Human Biography and Planetary Evolution

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, March 4, 1907

Today I’d like to tell you some more and expand on the theme of human biography from my last lecture.⁹⁵ We can consider some more subtle aspects and also add something here and there that had to be left out in the public lecture. Above all I would like to present human biography to you as a whole, in all its greatness. I’d like to show you how human beings, the way we have them before us today, are indeed a kind of microcosm, a small world. Everything we have all around us, not only on earth but in a way also in the starry heavens, is in us, being part of the laws that govern our evolution.

You may remember that reference has been made on several earlier occasions to the fact that our earth has to go through an evolution which is similar to that of the human being, that our earth has not always been the planet on which we live today, but that it is a reincarnation, as it were, of earlier planets. Basing ourselves on the science of the spirit, we can say that our earth has evolved from a planet that preceded it, though this was a vast number of years ago, and, as we have said several times before, this planet is called ‘Moon’ by occultists. It should not, of course, in any way be confused with our present-day moon. Today’s moon, a satellite of our earth, is a kind of cinder that has been cast off as being of no further use. You could see the predecessor of our earth develop if you were able to stir together everything our present-day earth and moon are today and everything of soul and spiritual quality they contain. This would give you a planet that would more or less be the predecessor of our earth, the Moon. On that Moon, from which our earth has gradually evolved, the physical human beings did not yet have their present form. A kind of physical predecessor lived on the Moon, but this predecessor still had very much an animal nature. You should not think that today’s human being was present in the animal-human being on Moon. On ancient Moon, creatures walked about that had animal and human nature, higher than today’s mammals but lower than today’s human beings. The soul human beings have in them today was not yet present in the Moon human being. At that time it enveloped human beings, just as they have an invisible aura around them today.

I have said on several occasions that the human astral body leaves the physical body at night. In sleep, it is merely connected with the physical body by an astral strand in the region of the spleen that can be perceived by a clairvoyant. The spleen does not only have a physical function; it also serves to provide the connection between man’s physical part and his spirit and soul. The spleen is the point where the physical body connects with the astral body. It is because of this that you’ll read in any anatomy book that nothing much is really known about the spleen. It is one of the organs that are on the borderline of being physical organs. The astral body, which in sleep is thus only connected with the physical body through the spleen, works to rid the body of matter created by tiredness. To the clairvoyant, the sleeping human appears to be enveloped in a strange cloud that is continually working on the physical body.

In the earth’s Moon state, the part of the human being which today is outside the physical body during sleep was outside all the time. It was connected with the general divine spirit of the world. Part of the spirituality enveloping the Moon only separated off for human beings during earth existence. Occultists may indeed say that human beings had a predecessor who was animal-like in spirit. But if you were to take materialistic thinking to be the only kind that has validity, the present-day human being would never have evolved from this predecessor. The principle which had been working on human beings from outside had to enter into them and develop in order to achieve the later stages. The ensoulment spoken of in the paradise myth did therefore truly take place on earth. This paradise myth is something you may take literally in the widest sense. The air which surrounds us today was the true body of the human soul on the Moon. At that time the air was still wholly filled with spirit. Just as today’s earth is surrounded by physical air, so the Moon was enveloped in something that was full of soul substance. Now you’ll understand why the air has grown soulless and physical. The soul entered into the body: ‘And God breathed into their nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.’⁹⁶ This paradise myth contains the most profound wisdom.

On the Moon, a physical body in the cosmos, the human being was therefore still much less perfect as a physical entity, and everything else therefore had not reached the level it has today. This Moon body is something I have also described to you several times before. Let us recall what it may have looked like. Rocks, soil, the kind of solid ground on which we walk about today did not exist on the Moon. The ancient Moon as a cosmic body was a kind of half living creature. Imagine a peat bog, though with more life in it than today’s peat—a vegetable mush, if you like, like spinach perhaps. This mushy substance contained woody material. Instead of the rocks we have today, there was a kind of woody foundation on the Moon, and above this a mass that was half plant, half stone. Life-forms grew on this that were halfway between plants and animals—plant-animals we might say. Today’s parasitic plants are descendants of the plants that lived on the Moon, above all mistletoe. This can only grow on other plants because it is a relic, a plant that grew on a vegetable base on the Moon. This is why mistletoe plays such a role in popular tales.

Human beings were at a higher level of development than those life forms that were half plant, half animal. If the Moon had stayed the way it then was, if it had retained all those things, human souls could never have managed to develop Moon's animal-human being further, to become today’s human soul. The whole substance of the Moon was not of a kind that would allow human beings to be taken further in their development. For this to happen, it was first of all necessary to cast out the material that is in our present-day moon. This alone made it possible to develop the animal-human being to the human being of today, using the earth’s material. We thus have a predecessor of our earth which we call ‘planet Moon’. In it, our present-day earth was united with the present-day moon, which was merely discarded in order to obtain the purified substance that would make it possible to develop human beings in their present form.

Further back in time, our earth was a planet which is called ‘Sun’ in occult science, though again it was not the same as our sun today. If you were to stir together our present earth, our present sun and our present moon, with all the creatures and spirits that belong to them, you would have the earlier planet Sun. Cosmically speaking, the sun is a much more advanced entity than our earth. It is inhabited by spirits who live permanently in the condition in which human beings only find themselves when they are in the devachanic world between death and rebirth. They are devachanic spirits whom we might call our devachanic comrades. They had previously gone through the stages human beings are going through today. To enable them to reach the Sun stage, they on their part had first to remove the Moon of that time, just as today’s earth later had to remove the present-day moon. This had to be taken out of the Sun as it then was, and the planet then advanced to being a fixed star. A star is not fixed from the beginning. In reality a fixed star has evolved from a planet. Our earth, too, will one day be a fixed star. It will then also be a sun, and the inhabitants of our earth will then exist in the spirit, as the sun’s inhabitants do today. First, however, the moon had to be cast out.

That Sun had in turn evolved from a planet which goes so far back that present-day humanity cannot easily gain an idea of it. This would need a high level of initiation. That planet is called ‘Saturn’. It became Sun, Sun became Moon, and Moon became earth. Earth will change into ‘Jupiter’, Jupiter into ‘Venus’, and Venus into a planet called ‘Vulcan’.

Someone may come and ask: ‘There’s a Venus in the heavens today, and also a Jupiter. How do all these planets relate to one another?’ It would be quite the wrong idea to think that our present-day humanity has ever been on the Saturn which is out there in the cosmos today. It would be like having a child of six and a man aged fifty before us and thinking that the child’s powers could ever pass over to that man. The man has once been a child of six, he has gone through exactly the same stage. And that is how it is with today’s planet Saturn. It has nothing to do with earth evolution, but represents the stage at which earth has once been. Just as the fifty-year-old man has once been what the six-year-old boy is today, so our earth has once been in a condition similar to today’s Saturn, today’s sun and today’s moon. But if you look at today’s Venus, that is the condition in which earth will be in future. The earth will be in that condition one day. The planet Venus is not just any heavenly body which man will inhabit one day; no, the earth will be Venus one day. These are generic terms representing the specific stages reached by a planet.

