Lecture
III
When
speaking about the spiritual worlds as we are doing in these
lectures, we should keep the following well in mind: the clairvoyant
consciousness which the human soul can develop in itself will change
nothing in the nature and individuality of a person, for everything
entering that consciousness was already long present in man's nature.
Knowing a thing is not the same as creating it; a person learns only
to perceive what is already there as a fact. Obvious as this is, it
has to be said, for we must lead our thoughts to realize that the
nature of the human being is hidden in the very depths of his
existence; it can be brought up out of those depths only through
clairvoyant cognition. It follows from this that the true, inmost
nature of man's being cannot be brought to light in any other way
than through occult knowledge. We can learn what a human being
actually is not through any kind of philosophy but only through the
kind of knowledge based on clairvoyant consciousness. To the
observation we use in the sense world and to the understanding
limited to the sense world, the being of man, the true, inmost nature
of man, lies in hidden worlds. Clairvoyant consciousness provides the
point of view from which the worlds beyond the so-called threshold
have to be observed; in order to perceive and learn, quite different
demands are made on it from those in the sense world.
This is the most important thing: that the human soul
should become more or less accustomed to the fact that the way of
looking at and recognizing things that for the sense world is the
correct and healthy one is not the only way.
Here I shall give the name elemental world
to the first world that the soul of a human being enters on becoming
clairvoyant and crossing the threshold. Only a person who wants to
carry the habits of the sense world into the higher super-sensible
worlds can demand a uniform choice of names for all the points of
view the higher worlds can offer. (At the close of this course of
lectures and also in my small book coming out in a day or two,
The Threshold of the Spiritual World,
I shall point out the connection between the terms chosen here —
for example, elemental world and those in my books
Theosophy
and
Occult Science,
soul world, spirit world, and so on — in order
that people do not look for contradictions in a superficial way where
they do not exist.)
Fully new demands meet the life of soul when it steps
over the threshold into the elemental world. If the human soul
insisted on entering this world with the habits of the sense world,
two things might happen: cloudiness or complete darkness would spread
over the horizon of the consciousness, over the field of vision, or
else — if the soul wanted to enter the elemental world without
preparing itself for the peculiarities and requirements there —
it would be thrown back again into the sense world. The elemental
world is absolutely different from the sense world. In this world of
ours when you move from one living being to another, from one
happening to the next, you have these beings and events before you
and can observe them; while confronting and observing them, you keep
your own distinct existence, your own separate personality. You know
all the time that in the presence of another person or happening you
are the same person that you were before and that you will be the
same when you confront a new situation; you can never lose yourself
in another being or happening. You confront them, you stand outside
them and you know you will always be the same in the sense world
wherever you go.
This changes as soon as a person enters the elemental
world. There it is necessary to adapt one's whole inner life of soul
to a being or event so completely that one transforms one's own inner
soul life into this other being, into this other event. We can learn
nothing at all in the elemental world unless we become a different
person within every other being, indeed unless we become similar to a
high degree to the other beings and events.
We have to have, then, one peculiarity of soul for the
elemental world: the capacity for transforming our own being into
other beings outside ourselves. We must have the faculty of
metamorphosis. We must be able to immerse ourselves in and become the
other being. We must be able to lose the consciousness which always —
in order to remain emotionally healthy — we have to have in the
sense world, the consciousness of “I am myself.” In the
elemental world we get to know another being only when in a way we
inwardly have “become” the other. When we have crossed
the threshold, we have to move through the elemental world in such a
way that with every step we transform ourselves into every single
happening, creep into every single being. It belongs to the health of
a person's soul that in passing through the sense world, he should
hold his own and assert his individual character, but this is
altogether impossible in the elemental world, where it would lead
either to the darkening of his field of vision or to his being thrown
back into the sense world.
