Our Connection With Divine Spiritual Beings

 

Rudolf Steiner, September 17, 1922, Dornach

Automated Translation

Today I would like to continue the meditation I undertook yesterday by bringing it even closer to the human being himself. You can well imagine that what one is actually trying to depict through such a description is so rich and varied inwardly that any such description, like yesterday's, which covers such wide areas, can only grasp the matter from one point of view, and that a feeling for what is actually intended by such a description can only arise from descriptions from the most diverse points of view.

When we consider the human head formation, the head formation, we must be clear about the fact that this head formation does not only concern the externally observed head, limited downwards by the neck, but also the processes that take place in the human head, the internal organ processes. These are mainly present in the head as head processes, but they continue throughout the organism; so that essentially the head organization is found in the whole human being, but outwardly it reveals itself primarily in the head. The same applies to the chest organization, which essentially comprises breathing and blood circulation. This too extends into both the head organization and the metabolism and limb organization. We can speak of the human being in such a way that we distinguish between its individual organizational elements, but we must be clear about how they interact in the whole person.

If we now consider the organization of the human head, it undergoes quite different metamorphoses than the other parts of the human organism when passing through the spiritual world between death and a new birth. In the head we have an actual reproduction of that cosmic which, as a spirit germ, develops through such activity as I have characterized yesterday and already on the previous days. In the human head we have the complete reproduction, filled with material substance, of the universal whole.

If we could study the human head not with a physically constructed microscope but with our spiritual and soul abilities to enlarge, we would find the whole cosmos reproduced in its physical, etheric, astral and ego structure. We actually carry this entire cosmos within us, and most of it in our head organization. It is also true for this head organization that, between death and a new birth, the human being, in union with higher spiritual beings of the upper hierarchies, works out what will find the continuation of its development within human inheritance, which, so to speak, has been brought to a certain point by the human being himself in union with the beings of the higher hierarchies in the spiritual world, falls into the physical world and continues its development in the mother's organism through conception.

What we see as head formation has actually emerged from the cosmos, so that it itself comes down to earth in an astral state, which it finally reaches through the processing of the human being, and there, before conception, up to the physical state of development, , so that later on that which has now been left behind by the human being itself is clothed with an etheric body, after it has first cast off the germ of the physical body in the spiritual, and can then in turn connect with this spirit germ that has become physical.

But now it is the case that during the waking state, on a small scale, we are constantly continuing what we have accomplished on a large scale, in the universal between death and a new birth in union with divine spiritual entities. This activity, which is carried out here, takes place, so to speak, behind the ordinary human consciousness.

I would like to sketch this out for you. If we look at the human head of a normally functioning person, the following appears to the spiritual view: While we are awake, while the impressions of the external world are constantly approaching the human head through our waking state, everything that lives in the sense perception takes place for the consciousness. I would like to characterize what lives in sensory perception by first drawing the eye (see drawing), the nose, where the olfactory sensations take place, palate, mouth, where the taste experiences take place. This part, marked in red, is intended to schematically represent everything that a person actually experiences in their ordinary consciousness. But in the world of facts that takes place in a person, not only that takes place. You know, of course, that the brain is structured in the most diverse ways. I will only hint at this schematically (blue-green). What is combined and structured here in the brain is an image of the whole universe, the whole universe contracted into a small size and lined with earthly substances. The fact that this brain, in its ego part, its astral and etheric part, is then lined with physical earthly substance means that the earth, with its forces and components, has influence over this part of the human being.

While our sensory perception is taking place, while the colors flood in and form internally into images, while the auditory impulses vibrate through the human organism and form through the structure of the auditory organ into auditory perceptions, while a similar thing happens with taste, smell and tactile perceptions, while this whole waking experience is maintained by the influence of the external physical-sensory world, it comes to life as a force within the unconscious parts of the human head organization. And while we perceive a color, hear a sound or have a taste perception, we unconsciously work to create an afterimage of, say, Jupiter's position in relation to the sun or to Mars (yellow). We are mapping a cosmic relationship within our own being. Throughout our waking life, something happens that we accomplish behind our ordinary consciousness: the reproduction of cosmic activity. What is accomplished behind our ordinary consciousness is nothing other than the echo of what we go through cosmically between death and a new birth or conception. There we have gone through it on a large scale, in the universal. We have gone through it in the spiritual, unperturbed by the earthly substance. We did not need to take off the earthly substance in fine portions, wrap it around axes in spiral lines and so on. We did everything in a spiritual substance. The spiritual-divine powers of the highest hierarchies accompanied us in our work. What we accomplished in their community, we do here in an unconscious way, by surrendering to the sensory perceptions in our brain, by reproducing what we have done outside in a spiritual way with spiritual beings in an earthly way with earthly substances. Through this activity, we carry our pre-earthly life into our earthly life and into our physical organization.