The way they are today, human beings consist of a physical body which has the same substances in it as the whole mineral world. They also have an ether body, which plants also have, an astral body, which animals also have, and an I. If we go back to ancient Saturn, human beings—our physical ancestors—had nothing but the potential for a physical body. The potential for an ether body was added on the Sun, the potential for an astral body on Moon, and the I evolved on earth. This is the meaning of those consecutive stages of development.

On ancient Saturn, nothing existed that would be like a present-day physical human body. When Saturn was at its densest, it was as follows. When I talk, I set the air in wave motion. If you did not need to hear what I am saying, if I were able to set the air in motion without speaking, you would be able to see the wave motions of my words—quite specific movements in the air—you would see images of my words. If you had the context, you would be able to see from those waves what I had been saying. My words are the reason why the air is in motion here. Now just imagine you were able to freeze the air waves at one moment. My words would then fall to the ground, you would have something like oyster shells on the ground and be able to see the shapes of my words in air which had grown solid. This is more or less how you have to visualize the human body, the animal bodies, the plants and mineral crystals on Saturn—dissolved out of their stillness and in an air-like state. For on ancient Saturn all this lived only as a heaving, boiling mass of air. Today’s crystal is boiling Saturn matter that has become solid. It is the same with the plants and animals which existed on ancient Saturn as wave motions in the light, subtle Saturn matter. It was just as if higher spirits were speaking all the plants, creatures and minerals into the Saturn matter, just as I create waves in the air by speaking now. The creative spirits of Saturn set Saturn matter into inner motion, and those were the precursors of later plant, animal and human bodies.

That was the beginning of our evolution—‘In the beginning was the word.’ The word sounded through Saturn matter and all creation was wave motions in this Saturn matter. Think of Chladni’s figures for an analogy. If you take a brass plate sprinkled with fine sand or dust and make it sound, using a violin bow, you will get all kinds of figures on the plate. This is because you were holding the plate still and playing the bow against it. The movement of the bow creates a sound with specific waves and lines. The dust remains on parts of the plate that do not take up the wave motion and is shaken off elsewhere. You can evoke the figures from the tone colour, as it were, just as once—through the ‘word’ in the beginning—they were spoken into matter. Matter was given inner form and organization according to the laws of sound waves. And little by little solid bodies arose from the sound waves.

On the Sun, the ether body was added, filling part of the forms that had evolved on Saturn with spirit. The form thus filled with spirit progressed to a kind of plant existence. On the Moon, the astral body was added. Here the life forms advanced to a kind of animal existence. On earth, then, came ensoulment with the I. Humanity could only come into being on earth, however, if the predecessor of the earth cast off what has become physical moon matter today. Certain constituents will need to be removed from the earth as evolution continues, so that man may progress to Jupiter existence, to Venus and to Vulcan.

You need to be clear in your minds that in occultism careful distinction is made between the first and second halves of the earth stage, for in its first half, earth passed through Mars. The potential was gathered then to produce warm, red blood. The earth’s iron content comes from Mars, and the incorporation of iron in the blood comes from that passage through Mars. The initiates of ancient Greece and Rome who knew that humanity was given the element of courage, of aggressiveness, with the iron, would therefore refer to Mars as the god of war. The names which astronomers give to newly discovered stars today are chosen at will. In those days the name was still seen as something taken from the nature of the thing. The courageous nature of the soul is thus connected with powers which earth owes to Mars. Mars was therefore given the name of the war god because of the quality of courage. The second half of the earth stage on the other hand is more and more connected with powers which earth will one day owe to Mercury. The connection between earth and Mercury is of a more spiritual nature, however.

The following, then, are the different stages of our planet—Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars (because that powerful influence came from there), then Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. This comes to expression in the sequence of weekdays. The initiates referred to the sequence of earth incarnations in the names they gave to the weekdays. You have to start with Saturday, which was the Saturn day. It is still called Saturday in English, Zaterdag in Dutch. Then comes Sunday, Monday, and the Mars day, mardi in French; Ziu was the god of war in old German, hence ‘Ziu's day’, English Tuesday. Wednesday is a more exoteric name in German (Mittwoch = midweek, translator). The ancients called it Mercury day, mercredi in French, Wotanstag in German—because Wotan is a Mercury spirit—Woensdag in Dutch, Wednesday in English. Then we have Jupiter day, French jeudi. For the Germans, Jupiter was Donar, the thunderer, hence Donnerstag. Then came Venus day, French vendredi, German Freyatag. And then it starts again from the beginning, Vulcan being a new Saturn stage.

The human body has to some extent also gone through everything I have been describing to you. The traces of motion that existed on Saturn are now wave motions in the physical body. The development of the physical body in the first seven years is a kind of repetition of Saturn existence which is why occultists call the period from the 1st to the 7th year of life, that is, up to the changing of the teeth, the period of Saturn existence. The same powers are active there which were just beginning to be a possibility at the time when human beings had only developed in their physical body on Saturn. Then the ether body was born and with it the powers connected with Sun existence. The period from the 7th to the 14th or 16th year, when these powers are active, is therefore called our Sun existence. You have to understand that all the powers which were present in the human being at the Sun stage emerge as powers of life coming into flower, that is, as Sun powers, and develop during the period from the changing of the teeth to sexual maturity. This is not without importance, for you will only begin to understand something of the way these human powers relate to the present-day forms of those corresponding stars if you think back on the time when earth itself was a similar star. The powers active in the child up to the 7th year also relate to today’s Saturn. Here you see the first inner seed of the widespread and tremendous wisdom that has come down to us as astrology from the times of the truly great initiates, a science that is no longer understood today. As there is this inner relationship between Saturn and childhood years, you can now understand how these things are inwardly connected. You can also see how the powers of the Sun itself have gone away. The development which will be important for the human being later on was brought to a conclusion with Moon and earth. The form principles are particularly important for human development from the 7th year to sexual maturity. This will in turn give you the right insight to realize how extraordinarily important it is that where their ether body is concerned, children have a deeper connection with the ‘spiritual sun’, as it is called, exactly at this time.

Here you have the more esoteric connection between the things I referred to in my public lecture. Remember above all that it is particularly important to give children a sense of beauty at this time. If they are not given a sense of beauty at this time, this cannot be made up for later on, because completely different powers will have come into play by then. This period has to do with a feeling for light and shade, and you can’t do better than teach your child to have a feeling for light and shadow. A quite renowned art historian I know⁹⁷ once complained bitterly: ‘I’m supposed to give lectures on art history. When I try and get people to understand, showing them pictures, they have no idea. Young people come from grammar school and have no feeling for light and shade; they can’t even grasp why a hand is foreshortened. One could build on light and shadow in the widest possible sense, but people are not much inclined to take this up.’

People can only develop a sense of beauty if they come to understand what the Sun does so beautifully on earth, the spiritual deeds of the Sun. This is very important. The Sun spirits live as divine spirits. Because of this, it is also necessary for religious development to begin at this time. This has to do with the development of the human ether body. Just as the Sun was able to take its inhabitants to the level of being spirits in the course of cosmic evolution, so teachers are able to arouse a receptivity, a feeling for the purely spiritual and religious element in children between the changing of the teeth and sexual maturity, for that is the time when the Sun body develops freely in all directions.

