The Rudolf Steiner Archive

As we approach the processes in the astral body and in the Self of man as experienced in occult development, it becomes more and more difficult to describe them. For the experience in these parts of human nature is far removed from the experience of everyday life. In the ordinary life of the soul we usually experience life in the astral body as the flowing and ebbing of desires, emotions, impulses, passions, etc.; and we also feel as our inward life that which is expressed collectively in the ego. But what is thus experienced is really nothing but the reflection, the mirroring of the self and the astral body in the etheric body and the physical body; it is no conscious experience of the astral body and the self. We cannot through what we experience in the ordinary life of the soul obtain a true idea of the actual experience in the higher worlds in our astral body and self; therefore, when we describe these things, we must have recourse to a kind of representation suited to these higher worlds, we must have recourse to imaginations: and these imaginations are really actually experienced. But one must not imagine that the beholding of the clairvoyant imaginations is the only thing that we experience; in a sense it is not even the principal thing; the principal thing is what we then experience inwardly through it; the processes and inward tests which the soul goes through when it confronts these imaginations.

And this is particularly the case with such an important and powerful imagination as that which has been described as the Paradise-Imagination. One who really experiences this Paradise-Imagination, who can have it before him as a conquest in higher experience, feels himself standing in the middle of an inner surging of the soul, he feels himself laid hold of by an inner soul-wave, and he feels that he himself might err in the two different directions described in the last lecture; he feels himself attracted, vividly attracted by all the passions and emotions which continue to work from the personal life he had previously led on the physical plane; for the personal interests which we have gradually acquired on the physical plane work with ever-increasing strength as numberless magnetic forces of attraction. But, on the other hand, he feels something else. The nearer he comes, the more clearly he sees this Paradise-Imagination, the more power have these forces which draw him down to personal interests. What they bring about in him is that they blot out the Paradise-Imagination more and more, or perhaps it would be better to say that they prevent it from appearing properly; he is as though benumbed: the personal interests, emotions, feelings, sensations, etc., which we drag about with us, are so many hundreds and hundreds of magnetic forces which are so many causes of stupefaction. When the student tries to progress so far in his self-training that he observes his astral body more and more truthfully (for the Paradise-Imagination is experienced outside the physical body and etheric body, that is, in the astral body and Ego), when he has grasped the true nature and character of the astral body, he knows that it is the Egotist. And he alone is in the right position at this point, which he has reached through self-training, if he does not allow his egotistical interests to become personal to his nature and to draw him with numberless forces, but can make the interests of the whole of humanity and the world more and more his own. At this stage of occult development a counter-balance against the egotism of the astral body is felt, something which is the more evident, the more the egotistic forces bestir themselves in the now liberated astral body. There is an ever-increasing feeling of solitude, icy solitude. This icy solitude is also part of what is experienced in the inward surging of the soul. It is this icy solitude which cures one of allowing egotism to have the upper hand, and the student has trained himself correctly if at this point in his occult development he can feel the impulse to be everything through himself and for himself, and can at the same time also feel the frosty solitude approaching him.

It is just as important to have this feeling as to approach gradually to the Paradise-Imagination. And when these two forces, that of the egotism which expands to world-interests and the frosty solitude, work together, the student then draws nearer and nearer to the Paradise-Imagination. And when this latter appears in all its vividness, when it is actually there, the time has also arrived for experiencing the meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold in the entirely right way. It is difficult to give a single description of the Guardian of the Threshold—I have done so on different occasions in our theosophical considerations. It is not so much our task to-day to describe the Guardian of the Threshold as to describe the inward experiences in the sheaths of man and in the human self. If the student draws closer to the Paradise-Imagination; that is to say, if it becomes more and more vivid, and he meets the Guardian of the Threshold, he then feels the full force of the magnetic forces just described, and as he confronts the Guardian of the Threshold he feels—and this is a dreadful sensation—he feels as though chained or rooted to the spot. For all the magnetic forces which draw him down to what is personal now exercise their strongest influence; and only if he progressed to the point at which the frosty solitude has become so instructive that he is really able to make the world's interests his own, does he pass the Guardian of the Threshold; and then only does he feel himself united with the Paradise-Imagination, and become one with it. He then feels himself within it. The experience is like a coming into a right relationship with the world-interests, so that he can confess: ‘Now only may I allow my own interests to assert themselves, for they have become the interests of the world.’

But if he does not pass, if he has not yet acquired sufficient universal interests, his personal interests then draw him back and there comes about what in Occultism is described as: not passing the Guardian of the Threshold. These personal interests obscure the Paradise-Imagination; he may obtain separate parts of it, as it were, indistinct impressions, but not perfect ones, and one is dragged back, as it were, into the personal life. It may then happen that he has thereby received the power to have a certain degree of clairvoyant experience; but these are then really maya-experiences; they may be quite misleading, for they are entirely permeated and clouded by personal interests.

Only through such an experience is the student able fully to comprehend—for it now becomes a serious matter to him, as it were—that personal interests must pass into world-interests if he really wishes to see accurately in the Spiritual world. It is actually the case that before attaining this stage he cannot thoroughly believe this, for the personal interests are against it; but now having reached this point he sees it.

We have now reached a very hazardous place in the description of occult conditions; yet the endeavour shall be made to describe the next steps also, as they appear from the experience of occultists, and in the way in which they must be given, reckoning with the fact that our hearers are trying, in a sense, to make these things a possession of their own souls, and to work upon them further; for things such as these cannot be expressed in dry abstract ideas; we must try to portray what appears to clairvoyant vision. Now, this clairvoyant vision should by no means be understood as something that can be rigidly and diagrammatically depicted; but what I shall describe is again a typical experience, like that of the Paradise-experience, and we must really have this experience in order to recognise afterwards what knowledge and occult vision really are. Until this experience comes we can have no real idea, I mean no experienced idea, of occult vision; but still, when such a thing is described, we can understand it, if we bring sound human understanding to bear upon it. It must now be described, as far as is possible, from vision itself.

I will suppose that the student has passed the Guardian of the Threshold and the union with the Paradise-Imagination is accomplished; that he feels within it, as if this Paradise-Imagination had now become his own greater astral sheath. He still distinctly feels his own astral body about him, and knows that it is connected with his Self, but at the same time he knows that this astral body extends its interests to all that concerns the objects and beings of the Paradise-Imagination. When the student knows his union with the Paradise-Imagination is accomplished, he may then have somewhat the following impression: he will perceive his own astral body as belonging to him, and when he has felt sufficiently what has just been described as icy solitude, this feeling becomes a power within him, and it will preserve him from gazing at nothing but himself after his accomplishment of his union with the Paradise-Imagination. He will thereby create for himself, as it were, the organ by which he may behold other beings. His occult vision will first fall on another being, a being who will make a special impression upon him, because it will appear just like himself. He himself feels that he is in his Self and astral body; the other being also at first appears to him with a Self and an astral body. This is because the qualities and powers which the pupil brings with him to such a moment enables him to see just such a being, which presents itself as if in a self and an astral body. The student will now have the following experience—produced by the frosty solitude which he has learned to bear.

The forces of his astral body will be seen endeavouring to flow outwards. If I were to represent this in diagram, I should have to draw it in this manner; but, as I have said, it is only very diagrammatically expressed. I draw the Self something like the nucleus of a comet, and the astral body like the comet's tail spreading out above.

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But that is only a diagram; for the student really sees a being, he sees himself as a being, and this vision is much more complex than the vision of one's own being as physical man. He also sees within his own self the other being to which he looks across. As already said, this is a typical experience. His vision simply falls upon such a being, but he feels that this being is not in such a sphere of frosty solitude as he is himself, and therefore its astral body is seen as though directed downwards. It is extremely important to experience this, to feel oneself as if in an astral body which opens upwards, develops its rays of force upwards, wishes to stream upwards, and yet to see the other being as a Self whose astral body develops its forces downwards.

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With this typical experience there now comes into the self-consciousness something like the following: ‘I am of lower degree, of less value than this other being. What is valuable in the other being is that it can open its astral body downwards, it can, as it were, pour its forces downwards.’ And the student's impression is that of having left the physical world. The forces which proceed downwards from the astral body of the other go to the physical world, and work there as forces of blessing; in short, he has the impression that he is confronting a being that may send down to the earth, as a Spiritual rain of blessing, that which it has acquired in the Spiritual world; whereas he himself cannot direct his astral body downwards, it insists on going upwards. He has a feeling that he is of less value, because he cannot direct his astral body downwards. Further, he has a feeling that this consciousness arising thus within him must lead to a Spiritual act. A Spiritual decision matures. This Spiritual decision is to take his loneliness to this second being and warm his coldness with his warmth; he unites himself with this other being. Now, for a moment he has the impression that his own consciousness is being blotted out, as though he had brought about a sort of killing of his own being, a sort of consuming of his own being as though by fire. Then flashes into the self-consciousness, which had previously felt itself blotted out, something which he now first learns to know: Inspiration. He feels himself inspired. It is like a conversation, a typical conversation, now held with a being whom he has only learned to know because it allows him to share in its inspiration. If a student is really capable of understanding what this being sends in as his inspiring voice, he might translate what it says in somewhat the following words: ‘Because thou hast found the way to the other and hast united thyself with his beneficial rain of sacrifice, thou may'st return to the earth with him, within him, and I will make thee his guardian on the earth.’ And the student has the feeling that something of infinite importance has been taken into his soul through being able to hear these words of inspiration. In the Spiritual there is a being that is more precious than oneself, and that is .allowed to pour its astral being downwards in blessing. Through the impression of being able to unite with this being, and being its guardian when he descends, the student first learns to understand how, as physical human beings who tread the earth, we are really related through our physical and etheric coverings to that which is impregnated as higher powers in the Self and the astral body. In our physical and etheric coverings we are guardians of that which is to develop further and further to higher spheres. Only in this inner experience, when he feels his external being as the guardian of the inner being, does a man really have a true understanding of the relation of the external being to the inner being of man.