What we see through colors, hear through sounds, smell through scents, is there for us during our earthly existence. What takes place in the background are thoughts that have an ethereal vitality, which in the materiality of the brain have only their physical expression. The essential thing that matters is what ethereally weaves in the finest substantiality of the brain. There, living thoughts weave into each other. Our thoughts are, after all, only reflex images that are formed in this inner cosmos, where what we receive from outside reflects back and then becomes conscious to us. But what I have just described takes place behind the level of memory. Nothing needs to take place behind an ordinary mirror; but behind the mirror that reflects our abstract ideas back to our consciousness through our brain, an entire world existence is reflected in miniature in every single person. And these living thoughts that we develop are for the third hierarchy, for the hierarchy of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai, the same as our abstractly reflecting thoughts are for us. Behind our consciousness, through our humanity, the third hierarchy unfolds its activity. There the essences of the archai, archangeloi and angeloi develop what must and can only be accomplished by placing the human being in the cosmos and on the earth. In the formation of his brain, he not only develops a mirror that reflects his ordinary earthly consciousness, the abstract ideas, but within the head something takes place that the hierarchy of the angels, archangels, and archai has to carry out on earth and through earthly existence. This is an event that is just as much connected with earthly existence as another event.

You can characterize earthly existence in such a way that you say: through the minerals this and that happens; through the plants it happens that they bloom, bear fruit; through the animals, yet another thing happens. Through man, the angeloi, archangeloi and archai pour their activity into the spiritual atmosphere of the earth. But this happens indirectly through the subconscious activity of the human head organization.

Our earthly existence is not exhausted by the blossoming of plants and the running around of animals, but continues into a spiritual existence. Beyond plants, beyond animals, beyond man, there is an activity of the angelic world, the spiritual world, the third hierarchy, and this activity is possible through the human mind.

I was able to point out to you yesterday that there is something astral about a plant (see drawing) when it grows out of the earth (green and pink). So we also have an astral form above it, a higher spiritual form (yellow) than is represented in the plant blossom itself. Thus the activity of the human head continues into the spiritual, and if we seek where it continues to, we find the activity of the beings of the third hierarchy in connection with earthly existence.

This activity also has a very deep significance in cosmic evolution. In the background of one's own human existence on earth, in the background of what man must do without knowing it in his organic activity, the beings of the third hierarchy are his helpers. Man dies in his earthly existence. We have considered dying and sought to understand it. But what dying is for man, that is for the entities of the third hierarchy, submerging in human nature. If they only had this, this submerging in human nature, their consciousness would fade away; they would lose their entity. They must nourish their entity again and again, as it were. The entity of these creatures of the third hierarchy must be nourished from the substance of the world.

Now, as I said before, what is woven behind human consciousness are primarily etheric forms. Even during our earthly existence, there is not such a sharp boundary between the inner human ether and the outer cosmic ether that what is produced by human thoughts, by this human work of the brain behind the conscious thoughts, does not vibrate out into the cosmic ether. Man is actually surrounded around his head by the vibrations that are generated in the cosmic ether through his head activity, which is accomplished in union with the beings of the third hierarchy. And when man passes through the gate of death, then it is as I said yesterday: that the head activity drops away first, also in relation to the etheric. But in reality this means that whatever takes place in the head, even as subconscious matter, first disperses rapidly in the cosmic ether. Everything that is brought about by man in this way takes shape in the World Ether, and the beings of the third hierarchy feed on these shapes. Thus the beings of the third hierarchy, on the one hand, help man in relation to his head organization, and on the other hand, they themselves develop through what is accomplished within this head organization.

The fact that man is interwoven with the evolution of the earth during his earthly existence means that these entities of the third hierarchy also come into contact with earthly existence through him. Otherwise these entities of the third hierarchy would belong to a world from which they could not come into contact with earthly existence at all. But they must draw their spiritual nourishment from earthly existence in the way described. Thus man is included in a cosmic activity mediated by these entities of the third hierarchy. This cosmic activity passes, as it were, through his being. Of the higher entities standing directly above man, these beings of the third hierarchy are the least powerful. They could not transform what vibrates out into the world from man and should become his spiritual nourishment, if it were quite foreign to their nature. That is why it is also the case that what arises through the human head organization as a human effect is mixed as little as possible with what the human being is through his other being. Our thoughts remain logical even when a person accumulates much evil in terms of morality through his life. Thoughts remain cool towards the other human being. They remain cool to such an extent that they can become the aforementioned nourishment for higher beings.

