wenn man aus der Umgebung Gedanken und Gefühle wahrnehmen würde, und auch Willensimpulse, Sympathien und Antipathien kommen zum Ausdruck in demjenigen, was da diese Wesenheiten uns an Gedanken, an Gefühlen, an Willensimpulsen zufließen lassen. So daß wir, man möchte sagen, schon den menschlichen Seelen ähnliche Wesen in dieser Art, in dieser Kategorie von Geistern zu sehen haben.
Wenn wir noch einmal zurückblicken auf das, was wir angeführt haben, so können wir sagen, daß auch alle Arten von Anordnungen in der Zeit, von Verteilung in den Zeit- und Raumverhältnissen mit diesen Wesenheiten zusammenhängen. Daher ist uns im Okkultismus ein altes Wort erhalten zur Bezeichnung von diesen Wesenheiten, die wir in der Gesamtheit erkennen als den astralischen Leib der Erde, und dieses Wort würde, im Deutschen ausgedrückt, heißen: Geister der Umlaufszeiten. So daß also nicht nur der regelmäßige Jahresumlauf im Wachsen und Verwelken der Pflanzen, sondern auch der regelmäßige Umlauf, der sich in bezug auf den Erdplaneten in Tag und Nacht ausdrückt, von solchen Geistern bewirkt wird, welche zum astralischen Leib der Erde zu rechnen sind. Mit anderen Worten, alles, was mit rhythmischer Wiederkehr, rhythmischer Abwechslung, was mit dem Wechsel der Zeitverhältnisse und der Wiederholung der Zeitgeschehnisse zusammenhängt, das wird angeordnet von geistigen Wesenheiten, die alle zusammen zum astralischen Leib der Erde gehören und auf welche anwendbar ist der Name «Geister der Umlaufszeiten unseres Planeten». Und dasjenige, was der Astronom durch seine Berechnungen herausfindet von dem Umdrehen der Erde um ihre Achse, das ist dem okkulten Blick dadurch wahrnehmbar, daß er um die ganze Erde herum verteilt weiß diese Geister der Umlaufszeiten, welche wirklich die Träger der Kräfte sind, die die Erde um ihre Achse herum drehen. Es ist außerordentlich wichtig, daß man in dem astralischen Leib der Erde alles dasjenige sieht, was mit dem gewöhnlichen Wechsel zusammenhängt, mit dem Aufblühen und Verblühen der Pflanzen, aber auch alles das, was mit dem Wechsel, bis zu Tag und Nacht hin, in den Jahreszeiten, in den Tageszeiten und so weiter zusammenhängt. Alles das, was so geschieht, ruft in dem Beobachter, der so weit gekommen ist, daß er mit seinem astralischen Leib aus seinem physischen und Ätherleib herausgehen und doch bewußt bleiben kann, den Eindruck von geistigen Wesenheiten hervor, die eben zu den Geistern der Umlaufszeiten gehören.
Damit haben wir gleichsam den zweiten Schleier hinweggezogen, den Schleier, der gewoben wird aus den Naturgeistern. Wir könnten sagen: Den ersten Schleier, der gewoben ist aus den sinnlich-physischen Eindrücken, den ziehen wir hinweg und kommen zum Ätherleib der Erde, zu den Naturgeistern. Dann können wir einen zweiten Schleier hinwegziehen und kommen zu den Geistern der Umlaufszeiten, die alles das, was in periodischer Weise wiederkehrt, was einem rhythmischen Wechsel unterworfen ist, regeln und anordnen.
Nun wissen wir, daß in unseren eigenen Astralleibern wiederum eingebettet ist das, was wir die höheren Glieder der Menschennatur nennen können und was wir zunächst zusammenfassen als das in unseren astralischen Leib eingebettete Ich. Von unserem astralischen Leib haben wir schon gesagt, daß er in das Gebiet der Geister der Umlaufszeiten, gleichsam in das wogende Meer der Geister der Umlaufszeiten untertaucht: unser Ich, das schläft eigentlich für das normale Bewußtsein noch mehr als der astralische Leib. Daß dieses Ich noch mehr schläft, das wird derjenige Mensch, der sich in einer okkulten Entwickelung befindet, der esoterisch sich weiterbringt, dadurch gewahr, daß er zuerst eindringen lernt in die Wahrnehmungen des astralischen Leibes, in die geistige Welt, in die er untertaucht und die da besteht aus den Geistern der Umlaufszeiten. Dieses Wahrnehmen ist eigentlich in gewisser Beziehung eine gefährliche Klippe der esoterischen Entwickelung. Denn der astralische Leib des Menschen ist wiederum eine Einheit, alles das aber, was im Gebiet der Geister der Umlaufszeiten ist, das ist im Grunde genommen eine Vielheit, eine Mannigfaltigkeit. Und da der Mensch, wie geschildert wurde, vereinigt ist mit dieser Mannigfaltigkeit, untergetaucht ist in diese Mannigfaltigkeit, so fühlt er sich, wenn er mit seinem Ich noch schläft und mit seinem astralischen Leib aufgewacht ist, wie zerstückelt innerhalb der Welt der Geister der Umlaufszeiten. Das muß auch bei einer regelrechten esoterischen Entwickelung vermieden werden. Daher werden von denjenigen, die Anweisung geben können zu einer solchen regelrechten Entwickelung, Maßregeln getroffen, daß der Mensch womöglich sein Ich gar nicht zum Einschlafen bringt, wenn sein astralischer Leib schon aufgewacht ist. Der Mensch würde nämlich, wenn sein Ich schlafend bliebe, während sein astralischer Leib schon aufgewacht ist, seinen inneren Zusammenhalt verlieren und würde sich zerspalten wie Dionysos vorkommen in der ganzen astralischen Welt der Erde, welche aus den Geistern der Umlaufszeiten besteht. Bei einer richtigen esoterischen Entwickelung werden also Maßregeln getroffen, daß dies nicht geschieht. Diese Maßregeln bestehen darin, daß man Sorge trägt, daß derjenige, welcher durch Meditation, Konzentration oder durch andere esoterische Übungen bis zur Hellsichtigkeit getrieben werden soll, in das ganze Gebiet der hellsichtigen, der okkulten Beobachtung hinein zwei Dinge behält, zwei Dinge ja nicht verliert. Das ist außerordentlich wichtig, daß in jeder esoterischen Entwickelung alles so eingerichtet wird, daß zwei Dinge nicht verlorengehen, die der Mensch im gewöhnlichen Leben hat, die er allerdings leicht verlieren kann in der esoterischen Entwickelung, wenn sie nicht richtig dirigiert wird. Wird sie aber richtig dirigiert, dann wird er sie nicht verlieren. Das erste ist, daß der Mensch nicht verliert die Erinnerung an alle Erlebnisse der gegenwärtigen Inkarnation, wie er sie sonst hat in seinem Gedächtnis. Der Zusammenhalt des Gedächtnisses darf nicht zerstört werden. Mit diesem Zusammenhalt des Gedächtnisses meint man auf dem Gebiet des Okkultismus noch viel mehr als im gewöhnlichen Leben. Im gewöhnlichen Leben versteht man mit diesem Gedächtnis eigentlich nur, daß man zurückblicken kann und wichtige Ereignisse seines Lebens nicht gerade aus dem Bewußtsein verloren hat. Im Okkultismus meint man unter richtigem Gedächtnis auch noch, daß der Mensch mit seiner Empfindung, mit seinem Gefühl nur auf das etwas gibt, was er schon in der Vergangenheit geleistet hat, so daß sich der Mensch keinen anderen Wert beimißt als den Wert, den ihm die Taten seiner Vergangenheit geben.