Now, when the student has passed the Guardian of the Threshold, the experience which I have just described does not stand alone, but is followed by another. I have described the purely clairvoyant and inspired experience the student may have when, outside the physical body and etheric body, he arrives at union with the Paradise-Imagination, and then obtains the inspiration which first gives an idea of the inter-relationship between the sheaths. But when he has passed the Guardian of the Threshold a second impression is added to the first one; the vision opens past the Guardian of the Threshold down into the physical world. I draw a line to represent the boundary between the higher Spiritual worlds and the physical world; above it is the realm of the Spiritual worlds and below that of the physical.

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He now sees down into the physical world, as it were, and there appears another picture, a picture of himself standing below as man. The student observes his own astral body; but this astral body which now appears as a reflection is directed downwards, it does not try to develop the force to stream towards the Spiritual world; it clings closely, as it were, to the physical plane, it does not raise itself to the heights. He also sees the reflection of the other being, whose astral body streams upwards. He has the feeling that this astral body is streaming into the Spiritual world. He sees himself and he sees the other, and he has the feeling: ‘Thou standest there below once more; in the place of the other being there stands there below a quite different man; he is a better man than thou; his astral body strives upward, it rises upward like smoke. Thy astral body strives towards the earth, it goes like smoke downward.’ He has a feeling of the Self which dwells within him as he thus looks down, and the following dreadful impression comes to him: Within thee a resolve is being formed, a dreadful resolve, the resolution to kill the other whom thou feelest to be better than thou. The student knows that this decision does not come entirely from the Self, for his Self is there above. It is another being that speaks out of the one there below; but this being suggests the decision to kill the other. And he again hears the voice which previously inspired him, but now it sounds as a dreadful, avenging voice: ‘Where is thy brother?’ And from this self bursts forth a voice hostile to the former. Previously the inspiration was as follows: ‘Through having united thyself with the beneficent powers of the other being, thou desirest to pour thyself downwards with them, and I will make thee the guardian of the other being.’ There now bursts forth from this being that one recognises as oneself the words: ‘I will not be my brother's keeper.’ First comes the resolve to kill the other, then the protest against the inspiring voice which said: ‘Because thou hast wished to unite thy coldness with that warmth I appoint thee to be the guardian of that other;’ the protest: ‘I will not be his guardian.’

When we have had this imaginative experience, we then know all of which the human soul is capable, and above all we know one thing: that, if perverted, the noblest things in the Spiritual world may become the most dreadful things in the physical world. We know that in the depths of the human soul, through the perversion of the noblest readiness to sacrifice, may arise the wish to kill our companion. From this moment we know what is meant in the Bible by the story of Cain and Abel—but only from this moment—for the story of Cain and Abel is none other than the reproduction of an occult experience, which has just been described. If the writer of the story of Cain and Abel had been able to describe what took place with man before the time of the story of Paradise from other reasons than those displayed in the course of the development of humanity, he would have described the first experience, the upper one (on the diagram). Thus he begins with the story of Paradise, and describes its reflection; for Cain felt in this manner towards Abel before that period in the development of the earth indicated by the story of Paradise, he felt towards him as it has been shown here above. And after the temptation, and after the loss of the vision which is regained in occult vision through the Paradise-Imagination, Cain's readiness to sacrifice had passed into what appears here below; his readiness to sacrifice had really changed into the wish to kill the other. The cry we read of in the Bible: ‘Am I to be my brother's keeper?’ is the reverse reflection of the other inspiration: ‘I will make thee the guardian of the other here below on the earth.’ From this you will be able to see that these typical experiences are certainly important; for they bring about a certain union between what we may be to-day and the interests common to all humanity. But at the same time they show us very clearly by what we experience in them in our pulsing soul-life, that the principal thing is to feel the colossal leap the development of humanity has made from what I described to you as the first, the pre-earthly imagination, as it were, to that which is presented in the story of Cain and Abel as an event in humanity after the expulsion from Paradise, after the expulsion through which the Guardian of the Threshold has become invisible for man. The knowledge of this leap in the development of humanity really first shows us what this earthly man is; for when we really feel through and through what has just been described, we gradually experience that this earthly man, as he now is here upon the earth, is the perversion of what he once was. And we then know with great certainty what we should have become if nothing else had intervened. If we had simply developed in this earthly evolution without anything further, we should have become aware of what this is the reflection on the earth. We were not to know this to begin with. It is really only in our present age that man is allowed to know of what the story of Cain and Abel is the reflection, that it is the reflection of a lofty sacrifice. All that was above, everything before Paradise was concealed, for the Guardian himself hid it from us, when, in other words, man was driven out of Paradise. This could only come about through the physical body and etheric body of man being now so permeated with forces that he does not carry out what appears as the reflection—for he certainly would carry it out if he were to feel all that is in the astral body. The physical body and etheric body so stupefy the human being that his wish to kill his fellow is not actualised. Consider what is said in this simple sentence: In that the good, progressive, divine Spiritual Powers gave man a physical and an etheric body, so that he cannot look back, something like a sort of stupefaction was at the same time poured over the wish for the war of each against all. The desire for this is not roused in the soul, because the physical body and etheric body of man were prepared in such a way that this desire is benumbed. A person cannot see his astral body; therefore this wish, too, remains unknown to him; he does not carry it out.

If we wish really to describe the interaction of the astral body and the self, we must describe things which not only actually remain hidden to human nature, but which must so remain. But what has been brought about through the stunning of this and similar wishes—wishes connected with the annihilation and destruction of human and other communal life on the physical plane? They have become debilitated; the human soul only perceives them in a weakened form; it only feels them to a slight extent. And the dim feeling of those wishes that would be something so terrible if man were to allow them free expression, as they really are—this is really our human earthly knowledge.

I am now giving you for the first time a definition of the nature of human earthly knowledge. It consists of the dim and dulled impulses of destruction. Shiva in his most terrible form, so far stupefied that he cannot freely find expression but is, as it were, made threadbare, compressed into the human world of ideas—this is the maya of the human being, this is the knowledge of man. Thus knowledge had to be so weakened—that is to say, the impulses and inner forces had to be so weakened—that the original terrible impulse—ruled by Ahriman, that Ahriman's power (for originally it is Ahriman who gives rise to this wish) should be so far weakened that he could not express himself through man, who would have thereby made himself permanently a servant of Shiva. The sum total of these forces had to be so weakened that its expression in man only enables him to transpose himself into the being of another with his conceptions and ideas. When we try to force an idea of our own into the being of another, when we try to imbue another with a conception of our own, this conception impressed into the nature of the other is the blunted weapon of Cain which was thrust into Abel. And because this weapon was thus blunted it was made possible for that which was at a bound reversed into its opposite, to pass over into evolution. And thus by a slower evolution, through ever-increasing strengthening of his knowledge, man reaches at last the experience of something he was not permitted to express in the physical world because it there became a destructive impulse; stage by stage he develops first ordinary knowledge, then imaginative knowledge, which enters more into the being of another, then inspirational knowledge, which penetrates still more into the being of another, till in intuitive knowledge he enters it entirely and lives on spiritually in the other being.

Thus we gradually struggle up to the comprehension of what this self really is. As to its innermost nature, the astral body is seen to be the great egotist; the self is more than that—it not only lives for itself, but wishes to pass over into others as well. And knowledge, such as is acquired on earth, is this dulled passion to enter into another, not merely to expand oneself and all that one is, but further to pass beyond oneself into another. It is egotism intensified and extended beyond itself.

If you bear in mind what the origin of knowledge is, you will then understand that there is always the possibility of misusing it, for if this is a true knowledge in the Self, the moment it goes astray it is misused. Only by progressing, and making this penetration into another more and more spiritual, and the renunciation by the astral body which has expanded to world-interests, of this penetration into another's being, only by leaving his constitution quite untouched and placing his interests higher than our own, can we make ourselves ready for higher knowledge. Moreover, we cannot recognise a being of the hierarchy of the angels, for instance, if we have not reached the stage when the inner being of the angels interests us more than does our own. As long as we have more interest in our own being than in the being of the angels, we cannot recognise them. Thus we must first educate ourselves up to world-interests, and then to interests that go even further, so that another can be more important and of more consequence than oneself. The moment we try to develop further in occult experiences, while yet remaining more precious to ourselves than the other beings we wish to know, that same moment we go astray. At this point, if you follow out this train of thought, you really come to a true conception of black magic; for black magic begins where occult activity is carried into the world without our first being in the position to expand our own interests into world-interests, without being able to value other interests more than our own.