You will easily understand that in order to
exercise the faculty of transformation, the soul needs something more
than it already possesses here in our world. The human soul is too
weak to be able to change itself continuously and adapt itself to
every sort of being if it enters the elemental world in its ordinary
state. Therefore the forces of the human soul must be strengthened
and heightened through the preparations described in my books,
Occult Science
and
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
from these the life of soul will become stronger and more forceful. It
can then immerse itself in other entities without losing itself in the
process. This being said, you will understand at once the importance
of noting what is called the threshold between the sense world and
the super-sensible world. We have already said that the clairvoyant
consciousness of a human being on earth must go back and forth
continually, that it must observe the spiritual world beyond the
threshold while it is outside the physical body and must then return
into the physical body, exercising in a healthy way the faculties
which lead it to the right observation of the physical sense world.
Let us suppose that a person's clairvoyant
consciousness, when returning over the threshold, were to take back
into the sense world the faculty of transformation it has to have in
order to be at all aware of the spiritual world. The faculty of
transformation I've been speaking about is a peculiarity of the human
etheric body, which lives by preference in the elemental world. Now
suppose that a person were to go back into the physical world keeping
his etheric body as capable of transformation as it has to be in the
elemental world. What would happen? Each of the worlds has it's
own special laws.
The sense world is the world of self-contained forms,
for here the Spirits of Form rule. The elemental world is the world
of mobility, of metamorphosis, of transformation; just as we
continually have to change in order to feel at home in that world,
all the beings there are continually changing themselves. There is no
enclosed, circumscribed form: all is in continual metamorphosis. A
soul has to take part in this ever-changing existence outside the
physical body if it wants to unfold itself there. Then in the
physical sense world we must allow our etheric body, as an entity of
the elemental world capable of metamorphosis, to sink down into the
physical body. Through this physical body I am a definite personality
in the physical sense world; I am this or that distinct person. My
physical body stamps my personality upon me; the physical body and
the conditions of the physical world in which I find myself make me a
personality. In the elemental world one is not a personality, for
this would require an enclosed form. Here, however, we must note that
what the clairvoyant consciousness recognizes in the human soul is,
and always has been, present within it. Through the forces of the
physical body, the mobility of the etheric body is restrained only
for the time being. As soon as the etheric body sinks back into the
physical encasement, its powers of movement are held together and
adapted to the form. If the etheric body were not tucked into the
physical body as if into a tote bag, it would always be impelled to
continuous transformation.
Now let us suppose that a soul, becoming clairvoyant,
were to carry over into the physical world this desire of its etheric
body for transformation. Then with its tendency towards movement, it
will fit rather loosely into the physical body, and thus the soul can
come into contradiction with the physical world that wants to shape
it into a definite personality. The etheric body, which always wants
to move freely, can come back over the threshold in the wrong way,
every moment wishing to be something or someone else, someone that
may be quite the opposite of the firmly imprinted form of the
physical body. To put it even more concretely: a person could be,
say, a Scandinavian bank executive, thanks to his physical body, but
because his etheric brings over into the physical world the impulse
to free itself from physical constraints, he may imagine himself to
be the emperor of China. (Or, to use another example, a person may be
— let us say — the president of the Theosophical Society,
and if her etheric body has been loosened, she may imagine that she
has been in the presence of the Director of the Universe.)
( 9 )
We see that the threshold that sharply divides the sense
world from the super-sensible world must be respected absolutely; the
soul must observe the requirements of each of the two worlds,
adapting and conducting itself differently on this side and that. We
have emphasized repeatedly that the peculiarities of the
super-sensible world must not unlawfully be carried over when one
comes back into the sense world. If I may put it more plainly, one
has to understand how to conduct oneself in both worlds; one may not
carry over into one world the method of observation that is right for
the other.
