II.
INTRODUCTORY EXPLANATIONS CONCERNING
THE NATURE OF MAN
Yesterday we
spoke in an introductory way of the aim and essence of the
spiritual-scientific movement; to-day we shall penetrate more
directly into the essence of this science. It has the
disadvantage that it may shock those who are not familiar
with these things, but we must have patience and realise that
many things which seem almost nonsensical at first, will in
the course of time appear well founded and
comprehensible.
Of the subject
which lies before us, we shall first of all consider the
nature of the human being.
Let us place
this human being before our soul. He is a most complicated
being, the most complicated being of all which we encounter
in the known world. Those who possessed a deeper insight have
therefore always called man a microcosm, in contrast to the
macrocosm, the universe. Paracelsus used a very fine
comparison expressing man's being in the form of an image. He
said: Contemplate Nature around you, and imagine every being
in Nature, every plant, animal and stone, as the letter of an
alphabet, and if you imagine a word written with these
letters, you obtain man.
We find, in
this connection, the confirmation of Goethe's words, that we
must understand the whole of Nature in order to understand
man.
To begin with,
my explanations will only be a kind of sketch of man's
nature. This will be related to the explanations of the
following days in the same way in which a charcoal sketch is
related to the finished picture.
If we
contemplate man with our physical senses, when he stands
before us as an earthly being, if our eyes perceive him and
our hands can touch him, we look upon him, from the
materialistic standpoint, as complete, as a whole being. Yet
a deeper, that is to say, a spiritual contemplation of the
world, sees in that which is perceptible to our physical
senses only a small part of the human being, that part which
the anatomist dismembers and dissects, The anatomist
endeavours to understand the human being through the
intellect, by dissecting the visible part into cells which
can only be perceived through the microscope, and he thinks
that he thus obtains an idea of the structure and activity of
the single organs.
Ordinary
science thinks that all this constitutes the physical body of
man. But at the present time, man's physical body is
frequently looked upon in the wrong way, for people think
that the human being standing before them only consists of a
physical body. This is not the case at all, for higher
members of human nature are intimately connected with the
physical body, are active through it, and it is through these
members that this body becomes manifest in the form in which
one human being confronts another. The physical body would
present an altogether different aspect were we to separate it
from the higher members of human nature. Man has this
physical body in common with the whole mineral world. All the
substances and forces which are active in mineral substances,
such as iron, arsenic, carbon, etc, are also active in the
substances of the human body and in the physical body of
animals and plants.
Our attention
is immediately drawn to the higher members of human nature if
we once realise the tremendous difference which exists
between man's physical body and the other physical substances
which surround us in the mineral world. You will know that
this wonderful structure of the physical body bears within it
what we call inner life, consciousness, desires, joy and
pain, love and hate; this physical body does not only contain
substances pertaining to the mineral world, but also
thoughts. You may indeed perceive the glow upon the
countenance, or the colour of the hair, but you do not
perceive what takes place within the physical body in the
form of inclinations and dislikes, joy and suffering, etc,
All this we do not see, nevertheless it takes place within
the covering (sheath) of the skin. This is the most evident
and irrefutable proof that there is something in addition to
the physical body, something besides mere physical
substances.
When you watch
a tear falling, this tear is but the physical expression of
sorrow, which is an inner process, Now look upon the mineral
world: these minerals are dumb! You cannot perceive in them
any joy or sorrow, nor any other inner life. The stone has no
feelings and no consciousness, such as we have. To a
spiritual scientist this stone appears like the nails upon
our fingers, or like the teeth. Observe one of your finger
nails: it has no feeling, no consciousness, nevertheless the
nail forms part of your being. There must be something within
us which brings about the formation of nails and teeth, and
in the same way there must be something in the world outside
which produces minerals. The nails themselves have no
consciousness, but they form part of something which is
endowed with consciousness. If a small beetle creeps over one
of our nails, this nail perhaps appears to it as a mineral.
This is the case when we creep over the earth, without being
aware that behind this mineral earth there is consciousness,
even as there is, consciousness behind our nails. Later on we
shall see what kind of consciousness lies at the foundation
of the mineral world. This Ego-consciousness of the mineral
world lies high above us, even as, for instance, the
consciousness, of the small beetle creeping over our nail is
surpassed by our own consciousness behind the nails.