Verstehen wir uns da nur ganz richtig, meine lieben Freunde! Es ist damit etwas außerordentlich Wichtiges gesagt. Wenn ein Mensch durch seine okkulte Entwickelung dahin getrieben würde, sich plötzlich zu sagen: Ich bin die Verkörperung dieses oder jenes Geistes—, ohne daß irgendwie eine Berechtigung dazu vorliegen würde durch alles das, was er bisher geleistet hat, was schon da ist in dieser physischen Welt von ihm, dann würde im okkulten Sinn sein Gedächtnis unterbrochen sein. Ein wichtiger Grundsatz in der okkulten Entwickelung ist der, sich keinen anderen Wert beizumessen als denjenigen, der da kommt aus den Leistungen in der physischen Welt innerhalb der gegenwärtigen Inkarnation. Das ist außerordentlich wichtig. Jeder andere Wert muß erst auf Grundlage einer höheren Entwickelung kommen, die sich erst dann ergeben kann, wenn man zunächst feststeht auf dem Boden, daß man sich für nichts anderes hält, als was man in dieser Inkarnation hat leisten können. Es ist das auch natürlich, wenn man die Sache objektiv betrachtet, denn das, was man geleistet hat in der gegenwärtigen Inkarnation, ist das Ergebnis auch der früheren Inkarnationen; es ist das, was Karma bisher aus uns gemacht hat. Was Karma noch aus uns macht, müssen wir erst machen lassen, das dürfen wir nicht in unseren Wert hineinrechnen. Kurz, wir werden, wenn wir uns selber bewerten sollen, dies bei der beginnenden esoterischen Entwickelung nur in der richtigen Weise tun, wenn wir uns unseren Wert nur von dem beilegen lassen, was sich in der Erinnerung als unser Vergangenes darbietet. Das ist das eine Element, das uns erhalten bleiben muß, damit unser Ich nicht einschläft, während unser astralischer Leib aufwacht.
Das zweite, was uns als gegenwärtiger Mensch auch nicht verlorengehen darf, ist der Grad unseres Gewissens, den wir in der äußeren physischen Welt besitzen. Hier ist wiederum etwas, was außerordentlich wichtig ist, zu beachten. Sie werden schon öfter erfahren haben, daß da oder dort irgend jemand eine okkulte Entwickelung durchmacht. Wenn sie nicht in der richtigen Weise gelenkt und geleitet ist, dann kann man oftmals die Erfahrung machen, daß der Mensch die Dinge in bezug auf Gewissensfragen leichter nimmt als vor seiner okkulten Entwickelung. Vorher haben ihn Erziehung, sozialer Zusammenhang geleitet, daß er dies oder jenes tun oder nicht tun durfte. Nach Beginn einer okkulten Entwickelung fängt sogar mancher, der früher nicht gelogen hätte, zu lügen an, nimmt die Dinge in bezug auf Gewissensfragen leichter, als er sie früher genommen hatte. Keinen Grad des uns angeeigneten Gewissens dürfen wir verlieren. Gedächtnis so, daß wir uns unseren Wert nur geben lassen aus der Betrachtung dessen, was wir schon geworden sind, nicht durch irgendeine Anleihe auf die Zukunft, auf das, was wir noch tun werden, Gewissen in dem Grade, wie wir es uns erworben haben in der ganz gewöhnlichen physischen Welt bisher, das müssen wir uns erhalten. Wenn wir diese zwei Elemente in unserem Bewußtsein erhalten, unser gesundes Gedächtnis, das uns nicht vorgaukelt, etwas anderes zu sein als das, was sich als in unseren Leistungen gelegen ergeben hat, und unser Gewissen, das uns die Dinge moralisch nicht leichter nehmen läßt, als wir sie bisher genommen haben, womöglich noch schwerer —, wenn wir uns diese erhalten haben, dann kann niemals unser Ich einschlafen, wenn unser astralischer Leib aufgewacht ist. Dann tragen wir den Zusammenhalt unseres Ich hinein in die Welt, in der wir aufwachen mit unserem astralischen Leib, wenn wir gleichsam wachend schlafen, wenn wir unser Bewußtsein hinüberretten in den Zustand, in dem wir mit unserem astralischen Leib von dem physischen und ätherischen Leib befreit sind. Und dann, wenn wir mit unserem Ich aufwachen, dann fühlen wir nicht nur unseren astralischen Leib verbunden mit all den geistigen Wesenheiten, die wir heute geschildert haben als die Geister der Umlaufszeiten unseres Planeten, sondern dann fühlen wir in einer ganz eigenartigen Weise, daß wir eigentlich nicht mehr eine unmittelbare Beziehung haben zu dem einzelnen Menschen, der Träger dieses physischen Leibes, dieses ätherischen Leibes ist, in dem wir uns gewöhnlich befinden. Wir fühlen sozusagen alles dasjenige, was nur als Eigenschaften unseres physischen Leibes, unseres ätherischen Leibes sich ergibt, wie von uns genommen. Wir fühlen daher dann auch von uns genommen alles das, was nur äußerlich leben kann auf irgendeinem Territorium unseres Planeten, denn was auf einem Territorium unseres Planeten lebt, hängt eben zusammen mit den Geistern der Umlaufszeiten. Jetzt aber fühlen wir, wenn wir mit unserem Ich aufwachen, nicht nur uns ergossen in die ganze Welt der Geister der Umlaufszeiten, sondern wir fühlen uns eins mit dem ganzen einheitlichen Geist des Planeten selber; wir wachen in dem einheitlichen Geist des Planeten selber auf.
