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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Occult Science - An Outline
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Occult Science - An Outline
What we have seen to be true of the supersensible way of cognition in
general, becomes immediately evident when we set out to study Man from
this standpoint. For the essential thing will be to recognize the
manifest secret of our own human nature. What is
accessible to the senses, and to the intellect that rests on
sense-perception, is but a part of human nature as known to
supersensible cognition. It is the physical body of man.
To reach a clear and accurate idea of the physical body,
our attention must first be directed to the phenomenon of death
the great riddle that confronts us wherever we turn to observe life.
And in connection with death, we have to think of lifeless Nature
so-called the kingdom of the mineral, which carries death
perpetually within it. All these are facts of which the full
explanation is only possible with the help of supersensible knowledge,
and an important section of this work must be devoted to them. We will
begin by suggesting certain ideas and lines of thought with a view to
clearer understanding.
Within the manifest world it is the physical body in which man is of
like nature with the mineral creation. Anything that distinguishes man
from the mineral cannot properly be regarded as physical body.
To clear and open-minded reflection the important fact will be that death
lays bare the part of the human being which after death
is of like nature with the mineral world. We can point to the corpse
as to that part of man, which, after death, is subject to processes
such as are also found in the mineral kingdom. We can emphasize that
in this member of man's nature, which we now call the corpse, the same
substances and forces are at work as in the mineral world. Equal
stress must however be laid upon the fact that for the physical body
of man, disintegration sets in the moment death occurs. Moreover we
shall be justified in saying: while the same substances and forces are
indeed at work in the physical body of man and in the mineral, during
man's life their activity is made to serve a higher function. It is
only when death has taken place that they work identically with the
mineral world. Then they appear, as indeed they must in accordance
with their own nature, as the destroyer of the form and structure of
man's physical body.
Thus we are able clearly to distinguish what is manifest from what is
hidden in the human being. Throughout the life of man something that
is hidden must perpetually be battling with the mineral substances and
forces in the physical body. The moment the battle ceases, the mineral
form of activity makes its appearance. This is the point where the
science of the supersensible must enter in; it has to discover what [it
is] that maintains the battle. For this is hidden from the outer
senses; it is accessible only to supersensible observation. The way
man can attain such observation, so that the hidden
reality becomes as manifest to him as are the phenomena of the
sense-world to his ordinary vision, will be dealt with in a later
chapter. Here, the results of supersensible observation must first be
described. As has already been pointed out, information about the path
to the attainment of higher faculties of cognition can only be of
value to a man when he has first made himself acquainted, through
simple narrative, with that which supersensible research reveals. In
this domain it is indeed possible to comprehend what one cannot
yet observe. Nay more, the right path to seership is one that
takes its start from such comprehension.
Although the hidden something which battles against the disintegration
of the physical body can be observed by seership alone, in its effects
it is plainly evident even to the kind of judgment which is restricted
to the outwardly manifest. For its effects are expressed in the form
and shape into which the substances and forces of the physical body
are combined during life. When death has taken place, this form
gradually disappears and the physical body becomes part of the mineral
kingdom pure and simple. Supersensible perception can observe, as an
independent member of the human being, what it is that prevents the
physical substances and forces during life from going their own way,
which would, as we have seen, lead to the disintegration of the
physical body. We will call this independent member of man's being the
Etheric Body or Life-Body.
If misunderstandings are not to creep in at the outset, two things
must be borne in mind when these terms are used. In the first place,
the word ether is here applied in a different sense from
that of modern Physics, which denotes as ether, for example, the
supposed carrier of light the luminiferous either.
Here the word ether will be strictly limited to the
meaning above indicated. It will be applied to the reality, accessible
to higher perception, which makes itself known to sense-observation
only by its effects, namely by its power to give definite form and
configuration to the mineral substances and forces present in the
physical body. Nor, in the second place, must the word
body be misunderstood. To designate these more spiritual
entities there is no avoiding the use of words taken from ordinary
language, which to begin with apply to material, sense-perceptible
things. The etheric body is of course nothing bodily in
the sensual meaning of the term, in however refined a way we might
conceive it.1
With the mention of the etheric body or life-body, our description of
supersensible realities is already bound to come into conflict with
contemporary opinions. As an outcome of the development of human
thought hitherto, the mention of a life-body as an
essential principle of human nature can at the present time scarcely
fail to be regarded as unscientific. Materialistic thought has reached
a point where it sees no more in the living organism than a combination
of physical substances and forces such as are also found in the
so-called lifeless body, or in the mineral. The combination is only
supposed to be far more complex.