Such things can really only be touched upon, so as to arouse conceptions concerning them; they are too important for more than this. I wished to show how we may gradually come to recognise in its true form, not in its maya, that which dwells within us as astral body and self; for what a man experiences inwardly as his astral body is not the true astral body, but merely the reflection of that in the etheric body. And what a man calls his self is not the true Ego, but a reflection of the Ego in his physical body. A man only experiences reflections of his inner being. If he were to experience the forms of his own inner astral body and Ego before he was sufficiently mature, impulses of destruction would be enkindled within him; he would become an aggressive being; the desire to injure would arise within him. And such things underlie all black magic. Although the paths followed by black magic are many, the effect they aim at is always something like a covenant with Ahriman or Shiva. We can only learn to recognise the astral body and Ego in their true form if at the same time we acknowledge the necessity of developing them and making them worthy of being what they ought to be. The innermost nature of the astral body is egotism; but it should become our ideal to be permitted to be an egotist because the interests of the world have become our own. It must be our ideal to be allowed to enter into another being because we do not intend to seek our own interests, but we find the other being more important than ourselves. Self-education must go so far that we feel this upper picture in all its occult-moral significance; that we so gradually transform this picture which is our self, that we can no longer be warmed by our own emotions, impulses, desires and passions, but that with living our life in the astral body we enter the frosty solitude; we then thereby open ourselves to the warmth, to the warm interest which streams forth from the other worlds, and wish to unite ourselves with the beneficent forces proceeding from this other being. This is at the same time the starting-point for a gradual raising of our self to the higher Hierarchies in their true form. We do not attain to the Beings of the higher Hierarchies if we are not in a position worthily to confront the Imagination and Inspiration which has been described, and to bear seeing its opposite picture; that is, the possibilities in the depths of human nature when it was cast down from the Spiritual into the physical world. If we refuse to look upon the twofold picture of Cain and Abel below—our own self, and the representative of our Higher Self—the mediator between our self and the higher Hierarchies—we cannot ascend. But when we are able to cultivate within our self the feeling indicated here, we then experience our Self, and this provides the entrance to the higher orders of the Hierarchies.

From a poet who died some years ago. On one occasion, in the second half of the '80s of last century, he said to me that he was very anxious about the future of humanity. I admit that his expression of anxiety was somewhat of a paradox, but he was very much in earnest in his anxiety as to the tendency he wished to point out by his paradox; indeed, this anxiety inclined him to a certain pessimism. It seemed to him that the development of humanity in the future would be such that man would principally develop his head more and more, and that, compared with his head, all the other parts of a man would be stunted. He was very much in earnest over this idea, and he expressed this in paradox by saying that he was afraid the reasoning intellectual nature of man would get the upper hand to such an extent that the head would become like a great globe, and that men would then roll on earth as balls. The anxiety was very real to the man, for he reflected that we are living in the age of intellectualism, of the development of the intellectual powers which are expressed in the head, and that these reasoning powers would increase more and more, and that mankind was moving towards an unenviable future. Now that, of course, is a very paradoxical statement, and we might say also, in a certain sense, that even the anxiety which gave rise to his pessimism is also paradoxical. But the human intellect has a tendency to deteriorate, to draw conclusions when some or other observation has been made, and this is a case in point. This may be amply noticed in the realm of the theosophical movement as well as in the external, exoteric life. In external, exoteric life we do not have to look very far before we notice that the observations made by man at various times have always given rise to a great number of theories. How many hypotheses have been abandoned as worthless in the course of the evolution of humanity! In the theosophical-occult field it can also be observed that someone who has undergone occult training, and has thus acquired some clairvoyant power, may recount something from true clairvoyant observation, and then come the theorists who invent all sorts of schemes and theories, and so the matter develops. Very often the observation is quite an insignificant one, but the schemes and theories built upon it include whole worlds. That is always the danger; the intellect has this tendency. We have this tendency in a fairly passable sense in the well-known book, ‘Esoteric Buddhism’ by Sinnett. This book is based upon a number of genuine occult facts; these are in the middle of the book, and relate to the middle of the development of the earth. But upon these facts he built up a scheme of Rounds and Races, and this only rolls and turns, as it were, upon itself, always more or less in the same way. They are inferences, theories, made from the few genuine data to be found in the book. And this was the case also with my poet. In the background he had a sort of unconscious, instinctive imagination which told him something true; we might say, there is half an ounce of truth, and from this he made a hundred-weight, or many hundred-weight. We often find cases such as this in the world. Now, what is the truth of the matter? The truth is this, that in our age man's head is undergoing a certain evolution, the formation of the head, the whole structure of the head will undergo change in the future. If we direct our attention to a very far-distant period in the earth's evolution, we have to imagine that, for example, the formation of the human forehead, nose, and jaws will have undergone essential changes, and that, in a certain sense, all the rest which the human being bears as his earthly organism will have retrograded; but, of course, never, during the earth period, will the relation of the developing head to the rest of the body be that of a rolling globe. This must only be taken literally to a very, very limited extent. On the other hand, in ancient epochs of development on the earth, before the middle of the Atlantean epoch, the rest of the human organism was capable of change; it was engaged in a sort of development. Apart from the head, the human organism has changed comparatively little—and again I say comparatively little—since the middle of the Atlantean epoch; on the other hand, prior to that time the remainder of the human organism underwent great changes. From this you will be able to draw the inference—which will now be correct, because it is nothing but an actual observation clothed in words—that the further we go back into the Atlantean and Lemurian epochs the more essentially different man looked, even to his own observation. In the ancient Lemurian epoch, man looked quite different from what he now recognises as himself at the present day.

The appearance man would have presented to himself in the latter portion of the Lemurian epoch is apparent to him again, in a certain way, when he gradually approaches the clairvoyant impression leading to what we have described as the Paradise-Imagination. I have, indeed, told you—and it is true—that this Paradise-Imagination corresponds to a complete delineation of the human being, the physical human body, so to say, as the Paradise itself. Man separated—as it were—he divided; the present corporeal nature appeared outspread in the manner described; but at that time, the actual time to which we look back clairvoyantly, and we have the Paradise Legend before us, a mighty leap forward was made. And through this movement—which may also be observed by means of clairvoyance—what might be called the outspread human being was drawn together relatively rapidly into that which then became the starting-point of man for the development which followed. Directly after the time corresponding to the Paradise-Imagination, the form of man was, however, quite unlike what has developed out of it to-day. And, fundamentally, all that surrounded man in the kingdoms of nature was also quite unlike his present surroundings.

I have already mentioned in the previous lectures of this course that the pupil might attain to this Paradise-Imagination if he were suddenly to become clairvoyant for a moment during sleep, and to look back, as it were, at his physical body and etheric body, stimulated to this Imagination by these. On the whole, it may be said that a great deal of esoteric development is necessary before attaining to this Paradise-Imagination. The student must have gained many victories in order to transform his own personal interests into those common to humanity and the world. There then comes, when from the very deepest sleep—for there are degrees of sleep—he passes to a less deep sleep, and in this less deep sleep becomes clairvoyant—there comes what later in earthly evolution became reality: The condition of man in the ancient Lemurian epoch after he had made the great leap forward.

Thus we say that it is possible to see this primeval period of the earth through separation in the self and astral body from the physical body and etheric body, looking back at them. Now, as the order of nature comes to our aid—for in the night we are outside our physical body—we can make use of this arrangement of nature, and so regulate the training that, as if awaking out of sleep, but not returning to the physical body—as if awaking in a different state of consciousness—we see the physical body. From this you will be able to gather that the vision we have just spoken of provides the only true possibility of learning to know how man was formed in the primeval past.

In the far-distant future will come a time when we shall be able to say: How extraordinary were those people of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries! They believed themselves able to discover the origin of man by means of the external investigation of nature; they thought they could draw conclusions regarding the ancestry of man from the observation of the animals surrounding them on the physical plane. However, through the true development of human knowledge, it becomes evident that we can only arrive at a true idea of the origin of man upon the earth, and of his ancient form, by means of clairvoyant observation, and that we can never obtain insight into what man was like in the Lemurian epoch, for example, except through clairvoyant observation, through the retrospective vision stimulated by the impressions of one's own physical body and etheric body. But then it will be seen—this will be admitted in that future time—that man was never like any of the animal forms about him in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries; for the forms which man had in that time, and which manifest themselves to his clairvoyant consciousness in the way we have described, are different from all the animal forms around man in the nineteenth century. And even the expressions we have made use of—bull, lion, etc.—are only used comparatively. The men of the future will say how very grotesque it is to see the way people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries traced back their ancestry to ape-like beings; for in the Lemurian epoch there were no apes at all in the form in which they later appeared upon earth; they only originated at a much later period, from degraded and degenerated human forms. Animal beings which may be compared to our present apes can only be found by clairvoyant vision about the middle of the Atlantean epoch of the earth's evolution. The further we go back in the development of humanity, the more we see that to the clairvoyant view, in the vision of our self during sleep in the night, our shape, our form in ancient times is to some extent preserved. And so it comes about that, when a student thus looks at himself, he learns to recognise his physical corporeality in an infinitely more delicate etheric body, one might say, though not in the sense of our present ether. Thus does man appear. His form appears more as a vivid dream-picture than as the form of flesh and blood he now bears. We have to become acquainted with the idea that when the self and astral body are outside the human being they can scarcely see the head; it is quite shadowy; not completely blotted out, but quite shadowy. On the other hand, the rest of the organisation of man is distinct. That is shadowy, too, but its condition is such that the human being does not appear as made of flesh and blood, but one has the distinct impression that he possesses a more powerful organisation. It may appear paradoxical, yet it is true that when a man looks at himself clairvoyantly in sleep he has at certain moments such an appearance—that is, to the self and astral body, his physical body and etheric body present such an appearance—that he is reminded of the form of the Centaur! The upper part, which appears in the Centaur as the human part, bears the human face, but in a very shadowy form; the other part, which is not exactly like any of our present animal forms, but which is reminiscent of them in certain respects, is more powerful, and the seer says to himself: ‘To the spiritual view this is stronger, even denser, than our present form of flesh and blood.’ I have already touched upon these matters in a previous course of lectures; but you must understand that all these Imaginations, except the Paradise-Imagination, are fugitive, and can be presented from different aspects. I might also present a somewhat different aspect—and you would see that this only corresponds to a different period of development—and then we should arrive at the form of the Sphinx. The consecutive order of the evolution of man is presented in various aspects, in different views. The mythological pictures, the so-called mythological symbols, contain much more truth than the fantastic intellectual combinations made by present-day science.