From the 14th to the 21st or 23rd year you then have human Moon existence, with above all the astral body coming into its own. This is the period when the drives that must be fought tend to emerge; everything that cannot be purified must be cast off. Things come out that really must sometimes be treated like the moon cinder; things truly have to be cast out, the way it happened with the moon.

We might indeed look more deeply into this time, and we would see how deeply man is connected with the whole world. We would see how because humanity is not able to cast out certain powers that are really moon powers, the terrible diseases develop which are called dementia precox, insanity of the young. This is a specific phenomenon, with symptoms of definite character that indicate how it attaches itself to the astral body which is just in the process of evolving out of the ether body. Try and observe someone who sails into dementia precox in puberty. You get specific symptoms that show a marked tendency to repeat things. The astral body if often very bright, but the way in which the astral body should relate to the ether body is in disorder. So if you were to ask such a person: ‘How much is 5 times 6?’ he’ll say: ‘30.’ ‘How much is 7 times 8?’ ‘30.’ How much is 6 times 9?’ ‘30.’ And so on, always 30. Memory goes haywire, as it were, and you can imagine that he cannot get out of the ether body stage, and cannot let the Moon stage develop in himself. Such aspects make it possible for us to look very deeply into the microcosm.

From the 21st to the 28th or 30th year of life human beings have their Mars existence. This is indeed the time when the courageous character of a person develops, through the blood sphere. It is not for nothing that people are made to serve Mars in exactly these years. To some extent these things happen from instinct. Much is also tradition based on things that people used to know in the spirit before.

Then come periods of preparation for future ages. As the soul is more and more left to itself, it initiates a process in the human being that will happen on the cosmic scale with the earth. Something will drop away from the earth, so that it may rise higher, up to Jupiter. And humanity is beginning with this process today. Here, too, the human being is a microcosm. Something separates off inwardly and develops to the inner freedom we call Mercury existence. This reaches its peak in the 35th year. We speak of mid-life, just as 70 has been called the patriarchal age, not without justification. Human beings thus gain their independence in their 35th year. They enter into the age where they do not merely learn things, but consolidate and strengthen them inwardly. With the will coming in firmly, the human body is left to itself and the inner life consolidates. Now people become counsellors for others around them. Their views now have value for others. Before, they had to follow the world; now the world can follow them. This is important, for many sins are committed in this respect. People above all cause harm to themselves if they start giving advice before they have reached the age of maturity, the middle of life. They will not create so many obstacles for themselves if they feel themselves to be merely students passing on what they have heard, but they will if they present all kinds of things as their own. This will indeed make their best powers ineffective. Knowledge can be acquired earlier, but wisdom is something that has to be developed inwardly. Knowledge is something one must first gather and which may then become wisdom.

The Jupiter age then begins with the 49th year. The soul grows even more free inwardly by leaving the body to itself even more and developing something in itself that contains the best powers for transition to the Venus age which begins in the 63rd or 64th year. The inner life has then consolidated to the point where individuals may have shed all egoism if development has gone well. They then have only love for everything there is in the world. They no longer want to have anything for themselves but are there for others. Today human beings are only developing the very beginnings of this, so that it is difficult to speak of it.

In the science of the spirit we speak of seven stages in the biography. This also shows how man is seen as a microcosm, looking back to a cosmic age that has passed and pointing to future development. Human beings are thus born out of the universe, and not only out of the past, for their whole development also has a prophetic note, something that points to the future. And what is to happen one day in the cosmos is already happening today in human life. It is therefore not entirely wrong to say that we truly get to know our self when we get to know world evolution. Letting the mind’s eye roam from Saturn to Venus, we see in the macrocosm what also happens in our own lives. This is how humanity is connected with the whole cosmos. If you think of human beings, the way they are now, with their organs spread out in the cosmos, you have an idea that may also be found in an ancient Central European myth. This tells that the whole world was created out of the giant Ymir—the vault of heaven from their skull, the rivers from their blood, mountains from their bones, and so on. The myths of Osiris and Dionysus tell a similar story. Yet when we speak of the original human being as being thus divided up, this means nothing else but that the whole cosmos may be found in man, and when human beings enter into the cosmos they find there their own existence in greatly magnified form. We have to extend our own insight to make it cosmic, and not brood in introspection. Just as we see ourselves in the body in which our soul and our spirit are concentrated, so we may look at the large body which is the widespread image of our own body, seeing it as the divine body, image of the cosmic spirit. In self perception we thus have perception of the world and of God.

Thus man is born out of the godhead and in gaining insight can gradually return to the godhead again. Entering into the cosmos and opening up cosmic existence with all the powers of the human soul—that is the mood which may come to us also from the science of the spirit. Through it, human beings learn to see the world as the great body of the godhead, and they learn how the self has evolved out of this body. If we learn first of all to feel this in our hearts, having gained it through the science of the spirit, this inner feeling will finally be transformed into a feeling of being with God. Though still a long way off, this feeling, this inner experience, will be the completion of what human beings can learn by considering the world in the light of spiritual science.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive  March 4, 1907

The Lord's Prayer: Manas, Buddhi, Atman

 

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, January 28, 1907

Today I'd like to consider the question as to how far religious confessions can be seen, using specific examples, to have their foundation in the science of the spirit, or, as we may also put it, in occult science. I only want to consider a very small part of this subject concerning the spiritual scientific foundation of religions. You are going to see that this concerns a fact known to everyone in our civilization, even the most naive individuals, a spiritual fact that holds the most profound truths and fundamentals of the science of the spirit, and one only has to look for it to see how mysterious and full of wisdom are the connections that exist in cultural life.

Let us start with the question of Christian prayer. You all know 'Christian prayer’, as it is called today. We have spoken of it before and some people may well have asked themselves: ‘How does Christian prayer relate to the view of the world we have in the science of the spirit?’ Through this view of the world, members of the spiritual scientific movement have heard something about another way in which man, the human soul, can rise to the divine spiritual powers in the universe; about meditation, about that particular way of inwardly living with a spiritual thought; also something or other about what the great spirits that guide humanity have given us; or about the spiritual reality that lived and lives in the great civilizations. If we consider those civilizations we are given the means of entering for a short time in our souls into the divine and spiritual streams in this world.

Someone who meditates, even in the simplest way, using one of the meditations given by the spiritual guides of humanity; someone who meditates and thus lets one of the formulae, one of the significant thoughts, be present in his mind—you know it cannot be any kind of thought, but has to be something given by the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Inner Feelings—someone who meditates and lets these formulae come alive in his heart, finds he has entered into the stream of a higher spirituality; a higher power flows through him. He lives in it. First he creates the ability to strengthen his ordinary powers of mind, to elevate them and give them life, and with sufficient patience and perseverance, perhaps having let this power flow into him to strengthen him morally and intellectually, the moment will come when deeper powers are aroused that lie dormant in every human soul, powers awakened by such a meditative thought. From the simplest way of gaining moral strength up to the highest regions of clairvoyant potential, all kinds of stages can be reached by meditating like this. For most people it is just a matter of time, patience and energy to reach the higher levels. Meditating like this is usually considered a more Eastern way of going to higher levels to meet one’s god. In the West, and especially in the Christian world, we have prayer instead, the prayer in which the Christian goes to higher levels, to his god, prayer in which the Christian seeks to gain entrance to the higher worlds in his particular way.