Yet it is not so very long since other views were held, even by
official science. If we study the writings of many serious thinkers of
the first half of the nineteenth century, we realize how at that time
even genuine scientists were aware that something more is
present in the living body than in the mineral. They spoke of a vital
force or life-force. True, they did not conceive it as a
life-body in the sense above described, but there was in
their minds a dim underlying feeling that something of the sort
exists. To their way of thinking, it was as though the life-force were
present in the living body over and above the physical substances and
forces, in much the same way as in the magnet the magnetic force is
present over and above the mere iron. Then the time came when the idea
of a life-force was eliminated form the accepted scientific teachings.
It was claimed that physical and chemical causes alone are a
sufficient explanation. Latterly, there has again been a reaction.
Some scientific thinkers are disposed to admit that something like a
vital force is, after all, not entirely out of the question. But even
scientists who admit this much will hardly be disposed to make common
cause with the conception here put forward of the life-body.
Generally speaking, to enter into a discussion of these scientific
theories from the standpoint of supersensible knowledge will be of
little value. Rather should it be recognized that the materialistic
conception is an inevitable concomitant of the great progress of
Natural Science in our time. This progress has been due to an extreme
refinement in the methods of observation by the external senses. And
it is characteristic of human nature: again and again in the course of
his evolution man brings certain faculties to a high degree of
perfection at the expense of others. The faculty of precise sensory
observation, which has evolved so significantly with the rise of
Natural Science, was bound to eclipse the cultivation of those human
faculties which lead into the hidden worlds. But the time has come
round again when their cultivation is urgently needed. The recognition
of the hidden worlds will not be furthered by combating judgments
which are only the logical outcome of its denial; rather, by putting
forward the hidden reality itself in a true light. Then those for whom
the time has come will recognize it.
Yet it was necessary to say this much, lest mere ignorance of
scientific viewpoints should be presumed when mention is made of an
etheric body, which, we are well aware, will widely be regarded as a
mere figment of the imagination.
The etheric body, then, constitutes a second member of the human
being. For supersensible perception it has indeed a higher degree of
reality than the physical. A description of how supersensible
perception sees it can only be given in the later sections of this
book, when the way of understanding such descriptions will have been
made clear. For the present it will suffice to say that the etheric
body completely permeates the physical, of which it may be regarded as
a kind of architect. All the organs of the physical body are
maintained in their form and structure by the currents and movements
of the etheric body. Underlying the physical heart there is an etheric
heart, underlying the physical brain as etheric brain, and so on. The
etheric body is in effect a differentiated body like the physical,
only far more complicated. And whereas in the physical body there are
relatively separated parts, in the etheric all is in living interflow
and movement.
Man has the etheric body, the science of the supersensible advances to
a further member of human nature. And as in leading up to the etheric
body attention had to be drawn to death, so, to form a conception of
this further member of man's nature, supersensible science points to
the phenomenon of sleep. All the creative work of man depends
so far as the manifest world is concerned on his activity in
waking life. But this activity is only possible if he again and again
derives from sleep a strengthening of his exhausted forces. In sleep,
action and thought disappear; pain and joy vanish from conscious life.
On awakening, man's conscious powers well up from the unconsciousness
of sleep as if from mysteries and hidden springs. It is the
same consciousness which sinks into dark depths when man falls
asleep, and then arises again when he awakens. To the science of the
supersensible, what rouses life again and again from the unconscious
state is the third member of the human being. It may be called the
Astral Body.
As the physical body cannot maintain its form through the mineral
substances and forces it contains, but needs to be permeated by the
etheric body, so too the forces of the etheric body cannot of
themselves become illumined with the light of consciousness. Left to
itself, an etheric body would of necessity be in a perpetual state of
sleep or, we may also say, could only maintain in the physical
body a vegetable form of life. An etheric body that is awake is
illumined by an astral body. For outer observation the effect of the
astral body disappears when man falls asleep. For supersensible
observation however, the astral body still remains, but it is now seen
to be separated from the etheric body, or lifted out of it. Sensory
observation is in fact concerned, not with the astral body itself, but
only with its effects within the manifest world, and these are not
immediately present during sleep.
