Nature Spirits E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Based on knowledge attained through his highly-trained clairvoyance, Rudolf Steiner contends that folk traditions regarding nature spirits are based on spiritual reality. He describes how people possessed a natural spiritual vision in ancient times, enabling them to commune with nature spirits. These entities - which are also referred to as elemental beings - became immortalised as fairies and gnomes in myth, legend and children's stories. Today, says Steiner, the instinctive understanding that humanity once had for these elemental beings should be transformed into clear scientific knowledge. He even asserts that humanity will not be able to reconnect with the spiritual world if it cannot develop a new relationship to the elementals. The nature spirits themselves want to be of great assistance to us, acting as 'emissaries of higher divine spiritual beings'.

Leseprobe

RUDOLF STEINER (1861–1925) called his spiritual philosophy ‘anthroposophy’, meaning ‘wisdom of the human being’. As a highly developed seer, he based his work on direct knowledge and perception of spiritual dimensions. He initiated a modern and universal ‘science of spirit’, accessible to anyone willing to exercise clear and unprejudiced thinking.

From his spiritual investigations Steiner provided suggestions for the renewal of many activities, including education (both general and special), agriculture, medicine, economics, architecture, science, philosophy, religion and the arts. Today there are thousands of schools, clinics, farms and other organizations involved in practical work based on his principles. His many published works feature his research into the spiritual nature of the human being, the evolution of the world and humanity, and methods of personal development. Steiner wrote some 30 books and delivered over 6000 lectures across Europe. In 1924 he founded the General Anthroposophical Society, which today has branches throughout the world.

Nature Spirits

Selected lectures by

Rudolf Steiner

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Compiled and edited by Wolf-Ulrich Klünker

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

www.rudolfstemerpress.com

Published by Rudolf Steiner Press 2012

Originally published in German under the title Geistige Wesen in der Natur by Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart, in 1992

© Verlag Freies Geistesleben 1992 This translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 1995

Where appropriate, the moral right of the author has been asserted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

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, recording 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 357 8

Cover by Andrew Morgan Typeset by Imprint Publicity Service, Crawley Down, Sussex

Contents

Introduction by Wolf-Ulrich Klünker

I Elemental Beings of Earth and Water

Helsinki, 3 April 1912

II Elemental Beings and the Spirits of the Cosmos

Helsinki, 4 April 1912

III Redemption of the Elementals by the Human Being

Düsseldorf, 12 April 1909

IV Gnomes, Undines, Sylphs and Salamanders

Berlin, 16 May 1908

V Phantoms, Spectres and Demons

Berlin, 4 June 1908

VI Elemental Spirits of Birth and Death

Dornach, 6 October 1917

VII Truth, Beauty, Goodness and the Elemental Beings

Dornach, 16 December 1922

VIII Elemental Spirits and the Plant World

Dornach, 2 November 1923

IX Elemental Spirits and the Animal Kingdom

Dornach, 3 November 1923

X Ahrimanic Elemental Beings

Torquay, 19 August 1924

XI The Elemental World and the Future of Mankind

Dornach, 28 May 1922

XII Perception of the Elemental World

Münich, 26th August 1913

Sources of the lectures

Notes

Introduction

by Wolf-Ulrich Klünker

Human beings stand in a particular relationship to the spiritual world: we live upon the earth; through our physical body and its sense-organs we connect directly with the physical world. As a being of spirit a human being can develop a connection with the spiritual world. This spiritual world is composed of various, differentiated regions; it spans many levels, from the lowest, that of the angel beings, right up to the highest domain of the Holy Trinity. Inasmuch as the human being is a perceiving, discerning spiritual being, he is in direct relationship to angelic beings; the angels, who represent the lower order of the Third Hierarchy, can be seen as intermediaries between the spiritual world and human beings. Whenever a human being turns his attention and recognition to the angel being, he gains access to that domain of reality which is wholly spiritual.

With the other side of his nature a human being partakes of earthly things. These consist of the world of the elements, of the animal kingdom, the plant and mineral worlds. One can perceive these realms as the living forms of nature spirits, who exist in a lower domain than human beings whereas the angels reside above the human sphere. Just as the angels embody, for human beings, a transition or mediation with the spiritual world, so do human beings border upon the domain of nature beings. We can give them an orientation towards the world of spirit, standing as we do between the kingdoms of nature and the realms of spiritual reality.

