The Rudolf Steiner Archive

26. The Three Aspects of the World

[ 1 ] We can distinguish three aspects in the world that approaches us, in which we live: first, how it appears to us from the outside; second, how we perceive it within ourselves; and third, how it is within itself.

[ 2 ] Our sensory organs convey to us the aspect of the world as it appears to us from the outside, the world of forms and shapes in inorganic nature, the mineral world; in animate nature, the plant world; in sentient nature, the animal world; and in thinking nature, the human world. From the outside, it appears to us as the world of perceptions, and we take in this world of appearances, of perception, through our sensory organs. Our sensory organs are the gateways through which the outer world of forms has access to us. If we did not have our sensory organs, the world of forms would remain forever unknown to us, a secret, an occult; it would not exist for us. We could only be told about it and given a description of it that we could approximately understand. But as long as we lacked the sense organs, we could never form a completely accurate idea of the external world of forms and shapes. What we now perceive through seeing, hearing, feeling, touching, smelling, and tasting would then not exist for us. The external world would then remain hidden in darkness for us, and we could only guess at it and, based on the descriptions of those who know it, form an approximate but never an accurate picture of it. This world of forms would always have remained an occult world for human beings if their senses had not opened up to perceive it. His senses had to open up in order for him to gain access to this outer world.

[ 3 ] The perception of the sensory world is a stage in human development that had not been reached before. There was a time when the sensory organs of human beings had not yet opened up to the outside world. Human beings could not perceive the world of forms; they could not perceive anything outside themselves; they still lived entirely in their inner world, closed off from the outside world. They lived entirely an inner life, as we still know it today in our feelings.

[ 4 ] In this inner life we still find the second aspect of the world. Perceiving the external world of forms with our sensory organs gives rise to feelings within us. Just as we perceive the external world with our sensory organs, so we feel with our soul the impressions that this external world makes on us. In this way, the external world becomes our own inner world in our soul. To the extent that our soul and its organs are developed, we become aware of this inner world of our own. The higher a person is in their development, the more strongly they perceive this external world as an inner world in their soul; the more they have developed their soul organs, the more diverse their inner world becomes, the richer the images of it that arise within them, and the more orderly and harmonious they permeate their inner being. In order to make the outer world completely his own, man must have a strong, harmoniously developed and structured soul, a developed soul organism. The more versatile a person has developed their soul life, the more diverse the outer world will appear there in varied images. The more harmonious their soul is, the more beautifully the outer world will be reflected in their soul. The outside world then submerges into our soul and emerges there as a beautiful, harmonious, lively, varied whole.

[ 5 ] While in waking consciousness the human being focuses his attention primarily on the outer world and initially feels it emerging chaotically as sensations within himself, he must learn to order and regulate these chaotic processes of sensation, to bring them into conscious relation to the outer world and to form a harmonious whole out of them. He must learn to bring the inner world of his soul under his control. Only then does it truly become their own, most personal world, in which they can live consciously and according to their own will. In their dream life, people immerse themselves in their inner world. There they are removed from the sensory world and are exposed to the chaotic whirlwind of their world of sensations, which appears in images within them. As his feelings become more orderly, his dream images also become more orderly and meaningful.

[ 6 ] What has now become his inner world in his soul is the aspect of the environment as he perceives it. This stands in contrast to the aspect of perceptions, under which the environment reveals itself to his senses.

[ 7 ] But now the world also exists under another aspect, under the aspect of how it really is. It is the actual aspect of the true being of the world, as it is in its innermost being. Man reaches this aspect when he continues to follow the path he has taken. When clear sensory perceptions have given rise to feelings within him, when he has brought these feelings into harmonious order and beautiful rhythm, then these feelings carry him back out into the world. They build a bridge from his soul to the world, and while the world pours into him through his senses, his soul now pours into the world through his thinking about the world. He pours his feelings into his thoughts, and his thoughts penetrate the environment. Thus the chain is closed between the world and man and between man and the world.

[ 8 ] The world is outside, feelings are inside man; thoughts are in both. In thinking, man unites completely with the world. For the world's thinking and his thinking are one. Thus, humanity is rooted in sensory existence with its perceptions. It grows by receiving impressions from the sensory world and arranging them in the soul into feelings and images, giving them rhythm and transforming them in the life of the soul. Thus it blossoms by reading, feeling, and hearing out of these images and perceptions the world thought that blossoms anew in every thinking human being.

[ 9 ] All human beings are rooted in the one soil of the physical world of senses and forms. It is the same world for all, the same soil from which all grow. And each individual human personality draws forces from this common soil for its own particular development. The individual human personalities are many and varied stems growing out of the one soil, each processing in its own soul life the forces absorbed from the one soil in its own particular way. But reaching their blossoming point above, in the world of thought, they all form a great whole, a wonderful, undulating sea of blossoms, each blossom a reflection of the great one world thought, and one complementing the other, fitting into the whole chain as a link, as a jewel in a crown of jewels, as a wave in a sea of thought worlds.

[ 10 ] Below, a whole: the physical world. Above, a whole: the spiritual world. In between, the transformation of the lower into the higher in many individualities: the world of souls.

[ 11 ] The physical world outside, in its uniformity, is a reflection of the spiritual world. A reflection of the spiritual world is the soul world of human beings in its diversity. The whole great world outside becomes a special little world in every human soul, and, emerging from all human souls in thought, becomes a great whole again. Thus the path leads from the cosmos through the microcosm, in order to emerge as a new, perfected cosmos from the entire microcosms.