Now above all else we must be clear that much of what is thought to be prayer today would not have counted as such at all in the early Christian sense, and least of all in the view of the founder of the Christian religion, Christ Jesus himself. In truly Christian terms it never is prayer if someone asks his god for something to satisfy his own personal and egoistical desires. When someone pleads or prays for his own personal wishes to be met, he will soon reach the point where he completely forgets the universal and comprehensive nature of anything which is granted in answer to prayer. He thinks the divine spirit will specifically meet his own desires. A farmer who is growing a particular crop may need rain, perhaps, whilst his neighbour needs the sun to shine. One of them prays for rain, the other for sun. What is divine providence to do? And this quite apart from anything divine providence is supposed to do when two armies face one another in the field and each is praying for victory, each considering its own victory to be the only just and fair one. You can see immediately how little universality and general humanity lies in such prayers, and that if a god were to grant them, only one party would be satisfied. Praying in that way people forget the prayer in which Christ Jesus set the basic mood that should prevail in any prayer, the prayer that says: ‘Father, let this cup pass; but not my will but your will be done.’⁹¹ That is the basic mood of Christian prayer. Whatever people intercede or pray for, this basic mood must be a bright note sounding again and again in the soul as someone seeks to offer Christian prayer. The prayer formula then becomes a means of raising ourselves to higher regions so that we may feel the god within us. The formula will then also drive away any egoistical wish and will impulse, so that the words ‘not my will but your will be done’ will have real meaning. We then give ourselves up to and enter deeply into the divine world. When we achieve this basic mood as the true mood for prayer, Christian prayer is exactly the same—only with more of a feeling note to it as meditation. And this Christian prayer originally was exactly what meditation also is. It is only that meditation is more at the level of thought, seeking to be in harmony with the divine streams that go through the world and doing so by means of the thoughts of the great guides of humanity. The same thing is achieved, but more at the level of feelings, in prayer.

We see therefore that in both prayer and meditation people seek to achieve something which we may call oneness of the soul with the divine streams that go through the world, something which at its highest level is known as ‘mystic union’ with the godhead. Prayer and meditation, are the first step towards this. Human beings could never unite with their god, they could never make connection with the higher spiritual entities if they themselves were not an outflowing from this divine spirit.

As we all know, man is dual by nature. He has the four bodies that make up his essential human nature, bodies we have often mentioned before—physical body, ether or life body, astral body and I. Within the I lies the potential for the future—manas, buddhi, atman, or spirit self, life spirit and spirit human being.

To gain the right insight into the way these two essential realities of human nature are related, we have to go back for a moment to the time when man came into existence. You all know from earlier lectures that man as he is today is a symphony of the two essential realities—threefold potential for the future in manas, buddhi and atman, his three higher principles on the one hand, and physical body, ether body, astral body and I as the four lower principles on the other. We also know that he evolved to be like this in a far, far distant past which we call the Lemurian age of the earth.

Going back from our present age, through the Graeco-Latin, then the Egyptian, Assyrian and Chaldean, the Persian and also the Indian civilizations, we gradually come, as we go further and further back, to the great Atlantean flood that lives on in the mythologies of all peoples, and to our ancestors who lived in the land that lay between Europe and America, a land which we call Atlantis. Further back we come to ancestors who lived in primordial times in a land which then lay between Australia and India. The higher trinity of man—spirit self, life spirit and spirit human being—did not unite with the four lower bodies, as we call them—physical body, ether body, astral body and I—until the middle of that period.

We have the right idea if we see it like this. During Lemurian times on this earth, the highest life form was not the physical human being we know today. There was just a kind of highly developed animal form which today envelops our present-day human being. At that time it consisted of the four lower bodies. Higher human nature, the eternal in man, with the three potential elements that will develop further in the future through manas, buddhi and atman, had until then been in the keeping of the godhead. To imagine what happened at the time, in a way that may be rather commonplace but does help us to see it, think of all the people who today make up the whole of humanity having developed bodies by then that would enable them to absorb the human soul rather the way a sponge is able to absorb water.

Think of a vessel filled with water. You’ll be unable to tell where one drop of water ends and another begins. And then think of a number of tiny little sponges dipped into the water. What had been a uniform mass of water in the vessel, is now divided up among many tiny sponges. That is how it was with the human soul at that time, if we may use such a commonplace analogy. Before, they rested in the care of the divine prime spirit, and they were dependent, having no individuality; then they were absorbed into human bodies and thus made individual, like the water in the tiny sponges.

The principle which was then absorbed by the individual bodies, which are the four lower principles, has continued on into our time, developing all the time, and it will continue to develop in the future. In the science of the spirit, or occult science, it was always called the upper trinity, and triangle and square were chosen, above all by the Pythagorean school, to represent this human being who came into being in the middle of the Lemurian age.

Fig. 19

But as you can easily imagine, this upper, eternal principle which goes through all incarnations can be considered from two points cf view. On the one hand we may see it as part of humanity for ever and all eternity, and on the other hand as part of the divine spirit which that great spirit gave away at the time as a part or droplet of its own content, which is now down in the fourfold human vessel. A droplet of divinity became individual and independent as it came to rest in us human beings. You can see, therefore, that you may consider the three higher principles of human nature, the eternal in us, to be not only the three highest principles in human nature, but also as three principles in the godhead itself. If you wanted to enumerate the principles of the gods who gave humanity the soul droplet at that time, you would have to start with man and his physical body, continue with the ether body, astral body and I, go on up from manas to atman, beginning with manas, continuing with buddhi and atman, and go on to the principles that lie above atman and of which present-day human beings will only be able to have a idea when they become pupils of the initiates. So you see that we can also consider these three principles, which man has within him as his content, to be three divine principles.

Let us now look at them not as human but as divine principles, and describe them in their essential nature. The highest principle in the human being, atman, something we will develop at the end of this earthly, or, shall we say, present planetary evolution, can be characterized in terms of spiritual or occult science by comparing its essential nature with something of which present-day human beings have only a vague notion, and that is the will element in man. The basic character of this, the highest divine principle in us, is will-like by nature, a kind of will intent. The will, which is least developed in our inner nature today, will be our most outstanding principle at a future time, when we shall ascend higher and higher.

Today man is essentially a creature who seeks insight, with the will really still limited in all kinds of directions. We can grasp the universal nature of the world around us up to a point. But just consider how few of the things we are able to grasp are things we are able to will; how little power we have over the things we are able to grasp. The future will bring what we do not yet have. The will is going to grow mightier and mightier, until we reach our great goal, which in the science of the spirit is called 'the great offering' or 'sacrifice'. This consists in a power of the will where the spirit which wills is able to give itself up completely, not just giving the little a human being is able to give out of the weakness of his powers of feeling and will, but giving one’s whole existence, letting oneself flow out as an essential spirit right down to the level of material nature.