The Rosicrucian
philosophy ascribes this consciousness of the mineral kingdom
to a world which it calls the WORLD OF INTELLIGENCE; there
lies the consciousness of minerals, and there lies also the
foundation of human intelligence, enabling us to form
thoughts. Yet the thoughts which live in us are very
deceptive, for human thoughts are related to the Beings of
the Intelligent World in the same way in which our shadow is
related to our real self. Even as the shadow upon the wall is
not I, but only my own shadow, so man's thoughts are only
shadow-pictures in the world of the spirit. But here on earth
we are able to grasp a thought because in the Intelligent
World there is a real Being who produces this thought. This
is a world in which our thoughts are real beings, whom we
encounter in the same way in which we here meet other human
beings. This Intelligent World of the Rosicrucians is for an
initiate the higher Devachan World, the Arupa Devachan of the
Hindoos, or the higher Mental World. When an initiate passes
through the physical world, every portion of the earth speaks
to him of life, and he experiences everywhere the
manifestations of another world. Since in our physical body
we are nothing but portions of the physical world, we also
have a subordinate physical consciousness, reaching as far as
the Intelligent World, that is to say, as far as the
consciousness of the mineral world.
Our physical
body is therefore, in its substances, of mineral nature, and
the consciousness of the physical body lies there where the
consciousness of the mineral world is to be found.
What is,
however, the difference between our physical body and a
mineral — for instance, a rock crystal? If we compare
our body with a crystal; we find upon comparison, that
our body is a most complicated thing, Let us picture to
ourselves the difference between a mineral and a living
being.
In regard to
the substances, there is no difference at all, for exactly
the same substances can be found in living beings as in
minerals, except that the structure is far more
complicated.
If you have
before you the mineral and its form, you will find that it
remains the same; if it only depends upon itself. But this is
not the case in a living being, in a plant, an animal, or a
human being. As soon as a substance takes on so complicated a
form that it can no longer be held together through its own
forces, in other words, that it would decay if left to
itself, there is something in this substance which prevents
it from decaying, and in that case we have before us what we
call a LIVING BEING.
Spiritual
science therefore says: A living being would decay into the
component parts of its substances if it were left to itself,
if within it there did not exist something which prevents
this decay. That which every moment prevents this living
being from decaying, the preventing factor of such a decay,
is what we call the etheric or the vital body. This is of an
entirely different nature from the substances which
constitute the physical body in every living being, and it
has the capacity to produce the most complicated physical
substances, to maintain them and to prevent their decay. What
a living organism thus reveals in a purely external form, is
what we call LIFE. This etheric or vital body, or this body
of formative forces, cannot be perceived by physical eyes,
but it can be perceived through the first degree of
clairvoyant vision, and it is the task of a clairvoyant to
develop himself so as to be able to perceive this etheric
body. Modern natural science does indeed try to discover the
etheric body, but it tries to form a conception of it in a
purely speculative way, by speaking, for instance of vital
force, or vital energy.
How does the
etheric body appear to a clairvoyant eye, that is to say, to
the clairvoyant?
If you
contemplate an object of the mineral world, for instance, a
rock crystal, through the eye of a clairvoyant, eliminating
for this purpose the physical substance, by deviating as it
were, your attention from it you would see nothing in the
space occupied by the physical crystal. This space is void.
But if you contemplate in the same way a living being, a
plant, an animal, or a human being, this space occupied by
the physical body will not be empty, for it will be filled up
by a kind of shape of light, and this is the above-mentioned
etheric body.