Das ist außerordentlich wichtig, daß wir uns fühlen wie zum ganzen Planeten gehörig. Es drückt sich zum Beispiel, um eine Einzelheit zu sagen, für den genügend aufgewachten okkulten Blick dieses Leben mit dem Planeten so aus, daß der Mensch dann, wenn er so weit gekommen ist, daß sein Ich und sein astralischer Leib zugleich aufwachen, allerdings während des Tagwachens, wenn er in der Sinneswelt ist, die Sonne verfolgt, wie sie über den Himmel hin zieht von der Morgen- bis zur Abenddämmerung, daß ihm aber die Sonne nicht entschwindet, wenn er einschläft. Wenn er einschläft, bleibt die Sonne mit ihm verbunden. Sie hört nicht auf zu leuchten, nur nimmt sie einen geistigen Charakter an. So daß der Mensch, wenn er nun wirklich während der Nacht dann schläft, die Sonne auch während der Nacht verfolgt. Der Mensch ist eben so, daß. er mit den wechselnden Zuständen des Planeten nur insofern etwas zu tun hat, als er in seinem astralischen Leib lebt. Mit diesen wechselnden Zuständen des Planeten hat er aber dann nichts zu tun, wenn er sich seines Ich bewußt wird. Da wird er sich aller Zustände bewußt, die sein Planet durchmachen kann. Er, der Mensch, ergießt sich dann in die ganze Substanz des Planetengeistes.
Sie dürfen, indem ich dieses so ausspreche, nicht etwa glauben, daß mit dem Ausspruch: Der Mensch ist eins geworden mit dem Planetengeist, lebt in Einheit mit diesem Planetengeist — schon etwas Ungeheures in bezug auf Hellsichtigkeit gesagt ist. Es ist dies doch zunächst so, wie es hier gemeint ist, nur ein Anfang. Denn wenn der Mensch in der geschilderten Weise aufwacht, dann ist es so, daß er eigentlich nur den Planetengeist wie im allgemeinen miterlebt, während dieser Planetengeist aus vielen, vielen Einzelheiten, aus wunderbaren einzelnen geistigen Wesenheiten besteht, wie wir in den folgenden Vorträgen hören werden. Die Einzelheiten des Planetengeistes, die besonderen Mannigfaltigkeiten dieses Geistes nimmt der Mensch noch nicht wahr. Was er wahrnimmt, ist, daß er zunächst weiß: Ich lebe in dem Planetengeist eingetaucht wie in dem Meere, das eben den ganzen Erdplaneten geistig umspült und der Geist der Erde also selber ist. — Man kann ungeheuer lange Entwickelungen durchmachen, um dieses Einswerden mit dem Planetengeist immer weiter und weiter zu erleben, aber der Anfang ist mit dem gemacht, was geschildert worden ist. So wie wir beim Menschen also sagen: hinter seinem astralischen Leib ist sein Ich, so sprechen wir davon, daß hinter all dem, was wir die Gesamtheit der Geister der Umlaufszeiten nennen, verborgen ist der Geist des Planeten selbst, der Planetengeist. Während die Geister der Umlaufszeiten die Naturgeister der Elemente dirigieren, um auf dem Erdenplaneten rhythmischen Wechsel, Wiederholungen in der Zeit, Abwechselung im Raum hervorzurufen, hat der Geist der Erde eine andere Aufgabe. Dieser Geist der Erde hat die Aufgabe, die Erde selber in Wechselbeziehung zu bringen zu den übrigen Himmelskörpern der Umgebung, sie so zu dirigieren und zu lenken, daß sie im Laufe der Zeiten in die richtigen Stellungen kommt zu den anderen Himmelskörpern. Dieser Geist der Erde ist gleichsam der große Sinnesapparat der Erde, durch den die Erde, der Erdenplanet, in das richtige Verhältnis zu der Umwelt kommt.
Wenn ich also die Aufeinanderfolge jener geistigen Wesenheiten, mit denen wir es zunächst auf unserer Erde zu tun haben und zu denen wir den Weg finden können durch eine allmähliche okkulte Entwickelung, zusammenfassen soll, so muß ich sagen: Wir haben als den äußersten Schleier die Sinnenwelt mit aller ihrer Mannigfaltigkeit, mit demjenigen, was wir ausgebreitet sehen für unsere Sinne, was wir mit dem Verstand des Menschen begreifen können. Wir haben dann hinter der Sinneswelt liegen die Welt der Naturgeister. Hinter der Welt der Naturgeister haben wir liegen die Welt der Geister der Umlaufszeiten und dahinter den Planetengeist.