A human being connects with both nature and spirit; he unites them as one being within himself. This special place in the cosmos has, through the ages, been perceived in Christian tradition and considered as the human being’s particular task. In the ninth century, Johannes Scotus Erigena spoke of this task in his Homelia, describing human beings as the ‘third world’ in which are united the ‘first world’ of spiritual beings and the ‘second world’ of bodily existence: ‘The third world possesses an intermediary nature, uniting the higher spiritual and the lower bodily worlds, making one out of the two; it is in a human being that all creation is united. The human being consists of body and soul. He unites the body of this world with the soul of the other world and so makes one glorious creation. And the body, of course, possesses the whole bodily nature, while the soul possesses the whole non-physical nature. Inasmuch as these natures are united as one, they form the all-encompassing worldly splendour of mankind. That is why the human being is named “everything”, for all creation is united in him as in a workshop.’1 By ‘soul’ (anima), Erigena understands the spiritual essence of the human being; this is clear from the passage in which he describes the soul as possessing ‘the whole non-physical nature’. In his analogy to a ‘workshop’, Erigena suggests that the binding together of two domains within the human being cannot happen by itself, but must be made and worked at.

We can see, then, that human beings have a certain mediating task in regard to nature and the beings inhabiting it. This task of establishing a connection between the kingdom of nature and the spiritual world is not compatible with our having a one-sided exploitative relationship to nature. It also excludes an investigation of nature beings which is fired only by curiosity and a desire for knowledge. A human being cannot really involve himself with these beings simply in order to satisfy his curiosity. The aim of his striving for knowledge about them must, rather, be to create a connection between the worlds of nature and spirit: in other words to establish a connection between nature beings and angel beings. Only a human being can make this connection, for he alone unites both realms within himself. If he withdraws from this task, both realms remain separate. The perception and understanding of nature spirits or elemental beings is essentially connected with a task which one can call ‘cosmic’, an evolutionary task which only human beings can accomplish, because of their special position within the cosmos. That is why the question about elemental beings is intimately bound up with the whole cosmos and its evolution, as expressed in the traditions of Christianity.

Knowledge and Nature Beings

We see, then, that a perception of, and understanding for, elemental beings is integral to our consciousness of our task in cosmic evolution. Rudolf Steiner points to the need for such a consciousness when, in a lecture, he formulates the question: ‘Can we, as human beings, do something for these elemental spirits?... Can we do anything to free them from their state of enchantment?’2 He answers this question by differentiating between nature-investigation of two kinds. A human being can, in the first case, remain ‘a mere observer of the material phenomena which come towards him. If this is so, the elemental spirits enter him, sit there inside him and have gained nothing from the world-process except that they have come in to him from the outer world.’ The other form of observation is practised by one who ‘digests his impressions spiritually by thinking about them, and by forming concepts about the underlying spiritual foundation of the world. That is, a person who does not merely stare, but ponders over its nature; a person who feels the beauty of things and ennobles his impressions.’ The elemental beings can be released from their ‘enchantment’ and made free to reassume their original destiny according to the degree to which we develop a spiritual relationship to nature. ‘As a result of this spiritual activity he redeems the elemental being that streams toward him from the outer world, thus raising it to its previous state. He releases the elemental being from its enchantment. So, through our spiritual activity, we can release beings who are bewitched in air, water and earth...’ Mankind’s task therefore consists in developing a particular attitude of mind towards the world.

Human beings can work at the freeing of other kinds of elemental being when they create in themselves a certain attitude of soul, which Rudolf Steiner describes as ‘industrious and reproductive’: ‘When a person is lazy, these elementals continually flow into him unchanged. Through his idleness he leaves unchanged those elemental beings who are chained to darkness at night. Those elemental beings who enter into him when he is active and industrious are led back into the daylight.’

Human beings can also develop a third kind of attitude, an attitude of life, and thereby release yet another form of elemental being: ‘A person who is bright and cheerful, who is satisfied with life, who is of a cheerful disposition because of his understanding of the world is continually liberating beings who are chained because of the waning moon. These beings enter into him but are continually released because of his serene soul disposition, his inner contentment, his harmonious view of life.’ One can easily imagine that the development of such an attitude of life has a stronger transformative effect upon a human being than is produced by the attitudes of soul and mind. It becomes clear that a recognition of the elemental beings is inevitably bound up with mankind’s own further evolution. This evolution begins with an attitude of mind, passes through a mood of soul and leads to a profound attitude towards life.