You’ll get an idea of what is meant by 'the great sacrifice', the highest form of the will in divine nature, if you look at it in the following way. Imagine you are standing in front of a mirror and your image is looking at you from this mirror. This image is an illusion but it is your perfect counterfeit. Now imagine you have died, giving up your own existence, your feeling, thinking and your very essence in order to give life to this image, making it into what you yourself are. To give up oneself and one's life to the image—this is something which in the science of the spirit has always been called the emanation, the flowing out. If you were able to do this you would find that you yourself are no longer there, for you have given away everything in order to resurrect life and conscious awareness in the image.

When the will has reached a level where it is capable of performing ‘the great sacrifice’, as it is called, then it makes, it creates a universe, large or small, and this universe is a mirror image that has been given its mission through the essential nature of its creator. We have thus characterized the creative will in the divine spirit.

The second principle we have to characterize in divine nature, in so far as it has entered into humanity, is already contained in the analogy we have made—it is the mirror image itself. Enter as actively as you can into a divine spirit that is the creator of a world and the centre of the universe. If you think of a point in this room and imagine that rather than by these walls, of which there are six, it is surrounded by a hollow sphere, the inner surface of which is a mirror, you will see yourself, the centre, reflected on all sides. You have the image of a divine spirit as a will centre that is reflected on all sides, and the mirror is the image of the godhead itself and also of the universe. For what is a universe? It is nothing but a mirror reflecting the essential nature of the divine spirit.

The universe is alive and active. And this is because the godhead emanates in making its great sacrifice, in reflecting its universe, which is like the enlivening of the mirror image we tried to imagine. The whole universe is given life out of the universal will that comes to expression in infinite variety. This process of infinite variety, infinite replication, this repetition of the godhead is known as the ‘realm’, as distinct from the ‘will’, in every occult or spiritual science. The will is thus the centre; its mirror is the realm, so that you may compare the will with atman or spirit man, and the realm, or mirror image of the will, with buddhi or life spirit.

Now this realm is such that it reflects the essential nature of the divine in infinite variety. Just look at this realm all around, in so far as it is our realm, our rich variety, our universe; look at its visible part in minerals, plants, animals and human beings. The realm manifests in every individual form, and something of this still lives on in the German term Reich [meaning 'rich' as well as 'realm'; tr.], with the major divisions of our universe called the mineral, plant and animal worlds or realms. But if we also go into detail, then every detail, too, is divine by nature. Nature is reflected in all of it, just as the centre would be mirrored in the hollow sphere. And someone who looks at the world in the terms of occult research sees the god, an image and expression of the divine, in every mineral, every plant, every animal and every human being.

The divine spirit shows itself in infinitely many different forms of life in all their variety. If one has reached the level of perception in the science of the spirit that enables one to see the individual entities as having originated in the godhead, they are told apart by giving them a ‘name’. It is the name which the human being thinks of as the individual entity; it serves to distinguish the individual entities in this vast variety from one another. It is the third of the greatest three human principles that flow from the godhead and may be said to correspond to the manas or spirit self. The occult teaching of different religions also used to teach, naively, what had flowed from the godhead and flowed into you, becoming your eternal image.

If you wish to rise to the realm to which you are ultimately destined to rise, you will find that it is will-like by nature.

If you wish to rise to the buddhi, the bearer of this will, of this atman, its realm is of the divine.

And if you wish to rise to that which you perceive to be names, concepts or ideas of things—this is what name is within the realm of the divine.

What we have been considering is the ancient wisdom which tells us that name, realm and will make up the part of the godhead that has flowed into essential human nature to be the eternal part of it. We thus see that the three higher principles in man are part of the divine.

To complete our study, let us now take a look at the four lower principles of mortal man. We know of the three higher principles that they can actually be considered from the other aspect, since we consider them to be parts of the divine principle. In a similar way, the four lower principles of essential human nature can be considered to be parts of the transitory world and parts of human nature.

Consider the physical body. It is made up of the same material and the same forces as the seemingly lifeless world all around it. This physical body could not exist unless matter and energy were continually flowing into it from the physical world that surrounds it, building it up over and over again. Everything we have in the physical body is really in transit within it. Materials flow into and out of it which make up the outer universe as well as being inside us for a time. Mention has been made here on several occasions that the whole material content of the human body is renewed in the course of seven years. None of you have any of the matter in you today that you had in you ten years ago. Human beings renew the substance of their physical bodies all the time. The matter which was in us before is now somewhere else, distributed in the natural world outside, and other matter has come into us. The life of the body requires matter to come in and go out all the time.

Just as we considered the three higher principles in the essential human being to be parts of the godhead, so we can consider the four parts of lower human nature to be parts of the divine natural world.

We may consider the physical body to be part of the material part of our planet; its substance has been taken from this material planet and goes back again to it. If we consider the ether body, we must also see it as part of the world that surrounds us here, and the same holds true for the astral body.

Let us consider the life body or ether body and the astral body in context. You know that the astral body sustains everything we have by way of drives, desires and passions, everything that moves the human soul—joy and suffering, pleasure and pain, whilst the life or ether body relates to qualities of soul that are more lasting, of longer duration and sustains them.

On some occasions when speaking to you I compared the development of the life or ether body and the astral body with the hour and minute hands of a clock. I made you aware that when you recall things which you knew and which happened when you were eight and the things you know and that happen now, you'll notice a great difference. You have learned infinitely many things, taking up many ideas; as to the things you did when you were eight, many feelings of joy and pain may have come to mind again; not only come to mind, but also passed through it. But if you now compare this with your temperament, your character, your lasting tendencies, you will realize that if you had a violent temper as a child you will probably still have a violent temper today. Most people keep these basic characteristics for the whole of their lives. As we have stressed a number of times, occult training is not a matter of theory but of directing evolution to the structures in the ether body, which otherwise tend to be unchanging. A disciple has done more if he has changed one of these temperamental characteristics, his basic inclination, and thus made the hour hand move a little faster than would otherwise have been the case. All the things that evolve so slowly—our lasting habits and basic temperament—are embodied in the ether or life body. Everything that changes relatively more quickly, like the minute hand on the clock, is embodied in the astral body.

If you now apply this to our human environment, to our life in the outside world, you will see that your habits, temperaments and lasting inclinations connect you with your era, your nation and your family. The lasting, unchanging qualities which people have will be found not only in them but in everyone with whom they are in some way connected—family, nation and so on. Individual members of a nation can be seen to have the same habits and temperaments. This basic set of habits and inclinations which need to be changed if we want to go through higher development make up our higher nature. Because of this such an individual is called a 'homeless' person, for he must change his ether body which normally connects him with his people.

If we consider the communities we live in, into which we are born, we find that the character qualities through which we belong to a family, a nation, and through which we feel we have a connection with the members of this nation, are also similar to the character qualities that live in our era. Just think how little you’d have in common with a member of the ancient Greek nation. His ether body would have been very different from the ether body of someone living today. People understand one another because of the common qualities in their ether bodies. The quality that makes people stand out from the common characteristics, making them unique within the family or the nation, so that they are individuals and not just a French or a German person, a quality that can also transcend the sum of gender characteristics, is anchored in the astral body; the astral body sustains it. The astral body thus holds more the individual, personal aspect.

If someone errs through his ether or life body, he is more liable to be a sinner among the people he lives or works with, failing to play his proper role in the social sphere that enables people to have a social life. Sins of a more individual nature, so that a person errs in a personal way, are due to the qualities of the astral body.