Thus, at night the human figure becomes very peculiar. Something else now becomes clear. When we consider with clairvoyant eye this lower part which reminds us of an animal, we become acquainted with something which makes a very definite impression upon us; as I observed in the last lecture, these impressions, these inner experiences, are really the essential thing. The pictures are important, but the inner experiences are still more so. We reach an impression so that we know afterwards: That which really drives me during the day to my personal interests alone, that which inoculates my soul with merely personal interests, is the outcome of what I observe at night as my lower animal part. During the day I do not see it; but it is within me as forces, and these are the forces which draw me down to a certain extent, and lead me astray into personal interests.

Developing this impression more and more brings us to the recognition of the place Lucifer really fills in our evolution. The further we direct our clairvoyant vision back towards the time that corresponds to the Paradise-Imagination, the more beautiful becomes the structure, which is really only reminiscent in a later time of what belongs to the animal—kingdom. And if we go back altogether into what belongs to Paradise, where the animal continuation of man appears as though separated from man himself, and multiplied into—bull, lion, and eagle, we may then say that these forms—which we know in those ancient times by these names—may also in a certain sense be for us symbols of beauty. More and more beautiful become these forms, and, going still further back, to the time of which we spoke in the last lecture, when we represented the impression of the sacrifice, we arrive at the period when Lucifer's true form appears to us in sublime beauty, just as he wished to preserve himself unchanged in the evolution from the ancient Moon to the earth.

From the account I have given in ‘Occult Science,’ you know that on ancient Moon the astral body was given to man. What we bear within us in our astral body played a great part on the ancient Moon. We have described it as personal selfhood, as egotism. This egotism had to be implanted in man on the ancient Moon, and, as man received his astral body on the ancient Moon, egotism has its seat in the astral body; and, as Lucifer has preserved his Moon-nature, he has brought egotism to the earth as the inner soul-quality of his beauty. Therefore, on the one hand he is the Spirit of Beauty, and on the other the Spirit of Egotism. And what we may call his error is only this: that he has transplanted to the earth something which, as far as man is concerned, if I may use the expression, belonged to the ancient Moon; that is, the permeating and impregnating of himself with egotism. But thereby, as has often been said, was given to man the possibility of becoming a self-contained, free being, which he never would have become if Lucifer had not carried over egotism from the Moon to the Earth.

Thus inner experience teaches us to know Lucifer as the Night Spirit, as it were. And it is part of the change that goes on in our self and our astral body that at night we feel—ourselves in the company of Lucifer.

You may perhaps at first think—if you only think superficially—that it must be disagreeable to a person, when he goes to sleep and becomes clairvoyant, to become aware that—during the night he comes into Lucifer's company. But if you reflect more deeply, you will soon come to the conclusion that it is wiser for us to learn to recognise Lucifer; it is better to know that we are in his company than to think that he is not there, and yet have him invisibly active with his forces within us, as, indeed, is the case during the day. The evil does not consist in Lucifer's being by our side, for we gradually learn to recognise him as the Spirit who brings—us freedom; the evil consists in our not recognising him. But after men had caught sight of him, as it were, when he misled them in the Lemurian epoch, they were not permitted to see him any more; for then, in addition to that original misleading in the Lemurian epoch, there would have been innumerable other smaller misleadings. Therefore, the divine-Spiritual Being who was watching over the progress of mankind had to draw a veil over the vision of the night. Thereby man lost as well all else that he would have seen during sleep. Sleep covers from man with darkness the world in which he is from the time of his going to sleep until he awakens. At the withdrawal of the veil which covers the night with darkness, we should instantly perceive Lucifer by our side. If man were strong enough, this would do no harm; but as at first he could not be strong in the sense required by our earthly development, this veil had to be drawn during his sleep at night. After the first great misleading, which left in its train the possibility of human freedom, no other misleadings, through the direct vision of Lucifer from the time of his going to sleep until reawakening, were to come to man.

Now, there is an equivalent. We cannot see Lucifer at night if during the day we do not see his comrade, Ahriman. Thus to the student who has progressed as far as this in the development of his self and his astral body, the daily experience which allows him to have the vision of outer objects becomes different from what it is to the ordinary man. He learns to recognise that he sees things in a different light from before the development of his self and his astral body. He first learns to look upon certain impressions, which ordinarily he considered in an abstract manner, as the activities of the Ahrimanic beings. Thus that which comes from outside, which awakens desire in him from outside—not that which comes from within, for that is Luciferic—but that which attracts him in the objects and beings around him, so that he follows this attraction from personal interests; in short, all that entices him to enjoyment from outside he learns to recognise as bearing the impress of Ahriman. We also learn to recognise this in all that rouses fear within us from outside. They are the two poles—enjoyment and fear. Around us are the so-called material world and the so-called Spiritual world; both these in our ordinary waking life are enveloped in illusion. The external world of the senses appears as maya, or illusion, for people do not see that whenever they are stimulated to enjoyment by outer objects and beings Ahriman peeps out and calls forth the enjoyment in the soul. But the fact that there is a true Spiritual nature everywhere in matter—which the materialists deny—that produces fear, and when the materialists notice that fear is beginning to appear from the astral depths of their soul, they then stupefy themselves, and think out materialistic theories; for what the poet says is profoundly true, ‘People never notice the devil (that is Ahriman), even when he has them by the collar.’ To what end are materialistic meetings held? In order to swear allegiance to the devil. This is literally true, only they do not know it. Whenever materialists gather together to-day, to explain in beautiful theories that nothing exists but matter, Ahriman then has them by the collar; and there is no more favourable opportunity for studying the devil to-day than by going to a gathering of materialists or monists. Thus, when a man has undergone a certain development in his astral body and self, Ahriman accompanies him at every step. When we begin to see him, then we can protect ourselves from him; we can see Ahriman spying out in the allurements of enjoyment and in the impressions of fear.

Again, on account of the immaturity of man, it was necessary that Ahriman should be hidden; that is, a veil was drawn over his nature. This was done somewhat differently from in the case of Lucifer; the outer world was plunged into maya for man, giving him the illusion that outside in the world, instead of Ahriman peeping out, there was matter everywhere. Wherever man dreams there is matter, there is, in reality, Ahriman; and the greatest illusion is the materialistic theory of physics about the material atoms, for in reality these are nothing but the forces of Ahriman.

Now, humanity as a whole is developing, evolving, and this evolution advances so that towards our future man will actually develop the powers of pure intellect more and more. This will cause his head to assume a different shape externally. In a certain respect the beginning of this development towards intellectuality was made with the dawn of modern natural science, about the sixteenth century. When intensified, this intellectual development will exercise great influence upon the self and the astral body of man. A time set in when there still remained traditions of the old clairvoyance. These came in contact with one another exactly at the dawn of our modern natural science. It was precisely in the sixteenth century; it was then known that a future would come when, through the higher development of the self and astral body, man would be able really to see Ahriman more and more clearly. Then, because in the early period of intellectual development it struggled against the perception of the Spiritual with all its might, a darkening set in; but in the figure of Mephistopheles, who is none other than Ahriman, at the side of Faust, the sixteenth century was able to point out that, fundamentally, Ahriman will become more and more dangerous in a conscious manner to the future development of humanity; that Mephistopheles will become more and more a sort of tempter of the human race. At that time this could only be demonstrated because man still had a remembrance of the ancient Spiritual figures. But this has now been forgotten by the general body of humanity, though in the future the knowledge will be forced on man that through all his waking life he is accompanied by Ahriman-Mephistopheles. Naturally, this corresponds to the complementary picture that man is living towards a future when, each time he awakes, he will have—at first like a fleeting dream, but later more clearly—the impression: ‘Thy companion during the night was Lucifer.’ You see from this that through the theosophical-occult development of the self and astral body we may have the fore-knowledge of what will come to humanity in the future, we can dimly sense the companionship of Ahriman and Lucifer. Through a definite law of evolution, Lucifer first came to man during the Lemurian epoch, then later, as the consequences of the Luciferic influence, came the Ahrimanic. In the future this will be reversed: The Ahrimanic will first be strong, and subsequently the Luciferic influence will be added. In the ever-developing clairvoyant conditions of the human soul, the Ahrimanic influence will work principally in the waking condition, the Luciferic influence principally during sleep, or in all the conditions which are indeed similar to sleep, but in which there is consciousness.