First of all then, we have to take note that the
essential faculty for finding and feeling oneself in the elemental
world is the faculty of transformation. But the human soul could
never live permanently in this mobile element. The etheric body could
as little remain permanently in a state of being able to transform
itself, as a human being in the physical world could remain
continually awake. Only when we are awake can we observe the physical
world; asleep, we do not perceive it. Nevertheless we have to allow
the waking condition to alternate with the sleeping one. Something
comparable to this is necessary in the elemental world. Just as
little as it is right in the physical world to be continually awake,
for life here must swing like a pendulum between waking and sleeping,
so something similar is necessary for the life of the etheric body in
the elemental world. There must be an opposite pole, as it were,
something that works in the opposite direction to the faculty of
transformation leading to perception in the spiritual world. What is
it that makes the human being capable of transformation? It is his
living in imagination, in mental images, the ability to make his
ideas and thoughts so mobile that through his lively, flexible
thinking he can dip down into other beings and happenings. For the
opposite condition, comparable to sleep in the sense world, it is the
will of the human being that must be developed and strengthened. For
the faculty of transformation: thinking or imagination; for the
opposite condition: the will.
To understand this, we should consider that in the
physical sense world the human being is a self, an ego, an “I.”
It is the physical body, as long as it is awake, that contributes
what is necessary for this feeling of self. The forces of the
physical body, when the human being sinks down into it, supply him
with the power to feel himself an ego, an I. It is different in the
elemental world. There the human being himself must achieve to some
degree what the physical body achieves in the physical world. He can
develop no feeling of self in the elemental world if he does not
exert his will, if he himself does not do the “willing.”
This, however, calls for overcoming something that is deeply rooted
in us: our love of comfort and convenience. For the elemental world
this self-willing is necessary; like the alternation of sleeping and
waking in the physical world, the condition of “transforming
oneself into other beings” must give way to the feeling of
self-strengthened volition. Just as we have become tired in the
physical world and close our eyes, overcome by sleep, the moment
comes in the elemental world when the etheric body feels, “I
cannot go on continually changing; now I must shut out all the beings
and happenings around me. I will have to thrust it all out of my
field of vision and look away from it. I now must will myself and
live absolutely and entirely within myself, ignoring the other beings
and occurrences.” This willing of self, excluding everything
else, corresponds to sleep in the physical world.
We would be mistaken if we imagined that the alternation
of transformation with strengthened ego feeling were regulated in the
elemental world just as naturally as waking and sleeping are in the
physical world. According to clairvoyant consciousness — and to
this alone it is perceptible — it takes place at will, not
passing so easily as waking here passes into sleep. After one has
lived for a time in the element of metamorphosis, one feels the need
within oneself to engage and use the other swing of the pendulum of
elemental life. In a much more arbitrary way than with our waking and
sleeping, the element of transforming oneself alternates with living
within with its heightened feeling of self. Yes, our consciousness
can even bring it about through its elasticity that in certain
circumstances both conditions can be present at the same time: on the
one hand, one transforms oneself to some degree and yet can hold
together certain parts of the soul and rest within oneself. In the
elemental world we can wake and sleep at the same time, something we
should not try to do in the physical world if we have any concern for
our soul life.
We must further consider that when thinking develops
into the faculty of transformation and begins to be at home in the
elemental world, it cannot be used in that world in the way that is
right and healthy for the physical world. What is thinking like in
our ordinary world? Observe it as you follow its movement. A person
is aware of thoughts in his soul; he knows that he is grasping,
spinning out, connecting and separating these thoughts. Inwardly he
feels himself to be the master of his thoughts, which seem rather
passive; they allow themselves to be connected and separated, to be
formed and then dismissed. This life of thought must develop in the
elemental world a step further. There a person is not in a position
to deal with thoughts that are passive. If someone really succeeds in
entering that world with his clairvoyant soul, it seems as though his
thoughts were not things over which he has any command: they are
living beings. Only imagine how it is when you cannot form and
connect and separate your thoughts but, instead, each one of them in
your consciousness begins to have a life of its own, a life as an
entity in itself. You thrust your consciousness into a place, it
seems, where you don't find thoughts that are like those in the
physical world but where they are living beings. I can only use a
grotesque picture which will help us somehow to realize how different
our thinking must become from what it is here. Imagine sticking your
head into an anthill, while your thinking comes to a stop — you
would have ants in your head instead of thoughts! It is just like
that, when your soul dips down into the elemental world; your
thoughts become so alive that they themselves join each other,
separate from each other and lead a life of their own. We truly need
a stronger power of soul to confront these living thought-beings with
our consciousness than we do with the passive thoughts of the
physical world, which allow themselves to be formed at will, to be
connected and separated not only sensibly but often even quite
foolishly. They are patient things, these thoughts of our ordinary
world; they let the human soul do anything it likes with them. But it
is quite different when we thrust our soul into the elemental world,
where our thoughts will lead an independent life. A human being must
hold his own with his soul life and assert his will in confronting
these active, lively, no longer passive thoughts. In the physical
world our thinking can be completely stupid and this does not harm us
at all. But if we do foolish things with our thinking in the
elemental world, it may well happen that our stupid thoughts,
creeping around there as independent beings, can hurt us, can even
cause real pain.