The etheric
body is not of the same kind in every living being; on the
contrary, it takes on very different forms, even as regards
shape and size in relation to the physical body of the living
being in question; this varies according to the stage of
development of the different beings. The etheric body of
plants has quite a different shape from the plants
themselves; the etheric body of animals has a greater
resemblance to the external shape, and the etheric body of
man appears as a shape of light which corresponds almost
exactly to the form of the physical body. If we contemplate,
for instance, a horse from this standpoint, we see its
etheric body protruding rather far from the head as a shape
of light, but it more or less resembles the shape of the
horse's head. But in the case of an average man of to-day we
can see his etheric body protruding only slightly above the
head and its sides. In regard to the substance of the etheric
body, one generally has quite wrong ideas. Even in theosophy
people write and talk a lot of confusing nonsense on the
etheric body, but this forms part of the “childhood
illnesses” of the Theosophical Society, and they must
be overcome. To obtain a correct idea of the substantiality
of the etheric body, please try to follow my thoughts in this
comparison: —
Imagine that
you have one hundred pounds and that you spend more and more:
Your property will grow smaller and smaller and finally you
will have nothing at all. This would be the least possible
substantial state of your property. But there is one still
less substantial, when you diminish still more the zero-stage
of your property by making debts and acquiring a
“negative” property. You can therefore reduce
your property still more, for you have less than nothing if
you borrow, for instance, ten pounds.
Or imagine this
applied to something else. Imagine a battle with its
tremendous noise; if you go further away from it the noise
will grow weaker and weaker; the silence will grow until you
finally hear nothing more. If you reduce still further this
stage of hearing nothing at all, then it will be more than
silent around you, more than soundless ... Such a
silence actually exists, and it is in the highest degree
blissful, though an ordinary person will not so easily be
able to imagine it.
Now imagine
these examples applied to the density of substance. At first
you will have the three generally known aggregate conditions:
the solid, liquid and gaseous conditions; but in accordance
with the above-mentioned example of the property, you should
not remain by these three conditions. Even as it is possible
to dilute the property into a “negative”
property, so the substance can also become thinner and
thinner, more and more diluted, beyond the gaseous stage.
Imagine therefore a kind of substance opposed to the physical
substance; this will give you a kind of idea of that which
constitutes the etheric body.
A
“negative” property has the opposite qualities of
a positive one, for a “plus” property makes us
rich, and a “minus” property poor; the more money
I have, the more I can buy; the less money I have, the less I
can buy. In the same way, the cosmic ether, of which the
etheric body of every living being is a part, has the
opposite qualities of physical substances.
Even as physical substance has the inclination to fall
asunder, to decay, so the etheric body has the inclination to
hold everything together, preventing the physical body, which
it permeates from decaying. As soon as the etheric body
abandons the physical body — in other words, when
physical death arises — the decomposition into the
elemental parts immediately sets in. We have thus traced
matter into a world where it has the opposite effect of our
physical matter.
When I say that
man's etheric body resembles his physical body, I mention a
fact which must be borne in mind and which must be mentioned
here, for it will give rise to important conclusions in
following lectures. This statement must be subjected to an
important limitation, for in reality the etheric body differs
greatly from the physical body and resembles it only in its
upper part, in the head; but it differs from it greatly in
regard to the fact that it is of opposite sex: man's etheric
body is feminine, and woman's etheric body is masculine.
Every human being is therefore bisexual; the sex of the
physical body is only an external expression, having its
opposite pole in the etheric body. Even as a magnet has a
north pole and a south pole, even as a magnet cannot have
only a north pole, so we also find two poles in man: the pole
and the counter-pole.
The etheric or
vital body, also called the body of formative forces,
therefore constitutes the second member of man's being, and
from birth to death it remains intimately connected with
man's physical body, and when the etheric body severs itself
from the physical body, this signifies death.
The physical
body is first built up by the etheric body; the etheric body
is, so to speak, the architect of the physical body. If you
wish to have a picture for this, take that of water and ice:
When the water cools down, it takes on another shape, it
becomes ice. Even as ice is formed out of water through
condensation, so the physical body is formed out of the
etheric body.
Ice —
water, physical — etheric body; this means, that the
forces of the etheric body have become tangible, physically
perceptible in the physical body. Even as the water already
contained the forces which then manifest themselves in the
solid ice, so the etheric body already contains, all the
forces needed for the structure of the physical body. The
etheric body thus already contains a force producing, for
example; the heart, or the stomach, or the brain, and so
forth. For each organ of our physical body there is a
predisposition in the etheric body; these predispositions are
not substances, but currents of forces.
Man has the
etheric body in common with every plant and animal, that is
to say, with every physical being manifesting LIFE,
Now we may ask:
Do the plants have a kind of consciousness such as we have
found for the world of the minerals? We have already seen
that spiritual research discovers the consciousness of
minerals in the higher Intelligent World, the origin of our
thoughts.