Thus, as Ahriman entered our external sensible life in our waking condition, man first needed a protection against Ahriman during this waking condition. These protective impulses are given in the development of humanity many, many centuries before the danger appears. Although the general body of humanity has not yet developed the full consciousness of Ahriman-Mephistopheles, the protective impulse came at the beginning of our era in the physical appearance of Christ in the earth-development. Christ once appeared in the physical body in the earth-development to make provision that man might be armed, through receiving the Christ-impulse, against the necessary influence which will come from Ahriman-Mephistopheles. The power through which man will be armed later on when the Luciferic influence is there, is an influence which will affect a different consciousness; man will be armed against this by the appearance of Christ in the etheric body, regarding which we have often said that it is drawing near. Just as Christ appeared once in a physical body and thence his impulse has proceeded further, so from this twentieth century onward Christ will be seen in an etheric form, at first by a small number, and then by an ever-increasing number of human beings. Thus we see that the progressive development of man is brought about by a kind of equilibrium; a kind of balancing of the different impulses. What is related in the Gospels as the story of the Temptation, the confronting of Lucifer and Ahriman by Christ, portrayed in different ways in the different Gospels—I have spoken of this on a previous occasion—is a sign that through the Christ-Impulse, through the Mystery of Golgotha, man will be able to find the right way of development in the future. It forms part of a true development of the self and the astral body of man that in this transformed self and astral body he can receive the impressions of the positions occupied by Ahriman, Lucifer, and Christ in the development of humanity, and a correct development of the self and astral body leads to this knowledge of the three impulses which condition the evolution of mankind.

A correct development, however, includes the extension of the sense of self in the astral body to interests common to humanity and the world. And it acts like poison when a man carries his personal aspirations into those regions of his clairvoyant observation which he ought only to observe when filled with interests common to humanity and the world. He cannot then perceive the truth, but has imaginations which are incorrect, untrue, which are only the reflections of his own personal interests and aspirations. It may sometimes happen that a clairvoyant who is still filled with personal aspirations and interests experiences something like the following. I received a letter in which someone wrote that he had to communicate something that I ought to know. He said that Christ was reborn in a physical body, and his address is somewhere in London, W.; that Mary is reborn in a physical body; her address is that of his niece, in such-and-such a street. Paul is reborn, and was his brother-in-law, and his address was also given. And all those mentioned in the Gospels were reborn among the relatives, and in this letter all their various addresses were given. I could show this letter to anyone: it is a document—grotesque as it may appear—which shows the effect of carrying personal interests into those heights where there should only be the interests of the world and of humanity.

But now we must clearly understand that when someone makes a mistake in abstract intellectual knowledge in general, this kind of error can easily be controlled, it is something that can be done away with comparatively quickly, although, indeed, human knowledge has the frightful origin, which was referred to in the last lecture. As the knowledge of man, which is expressed in our waking daily life, receives such diluted impulses that everyone may develop perfect freedom with respect to them, hence no one need be dazzled by the foolish things thought out by human intellect, and those who allow themselves to be dazzled by these foolish imaginings can be cured in a comparatively short time. But suppose that in this clairvoyant observation a person arrives at incorrect imaginations in the manner we have described; these incorrect imaginings then act as a poison in the soul in a certain way; they poison it by obliterating the healthy human reason and intellectual grasp. Thus they injure one much more deeply than do merely intellectual follies. If, therefore, we try to permeate everything obtained in the fields of occultism with the forms of sound human intellect, we do well. If an Imagination is simply given out, without any attempt to justify it, as we have tried to justify such in this course of lectures (and incorrect imaginations would only be cited as mere imaginations), then this will impose upon the very faculty in others which should bestir itself to reject such imaginations. And it might very well be that, while one who spreads intellectual follies may easily provoke criticism, one who spreads false imaginations by this means takes away from those who believe in him the power to criticise; that is, he blinds them to the challenge that ought to be given to the imaginations in question.

From this we may gather, my dear friends, how very necessary it is that the moment the knowledge goes beyond what is intended for man in the natural course of evolution, the moment a man uplifts himself to clairvoyant knowledge, how unconditionally necessary it is that his development should move unswervingly towards interests common to humanity and the world. This will always be recognised in true occultism. And to assert the opposite, that there can be sound entry into the Spiritual world, that is, a sound development of the astral body and the self apart from the extension of the human interests to selfless world-interests and interests common to humanity; that is, to make the opposite affirmation to the one made here, could only spring from a disposition that permeates occultism with frivolity. We must bear in mind the serious importance of these things in speaking of the changes which take place in the astral body and the Self of man during his higher Spiritual development.

We have seen that as the result of serious theosophical training, or esoteric occult development, changes come about in the four principal parts of the human being; and you may have observed that in the descriptions we have given the principal stress has been laid upon the inward change in these four parts of human nature, or the changes which are, to a certain extent, experienced inwardly. But we have to distinguish clearly between this change to be experienced inwardly, and the description of the outer changes manifest to the vision of the seer, which is, of course, quite different. In true esoteric development it is very important to know what takes place within man, and what is in front of him, when he goes through occult development. Interesting, also, although perhaps not so important, is the change outwardly visible to the seer. To sum up in a few words, we might say: that which is perceived inwardly as a sort of ‘becoming more mobile’ and ‘becoming more independent’ of the various parts of the physical body, manifests itself to the clairvoyant vision, which does not experience the changes in the physical body from within, but looks upon them from without, in such a manner that the physical body of a person undergoing occult development is seen to split up, to divide, in a certain sense; and because of this splitting-up, clairvoyant-vision feels it to be separating. To clairvoyant vision the physical body of a person who is steadily advancing in occult development is actually seen to grow. And we may say that if at one time we meet a person who is undergoing a true occult development, that which the clairvoyant vision sees at a definite time as the physical body has a definite size; if we meet him again a few years later his physical body has grown; it has become decidedly larger. Thus there is such a thing as the growth of the physical body beyond the normal physical size, but with this is connected the fact that it becomes more shadowy. Thus we notice that as the person develops, his physical body is seen to become larger and larger. It consists, however, of various parts, as it were, and these manifest themselves in what in occult life is called ‘Imagination.’ The physical body of a person undergoing occult development manifests more and more as a number of imaginations, of pictures which are in a sense inwardly alive and active, and are, or rather become, more and more interesting; for they are not just anything we please. When the person is beginning his development the pictures are not specially significant; and they are least so when the clairvoyant vision observes the body of a person who has not yet developed in occultism. In this latter case a number of pictures, a number of imaginations are perceived. To clairvoyant vision the physical substance disappears, and in its place appear imaginations: but these are so pressed together that instead of the pleasing inwardly shining aspect of a person engaged in occult development, they manifest as in an opaque substance. Even, however, in the case of a person who is not yet developed they are to be seen, and indeed as parts and each part signifies something in the macrocosm. Essentially one can distinguish twelve parts, each of which is really a picture—a painting of one part of the great cosmos. When all twelve are assembled together, the impression is given that some unknown painter has produced miniature pictures of the macrocosm, twelve in number, and from these has formed the physical human body. Now, when the individual is engaged in occult development, this picture grows larger and larger, and also appears inwardly more and more pleasing, radiant from within. This is because, in the case of an individual not engaged in occult development, the macrocosm is only reflected in its physical aspect; but in the case of one undergoing an occult development the spiritual content more and more manifests itself; the pictures of the spiritual essence of the macrocosm are to be seen. Thus occult development also shows us that a person engaged in an occult development, from being merely a physical microcosm, becomes more and more a spiritual one, that is, he manifests within himself more and more, not merely the pictures of planets and suns, but of entities belonging to the Higher Hierarchies. That is the difference between persons engaged and others not engaged in occult development. The more a person presses forward in occult development the more exalted are the Hierarchies manifesting within him. And thus we learn the structure of the world, as it were, by clairvoyantly observing the physical human body.

The human etheric body of one who is not undergoing occult development manifests the progressive course of the world, that which follows consecutively in time; it shows how planets and suns, even the human civilisations on earth, and the individual human beings alter in the course of their incarnations, and how they appear in consecutive stages of growth. Thus the etheric body may truly be called a narrator; it recounts the story of the growth of the world. While the physical body of man is like a sum-total of pictures painted by an unknown artist, the etheric body proves to be a kind of story-teller who narrates in its own inner happenings the story of the world itself. And the more deeply a person is engaged in occult development, the wider the range of the stories. The etheric body of a person who has undergone comparatively little occult development manifests to the clairvoyant vision perhaps only a few generations which have preceded him in physical ancestry—for this development is still also shown in the etheric body of man. But the further a person carries his occult development, the more possible it becomes to see in his etheric body the various civilisations of humanity, the various incarnations of this or that individuality; yea, even to ascend to cosmic development and see the share of the Spirits of the Higher Hierarchies in it.

The astral body of man—which to ordinary observation can only be seen, as it were, through its inner reflection, through experiences of thought, will and feeling—becomes more and more an expression of the value of man, with respect to his essential entity in the cosmos. I want you to consider this description, this presentation, as being of very special significance. The astral body of a human being undergoing an occult development becomes more and more the expression of his value in the cosmos. In a previous lecture we showed how we discover that the astral body, in its original nature, is a sort of egotist, and that this has to be overcome in occult development, raising the personal interests to those of the world. Observing the astral body of a person engaged in higher development one can see from it, according to whether it appears dark and dull or has an inner illumination, according to its revelation of itself in shrill dissonances or in harmonious melodious tones, whether the person in question has so conducted his development that he is still entangled in his personal interests, of which we have spoken, or whether he has really made the interests of the world his own. This is what can be seen from the astral body of a human personality engaged in higher development: when the development goes on in a true, occult, ethical manner, we see in him how wonderful man becomes through extending the horizon of his interests from those that are personal to those that are universally human, and into the common aims of the world. The astral body becomes more radiant, shines more and more like a radiant sun, as the human being learns to make the affairs of all humanity and the world his own.

