The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. About Some Supernatural Facts and Beings

[ 1 ] Today we want to consider some details from the occult world. Some of what we will say today will follow on from the considerations we engaged in last time; some will broaden your view in the direction we already took last time, so that you will see more and more how the space around us is alive and permeated by supernatural facts, by supernatural beings. Last time, we saw how the different realms—the mineral, plant, and animal realms—contain beings that we can call group egos. We explained how group egos underlie the animal world, how these group egos can be found on the astral plane as complete individualities, one might say as personalities, how they circle around the earth, so to speak. We have seen how the plant Iches are at the center of the earth and how we did not specify a particular location for the group Iches of the minerals because they reside in higher parts of the Devachan. From this you have already seen that there are constantly beings around us that we always pass through, so to speak, that penetrate us, that live in the same space as we do. That which is, for example, an animal group soul, which belongs to a whole group of animals of the same form, can pass through us. For in the astral world the law of interpenetration, of permeability, prevails, in contrast to our physical world, where the law of impenetrability prevails.

[ 2 ] Now I would first like to add a kind of note to expand on what was said earlier. You saw then that we must think of the root of the plant as its head, which is stuck in the earth; then the stem grows out, developing leaf after leaf, and so on. Schematically speaking, we would have to look for the group egos of the plants in the center of the earth. What we see of the plant with our eyes is, of course, the physical body of the plant. This is embedded in what we call the etheric body of the plants. What is the nature of this etheric body of the plant? Everything we know as etheric body has the characteristic of repetition. Where the etheric body is active as such, the principle of repetition prevails. We see how leaves repeat themselves in plants. Why? Because this repetition is based on the power of the etheric body. This principle of the etheric body also prevails in humans. We find it, for example, in the spine, where ring upon ring is attached. When the clairvoyant views the plant in its entirety, he sees the etheric body underlying the whole plant, but above, the plant is enveloped as if by a shell of astral clouds, so that we see the physical body of the plant, consisting of roots, leaves, and so on, saturated with the etheric body and surrounded at the top by a kind of glowing light, the astral light. And this astral element, which acts upon the plant, brings about its completion in the flower and fruit. If only the etheric body were at work, the plant would unfold leaf after leaf endlessly; the astral body brings this to completion. The etheric body is, so to speak, dampened by the astral. We can see the plant's ego clairvoyantly as a sheath that goes to the center of the earth.

[ 3 ] If you observe the plant from the outside, you initially see only the physical and etheric bodies. What surrounds the plant belongs to the astral atmosphere of the entire earth. You can thus see how the spiritual surrounds our globe. What you yourself have within you as the effect of the etheric body principle is the succession of spinal vertebrae. This is completed by the spine being surrounded by the powerfully intervening astral. Through the unfolding of the astral body, the spinal vertebrae close to form the bones of the brain. In this way, you would have to trace the interaction of the etheric with the astral everywhere in the world. Underlying this is a mystery, the secret that everything living must be dampened, as it were killed, by the astral. This killing in the astral is such that the etheric finds a conclusion. If we imagine it as a force, it is called azot. In spiritual terms, azot means the force in the cosmos that prevents the etheric from unfolding with exuberant power without ever coming to completion. The force of azot is the basis for the living being called to consciousness, for without the astral there would be no consciousness.

[ 4 ] Everything that is spiritual also has its expression in the physical; just as all physical matter is nothing other than the embodiment of the spiritual, so to speak, for the spiritual observer. We have now seen, spiritually speaking, the interaction between the ever-evolving etheric and the astral, which holds back the etheric, and consciousness is contained in this holding back. You can find the physical expression of this in humans and animals when you observe the interaction of the two substances contained in our air: oxygen and nitrogen. Oxygen in our air is the embodiment of the etheric, the great life body of the earth. If you breathed only oxygen, you would consume yourself in a vehement life; you would be old, so to speak, immediately after birth. Consciousness as such would not be able to develop as it does in humans and animals. The developing life, the oxygen principle, must be dampened. It is dampened by the addition of nitrogen, which regulates and limits the effect of oxygen. If you only breathed nitrogen, you would die immediately. The interaction of the two creates the balance that dampens life so that it can become conscious. The physical embodiment of azot is the force that finds expression in nitrogen. In this way, you learn about the spiritual background of what you continually take in and give out.