Even as our
fingers do not have a consciousness of their own, for the
consciousness of the finger forms part of man's
consciousness, so the plants form part of a state of
consciousness lying on the lower Intelligent World, in the
heavenly world (Rupa Devachan), When the spiritual
investigator enters this world, he encounters in it the souls
of the plants. There, the souls of the plants are Beings,
such as we are beings here on earth; and these Beings are
related to the plants in the same way in which man is related
to his fingers.
The
consciousness of plants is therefore rooted in this lower
Devachan World. In it are rooted the forces which lie at the
foundation of every growth and of every organic structure; in
it are also rooted the forces which build up our physical
body, that is to say, the forces of our etheric body, which,
we have already designated as the architect of our physical
body. This consciousness of the vegetable world is far higher
and wiser than the consciousness of man,
You will
realise this at once if you bear in mind the wise structure
not only of man's physical body, but of every being permeated
by an etheric body, that is to say, of every living being.
What enormous wisdom is needed to build up the simplest
physical body of any living being; not to mention the most
wonderful structure all living beings on earth; the human
body!
Observe, for
instance, man's upper thigh bone; how wonderfully and in
accordance with every rule of architecture the single little
osseous joists and beams are put together! In its upper part,
the upper thigh bone is far more complicated than it appears
to us externally; for it is composed of a trestle of beams
whose angles are arranged so skillfully that the weight of
the whole body is borne by the least quantity of matter;
truly a far greater work of art than the most complicated
bridge construction; no engineering skill in the world could
imitate it!
Or contemplate
the structure of the heart: it is built so wisely that man
with all his wisdom is but a child in comparison to that
wisdom which reveals itself in the structure of the heart.
How many things does the human heart withstand, though man's
foolish attempts to ruin it every day, for instance, through
our so-called stimulants — coffee, alcohol,
nicotine.
Forces reaching
as far as the astral world are needed for the construction of
such a wonderful edifice as our physical body; only the
Beings of this astral world are, trivially speaking, clever
enough to build up such a physical body.
And now we come
to the third member of man's being. Plants have a physical
body and an etheric body; but they lack something which both
man and the animals have; they have no pain, no desires, no
sufferings, and no sensations whatever. This is the
difference between man and animal on the one side, and the
plants on the other. The difference consists therein that
inner, processes take place in the animals and in man. From
processes observed in plants, modern science even seeks to
ascribe sensations to plants. It is a shame to see how
concepts are being misused! These are no inner processes, as
in the case of a sensation — such sensations might just
as well be ascribed to a blue litmus paper. Such mistakes
arise if sensations are looked for in the physical world; no
sensation can be found in the physical world in a phenomenon
of the kind which may be observed in certain plants, for we
must rise up to heavenly worlds if we wish to find sensations
in plants. To prevent misunderstandings, let me add that in
the case of so-called reacting plants, for instance, in the
mimosa, the sensitive process of reaction does not reflect
itself in the physical world as a sensation, but only in the
lower Intelligent World, the seat of the plant's
consciousness. Here, in the physical, world, only man and
animals have instincts and passions, joys and pains. Why?
— Because they have, in addition to the physical and
etheric body, also the astral body, the third member of human
nature.
To a
clairvoyant seer, the astral body appears in such a way as to
envelop the whole human being in an egg-shaped cloud, and
within this cloud every sensation comes to expression, every
instinct and every passion. The astral body is therefore the
carrier of desire, pain, suffering and joy. This third member
presents a different aspect from the etheric body and the
physical body. When man is asleep, only the physical and the
etheric body lie upon the bed, whereas the astral body and
the Ego are lifted out; but when the astral body and the
etheric body go out of the physical body, then death arises,
and with it the decay of the physical body.
Why is this
third member called astral body? — No more appropriate
name could be found for it! Why? — Because this member
has an important task which we must bear in mind. At night,
this astral body is not inactive, for then it works upon the
physical and etheric body, and the clairvoyant seer can
observe this. During the day, we use up our physical and
etheric body, for everything we do uses up the physical body,
and the expression of this is fatigue. Now the astral body
repairs what we use up during the day. The astral body really
eliminates fatigue while we are asleep. This shows the
importance and necessity of sleep. The clairvoyant seer can
do this repair-work consciously. The refreshing element of
sleep depends on the fact that the astral body has worked in
the right way upon the physical and astral bodies. But since
the astral body must first return into the physical and
etheric bodies, the refreshment of sleep arises gradually,
that is to say, about one hour after waking up.