The further the human being progresses in his development, the more the Self manifests the tendency to split up, to divide. It sends out, as it were, the contents of its consciousness, and these make ‘messenger paths’ in the world. If, for example, a human being wishes to learn to know a being belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angels, it is not sufficient for him to exercise the ordinary forces of perception; if he really wishes to know this being he must be able to transfer his consciousness; that is, he must be able to separate the forces of his Self and transpose a part of his self-consciousness into the being of the Angel. Whatever sort of being we wish to know, we can only do it by transposing our self-consciousness into this being. It is the impulse of the Self to go out of itself, to transpose itself into the other being and allow that which at first lived only in oneself to enter the life of the other being. At a lower stage in the development of the human being, at the stage of ordinary human existence, this manifests as a certain impulse to remove its consciousness out of itself; this can be seen in the need for sleep. And that which psychically drives man to sleep is exactly the same that in higher development directs the consciousness, not into the unconscious world of sleep, but into the consciousness of the Angels or the Spirits of Form or still Higher Hierarchies. Thus one might be paradoxical by inquiring: What does it imply when a man becomes acquainted with one of the Elohim, one of the Spirits of Form? It means that he has developed so far that he is able to sleep over into the consciousness of the Elohim and to awaken within the Elohim, possessing the consciousness of this Spirit of Form, of this spirit belonging to the Higher Hierarchies. This is recognition of a higher being: consciousness must be resigned as in sleep, but so resigned that by reason of the higher forces awakened within, it reawakens and radiates towards us as the consciousness of the higher being. Thus, an astral body under true occult development becomes like a sun which radiates its world-interests; but when the Self is more highly developed it becomes like the planets which circle round the sun of the astral body, and which, in their circling through the world, meet other beings, and by means of this bring messages from them to the perceptive nature of man. Thus the astral body and the Self of a human being undergoing occult development present the picture of a sun—which is the astral body—surrounded by its planets—that are a number of multiplications of the Self, sent out into other beings in order that the student through that which his multiplied Self rays back to him from these other beings may know their nature.

The feeling we have when becoming acquainted with the inner nature of the members of the Higher Hierarchies (we learn to recognise their external being through the physical body and the etheric body; and to recognise them inwardly through the astral body and the Self, we come into communication, as it were, with these beings who belong to the Higher Hierarchies through the astral body and Self)—the feeling we have is as though we had to make our self in our astral body into a sun and to separate from oneself, a Self capable of active participation in the nature of the Hierarchy of the Angels; another Self which has that gift as regards the Hierarchy of the Archangels; and yet another Self which has the gift with regard to the Hierarchy of the Spirits of Form. A fourth Self participates in the nature of the Hierarchy of the Spirits of Motion, a fifth in that of the Hierarchy of the Spirits of Wisdom and of Will, a sixth Self or Ego in that of the Hierarchy of the Cherubim, and a seventh in that of the Hierarchy of the Seraphim. It is possible for a person, when he develops the four parts of his being and continues this development to a high stage, actually to attain to the experience we have just described. This is possible; and in addition to this development of his Self in the manner I have just indicated, he can attain to a still higher development of his Self.

For through the separation of seven selves from the eighth Self, this eighth self, which remains behind, undergoes a higher development. Consider the matter in this way: We have the original Self of man, which is given to him before he undergoes occult development. He then undergoes this, and thereby sends forth from himself seven Selves. In order that the Self originally given him may be able to send forth seven Selves he has to exercise an inner force, the result of which is that the Self rises a stage higher. But now I want you to reflect that the process which I have described in its most extreme development, as it were, only comes about gradually. A person undergoing occult development does not, of course, at once become a perfect Sun in—the astral body, surrounded by the planets of his Selves, but he first attains to an imperfect Sun existence, and imperfect developments of his planetary Selves; all this takes place gradually. And, at the same time, the development of the ordinary Self into the Higher Self takes place slowly and gradually. When this development has reached a definite stage, when the Self has reached higher and higher attainment, then gradually comes the power to look back at former incarnations. This is the stage which gives one the power to look back to previous incarnations; it is the development of the Self beyond itself, the attainment of forces beyond itself, which give it at the same time power truly to understand higher Hierarchies. We might say that, to clairvoyant vision, a person, through occult development, with respect to his Self and his astral body, becomes star-like—similar to a starry system.

In the above I have briefly described what is presented to another person who is becoming clairvoyant, whereas in the previous lectures I spoke more of the inward experiences. There is still something important which I have to lay before you, which is to amplify an indication already made. When the student develops his astral body and his Self he attains, as you have heard, to observation of a world, previously empty, now filled with the beings of the Higher Hierarchies, Angels, Archangels, Archai, etc.

The question might now be asked: Do the kingdoms of nature around man also change? Yes; the kingdoms of nature do very materially change. I have already mentioned that, to the vision of a clairvoyant, the physical body, even of an ordinary person, presents the appearance of a number of paintings, and these shine more and more within the more the person progresses. Now, how does the case stand with the animals? When with clairvoyant vision we look at an animal its physical body also changes into Imaginations, and then we know that these animals are not what they appear to be in maya, but are imaginations: that is, they are imaginations, conceived in a consciousness. Who, then, conceives the animals as imaginations? Whose imaginations are they? Animals, also plants in their outward forms—though plants less than animals, and least of all minerals—are imaginations of Ahriman. Our physicists seek for the material laws in the external kingdoms of nature; but the occultist comes more and more to the knowledge that the external kingdoms of nature, as far as they present themselves as material beings, are imaginations of Ahriman. We know, indeed, that behind the animals, for example, are the Group-Souls. The Group-Souls are not imaginations of Ahriman, but the separate individual animals in their external forms are imaginations of Ahriman. Thus, if we take the lion-tribe; the group-soul of this species belongs to the good spiritual beings, as it were, and the war of Ahriman against the good spiritual beings consists in his pressing their group-souls into the separate individual forms of the animals and imprinting upon them his own imaginations. The separate lion-forms, as they move about outwardly in the world, are forced out of the group-souls by Ahriman. Thus the external world which surrounds us also changes gradually into something quite different from its appearance in maya.

Now, in order that you may have something on which you may range as on the steps of a ladder the thoughts which have been opened to us in the course of these lectures, I will give you a sort of diagram.

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Here on the left I will represent what we may call the constitution of the ordinary man: Physical body, Etheric body, Astral body, Sentient soul, Intellectual soul, Consciousness soul, Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man. We know this as the constitution of man. I will represent this only by lines. The inner being would be the Sentient soul, the next, the Intellectual or Mind soul, the next, the Consciousness soul, the next would be Spirit Self. The higher parts may be left out of account, as we do not need to consider them to-day. This constitution of man so manifests itself externally that the bodily part consists of the three lower principles; that which is experienced in the soul, of the three middle ones; the Spirit Self is not present in man, except as a perspective of the future, as it were. Now, when a person undergoes occult development the first thing to be done is to suppress certain things in the soul itself. We have seen that it is particularly important for the student to be able to lay aside the external sense impressions. It is, indeed, the first requirement of true occult progress that the student should lay aside external sense impressions. Now through this laying aside of external impressions of the senses, that principle of the soul which is chiefly developed under the influence of these impressions, namely, the Consciousness Soul, changes inwardly. It must be clearly understood that the Consciousness Soul is at present undergoing its chief development, because so much value is now attached to the external impressions of the senses. You must not confuse the fact that the Consciousness Soul generally is inwardly strengthened by the impressions received through the senses, with the fact that these sense impressions are transmitted through the Sentient Soul. When we are dealing with occult development we must notice under what sort of influences the Consciousness Soul is most strengthened, and we find these to be the external sense impressions. When these are laid aside the Consciousness Soul is then suppressed, so that in the one who is undergoing occult development it is the Consciousness Soul which must first of all retire into the background. (Here, on the right, I will draw that which in the occultly developing man corresponds to the several parts of the soul.) We are speaking of that which in ordinary life leads a person to emphasise his ‘ego,’ which above all leads him to lay stress upon his ego in all sorts of directions. In our age special stress is laid upon this ego or ‘I’ in the direction of thought. One hears nothing more often said than—this is my standpoint, I think this or that—as though the opinion of this or that person had any significance compared with the truth. It is true that the sum of the three angles of a triangle is 180 degrees, and it is immaterial how a person regards it. It is true that the Hierarchies, counting from man upwards, are divided into three times three, and it is quite immaterial how this truth is regarded. Insistence upon the ego retires into the background, and in its place the Consciousness Soul, which previously served principally for the development of the ego, is gradually filled with what we call ‘Imaginations.’ We may simply say that when a person develops his Consciousness Soul is changed into the Imaginative Soul.

We also know from what has been said in the previous lectures that thinking itself, which is developed principally in the Intellectual or Mind Soul, must also be changed. We have heard that thinking must more and more give up developing its own thoughts, that it must more and more suppress personal thinking; the human personality suppressing its own thought. When the student is able to suppress that which in his ordinary life he has made of his Intellectual or Mind Soul, then in the place of that which exists in him as ordinary thinking, as reason, and also as the ordinary mental life on the physical plane, comes Inspiration. The Intellectual or Mind Soul changes into the Inspirational or Inspired Soul. The inspired works of culture have been received in the transformed Intellectual Soul as Inspiration.