Man has his physical body in common with the minerals and his etheric
body with the plants. In the same sense he is of like nature with the
animals in respect of the astral body. The plant is in a perpetual
state of sleep. Anyone who does not judge accurately in these matters
may easily fall into the error of attributing to plants too a kind of
consciousness such as the animals and man have in their waking state.
But this mistake is only possible when one's idea of consciousness is
inexact. One may then aver that a plant too, when subjected to an
outer stimulus, will perform movements, just an animal will do. One
will refer to the sensitiveness of many plants, which for
example contract their leaves when certain outer things affect them.
But the criterion of consciousness does not lie in the fact that to a
given action a being shows a definite reaction. It lies in this, that
the being has an inner experience, and this is a new factor, over and
above the mere reaction. Otherwise we might as well speak of
consciousness when a piece of iron expands under the influence of
heat. Consciousness is only there when for example, through the effect
of heat, the being inwardly experiences pain.
The fourth member which supersensible science attributes to the human
being, is one he no longer has in common with any of the manifest
world around him. Indeed it is this fourth member which distinguishes
him from all his fellow-creatures and marks him as the crown of the
creation or of that realm of the creation to which man belongs.
Supersensible science arrives at an idea of this fourth member of the
human being by pointing to an essential differentiation between the
kinds of experience we have even within waking life.
This difference becomes directly evident when man observes that in the
waking state he is on the one hand in the midst of experiences which
must come and go, while on the other hand he also has
experiences of which this cannot be said. It comes out most distinctly
when we compare the conscious experiences of man with those of the
animal. The animal experiences the influences of the outer world with
great regularity. Under the influences of heat and cold it becomes
conscious of pain or pleasure, and its experience of thirst and hunger
is subject to bodily processes which take a regular and periodic
course. Man's life is not exhausted by experiences such as these. He
can develop wishes and cravings transcending all these things. For the
animal, could we but pursue the matter far enough, we should always be
able to indicate within the body or outside it the
precise cause for any given action or sensation. With man it is not
so. He can give birth to wishes and desires for whose origin no
external cause whether in the body or outside it is
sufficient. Everything that belongs to this domain must be attributed
to a special source, which the science of the supersensible recognizes
to be the I or Ego of man. The I may therefore be
described as the fourth member of the human being.
If the astral body were left to itself, pleasure and pain, feelings of
hunger or of thirst would come and go in it, but one thing would never
come about namely, the sense of something permanent in all
these things. Not the permanent itself, but that which has conscious
experience of the permanent, is here called the I. (We must
form our concepts with great precision if misunderstandings are not to
arise in this domain.) With the awareness of something permanent and
lasting in the changing flow of inner experiences, the feeling of
I of inner selfhood begins to dawn. The mere fact that a
creature experiences hunger, for example, cannot give it the feeling
of I. On every new occasion when the causes of hunger make
themselves felt, hunger arises. The creature falls upon its food
simply because the causes of hunger are there anew. The feeling of
I comes in when the creature is not merely impelled to
take food by the renewed causes of hunger, but when a previous
satisfaction gave rise to a sense of pleasure and the consciousness of
the pleasure has remained. Here it is not only the present
experience of hunger but the past experience of satisfaction
which provides the impulse.
The physical body disintegrates when it is not held together by the
etheric; the etheric body falls into unconsciousness when it is not
irradiated by the astral body. In the like manner the astral body
would ever and again have to let the past sink into oblivion if the
I did not preserve the past and carry it over into the present.
Forgetting is for the astral body what death is for the physical body
and sleep for the etheric. Or, as we may also express it: life
is proper to the etheric body, consciousness to the astral
body, and memory to the Ego.