Ultimately human beings can take a further step in inner development and thereby free a fourth kind of elemental being: ‘Let us take a person who, with the approach of Christmas, carries an ever greater feeling of devotion in his heart, one who understands the true meaning of this festival, which is that as outer nature dies the spirit must be all the more awake. Let us assume such a person lives through the winter season and at Easter realizes that the time of sleep for the spirit is connected with the enlivening processes in nature. He then experiences the Easter festival with understanding.’

Rudolf Steiner describes the capacity that is thus developed as ‘religious understanding for natural processes’, as distinct from a ‘merely outer religion.’ This religious attitude consists in a striving to create an inner context and connection, which is not immediately evident in outer nature. The example chosen here by Rudolf Steiner refers to the seasons of the year, yet it also holds good in other contexts. Through his consciousness a human being inwardly complements, rounds out to wholeness, what is not immediately apparent in nature. In this way a stage of development is attained in which he not only engages himself in inner reaction, as in the first three stages, but also complements, or one could say creates, a missing aspect of nature. In order to do this, he must have learnt to grasp a whole context, must allow it to live in him and recognize in each case what is not present in nature, so that he can add, from his spiritual life, what is lacking. The principle, which could be summed up as ‘intentional inner activity in contrast to mere observation’, comes here to a very significant culmination.

There exists a strange connection between the elements and human knowledge. In Rudolf Steiner’s fourth Mystery Drama, it becomes clear that the human soul can either lift itself up to the spirit and so to its own essence, or alternatively can, as it were, remain ‘possessed’ by elemental realities:

The conflicts of the elements have blown Away her error’s fabric of appearance; Which now lives on within the elements’ fury. Only her essence has the soul preserved.3

What is expressed in these lines is that the part of the soul which is bound up with illusion and appearance has, as it were, been absorbed by the elements. The essence or being of the soul itself, however, has risen up to the spirit. The step, here described as the goal of an ancient Egyptian initiation, could not in this case be completed by the one being initiated. If he had truly achieved recognition and understanding his soul would have found itself in the Spirit-Self. But it was unable to pass through a process of self-knowledge, giving itself over instead to the weaving of the elements. Therefore it created ‘being’ rather than knowledge and entered into a non-spiritual, elemental form of existence. The neophyte should, instead of directly experiencing the elemental world, have permeated it with knowledge and understanding. It becomes apparent after the neophyte’s awakening that he has connected himself with the elements and lived within them, instead of gaining understanding about them. Therefore the life of the elements has taken the place of a process of knowledge. In the cultural epoch referred to here, initiation consisted in recognition of the movements of elemental powers, not in becoming them. But this would only have been possible, at that time, if the one to be initiated had meditated on a ‘word’ which the initiating priest had given to him, which was intended to have a spiritual effect.4 In those days one could be protected from being absorbed into elemental life by the thought-forms of someone else; in our time this would have to occur through one’s own understanding and knowledge.

A similar set of circumstances is portrayed – again in the fourth Mystery Drama – which also has significance for the present day. A condition of soul from one’s own past, which has been overcome, enters the realms of the elements when it is no longer appropriate or relevant to one’s present stage of biographical development. Yet it can still be apparent in the experiencing of oneself, ‘shadowing forth from outlived times’. The past which appears in this way

...constrains you not, for you can rule it. Compare it with the elemental beings, With shades and shadows of all kinds, Place it also in the sphere of demons; Then you will recognise its true extent. But seek your own self in the realm of spirit...5

In this context, the elemental nature appears as the soul-residue of the past. We are not controlled by it if we can confront it with conscious recognition. We must not confuse it with ourself but must, rather, separate it from ourself, objectify it. Then we can discover ‘its true extent’. Real self-knowledge does not begin with the elemental forces of one’s own past state of soul, but ‘in the realm of spirit’, in other words, with the soul’s future, with the spirit towards which the soul is evolving. This allows the soul’s outlived past to unite itself with the elements

Which work unconsciously through world-expanses Eluding constantly the soul’s wakefulness.6

The old forces of soul unite with the elements; from the purified soul of the present arises spirit. The world of the elements appears, in this context, as outmoded powers of soul, which have a demonic influence when they encroach on the present, but which we can lead back into the unconsciousness of elemental existence and so be rendered harmless. We are able to do this when we journey upon a path of spiritual development. The relationship between elemental world, human soul and spiritual reality is therefore also one of time: the soul evolves towards spirit (that is, into the future); when this evolution does not take place, then old soul forces (the soul’s past) condense into elemental existence.