Sins against the community that come from a faulty ether body have always been called ‘faults’ in occult science. The way the term ‘fault’ is used for a physical defect is close to its use in a moral sense. The problem is due to a defect in the ether body. Defects in the astral body, on the other hand, are called ‘temptations’. Temptation causes people to commit individual sins. The I can also fall into its own kind of error, as shown in the story of paradise. When the human soul came down, out of the keeping of the godhead, and for the first time entered into an earthly body, it was taken up into that body the way a drop of water is absorbed into a sponge, and the higher soul then developed I-nature.

This higher soul, I-nature, can commit errors within the I. Man does not fall because of faults in his ether and astral bodies, but there is a basic way of falling into sin and this is due to the fact that man has gained his independence. Humanity had to go through selfishness and egoism so that they might gradually gain freedom and independence in full awareness. Man came down as a soul that was part of the godhead, and the godhead cannot fall into egoism. Nothing that is part of an organism would ever imagine itself to be independent of it. If a finger were to think so, for example, it would tear itself away from the body and shrivel up. Human beings could never have gained the independence which they need to develop if they had not first gone through selfishness; this independence will only gain its true meaning once selflessness has become its basic characteristic.

Selfishness entered into the human body and this made man a selfish, egoistical creature. We see, therefore, that the I follows all the drives and inclinations of the body. The human being devours his neighbour, he gives in to all kinds of drives and desires and is wholly caught up in the earthly vessel, just as a drop of water is absorbed by a small sponge.

The paradise story refers to the sins man was able to commit once he had become such an I-creature, a truly independent creature. Before that he drew on the common source, like a drop that is still in water and takes its energy from the common body of water; now he has all impulses within himself. This is indicated by biting into the apple in the paradise story, and not for nothing, for in occult science, all true meanings of words have a deep inner connection. So the Latin malum means both ‘evil’ and ‘apple’. In occult science, the word ‘evil’ is only used for errors arising out of the I.

Evil thus is to do wrong out of the I. A fault is the kind of error the ether body falls into in social life, in the life that human beings live together. Temptation is something that may affect the astral body in so far as it may be defective on the personal, individual level. And so the error which the ether or life body falls into is ‘fault’, that of the astral body is ‘temptation’, and the I is capable of ‘evil’.

When we consider the way the four lower bodies of man relate to the environment, to the surrounding planetary body, we see that the physical body is all the time taking up physical matter to feed and maintain itself. We see that the life of the life or ether body here on earth comes into existence in that the individual maintains community with the people of the community into which he has grown. We see that the astral body maintains itself by not falling into temptation. And finally we see that the I maintains itself and develops in the right way by not succumbing to what we call ‘evil’.

Now imagine you have before your mind’s eye the whole of this human nature with its lower four and higher three principles and are then able to say: ‘A drop of the divine lives in the individual human being, and man is developing towards the divine, to let his deepest, inmost nature come to fruition.’ Once he has done this, he will have gone through a gradual process to transform his own nature into what is called the ‘Father’ in Christian terminology. The great goal of humankind which lies hidden in the human soul is the ‘Father in heaven’. To develop in that direction, we must have the power to develop our higher three and lower four principles to the point where they maintain the physical body in the right way. The ether or life body must then live in such a way with other human beings that compensation is made for anything that lives in it by way of faults; the astral body must not perish in temptation and the I not in evil. Through the three higher principles, man must seek to rise to the Father in heaven—through the name, the realm and the will. The name should be seen as something holy. Behold all things around you; they reflect the godhead in their manifoldness. Saying their name you must once again know them to be parts of the divine world order. Let everything there is around you be sacred; and see something in the name you give it that will make it part of the divine. Let it be sacred to you, grow into the realm that has come forth from the godhead, and progress to achieve the will that shall be atman, but at the same time also part of the godhead.

Now think of someone who enters deeply in meditation into this aim of evolution, and needs to express this aim in seven petitions in a prayer. How will he put it?

To say what the aim of the prayer is, he will say: ‘Our Father, who are in heaven,’ before he says the seven petitions. This refers to the deepest part of the human soul, the inmost nature of man which according to Christian esoterics belongs to the realm of the spirit. The first three petitions relate to the three higher principles in the human being: ‘Let your name be holy. Let your realm come to us.

Let your will be done.’ We now move on from the realm of the spirit to the earthly realm: ‘Let your will be done in earth as it is in heaven.’

The last four petitions relate to the four lower principles in human nature.

What shall we say of the physical body, so that it may be maintained in life on the planet? ‘Give us today our daily bread.’

What shall we say of the ether or life body? ‘Forgive us our faults, just as we shall forgive those who commit faults against us.’

What shall we say with regard to the astral body? ‘Lead us not into temptation.’

And what shall we say with regard to the I? ‘Deliver us from evil.’ You see, therefore, that the seven petitions in the Lord’s Prayer speak of how the human soul, if it rises to this in the right way, asks the divine will to guide the development of the individual principles of the human being in such a way that he may develop all aspects of his essential nature in the right way. The Lord’s Prayer thus helps the human being to rise in moments of need to the true purpose of developing his sevenfold nature. And even for the most naive of individuals who is quite unable to understand them, the seven petitions reflect human nature as it is seen in the light of spiritual science.

Any meditation formulas that ever existed with the major religions have come from occult knowledge. You may take all real prayers and analyse them word by word—you’ll never find them to be words put together at random. It has not been a matter of following a vague impulse and putting together nice words; no, the great initiates took the prayer formulas from the wisdom of old, something we call the science of the spirit today. There is no true prayer formula that has not come to life out of profound wisdom. Christ Jesus, the great initiate and founder of Christianity, had the seven principles of essential human nature in mind when he taught this prayer, which reflects those seven principles.

All the prayers thus show a particular order. If they did not they would not have had the power which they have had for thousands of years. Prayers have to show this kind of order if they are to be a power also for simple people who may not even understand the meaning of the words.

This will be clearer if we compare what happens in the human soul with something that happens in the natural world. Consider a plant. It delights you and there is no need to know anything about the great universal laws that have made it grow. The plant is there and can lift up your hearts. It could not have been created if it had not been for those original and eternal laws. Naive minds need not understand those laws, but a plant can only come into existence on the basis of these laws. To be effective, a prayer cannot just be invented at will but must have arisen out of the eternal laws of wisdom just as a plant arises on the basis of the eternal laws of wisdom. A prayer can have no real significance for those who understand and those who do not understand unless it has come from that wisdom.