[ 5 ] You now have an example of how all life comes into being through the establishment of a balance between opposing forces. We also see this balance between two forces in the vast universe, in our solar system, for example. And this brings us to a chapter where we can point out that our solar system is not just a series of bodies of physical substance, but that all these bodies belonging to our system are only an expression of something spiritual in the physical realm. Just as you have a physical body that belongs to a soul, so every planetary body belongs to a soul and a spirit, and the spiritual members of the individual world bodies are very different. If one could view our Earth clairvoyantly from outside, one would not only perceive rocks and so on made of material substance and see animal and human figures wandering among them, but one would above all see group souls of plants, animals, and so on. This is already a spiritual population of our Earth. The clairvoyant would also see the individual souls of human beings, the soul of a people, and so on. You must not imagine the spirit of a heavenly body as simply a sphere in space that has a spirit and a soul, but rather as an entire spiritual population that forms a whole and inhabits this heavenly body. And all these individual spirits, group souls, and so on, are in turn under a leader, as we might call it, and all this together corresponds to the entire spirit of our Earth, to what we call the Earth spirit.

[ 6 ] Our aim is to penetrate ever more deeply into the details of the spiritual life of a planet. Even from these hints you can see that the spiritual life of a planet is complicated. You must be patient; we are always making progress.

[ 7 ] Today we will be able to follow our planetary system a little further if we remember that our Earth has not always been as it is now. It has only become so through a slow process of development. You know that before it became Earth, it was another planet. We call the earlier embodiment of our Earth the old moon. That is not our present moon; it is only a separated part of it. Even earlier, the Earth was what we call the sun planet. Again, this does not mean the present sun. And even earlier, our Earth was Saturn. How does our present sun relate to the old sun, when our Earth was still the sun?

[ 8 ] The position of the sun in space was not yet as it is today, for at that time there was no sun separated from the earth. What you all were at that time, what was the preparation for the present physical, etheric, and astral bodies, lived in this old sun itself. The first foundation for the physical body was laid on Saturn, the foundation for the etheric body on the Sun, the foundation for the astral body on the Moon, and then the I was added on Earth. If you hold this together with the present state, you will understand how you lived on the old Sun. Your life consisted only of the physical and etheric bodies; your I was not yet in your body, nor was your astral body. If you want to imagine life on the old sun, you can get an idea of it by thinking that you are all suddenly falling asleep here. Then the physical and etheric bodies would remain sitting on the chairs, and the astral body and your I would float above you. That was the constant state of the sun. That is how it was on the old sun. You yourselves, your I and the astral body, floated around the sun and ruled and directed from above what was below. Of course, your physical body was not as it is today. You can get an idea of what your physical body was like back then if you imagine it as a plant of today; flesh in the modern sense did not yet exist. What you had was a kind of plant life. But it was impossible for this sun to retain such a form, for then a world with human beings such as you are today could never have come into being.

[ 9 ] During the transition to the moon, those beings who could endure this solar existence had to separate themselves from the earth, for this solar existence was a rapid, fast-moving one. And so it came to pass that the sun, with those substances that required a fast, hasty life, separated itself from the earth. The sun thus took with it the rapidly developing substances and beings, and the earth remained behind with those beings that could not keep up with the rapid pace. And among these beings was man. The best of the beings and substances on the old sun emerged and became independent. In today's sun, in the fiery, gaseous masses, we see the bodies of exalted beings who have long since surpassed human beings. Because they have long since reached a stage where they no longer need to live in a body, they can now endure existence in the sun. Thus, the sun is an existence that arose from a planetary existence, and there you have what is called a fixed star in occultism.