The elemental world borders directly on the soul-world of human beings and can be influenced by processes of thought and understanding. What was described above in connection with outer nature is also valid in the realm of self-knowledge: an understanding for the elemental world is only possible when it is sought, not through simple, passive observation but through an engaged and intentionally directed activity of enquiry. This activity can also be described as a moral quality which, in the realm of self-knowledge, consists of being clearly focused on the possibilities for one’s own future development. Such an activity must, in contrast to a holding fast to past soul-states, be consistently and intentionally upheld.

It is for this reason that a true recognition of the elemental world always contains a moral aspect; without it, human beings are imprisoned in elemental reality. By ‘moral’ is meant (in accord with a philosophy of idealism) a disposition of will which we continually draw out of ourselves anew and must consciously uphold. If this does not occur, the human ‘I’ succumbs to the elemental powers. ‘One cannot develop a sense of oneself in the elemental world without strenuously exercising one’s power of will, without willing oneself. That, however, requires the overcoming of the human love of comfort, which is enormously deep-rooted.’7 ‘One must experience the great significance of the fact that, at the moment in which one is no longer strong enough to activate not the thought but the power of will involved in saying “I will myself”, one has the sensation of fainting away. To fail to hold oneself up in the elemental world means to fall, as it were, into a faint.’

The uniting of perception and morality is also necessary for an understanding of the elemental world, because perception unsustained by moral activity is open to great illusions in this realm of reality. Both the ‘I’-experience and an insight into the ‘object realm’ of the elements need to be permeated with intentional thinking activity. ‘Inner courage and firmness of purpose must, above all things, be developed in the soul; a weak purpose weakens the whole soul-life and a weak soul-life draws one into the elemental world. That should not be, if one wishes to live rightly and truly within the elemental world. It is for this reason that no one who truly takes experiences of higher worlds seriously will ever fail to emphasize that in order to strengthen soul-life, so that it can rightly enter into higher worlds, one must also strengthen the moral powers of the soul.’

A Perspective on the Historical and Spiritual Evolution of Christianity

A very similar connection between knowledge and the elemental world can be found in the previously cited Homelia by Johannes Scotus Erigena: ‘The Holy Scriptures are ... like a spiritual world, composed of four parts, as though of the four elements. Their “earth” occupies a middle and lower position – similar to a central point – in the form of history. Around it flows the cascade of moral understanding, commonly termed “ethics” by the Greeks, which is comparable to the waters of the earth. Around both history and ethics streams, as around the two lower realms of earth and water, the air and atmosphere of natural science, which the Greeks name “physics”. Beyond and around all these is spread the ethereal, blazing globe of the fiery heavens, that is, the loftiest perception of the nature of God, which the Greeks refer to as “theology”.’8

Erigena here relates four domains of elemental reality to four realms of knowledge. An historical understanding, called ‘history’ by Erigena, is connected by him to the earth, a moral understanding to water, a knowledge of nature to the air and a theological enquiry into purely spiritual truths, to fire. One must bear in mind that Erigena did not intend a simple outward comparison; this passage is, rather, to be understood as an indication of the inner connection which was still experienced in the ninth century between the elemental world and human knowledge. It is interesting to notice that Erigena has an understanding of ‘natural science’ which is unusual in our day: he places it, not in relation to the earth but higher than ethics, immediately below a perception of purely spiritual reality (‘theology’). His introductory remark referring to the Holy Scriptures as a kind of ‘spiritual world’ makes clear that Erigena sees the spiritual world as being composed of various realms in a way similar to the differentiation of the physical world into its constituent elements. Knowledge of the elements and spiritual knowledge have stages which relate to each other. This insight can provide the means to progress from an understanding of the elements to a recognition of the elemental beings.