Wenn Sie dasjenige, was für das normale Bewußtsein von diesem Weltenaufbau vorliegt, vergleichen wollen mit diesem Weltenaufbau selber, dann können Sie sich das etwa so klarmachen: der äußerste Schleier der Welt wäre diese Welt der Sinne, dahinter die Welt der Naturgeister, die Welt der Geister der Umlaufszeiten und dahinter der Planetengeist. Nun müssen wir aber sagen, daß der Planetengeist sich in seiner Wirksamkeit in einer gewissen Beziehung durchdrückt bis zur Sinneswelt, so daß man in der Sinneswelt sein Abbild in gewisser Weise wahrnehmen kann, ebenso die Geister der Umlaufszeiten, ebenso die Naturgeister. So daß wir, wenn wir die Sinneswelt selber mit dem normalen Bewußtsein beobachten, in dieser Sinneswelt gleichsam wie in einem Aufdruck von hinten die Spur dieser Welten haben, die dahinter liegen, etwa so, wie wenn wir in der obersten Haut, die wir als die Sinneswelt weggezogen haben, eben die hinter dieser stufenweise wirksamen geistigen Wesenheiten hätten. Das normale Bewußtsein nimmt die Sinneswelt als ihre Wahrnehmungen wahr; die Welt der Naturgeister, die drückt sich in den Wahrnehmungen als das ab, was man die Naturkräfte nennt. Wo die Wissenschaft von Naturkräften spricht, da haben wir eigentlich nichts Wirkliches. Für den Okkultisten sind die Naturkräfte nichts Wirkliches, sondern sie sind die Maja, sie sind die Abprägung der Naturgeister, die hinter der Sinneswelt wirken.
Der Abdruck wiederum der Geister der Umlaufszeiten ist das, was man gewöhnlich für das normale Bewußtsein die Naturgesetze nennt. Alle Naturgesetze sind im Grunde genommen dadurch vorhanden, daß die Geister der Umlaufszeiten dirigierend als Mächte wirken. Naturgesetze sind nichts Wirkliches für den Okkultisten. Wenn der gewöhnliche Naturforscher von Naturgesetzen spricht und sie äußerlich kombiniert, so weiß der Okkultist, daß diese Naturgesetze in ihrer Wahrheit sich enthüllen, wenn der Mensch bei aufgewachtem Astralleib hinlauscht auf das, was die Geister der Umlaufszeiten sagen und wie sie die Naturgeister anordnen, dirigieren. Das drückt sich in der Maja, im äußeren Schein, in den Naturgesetzen aus. Und weiter geht gewöhnlich das normale Bewußtsein nicht. Zu dem Abdruck des Planetengeistes in der äußeren Welt geht gewöhnlich das normale Bewußtsein nicht. Das normale Bewußtsein der heutigen Menschheit spricht von der äußeren Wahrnehmungswelt, von den Tatsachen, die man wahrnimmt, spricht von den Naturkräften: Licht, Wärme, Magnetismus, Elektrizität und so weiter, Anziehungskraft, Abstoßungskraft, Schwere und so weiter. Das sind diejenigen Wahrnehmungen in der Welt der Maja, denen in Wirklichkeit die Welt der Naturgeister zugrunde liegt, der Ätherleib der Erde. Dann spricht die äußere Wissenschaft von Naturgesetzen. Das ist wiederum eine Maja. Es liegt zugrunde das, was wir heute geschildert haben als die Welt der Geister der Umlaufszeiten. Erst dann, wenn man noch weiter vordringt, kommt man auch zu der Ausprägung des Planetengeistes selber in der äußeren Sinneswelt. Die Wissenschaft tut das heute nicht. Diejenigen, die das heute noch tun, denen glaubt man nicht mehr so recht. Die Dichter, die Künstler tun es, sie suchen noch einen Sinn hinter den Dingen. Warum blüht die Pflanzenwelt? Warum entstehen und vergehen die tierischen Gattungen und Arten? Warum belebt der Mensch die Erde? Wenn man so fragt nach dem Sinn der Naturerscheinungen und diesen Sinn zergliedern will, kombinieren will aus den äußeren Tatsachen, wie manchmal auch die tiefere Philosophie noch ver‘sucht, dann nähert man sich der Ausprägung des Planetengeistes selber in der physischen Welt. Aber man glaubt heute nicht mehr recht diesem Suchen nach dem Sinn des Daseins. Das Gefühl glaubt manchmal noch ein wenig, aber die Wissenschaft will nicht mehr viel wissen von etwas, was man über die Naturgesetze hinaus finden könnte in der Erscheinungen Flucht. Wenn man über den Naturgesetzen in den Dingen der Welt, wie man sie mit den Sinnen wahrnimmt, noch einen Sinn sucht, dann würde man diesen Sinn als den Abdruck des Planetengeistes in der Sinneswelt wahrnehmen können. Das wäre die äußere Maja. Zunächst ist eine äußere Maja die Sinneswelt selber, denn sie ist das, was hervortreibt aus sich selbst der Ätherleib der Erde, die Substanz der Naturgeister. Eine zweite Maja ist das, was den Menschen von den Naturgeistern in den Naturkräften erscheint; eine dritte Maja, was als Naturgesetze erscheint von den Geistern der Umlaufszeiten, und eine vierte Maja etwas, was trotz seiner Maja-Natur zu der Seele des Menschen spricht, weil der Mensch in der Wahrnehmung des Sinnes der Natur sich wenigstens verbunden fühlt mit dem Geist des ganzen Planeten, der den Planeten durch den Weltenraum führt und eben dem ganzen Planeten einen Sinn gibt. In dieser Maja liegt unmittelbar der Abdruck des Planetengeistes selber.
