CHAPTER II
N this and the succeeding chapters we shall make it a special point to
consider the wisdom of the Eastern world, that is to say humanity's treasures
of ancient wisdom in general, in the light which may be kindled by the
knowledge of the Christ impulse and all that the course of the
centuries has gradually evolved from this Christ impulse in the form
of the wisdom of the Western world. If Anthroposophy is to be a
living thing it must not consist in views and opinions of the higher
worlds which are already in existence, taken from history and then
taught, but it must comprise all the knowledge obtainable by us today
about the nature of the higher worlds. Not only in olden times were
there people who could turn their gaze towards these higher worlds
and see them in the same way as we see the outer world with our
physical eyes and understand it with our intellect. There have been
such people at all periods of human evolution and there are such
today. Humanity never has been dependent on the mere study of truths
recorded in history, nor is man dependent on receiving these
teachings about the higher worlds from any special physical place.
Everywhere in the world the current of higher wisdom and knowledge
may be tapped. It would be no wiser for our schools to teach
mathematics or geography today by means of old documents, written in
ancient times, than it is for us, when studying the great wisdom of
the super-sensible worlds, to consider only ancient, historical
accounts. Therefore it will be our present task to approach the
things of the higher worlds, the beings of the super-sensible regions
themselves, to review many things that are known, less known, or
quite unknown about these higher worlds, and then to ask ourselves
what the people of older and of ancient times had to say about these
things. In other words, we shall allow Western wisdom to pass before
our souls, and then enquire how that which we learn to know as
Western wisdom accords with what we may learn to know as Eastern
wisdom. The point is that the wisdom of the super-sensible worlds, if
related to man, may be grasped by the intellect. It has often been
emphasised by me, that any unprejudiced mind may grasp and comprehend
the facts of the higher worlds. Although this unprejudiced common
sense is a very rare faculty in our present time it does exist, and
whoever is willing to exercise it can understand everything that is
related of the result of clairvoyant investigation. It is true that
these facts of the higher worlds can only be collected and
investigated by so-called clairvoyant research, through the ascent
into the higher worlds of people who have prepared themselves for
this special purpose. And as in these higher worlds beings live
which, in relation to man, we may call spirits or gods, the
investigation of the higher worlds is in reality an association of
the clairvoyant or the initiate with spirits or gods. Consequently a
clairvoyant can only investigate the higher worlds by ascending the
stages which lead to intercourse with the spirits or gods.
Much
already has been said about these things at different times and
places, and only the most essential part is here repeated. The first
requisite for a person who wants to become clairvoyant in order to
penetrate the higher worlds is nothing less than the acquisition of
the faculty of seeing, knowing and experiencing without the help of
the outer senses, not only without the help of instruments which have
been built into our body such as eyes and ears, etc., but also
unaided by the instrument which more especially serves our intellect,
namely, our mind. No more than we can see the super-sensible worlds
with physical eyes, or hear in them with physical ears, can we learn
to know them through the intellect which is bound up with our
physical brain. Thus man has to become independent of the activity
which he exercises when using his physical senses and his physical
brain.
Now
we know already that in normal human life there is a condition in
which man is outside the instrument of his physical body, viz. the
condition of sleep. We know that of the four principles of human
nature, the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the
Ego, the latter two, the astral body and the Ego, gain a certain
independence during sleep. During our waking life, from morning till
we fall asleep at night, they are closely connected with the other
two principles, with the physical and etheric bodies. But when we are
asleep these four principles separate in such a way that the physical
body with the etheric body remain lying on the bed, and the astral
body and the Ego are liberated and live in another world. Thus in the
normal course of his life man is for some hours out of every
twenty-four in a condition in which he is free from the instruments
which are built into his physical body; but he has to pay for this
liberation from his sense-body in a certain way with darkness; he
cannot perceive the world in which he lives during sleep.