To attribute memory to animals is an error still easier to fall into
than the mistake of ascribing consciousness to plants. It is natural
enough to think of memory when a dog recognizes its master, whom it
may not have seen for some time past. Yet in reality the recognition
depends not on memory, but on something else. The attraction proceeds
from the master's nature, which give pleasure to the dog when in his
presence. Every time the master's presence is renewed this causes a
renewal of the pleasure. Now memory is only there when a being not
only feels the experiences of the present moment but preserves those
of the past. Even when this is granted, it is however still possible
of make the mistake of attributing memory to the dog. Surely, one
might rejoin, since the dog grieves when its master goes away, it must
retain some memory of him. This too, however, is a wrong conclusion.
By living with him, the master's presence has become a need to the
dog; it feels his absence just as it experiences hunger. If we are not
ready to make clear distinctions of this kind, insight into the true
relationships of life remains impaired.
Prevalent misconceptions may even now lead to the retort that we
surely cannot know whether anything like human memory is present in
the animal or not. This difficulty is due to untrained observation.
Anyone who can observe in a really sensible way how the animal behaves
in the whole nexus of its experiences, will notice an essential
difference between the behavior of the animal and that of man. He will
realize that the animal's behavior implies the absence of all memory.
To supersensible perception this is directly evident; but in these
matters what the supersensible observer is aware of directly, can also
be recognized in its effects by sense-perception and the
penetration of sense-perception with clear thinking.
If we say that man is aware of his memory by looking into his own
inner life a method he obviously cannot apply to the animal
we make a fatal mistake. Man is of course aware of his own
faculty of memory, but he can not derive this knowledge from mere
introspection. He derives it from what he experiences with himself
in relation to the things and events of the external world.
This kind of experience he has with himself, with his fellow-man, and
with the animals too, in precisely the same way. It is an illusion to
imagine that we judge of the presence of memory simply on the strength
of introspection. The power underlying memory may indeed by called an
inner one; the judgment about it is acquired, even for one's own
person, by the tests of the external world by observing the
whole sequence and continuity of life. Of this we can form a judgment
in the case of the animal no less than in our own. In such matters the
psychology of our time suffers greatly from crude and inexact
conceptions conceptions based on faulty observation and
therefore highly misleading.
The significance for the Ego of remembering and forgetting is like
that of waking and sleeping for the astral body. As sleep lets the
cares and troubles of the day vanish into nothingness, so does
forgetting spread a veil over the unhappy experiences of life, thus
extinguishing a portion of the past. And as sleep is necessary to
refresh the exhausted powers of life, so must the human being blot out
from memory certain portions of his past if he is to meet new
experiences openly and freely. From the very forgetting he gains
strength for perception of the new. Think for instance of how we learn
to write. The many details which a child must live through as he
learns to write are afterwards forgotten. It is only the faculty of
writing that remains. How would a man ever manage to write, if every
time he put pen to paper there rose up in his soul the memory of all
the experiences he had to undergo as a child during his writing
lessons!
Now memory appears in different stages and degrees. We have it in its
simplest form when a man perceives an object and, having turned away,
is able still to recall an image of it to his mind. It was while he
was perceiving the object that he formed the mental image. A process
was then taking place between his astral body and his Ego. The astral
body brought the external impression of the object to his
consciousness. But his awareness of the object would have lasted no
longer than it was actually there before him, if it were not for the
Ego receiving this awareness into itself and making it its own.
It is this point that the science of the supersensible distinguishes
body from soul. We speak of the astral
body so long as we have in mind how the knowledge or awareness
of an actually present object comes about, while we designate as
soul what give the knowledge performance, duration. From
this it will be evident how close is the connection of the astral body
with the part of the soul which gives permanence to knowledge. In a
sense, they may even be said to be united to constitute a
single member of the human being. Hence it is also possible to refer
to them jointly as the astral body. Or, if we desire a more exact
description, we may call the astral body of man the
Soul-Body and the soul, is so far as it is united with the
astral body, the Sentient Soul.
The Ego rises to a higher stage of being when it directs its activity
to what it has received and has made its own by taking cognizance of
external objects. In this activity it liberates itself increasingly
from the external objects of perception., to work within its own
sphere and property. The part of the soul to which this faculty
belongs may be described as the Intellectual or Mind-Soul.
