The Advent of Christ in the Ethereal World
GA 118 — 11 April 1910, Rome
IV. The Essence of Man
Notes from the lecture
Last year, I had the pleasure of giving a few lectures here on the subject of theosophy, and it gives me great satisfaction that, during my travels through Rome this spring, I am able to give three lectures here with the permission of our esteemed Princess. These three lectures are intended to shed light on what is called in the theosophical sense “spiritual knowledge of the world”, from a somewhat more inward perspective than was the case in last year's introductory course, and, I believe, rightly so.
Theosophy, or, as it could also be called, “spiritual science”, is something that is still widely misunderstood in our time from various sides, especially from those who are based on a particular religious belief. Now, spiritual science is in no way opposed to this or that religious belief. In relation to religions, it can only have the sole and exclusive task of leading to a deeper understanding of religious truths. So that one may well say: Not the slightest thing can be taken away from anyone in the world in the way of their religious convictions through spiritual scientific knowledge. It is so often misunderstood that spiritual science is fundamentally based on a completely different ground than any religious creed. It is based on purely spiritual science.
This brings us to another form of resistance that is often encountered by spiritual science today, and which is expressed in the claim that it is unscientific, fantastic and dreamy. However, anyone who has studied the spiritual scientific movement of the present day will soon realize that spiritual science touches on a completely different field from that of external science. While the latter deals with the things of the outer, sensual world, which can be grasped with the physical senses and the mind, it is the task of spiritual science to explore the realm of the spirit that lies behind the sensual world and is closed to our normal consciousness. The way of thinking, the ideas and concepts with which the exact science approaches the world of the senses and spiritual science approaches the spiritual world are exactly the same. There are only two reasons why spiritual science differs in principle from the other sciences. Firstly, because it is comprehensible to every human soul in that it considers things that every human heart must actually ask about at every hour of the day. The subjects of spiritual science are universally human, and there is hardly a question in the human soul to which spiritual science has no answer. In a thousand and one cases, people need the comfort that spiritual science has to offer them, and they need the hope and confidence that spiritual science gives them for this life and for the future.
The other reason is that, while the other sciences require the 'acquisition of prerequisites, spiritual science knows how to speak to everyone in a way that is understandable if they just make an effort to understand its language. And when it is said so often that it is difficult to understand, it is only because people approach it with prejudices and self-made obstacles. The difficulty lies not in its language, but in our way of thinking.
These three lectures will now be given: today on the nature of man himself, tomorrow on the nature of the higher worlds and their connection with ours, and the day after tomorrow on the course of human evolution and on the intervention of the high great personalities who are involved in our spiritual life.
The essence of man can only be grasped if one is able to grasp it from the spirit. Just as the human being is built from the sensual world in terms of his outer, bodily form, so he is formed and built up as a spiritual and soul being from the supersensible world. Thus, only a science that looks to the regions of the spiritual world can penetrate to the true nature of man, and we must agree from the outset on how to arrive at such knowledge of higher worlds.
This can only be briefly hinted at here as an introduction. With the senses and mind that man relies on for his external life, we never really come close to the spiritual world, no closer than a blind person comes close to light and color. But just as a world of light and color breaks into the soul of a person who was born blind and has been successfully operated on, it is also possible for the spiritual organ of perception, the spiritual senses, to open and for the person to experience the great moment that, on a higher level, means the same as the moment just characterized for the blind person. It is possible that soul and spiritual powers, which lie dormant in the ordinary consciousness, are awakened and that spiritual powers, which represent a spiritual eye or a spiritual ear, are brought out. At the moment of awakening of the higher senses, a world of spiritual facts and spiritual entities breaks into our soul, just as light and color appear to the newly sighted man born blind. We call such people, who are able to see the spiritual worlds and to explain the reasons for our existence from them, “awakened” or “initiated” people. They can then communicate to others what they have recognized, and if they have understood their task aright, they will express it in such a way that everyone's reason and intellect can understand it. For an understanding of spiritual science or theosophy does not itself involve spiritual research, but only an experience of it.
It will be briefly indicated how these higher abilities are acquired in man. One has first to learn to artificially induce a certain moment that occurs naturally every day. It is the moment of falling asleep, when man passes into a special state of consciousness. What happens at the moment of falling asleep? We notice how all our passions, desires and perceptions, which flood up and down in us throughout the day, gradually come to silence, external impressions cease and sleep sets in for normal people. Now we know nothing more about ourselves and perceive nothing more of the environment. So in this moment, when we separate ourselves from the external world, unconsciousness sets in. Now, anyone who wants to gradually come to initiation, that is, to be initiated into the higher mysteries, must learn to artificially induce this moment of the disappearance of external impressions. He must be able to evoke a state within himself that is the same as the lack of impressions when sleeping, where neither color nor warmth nor sound is perceived by the soul and it feels neither suffering nor joy about anything in the external world.
