NATURE AND SPIRIT BEINGS E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

'Suppose you have seen an event, have formed an idea about it, and you say something that is not true – in other words, something that is a lie. Then what flows from the object is correct and what flows from you is false and this collision is a terrible explosion; and each time you do this, you attach a gruesome being to your karma which you cannot get rid of again until you have made good what you lied about.' – Rudolf Steiner In a previously-untranslated volume of lectures, Rudolf Steiner presents shattering insights regarding the interaction of human and spiritual beings. He speaks, for example, about how perfumes can give certain spirits access to people on earth, or how phantoms, spectres and demons can be created through human deficiencies – or even how the arts of architecture, sculpture, painting and music allow 'good' or 'hideous' entities to enter our world. As he states: 'Learning about the effects of spiritual beings is of much greater help than moral preaching. A future humanity will know what it is creating through lies, hypocrisy and slander.' The lectures are divided into two broad thematic groups: the first relating to the inner path of knowledge and its relation to the yearly festivals, and the second focusing on the work of elemental beings in our everyday world. The 18 lectures are complemented with notes, an index and an introduction by Christian von Arnim.

Leseprobe

NATURE AND SPIRIT BEINGS

THEIR ACTIVITY IN OUR VISIBLE WORLD

Listeners’ notes of eighteen lectures held in various cities between 5 November 1907 and 14 June 1908

TRANSLATED AND INTRODUCED BY CHRISTIAN VON ARNIM

RUDOLF STEINER

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

CW 98

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2022

Originally published in German under the title Natur- und Geistwesen—ihr Wirken in unserer sichtbaren Welt (volume 98 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. Based on transcripts and notes not reviewed or revised by the speaker. This authorized translation is based on the second German edition (1996), edited by Hendrik Knobel. Drawings in the text are based on sketches in the shorthand notes, drawn by Leonore Uhlig

Published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

© Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Rudolf Steiner Verlag 1996

This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85584 600 5 eISBN 978 1 85584 634 0

Cover by Morgan Creative Typeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Vishakapatnam, India Printed and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

CONTENTS

Publisher’s Note

Introduction by Christian von Arnim

I

VIENNA, 5 NOVEMBER 1907

The so-called dangers of occult development

Occult development and theosophical work. The concealed activity of Christian Rosenkreutz. Initiate, clairvoyant, adept. The development of the human being to age twenty-eight. Softening and hardening. Rickets, tuberculosis, arteriosclerosis. The nature of the theosophical movement. Method of clairvoyance. Non-sensory thinking. The imagination. The image of plant, animal and human being as a cross. Heart and larynx as organs of the future, the sexual organs as dying organs. The sacred lance of love. The Grail. Lies and their effects. Spiritual listening. The image of the blood that will shine again. The Apocalypse of John.

Pages 03-13

VIENNA, 7 NOVEMBER 1907

Esoteric development and supersensory knowledge

About the sleep state. The lotus flower (swastika). Training of the supersensory organs. The errors to be avoided in training. Concentration, proactive action, mastery of pleasure and grief, positivity, impartiality. Life after death. Karma. Preview of the life to come. The Guardian of the Threshold. The two sides of self-knowledge. Fertilization by the spirit in love and humility leads to godliness.

Pages 14-24

DÜSSELDORF, 15 DECEMBER 1907

Rosicrucianism

The different methods of initiation. Overview of the post-Atlantean period. The nature of the Indian peoples. The modern period. Cimabue, Giotto, Raphael. The emergence of the materialistic mentality through occult powers. Christian Rosenkreutz and his method. The various lives of Christian Rosenkreutz. The seven stages of initiation. Occult studies. Non-sensory thinking. The imagination. The Grail. Occult writing. The philosopher’s stone. Correspondence of microcosm and macrocosm. Sun and eye. Godliness. Goethe’s ‘Mysteries’. Oaks and initiates.

Pages 25-39

COLOGNE, 25 DECEMBER 1907

‘The Mysteries’—A Christmas and Easter poem by Goethe

The legend of the Three Kings. The worldview of esoteric Christianity. The spiritual light of the moon (Jehovah) and the sun (Christ). The sun seen through the earth as the star of the Magi. The unification of the religions. Goethe’s ‘The Mysteries’, text and exegesis. The devotion of the external world infused by spirit.

Pages 40-66

COLOGNE (FIRST LECTURE), 7 JUNE 1908

The Whitsun festival of joint spiritual striving and spiritualizing the world

The loss of emotional content in relation to the festivals of the year. The elemental beings and their relationship with humans and animals. Sylphs, undines, gnomes, salamanders. The group souls of the animals. The development of the human being from the group soul to the individual soul since Atlantis. The Germanic tribes in Tacitus. The period of the patriarchs of the Jewish people. Beings of the animal group soul. Constrictions from the group soul. New formation of group souls in human beings through internalization of the ideals. The Whitsun festival of souls striving together as task for the future.