Thus we see that the habits of our soul life must change
when we cross the threshold from the physical into the super-sensible
world. If we were then to return to the physical world with the
activity we have to bring to bear on the living thought entities of
the elemental world and failed to develop in ourselves sound thinking
with these passive thoughts, wishing rather to hold fast to the
conditions of the other world, our thoughts would continually run
away from us; then hurrying after them, we would become a slave to
our thoughts.
When a person enters the elemental world
with clairvoyant soul and develops his faculty of metamorphosis, he
delves into it with his inner life, transforming himself according to
the kind of entity he is confronting. What is his experience when he
does this? It is something we can call sympathy and antipathy. Out of
soul depths these experiences seem to well up, presenting themselves
to the soul that has become clairvoyant. Quite definite kinds of
sympathy and antipathy appear as it transforms itself into this or
that other being. When the person proceeds from one transformation to
the next, he is continually aware of different sympathies or
antipathies. Just as in the physical world we recognize,
characterize, describe the objects and living beings, in short,
perceive them when the eye sees their color or the ear hears their
tones so correspondingly in the spiritual world we would describe its
beings in terms of particular sympathies and antipathies. Two things,
however, should be noted. One is that in our usual way of speaking in
the physical world, we generally differentiate only between stronger
and weaker degrees of sympathy and antipathy; in the elemental world
the sympathies and antipathies differ from one another not only in
degree but also in quality. There they vary, just as yellow
here is quite different from red. As our colors are qualitatively
different, so are the many varieties of sympathy and antipathy that
we meet in the elemental world. In order therefore to describe this
correctly, one may not merely say — as one would do in the
physical world — that in diving down and entering this
particular entity one feels greater sympathy, while in immersing
oneself in another entity one feels less sympathy. No! Sympathies of
all sorts and kinds can be found there!
The other point to note is this: Our usual natural
attitude to sympathy and antipathy cannot be carried over into the
elemental world. Here in this world we feel drawn to some people,
repelled by others; we associate by choice with those who are
sympathetic and wish to stay near them; we turn away from the things
and people who are abhorrent and refuse to have anything to do with
them. This cannot be the case in the elemental world, for there —
if I may express it rather oddly — we will not find the
sympathies sympathetic nor the antipathies antipathetic. This would
resemble someone in the physical world saying, “I can stand
only the blues and greens, not the red or yellow colors. I simply
have to run away from red and yellow!” If a being of the
elemental world is antipathetic, it means that it has a distinct
characteristic of that world, which must be described as
antipathetic, and we have to deal with it just as we deal in the
sense world with the colors blue and red, not permitting one to be
more sympathetic to us than the other. Here we meet all the colors
with a certain calmness because they convey what the things are; only
when a person is a bit neurotic does he run away from certain colors,
or when he is a bull and cannot bear the sight of red. Most of us
accept all the colors with equanimity and in the same way we should
be able to observe with the utmost calmness the qualities of sympathy
and antipathy that belong to the elemental world. For this we must
necessarily change the attitude of soul usual in the physical world,
where it is attracted by sympathy and repelled by antipathy; it must
become completely changed. There the inner mood or disposition
corresponding to the feelings of sympathy and antipathy must be
replaced with what we can call soul-quiet, spirit-peacefulness.