[ 10 ] A fixed star is an advanced planet that has repelled the things that could not keep up. The higher beings have established an existence on the fixed star. Every fixed star originated from a planet. Advancement, or upward movement, also takes place in the cosmos. Our Earth will also undergo the following incarnations: it will become Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. Already on Venus, our Earth will have arrived at a kind of fixed star existence. Together with the Earth, we will transform into higher beings who will then be able to endure fixed star existence.

[ 11 ] Now we have seen how a fixed star comes into being when a planet separates its bad substances and beings and elevates the better substances and beings to a more exalted existence. Now you may ask: If such a fixed star continues to ascend, what will become of it? What will become of the sun with all its exalted beings? — That will take some time, because the next thing will be that our earth will unite once again with this sun. But then another separation will occur, because our earth will gradually become a fixed star. Once our earth has reached the state of Venus or Vulcan, then what is now the sun will also slowly become something else. What will become of a sun? — A sun will become what we see today glistening down from the sky as the zodiac. The higher stage of development of a sun is that it unfolds into the zodiac. The zodiac consists of the twelve constellations: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces. For the materialistic astronomer, these are simply group images. But the seer knows that they are not simply placed in space, but that in their constellation they correspond to spiritual beings grouped together in this belt in the sky. When beings have completed their solar existence, they become such a zodiac. This too has a kind of development.

[ 12 ] Today you know the zodiac, which has a certain relationship to our life and existence, as a certain spatial arrangement of certain stars; but this was not always so. It developed out of a kind of nebular substance. Imagine the old Saturn, which once represented the Earth, which then became the Sun, the Moon, and finally the Earth as we know it today. It was already surrounded by our zodiac, but at that time our zodiac was not differentiated into stars, but was a mass like a misty rain. With the advancement of Saturn to the Sun and the Moon, the mass grouped together and the constellations shone forth.

[ 13 ] Where did this zodiac come from, which once surrounded Saturn and which, when our sun once becomes the zodiac, will disappear because it has served its purpose? Well, you can imagine that Saturn was preceded by other stages of development. An earlier sun, which shone over earlier incarnations of our Earth when it was Saturn, sacrificed itself and became this zodiac. When we look at this zodiac from an occult perspective, we see that it only came into being through a great sacrifice. Substances and beings that preceded our existence sacrificed themselves and formed this zodiac, first as a group of nebulae and then grouping themselves into stars. What has been described to you as the creative beings for our beings when the Earth was still Saturn was united with the old zodiac at that time. All the exalted beings who had already passed through a high stage had to work downwards; they poured out the predisposition for the physical body. This is what lies behind the mystery of the world's becoming: that all beings ascend from beings who receive to beings who produce and create. Becoming a creator is the goal of beings.

[ 14 ] The beings gather in the zodiac when they have ascended from receiving to giving. From the zodiac, matter flowed together to form the first outline of the physical body of man. In this way, we learn more and more to look into the world space and at what floats through it. And physical bodies appear to us only as the physical expression of higher spiritual beings. Thus, those higher spiritual beings have poured out matter through their will. This is the powerful, magical workings of the will becoming so strong that it can pour out matter. The substance rained down from those beings who were called upon to form the substance on the old Saturn, which has been transformed over time into the physical body of today. We call these exalted beings, who had developed to such a height that they could pour down that cosmic rain which was the first seed of the physical human body, the Thrones or Spirits of Will.

[ 15 ] This is again one of the insights we would like to gain. The time will come when what might be called a confluence of all these perspectives will come about; but you must be patient in learning all the details, so that the greatness of the cosmos may gradually become apparent.p>

[ 16 ] We now leave these world expanses and move on to another chapter. We return to that point in the evolution of our Earth where the Sun separated from our Earth, where, in the distant past, when the Sun and Earth still formed one body, the Sun departed with the higher developed beings and left our Earth behind as a stage suitable for us who were developing more slowly. The sun then shone on the earth from outside. The beings of the sun are sublime and powerful beings, but creative in a different way than the thrones, those spirits of the zodiac. What flows from the sun to the earth is light. This is also a mighty deed, but it is cosmically less than the dripping down of the substance itself.

