THE ETHERIC BEING
IN THE PHYSICAL HUMAN BEING
Lecture by Dr.
Rudolf Steiner
Berlin, 20 April, 1915
[From stenographic notes not revised by the
lecturer.]
To begin with, let
me remind you of something which most of you already know from
previous lectures. When the human soul unfolds in the way which I
have so often described even in public lectures, we arrive at a
different picture of the world. The essential thing is that our
soul follows, as it were, the path leading from the physical into
the spiritual world. When the soul progresses in its development,
the physical world gradually transforms itself and assumes the
aspect of a spiritual world. We might say: Little by little, the
characteristics of the physical-sensory world vanish and on the
horizon of our consciousness appear forms, beings, and events
pertaining to the spiritual world.
An important thing
which now rises up in our consciousness with everything that
appears before us, might be described as follows: We ourselves
undergo a change — in our own sight, of course, we
ourselves change, and even the surrounding world which exists in
our physical-sensory perception undergoes a change. Let us first
consider what lies nearest to us, the earthly plane.
Man really knows
very little of the world which transcends the earth, if during
his earthly existence he does not abandon his habitual attitude,
if he remains within this whole way of looking at the world,
which makes him grow together with his earthly life. When we
penetrate into the spiritual world (we are then outside the
physical body) and look back upon our body, upon our whole
physical life, or in general upon our whole being, it is evident
that we grow richer and richer; our content grows, our whole
being expands and becomes a world. Man himself actually grows to
the size of a whole world, when we thus look back upon him.
This is the true
significance of something which we have often emphasized: Through
spiritual development we identify ourselves with the world. We
perceive a new world which seems to come out of our own being. We
expand into a world. The earth instead loses is solid substance,
or what we are accustomed to see physically — mountains,
rivers, etc. This vanishes and we gradually begin to experience
ourselves within the earth — I purposely say within the
earth — we feel as if we lived within a great organism. We
are outside our own world, and our inner world, this inner
reality, now becomes an immense world, whereas the physical world
which surrounded us becomes a Being and we live within it. This
is what we should be able to conceive. When we transcend our own
self, the human world expands into an immense world, and we
ourselves grow into the organism of the earth; within it we
experience ourselves in the same way in which our finger would,
for example, feel that it belongs to our organism — if the
finger were endowed with consciousness.
Man passes through
this experience and this has often been expressed by more
poetical natures, by people with a deeper capacity of feeling.
The moment of waking up in the morning has often been compared
with the awakening of Nature outside; the daily course of human
life, with the sun's ascent to the zenith, and sunset with the
need to sleep which appears in the form of fatigue.
These similes are
born out of the feeling that man stands within the life of
Nature. Nevertheless they are not worth much, for they do not
touch the essential. I have therefore told you many times that a
comparison really in keeping with the facts must differ from the
one in which Nature's course of events is compared with the
processes of sleeping and waking. The course of human life during
the space of 24 hours should instead be compared with the course
of events upon the earth during a whole year. The simile will
agree if we take the whole year and compare its events with the
processes of waking up and falling asleep which take place within
us in the course of 24 hours. It is quite wrong to compare man's
waking life from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling
asleep with the summer season, for man's waking condition
corresponds to winter, when Nature outside is awake, and summer
should be compared with man's sleeping condition. If comparisons
are drawn in, we should therefore say:
Man falls asleep; i.e., he
passes over into the summer season of his personal existence;
whereas his waking condition would more or less correspond to
autumn, winter, and early spring.
Why is this in
keeping with the actual facts? Because when we develop in the
manner described and become part of the whole earthly organism,
we should indeed consider that in the summer the Spirit of the
Earth is asleep; summer is the earth's real sleeping condition
and the great consciousness of the Spirit of the Earth then
withdraws. In the spring the Spirit of the Earth begins to
slumber and it wakes up again in the autumn, when the first frost
falls; it then begins to think and lives through its thinking,
waking condition. This is daytime for the Spirit of the Earth, in
the course of the year.