( 10 )
With an inwardly resolute soul life filled with spirit calm, we must
immerse ourselves in the entities and transform ourselves into them;
then we will feel the qualities of these beings rising within our
soul depths as sympathies and antipathies. Only when we can do this,
with such an attitude toward sympathy and antipathy, will the soul,
in its experiences, be capable of letting the sympathetic and
antipathetic perception appear before it as images that are right and
true. That is, only then are we capable not merely of feeling what
the perception of sympathies and antipathies is but of really
experiencing our own particular self, transformed into another being,
suddenly rising up as one or another color-picture or as one or
another tone-picture of the elemental world.
You can also learn how sympathies and
antipathies play a part in regard to the experience of the soul in
the spiritual world if you will look with a certain amount of inner
understanding at the chapter of my book
Theosophy
that describes the soul world. You will see there that the soul world
is actually constructed of sympathies and antipathies. From my
description you will have been able to learn that what we know as
thinking in the physical sense world is really only the external
shadowy imprint, called up by the physical body, of the thinking
that, lying in occult depths, can be called a true living force. As
soon as we enter the elemental world and move with our etheric body,
thoughts become — one can say — denser, more alive, more
independent, more true to their own nature. What we experience as
thought in the physical body relates to this truer element of
thinking as a shadow on the wall relates to the objects casting it.
As a matter of fact, it is the shadow of the elemental
thought-life thrown into the physical sense world through the
instrumentality of the physical body. When we think, our thinking
lies more or less in the shadow of thought beings. Here clairvoyant
spiritual knowledge throws new light on the true nature of thinking.
No philosophy, no external science, however ingenious, can determine
anything of the real nature of thinking; only a knowledge based on
clairvoyant consciousness can recognize what it is.
The same thing holds good with the nature of our
willing. The will must grow stronger, for in the elemental world
things are not so obliging that the ego feeling is provided for us as
it is through the forces of the physical body. There we ourselves
have to will the feeling of ego; we have to find out what it means
for our soul to be entirely filled with the consciousness, “I
will myself”; we have to experience something of the greatest
significance: that when we are not strong enough to bring forth the
real act of will, “I will myself,” and not just the
thought of it, at that moment we will feel ourselves falling
unconscious as though in a faint. If we do not hold ourselves
together in the elemental world, we will fall into a kind of faint.
There we look into the true nature of the will, again something that
cannot be discovered by external science or philosophy but only by
the clairvoyant consciousness. What we call the will in the physical
world is a shadowy image of the strong, living will of the elemental
world, which grows and develops so that it can maintain the self out
of its own volition without the support of external forces. We can
say that everything in that world, when we grow accustomed to it,
becomes self-willed.
Above all, when we have left the physical body and our
etheric body has the elemental world as its environment, it is
through the innate character of the etheric body that the drive to
transform ourselves awakens. We wish to immerse ourselves in the
other beings. However, just as in our waking state by day the need
for sleep arises, so in the elemental world there arises in turn the
need to be alone, to shut out everything into which we could
transform ourselves. Then again, when we have felt alone for a while
and developed the strong feeling of will, “I will myself,”
there comes what may be called a terrible feeling of isolation, of
being forsaken, which evokes the longing to awaken out of this state,
of only willing oneself, to the faculty of transformation again.
While we rest in physical sleep, other forces take care that we wake
up; we don't have to attend to it ourselves. In the elemental world
when we are in the sleeping condition of only willing ourselves, it
is through the demand of feeling forsaken that we are impelled to put
ourselves into the state of transformation, that is, of wanting to
awaken.
From all this, you see how different are the conditions
of experiencing oneself in the elemental world, of perceiving oneself
there, from those of the physical world. You can judge therefore how
necessary it is, again and again, to take care that the clairvoyant
consciousness, passing back and forth from one world to the other,
adapts itself correctly to the requirements of each world and does
not carry over, on crossing the threshold, the usages of one into the
other. The strengthening and invigorating of the life of soul
consequently belongs to the preparation we have often described as
necessary for the experience of super-sensible worlds.