Pages 67-78

COLOGNE (SECOND LECTURE), 9 JUNE 1908

The Whitsun festival of joint spiritual striving and working towards spiritualizing the world

Elemental beings. Influences of higher beings in the human being during sleep. Creation of elemental beings through bad characteristics of human beings. Phantoms, spectres, demons. The development of the etheric body (etheric head) from Atlantis to the present day. The gradual loosening of the etheric head in the future. Necessity of spiritual teaching. Böcklin’s Pieta. The influence of spiritual beings in the forms of architecture. The idea of Whitsun.

Pages 79-88

II

Nuremberg, 1 DECEMBER 1907

The relationship of human beings to the world around them

The experience of nature in a theosophical sense. Self-awareness in humans, minerals and animals. The group I of animals. The I of the plant. Wellbeing and pain in the plant kingdom. World spirit (animal kingdom) and world soul (plant kingdom). The warmth of feeling for nature as true theosophy. Feelings of pain and wellbeing in the mineral world. The child’s destructiveness. The experience in the feelings of the soul and spiritual element in the surroundings, in sun, moon and earth through the course of the year. Sun beings and moon deity. The meaning of Christ’s death on Golgotha for the earth. The nature of the sixfold sun spirit. The mystery of the Last Supper. The withdrawal of the spirit because of intellectual culture (brownies). The Rainbow Bible. Goethe and the Bible.

Pages 91-103

MUNICH, 4 DECEMBER 1907

The elemental kingdoms, their nature and their actions

The four kingdoms of the sensory world. The three elemental kingdoms. Their connection with the higher planes. The nature of the mineral, plant, animal and human being. The fourfold human being. Development since Old Saturn. Blood, nerves, glands, senses. The sleeping human being. The conscious I in the mineral kingdom today and the plant kingdom in future. Influences from the astral plane on the human being during the night. The seven elemental kingdoms.

Pages 104-120

STUTTGART, 7 DECEMBER 1907

The human being’s relationship with nature

The nature of theosophy and the theosophist. Mineral, plant, animal, human. The group soul of animals (bird migration). Wellbeing and pain in the plant world. The nature of the mineral. Pain and wellbeing in the mineral kingdom. The experience of nature as the fruit of theosophy.

Pages 121-130

MUNICH, 15 JANUARY 1908

The effects of some supersensory beings on the human being

Remarks for new listeners. Animal group souls. Example of fingers held through a wall. The two groups of beings of the astral plane. Roaring moon beings. Benign Mars beings. Pleasure and pain in the plant world. Two types of Venus beings. Pleasure and pain in the mineral kingdom. Two types of Saturn beings. Effects in the blood, lymph and chyle. Overcoming the effects of the moon and Mars spirits in the lymph, the Venus spirits in the chyle through training of the higher human being (lymph) and through proper nutrition (chyle). Effect on the senses through Saturn beings. Effect of smell (perfume) on our fellow human beings.

Pages 131-140

FRANKFURT AM MAIN, 2 FEBRUARY 1908 (MORNING)

The group I’s of animals, plants and minerals

The effect of theosophy on the human being. The animal group soul. Examples of fingers held through a wall. Bird flight. Beavers. About bees. Animal group I and plant group I. Pleasure and pain in the plant kingdom. Rock group I on the higher Devachan. Pleasure and pain in the mineral kingdom. Paul’s saying about the groaning of creatures. Religious records and their interpretation. The position of the human being in the world.

Pages 141-146

HEIDELBERG, 2 FEBRUARY 1908 (EVENING)

The group I’s of animals, plants and minerals

The nature of plants. The glowing light of the plant. The group I’s of the animals. Pain and pleasure in the plant kingdom and mineral kingdom. Formation and disintegration of the earth. Paul’s words that every creature groans in pain. The work of the deceased on the earth in the past and future. The creation of the planets Mercury and Venus. The nature of the sun and moon.

Pages 147-154

STUTTGART, 8 FEBRUARY 1908

Some supersensory facts and beings

The nature of plants. The difference between astral and etheric. Oxygen and nitrogen (azote). The nature of a planet. The life of the old sun. The fixed-star existence of the sun and its development to the zodiac. The pre-Saturn existence. The matter-emitting being of the Thrones (Saturn). The light-emitting being of the sun, being of the moon. The formation of the planets Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and Mars. The creation of the sentient soul, mind soul and consciousness soul as well as manas out of planetary forces. The human being as spectrum, as ‘spectre’ of cosmic forces, except the I. The nature of the word maya.

Pages 155-166

STUTTGART, 11 FEBRUARY 1908

Influences from other worlds on the earth

The animal group souls. The moon beings. Chyle, lymph, blood. The Mars beings and the Venus beings. The impact of the surroundings on human beings. Saturn beings—their influences through the senses. Black-magic practices in politics through smell. Comment on the burning of undesirable persons in the past and their treatment today. Sugar consumption in Russia and England. Concrete treatment of such questions as sugar consumption. Knowledge and freedom.