It is characteristic both of the sentient and of the intellectual soul
that they work with what is received through the impressions of
sense-perceived objects and with what memory retains of these
impressions. The soul is here entirely given up to things external to
it. For even what it has made its own through memory,--even this was
received originally from outside. But it is able to transcend all
this; the soul is not only sentient and intelligent. Supersensible
perception can most readily form an idea of this transcendent faculty
by pointing to a simple fact, the far-reaching significance of which
needs only to be rightly valued,--the fact that in the whole domain of
language there is one name which differs in its essence from all other
names. It is the name I. Every other name can be given by
every man to the thing or being to which it belongs. I, on
the other hand, as the designation of a being, only has meaning when
the being gives itself this name. The name I can never
reach a man from without as a designation of himself. It is only to
himself that any being can apply this name. I am an I
only to myself; to every other being I am a you, and every
other being is a you to me.
This is the outer expression of a deeply significant truth. The real
being of the I is independent of all external things and for
this very reason no external thing or person can call it by its name.
Hence those religious faiths which have consciously maintained their
connection with the supersensible wisdom speak of the I as the
Unutterable Name of God. For this is what they mean to indicate.
Nothing external has access to the part of the human soul which is
here envisaged. Here is the hidden Holy of Holies of the
soul, to which no entry is possible save for a Being with whom the
soul is of like kind and essence. The God who dwells in man,--He
it is who speaks when the soul perceives and knows itself as
I. As the sentient soul and intellectual soul live in the
outer world, so does a third member of the soul immerse itself in the
Divine when the soul comes to a perception of its own essence and
nature.
One may all too easily be misunderstood at this point as though
one were asserting that the human I and God were one and the same. Yet
it is not said that the I is God, but only that it is of like
kind and essence with the Divine. When we say that a drop of water
taken from the ocean is of the same essence or substance as the ocean,
are we thereby stating that the drop is the ocean? If we must
use a comparison, we may put it thus: as the drop is to the ocean, so
is the I to the Divine. Man can find a Divine within himself,
because his own and most essential being springs from the Divine.
In this way man reaches up to a third member of his soul to an
inner knowledge and awareness of himself, even as through the astral
body he gains knowledge and awareness of the outer world. Hence too,
Occult Science calls this third member of the soul, the
Consciousness-Soul or Spiritual Soul. Thus Occult Science sees the
soul as consisting of three members: Sentient Soul, Intellectual Soul
and Spiritual Soul; just as the bodily nature consists of the three
members: Physical Body, Etheric Body and Astral Body.
Errors in psychological observation, not unlike those already
discussed with reference to memory, give rise to difficulties once
again when seeking insight into the nature of the I. Much that people
think they see may easily be taken by them for a refutation of what
has here been said, whereas in truth it serves only to confirm it.
Such is the case, for instance, with Eduard von Hartmann's remarks on
page 55 of his
Outline of Psychology.2
To begin with, says von Hartmann,
self-consciousness is older than that word I. The
personal pronouns are a comparatively late product in the evolution of
language, and have for language merely the value of abbreviation. The
word I is a short substitute for the proper name of the
speaker with this peculiarity, that every speaker applies it to
himself, no matter by what proper name the others call him. In animals
and in the untrained deaf and dumb, self-consciousness may evolve to a
high degree, even without the initial connection with a proper name.
Also the consciousness of the proper name may completely replace the
use of the word I when this is absent. The recognition of
this fact will suffice to remove the magic halo with which the little
word I is invested for so many people. The word
contributes nothing to the concept of self-consciousness; it receives
its own content purely from this concept.
We need not quarrel with such a point of view. We may well agree that
the little word I should not be invested with a magic halo
such as could, after all, only blur the thoughtful perception
of the truth. But the essence of a matter is not decided by the way in
which the word, the designation for it, has evolved. That the real
essence and nature of the I in self-consciousness is
older than the word I this is precisely the
point. The point is, moreover, that the human being needs this word,
with its unique properties, to express what he experiences in relation
to the outer world in a different way from an animal. Nothing is
ascertained about the nature of the triangle by showing how the word
triangle evolved. No more can the nature of the I
or Ego be determined by anything that we may know as to how the use of
the word I arose from other usages of words in the
evolution of language.
In the spiritual soul the real nature of the I first becomes
revealed. For while in sentient and intellectual activity the soul is
given up to other things, qua spiritual soul it seizes hold of
its own being. Hence too, the spiritual soul can only perceive the
I by dint of a certain inner activity. The mental images
and representations of external objects are formed as these objects
come and go; in the intellect they go on working by their own impetus.