So können wir sagen: Wir sind heute aufgestiegen bis zu dem einheitlichen Geist des Planeten. Und wollen wir wiederum dasjenige, was wir hier für den Planeten gefunden haben, mit dem Menschen parallelisieren, so können wir sagen: Es entspricht die Sinnenwelt dem physischen Leib des Menschen, die Welt der Naturgeister dem ätherischen Leib, die Welt der Geister der Umlaufszeiten dem astralischen Leib und der Planetengeist dem Ich des Menschen. So wie das Ich des Menschen die physische Erdenumgebung wahrnimmt, so nimmt der Planetengeist wahr alles dasjenige, was im Umkreis und überhaupt in der Raumeswelt außerhalb des Planeten ist und richtet die Taten des Planeten und auch das Fühlen des Planeten, von dem wir morgen sprechen werden, ein nach diesen Wahrnehmungen aus dem Weltenraum. Denn das, was ein Planet tut außerhalb im Raum, indem er seinen Weg durch die Weltenweiten geht, und das, was er bewirkt in seinem eigenen Leib, in seinen Elementen, aus denen er besteht, das ist wiederum das Ergebnis der Beobachtungen des Planetengeistes gegenüber der äußeren Welt. Wie die einzelne menschliche Seele auf der Welt der Erde neben anderen Menschen lebt, sich nach ihnen richtet, so lebt der Planetengeist in seinem Planetenleib, der eben der Boden ist, auf dem wir stehen; aber dieser Planetengeist lebt in der Gesellschaft anderer Planetengeister, anderer Geister der Himmelskörper überhaupt.
Second Lecture
Yesterday evening I first attempted to show the path that leads the human soul to the observation of that spiritual world which is hidden immediately behind our sensory-physical world, and I tried to draw attention to two classes, two categories of spiritual beings which the occult gaze finds when it lifts the veil from the sensory world in the manner described yesterday. Today I will discuss two other types, or categories, of nature spirits. One type, or special category, reveals itself to the occult eye when observing the gradual withering and dying of, say, the plant world in late summer or autumn, or the dying of natural beings in general. Even when plants begin to develop fruit in their blossoms, one can allow this development of the fruit to affect the soul in the way we described yesterday. And in the same way as described yesterday, one then gains an impression in one's imagination of spiritual beings who have something to do with the dying, with the withering of natural beings. Just as we were able to describe yesterday that in spring the plants are, as it were, pulled out of the earth by certain beings who are undergoing a continuous metamorphosis, so we can say: When the plants have gradually developed and the necessity arises for them to wither, other beings intervene, beings of which we cannot even say that they continually change their form, for we can only say that they have no real form. They appear to us as flashes of lightning, like little meteors that light up and disappear again, flashing and disappearing again, so that they do not really have any definite form, but rather flit across our earth, lighting up and fading like meteors or will-o'-the-wisps. These beings are initially connected with the maturing of everything that exists in the realms of nature. These forces or beings are necessary for beings in the natural realms to mature. To the occult eye, these beings are actually only perceptible when it is directed solely at the air itself, and that air should be as pure as possible. Yesterday we had to describe the second type of natural beings in such a way that we allowed the spraying or gathering water that presents itself to our view in cloud formations or elsewhere to act upon us. Air that is as pure as water, permeated by sunlight and the sun's warmth, must act upon the soul if one wants to maintain the imagination of these meteorically flashing and fading beings, which live invisibly in the pure air and greedily suck in the light that permeates the air and makes them shine and flash. It is these beings that then descend, for example, onto the plant world or even onto the animal world, and bring about maturation.
We can already see from the way we come to these beings that they are related in a certain way to what has been called the elements in occultism since ancient times. What we described yesterday as the first type of such beings can be found when we descend into the depths of the earth, when we penetrate the solid matter of our planet; there, beings of a certain form arise in our imagination, so that we can also call these beings the nature spirits of the solid matter or the nature spirits of the earth. The second category, which we described yesterday, we found in water as it contracts and disperses; hence we can connect these spiritual beings with what occultism has always called the liquid or water element. There they undergo metamorphosis and simultaneously take on the role of drawing everything that grows and sprouts out of the earth. And the beings we have been discussing today are connected with the element of air, which is as free of water as possible. So we can speak of nature spirits of the earth, of water, and of air.
We can consider a fourth category of such spiritual beings. The occult gaze can become acquainted with this fourth category if it waits until a flower has produced fruit and seeds, and then observes how the seed gradually grows into a new plant. Only on this occasion can one easily observe the fourth type of these beings, for the fourth type are the preservers of all seeds within our natural kingdoms. As guardians, they carry the seeds from one generation of plants or other natural beings to the next generation. And we can observe that these beings, which are the preservers of the seeds or germs and thereby make it possible for the same beings to appear again and again on our earth, that these beings live together with the warmth of our planet, with what has been called since ancient times the element of fire or the element of warmth. That is why the seed forces are also connected with a certain degree of warmth, with a certain temperature. And when the occult gaze observes very closely, it finds that the necessary transformation of the heat of the environment into the kind of heat that the seed or germ needs in order to mature, that this transformation of lifeless heat into living heat is brought about by such beings. Therefore, these beings can also be called the nature spirits of heat or fire. So that we have now, for the time being — we will hear more details in the next lectures — learned about four categories of nature spirits that have a certain relationship to what we call the elements earth, water, air, and fire, as if these spiritual beings had their domain, their territory, in these elements, just as human beings themselves have their domain, their territory, on the entire planet. Just as he is at home in relation to the universe, so these beings have their territory in one of the elements mentioned above.
We already pointed out yesterday that these different beings mean for our entire Earth with its natural kingdoms, that is, for our earthly, physical world, what the etheric body or life body means for the individual human being. However, we have said that this life body is a unity, while the etheric body of the earth consists of many, many such nature spirits, which are further divided into four categories. The etheric or life body of the earth consists of the living interaction of these nature spirits. It is therefore not a unity, but a multiplicity, a diversity. If one wants to recognize this etheric body of the earth with the occult gaze, then one must, as was described yesterday, allow the physical world to work on oneself morally and thereby pull away the veil of the physical “world.” Then, as it were, what lies immediately beneath this veil, this etheric body of the earth, becomes visible.