The sentient soul is chiefly laid aside by overcoming the astral body, by making the world-interests one's own, and thereby rising more and more above personal feelings; the sentient soul thereby changes; and all the inner impulses, »•;inner passions and emotions, change into Intuitions; and in the place of the Sentient Soul appears the Intuition Soul. So that here on the right (see diagram I.) we may sketch the developed human being, of whom we say: He consists of astral body, etheric body and physical body but inwardly of the Intuitional Soul, the Inspirational Soul, and the Imaginative Soul which then changes into Spirit Self. And now from this diagram, which reflects truly the facts of occult observation, you may gather from the results of these lectures how a person influences his occult development by the degree of his moral development. For what is a person who is still absolutely filled with personal emotions and passions, and who acts under the impressions of what we might call human instincts? Such a person still lives entirely in his Sentient Soul; he does not moderate his instincts by means of intellectual ideas, or by means of the development of his consciousness; he has only developed, as it were, as far as the Sentient Soul here, if I might now indicate the moral development in the middle (small arrow in diagram). Thus we may have the case of a person who has only developed as far as the Sentient Soul; that is to say, he is ruled entirely by his personal passions, impulses, etc. Now let us suppose that such a person were forced on by occult development. The consequence would be the transformation of his Sentient Soul into his Intuitional Soul, and he would have certain intuitions; these intuitions would, however, represent nothing but the transformations of his own personal impulses, passions and instincts.

A man who in his moral development has progressed to the Intellectual Soul, that is, one who has acquired pure conceptions, more general universal ideas, whose inner feelings include feelings of interest in the whole world, such a one will at least transmute his Intellectual or Mind Soul into the Inspirational Soul, and he can arrive at certain inspirations, although his clairvoyant power may not be always quite pure as yet. But it is only when a person has really penetrated with his ego as far as the Consciousness Soul that he arrives at the transformation of his Consciousness Soul into Imaginative Soul, and the rest follows as a self-evident consequence, because he has passed through the other stages. Hence in our age, in order to arrive at true clairvoyance, the student must be given the task of so working at his moral development that he shall first take away from his impulses, passions, etc., all that is personal, and raise himself to the standpoint of making the interests common to the whole world his own. Then the endeavour must be made to teach him really to comprehend himself as ‘I;’ but he must feel this in the Consciousness Soul. Then the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual Soul and the Consciousness Soul may be transformed into the Souls of Intuition, Inspiration and Imagination without any danger. When we consider the ordinary consciousness on the physical plane the Sentient Soul is the richest Soul. For what a number of instincts and impulses does not such a human Soul conceal, however low its stage! Of what impulses and passions is not such a human soul capable! The human soul is somewhat poorer as regards the contents of intellect and its more cultivated feelings, poorest of all as Consciousness Soul, shrivelled up to the consciousness of the self, as though to one point. One might say that the figure which represents the human soul in its natural condition on the physical plane would be a sort of pyramid (see diagram II.). In the lower part, at the base, the sum total of impulse, desires and passions; at the top, at the summit, the point of consciousness. A reversed pyramid represents the developed soul of the true clairvoyant, a pyramid having its base above, that is, all possible kinds of imaginations which can be formed, which express all that can reflect for us the contents of the cosmos; here below as the point, that which results as the higher individual consciousness of man.

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This diagram is a standard, to a certain extent, in another sense. In the new edition of my book Theosophy I have said that the Sentient Soul is, as it were, the provisionally transformed astral body, so that we may sum up thus: Below is the physical body, then the etheric body, then the astral body. The astral body on its way to transformation is the Sentient Soul on the physical plane; the etheric body so proceeding is the Intellectual or Mind Soul, and the physical body the Consciousness Soul.

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Thus in our present cycle of humanity we have the Consciousness Soul localised in the physical body; that is to say, it makes use of the physical instrument. The Intellectual Soul is in the etheric body; that is, it makes use of the etheric movements. The Sentient Soul, containing the impulses, desires and passions, makes use of the forces localised in the astral body. The Soul of Intellect or Mind, which contains the forces of inner feeling, of sympathy, makes use of the etheric body; the Consciousness Soul uses the brain of the physical body.

As in this sense the Sentient Soul is transformed into the Intuitional Soul, we must also correspondingly imagine that the Intuitional Soul uses the astral body of man as its instrument. The Inspirational Soul is the transformed Intellectual or Mind Soul; its instrument is the etheric body of man. And the Imaginative Soul, the transformed Consciousness Soul, has as its instrument the physical body of man. And now, if you compare what I have presented here in diagram with what I have said previously, you will become aware that in this diagram you have a memory picture. I mentioned that to clairvoyant vision the physical body is transformed into imaginations, which are pictures of the macrocosm. In this diagram you see that the Imaginative Soul fills up the physical body. The Imaginative Soul actually enters into the physical body and permeates it, so that when a developed human being is observed by clairvoyant consciousness, the parts of the physical body are seen to be permeated with higher and higher imaginations, according to the degree of his development; these are impressed into the physical body by the inner being of this personality. In an ordinary individual there are a number of imaginations imprinted in the various principles of his body by higher spiritual beings; in a more highly developed man there appear in the various parts of his physical body, in addition to the imaginations originally there, others which he imprints into the parts of his body from his own inner being, so that the organs in the physical body of a developed human being become richer and richer.

In this diagram I wished to give you a sort of précis which sums up what I have described at length in these lectures. I specially draw your attention to this: that this diagram may always remind you that the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual or Mind Soul and the Consciousness Soul are reversed, so that the Consciousness Soul does not become the Intuitional Soul but the Imaginative Soul; and the Sentient Soul does not become the Imaginative Soul but the Intuitional Soul. In this you have a sketch of what could be given in the course of these lectures under the title of: The changes in the human sheaths and the human self in the course of a seriously conducted theosophical development, or an esoteric occult development—which, indeed, fundamentally may coincide.

You will have observed that we began with the tiny, almost imperceptible, changes in the physical body, which the student who is developing at first perceives but faintly: the various parts of the physical body become more and more inwardly living, while usually only the whole physical body of man appears to us as a living thing. We then saw how certain changes take place, presenting the mighty facts of the inner life, changes in the astral body and the Self providing those mighty imaginations through which we may feel ourselves transposed to the beginning of our earthly human development; yet even further back, for they lead to the Imaginations of Paradise, and of Cain and Abel. You have seen how, in fact, there arises as a reality in the physical body a sort of force which enables it to divide, as it were—but still it holds together; it does not give way, because here, in our present cycle of humanity, occult training may not go so far as to lead to the injury of the physical body—still there is, however, a degree of occult development which leads to the possibility that the physical body and the etheric body may draw to themselves inwardly destructive forces; and this danger is always present when a person meets the Guardian of the Threshold. This meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold is not possible without being confronted by the danger of implanting destructive forces in the physical and etheric bodies; but every true occult development provides the remedies at the same time, and these remedies are given in that which you find described in my book, Occult Science, as the six auxiliary occult exercises: Concentration of thought; that is, strenuous exertion of thought, the concentrated gathering together of thoughts; the development of a certain Initiative of Will; a certain Equilibrium of joy and sorrow, a certain Positivity in relation to the world, a certain Impartiality. The student who endeavours to develop these qualities in his soul parallel with his occult development, on the one hand certainly produces in himself a sort of effort to break the physical and etheric bodies to pieces, that is, under the influence of occult development to take in the seed of death; but to the same extent that this develops it is annulled, so that it is never really active when a person develops the qualities mentioned, or when through his moral development he already possesses the qualities equivalent to these six. It has been my endeavour to give you more than a mere description of what occult development is, namely, to rouse in your hearts a feeling of what it is, and what manifold changes it produces in a human being. You may have been able to divine and feel that a person has to meet much that is terrible and also much that is dangerous when he goes through occult development; but side by side with much that, even in this theoretical manner of considering the matter may have produced a certain amount of dread, we must always call to mind the thought which dispels all dread, can take away all fear of danger, simply arousing enthusiasm and strength of will within our souls—the thought that by developing ourselves further we are thus working actively at one part of the evolution willed by the Gods. A man who knows how to grasp this thought in all its greatness, and take into himself its stimulus and feel it with enthusiasm, and who forms this thought in such a manner that it presents evolution, or occult development in its most beautiful sense, as his duty, he is one who feels the beginning of that which, side by side with all danger, all fighting, all entanglements, all hindrances, is connected with all development, namely, the approach towards the beatitude of the spiritual worlds. For when he feels this thought of the enthusiasm-producing power of the ideal of development he may already begin to feel the bliss of development; but this means to recognise the development, the occult progress as a necessity. The future of such spiritual, esoteric movements as ours will be that the spiritual development of human souls will be regarded more and more as a necessity, and that the exclusion of spiritual development and the adoption of a hostile attitude towards it will signify a union with the earthly dross, which is cast out through its own weight, a union with what has fallen away from the God-willed evolution of the universe.

Translated by Steiner Online Library

It may remain undecided how many hearts in Western Europe today still feel so much connection between the spiritual and soul and the divine and natural that on this day, on this feast of hope for the future, in this year, the thought passes through the soul, how we are living in a year in which this festival of springtime hope may enter as early as possible into the time when the fresh shoots of the year sprout from the womb of our mother earth, when what we call spring enters into human life. In such years as this one is, three days that are otherwise far apart from each other are crowded together in a row. Easter Sunday, after all, is the Sunday that follows the full moon, which in turn follows the beginning of spring on March 21. Three days that can be relatively far apart follow each other this year: the beginning of spring the day before yesterday, the full moon of spring yesterday, Easter Sunday today. In such years, a very special writing is inscribed in the universe for those who are entering into the spiritual knowledge of the world, and especially on this day of such a year, it behoves the soul, which strives to learn to understand the spiritual secrets of the universe and the becoming of time, also to learn to understand what should be written into our human development on earth with this spring festival.