What must above all become strong and
forceful are the soul experiences we can call the eminently moral
ones. These imprint themselves as soul dispositions in firmness of
character and inner resolute calm. Inner courage and firmness of
character must most especially be developed, for through weakness of
character we cripple the whole life of soul, which would then come
powerless into the elemental world; this we must avoid if we hope to
have a true and correct experience there. No one who is really
earnest about gaining knowledge in the higher worlds will therefore
fail to give weight to the strengthening of the moral forces
among all the other forces that help the soul enter those worlds. One
of the most shameful errors is foisted on humanity when someone takes
it on himself to say that clairvoyance should be acquired without
paying attention to strengthening the moral life. It must be stressed
once and for all that what I described in my book
Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
as the development of the lotus flowers that
crystallize in the spirit body of a student-clairvoyant may indeed
take place without attention to supportive moral strength but
certainly ought not to do so.
The lotus flowers must be there if a person wants to
have the faculty of transformation. That faculty comes into existence
when the flowers unfold their petals in a motion away from the human
being, in order to grasp the spiritual world and adhere to it.
Whatever a person develops as the ability to transform himself is
expressed for the clairvoyant vision in the unfolding of the lotus
flowers. Whatever he can acquire of a strengthened ego-feeling
becomes inner firmness; we can call it an elementary backbone. Both
of these must be correspondingly developed, the lotus flowers so that
one can transform oneself, and an elementary backbone so that one can
unfold a strengthened ego in the elemental world.
As mentioned in the lecture yesterday, what develops in
a spiritual way can lead to a high order of virtues in the spiritual
world, but if this is allowed to stream down into the sense world, it
can bring about the most terrible vices. It is the same with the
lotus flowers and elemental backbone. By practicing certain methods
it is also possible to awaken the lotus flowers and backbone without
aiming for moral firmness — but this no conscientious
clairvoyant would recommend. It is not merely a question of attaining
something or other in the higher worlds, but of knowing what is
involved. At the moment we pass over the threshold into the spiritual
world, we approach the luciferic and ahrimanic beings, of whom we
have already spoken; here we meet them in quite a different way from
any confrontation we might have in the physical world. We will have
the remarkable experience that as soon as we cross the threshold,
that is, as soon as we have developed the lotus flowers and a
backbone, we will see the luciferic powers coming towards us with the
intention of seizing the lotus flowers. They stretch their tentacles
out towards our lotus flowers; we must have developed in the right
way so that we use the lotus flowers to grasp and understand the
spiritual events and so that they are not themselves grasped by the
luciferic powers. It is possible to prevent their being seized by
these powers only by ascending into the spiritual world with firmly
established moral forces.
I have already mentioned that in the physical sense
world the ahrimanic forces approach us more from outside, the
luciferic more from within the soul. In the spiritual world it is
just the opposite: the luciferic beings come from outside and try to
lay hold of the lotus flowers, whereas the ahrimanic beings come from
within and settle themselves tenaciously within the elementary
backbone. If we have risen into the spiritual world without the
support of morality, the ahrimanic and luciferic powers form an
extraordinary alliance with each other. If we have come into the
higher worlds filled with ambition, vanity, pride or with the desire
for power, Ahriman and Lucifer will succeed in forming a partnership
with each other. I will use a picture for what they do, but this
picture corresponds to the actual situation and you will understand
that what I am indicating really takes place: Ahriman and Lucifer
form an alliance; together they bind the petals of the lotus flowers
to the elementary backbone. When all the petals are fastened to the
backbone, the human being is tied up in himself, fettered within
himself through his strongly developed lotus flowers and backbone.
The results of this will be the onset of egoism and love of deception
to an extent that would be impossible were he to remain normally in
the physical world. Thus we see what can happen if clairvoyant
consciousness is not developed in the right way: the alliance of
Ahriman and Lucifer whereby the petals of the lotus flowers are
fastened onto the elementary backbone, fettering a person within
himself by means of his own elemental or etheric capacities. These
are the things we must know if we wish to penetrate with open eyes
and with understanding into the actual spiritual world.
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