The organs and
instruments necessary for man when he wishes to see in the spiritual
world, in which he lives with his Ego and his astral body at night,
must of course be built into his astral body — relatively
speaking into his ego. And the difference between a normal person of
our time and a clairvoyant investigator consists in the fact that the
astral body and the ego of the normal person are in a certain way
unorganised and lacking organs of perception when they withdraw from
the physical and etheric bodies at night, while in the astral body
and ego of the clairvoyant investigator organs have been similarly
developed to the eyes and ears of the physical body, though the
organs are of a different kind. Thus the first task which the person
who wants to become a clairvoyant investigator has to undertake is
that of building into his hitherto unorganised astral body, and ego,
spiritual eyes, spiritual ears, etc., and of doing all that is
necessary to develop these spiritual organs. But that is not the only
thing necessary. Let us suppose that a person has progressed so far
that, by the methods, which we shall presently mention, he has
equipped his astral body and ego with spiritual eyes and ears, etc.
Such a person would then have an astral body different from that of
an ordinary person since he would have an organised astral body. He
would, however, not yet be able to see in the spiritual world, or at
any rate he would not be able to reach certain stages of seeing.
Therefore something more is necessary. If in our present conditions
man really wishes to ascend to conscious clairvoyance, it is not only
necessary for spiritual eyes and ears to be developed in his astral
body, but also for all that is thus plastically formed in this astral
body to be imprinted upon the etheric body, even as a seal is stamped
on sealing-wax. Real, conscious clairvoyance begins when the organs,
the spiritual eyes and ears, etc. formed in the astral body imprint
themselves on the etheric body.
Thus
the etheric body has to help the astral body and the ego if
clairvoyance is to be brought about; or in other words, all the
principles of man's nature that we possess — the ego,
astral body and etheric body, with the sole exception of the physical
body, have to work together to this end. Now there are greater
difficulties for the etheric body than for the astral body in this
respect. For the astral body and ego are, we might say, in the
fortunate position of being free from the physical body once every
twenty-four hours. From morning when we wake till evening when we go
to sleep they are united with the physical body, and, all that time
the astral body and the ego are bound up with the forces of the
physical body, which prevent the astral body and ego from developing
their own organs. The astral body and ego are delicate soul-beings;
they follow, by their own elasticity, the forces of the physical
body, conforming themselves to it and taking on its form. Therefore
at night the astral body and ego of normal persons still have these
forces of the physical body within themselves as after-effects, and
only by special measures can we free the astral body and ego from
these after-effects and enable the astral body to develop its own
form, that is to say its spiritual eyes and ears, etc. But we are at
least in the fortunate position of having the astral body free in the
course of every twenty-four hours; that is to say we have the
possibility of working on it in such a way that it no longer follows
the elasticity of the physical body at night but its own elasticity.
The
preparatory exercises taken up by the clairvoyant investigator
consist essentially in spiritual activities performed during waking
life, which strongly influence the astral body and the ego, and which
have such strong inner effects that when at the moment of falling
asleep the astral body and ego withdraw from the physical and etheric
bodies, they experience the after effect of what has been done by way
of special preparation for clairvoyant research.
Let us now consider two cases.
The ordinary person living a normal life surrenders himself from morning
till evening to the impressions of the outer world, which works on
the outer senses and the intellect. He falls asleep at night, his
astral body goes out of his physical body and is then given over
entirely to the experiences of the day, following the elasticity of
the physical body, but not its own. But when through meditation,
concentration and other exercises given to those who wish to tread
the path to higher knowledge a person strongly influences his soul,
that is his astral body and ego, during waking life; in other words,
when he has certain moments which he sets apart from ordinary daily
life and in which he does something entirely different from the
pursuits of ordinary waking life, and when in these particular
moments he does not surrender himself to what the outer world has to
say to the senses and to the intellect, but to what is a revelation
from and a product of the spiritual worlds, a marked change takes
place. When a man surrenders himself to such things, when he spends
part of his daily waking life in meditation, concentration and other
exercises, for however short a time it may be, they affect his soul
so strongly that the astral body experiences the effects of this
meditation, concentration, etc., at night when it leaves the physical
body, and follows an elasticity different from that of the physical
body. The method for the attainment of clairvoyant powers employed by
the teachers of this research is drawn from the knowledge which has
been tested for thousands of years in the way of exercises,
meditations and concentrations, which have to be followed in waking
life in order that they may have after-effects in sleeping life and
produce a different organisation of the astral body. It is a great
responsibility, which the person who gives such exercises to his
fellow men takes upon himself. Such exercises are not invented, they
are the result of spiritual labour in the mysteries, in the occult
schools. It is known that that which is prescribed in these exercises
works on the soul in such a way that when this soul withdraws from
the physical body in sleep it develops its spiritual eyes and ears
and its spiritual thinking in the right way. If something wrong is
done, or wrong exercises are practiced, certain results also follow.