But if the I is to perceive itself, it can no longer passively devote
itself to other things. To become conscious of its own essence and
being, it must first call it forth by dint of inner activity
out of the depths of its own nature. With the perception of the
I with self-contemplation an inner activity
of the I itself begins. By virtue of this activity, the perception of
the I in the spiritual soul has a fundamentally different
significance for man from the observation of what comes to him through
the three bodily members and the other two members of the soul.
The power which brings the I to manifestations in the spiritual soul
is indeed the self-same power which reveals itself throughout the
world. In the body however, and in the lower members of the soul, it
does not come forth directly but is revealed stage by stage in its
effects. The lowest revelation of it is through the physical body;
thence it arises, step by step, up to the content of the intellectual
soul. We might say that with each step in the ascent one of the veils
by which the Unmanifest is shrouded falls away. In the experience and
content of the spiritual soul, the Unmanifest in its own essence
enters unveiled into the inmost temple of the soul Admittedly it shows
itself as a mere drop out of the ocean of the all-pervading spiritual
essence. Yet it is here that man must first seize the spiritual
essence. He must know it by discovering it within himself; then he can
also find it in all other revelations.
What penetrates in this way like a drop into the spiritual soul is
what Occult Science calls the Spirit. Thus the spiritual soul is
connected with the universal Spirit which is the hidden reality within
all things manifest. If man would apprehend the hidden Spirit in all
the other manifestations of the World, he must needs do so in the same
way in which he apprehends the Ego in the
Consciousness-Soul the spiritual soul. He must
apply to the manifest world the same activity which has led him to a
perception of the I within himself. By this means he evolves to higher
stages of his being. To the bodily members and the members of the soul
he now adds something new.
The first step along this path consists in his conquering and making
his own all that lies hidden in the lower members of his soul He does
this by working upon his soul working upon it out of the inmost
resources of the Ego. We have a vivid picture of the way the human
being is engaged upon this work when we compare a man still given up
to lower ravings and so-called sensual pleasures with a high-minded
idealist. The former evolves into the latter in that he withdraws from
lower inclinations and turns to higher ones. In so doing, he works
from the Ego upon his soul, ennobling and spiritualizing it. The Ego
becomes master in the soul's life.
This process can go so far that no desires or enjoyments can gain
access to the soul without the I itself being the power which
makes possible their entry. And in this way the soul in its entirety
becomes at length a revelation of the I, as was hitherto the
spiritual soul alone . This is the meaning of all civilization, of all
the spiritual strivings and aspirations of mankind. There is this
constant endeavor for the mastery of the Ego. Every human being living
at the present time is engaged in this great work whether he
will or not, whether he is conscious of the fact or not.
This work leads on to ever higher levels of human nature. Through it
man evolves new members of his being, which lie as yet
unmanifest behind what is manifest in him. Moreover, it is not
only the soul over which a man can attain mastery by working upon it
from the Ego, till from the manifest within the soul the unmanifest
springs forth. He can extend this work still further, carrying it over
to the astral body. As he does so, the Ego gains power over the astral
body, entering into union with its hidden nature. The astral body thus
mastered and transformed by the I may be called the
Spirit-Self. (This is identical with what is called, in
connection with Oriental wisdom, Manas.) In the
Spirit-Self we have therefore a higher member of man's nature, one
which is already present in him germinally, as it were
and comes forth ever more and more as he continues to work upon
himself.
As man gains mastery over his astral body by penetrating to the hidden
forces that underlie it, so in the course of evolution does he gain
mastery over the etheric body too. The work upon the etheric body is
however more intense and more exacting. For what lies hidden in the
etheric body is shrouded beneath a double-veil; the hidden in the
astral body beneath a single veil only. We can get some idea of the
difference in the work upon the two bodies by noticing the changes
which take place in a human being in the course of his life. Think of
the qualities that are developed when the Ego works upon the soul. How
very different a man's pleasures and desires, his joys and sufferings
become! A man need only look back to the time of his childhood. What
was it that he then delighted in, or that caused him pain? And what
has he not learned and added to the faculties he had in childhood?