The person who knows the connection between the sun and the moon, as can be known by beholding the interaction of the sun and the moon with the Earth in the secret-scientific writing, also knows the deep secret that reigns between the Earth Spirit, Christ, and the Spirit whom we express with the words Jahve, Jehovah. And anyone who knows the connection between the sun and the moon hears with an understanding-awakening sound the legend of the Fall of Man and their seduction by Lucifer, of the words of God resounding in divine justice. Those who try to understand some of the things contained between the lines of my “Occult Science in Outline” can sense the connection between the sun-moon mystery and the mystery that is usually characterized as the temptation of Lucifer and the influence of Yahweh-Jehovah.

Today, however, we want to focus more on the fact that the sun and moon, as they follow each other in their effect on the earth, from this Good Friday to this Holy Saturday, appear to the occultist in their writing in the cosmos appear as a question mark, written in a deeply mysterious way into the spiritual universe, and the answer is given to us this year, as soon as possible, by the immediate sequence of Easter Sunday following the Saturday of the spring full moon: Easter Sunday, the day of remembrance and the day of hope, the day that symbolically expresses the mystery of Golgotha. Many secrets are hidden behind what surrounds us in the outer physical-sensual nature, and the unveiling of such secrets always brings us in a certain way close to the strict guardian of the threshold. The Easter Mystery is also one of these, which, in a certain sense, requires the maturing of the human soul in order to be understood, although in the instinctive feeling everyone can always perform the inner devotional sacrifice that our soul may fulfill when the day of earthly confidence, the day of redemption and resurrection, Easter Sunday, is joined to the beginning of spring. When spring begins, when the sun moves into such a position in relation to the earth that the plant germs can sprout from the womb of the earth mother through its power, then the human soul begins to rejoice inwardly as if in the brightness of paradise, because it knows that forces are at work through through the cosmos, which in a cyclic sequence with each new year conjure forth out of the bosom of the earth what is necessary for the outer life and also for the life of the soul, so that man in his development on earth can go his course from the beginning to the end of this development on earth. And when the impressions of winter, when the earth mother covers the ground with its icy blanket, when all this evokes the thought of all that will one day bring the earth to decay in the universe, what will one day will transform the earth into a state of world-wide solidification, which will make it incapable of being a further dwelling place for man, when winter evokes these thoughts, then every new spring evokes the other thought into the human soul: Yes, Earth, since the beginning of time you have been endowed with ever new youthful vigor, ever renewing life. You are given the task of calling forth the soul again to inward rejoicing, but also to inward devotion. And even when the cold blanket of ice has spread over the earthly realm, the hopeful images in the human soul combine with the intuitive feeling of how the earth will be able to sustain people through its spring and summer forces for a long time to come, so that they will find the opportunity to develop all the abilities, all the inner powers that lie within them. This is the soul's inner, reverent exultation at the spring equinox. It comes from the soul feeling full of hope that the earth can endure and that the earth can provide the opportunity for human forces to fully develop.

But the human soul may also wonder: Will all the forces of the sun be able to overcome all the forces of winter, or at least to counterbalance them? Will the winter forces not perhaps be able to exert such a strong influence on the earth that the earth must sooner go into a state of torpor before the human soul has fulfilled its full mission on earth? Will summer counterbalance winter? Will spring always have the strength it needs? This thought may not come easily to human souls that observe only the outer nature, but it must come more and more to those souls that can delve into the true spiritual content of the universe. These souls seek to decipher the great, powerful writing with which the secrets of the world are written into the cosmos. Then, in contrast to the writing just mentioned, the struggle of winter with summer, another writing of the soul becomes audible, the writing that is written into our universe when we follow the moon in its mysterious course, as it invisibly and visibly completes its cycle. Oh, this moonlight, like an enigmatic letter of the world's writing, it inscribes itself into the eternal word of creation of earth life. When the occultist seeks to fathom this moonlight, it reminds him first of the punishing voice of Yahweh in Paradise after the temptation of Lucifer, then it reminds him, of course, also of the wonderful, mysterious fact that the Buddha expired his spirit into the cosmic universe on a night of the silver moon. What does the moonlight tell us, which is there in the darkness of the night like a dream in a person's sleep? — The occultist learns that of the forces of the active sun, of the sun's forces that repeatedly and repeatedly renew the evolution of the earth, as much is taken away as the light of the sun is reflected by the full moon. The human soul may dream itself into the moonlit magic nights, the occultist knows that as much of the power of sunlight and solar heat is taken as the full moon reflects back to Earth from that sunlight.

Thus, the full moon is the constant symbol of what is taken from the sun. And when the Sun, with all its powers, once more penetrates into earthly life with each new spring, the occultist knows that, even if this is hardly perceptible to external observation, with each new spring the Sun has weaker powers than it had in the old, previous spring, and that just as much of its powers has been taken from it as full moonlight has shone over the earth. Thus the full moon that appears after the beginning of spring, however mysterious and soul-stirring it may appear to people, is at the same time a serious, stern admonisher of the earthly-cosmic fact that the sun's powers have diminished with each new spring, and that man could never achieve in his earthly mission what he would achieve if these powers were not taken from the sun. To sense this fact puts a huge question mark in the cosmos. Sensing this question mark, the old occultists behaved in their hearts.

So the old occultists said to themselves: We look up to the sun, whose secrets Zarathustra once proclaimed to men. We look up to the moon, whose secret has found its most significant expression in the religion of Yahweh. When we behold these two heavenly signs, we know that the interaction of Sun and Moon signifies the decline of the Earth. Then these ancient occultists looked at a point in the evolution of the Earth itself, at the point where the spirit of the Sun arose from the Earth itself in the fullness of time in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. At that time, when Christ died on the cross of Golgotha and the spirit of Christ united with the earth, a cosmic event occurred in earthly life that created a countervailing force against all that the moon takes away from the forces of the sun, while this sun works from the cosmos upon the earth. By the Christ-Spirit having taken up His abode in a human soul and from there spreading throughout all earthly existence in the course of future earthly evolution, compensation is made for what the lunar forces continually withdraw from the sun's penetrating solar forces. Thus the human soul understands its relationship to the cosmos when, morally and spiritually, it adds to the days dictated by the cosmos the third day, the day of death and resurrection of Golgotha. And when the progressive cosmic powers of the sun, which in their infinite kindness always want to give the earth new life, and the strict lunar spirit, which, because of the nature of Lucifer and his forces, must take away from the sun, insofar as it is only the natural sun, its powers, so can add to the two as a third day, morally and spiritually, as the answer to the great cosmic question, the human soul this Easter day. Wonderfully they stand side by side in such years as this one is.

Good Friday! This year in particular, it may remind us in cosmic-occult writing that the sun is constantly losing its strength with each new spring, and that the earth could die sooner than the human soul has developed all its powers. The full moon on Easter Saturday, a wonderful mystery! Above in the cosmos, the wonderful sign, the symbol of the stern Yahweh, who lets his thundering voice resound through Paradise, in which human sin radiates as the result of temptation; down on earth, the symbol of the newly resurrected power of the earth, Christ resting in the grave! It goes deep into the soul that can feel occultistically when the silver, solemn and strict full moon light spreads just above the Easter grave, the symbol of the penetration of the Christ impulse into the earthly body. Following this, the symbol of the resurrected sun, the sun that has risen again from the human soul, Easter Sunday! If we feel this trinity in our soul, we feel the cosmic sun, followed by the cosmic moon, followed by the moral-spiritual sun. If we feel in this trinity in our soul the symbol of how the spirit overcomes matter, how life overcomes death, if we feel something of what can fill us when we are occultists in the true sense of the word in our time, how the power which we call the Christ Impulse will dawn ever more clearly upon man, so that in the ever more and more revealing Christ Impulse, people will learn to feel what must be in them, so that they as human beings will find the way out of the dying earth to the higher stages of development of the immortal human soul, which lives on in eternities!

Notes by Amalie Künstler

Man was silent in the beginning of time. He could not speak to the outside world. But within him, the sound of the harmonies of the spheres resonated. The world word resounded within him. Then came what is described in the Bible as the legend of temptation. His organs opened to the outside world. He began to speak outwards. But every sound he let out into the world caused the sound of the holy word of the world to die within him.

The larynx and ear of man have arisen from these dying forces in relation to the hearing of the primal word – they have arisen from the forces of death. Every spoken word that breaks the great silence is a loss of the sacred creative word. Through the being that is present as Lucifer in the story of temptation, language is given to us and also the effect of language.

The human face should have taken on a different appearance according to the plan of the Elohim. Man also owes the form that the human face took on after the temptation to Lucifer. By connecting the ear and larynx through the sign, we draw the form that the human face should have taken on according to the plan of the Elohim.

Man rose from his horizontal position, in which he once floated in the etheric water of the world, to a vertical position, and YES KIN resounded, his first word. By pronouncing it, it should place us in the force field that we ourselves are to create, so that the sacred creative word can resound in us again. From below we then speak it up. And from above, the power of the holy world word descends into this creative word resounding in man.