Effects do not fail to appear, but in this case abnormal forms (or if
we want to use an expression of the sense-world we might say
‘unnatural’ forms) are built into the astral body. What
is the meaning of unnatural forms being built into the astral body?
It means that forms are built into it, which contradict the great
universe, which do not harmonise with it. It would correspond in this
sphere to building organs in our physical body which could not hear
outer sounds in the right way or see the outer light in the right
way, and which would not be in accord with the outer world. Through
wrong meditation and concentration man would therefore be brought
into a position of contradiction to the universe, with regard to his
astral body and his ego; and he would, instead of receiving organs
through which the spiritual world could gradually reveal itself, be
shattered by the influences of the spiritual world. He would
experience these influences of the spiritual world not as something
which benefited and enriched him, but as something which shattered
his life, and, if the methods were quite wrong, tore his being
asunder.
It
is important to take particular notice that we are here confronted
with the fact that something which exists in the outer world —
and we speak now of the spiritual outer world — may be
beneficial to man in the highest degree, as well as harmful in the
highest degree, according to the way in which he brings his own being
to meet it. Let us suppose that a man with a wrongly developed astral
body exposes himself to the spiritual world around him. This world
works in upon him. Whereas this spiritual world would flow in on him
and enrich him with the mysteries if he has cultivated his organs in
the right way, it will tear him asunder and shatter him if he has
developed them in the wrong way. It is one and the same outer world
which in one case carries man upwards to the highest, in the other
case shatters and ruins him; the same external world, of which he
will say that it is a divine and beneficent world when he carries
within himself the right organs of perception, and a world of ruin
and destruction when he has within himself an inner being which is
not developed in the right way. In these words lies much of the key
to an understanding of good and evil, of what is fruitful and what is
destructive in the world. And this should enable us to see that the
effect which any kind of beings of the outer world have on us is no
standard by which to judge these beings themselves. According to the
way in which we confront the outer world, the same being may either
be beneficial or destructive to us, god or devil to our inner
Organisation, and it is therefore imperative to bear this continually
in mind.
We
have now placed before our minds what the preparation for clairvoyant
investigation is like with regard to our astral body and ego. And we
have emphasised that we human beings are in a certain respect in a
fortunate position, because we have our delicate astral body and ego
outside our physical and etheric bodies for at least a certain time
during each twenty-four hours. But the etheric body does not leave
the physical body at night; it remains united with it. We know that
not till the moment of death is the physical body deserted by the
etheric body, which then withdraws along with the astral body and the
ego. We need not mention today what becomes of these three principles
of human nature between death and a new birth; we will only clearly
present to our minds the fact that at death man is set free from his
physical body and from all that is built into this physical body,
free from the physical sense-organs and free from the brain, the
instrument of the intellect which works physically. The ego, the
astral body and the etheric body are then united in an appropriate
fashion and can work together. Therefore it is that from the moment
of death true clairvoyance sets in with regard to the previous life,
although this at first lasts only for a short time. This has been
often stated. Such a co-operation as normally only takes place at the
moment of death must be made possible to the ego, the astral body and
the etheric body during life if complete clairvoyance is to be
brought about. The etheric body must be liberated from the condition
in which it is imprisoned during normal life; it must arrive at being
able to use its elasticity and to become independent of the
elasticity of the physical body, as the astral body is at night. For
this purpose more intense, more strenuous and in a certain respect
higher exercises are required. All these things will be mentioned
again in their corresponding connection in the course of the next
chapters; for the present it will suffice to understand that such
exercises are necessary, and that it is not sufficient to have
practiced the preparatory exercises which have the effect of
developing spiritual eyes and ears in the astral body, but that
exercises for giving the etheric body independence and freedom from
the physical body are also required. Just now, however, we will only
consider the result. It is not difficult to imagine, from what has
been said what this result must be. In normal cases it is only at the
moment of death that the astral body and the etheric body can work
together, free from the physical body. So if clairvoyance is to be
aroused, something must take place which can only be compared with
what sets in for man at the moment of death; that is to say, man
must, if he wishes to become consciously clairvoyant, reach a stage
of development where he is just as independent of his physical body
and the use of the members of his physical body during life as he is
at the moment of death.