Pages 167-175

MUNICH, 17 MARCH 1908

Earth and human development

The nature of presenting occult facts. The development of the earth through Saturn, sun, moon. Description of the old moon. Beginnings of the earth state. The human warmth organ up in the head. The earth as light being. The nervous system. Densification of the earth into water. Formation of organic substances. External fire and ash. The separation of the sun from the earth. Beings on Saturn, sun and moon at the human stage. Formation of the planets Uranus, Jupiter, Mercury and Venus. The first great teachers of the mysteries. Mercury beings.

Pages 176-183

MUNICH, 29 APRIL 1908

The connections between worlds and beings

The hierarchies of Christian esotericism. The denial of the hierarchies out of the laziness of materialism. The angels: their inner nature, their leadership of human beings in shaping the earth, their guidance of the eternal I in the human being. The angel as the future figure of the human being. The nature of the archangels. Egyptian animal worship. The sense organs of the angels. The archai as spirits of an epoch or time. Description of the post-Atlantean epochs. Giordano Bruno as an expression of the spirit of his time. The nature of the ‘powers’. Sun and moon. ‘Satan’ as master of obstacles. Christ and Satan. The nature of the movement of celestial bodies. Copernicus and his three celestial laws. The true orbit of the earth. The spirits of the orbital periods. Reflections on a psychological book.

Pages 184-196

MUNICH, 14 JUNE 1908

Elemental beings and other higher spiritual beings. Spiritual beings of the kingdoms of nature

External facts as the physiognomic expression of spiritual beings and events. The intervention of higher spiritual beings in the sleeping state of the human being. The effect of soul deficiencies of the human being connected with this: creation of phantoms, spectres and demons. The connection of the human being with higher spiritual beings through the former’s space- and form-creating cultural activities: architecture, sculpture, painting, music. Spiritual beings of the kingdoms of nature: gnomes, undines, sylphs and salamanders. Anthroposophy as the creator of culture. The future of the anthroposophical movement.

Pages 197-214

APPENDIX

HANOVER, 24 FEBRUARY 1908 (BRIEF NOTES)

Beings that influence the human being

Spiritual beings and group souls. Etheric and astral body. Blood, lymph, chyle, sensory organs. Moon and Venus beings. Human types. Saturn beings acting in smells. The rainbow as an image of the human being. Reality as the revelation of spiritual activity. Four types of counteraction against bad influences from the planets, moon, Mars, Venus, Saturn. The Star of Bethlehem. The possible effect of the word Yahweh. Overcoming evil.

Pages 215-218

Notes

Rudolf Steiner’s Collected Works

Significant Events in the Life of Rudolf Steiner

Index

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

THE present volume combines the transcripts and notes of eighteen single and double lectures in various places in the years 1907 and 1908. They were given in the same period as the Berlin lectures of the volume Good and Evil Spirits and their Influence on Humanity,* CW 102, and thus form a supplement to the Berlin presentations.

Instead of the usual strictly chronological sequence, the lectures were divided into two large thematic groups. In the lectures of the first group, Rudolf Steiner throws a light on the supersensory path of knowledge in connection with the annual festivals, while in the lectures of the second group he focuses more on the work of spiritual, specifically elemental beings in our visible world.

______________________

*Rudolf Steiner Press, 2014.

INTRODUCTION

IN June 1923, Rudolf Steiner spoke in Dornach in a series of lectures for members about the Anthroposophical Society and the wider anthroposophical movement at a critical stage in their development. It was a wake-up call to the Society, which had fractured and lost its sense of purpose (and which, indeed, he was soon to re-found), and in those lectures Steiner took the opportunity to set out and review for members the way anthroposophy had evolved from its beginnings.

Looking back, he divided its development into three major phases. In the first one, up to about 1909, he worked on the fundamental inner spiritual content to lay the foundations for a modern science of the spirit. The second stage was concerned with coming to grips with the natural sciences and also the elaboration of the anthroposophical understanding of Christianity. There was also what Steiner described as the first expansion of anthroposophy into the artistic field. This phase finished in about 1914. The third phase was then concerned, among other things, with deepening all these things.

The present lectures were given from late 1907 to mid-1908. They thus fall towards the end of the period when Rudolf Steiner was engaged in developing the spiritual foundations of what—after the expulsion of the German Section from the Theosophical Society in 1913—was to become anthroposophy and the Anthroposophical Society. Steiner had assumed the leadership of the German Section of the Theosophical Society in 1901 as a vehicle for his work and in 1902 gave his first public lectures on theosophy. The basic texts on spiritual science that are written within this period includeTheosophy, published in 1904, and An Outline of Esoteric Science, which he began writing in 1906 and which was finally published in 1909. The source material for How to Know Higher Worlds and Cosmic Memory first appeared in 1904.