But the disciple must not only be able to induce this state completely consciously, but he must also be just as conscious as he is during ordinary daily life, even though his soul is empty of all external impressions. Into this emptiness of soul he must now fill certain ideas and feelings, which do not come from outside, but are awakened within the soul itself. Through strong will and out of its own power, the soul must be able to evoke certain feelings, sensations, and volitional impulses that must be stronger than anything that can come from outside. This state is that of meditation. If the meditant were to develop only these two abilities within himself, he would soon experience something internally like an earthquake-like tremor; to avoid this, he must learn to maintain the greatest calmness of soul. He must be able to experience the strong inner impulses during meditation with a soul as smooth as the sea in complete calm.
These are the three conditions for the person to be initiated: firstly, emptiness of the soul from all external impressions; secondly, richness of the soul in inner perceptions; thirdly, complete calmness of the soul. Those who have the stamina to train themselves in this way will experience a great, powerful moment, perhaps after just a few months, perhaps only after years. The spiritual senses will open to him and he will exclaim: Oh, there is something quite different in our world than I have known so far. Until now I only saw what my mind could combine, but now I see that there are spiritual facts and spiritual beings in the same world and that there are worlds that can be described as hidden worlds.
From this sublime moment on, the disciple becomes a researcher in the spiritual worlds and is then able to recognize for himself what is to be outlined here with regard to the nature of man. Today we will speak of the following states and experiences of the soul, which must interest everyone deeply and which we can describe as the state between waking and sleeping and what is called life and death. We have already hinted at the external state of waking and sleeping and now we want to go into the inner state in more detail. It would be absurd if we, with our ordinary minds, were to try to present it as logical that the actual inner being of a person disappears when they fall asleep, as soon as external impressions cease, and then, so to speak, rises again in the morning. This cannot be the case, and only someone who wanted to indulge in absurd ideas could believe that the inner man perishes in the evening and rises again in the morning.
But is that the inner, real man, what we see with our physical eyes lying in bed as a sleeping body? No one would want to claim that. Now, the one who follows the transition from waking to sleeping with ordinary consciousness can, of course, notice nothing other than that the physical body gradually enters into a motionless state. But the one who has developed his spiritual eye through the means just characterized perceives how the inner, spiritual, actual human being rises out of the physical body. Just as the outer sight of the one falling asleep is different for the seer than for the normal person, who is only able to perceive with the physical eye, so too is the state of sleep itself fundamentally different for the two. While the man without clairvoyance falls into unconsciousness, the seer remains conscious when falling asleep, for he has sensory organs developed in his soul body, which rises from the resting physical, for perceiving the spiritual world.
We will now try to characterize this spiritual world, in which the person who has become clairvoyant rises, in brief lines. The perceptions he has are initially limited to the time when his physical body is asleep. However, with constant practice, he will be able to switch off the physical senses at any time of the day, as soon as he wants, and see spiritually without leaving his body. A big difference is immediately noticeable when we look at this bouquet of roses with seer's eyes, for example. Suddenly we can no longer say: the bouquet of roses is in front of me, I am here and it is there, as we can say in our normal waking state. In the spiritual world, the difference in space, the here and there, completely loses its meaning, and we are no longer in front of the bouquet of roses with our consciousness, but inside it. In the spiritual world, the spiritual consciousness feels itself in the entity, in the fact; the clairvoyant person pours himself out into the object he perceives. His inner being, as it were, penetrates the skin of our physical body and becomes one with all that he sees around him in the spiritual world. What is it that pours out into the environment at night and what feels tied up during the day within the boundaries of the physical body? It is what we summarize in the little word “I”, of which the person in normal daytime consciousness says: It lives in my body. The clairvoyant consciousness feels this “I” poured out into the entire outer world that it can reach. We may ask: Where is it then? — There is only one answer to this: Fundamentally, the seer's I is everywhere it perceives.
This path into the spiritual world is the same as that taken by everyone who is not clairvoyant when they fall asleep, except that they are unconscious when they do so. Thus each of us lives alternately, while awake, in the physical body, our microcosm constrained, and asleep, expanded into the vastness and united with the great world around us, the macrocosm.