When we look back
upon the sleeping human being, we see that when he falls asleep
and goes out with his Ego and astral body, there arises a kind of
vegetable activity in the organism abandoned by the astral body
and Ego. There is activity in man's inner being and we feel that
the first moments of sleep are like the beginning of a vegetative
process; to the clairvoyant, sleep appears as if the body were
pervaded by the growing life of plants. Imaginative knowledge
enables us to perceive this. This vegetation, however, does not
grow in the same way as that upon the earth. It is possible to
describe this, to meditate over such things, for then we progress
further and further.
Upon the earth,
the plants grow out of the soil. But it is otherwise when we
observe the “vegetable growth” in man. There the
plants grow in such a way that their roots are outside and grow
into man; their flowers should therefore be sought in man.
Sleeping man is indeed a beautiful sight — I mean, to the
clairvoyant. He is like the earth with its budding, greening
life, but with a whole vegetation growing into it. What disturbs
the view is that at the same time we have the impression that the
astral body is gnawing at the roots. This appears in the course
of sleep. The animals consume, eat up what summer produces upon
the surface of the earth, and we perceive that our astral body
behaves like the animal world, except that it gnaws at the roots.
If this were not so, we could not unfold the nucleus, the kernel,
which we take with us through the portal of death. What the
astral body thus appropriates, is what we really take with us
through the portal of death, as harvest of our life.
I am describing to
you facts which rise up before the clairvoyant consciousness. And
even as winter comes over the fruits of the earth and covers them
with frost, I might say, so the astral body and the Ego, when
diving down into the etheric and physical body cover with frost,
freeze up the vegetation or spiritual plant growth which arises
in our organism during the night.
What I described
to you as the Spirit of the Earth, is really a personality, like
man — except that the Spirit of the Earth leads a different
kind of life. One year is one of his days, and in the Spirit of
the Earth we gradually learn to recognize the Impulse which I
described to you when speaking of the Impulse of Golgotha. We
find in it that vivifying power which did not live in the earth
before the Mystery of Golgotha, and within it we feel in the
safekeeping of the Spirit who passed through the Mystery of
Golgotha. We grow aware of this when we really penetrate into
that condition in which the earth becomes for us a Being to whom
we belong in the same way in which a finger belongs to our
organism. In the present time, occult immersion in the world
cannot help taking on the character of religious immersion in the
divine essence that streams through the world and spiritualizes
it. Real knowledge of the spiritual world cannot therefore take
away religious feeling; on the contrary, it deepens it.
I wished to speak
of the true aspect of things when one enters the image world of
spiritual reality; for what we appear to our own sight, in our
ordinary physical consciousness, is merely a reflexion, only an
inner kernel — but I must immediately add that this
expression is not quite appropriate, for it is difficult to coin
words for such significant facts; what we appear to be in our own
sight always remains connected with us when we are outside the
body with our soul being. It is therefore not correct to say that
this is a kernel, for a fruit has its peel outside and its best
substance inside — in man, on the other hand (in the
spiritual, things are frequently reversed) his best part is
outside and his peel inside; what exists inside is only his peel,
whereas the spiritual is something which may spatially be
described as peel.
When we follow the
path leading into the spiritual world we learn that man is not a
simple, but a very complicated being. We gathered that man and
everything that lives in him participates in all the worlds which
are accessible to him. With his physical body he belongs to the
physical world; with his soul he belongs to the soul world; with
his spirit he belongs to the spiritual world. We reach into these
three worlds.
We know that when
we enter the spiritual world we really experience ourselves in a
multiplied form. What is so alarming is that the oneness, the
unity is then split up, so that we feel as if we belonged to many
worlds. It is possible to bring forward different points of view,
but I will now draw attention to one aspect and refer to
explanations repeatedly given in recent lectures.
When studying
human life from the inner aspect, we should look upon it as a
structured life; but when we leave the body, the human being
immediately appears structured, subdivided into four parts. We
have, to begin with, the force which lies at the foundation of
memory. Through memory, things experienced in the past rise up in
our consciousness. Memory brings a connected sequence into life,
so that our existence from birth to death becomes a whole, a
unity. — A second element is what we call thinking, our
representing power — I cannot go into further details, this
is not the essential point just now, but our thinking activity is
something that lives in the present. And if we proceed further,
we come to feeling, and still further to the will. When we look
into ourselves, our own inner being takes on the aspect of
memory, thinking, feeling and will.