The eighteen lectures in this volume, then, deal with spiritual matters. Some of them are quite short but that may be because they were not taken down by a professional stenographer but are based on listeners’ notes. Some are therefore a less comprehensive record of what Steiner said than others. In this sense they may also be seen as abbreviated versions rather than full verbatim reproductions of the actual lectures.

They are grouped by subject matter rather than chronology and the first section deals with esoteric development and supersensory knowledge, also in connection with the seasonal festivals and esoteric Christianity. They delve into spiritual history and evolution, including in a cosmic context, and set out the different types of access to supersensory knowledge and stages of initiation, specifically the Rosicrucian path.

The last two lectures in the first section already touch on the theme of the second part of this volume, namely the influence of elemental and higher spiritual beings on the human being; indeed, how human beings themselves are responsible through their thoughts and actions for the creation of certain types of elementals with both positive and negative influences.

While the lectures in the first section deal quite widely with various aspects of their subject matter, those in the second part deal quite specifically and narrowly with the nature and origin of elemental beings and the planetary influence of higher beings on a person. Held in various cities throughout Germany, they cover the same core material to a greater or lesser extent—including referencing the same examples and images to illustrate the points he was making.

The striking thing about these latter lectures is the way in which Steiner talks about the different planes of existence, the different locations of the constitutional elements that make up humans, animals, plants and minerals, and planet earth as such, and the hierarchies of spiritual entities below human beings and above, extending into the cosmos and the planetary spheres.

What we see here is not a linear progression down into the earth and out into the cosmos but the interpenetration of all these various spheres of existence. We are surrounded by spiritual beings inside and outside us, by a spiritual world which constitutes our immediate environment. Beyond the material reality of the world accessible to our physical senses, these lectures show us the human being living in a spiritual multi-dimensional universe not above and below, but within and all around us, in which we also have to get used to thinking of space and distance in categories which are not always easy to fathom.

Christian von Arnim March 2022

I

VIENNA, 5 NOVEMBER 1907

THE SO-CALLED DANGERS OF OCCULT DEVELOPMENT

WHEN we talk about occultism or indeed the occult development of the human being, we must first and foremost discuss how the cultivation of such development relates to actual theosophical work in the world. The latter has, since it began, performed its task specifically in that it made a certain sum of occult truths accessible to humanity. These truths about the supersensory worlds, with which we can familiarize ourselves in the theosophical literature and the lectures, are essentially very ancient. But until the last third of the nineteenth century it was not customary, and neither was it necessary, to communicate these truths publicly to the world in the form in which they exist in theosophy today. The cultivation of these truths was a matter for the so-called secret schools and secret societies.

A person who wanted to know something about the ancient truths relating to the inner world had to be an accepted pupil, as we say, a pupil of the great teachers of humanity. That anybody went out in order to tell the world certain elementary truths, as we have to do today, that did not happen. Anyone who was admitted had to pass certain tests of their character, their intellectual and other abilities, and within the school there was a very strict division into grades. It was impossible, for example, that someone who had just been admitted would have been told secrets of higher grades. In short, everything was strictly regulated and the world outside knew nothing of the existence of such an occult science which is, after all, the only true occultism.

Who were the people who underwent their training there? As a rule, they were unknown—one was a blacksmith, another a cobbler, a court councillor, a carpenter. All that was known about them was how they presented themselves to the world; it was not known that these people were wise men and women who could look deep into the spiritual and supersensory world. That changed in the last third of the nineteenth century; it is necessary today for at least the basic part of the occult sciences to be communicated in public in theosophical writings and lectures and in other ways. We will see in a moment that this is possible, and why this is so.

Now let us first take a look at that previous time which basically lasted into the fourteenth century and partly even into the last third of the nineteenth century. The preparation of what is happening now—the making public of certain elementary teachings of occultism—was prepared by the occult stream which was founded in the fourteenth and fifteenth century by a highly placed individuality who has become known to the world under the name Christian Rosenkreutz.1 Who this Christian Rosenkreutz is or who is concealed behind this figure is only known by the initiates. Only one thing is certain, he is one of the most advanced individualities of modern times whose task was to shape the occult knowledge of the Middle Ages in such a way that it fitted into modern life.

In the last third of the nineteenth century, some people were to go out and tell humanity what it needs to know today. Theosophy is nothing other than the basic teaching of occultism.

If we now look back to those far distant times when occultism was practised in secret, there were three ways in which a person could establish a relationship with the supersensory worlds: first as an initiate, second as a clairvoyant, third as an adept. These were three strictly separate ways in ancient times and if we want to understand at all what the occult development of the human being involves, we have to keep these three concepts clearly in mind.