Erigena’s understanding of nature is, in the context of the spiritual history of Christianity, one of the roots from which Rudolf Steiner’s view of the elements arises. In his most important work, Categories of Nature (De Divisione Naturae), Erigena initially develops an overall concept of nature: ‘Often have I pondered and carefully investigated to the best of my power how all things which my mind can grasp or which are beyond the reach of its enquiry can first and foremost be divided into that which is and that which is not. And the general term for all this is given to us in the word “nature”.’9 To this definition of nature in its most all-encompassing sense, as what is and what is not, can be added one tiny word, which makes clear what Erigena means: nature is composed of what is and what is not yet. In other words, nature consists of what has already developed and what is still in the process of developing. Our modern consciousness mostly sees in nature what already exists, what has already developed; it is extremely difficult to find appropriate ways of perceiving and experiencing what exists as potential in nature, what is still becoming. Nature is most commonly perceived in its products and results, which are accessible to human senses. The potential aspects of nature, on the other hand, cannot be grasped in this way, but can only reveal themselves to different organs of perception. The realm of becoming, potential nature, consists most immediately of the elemental world, which cannot reveal itself to sense-organs but only to organs of soul and spirit.

Elemental reality is related, on the one hand then, to sense phenomena. But on the other hand it is also connected with the spiritual world. Erigena gives expression to both connections in the passage which follows: ‘It seems to me that there are four divisions of nature. One creates and is not created; then there is one which is both created and creates; the third kind is created but does not create; the fourth neither creates nor is created.’10 Four realms of reality are referred to here, which arise from the relationship between what creates and what is created. Human beings of the modern age have turned their attention from this relationship to another: nowadays we are more aware of the connections between the physical world and the world of our perceptions. In a lecture given in 1923, Rudolf Steiner undertook a similar division of realms of reality: he distinguishes a first world, which is physical and can be perceived; then a second world, which lies beyond the physical and cannot be perceived; a third world, which lies beyond the physical and can be perceived; and finally a fourth world, which is physical and cannot be perceived.11

Erigena’s four divisions of nature are not directly parallel to the four realms of reality described by Rudolf Steiner; they are two different perspectives. Erigena ascribes his ‘creating and not created’ nature to God; his ‘creating and created’ nature to the causes of things; his ‘created and not creating’ nature to human beings and the world; and his ‘not creating and not created’ nature to the end of the world, when all processes of evolution will have come to an end and God will be everywhere in everything. This perspective reflects old Christian traditions in which, for example, there is no clear differentiation between higher spiritual beings (the ‘angels’ of Christian scriptures) and nature.

Rudolf Steiner, on the other hand, describes the physical world we can perceive as that realm of reality which a human being experiences with a certain immediacy as ‘his’ world; the realm of reality beyond the physical, which cannot be perceived, is the home of the Third Hierarchy of spiritual beings; the Second Hierarchy resides in the world beyond the physical which can be perceived; the physical world which cannot be perceived is the realm of the First Hierarchy. But in spite of these differences of perspective and content, the views of Erigena and Rudolf Steiner are united across the centuries in their effort to grasp visible and invisible nature as one whole, and make it accessible to human enquiry.

Such is also the way in which one can find access to elemental reality. In Erigena’s Categories of Nature there appears a connection between human knowledge and elemental reality which is very similar to the one expressed by Rudolf Steiner. Erigena speaks of the physical world ‘returning’ into the elements, then the elements returning into ‘soul’, which ultimately evolves into the spiritual ‘original causes’. This transition from the physical world into a spiritual reality is placed by Erigena in complete accord with Christian tradition – at the ‘end of the world’. In order for us to understand this today, we need to translate his concepts and arguments into contemporary ways of thinking; which means, above all, to unite them with the idea of evolution. Then the traditional Christian views of the end of the world, in which God will be everywhere in everything, can be understood as an old way of trying to unite sense and spiritual worlds. What is, for Erigena, a process of development towards the end of the world can be understood today as a connection between different realms of reality, which can be realized and achieved in the present through knowledge and understanding. Then we can see Erigena’s thinking as an attempt to unite physical and spiritual realities by portraying an evolutionary connection between physical, elemental, soul and spiritual reality.12 Erigena speaks of a transition of physical reality into the four elements (fire, air, water, earth), of a subsequent metamorphosis of elemental reality into soul-existence; and finally he describes a further step: ‘A similar journey is made by the soul itself, which elevates itself into spirit, so as to become more glorious and more like God.’13

The elemental world is seen by Erigena as a realm of transition between physical and soul-spiritual reality. It becomes obvious from his descriptions that an understanding of the relationship between physical and soul-spiritual worlds is only possible when one takes account of this intermediary realm. Erigena clearly perceives that this transition can be understood as soon as one relinquishes ideas about fixed, constant shapes and forms which are apparent in the physical world: ‘The four simple elements of the world are not, after all, enclosed in forms: for they are to be found everywhere in the world, and from no part of the world is their influence absent. And how could that which is everywhere in the world be confined in a firmly encompassed form? Therefore there are corporealities which do not have a form perceptible to the senses.’14 The elemental world has, in common with soul-spiritual reality, an outward formlessness. If one can grasp this thought, it is not difficult to imagine that in the elements there are elemental beings at work.