By
what means can man acquire such independence of his physical body,
and bring himself into a condition which resembles the moment of
physical death? Only by cultivating certain feelings and shades of
feeling which stir the soul so forcibly that by their power they
seize the etheric body and lift it out of the physical body. Such
strong impulses of thought, feeling and will must work in the soul
that an inner force is aroused which frees the etheric body from the
physical body, at any rate for certain moments. In these moments,
however, the physical body must absolutely be as if dead to ordinary,
normal human life. But this cannot be brought about by external,
physical methods in our period of human evolution. Anyone who thinks
that such things can be brought about by physical methods would
become the victim of a stupendous delusion. Such a person would wish
to enter the spiritual worlds by adhering to the methods of the
physical world; that is to say he would not yet have attained to a
real belief in the force of the spiritual worlds. For purely
subjective experiences, impulses proceeding from the strong,
energetic life of the soul, are alone competent to bring about this
death-like condition. And speaking in the abstract, we may say for
the present that the most essential thing for bringing about such a
condition is that man experiences a change, as it were, a turning
upside down of his sphere of interests. For ordinary life provides
man with certain interests. These interests play their part from
morning till night. Man is interested and quite rightly, for he must
live in the world — in things that appeal to his eyes, his
ears, his physical intellect, his physical feelings, etc.; he is
interested in what confronts him in the outer world; one thing
interests him more, another less; he pays more attention to one thing
and less to another; and that is natural. In these fluctuating
interests, binding him to the tapestry of the outer world by a
certain power of attraction, man lives, and by far the greater part
of our present humanity lives in these interests alone. Nevertheless
it is possible for man, without detriment to the freshness and
intensity of these interests, to bring about moments in his life in
which these outer interests are not at all active, in which, if we
wish to express it radically, this whole outer sense-world becomes
absolutely indifferent to him, in which he kills out absolutely all
the interest forces which fetter him to this or that object in the
world of the senses. It would be wrong for a man not to reserve this
deadening of his interests in the outer world for certain ‘festival
moments’ in life, it would be wrong to extend it over his whole
life. He would then become incapable of taking part in the work of
the outer world, whereas we are called to take part in the outer
world and in its life.
We
must therefore reserve for ‘times of high festival’ this
possibility of letting all interests in the surrounding world die
out; we must, so to say, acquire this twofold nature. On the one hand
we must feel a fresh and vital interest in everything which goes on
in the outer world in the way of joy and sorrow, of pleasure and
pain, and of life which is blossoming and flourishing and of life
which is dying. This freshness and originality of our interest in the
outer world must be kept alive in our earthly life; we must not
become strangers upon earth, for then we should act from egoism and
deprive the stage to which our forces must be devoted in our present
evolution of these forces. But on the other hand we must, if we wish
to ascend into the higher worlds, cultivate the other side of our
being, which consists in killing out during ‘moments of Holy
Day’ all our interests in the outer world, of letting them die
out. And if we have patience and perseverance and energy and strength
to practice this as long and as much as our Karma demands, this
deadening of interest in the outer world at last liberates a strong
energetic force in our inner being, because that which we kill out in
this way in the outer world reappears as higher and more abundant
life in the inner world. We experience an entirely new kind of life;
we experience the moment in which we can say: That which we can see
with our eyes and hear with our cars is only a small part of life.