What a clairvoyant is understood to be is actually well known. I expressly note that the clairvoyant is the more important, because they have higher senses in general. It is very simple to explain what a clairvoyant is. Hidden abilities slumber in each human soul. They can be developed and then a person can see into the world which is hidden to the ordinary senses. There are such methods in occult science. If a person applies them to themselves, then they are not unconscious in sleep in the sense that ordinary people are. These methods enable that person, when their astral body pushes to get out with the I, to perceive the spiritual world that surrounds them. At first as a flood of light, as light and colour phenomena, then the person starts to hear in the night.

This is a real experience which a person has in themselves: that initially in this transitional stage they have a spiritual world around them in the same way that they have a physical one. That is the start of actual clairvoyance.

The person who truly wants to reach the stage of clairvoyance must be able to carry over what they initially see in the night into their daytime consciousness because it would only be a half measure if they were just able to look into the astral world during the night. When they can really set themselves to seeing in a person and animal and so on not just what exists for the physical senses, but can perceive as a shining aura what the person and animal are feeling, then the stage of modern clairvoyance has been reached. Thus the clairvoyant is a person who can really look into the spiritual world and can tell about it. Imagine there was somewhere where no one had ever seen a railway and a person from there was transplanted to a place where there is a railway, then they would know what it is from their own experience. They would be able to tell about it at home from their own experience—in the same way a clairvoyant can bear witness to the spiritual world.

But a person who is a clairvoyant in that way is not yet what we might call an adept, and neither what we call an initiate. If such a person who in the previous example has learnt about a railway through their own observation then returns home, they would not be entrusted with building a locomotive. The same applies in the case of the clairvoyant. They cannot yet do what the person can do who has practice and scholarship in the supersensory world. This is how the clairvoyant, who has only seen what is in the higher worlds, relates to the adept.

And the initiate is someone different again. Another comparison: imagine a person who can see all colours and lights and another who is very short-sighted. The former knows nothing about the laws of the world of light; the latter, who cannot see far, knows all the laws very well as an accomplished physicist and scientist. There are people who are initiated to a very high degree although they are not clairvoyant; at least that applies with regard to all old schools, not to the same degree any longer today. Previously it was possible to work like that, for you must not forget that it is a long process to train clairvoyance or an initiate. Some require many incarnations for that.

Now such work together between clairvoyants and initiates is no longer properly possible today; that is why the Rosicrucian school no longer separates these things so strictly. For humanity today no longer has any concept of the selflessness which used to be active in the esoteric schools. In the Egyptian esoteric schools in particular, there was collaboration of this kind. But this complete trust no longer exists today, humanity today no longer has any idea of it. That is why initiates and clairvoyants were only developed to a certain grade in the Rosicrucian schools. On the other hand, great care has to be taken with adeptship; one could easily harm the world. For people are very reluctant to believe that spiritual forces are at work in everything. A storm would be unleashed and the consequence would be that the preparatory understanding would be put at great risk. First clairvoyants and initiates have to make known the occult knowledge and only then will the adepts gradually follow.

What is an adept? They exist in all fields. Look at the human being themselves. The human being consists by their nature of a physical, etheric and astral body and the I. The different constitutional elements of human nature develop quite differently in the individual stages of life. That is a very important chapter. Because for the occultist the human being is born repeatedly, first physically out of the physical mother. We have the physical body enclosed by the physical womb; the blood and fluids flow from the mother to the child. When the latter is physically born, this physical womb is detached from the child. That is the first birth. At this point the etheric body has not yet been born.

This second birth takes place at second dentition in the seventh year of life. Until then the etheric body is enclosed by the etheric envelope which does not actually belong to the specific etheric body of the child. It is actually not until the seventh year of life that the etheric body is born. The envelope is pushed back and the outer expression of this event is the appearance of the teeth which a person keeps. To the degree that the teeth emerge, the clairvoyant sees how the etheric body is born out of its parent’s envelope. Then, until puberty, the human being is still enveloped by their astral mother who is there from the beginning and remains, also after the seventh year of life. Then this astral mother is pushed away and only then is the astral body born, like previously the physical and etheric one. The rise of the human being to puberty indicates the birth of the astral body. The I is not born fully until the period from age twenty-one to twenty-eight.

When in the future people know how such a development takes place, it will become clear how it influences education. I have given an account of it in my publication The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy.2 This pamphlet sets out all the rules which have to be taken into account in this respect. Now, you see, a teacher who had mastered this system would be an adept in the field of education.

Such practical work from out of the spiritual worlds, that is adeptship. Up to the seventh year, a kind of hardening of the form occurs in the human being. All the forms of the brain, of the skeletal structure are created to the seventh year. They continue to grow, but what is not present by the seventh year is irretrievable. In this way, irretrievable things can be neglected in education. From then on the etheric body is released. So now you can see how the teeth which a human being gets are an expression of whether such hardening and the formation of the etheric body that is being born are in the right proportion to one another. Both of these things are connected, the development of the teeth and the development of the etheric body. Everything that is growth and reproduction is associated with the latter. If one is not in order, the other will not be either. Here we can see how the connection between the teeth and the etheric body is explained out of spiritual science. Women with bad teeth are, for example, more likely to be affected by puerperal fever.