If everything that a person has in his emotions were also to pass over into these living thoughts, which take place behind consciousness, then the angels, archangels and so on would not be able to absorb that either. It would be useless nourishment for them. It does, however, play into our ordinary reflected thoughts, whether we are moral or immoral beings. But if I now express the matter in localized terms, which can only be in the form of a suggestion: what takes place there in the back of our heads, behind ordinary consciousness, that is something that remains, so to speak, innocent, untouched by human moral aberrations. These human moral aberrations only exert an influence on the cosmic ether and on the cosmic astrality to the extent that the soul of the human being is bound to the chest, respiratory and blood circulation systems. In a sense, the head is a pure image of the cosmos. And what happens during life on earth as an image of universal cosmic activity behind the ordinary consciousness, where worlds are continually being formed and destroyed, what goes on there, is present in a certain purity in relation to the rest of human nature. But it is nevertheless the case that if one could, as it were, turn one's eyes around and they would become spiritually seeing, and these eyes, turned around in their cave and having become spiritually clairvoyant, could look back into the interior of the human cranial cavity, they would see stars shining continuously, stars that are in motion in relation to each other, a world of fixed stars. A whole little cosmos would become visible.

The human chest is organized differently from the human head. The place where breathing and blood circulation take place as a rhythmic human being is also influenced by the cosmos, but earthly conditions have a much greater influence there. They change much more what comes in from the cosmos as a replica. When our lungs are active, we could see what is going on inside the lungs as a star, as a planet, as a solar and lunar world, if we could, as it were, turn around and see what is only lined with earthly matter in its etheric-astral existence. But earthly conditions continually interfere with this inner existence. Here the earth itself has a much greater influence. You must bear in mind that only something as fine as what the eyes make of the world of colour, what is made out of the world of sound by the body, plays a direct, immediate role in the organization of the head for the formations that I have just described. This blends in with cosmic activity. And only that which is brought about by the rest of the organism through the breath, through the blood that also functions in the brain, is pushed in. This is precisely the material that fills it. It pushes itself in. But the configuration, the sculpture, this inner sculpture that takes place there, is thoroughly an afterimage of the cosmic. The earth has little influence there.

The chest organism is in a completely different situation. The chest organism takes in the air we breathe and processes it. This is something that is in the immediate vicinity of the earth, that does not enter the human organism in such a fine way as what the eyes make of colors. The air we breathe is coarser than the colored light that enters our organism. Therefore, the coarser inhaled air has a much stronger, more transformative influence on everything that is present in the chest organism as a reproduction of cosmic processes. And just wait until we look at the blood circulation! All human foodstuffs play a role in the blood circulation. They are first absorbed as food, changed by the digestive and nutritional activity, and sent into the circulating blood.

When the blood reaches the head, it is in an extremely refined state, one that the ancient intuitive art of clairvoyance correctly called a phosphoric state. It is an extraordinarily refined state. Here the reproduction of cosmic activity has power over matter, so that matter cannot unfold its own forces. If any salt that enters the brain wants to unfold its own forces, it is drowned out, overgrown by the directions and activities that the reproduction of the cosmos exerts in the even thicker blood circulation that takes place in the chest organs. In the chest organs, what comes from within the person has a much greater influence. There, what replicates the cosmos is changed in a much stronger way. And that is why, when you look at the human chest organization with a spiritual eye, it presents itself as I can roughly characterize it in the following way (see drawing).

You can see how an image of the cosmos really does light up during inhalation. In the brain you can actually see an entire cosmos at play. This is only interrupted for the brain during sleep. Here, sleep does not interrupt anything, but the matter itself is constantly interrupting itself. Seen with spiritual eyes: the chest organization shows stars, and also shows star movements, but backwards in distortion and becoming quite indistinct towards the front. In a certain respect, man is also an after-image of the cosmos in terms of his chest organization, insofar as there are processes on our earth that depend entirely on the regular course of the year and the months. The plants come out and then pass away again. There is regularity. In the plant forms, those spiral paths that I have described unfold. There is a mineral tendency, which is admittedly spread over long periods of time, but which also occurs in a certain way in cosmic regularity. Certain changes take place in the air currents above the earth, which we can observe, for example, in the metamorphoses of the change in weather that occurs over the course of the year. But everything that is irregular in cloud formation, everything that is actually changing weather, falls into this. The whims of meteorology fall into this. The whims of meteorology fall into the cosmic.