There is an entirely different life, life in the spiritual world; a
resurrection in the spiritual world, a transcending of what we
usually call life, a transcending in such a way that not death but a
higher life is the result. As soon as this pure spiritual force has
grown strong enough in our inner being, we may gradually experience
moments in which we become rulers and lords over our etheric body,
when this etheric body does not take on the shape forced upon it by
the elasticity of the lungs and the liver, but the shape forced upon
it from above downwards by our astral body. Thus we imprint on our
etheric body the shape which, through meditation, concentration,
etc., we have first imprinted on our astral body. We imprint the
plastic form of our astral body on the etheric body, and we ascend
from ‘preparation’ to ‘illumination’ —
the next stage of clairvoyant research. The first stage, by which our
astral body is changed in such a way that it receives organs, is also
called ‘purification,’ because the astral body is
purified and purged from the forces of the outer world, and conforms
to the inner forces — purification, cleansing, Catharsis. But
the stage at which the astral body succeeds in imprinting its own
form on the etheric body implies that in a spiritual sense, light
begins to shine around us, that the spiritual world around us is
revealing itself and that ‘illumination’ is setting in.
What
I have just described goes hand in hand with certain experiences
which man goes through, with typical experiences which are the same
for everyone, and which everyone who treads this path experiences the
moment he is ripe for it, if he pays the necessary attention to
certain things and occurrences which are beyond the physical. The
first experience, which occurs through the organisation of the astral
body and which therefore comes about as an effect of meditation,
concentration, etc., might be called an inner experience of the
feelings describable as an inward division of the whole of our
personality. The moment this is experienced one can say to oneself:
Now you have become something like two personalities, you are like a
sword in its scabbard. Formerly you might have compared yourself with
a sword which does not lie loosely in its scabbard but is one with
it, the two consisting of one; you felt yourself one with your
physical body; but now you seem, although lying in your physical body
like a sword in its scabbard, to be a being which feels itself to be
something apart from the sheath of the physical body, in which it is
lying. You feel yourself to be within the physical body, but not
grown into one with it, not as if consisting of one piece with it.
This inward liberation, this inward realisation of oneself as a
second personality, which has emerged from the first, is the first
great experience on the way to clairvoyant vision of the World. The
fact must be emphasised that this first experience is an experience
of the inner feelings: One must feel that one is lying within one's
old personality, and yet feel free and mobile within it. The analogy
with the sword and its scabbard is of course rough. For the sword
feels itself cramped on all sides by the scabbard, while man, when he
has this experience, has a strong feeling of inner mobility, as if he
might break on all sides through the limits of his physical body, as
if he could forsake it by falling through the skin of his physical
body and stretch out his feelers far, far into a world which,
although still dark, begins to be perceptible to his feeling in the
darkness, one might say, begins to be knowable through inner touch.
This is the first great experience man has.
The
second great experience is that this second personality which now
exists within the first, gradually becomes capable of really leaving
this first personality, of stepping out of it. This experience
expresses itself in the fact that, although often only for a short
time, one feels as if one could see oneself, as if one stood
confronting oneself like a double. This is the second experience, and
it is moreover of much greater importance than the first. With it
something is connected which it is very difficult for man to bear. It
must never be forgotten that in normal life man is contained within
his physical body That which lives within man's physical body
as astral body and ego, accommodates itself to the forces of the
physical body; it yields as it were to them; it conforms itself to
the bodily forces, assuming the shapes of the liver, the heart, the
brain, etc. And this is also true of the etheric body, so long as it
remains within the physical body. Now we all know what is indicated
by the expression brain, heart, etc., what wonderful instruments and
organs they are, how complete in themselves, how perfect as
creations! What is all human art and human creative work compared
with the creative work, the art and technique necessary for
constructing such wonderful instruments as the heart, the brain, etc.
What is everything which man can accomplish at the present stage of
his evolution in the way of art and technical skill, compared with
that divine art and technique which have built up our physical body
and which, therefore, also guard us as long as we are within it. So
we are not merely in an abstract sense devoted to our physical bodies
during daily life, but interwoven with a concrete creation of the
gods. Our etheric and astral bodies are fitted into forms created by
the gods. If we now become free and independent there will be a
change. We free ourselves at the same time from a wonderful
instrument of divine creation. Thus we do not leave the physical body
as some imperfect thing to be looked down upon, but as the temple
which the gods have built for us and in which normally we live during
our waking life. Such a temple do we leave on abandoning the physical
body. What are we then?