There must be something of the hardening principle and something of the softening principle; there must be a correspondence between the hardening and softening principle. Rickets, for example, arises when the softening principle is stronger. Let us assume that the hardening principle predominates, then the seeds are laid for tuberculosis, for arteriosclerosis. As soon as a person is capable of mastering the etheric and physical body from supersensory causes, they are an adept in the field of child education, just as Paracelsus,3 who is not understood today, was an adept because he could see the invisible principle at every moment. Now you can imagine the uproar that would break out if you went to the university with such teachings. Humanity first has to be gradually prepared, then it will come to the point of demanding from the spiritual leaders that from out of the spiritual world they reinforce their teachings with works. That initiates exist is because the spiritual world can be researched and found by its laws through clairvoyance. But once it has been found and told about, then everything that the clairvoyant tells is comprehensible for ordinary human common sense, and if anyone claims that they cannot understand it, the reason is not that they are not a clairvoyant but that they do not want to apply their ordinary common sense sufficiently.

So one can be an initiate without being a clairvoyant but one then has to rely on the clairvoyant. And in a certain respect the theosophical movement wants to help in such a way that everything that is to be made known must be obtained through clairvoyants. What, then, is the aim with the public? It is to make people in a certain sense into initiates who understand without being clairvoyant themselves. That is the task of the theosophical movement; it is also the correct relationship between the teachings which are being made known and how they are transmitted to the public at large. Now this real penetration into the supersensory world is based on very specific methods. I have already spoken here specifically about the Rosicrucian method,4 so I will only mention a few things.

If we want to guide a person into the higher worlds, if we want to turn them into a clairvoyant, it is necessary first to develop the forces which are already within them: thinking, feeling and volition. This already includes many of the things which the first elementary stages bring in terms of difficulty, which we refer to when we draw attention to the dangers. Clairvoyance is too tempting for certain people today and those who hear something about theosophy are keen to advance to clairvoyance. They are not very pleased when they are told that it is necessary to learn something before you get there.

The first thing that a person has to take into account is that they should develop their thinking, thoroughly develop it, and that they should do so here before they become clairvoyant. It is exceptionally difficult to make clear today what is meant by developing the thinking. Because if you can look into the higher worlds through opening the higher senses, you will see that these worlds look quite, quite different from what you imagine here. As a rule, a person who cannot yet look into the higher worlds will have difficulty in imagining what can be experienced, the kind of impressions there, and even less so with regard to the world of clairaudience, the harmony of the spheres. But one thing remains the same through all worlds: logical thinking. If you have learnt it here, it is a secure guide in the astral and spiritual world. The impressions are very different, the logic is the same; it only begins to change in the highest worlds.

What is offered in the theosophical works and books is non-sensory thinking. If this is not assimilated, then you expose yourself to a certain risk. It is possible to bring someone to see into the astral world but it must not be forgotten that, if you do not stand firmly on the ground of healthy thinking, it is exceptionally difficult to differentiate truth from illusion there. And anyone who cannot do that is simply insane, they are not mentally healthy and thus expose themselves to the danger of losing their balance when the astral world crashes down on them.

We gradually learn to grasp the astral world when we work on the feeling, and this is done through the imagination. I want to show you how this acts on the human being, trains them and guides them into the astral world. It happens such that for the human being all ideas which are otherwise given in dogmas and abstract concepts are transformed into images, that they appear pictorially. What we think and say and learn are abstract concepts, it is speculation to begin with. That will not guide anyone into the higher worlds. Not until the concepts are transformed into images does a person gradually gain access to the higher worlds.

How does the transformation of thoughts into images occur? In the Rosicrucian school the teacher will tell the pupil: Look at the plant. With its root it reaches into the ground, the stem rises straight up, at the top is the flower and the fruit. And now compare the plant with the human being. With superficial thinking we might be tempted to compare the flower with the head of the human being and what is at the bottom of the plant with the feet. In truth, the head of the plant is the root and what the plant chastely holds upwards towards the light are the organs of fertilization, that is just the other way round in human beings. The flower turns these organs towards the light. Imagine the whole thing precisely; if you did not hold the organs of fertilization of the plant upwards but towards the centre of the earth, they would be permeated with desire and passion. Thus we have in the human being the reverse plant which is, however, at the same time permeated with desires and passions. As a result the human body is flesh and the plant body, the chaste one, is a body that has not yet developed into flesh.

And now look at the animal: it is located between plant and human. Plant, animal and at the top the human being form the cross that runs through the whole of nature. Then the pupil was told: Look at the plant, how it turns its calyx upwards, is kissed by the sun, by the ray of light, called the sacred lance of love. The human being had to exchange the plant body with the flesh permeated by desire but they have before them a high ideal.