We may now ask:
What is the essential difference between these four soul
activities? Ordinary psychology enumerates, but does not
differentiate them. Truth can only be reached if we are able to
penetrate into the essence of these four soul activities, and
there we discover that the will is, as it were, the infant among
them; feeling is older, thinking still older, and the activity
that lives in memory is the oldest, the old man among our soul
activities. You will grasp this more clearly from the following
standpoint:
We have often
explained that man did not begin his development upon the earth,
for the evolution of the earth was preceded by the old Moon
evolution, the old Sun evolution, and the old Saturn evolution.
Man did not first come into being upon the earth, but in order to
become man he had to pass through the evolutions of Saturn, Sun
and Moon.
You see, what we
unfold in our will, the will as it exists today, arose upon the
earth; its development is not complete and it is altogether a
product of the evolution of the earth. During the Moon evolution
man was not an independent volitional being; the Angels willed
for him. The will rayed in, as it were, when the evolution of the
earth began. During the Moon evolution, man was already endowed
with feeling; he was endowed with thinking during the Sun
evolution, and with memory during the Saturn evolution. If you
now connect these things with other facts described in my
“Akasha Chronicle” and in
“Occult Science” you will discover an important
connection. The first foundation of man's physical body arose
during the Saturn stage of evolution; the first basis of man's
etheric body arose during the Sun stage of evolution; during the
Moon stage of development arose the first foundation of the
astral body, and the Ego began to unfold during the earthly stage
of development.
Let us now
consider separately the activity which we designate as memory.
What is memory? The picture of an event which we experienced
remains behind in the soul, in the same way in which something of
the thoughts of a book's author remain in the book we read. When
you read a book, you may think through (not always, but this does
not count now) everything thought out by the author of the book.
Memory is a subconscious reading activity. In memory remain the
signs which the etheric body engraved upon the physical body. You
may have lived through something years ago and gathered from it
the necessary experience; what remains behind is the impression
which the etheric body engraved upon the physical body, and when
you remember this past experience your memory process is a
subconscious act of reading.
The mysterious
processes which take place in the human organism, in order that
the etheric body may engrave upon it the signs which lie at the
foundation of memory, began to form part of man's structure
during the ancient Saturn evolution. We have in fact within us
this secret Saturn-organism and its existence reveals a life and
being of its own. Upon it the etheric body writes down the signs
connected with man's experiences in the external world, so that
these signs may be drawn up again from memory. That man carries
out this subconscious writing activity is essentially dependent
on the fact that during his first seven years of life, the body,
or that part of his physical body which receives these
impressions or signs, is still elastic. Consequently we should
not — as explained in my book
“The Education of the Child” — maltreat a
child by developing its power of memory. During the first seven
years, the essential thing is to leave the child's elastic
organism to its own elemental forces, without maltreating it. We
should therefore tell a child as much as possible, but without
stressing the point that it should unfold its memory power
artificially. In regard to the unfolding of memory, the child
should instead be left to its own resources. Spiritual science
may thus be of immense importance in pedagogical life.
Even as the power
of memory is one of human nature's oldest components, so the
activity which lies at the foundation of thinking is part of
something which we may designate as having been formed upon the
Sun. This too is relatively old. The Sun forces organized man's
etheric body so as to enable it to exercise this peculiar
activity of thought, or representation. This will show you that
we must go far back into cosmic evolution in order to give an
answer to the question: Why is man able to remember things, and
why is he able to think? — We must go back to the
evolutions of Saturn and of the Sun.
If we consider
man's feeling life, we only have to go back as far as the Moon
evolution, and for his volitional life as far as the evolution of
the Earth. This will enable you to understand many things. In the
case of people who were strongly moulded by their preceding
incarnation, who are not elastic, but have a sharply moulded
form, many things will be pressed into their organism; they will
be people endowed with an almost automatic memory, but with their
thinking power they will not be able to unfold much in a
productive way. Whereas the power of memory should be connected
chiefly with the etheric body, and man's feeling life with the
astral body, his volitional life should be connected chiefly with
the Ego. Man says “I” to himself only because he is a
being endowed with will. If he had merely the power of thinking,
his life would only be like a dream.