Erigena gazes, finally, into a future in which human beings will be the creators of reality; alongside the given or natural world they will have brought forth two out of themselves: ‘It will happen, as we have often emphasized, that the blessedness of the just will be elevated beyond all natural powers by the grace of the Creator; so also will the justice of the same Creator punish the godless by casting them down beneath all nature. For what is lower and deeper beneath all nature than the vanity of all vanities and the false imaginings about things, for these will fade away into oblivion. Therefore there arises the wonderful and inexplicable, which yet will be confirmed by true reason and consideration of the Holy Scriptures; that the just will be blessed above all natural good and the impious, on the contrary, will be punished beneath all natural good, and that he whose nature partakes of both good and bad will be placed in the middle between these two.’15 In this passage, two realms are referred to, regions above and below nature, which are created by the human being himself and which, as it were, form a garment around the old, already created nature. The realm below nature is the product of ‘vanities’ (vanitates) and ‘false imaginings’ (imaginationes), in other words, of moral errors and mistakes. One can also conclude that the realm above nature arises from true knowledge, understanding and moral conduct. We can interpret what Erigena expresses in the language of Christian tradition in the following way: the moral constitution of the human being is, as it were, the ‘substance’ which forms the realm above nature, whereas the failure to develop morality creates a ‘negative substance’ in the realm below nature. One need only take one small further step in order to unite the view of Erigena with Rudolf Steiner’s portrayal, that of the elemental beings finding release through human recognition and morality.

Preparation for the Future

There is, then, a connection between moral development in human beings and the future evolution of nature and the nature beings. By ‘moral’ is not meant anything at all moralistic but rather a human being’s spiritual self-determination, something like the idea of ethics in German idealistic philosophy: a human being takes his own further development in hand when he reaches out beyond his natural and biographical circumstances and sets himself spiritual aims. To the degree that this becomes possible, he becomes free. In so doing, he also contributes to the further evolution of nature. Therefore the future evolution of nature depends upon mankind becoming free. That is the Christian aspect of the human being’s relationship to nature. Only when he understands himself to be a developing being and takes his own spiritual development in hand can nature and its beings also develop. It is in this way that the following statement of Rudolf Steiner can be interpreted: ‘One can only understand what should truly come about through the Mystery of Golgotha when one can look back and perceive what once occurred naturally, which now needs to occur morally.’16 This situation is evidently new in the history of mankind and the earth; it is very apparent, for example, in the ecological problems of the last decades. Precisely in this area it has, for the first time, become obvious to what extent the spiritual and moral development of the human being determines the fate of the natural environment. However, ecological questions must be seen only as an initial perspective on much more far-reaching evolutionary steps.

If one examines the understanding of nature expressed in this volume of lectures by Rudolf Steiner, without holding fast to particular concepts, one can discern as a continuous thread three overriding aspects of nature:

1. Past nature (the physical); this appears to human sense perception and has completed its development.

2. Present nature (the etheric); this is still developing and passing continuously into past nature.

3. Future nature (morality which human beings are creating now); its form will depend upon the moral evolution of mankind and will become the nature which will have been created by human beings themselves. It will be prepared upon the earth but will find its ultimate form in the Jupiter stage of future evolution.

Elemental beings are particularly connected with past nature (which however is still present and visible) and with present nature. Human beings will themselves become, in the future, beings who create nature, but who do so through moral self-determination. This process will gradually release the nature beings, through a human knowledge and understanding characterized by engaged activity rather than by a desire to satisfy curiosity. When a human being succeeds in forming, alongside a perception rooted simply in the senses, an active conceptual understanding of created nature, then he can release the spirits who are bound up within it. Human knowledge thus acquires an enormous significance for the evolution of spiritual beings. One can see from this that there is an interdependency between the elemental world in nature, human knowledge and moral development. It is only at this level that one can begin to speak of the etheric aspect of reality. To reach it, human beings must develop new kinds of knowledge, which will be the basis for the creation of a future nature, one which can only be formed through human moral relationships with creative powers which are beyond and above nature.