Let
us suppose that at a certain moment we could leave this physical body
without further preparation, let us suppose that some magician (of
whatever kind he might be) could assist us to leave our physical
body, and that our etheric body accompanied our astral body, and that
we, in a certain respect, went through an experience comparable with
the moment of death; let us suppose that we could do this without the
preparation of which we have spoken; what should we be when, outside
the physical body, we confront ourselves? We are then what in the
course of the world evolution we have made of ourselves from
incarnation to incarnation. As long as from morning to night we are
within our physical body, this divine creation, the temple of our
physical body, corrects what we have incorporated within ourselves in
the course of our incarnations on earth; but the moment we step out
of it, our astral and etheric bodies show what they have accumulated
from incarnation to incarnation and appear as they are according to
what they have made of themselves. If a man thus unprepared leaves
his physical body, he is not a spiritual being of a higher, nobler
and purer form than the form was which he had in his physical body,
but a being laden with all the imperfections heaped up in his Karma
during his incarnations. All this remains invisible so long as the
temple of our body encloses our etheric body, our astral body and our
Ego. It becomes visible the moment we step out of our physical body
with the higher principles of our being. Then there appear before us,
if at the same moment we become clairvoyant, all the inclinations and
passions, which still remain with us as the result of our former
incarnations. In the course of the future evolution of our earth we
have still to go through many incarnations, full of activities and
accomplishment. The inclinations, instinct and passions for much that
you will do later are already within you, developed through
incarnations in former times. Everything that man is capable of
accomplishing in the world in certain directions, all obligations to
others incurred by offences against them for which reparation has to
be made in the future, are already incorporated in the astral body
and the etheric body when he leaves his physical body. We confront
ourselves so to say naked as a soul-being, if at the moment of
leaving our body we are clairvoyant; that is to say we stand before
our spiritual vision in such a way that we know how much worse we are
than would be the case if we had attained the perfection possessed by
the gods, which made them capable of creating the wonderful building
of our physical body. We perceive at this moment how far we are from
the perfection which we must hold before us as our future ideal of
development.
We
know at this moment how deeply we have sunk below the world of
perfection.
This
is the experience which is connected with ‘illumination’;
it is the experience which is called the meeting with the Guardian of
the Threshold. That which is real does not become more or less real
according to our seeing or not seeing it. That shape which we see in
the moment just described is always there, is always within us; but
because we have not yet got loose from ourselves, because we do not
confront ourselves but are within ourselves we do not see it. In
ordinary life, that which we see at the moment that clairvoyantly we
step out of ourselves, is the Guardian of the Threshold. He shields
us from an experience that we must first learn to bear. We must first
acquire a strong enough force to enable us to see a world of the
future before us, and to look without fear and horror upon what we
have become, because we know for certain that we can make it all
right again. The capacity, which we must possess for experiencing
this moment without being depressed by it, must be acquired during
the preparation for clairvoyant investigation. This preparation
consists, abstractly expressed, in making the active, positive
qualities of our souls strong and energetic, in bringing our courage,
our feeling of freedom, our love, our energy of thought and our
energy of lucid intellect to the greatest possible height, so that we
step out of our physical body not as weak people but as strong. If,
however, there is too much left in man of what is called anxiety and
fear, he will not be able to endure this experience of encountering
the Guardian of the Threshold without harm.
Thus
we see that there are certain conditions to be fulfilled before
looking into the spiritual worlds, those worlds which in a certain
respect hold out a prospect of the highest that we can think of for
life in our present development of humanity, but at the same time
demand of man a complete transformation of his being such as he has
to attain in the solemn ‘Holy Day moments’ before
mentioned. It is a real blessing in our present time for the
aspirant, before he proceeds to this experience, to be told what
those who have gained experience in the higher worlds have seen. We
can understand even when we cannot see. But by making increasing
efforts to reach an intellectual comprehension of what the
clairvoyant tells us, and coming to the conclusion, after a survey of
everything life brings us, that the clairvoyant's reports are quite
sensible after all, we shall be doing the right thing at the present
time. We must become Anthroposophists before aspiring to
clairvoyance, and we must learn to know Anthroposophy thoroughly. If
we do this, the great, comprehensive, strengthening, encouraging and
refreshing ideas and thoughts of Anthroposophy give to the soul not
only a working hypothesis, but also qualities of feeling, will and
thought, which make the soul like tempered steel. If the soul has
gone through this process, the moment of meeting with the Guardian of
the Threshold becomes something quite different from what it would
have been otherwise. Fear and terror, states of anxiety and care, are
conquered in quite a different way if previously we have learned to
understand and to grasp what is related about the higher worlds. And
later, when a person has had this experience, when he has confronted
himself and thus has met the Guardian of the Threshold, the world
begins to show itself to him in quite a different way. Everything in
the world may be said to wear a new aspect. And a justifiable opinion
might be expressed by the following illustrations. I had supposed up
till now that I knew what fire is but that was only an illusion. For
what I have called fire up till now, would be like calling the tracks
of a carriage on a road the only reality, and denying that a carriage
in which a person was sitting must have been passing that way. I
declare these tracks on the road to be the signs, the outer
expression of the carriage which has passed there and in which a
person was sitting. I have not seen the person who passed there, but
he is the cause of these tracks, he is the reality. And a person who
believed the marks left by the wheels to be something complete in
themselves, something real and basic, would be taking the outer
expression for the thing itself.