What happens when we pull away what can be described as the etheric body of the earth? We know that the third member of the human being, behind the etheric body, is the astral body, the body that carries our desires, our wishes, our passions. So that when we disregard the higher members of human nature, we can say: First we have the physical body in the human being, then behind the physical body the etheric body, and behind the etheric body the astral body. It is exactly the same with external nature: when we remove the physical, we certainly arrive at a multiplicity, but this represents to us the etheric body of our entire Earth with all its natural kingdoms. Can we now also speak of a kind of astral body of the earth, of something that corresponds to the astral body of the human being in relation to the whole earth, in relation to all the realms of our earth? It is not so easy to advance to this astral body of the earth as it is to the etheric body. We have seen that one simply advances to the etheric body when one allows the phenomena of the world to affect oneself morally, rather than merely through the impressions of the senses. But if one wants to go further, then deeper occult exercises are necessary for the human being, such as you will find described in part, insofar as they can be communicated in an external publication, in my book How to Know Higher Worlds. At a certain point in esoteric or occult development, as you can read there, human beings also begin to become conscious during the time when they are otherwise unconscious, namely from falling asleep to waking up. We know that the ordinary unconscious state, the ordinary state of sleep, is based on the fact that when a person lies in bed, they leave their physical body and etheric body and astral body and everything else that belongs to them behind; but then the person is also unconscious in their normal state. If he devotes himself more and more to those exercises that lie in meditation and concentration and so on, if he makes the dormant, hidden powers of his soul ever stronger, then he can bring about a conscious state of sleep, so that the human being is not unconscious when he has withdrawn his astral body from his physical and etheric bodies, but then they do not have the physical world around them, nor the world that has been described so far, the world of nature spirits, but another, even more spiritual, more spiritual world than the one described so far. When the moment comes for a person to feel their consciousness light up after they have freed themselves from their physical and etheric bodies, they perceive a completely new kind of spiritual being.
The next thing that strikes the occult eye, which is so well trained, is that these new kinds of spirits that it now perceives are, as it were, the commanders of the nature spirits. Let us be clear about the extent to which they are commanders. You see, I have told you that those beings we can call the nature spirits of water are particularly active in the plant world as it sprouts and springs from the ground. Those nature spirits that we can call the nature spirits of the air play a greater role in late summer and autumn, when the plants wither and die. Then the meteor-like air spirits descend upon the plant world and, as it were, saturate themselves with it, causing it to wither away in its summer and spring forms. This order, whereby mainly the spirits of water work in one area of the earth and then the spirits of air in another, varies according to the different areas of the earth; it is naturally quite different in the northern hemisphere than in the southern. This arrangement, of directing the appropriate nature spirits to their work at the right time, is carried out by those spiritual beings whom one only learns to recognize when the occult gaze is so well trained that, when a person has freed himself from his etheric body and his physical body, he can still perceive something in his surroundings. So we can say, for example, that spiritual beings work in connection with our Earth, our planetary Earth, distributing the work of the nature spirits among the seasons, thereby bringing about the change of seasons in the different regions of the Earth. These spiritual beings represent what we might call the astral body of the Earth. They are also the same beings into which human beings immerse themselves with their own astral bodies when they fall asleep in the evening. This astral body, which consists of higher spirits, is connected to the earth, and during the night, the human being's own astral body immerses itself in the realm of these higher spirits, which surround the earth and permeate it like a spiritual atmosphere.
Now, for occult observation, there is a great difference between the first categories of nature spirits described above, the spirits of the earth, the spirits of water, and so on, and these spirits who in turn direct the nature spirits. The nature spirits are concerned with allowing nature beings to mature and wither, that is, with bringing life into the entire planetary region of the Earth. The situation is different with these spiritual beings, which we can describe in their entirety as the astral body of the Earth. These spiritual beings are such that when a person is able to become acquainted with them through his occult vision, already perceive them as beings that have something to do with their own soul, with their own astral body, beings that have such an effect on the astral body of humans and also on the astral body of animals that we cannot merely speak of an animating effect, but of an effect like the effect of feelings and thoughts on our own soul. The nature spirits of water and air can be observed, and one can say that they are in the environment; but these spiritual beings of which we are now speaking cannot be said to be in our environment. Rather, one is actually always united with them, as if poured into them, when one perceives them. One is absorbed in them, and they speak to one in the spirit. It is as if one were perceiving thoughts and feelings from the environment, and impulses of will, sympathies, and antipathies are also expressed in what these beings allow to flow to us in thoughts, feelings, and impulses of will. So that we, one might say, already have beings similar to human souls in this kind, in this category of spirits.
If we look back at what we have said, we can say that all kinds of arrangements in time, of distribution in time and space, are also connected with these beings. Therefore, in occultism, we have an old word to describe these beings, which we recognize in their entirety as the astral body of the Earth, and this word, expressed in English, would be: spirits of the cycles. Thus, not only the regular annual cycle of growth and decay of plants, but also the regular cycle expressed in relation to the Earth in terms of day and night, is brought about by such spirits, which are to be counted among the astral body of the Earth. In other words, everything that has to do with rhythmic recurrence, rhythmic alternation, with the change of time conditions and the repetition of events in time, is arranged by spiritual beings who all together belong to the astral body of the earth and to whom the name “spirits of the cycles of our planet” applies. And what the astronomer discovers through his calculations about the rotation of the Earth around its axis is perceptible to the occult eye because it knows that these spirits of the periods of circulation are distributed around the entire Earth and are truly the carriers of the forces that cause the Earth to rotate around its axis. It is extremely important to see in the astral body of the Earth everything that is connected with the ordinary cycle, with the blossoming and withering of plants, but also everything that is connected with the cycle, including day and night, the seasons, the times of day, and so on. Everything that happens in this way evokes in the observer, who has progressed so far that he can leave his physical and etheric bodies with his astral body and yet remain conscious, the impression of spiritual beings who belong to the spirits of the cycles of time.
With this we have, as it were, drawn back the second veil, the veil woven from the nature spirits. We could say: we pull away the first veil, woven from sensory-physical impressions, and come to the etheric body of the earth, to the nature spirits. Then we can pull away a second veil and come to the spirits of the cycles, who regulate and order everything that recurs periodically, everything that is subject to rhythmic change.