We thus have, I
might say, an organic connection of inner soul activities which
were impressed on our soul's being in the course of development.
In regard to the will, I have already explained that it only
arose during the development of the Earth. Upon the Moon, higher
spiritual hierarchies, the Angeloi, still willed for man. During
the Moon evolution, man's whole will was still of such a kind
that when the clairvoyant consciousness tried to recall this
state of existence, it perceives that although the will then
existed upon a higher stage, it lived in man instinctively, in
the form in which it now exists in the animals of the earth. The
animal necessarily follows its hot and whirling instincts and it
lives in the common will of its species.
Even as higher
spiritual beings, the Angeloi, willed for us during the Moon
evolution, so higher spiritual beings are now at work in
determining our Karma from one incarnation to the other. The
Angeloi do not work in our will, but in the uninterrupted stream
of our Karma. Even as during the Moon evolution man felt that his
will was not his own, but that of an Angel, so here on earth we
do not think that it is we who shape our Karma; this is ruled by
the spiritual beings of higher hierarchies. Only if our will can
be silenced, as it were, a gleam of the course of Karma, which
ordinarily remains concealed, may shine through and reveal itself
even to a non-clairvoyant consciousness.
Bear clearly in
mind what I have explained to you: That in man a nucleus unfolds
which passes through the portal of death and enters the spiritual
realm; this nucleus is the bearer of our Karma. What each one of
us will do tomorrow is determined by Karma and already lives in
us today. If the will had not to be unfolded here on earth, we
might be able to see through our Karma. We could see through it
to the extent that under certain conditions it might be possible
to foresee the near future. But the will which penetrates into
the stream of Karma darkens our outlook into the events which may
happen to us, for example tomorrow. Only if the will is
completely silenced, something of what will happen — not
through us, but to us — may gleam through.
Let me give you an
example, related by Erasmus Franceschi and based on truth. In his
youth, Erasmus Franceschi lived with an aunt. Once he dreamed
that a man whose name he also heard in his dream would fire at
him, but that he would not be killed, because his aunt would save
his life. This is what he dreamed. On the following day, before
anything had happened, he told his aunt what he had dreamed. She
was greatly alarmed and said that quite recently a man had been
shot in the neighbourhood, and she entreated her nephew to remain
at home, so that nothing might happen to him. She gave him the
key to the apple pantry, so that he might always go up and fetch
himself some apples. He went to his room and sat down at his desk
to read. But at that moment the book did not interest him as much
as the pantry key in his pocket which his aunt had given him. He
decided to go upstairs to the apple room. No sooner had he moved,
than a shot was fired, aimed in such a way that the bullet would
have struck his head, if he had still been reading. If he had not
got up, the bullet would have gone through his head. In the
neighbour's house, the manservant, whose name was the one which
Franceschi had heard in his dream and whom he did not know, was
cleaning two guns and was not aware that they were loaded. A gun
went off, and if Franceschi had not risen from his chair at that
very moment, in order to go to the apple pantry to which his aunt
had given him the key, he would unfailingly have been killed. The
dream therefore faithfully rendered what would have taken place
on the following day.
You see, of this
event we may say that the will had nothing to do with it, for
Franceschi could not influence the events with his own will; he
could not protect himself, yet something entered his Karma so
that he could live on. In his case, the spiritual being that
moulded his Karma had already had the rescuing idea. The dream
was foresight of the spirit controlling Karma, who saw what would
have occurred on the following day, and because that young man's
soul had, almost through natural meditation, passed through a
certain deepening, something arose which may be compared with
certain things in external life. In regard to external life man
can prophesy only in a very limited measure. But in a certain
sense we are all prophets. For example, we all know that tomorrow
at a certain moment the light will dawn, or a man crossing a
field will be able to foretell what it will look like tomorrow
... yet he will not be able to foresee whether rain will fall
upon it tomorrow. The same applies to inner life. Man lives in
accordance with his will, and Karma is contained in his will.
Through feeling, we may learn to know the things which lie
closest to us, and in the same way a light may be kindled in the
souls of certain people who have passed through an inner
deepening, so that they can see events in which the will must
remain silent. In the study of spiritual science it is important
to bear in mind such things, because they show us that in man's
inner being lives something which he is unable to survey through
his ordinary consciousness and which points to the future. Karma
then penetrates through the silenced will.