Here we have to look at the human heart and the larynx. There are two kinds of organ in the human being: those which are on the way to becoming imperfect and will gradually fall away and those which are just in the process of formation. All the lower organs, the sexual organs, will fall away. The heart and larynx, on the other hand, are organs which will only have their completion in the future, will only find their development in the future.

I speak to you. My thoughts are within me. I put them into words. The latter come out of the larynx, produce sound vibrations, and in this way my thoughts are communicated to your soul. The larynx is the device by which the airwaves are produced to bring out what is in the soul. If someone could invent a device through which the waves could be hardened, then you could pick up my thoughts, my words. In the future, the larynx will not just produce words but it will one day be the creative organ of procreation which will bring forth beings similar to humans.

In certain periods, the plant nature of the human being was not yet permeated by the lustful quality of the flesh. Precisely those organs which at the latest developed out of animal nature will be the first to go again; these are the reproductive organs. These were present for a long time as plant organs, when the human being already existed in the flesh. That is why in collections there are pictures of hermaphrodites5 with plant organs. When the Bible tells of Eve’s fig leaf, the truth is that this symbol should be understood to mean that these organs were the last to develop in the flesh. This is how we have to delve into the religious records. The sexual organs are declining organs, whereas the larynx is fully engaged in the process of transformation; and when human beings will have become chaste again, the larynx will turn towards the spiritual sun again. The calyx of the plant developed into the passion-filled form of the flesh, and the larynx will again develop into the chaste, pure chalice fertilized by the spirit, which is held towards the sacred lance of love. That is also the symbol of the Holy Grail, its high ideal.

Compare this, try to experience a sense of the awe in these images; you have here only one of the images which are given to the pupil of the Rosicrucians. And as you make your way through them in this way, you will gradually realize that your feelings become fact for you. You will observe that these feelings radiate light. It is always streaming out, but the lower human being does not see it. The person who experiences this mystery of the imagination learns to see their feelings. That is the beginning.

This has nothing to do with magic, but the ascent to clairvoyance is in the first instance an intimate process through the imagination. But we must become clear about one thing here—for from that moment onwards you see everything streaming out of you when you begin to transform your inner life into light: a person must be able to bear what they see there, and this requires a strength of character of which very few people have any idea. So, for example, if you lie without being a clairvoyant, that is bad in itself, but if you lie as a clairvoyant, and you see how the lie becomes visible and what it means on the astral plane, then you will understand why it is said that a lie there is murder. And it is so. Suppose you have seen an event, have formed an idea about it, and say something that is not true; in other words, something that is a lie. Then what flows from the object is correct and what flows from you is false and this collision is a terrible explosion; and each time you do this, you attach a gruesome being to your karma which you cannot get rid of again until you have made good what you lied about.

Everyone who wants to become clairvoyant has to develop three virtues which they necessarily need. First: trust in themselves, they must be sure of themselves. Second: self-knowledge, they must never shy away from seeing their mistakes. And third: presence of mind. For they will encounter many things on the astral plane but, although these things always surround us, it is a different matter to see them. That is why these qualities must be primarily trained and it is actually a folly when some school or society turns people into clairvoyants without guiding them in this way.

Now, if the pupil is influenced in another way, through what is called occult writing, they are led up into the spiritual world of Devachan, into listening. Here a person has to immerse themselves in the images we have for the course of people’s development. I will place such an image before your soul as an example.

Think of the ancient times when the human being first developed in their present form. At that time the earth was a warm, glowing ball of fire and all metals and minerals were melted in the red-hot earth. Physicists will say: There couldn’t yet be any humans then. Human beings at that time descended from the godhead and formed themselves in the fiery masses. The transformation is a long process. If you could see what the clairvoyant can observe, you would see that they enveloped themselves with the body of fire.

Where, then, has the fire gone which glowed on the earth? Where is it? In your blood. All the warmth which is and has always been in human beings and animals is the burning heat of the earth. And once you are able to transform your blood again so that it shines— that will be the case when the human larynx has been transformed into the Holy Grail—then the human being will emit shining masses again. If the human being now immerses themselves in an image such as this, then they can become seeing, hearing. I would like to draw your attention to the Prologue of the Book of Revelation, which says: ‘The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass.’ These are images which have been used for development in the Rosicrucian schools. The clairvoyant must learn to decipher such images. The development of the earth will be the Word, and the Word will be with the human being, and the human being will create the human being through the Word.