Now we know that embedded in our own astral bodies is what we can call the higher members of human nature, which we summarize initially as the I embedded in our astral body. We have already said that our astral body is submerged in the realm of the spirits of the cycles, as it were in the surging sea of the spirits of the cycles: our I, which actually sleeps even more than the astral body for normal consciousness. That this I sleeps even more is realized by the person who is undergoing occult development, who is advancing esoterically, in that he first learns to penetrate into the perceptions of the astral body, into the spiritual world into which it is immersed and which consists of the spirits of the cycles. This perception is actually, in a certain sense, a dangerous precipice in esoteric development. For the astral body of the human being is again a unity, but everything that is in the realm of the spirits of the cycles is, in essence, a multiplicity, a diversity. And since the human being, as has been described, is united with this multiplicity, immersed in this multiplicity, he feels, when he is still asleep with his ego and has awakened with his astral body, as if he were fragmented within the world of the spirits of the cycles. This must also be avoided in a proper esoteric development. Therefore, those who can give instructions for such a proper development take measures to ensure that the human being does not allow his ego to fall asleep at all when his astral body has already awakened. For if the ego remained asleep while the astral body had already awakened, the human being would lose its inner cohesion and would feel as if it were split up like Dionysus in the entire astral world of the earth, which consists of the spirits of the cycles of evolution. In a proper esoteric development, measures are therefore taken to prevent this from happening. These measures consist in ensuring that those who are to be led to clairvoyance through meditation, concentration, or other esoteric exercises retain two things in the entire realm of clairvoyant, occult observation, and do not lose two things. It is extremely important that in every esoteric development everything is arranged in such a way that two things are not lost which the human being has in ordinary life, but which he can easily lose in esoteric development if it is not properly directed. But if it is guided correctly, he will not lose them. The first is that the human being does not lose the memory of all the experiences of the present incarnation as he otherwise has them in his memory. The cohesion of memory must not be destroyed. In the field of occultism, this cohesion of memory means much more than in ordinary life. In ordinary life, this memory is understood to mean only that one can look back and has not lost important events of one's life from consciousness. In occultism, correct memory also means that a person, with his senses and feelings, only values what he has already accomplished in the past, so that he does not attribute any value to himself other than the value given to him by his past deeds.
Let us understand this correctly, my dear friends! This is an extremely important point. If a person's occult development were to drive them to suddenly say, “I am the embodiment of this or that spirit,” without any justification for this in anything they have achieved so far, in anything that already exists in this physical world, then in the occult sense their memory would be interrupted. An important principle in occult development is not to attribute to oneself any value other than that which comes from achievements in the physical world within the present incarnation. This is extremely important. Any other value must first come on the basis of a higher development, which can only arise when one is firmly established on the ground that one considers oneself to be nothing more than what one has been able to achieve in this incarnation. This is also natural when viewed objectively, for what one has achieved in the present incarnation is also the result of previous incarnations; it is what karma has made of us so far. We must first allow karma to make of us what it will; we must not include this in our value. In short, when we are to evaluate ourselves at the beginning of esoteric development, we will only do so in the right way if we allow our value to be determined solely by what presents itself in our memory as our past. This is the one element that must remain with us so that our ego does not fall asleep while our astral body awakens.
The second thing that we as present-day human beings must not lose is the degree of conscience that we possess in the outer physical world. Here again, there is something extremely important to note. You will often have heard that here and there someone is undergoing occult development. If this is not guided and directed in the right way, one often finds that the person takes matters of conscience more lightly than before their occult development. Previously, education and social context guided them in what they were allowed to do or not do. After beginning an occult development, even some who would not have lied before begin to lie, taking matters of conscience less seriously than they had before. We must not lose any degree of the conscience we have acquired. We must preserve our memory in such a way that we allow our value to be determined only by consideration of what we have already become, not by any borrowing from the future, from what we will yet do. We must preserve our conscience to the degree that we have acquired it in the ordinary physical world up to now. If we maintain these two elements in our consciousness, our healthy memory, which does not delude us into thinking we are anything other than what our achievements have shown us to be, and our conscience, which does not allow us to take things more lightly than we have done so far, but possibly even more seriously — if we have maintained these, then our ego can never fall asleep when our astral body has awakened. Then we carry the cohesion of our ego into the world in which we awaken with our astral body, when we sleep while remaining awake, as it were, when we carry our consciousness over into the state in which we are freed from the physical and etheric bodies with our astral body. And then, when we awaken with our ego, we not only feel our astral body connected with all the spiritual beings we have described today as the spirits of the cycles of our planet, but we also feel in a very peculiar way that we no longer have a direct relationship with the individual human being who is the bearer of this physical body, this etheric body in which we usually find ourselves. We feel, so to speak, that everything that arises as properties of our physical body, our etheric body, has been taken away from us. We therefore also feel that everything that can only live externally on any territory of our planet has been taken away from us, because what lives on a territory of our planet is connected with the spirits of the planetary cycles. But now, when we awaken with our I, we feel not only that we are poured out into the whole world of the spirits of the cycles, but we feel ourselves to be one with the whole unified spirit of the planet itself; we awaken in the unified spirit of the planet itself.
It is extremely important that we feel as if we belong to the whole planet. To give a specific example, for those with sufficiently awakened occult vision, this life with the planet is expressed in such a way that when a person has reached the point where his ego and his astral body awaken at the same time, albeit during daytime waking hours when he is in the sensory world, they follow the sun as it moves across the sky from dawn to dusk, but the sun does not disappear when they fall asleep. When they fall asleep, the sun remains connected to them. It does not cease to shine, but takes on a spiritual character. So that when human beings really sleep during the night, they also follow the sun during the night. Man is such that he has something to do with the changing states of the planet only insofar as he lives in his astral body. But he has nothing to do with these changing states of the planet when he becomes conscious of his ego. Then he becomes conscious of all the states his planet can go through. He, the human being, then pours himself into the whole substance of the planetary spirit.