[ 17 ] At first, what we now call the moon was still united with this earth. Our moon came into being when the inferior substances and beings that were still connected with the earth at that time were repelled. For if the earth had retained the moon, our development would not have proceeded properly; it would have become too slow. The earth would have been mummified, so to speak, like statues. Life would have died out. Too much would have been killed, and the earth would eventually have become a field of the dead. That is why the moon had to leave, and the earth remained behind and was able to maintain its balance. But now the sun and the moon act on the earth from outside: they maintain the balance on earth so that human evolution can take place. Everything is kept in balance by opposing forces. Only through the action of these two opposing forces, the sun and the moon, on the earth could the I find a place in humanity.

[ 18 ] And now remember our first elementary description of the human being. The human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and the I. The I works on the astral body and transforms it into manas, the etheric body into buddhi, and the physical body into atma or the spiritual human being. But it would have been impossible for this development to take place in this way right from the start. The sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul had to intervene. These members, which lie between the body—the physical, etheric, and astral bodies—and the spirit—manas, buddhi, and atma—were provisional transformations. Now, at its stage of spiritual development, the I works into the astral body, the spirit self, manas. Everything that happens now is the pure work of manas or the spirit self. But this is not long ago; we only began with it in the Atlantean epoch. It was prepared earlier, however, albeit unconsciously, through the three middle members: the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul.

[ 19 ] When human beings came over from the moon to the earth, they consisted only of three bodies: the physical, etheric, and astral bodies, and a bridge had to be built. Human beings could not build this bridge themselves; they had to be helped. In the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs, unconscious work was already being done on this, just as you are now consciously working on it. First, work was done on the astral body and the sentient soul was brought forth, then on the etheric body, from which the intellectual soul emerged, and finally even on the physical body, from which the consciousness soul unfolded, which came into being through the physical body being restored to its ability to drive its physical organs outward. With this development, the old clairvoyant state of the Atlantean consciousness passed into the present state of consciousness. Thus, in appearance, the consciousness soul is finally ignited.

[ 20 ] But it was not until the ancient Atlantean era that human beings became mature enough to work on themselves. Who helped them at that time, when human beings wanted to evolve from beings with physical, etheric, and astral bodies into beings with a sentient soul, a rational soul, and a conscious soul? We will understand who helped when we consider our earthly development as it took place through the sun, moon, and so on. As you know, the earth separated from the sun and sent out the moon. The sun had highly exalted beings who were so creative that they could send light into the world space. Now, I have often mentioned that one cannot just sit in school, but also in cosmic development. Human beings had progressed to the point where they could endure the Earth, and the high beings had progressed to the point where they could endure the Sun. Now, these beings who inhabit the sun today had previously existed as human beings, but in this development, some beings were left behind who were unable to complete their task; they could not simply inhabit the sun. If they had entered it, they would have fared badly; even human beings would not have been able to endure it. But these beings stood between the sun gods and humans. So they had to be given another world body, so to speak, where the conditions were right for their existence. In this way, these beings were actually provided for in the cosmic evolution. Even before our sun had pushed the earth out of itself, at about the same time, our Jupiter separated from the sun. Later, after the sun had already brought forth the earth, our present Venus separated from the sun; and still later, again by separation from the sun, the present Mercury.

[ 21 ] Thus planetary stages of existence were created for these beings who had not come along; they now inhabit these planets. At the time when the moon was still separating from the earth, a very mysterious process took place in our cosmic development, which is very difficult to explain and which is referred to as the “passage of Mars through our earth.” As I said, it is extremely difficult to explain, because when the Earth was still connected to the Sun, this mass of Mars was within it; then the Sun separated from the Earth and Mars left, leaving behind on Earth the substance that we call iron. Mars also became a place for those beings that did not come along. These Martian beings are the stimulators for the development of the sentient soul. Had they not exerted their influence on our planet, the sentient soul could not have developed. This shows you the significance of those beings we referred to at the beginning, which belong spiritually to the physical substances of the solar system and which are in interaction with what we have within ourselves.