VIENNA, 7 NOVEMBER 1907

ESOTERIC DEVELOPMENT AND SUPERSENSORY KNOWLEDGE

IWOULD like to speak to you today about an extension of the subject from the day before yesterday, about inner or esoteric development and supersensory knowledge. In doing so, it will be necessary for us to assume that we are familiar with what we looked at the day before yesterday and to build, so to speak, on what passed through our souls at that time. You have seen from what we discussed there that the development of the human being is not something which may be taken, let us say, as a joke; it is not something which may be taken lightly. On the other hand, it must be emphasized again and again that we must not speak of the dangers of occult development in the usual trivial way. The dangers are great, but the way in which these dangers are usually spoken of is not correct, and we will have to achieve clarity about a great many things. First of all, let us get a more precise idea for ourselves of what happens to someone who has developed through some kind of exercises, let us say through exercises along the lines as indicated in the last lecture, and let us compare them with a person who is not in such a schooling and lives as everyone else does in everyday life. We obtain a conscious understanding in this context when we start, for example, from what we know about the ordinary state of sleep.

From the previous lecture you gathered what the astral body of the human being actually does during the night in the ordinary state of sleep. When a person sleeps, the physical body and the etheric body lie in bed; the so-called astral body with the I is out of them; it has removed itself, has left them. And when the astral body is not inside the physical body; when it is not observing and contemplating the outer world through its tools, the sense organs; when it is not occupied by the movements and the work of the physical body, then the astral body can take on quite a different task. It removes the fatigue from both. The removal of this fatigue is its task, and the clairvoyant can see how the astral body works all night long on the physical and etheric body from the outside in order to repair them, so that in the morning the human being feels the restoration of their energy as being refreshed. That is why sleep is such a good doctor and why a person loses so much who does not have healthy and sufficient sleep. Many things that look like illnesses are only disorders in the physical and etheric body. These disorders remain when the astral body is not able to remove them. But it is able to remove these disorders when it is not in the body as it is in the waking state, but when it is outside the body.

Where, then, does the astral body get those powers and abilities with which it repairs, so to speak, the physical body? In the last public lecture6 I already compared such an exit of the astral body from the physical and etheric body with a body of water in a glass. If you have a thousand droplets of water in this glass and these droplets all form a body, that is different from taking a thousand sponges and sucking up each droplet of water individually; then you have individualized these droplets, separated them. It is the same with the astral body at night. If you all fell asleep here now, the same thing would happen as when you squeeze the sponges and make a body of water. Your astral body would leave you and join the others. But by joining together, people come into contact with those harmonious great events which are in the cosmos. Our souls return in the night to the harmony of the spheres and from these the astral body with the I—and that is the soul—draws the strength necessary to repair the physical body.

Now what happens to a person who is given an occult teacher and undergoes occult training? They are given certain tasks. We can only speak in broad terms about these. They are given tasks for meditation, concentration and so on. What is the purpose of the task that the teacher gives the pupil? It has the purpose of gradually making the astral body see when it is outside the physical body during the night. In the ordinary human being, the astral body, when it is outside, is unconscious in the astral world, just as you would be unconscious in the physical world if you had no senses. If you have no senses, then the world does not exist for you. Once the person is given the guidance to awaken the powers slumbering in their soul, their astral body acquires sense organs of the spirit or soul, those organs which are called lotus flowers. They are not flowers any more than the lungs are wings;7 everyone knows that the hawk has wings that look different from the lungs. Lotus flowers are organs that have a kind of circular movement.

One such an organ is below the forehead, one centimetre below where the eyebrows meet, in the brain. When this point is thought of intensely with the simultaneous utterance of a certain word, a kind of flash occurs, an illumination, and this is visible to the clairvoyant from the outside. This sense organ gets into a kind of revolving movement. It is described as the wheel turning, coming alive. In the ordinary average person, such an organ is not present at this point, or at most there is a trace of it; training produces such an illumination when the astral body is out of the physical body. It gives the impression of a wheel turning which can be observed from the outside by the clairvoyant. This wheel is called the swastika. This symbol, like real symbols in general, cannot be explained speculatively. They are not invented arbitrarily but they are actually visible on the spiritual or astral plane.

The swastika is an image of this sense organ and all more or less ingenious explanations in the theosophical writings are nonsense. In theosophy there should not be allegorical or symbolic explanations. That is what we should first discard as a habit: all speculation. All thinking about how things might be must be abandoned; it is solely a matter of penetrating the world of facts itself. Near the larynx is the sixteen-petalled lotus flower, an organ on which much, much depends in human development. Near the heart is the twelve-petalled lotus, further down is the ten-petalled one, and so on.

These organs develop through the exercises which the teacher gives the pupil, just as the senses of the physical body are developed through practice, for example through the influence of light and sound. Just consider the one as a physical, the other as a spiritual process of wholly the same duration. You must not believe that any tumultuous processes, sorcery and the like can lead a person to develop these sense organs. It is merely intimate processes, learning within thoughts, which have the power within themselves to develop such organs. Here it is important that the person keeps learning again and again which thoughts these are, and that they think of a certain organ in the body, for example a point in the brain which lies one centimetre below where the eyebrows meet. When the person thinks of this point, with a very specific sequence of words, they awaken certain faculties inside their astral body. It is all systematic and, one might say, technically determined.