That
which our senses see as flashing fire bears the same proportion to
its reality, to the spiritual being which stands behind it, as do the
tracks on the road to the person who was sitting in the carriage
which passed there. In fire we have only an outer expression. Behind
what our eyes see as fire and what we feel as heat is the real
spiritual entity, which has only its outer expression in the outer
fire. Behind what we inhale as air, behind what enters our eyes as
light, and behind what our ears perceive as sound, are active beings
spiritual and divine, whose outer garments only we behold in fire, in
water and in what surrounds us in the different realms of nature.
In
the so-called secret teaching, in the teaching of the mysteries, the
experience which is then gone through, is called the passage through
the elementary worlds. Whereas previously one had lived in the belief
that what we know as fire is a reality, one then becomes aware that
living beings are hidden behind the fire. We become, so to say,
acquainted with fire, more or less intimately as something quite
different from what it appears to be in the world of the senses. We
become acquainted with the fire-beings, with what is the soul of the
fire. Just as our souls are hidden behind our bodies, so the soul and
spirit of the fire are hidden by the fire which we perceive with our
outer senses. We penetrate into a spiritual domain when we experience
the soul and spirit of fire in this way, and the experience by which
we realise that the outer fire is no reality, that it is a mere
illusion, a mere garment, and that we now move among the fire-gods
just as we did formerly among people of the physical world, is called
‘living in the element of fire,’ to use the terms of
occult science. It is the same with that which we breathe. The moment
that what we breathe as outer air becomes to us only the garment of
the living beings within it, we live in the element of air. And so
when one has passed through the meeting with the Guardian of the
Threshold, that is to say, when one has acquired true self-knowledge,
one can ascend to experiencing the beings in the so-called elements,
in the elements of fire, of water, of air and of earth. These four
classes of gods, or spirits live a real existence in the elements,
and a person who has reached the stage which has just been described,
is in touch with the divine spiritual beings of the elements. He
lives in the elements; he experiences earth, water, air and fire.
That which in ordinary life is designated by these words, is only the
outer garment, the outer expression of divine spiritual beings behind
it. It becomes plain, therefore, that certain spiritual divine beings
live in that which meets us (speaking according to spiritual science)
as solid matter or earth, as fluid matter or water, as volatile
matter or air, and as warm fiery matter or fire.