Everything which
thus rises up before our soul in spiritual-scientific research,
shows us that what we call the great illusion chiefly consists
therein that with his ordinary consciousness man cannot survey
his own being; he belongs to the whole universe, although his
ordinary consciousness only enables him to see the shell,
enclosed, as it were, by the skin, etc. But what he thus sees in
an enclosed state is only an extract of what he really is, for
man is as great as the universe. Even in ordinary life we look
back upon ourselves from outside.
When we clearly
realize these things, we gradually begin to feel that within us
lives something which we may designate as man's etheric body.
Indeed, even in our ordinary life it is possible at least to
observe this second man — the etheric being in man's
physical being, but for this it is necessary to observe life in a
far more delicate way than is usually the case.
Think, for
example, that you are lying lazily in bed in the morning and
would much rather remain in bed than get up; indeed it costs you
an effort to get up. You will find it difficult to get up if you
only rely on what lives in you. But imagine that you are suddenly
struck by the thought that in the room next to yours there is an
object which you were expecting for some days. A thought
connected with something outside rises up in you, and this will
work almost like a miracle. For you will see that it is even
capable of driving you out of bed!
What has happened?
When you awoke and dived down into your physical body, you felt
what the physical body can make you feel; but this cannot inspire
you with the thought of getting up. The etheric body acts
independently, when you draw its attention to something which is
outside. This example will show you how you may confront your
physical body with the etheric body, and how the etheric body
literally takes hold of you and pushes you out of bed.
A definite
sensation may be reached in regard to our own being: that of
looking at ourselves and distinguishing between two kinds of
human activities: the things we do in the ordinary hubbub of
life, and those in which we feel that an inner activity asserts
itself. These are, of course, finer observations, and if we want
to, we may always deny them. But our observation should be
adapted to life and we should really gain insight into life as it
reveals itself to us. This will push our feeling in the right
direction. We should realize that the path leading into the
spiritual world cannot be discovered all at once; it leads out of
the world little by little, so that we ascend to what I have
described before, when that which used to be our world loses its
lifeless character and becomes a living being.
We thus grow
together cognisantly with the spiritual world. We grow together
with something of which we may say that it forms part of us when
we discard what is given to us with the instrument of the
physical body and what essentially constitutes our life from
birth to death. When passing through the portal of death we grow
into a world which very much resembles the one described just
now, which reveals itself to higher knowledge. And then we notice
an infinitely important thing: If we wish to penetrate in the
right way into the world we enter through the portal of death, we
need — in the same way in which a light is needed in a dark
room — something which we unfold here on earth in the
innermost depths of our soul. Life on earth should not be looked
upon as a prison. In the natural course of development man must,
of course, pass through the portal of death and he must pass
through the life between death and a new birth, but the whole of
life exists in order that each part of our being may add to us
something we need, something new, and in the present cycle of
evolution, life on earth should give us something that flames
like a torch, so that we do not simply live through our spiritual
existence, but recognize it; our life in the spiritual world will
then be flooded with light. The light which illumines us is the
imperishable element which we gain from birth to death for our
life between death and a new birth.
In connection with
these things, we should always say that particularly in the
present time it is important that as many people as possible
should grasp that the truths connected with the spiritual world
which we learn to know in the physical world, within the physical
body, become a flaming light, when we live in the spiritual
realms. All the difficulties which more developed human beings
must encounter in the present time, admonish us in a certain way
to deepen our soul and immerse it in spiritual feelings, in
spiritual vision. Consciousness of the fact that a
spiritual-scientific deepening is needed in the present time and
that the difficulties of our age are a warning, induce us to
conclude with words which we always pronounce before parting. I
hope that we shall be able to continue these lectures in a not
too distant future. Let us now close with the words:
Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
aus dem Leid Verlass'ner,
aus des Volkes Opfertaten —
wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht,
lenken Seelen geistbewußt
ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.
(From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
from the sorrow of the abandoned,
from the people's sacrifices —
shall spring forth a spirit fruit,
if souls, spirit-consciously direct
their mind (thoughts) to the spirit realm).
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