These changes are but an expression of the way the Ego has been
gaining mastery over the astral body. For the astral body is the
bearer of pleasure and pain, of joy and suffering. And now compare
with this the small extent to which certain other qualities of man
will change in course of time: his temperament, for instance, his
deeper traits of character. One who as a child is given to sudden fits
of anger will often show signs of violent temper right on into later
life. This is indeed so evident a fact that some thinkers tend
altogether to dismiss the possibility of change in the basic character
of any man. They assume it to be something that persists throughout is
life, though it may be revealed in varying directions. Such a judgment
rests however on insufficient observation. One who has sensitive
perception will realize that even the character and temperament of man
can change under the influence of his Ego, although the change is
comparatively slow. We might even say that the two types of change are
to one another as the movement of the hour hand to that of the minute
hand of a clock.
Now the forces that affect these changes in character or temperament
belong to the hidden domain of the etheric body. They are alike in
kind with the forces that govern the kingdom of life the forces
of growth and nourishment and those that serve the reproductive
process. All this will appear in the proper light in the further
course of this book.
It is not when man is merely given up to pleasure or suffering, to joy
or pain, that the Ego works upon the astral body; rather, when these
proclivities are actually being changed. In like manner, the work of the Ego
extends to the etheric body when it applies itself to changing the
qualities of character, temperament and so forth. And at this
transformation too, every man is working, whether or not he be aware of
it. The impulses that work most strongly in this direction are those
of religion. When the Ego lays itself open to these influences again
and again, they work within it as a power which reaches down to the
etheric body and transforms it, just as the lesser incentives of life
will bring about the changing of the astral body. These lesser
incentives, which come to man through learning, through thoughtful
reflection, through the refinement of his feelings and so on, are
subject to many variations; the religious emotions, on the other hand,
impress a kind of unity on all his thinking, feeling and willing. They
pour out as it were a common light, a light that is
single, over the whole life of the soul. A man thinks and
feels one thing to-day, another to-morrow. Many and varied
circumstances provide occasion for his thoughts and feelings. But one
who is aware through his religious life, of whatsoever kind it be, of
something that outlasts all changes, will refer to the same underlying
emotion his thoughts and feelings of to-day and his experiences of
to-morrow. A man's religious faith thus has a penetrating influence in
his soul's life an influence which grows as time goes on
through constant repetition. It thereby gains the power to work on the
etheric body. So do the influences of true art affect the human being.
When through the outer form, color or sound of a work of art man
penetrates with thought and feeling to the spiritual sources that
underlie it, the impulses the Ego thus receives do in effect reach the
etheric body. Thinking this through to its conclusion, we may gain
some idea of the immense significance of art in human evolution.
We have thus indicated some of the incentives enabling the Ego to work
at the etheric body. There are other such influences in human life,
though outwardly less evident than the ones here mentioned. From
these, however, it can already be seen that there lies hidden in man a
further member of human nature, which, once again, the Ego is
progressively elaborating. It is the second member of man's spiritual
being, and may be called the Life-Spirit. (It is identical
with what is named Budhi in connection with Oriental
wisdom. The term Life-Spirit is right and proper because the
same forces are working in it as in the life-body. Where they reveal
themselves as life-body the I of man is not yet active in them;
when they come to expression as Life-Spirit they are penetrated
through and through by its activity.
Man's intellectual development, the purification and refinement of his
feelings and of the manifestations of his will, are the measure of his
transmutation of the astral body into Spirit-Self. His religious
experiences, and other experiences too which life affords, become
engraved in his etheric body, changing it into Life-Spirit. In the
ordinary course of life all this goes on more or less unconsciously.
There is, on the other hand, what is called the Initiation of man.
Initiation consists in his being shown, through supersensible
knowledge, the means whereby he may take in hand with full
consciousness this work upon the Spirit-Self and the Life-Spirit. This
will be spoken of in subsequent chapters. For the moment, the point
was to show that in addition to the Soul and Body the Spirit too is at
work in man. In contrast to the transitory body, the Spirit belongs to
the Eternal in man. This too will emerge more clearly in further
course.