These,
however, are not the highest spiritual beings. When we have struggled
on through the experiences of the elementary world, we ascend to the
entities which stand in the relation of creators towards the spirits
who live in the elements. For let us consider our physical
surroundings. We find that they consist of the four outer principles
of the elementary world. Whether we take plants, or animals or stones
or anything else on the physical plane, they consist according to
spiritual science either of the solid element, that is earth, or the
fluid element, water, or the gaseous element, air, or the fiery
element, fire. Of these elements the things which physically surround
us in the world of stones, of plants, of animals and of men are
composed. And we know that behind what physically surrounds us there
are, as creative and fructifying forces, those forces which for the
most part come to us from the sun. We know that the sun calls forth
budding and germinating life out of the earth. Thus the sun sends to
the earth forces which — considered physically for the moment —
make it possible for us to perceive on earth with our physical senses
that which lives in fire, in air, in water and in earth. We see the
sun physically because it radiates physical light. This physical
light is sustained by physical matter. Man sees the sun from sunrise
to sunset, and he does not see it when the physical earth substance
hides it; he does not see it from sunset to sunrise. In the spiritual
world there is no such darkness as reigns in physical life from
sunset to sunrise. When the clairvoyant has gained what has been
described, when he perceives behind fire the spirits of fire, behind
air the spirits of air, behind water the spirits of water, and behind
earth the spirits of earth, in that moment he sees behind these
divine spiritual beings their higher ruler, their higher Lord, the
entity which in comparison to these beings of the element is like the
warming, illuminating beneficent sun as compared to the budding and
germinating life on our earth. That is to say, the clairvoyant
ascends from a contemplation of the elementary gods to the
contemplation of those higher divine beings which in the spiritual
world may be symbolically compared with the sun in its physical
relation to the earth. Behind the beings of the elements a high
spiritual world is seen, the spiritual sun. When for the clairvoyant
that which otherwise is darkness becomes light, when he attains to
clairvoyance, to ‘illumination,’ he realises the
spiritual sun, that is to say the higher divine spiritual beings in
the same way as the physical eye realises the physical sun. And when
does he penetrate to these higher divine spiritual beings? At the
moment when, as it were, for other people the spiritual darkness is
at its densest. When man's astral body and Ego are free, that is to
say, from the moment of falling asleep to that of waking, man lives
surrounded by darkness because he does not see the spiritual world
which then surrounds him. This darkness increases gradually, reaches
its densest point and decreases again until the morning when he
awakes. It comes, as it were, to a point in which it reaches its
densest degree. This densest degree of spiritual darkness may be
compared with what in outer life is called the hour of midnight. Just
as normally the outer physical darkness is then at its densest, since
it increases towards this moment and then decreases, so there is a
densest degree of spiritual darkness, a midnight. At a certain stage
of clairvoyance it happens that the spirits of the elements are seen
during the time when for other people the spiritual darkness begins
to increase, and similarly during the time in which darkness
decreases again. In other words if only a lower stage of clairvoyance
has been reached, one experiences, so to say, certain gods of the
elements, but just at the time of the highest spiritual moment, the
midnight hour, darkness may still set in and ‘illumination’
only begins again after this moment has been passed. When, however, a
definite stage of clairvoyance is reached, the midnight hour becomes
so much the more ‘illuminated’; and just at this
midnight-hour, at the time when the normal person is, so to say, most
shut off from the divine spiritual world, most entangled in maya, or
illusion, one ascends into the light. At this time one beholds those
spiritual beings which, compared to the gods of the elements, are
like the sun compared to the physical earth. One beholds the higher
creative gods, the sun gods, in the moment which is technically
called: ‘Beholding the sun at midnight.’
These
are the stages which today, as at all times, have to be lived through
by those who wish to work themselves up to clairvoyant investigation,
who wish to look through the veil which in the shape of the earthly
elements is drawn over the real world. They are: the feeling of
freedom inside one's ordinary personality, like that of a sword in
its sheath; the feeling of being outside the physical body, as if the
sword were drawn out of its sheath; the meeting with the Guardian of
the Threshold; the experiencing the gods of the elements, that is,
experiencing the great moment when the beings of fire, air, water and
earth become beings among whom we walk and with whom we associate as
in ordinary life we associate with human beings, and lastly,
experiencing the moment when we behold the king, the commander, the
leader of these beings of the elements. These are the stages which
could be experienced at all past times and which can still be
experienced today. These are the stages (already often described, for
they can be described in many ways, and still the description always
remains imperfect) leading upwards into the spiritual worlds. We were
obliged to present them to our souls so as to see what man at all
times has had to do himself, in order to learn to know the divine
spiritual beings. And we shall further have to place before our souls
what it is which man experiences in these divine spiritual worlds we
shall have to realise some of the more concrete preparations to be
gone through in order to meet the gods. And when we have presented
this to our souls and the way in which it can be attained by western
initiation, we shall compare what we have thus gained with what has
been given to humanity in the way of oriental tradition and ancient
wisdom. And in making this comparison, we shall be shedding the light
of the Christ upon the wisdom of pre-Christian times.
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