When I say this, you must not think that the statement: “Man has become one with the planetary spirit, lives in unity with this planetary spirit” is saying something monstrous in relation to clairvoyance. For now, it is only a beginning, as it is meant here. For when human beings awaken in the manner described, they actually only experience the planetary spirit in a general way, whereas this planetary spirit consists of many, many details, of wonderful individual spiritual beings, as we shall hear in the following lectures. Human beings do not yet perceive the details of the planetary spirit, the particular manifold aspects of this spirit. What they perceive is that they know, first of all, that they live immersed in the planetary spirit as in a sea that spiritually surrounds the entire Earth and is thus the spirit of the Earth itself. One can undergo enormously long periods of development in order to experience this becoming one with the planetary spirit more and more, but the beginning is made with what has been described. Just as we say of human beings that behind their astral body is their I, so we say that behind all that we call the totality of the spirits of the periods of circulation is hidden the spirit of the planet itself, the planetary spirit. While the spirits of the cycles direct the nature spirits of the elements in order to bring about rhythmic changes, repetitions in time, and alternations in space on the Earth planet, the spirit of the Earth has a different task. This spirit of the earth has the task of bringing the earth itself into interaction with the other heavenly bodies in its environment, directing and guiding it so that, in the course of time, it comes into the right position in relation to the other heavenly bodies. This spirit of the earth is, as it were, the great sensory apparatus of the earth, through which the earth, the terrestrial planet, comes into the right relationship with its environment.
So when I am asked to summarize the succession of those spiritual beings with whom we first come into contact on our Earth and to whom we can find our way through gradual occult development, I must say: As the outermost veil, we have the sensory world with all its diversity, with what we see spread out before our senses, what we can comprehend with the human intellect. Behind the sensory world lies the world of nature spirits. Behind the world of nature spirits lies the world of the spirits of the cycles, and behind that lies the planetary spirit.
If you want to compare what is available to normal consciousness about this world structure with the world structure itself, you can clarify this as follows: the outermost veil of the world would be this world of the senses, behind it the world of nature spirits, the world of spirits of the cycles, and behind that the planetary spirit. Now, however, we must say that the planetary spirit, in its activity, penetrates in a certain relationship to the world of the senses, so that one can perceive its image in a certain way in the world of the senses, as well as the spirits of the cycles of time and the nature spirits. So that when we observe the sensory world itself with our normal consciousness, we have in this sensory world, as it were, an imprint from behind of the traces of these worlds that lie behind it, somewhat as if we had, in the uppermost skin that we have pulled away as the sensory world, the spiritual beings that are gradually effective behind it. Normal consciousness perceives the sensory world as its perceptions; the world of nature spirits expresses itself in perceptions as what we call the forces of nature. Where science speaks of natural forces, we actually have nothing real. For the occultist, natural forces are not real, but are the Maya, the imprint of the nature spirits working behind the sensory world.
The imprint of the spirits of the cycles is what we usually call the laws of nature in normal consciousness. All natural laws exist basically because the spirits of the cycles work as directing forces. Natural laws are not real for the occultist. When the ordinary natural scientist speaks of natural laws and combines them externally, the occultist knows that these natural laws reveal themselves in their truth when the human being, with his astral body awakened, listens to what the spirits of the cycles say and how they order and direct the spirits of nature. This is expressed in Maya, in outward appearances, in the laws of nature. And normal consciousness does not usually go any further. Normal consciousness does not usually go beyond the imprint of the planetary spirit in the outer world. The normal consciousness of humanity today speaks of the outer world of perception, of the facts that are perceived, of the forces of nature: light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and so on, attraction, repulsion, gravity, and so on. These are the perceptions in the world of Maya, which in reality are based on the world of nature spirits, the etheric body of the earth. Then external science speaks of natural laws. This is again Maya. Underlying this is what we have described today as the world of the spirits of the cycles. Only when one goes further does one arrive at the manifestation of the planetary spirit itself in the outer sensory world. Science does not do this today. Those who still do so today are no longer really believed. Poets and artists do it; they still seek a meaning behind things. Why does the plant world blossom? Why do animal genera and species arise and pass away? Why do human beings enliven the earth? When one asks such questions about the meaning of natural phenomena and wants to dissect this meaning, to combine it from external facts, as deeper philosophy sometimes still attempts to do, then one approaches the manifestation of the planetary spirit itself in the physical world. But today, people no longer really believe in this search for the meaning of existence. The feeling sometimes still believes a little, but science no longer wants to know much about anything that could be found beyond the laws of nature in the flight of phenomena. If one still seeks a meaning beyond the laws of nature in the things of the world as perceived by the senses, then one would be able to perceive this meaning as the imprint of the planetary spirit in the sensory world. That would be the outer Maya. At first, an outer Maya is the sensory world itself, for it is what emerges from itself, the etheric body of the earth, the substance of the nature spirits. A second Maya is what appears to human beings from the nature spirits in the forces of nature; a third Maya is what appears as the laws of nature from the spirits of the cycles of evolution, and a fourth Maya is something that, despite its Maya nature, speaks to the human soul because, in the perception of nature's senses, human beings feel at least connected to the spirit of the entire planet, which guides the planet through world space and gives meaning to the entire planet. In this Maya lies the imprint of the planetary spirit itself.
Thus we can say: Today we have ascended to the unified spirit of the planet. And if we want to parallel what we have found here for the planet with the human being, we can say: The sensory world corresponds to the physical body of the human being, the world of nature spirits to the etheric body, the world of spirits of the cycles to the astral body, and the planetary spirit to the human ego. Just as the human ego perceives the physical environment of the Earth, so the planetary spirit perceives everything that is in the vicinity and in the spatial world outside the planet, and directs the actions of the planet and also the feelings of the planet, which we will talk about tomorrow, according to these perceptions from the world space. For what a planet does outside in space as it travels through the worlds, and what it brings about in its own body, in the elements of which it consists, is in turn the result of the observations of the planetary spirit in relation to the outer world. Just as the individual human soul lives on the earth alongside other human beings and is guided by them, so the planetary spirit lives in its planetary body, which is the ground on which we stand; but this planetary spirit lives in the company of other planetary spirits, other spirits of the heavenly bodies in general.