[ 22 ] Just as the sentient soul was stimulated by the Mars beings, so the intellectual soul was stimulated by the Mercury beings and the conscious soul by the Jupiter beings. And at that time, when the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul had already been stimulated, the impetus was given to set manas in motion. For this, too, a stimulus had first to be given. Once it had been set in motion, human beings could, so to speak, take their development into their own hands. This was in the last third of the Atlantean epoch. The initiators were the beings who were on Venus. This gives you an idea of the interaction between the different members of our planetary system. We must imagine that human beings brought with them their physical body, their etheric body, and their astral body. Then three members developed: the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul, and finally manas. The consciousness soul draws its power from Jupiter, the intellectual soul from Mercury, the sentient soul from Mars, and the spirit self received its impetus from Venus. So if you want to discover the powers that are within you, you must look up to the corresponding stars. Human beings are complex beings; they have become so because the forces of the cosmos have flowed together within them.

[ 23 ] Finally, let us summarize the whole picture. Imagine that someone sees a small solar spectrum on the wall here, a rainbow; that is, the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Imagine that it is not projected onto the wall, but only appears in the sun's dust. That is what you would see at first. Then, if you investigate how this comes about, you would see how the sunlight enters the room through a crack and that this spectrum, this “ghost,” is created by various devices, by a prism or some other light-refracting substance. You cannot remove this, but if you remove the individual parts that are outside the spectrum, the ghost disappears. Remove the external light — the ghost is gone; remove the prism, the wall with the light — the ghost is gone. It was formed as the result of purely external influences.

[ 24 ] When the clairvoyant looks at a person, it is the same with the person as with the spectrum here. This person is actually nothing in themselves, because the clairvoyant sees forces from Venus, Mercury, and Mars where the person stands. Remove the influence of Venus, and the person is gone. Remove the influence of Mercury and Mars, and the person is gone. The person appears to the clairvoyant as a confluence of world forces. The only thing that remains real in this phantom for the clairvoyant is the “I.” That is the true reality, this working I, which is the cause of everything flowing together, which works to ensure that all such influences are absorbed. Before the clairvoyant's gaze, all confluences disappear; the I alone is what remains as the only truth. The “I,” which so few people today regard as reality, is the only thing that remains. What the physical senses perceive as human beings is in truth a phantom whose individual parts are held together by the magnetic force of the “I.” Everything in human beings except the working “I” is an optical illusion.

[ 25 ] Now we have gone through a train of thought together. Please transform it into a feeling; only then will it acquire real value. Go through the world with this feeling. Imagine our earthly beings dissolved into ghosts, with only the egos working within them. When you feel this, you will feel what the materialistic sense calls existence, reality, dissolve like a mist, and you will see true reality in the spiritual self. Only then will you sense something of what is meant in the Eastern worldview when it says that reality is Maya. All other talk is mere phraseology. To begin with the phrase, “The world is Maya,” is absurd. We do not want to utter the word Maya without first having acquired such a feeling through such contemplation.

[ 26 ] You will now have gained some idea of what true secret schooling aims at with its long preparations. You see, it is actually a crude phrase to tell people that existence is a mere illusion. First, such contemplations must proceed patiently and calmly so that the soul's feelings are kindled. We all first want to learn to pronounce the words we need in the right way. For the most part, our words are uttered by people as empty sounds, whereas in fact, when they were spoken in the cultures in which they originated, these words were connected with deep, meaningful feelings.

[ 27 ] Such a consideration, which shows us what Maya is, which shows us the true reality within the illusion, first pours into our soul what we are to draw out of Theosophy as a feeling. It is therefore necessary that you do not leave here merely with knowledge, but with this tone of feeling, with this color of feeling that falls on such a word. In this way, imaginative contemplation is integrated with what we take with us into life, what lives in our soul as feeling, as sensation.