We now live in an age when people who have looked at the plant for so long, letting it lift up their hearts, can be guided towards discovering the wisdom-filled content of those laws. For two millennia, Christians have prayed the way naive people may look at a plant. In future they will perceive how the power of the prayer comes from that profound original wisdom that has given rise to it. All prayers, and especially the Lord’s Prayer as the central, focal prayer of Christian life, reflect that original wisdom. And just as light comes to expression in this world in seven colours, and the tonic in music in seven notes, so does human life, rising to its god in seven ways in the seven different feelings relating to the sevenfold nature of the human being, come to expression in the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer, as we contemplate it in our souls, thus reflects the sevenfold human being.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive  January 28, 1907

The Way Forward

 

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, June 12, 1907

The Munich Congress,¹³² being the fourth after Amsterdam, London and Paris, was intended to mark a certain milestone in our theosophical movement. A kind of connection is to be made between the different nations also for our theosophical cause in Europe. I am not intending to give an actual report on the congress today but just to offer a few comments for those who were unable to be there.¹³³

The congress was to show one thing, something I had been emphasizing many times with reference to our theosophical cause—it was to show that theosophy is not meant to be a personal matter of broodingly looking inward. It is meant to play a role in practical life, be concerned with education, come to be at home in all branches of practical life. Those who have deeper insight and understanding of the true impulses of theosophy will know, even today, what opportunities this theosophy will provide in the future. It will be the harmony between things we see [outside] and feel inwardly. Someone able to see into things more deeply will see a major reason for the scattiness [of today's people], disharmony between the situation as it is and the things theosophy aims at. Not only theosophists have felt this, but also other important figures, Richard Wagner, for instance...

In earlier times every door lock, every house, every structure was a structure of the soul. Soul stuff had flowed into it. In the old days a work of art was part of human feeling and thinking. The forms of Gothic churches were in accord with the mood of people who would often walk a long way to those churches. They had the soul mood of the people. The worshipper walking to the church would feel that those forms were like putting one's hands together in prayer, just as the ancient German [entering a grove] would feel [the movements of the trees] to be something like a putting the hands together in prayer. Everything was more familiar to people in those times. You can still see this most beautifully expressed in the works of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. The way a whole small village would come together in the church was a true expression of the inner life in that village. Whole ether streams would gather in the place where the church stood. The materialistic age has split everything apart. People don't realize this, being unable to take a clear look at life. A seer will know, however, that when you walk through a town today you'll see practically nothing but things for our stomachs or the latest fashions. Anyone able to trace the secret threads in life will also know what has brought our materialistic civilization to this split-apart state.

Health can come for the outside world if it becomes a reflection of our inmost moods of soul. We can't achieve complete perfection right away, but an example has been given in Munich. The spiritual scientific view of the world was brought to expression in the auditorium. The whole hall was in red. People are often quite wrong about the colour red, one should not fail to perceive the deeper significance of the colour. Human evolution involves ascending and descending movements. Look at the original peoples. Their natural world is green. And what do they love most? Red! An occultist knows that red has a special effect on a healthy soul. It releases active powers in that soul, powers that encourage one to act, powers that should move the soul from taking it too easy to making an effort, even if this is far from easy. A room intended to have a solemn, festive mood needs to be papered in red. Someone who uses red wall paper in his living room shows that he no longer has a feeling for solemn moods, taking the red colour down to an everyday level. Goethe wrote the most excellent words one can think of about these things: 'The effect of this colour is as unique as its nature. It gives an impression both of solemnity and dignity and of charm and graciousness. It does the former in its dark, dense form, the latter when bright and diluted. And so the dignity of old age and the charm of youth may garb themselves in one and the same colour.'¹³⁴

Those are the moods which red creates, moods we are able to demonstrate using occult methods. Look at the countryside through a red glass and you'll get the impression: That's what it must look like on the day of judgement. Red makes us glad to see how far human beings have developed. Red is hostile to moods that hold us back, moods of sin.

Then we had the seven column motifs for the time when buildings might also be erected for theosophy. The column motifs were taken from the teachings of the initiates, from very early times. In theosophy it will be possible to provide architecture with genuinely new column motifs. The old columns have really long ceased to mean something to people. The new ones relate to Saturn, Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury and Venus. The capitals reflect the laws. Between the columns we had put the seven seals of the Book of Revelation, in Rosicrucian style. The seal of the Grail appeared in public for the first time.

We can also build theosophy. We can build it in architectural forms, in education and in the social field. The Rosicrucian principle is to bring the spirit into the world, to do fruitful work for the soul. And it will also prove possible to elevate art to the mystery art which Richard Wagner longed for so much. An attempt has been made in Edouard Schuré's mystery play.¹³⁵ He sought to follow the mystery plays of old. The underlying intention was to let theosophy crystallize in the developing structure of the world. The programme was in a solemn and festive red, showing a black cross with roses wound around it against a blue background. Rosicrucianism takes the things given through Christianity forward into the future. The initials given on the programme reflected the underlying thoughts.¹³⁶

Today I would like to consider some questions that may come up in relation to this. First of all: How would it be if theosophy were to move across into the Rosicrucian stream and come wholly into its own within this? In this respect let us consider some ideas relating to theosophical ethics or morality. It is not a matter of saying: You must do or not do one thing or another. Theosophy has nothing to do with demands and commandments but with facts and narratives. Let us take just one example of a fact in the astral world; it will immediately be apparent that there is no need to preach morality—which does not serve any purpose anyway, for admonitions and commandments cannot be the basis of genuine morality which comes only with the facts of higher life. If you hear occultists say that a lie is murder and suicide, this acts as an impulse with such moral power that it simply does not compare with the simple admonition: You must not lie. If we know what a lie is and what the truth is, if we know that everything leaves its mark in the realm of the spirit, the situation changes. A narrative which is in accord with the truth creates vital energies for further development. Untruths that are spoken strike at the truth and this reflects on the individual himself. Every lie that is told will later have to be felt by the teller himself. Lies are the greatest obstacles to further development. It is not for nothing that the devil is called the spirit of lies and obstacles. The explosive substance of a lie kills objectively and discharges itself against the individual who put it out into the world.

We have three terms for the personal: the personal, the impersonal, and the more-than-personal. There were human ancestors once who were higher than any animal but lower than the human being. They consisted of physical body, ether body and astral body. Then the I was added, and this creates the higher parts out of itself, so that essential human nature will be sevenfold.

The evolution of physical body, ether body and astral body continued through long periods of time. They thus made themselves ripe to receive I-awareness into themselves. Today, we'll consider the tendencies of the three lower bodies and the way in which they developed. The human being gradually became more and more able to gain self-awareness. This is only possible with the power of egoism, self-seeking, which may be divine or devilish. We should judge these terms not merely by how we feel about them but according to their true essence. Independence made it necessary for human beings to grow egoistical.

Developing egoism brought with it the form of—apparent—loss of conscious awareness we call death in our present human life. Death developed to the same degree as self-seeking evolved. In the very beginning human beings did not die. They were like a part that dried up and would then grow again, more or less the way a finger nail may drop off and grow again. Our present-day way of dying and being reborn came into existence so that we may have the potential for our present I-awareness. Egoism and death are two sides of the same thing. The higher aspect of human nature is such that it overcomes egoism, works to rise to the level of the divine and thus overcomes death. The more the individual develops the higher part in himself, the more does he develop awareness of his immortality. The moment someone has become egoistical, he has also become an individual person. Animals are not persons and that is because they have their I as a group soul that does not descend from the astral plane. The individual personality lets the three bodies—physical body, ether body and astral body—be shone through by the I. This may of course be in an unclear, shadowy way, and in that case the individual concerned is weak in his personal identity.