Now the activity of the Ego is not exhausted with the work upon the
astral and etheric bodies. It extends also to the physical. We see a
faint suggestion of the influence of the ego on the physical body
when, for example, a human being blushes or grows pale. For the
I is here the underlying motive power of a process taking place
in the physical body. If now, through the Ego's own activity and
initiative, its influence upon the physical body undergoes essential
changes, the Ego will then be working in unison with the hidden forces
of the physical body. It will be united, in effect, with the same
forces which bring about the physical processes in this body. The Ego
itself may then be said to be working upon the physical body to
transform it. But this expression must not be misunderstood. It must
not be supposed that the work is of a crude material kind. For what
appears crudely material in the physical body is merely what is
manifest in it. Behind this manifest there lie the hidden forces of
its being, and these are of a spiritual kind. Here we are speaking,
not of a working upon the material appearance of the physical body,
but of a spiritual working a working upon the invisible forces
to which the coming-into-being and also the decay of the physical body
are due. In ordinary life man can at most become very dimly conscious
of this work of the Ego upon the physical body. Full clarity is only
reached when under the influence of spiritual knowledge he takes the
work consciously in hand. It then becomes manifest that there is yet a
third spiritual member in the human being. It may be called, in
contrast to the physical man, the Spirit-Man. (In Oriental
wisdom it is called Atma.)
With regard to Spirit-Man it is easy to be led astray by the fact that
the physical appears to be the lowest member of the human being. One
finds difficulty in conceiving that work upon the physical body should
culminate in the highest member of man's nature. But for the very
reason that the physical body conceals beneath a threefold veil the
Spirit that is active in it, the highest form of human activity is
needed to unite the Ego with this hidden Spirit.
Thus in the light of Occult Science man appears as a being composed of
several members. Those of a bodily nature are: physical body, etheric
body and astral body. Those of the soul are: sentient soul,
intellectual soul and spiritual soul. In the soul the Ego sheds its
light. Lastly we have the spiritual members: Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit
and Spirit-Man.
From the above explanations it will be seen that the sentient soul and
the astral body are intimately united, forming in one respect a single
whole. The same is true of the spiritual soul and the Spirit-Self. For
in the spiritual soul the light of the Spirit arises, to radiate from
thence throughout the other members of man's nature. Taking this into
account, the constitution of the human being may also be described as
follows: The astral body and the sentient soul can be taken together
as a single member; likewise the spiritual soul and the Spirit-Self.
Lastly the intellectual soul, since it partakes of the nature of the
I since in a certain respect it is the I,
though not yet conscious of its spiritual being may be
designated simply as the I or Ego. We thus obtain the following
seven members of the human being:
Etheric body or life-body
Even for those accustomed to materialistic notions, this organization
of the human being according to the number seven would not have the
vaguely magical and superstitious quality often attributed to it, if
they could simply follow the given explanations, and not themselves
bring in the magical significance which they presume. We
speak of the seven colors of the rainbow, or of the seven notes of the
scale (treating the octave as a repetition of the keynote.) In no
other sense only from the standpoint of a higher kind of
observation do we refer to the seven members of man's being. As
light appears in seven colors and the musical scale in seven notes, so
does human nature for all its singleness and unity
appear in the seven members here described. In sound and color the
number seven does not imply any kind of superstition; nor does it in
the constitution of the human being. (On one occasion when this was
mentioned in a lecture, it was objected that the number seven does not
apply to color, since there are other colors beyond the
red and violet, only the human eye cannot perceive them. But even
taking this into account, the comparison is still valid; for the human
being too reaches beyond the physical body on the one hand and beyond
Spirit-Man on the other. Only these extensions of man's being are
spiritually invisible to the available methods of
spiritual observation, just as the colors beyond red and violet are
invisible to the physical eye. This remark was necessary because it is
too easily concluded that supersensible vision and the ideas to which
it leads are scientifically inexact. If one really enters into what is
here intended, it will in no case be found inconsistent with genuine
Science. There is no contradiction neither when scientific
facts are cited by way of illustration, nor when a direct relation to
the discoveries of natural Science is pointed out.)
Footnotes:
-
That the terms etheric body and
life-body are not intended as a mere revival of the long
since discarded idea of a vital force was pointed out by
the author in his earlier work, Theosophy.
-
E. von Hartmann: System der
Philosophie im Grundriss. Vol. III: Grundriss der
Psychologie.
Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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