Something else,
something important is also connected with the fact that the
astral body goes out during sleep. When the astral body
enters in connection with the external world during the
waking life of daytime, it must live together with the
physical and etheric body; but when it extricates itself from
the body, that is to say, during sleep, it is freed from
these fetters of the physical and etheric body. Then
something wonderful arises; the forces of the astral body
then reach as far as the starry world, where the soul-Beings
of the plants are to be found, and it draws its strength from
that world. The astral body reposes in a world where the
stars are embedded. This is the world of the Harmony of the
Spheres, according to the Pythagoreans. It is a reality and
not a mere fancy. If we live consciously in this world, we
can hear the harmonies of the spheres, we can hear the stars
resounding in their reciprocal forces and relations. In this
sense, Goethe was an initiate, and in this meaning we should
read the beginning of the Prologue in Heaven of
“Faust: —
“Die Sonne tönt nach alter Weise
In Bruderspharen Wettgesang,
Und ihre vorgeschriebene Reise
Vollendet sie mit Donnergang.
Ihr Anblick gibt den Engeln Stärke,
Wenn keiner sie ergründen mag;
Die unbegreiflich hohen Werke
Sind herrlich, wie am ersten Tag.”
(Translation after Latham)
“The sun, with many a sister-sphere,
Still sings the rival psalm of wonder,
And still his fore-ordained career
Accomplishes with tread of thunder.
The sight sustains the angels' prime,
Though none may spell the mystic story;
Thy Works, unspeakably sublime,
Live on, in all their primal glory.”
People do not
know Goethe, and as a rule they are not aware that he was an
initiate, for they simply say: A poet needs images ...
. Yet Goethe knew that the sun stands in the midst of a choir
and that it resounds as Spirit of the Sun! Goethe therefore
remains by this image and continues: —
“Horchet! Horcht dem Sturm der
Horen!
Tönend wird für Geistesehren
Schon der neue Tag geboren.
Felsentore knarren rasselnd,
Phöbus' Räder rollen prasselnd;
Welch Getöse bringt das Licht!
Es drommetet, es posaunet,
Auge blinzt and Ohr erstaunet,
Unerhörtes hört sich nicht.”
(Translation after Latham)
“Hark! The Hours in storm are winging,
And to spirit ears loud-ringing,
Now the new-born day is springing.
Rocky portals clang asunder,
Phoebus' wheels roll forth in thunder,
What a tumult brings the light!
Loud the trump of dawn hath sounded,
Eye is dazzled, ear astounded,
The Unheard no ear may smite.”
During the
night, the astral body lives in this world of stars. During
the day it comes into a kind of disharmony of wordly things,
whereas at night, during sleep, it is once more embedded in
the world of the stars. And in the morning it returns with
the forces which it brings along from this world. From the
astral world we bring with us the harmony of the spheres,
when we awake from sleep! The real home of the astral body is
the world of the stars, the astral world, and that why it is
called astral body.
Now we have
learned to know three parts of human nature; the physical
body; the etheric body and the astral body.
The fourth
part, the Ego, we shall learn to know next time. The Ego is
that member which raises man above the animal and makes of
him the crown of creation.
The animal does
not have man's consciousness, although it has a certain kind
of consciousness, just as we have seen it in the case of the
plant and of the mineral; but the consciousness of animals
lies in the astral world. Man's fourth member, the Ego,
constitutes with the other three members, the, “holy
fourfold essence” of man, of which all the ancient
Schools speak.
Man therefore
has the physical body in common with the mineral, the etheric
body in common with the plants, and the astral body in common
with the animal. He alone has an Ego, and this raises him
above the others. In man we find, as it were, the essence of
everything which we see spread out round about us. In fact, a
microcosm! We must therefore first learn to know our
environment, if we wish to know man.
We
should therefore think of these three members, of these
three bodies, as sheaths, woven in different regions, and we,
that is to say, our Ego, lives in these sheaths, together
with the higher members of human nature, together with our
immortal part.
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