This is clearly apparent to a clairvoyant. He sees a colourful aura around the individual which exactly reflects his moods, passions, feelings and sensations in currents and clouds of colour. If we were to go back to the time when the three bodies were only just ready to receive the human I, we would see an aura also for this creature which was not yet wholly human. This would, however, lack the yellow currents that reflect man's higher nature. Powerful personalities have an aura with powerful yellow radiation. Now you may be a powerful personality but not active; you feel things strongly inside but not be a man or woman of action. The aura will also show a lot of yellow. But if you are a woman or man of action, and your personality is actively influencing the world, the yellow will gradually change into a radiant red. An aura showing red radiance is the aura of someone who is active; but it must be radiant.

There is, however, a pitfall for personalities that want to be active. This is ambition, vanity. Strong natures are particularly prone to this. A clairvoyant sees it in their auras. Without ambition the yellow changes directly into red. If the individual is ambitious, the aura will contain a lot of orange. This pitfall must be avoided if the action is to be objective.

Weak personalities are more interested in being given things than in giving themselves and doing something. You will then see mainly blues, and if they are particularly indolent you see indigo. This is more an inner indolence than an outer one.

So you see how a strong or weak personality is reflected in the aura. People should overcome the personal element more and more and let the higher principle be active. This is why you hear such a lot about overcoming personal concerns and egoism. But this brings us to our main point. It is a question of whether we overcome the personal with the impersonal or the more-than-personal.

What does it mean, to overcome oneself with the impersonal? It means to weaken and force back the individual's powerful energies. That would mean being impersonal. More-than-personal would in some respect be the exact opposite of this. It would mean increasing the individual's energies, bringing out the powerful energies which a person has.

We find the I in the soul, and within it first of all the element of courage, but secondly also the soul's desirous and demanding qualities. Basically everything in the inner life goes back to these two things. And things receive different treatment there. This is due to the following. Human beings do not make enough of an effort to be open to higher things. They will develop, but it will be the lower principle which develops, with elements of courage and qualities of desire developing in a crude way. If they were simply to reduce this side of things, we'd have a civilization of the impersonal. Activity, which makes human beings human as they go out to be among others and do whatever they are capable of, will in a way always bring such individuals in collision with others. And they must experience collisions if they feel they are called on to do something.

We can also kill off our desires. This will make the personality colourless, however. Yet there's something else we can do, and that is to ennoble them. We need not reduce their strength. We can direct them towards higher objects. The personality need lose nothing of its strength then, though it will grow more noble and divine. We need not kill off desires, only transform them into finer and more noble desires. They can then come into their own with the same vehemence. An example. Think of a honky-tonk entertainment. Someone who does not go to it need not be an ascetic. He has merely transformed his lower desires into higher ones and so a honky-tonk would simply bore him.

This is an area where theosophy has been most misunderstood by theosophists. There can be no question of killing off the personal element. It needs to be helped to move up to something higher. Everything theosophy is able to give us will be needed for this. It is thus above all a matter of arousing interest in higher things. This does happen. People need not deaden their feelings for this, but direct them towards the higher, divine process of evolution, to the great realities in this world. If we direct our feelings towards these we will lose interest in the brutal side of life, yet our feelings will not be deadened but will grow rich, and the whole of our human nature will catch fire. If someone is fond of some nice roast pork, it is not a matter of getting rid of this feeling for roast pork but of transforming it. Our aim should be to metamorphose our feelings. The feelings which one individual has for the symphony of a meal are applied to a real symphony by another. If you preach overcoming desires and activity, you are preaching something impersonal. But if you show people the way in which they can direct their desires to things of the spirit, you point them towards things that are more than personal. And this more-than-personal must be the goal of the theosophical movement.

The science of the spirit is not intended to produce stay-at-homes and eccentrics but people who are active, going out into the world. How do we reach the more-than-personal, however? Not by eating into the personal, but by perceiving what is true, great and all-embracing. This is why it is not for nothing that we cultivate an eye for the great scheme of things in theosophy. This helps us to grow beyond trivial things and take things not in an impersonal way but in one that goes beyond being personal.

There is an area where we have a crossover experiment,¹³⁷ as it were, to establish the difference between personal, impersonal and more-than-personal. When it comes to love, you may easily think that the feelings which someone has for someone else are impersonal. But this may be a long way off from anything more-than-personal. People fall into a strange illusion here. They confuse self love with love for someone else. Most people think they love someone else but are in fact loving themselves in the other person. Giving oneself up to someone else is merely something to satisfy our own egoism. The individual concerned is not aware of this, but basically it is just a roundabout way of satisfying one's egoism.

We do not exist in isolation but are part of a whole. A finger is lovingly part of the hand and the organism. It would die if it weren't. In the same way a person could never exist without the rest of humanity. The result of this is that people like people. Love sometimes simply comes from poverty of soul, and poverty of soul always comes from powerful egoism. If someone says he can't live without another person, his own personality is impoverished, and he is looking for something that will make him more complete. He dresses it all up by saying: I am getting impersonal; I love the other person.

The most beautiful and selfless love shows itself when one does not need the other person and can also do without him. The individual's then loving someone not for his own sake but for the sake of that other person. This does of course mean one has to be able to discern the true value of someone, which can only be done by entering deeply into the world. The more of a theosophist you are, the more you will learn to enter into the inner essence of another individual. And you'll then be all the more sensitive of his value and not love him for egoistical reasons. If you go through the world like this, you'll also see that some people have one kind of egoism, and others another, each living according to the value of his egoism.

What is needed is higher development of the personality. Impersonal love based on weakness will always also involve suffering. Love that is more-than-personal bases on strength and perception of the other person. It can be a source of joy and satisfaction. Swinging to and fro between all kinds of different moods in one's love is always a sign that this love is masked egoism and comes from an impoverished personality. This is how we can best see the difference between impersonal and more-than-personal—by looking at love.

Someone to whom the science of the spirit has not given a foundation in his life has failed to understand it, for it is a source of inner satisfaction in life for the future. If materialism were to continue to gain the upper hand, and with it also egoism, which is part of it, humanity would fall more and more into the pessimism which represents the burned-out ashes of burned-out minds. If humanity takes up the science of the spirit, true cheerfulness will be restored to it, and this is at the same time also the source of health. Disharmony ultimately comes from egoism, and the higher human being spreads a cheerful, happy mood. The more the higher, the divine comes into its own, the more will human beings be in harmony. We should think more about how we can help the whole of humanity than about how the science of the spirit may help us in particular. We will find it easier and easier to discover the source of genuine cheerfulness and joy, youth eternal, the more we make ourselves familiar with the ethics of the more-than-personal.

Negation is definitely not the aim with theosophy, but rather affirmation. The impersonal signifies negation, the more-than-personal affirmation, weak though it may still be. This also shows us the mission which the science of the spirit is given out of the essential nature of humanity. 'You'll know it by its fruits,' by the way it makes people fit and effective in life, with faces that reflect inner harmony. The spirit never shows itself in a woebegone face. Even the pain someone has to go through is transformed in the thinker's face and appears in a more noble form; the expression of pain has been purified in the harmonious face of a thinker. A woebegone face indicates that egoism has not yet been overcome. The science of the spirit encourages us to turn to the world around us without losing ourselves in that world. It takes us beyond the personal, not by destroying the personality, making it impersonal, but by enhancing it so that it will be more than personal.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive June 12, 1907