Thus, in the human chest, with respect to what is connected to the back, there is a distorted cosmos, a cosmos that gives the impression as if we took our cosmos, which surrounds us, once at night , one giant tugging on one side, another giant tugging on the other, so that instead of a rounded cosmos we would get an elongated cylinder, somewhat thicker in the middle. Thus, in the mind's eye, the Cosmos appears to be receding, and towards the front it appears to be in confusion. Just as what is happening above the earth's surface is changeable, so the Cosmos appears to be in confusion towards the front. The whole thing is such that the Cosmos sometimes shines, sometimes disappears: it shines with inhalation and disappears with exhalation. Just as a person causes physical processes in himself through breathing, inhaling causes the distorted cosmos to shine, while exhaling causes it to darken.

The Indian yogi sought to relive this shining and darkening of the distorted cosmos through his yoga exercises. And from this he then tried to deduce the real form of the world by what he perceived in this way, by breathing in a lively manner until he had a perception of this inner distorted cosmos, and then by reflecting on it, he was able to explore it. Thus, as chest people, we also experience the cosmos a second time, but in a sense as if in a struggle against chaos. And we experience the cosmos a third time, and in such a way that it actually appears quite indistinct. This is because it is integrated into the human metabolic and limbic systems. It is hardly recognizable to what extent what is astral and, according to the I-being, integrated has emerged from the cosmos. That is why, during the lectures I have given here, I had to call what is incorporated “embryonic,” because it is actually an evolving cosmos. It is only when the human being moves his limbs or when the metabolism is active that what appears to be an evolving cosmos behaves very similarly to that in which it is immersed. When I lift a leg, the spiritual essence of this third human limb, as it were, strikes into the leg movement and into the inner processes that arise in connection with the leg movement.

Schematically, I have to draw this third thing (see drawing) in such a way that there is no longer any sign of a cosmos like this, as it is clearly present in the human head organization, as it is present in the distortion, weakened in relation to the spiritual light, clouded, both in the arm organization and in the leg organization and in the nutrition organization (red). In fact, everything is still in a state of cosmic nebula. We can study cosmic nebulae out in the far reaches of space. But with spiritual vision we can also study the world nebulae on a small, microcosmic scale when we look at the third part of the human being, the limb-metabolic system, and when we see how this nebulous structure (bluish) is embedded in the stars (yellow), as if they wanted to emerge as a halo of light, but then immediately fade away at the moment of emergence. We can see how this is completely overwhelmed by what emanates from the earth. The chemical affinities, the chemical forces of the earth's substances play a major role in this.

During a person's life on earth, it is much more important how the individual earth substances relate to each other in their chemical forces than how what a person has brought with them from the cosmos relates. Nevertheless, the human being is also related to spiritual worlds through this part of his organization. He is related to spiritual worlds through his chest organization in that a spiritual hierarchy plays into his chest organization just as it does into his head organization. In the case of the head it is the third hierarchy; in the case of the chest organization it is the second hierarchy: the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes. These develop through the earthly human being a cosmic activity in which they make use of what is taking place in the human chest organization. And their activity is such that it is much more spiritual than the activity of the third hierarchy; this third hierarchy can therefore bear what arises in the material image. Therefore, in the human head formation, one really has a material image of the cosmos. Here in the chest organization, there is a distortion for the very reason that the material does not become a faithful replica of the cosmos, so that it can be destroyed again and again, and also dissolved. The cosmic formation is not completed. So there is the earthly, which plays a strong role, and the cosmic, which is not finished in man, remains cosmic, so that a cosmic activity permeates man, insofar as he breathes, insofar as he has a circulation, in which the entities of the second hierarchy work, weaving and floating. And into this, man inserts that living photograph of which I spoke yesterday and in previous lectures, which is an image of his moral and spiritual qualities.

Thus, because man has lungs and the processes of the lungs continue as the breathing processes, because he has a circulation and what is affected by the circulation vibrates into the world ether and even into the world astral, he is enmeshed in the activity of the second hierarchy. His being itself creates cosmic effects, and the beings of the second hierarchy are integrated into what is accomplished cosmically through him. But into this, the further his earthly life progresses, man pushes more and more, the living image of his moral-spiritual qualities, this elemental being, of which I have told you that it is produced by man during his earthly life. Incidentally, every night this elemental being moves out of the person a little, and one can see the activity carried out by the second hierarchy in it. When you are awake, it moves back into the person, and the waking activity further intersperses it with the moral and spiritual evaluations of the person's quality.

The first hierarchy is now connected with the activity that takes place in the metabolic-limb man. The connection is primarily with seraphim, cherubim and thrones. Here man is most physical, most devoted to physical forces. The cosmic plays into him only as a mist. But into this, which is present in him as a faint cosmic activity, which is permeated by a strong, intense material activity in chemistry, in physical action, the activity of the seraphim, cherubim and thrones flames and undulates and pushes into it. For these, through their spirituality, master the strongest material substance, and it will be the entities of this Hierarchy that will one day transform the earthly processes of chemistry, of the physical itself, from the earth form into the form of Jupiter, as I have described in my “Occult Science in Outline”. But into this activity, which actually takes place in the cosmic, is inscribed during earthly life that which has been touched by the will part of the soul, as I have explained in the other lectures, and in which cosmic processes are involved in loose compositions with the actually earthly and the chemical and physical processes that overwhelm the cosmic.

In the limb metabolism system (see drawing), I would say that the earth is in its full possession of the human being. During the earthly course of life, the earthly predominates over the cosmic in this part. In the chest organization, the cosmic balances the earthly. In the head organization, the cosmic predominates. But the head organization can only be connected to the lowest kind of beings of the higher hierarchies. Where the earth predominates, the strongest spiritual beings work in man, because he is more torn from the earth of his being: seraphim, cherubim and thrones.

And when man passes through the 'gate of death', when the physical organism falls away, that which is only a nebulous spiritual being is taken up into the activity of the seraphim, cherubim, thrones and gradually woven into them. But that which was previously formed in the chest organism as the living image of the moral and spiritual man sinks down into this activity. That which was only, I might say, in the current of the middle hierarchy, now enters into the current of the first hierarchy. Thus it acquires greater intensity in the context of the Cosmos, so that man develops his karma as a living elemental being in its middle link. This is then taken over by the current of the first hierarchy. And while man lives through the time between death and a new birth, while he, as I have described to you, frees himself from his karmic image, ascends to the world where he can actually work together with higher beings on the spiritual archetype of the physical organism, while man experiences all this, which he then finds again in this image when he descends, something else is also taking place. While the human being enters the spirit world from the soul world and dwells there, that living image of his self-made destiny is in the meantime being led back by the beings of the highest hierarchy, the seraphim, cherubim and thrones, to the second hierarchy and finally handed over to the third hierarchy, the angels, archangels and archai. On descending again, the human being takes up this image, which he left with the first hierarchy, from the third hierarchy. When he now enters life again, it is incorporated into what takes place between the third hierarchy, the angeloi, archangeloi and archai, and his head organization. Everything that man has produced through his most earthly being and handed over to the cosmos after death, everything that man has developed within himself through having a substance organization dominated by the earth, everything that he must hand over after death to the seraphim , cherubim and thrones, and what he lets flow into the cosmos in this way, he actually receives again in the way in which the angels, archangels and archai work through his head organization in a new life on earth. Man hands over to the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones that which he has prepared for himself as his destiny, and receives it again from the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. These carry it over into the activity that he will carry out in a new life on earth. In this way, what he handed over to the first hierarchy when he left his last life on earth is taken up into his new earthly destiny from the hand of the third hierarchy.

So you see that you can only understand the universe as a whole if you place the connection that our senses can survey and our minds can think into the context that arises from real vision. For there not only growing plants appear, not only water in cloud formations, in currents, there not only physical stars appear, there the whole cosmos appears in its living activity, spiritualized by a series of hierarchies, which also exercise a physical activity, an activity that permeates and surges through this physical activity. And events of a kind take place that, while man experiences existence between death and a new birth, his human destiny passes from the hand of the seraphim, cherubim and thrones to that of the angeloi, archangeloi and archai. In this way, each person receives what he or she is destined to experience in a new life. What a person has left to the highest hierarchy, he or she receives back from the hand of the third hierarchy, and together with the third hierarchy, he or she must bring it back into the world balance through balancing deeds during his or her earthly existence.

Source: September 17, 1922