Why, we might ask, must we fall into unconsciousness? The reason for this is that today's human being is not yet mature enough to do so, and his ego could not bear to consciously flow out into the universe. We can get a rough idea of the process by using a visual image: let us imagine a large pool of water into which we drop a small drop of a colored liquid. We see how the drop dissolves in the surrounding water and becomes less and less visible as it spreads. The human being experiences something similar in his ego, which, like a droplet, has to expand into the whole spiritual world. Today's human being could not bear to dissolve consciously in this way and must pay for this admission to his spiritual home with unconsciousness. What would happen to him if he were to expand into the spiritual world in full consciousness without occult preparation? We can best visualize this if we think of the ego as having only as much strength as is needed for limited perception on the physical plane. By extending itself beyond the bodily limits, it loses strength, like the drop loses consistency, and its perceptions would fade more and more the more it extends, until it would finally have the horrible feeling of floating over a bottomless abyss in deepest darkness. We have to think of the ego not only as a force, but also as a feeling and sensing being, and can therefore form a vague idea of the impression of being lost in nothingness. Therefore, one of the most important preparations for anyone who wants to penetrate to the clear-sighted consciousness is to acquire fearlessness. It is an essential part of the spiritual researcher's training that many opportunities be brought about for him to test his equanimity and steadfastness. A man who has not had thousands upon thousands of opportunities to face those events that would otherwise terrify and horrify him, and to say with a calm soul: “I am facing the most terrible danger, but I know that my situation will not be made any safer by my fear, but it will by taking bold action,” is not yet sufficiently prepared. In the old mysteries, of course, it happened that the person to be initiated was consciously led into the macrocosm, even if his ego did not yet have full strength, but the initiator always had to be with him in order to be able to help him in time. This kind of clairvoyance, as achieved in the old secret schools of Europe, is called ecstasy. For our present stage of development this method is no longer suitable, and in its place another has come which we shall now speak of. It is the Rosicrucian method.
As has just been said, in the old mysteries the disciple was under the supervision of his teacher, who had to prevent the emerging self from completely dissolving and falling into unconsciousness. This ecstatic absorption was achieved by the strictly regulated cultivation of certain feelings, which one also has in everyday life. The ancient method was to link these feelings to those that people still have today, albeit to a much lesser extent, when the seasons change. When, for example, the pupil stepped out into the fresh spring landscape and saw the young grass and the first flowers sprouting from the melting snow, when he saw the resurrection from hibernation all around him, when he felt the and the dry, leafless trees sprouted new buds under the awakening touch of the warm sunlight, then he had to feel this resurrecting life within himself and surrender to it with all his soul in deepest meditation.
Through constant repetition, he was then able to intensify this feeling to an unimaginable degree. You must, the initiator told him, be able to ignite this joy and this confidence and this zest for life in you with such power and such vibrancy that the earth itself would feel it if it had consciousness.
Likewise, the student had to learn to feel the melancholy in autumn, he had to let the dying off all around him take effect on him, he had to feel how forests and meadows lose their leafy decorations and life withdraws into the lap of the earth. With her, he had to be able to grieve for her children. Likewise, he had to experience the other seasons and especially the winter and summer solstice within himself.
This may appear to be only hidden everyday life, and yet it is not so, for the esotericist of ancient and modern times has to create these feelings in complete silence of soul, excluding all external impressions in his deepest inner being. Those who had learned to feel in this way experienced after prolonged practice - and this is still the case today - what was called in the ancient mysteries: The vision of the sun at midnight. The earth became transparent and through the fading physical form one saw the spiritual that lay beneath it; instead of the physical sun, one beheld the great spiritual sun, that primal powerful entity of which the physical sun was only the material body.
At this overwhelming sight, however, the disciple's ego ran the risk of sinking into unconsciousness, and his guru, his teacher, had to be ready to help him. Today, the guru would no longer be able to exert power over the disciple as he did back then, because the relationship between teacher and disciple has changed and, despite all good intentions and willing submission, today's human nature would no longer be able to suppress the rebellious forces within it, despite all good intentions and willing submission, despite all good intentions and willing submission.
Besides the path of ecstasy, there was also the so-called mystical path to initiation. This consisted of the meditant living more and more into his own inner being. He then experienced within himself what the ecstatic experienced on the outside. But this path also had its great dangers. While the ecstatic person was threatened by the powerlessness of the dissolving ego, the mystic's ego contracted into itself to unimagined strength, and selfishness swelled within him to monstrous proportions. “I want to be everything, I want to have everything” was the irrepressible desire that possessed the ego.
How did one achieve this immersion in oneself? Let us think of waking up. What happens then? The self, which was widely extended in the macrocosm, contracts and sinks into the physical shells. If it were not for the outside world, which sets a limit to the shrinking with its impressions, one would actually descend into one's own inner self. So what is there to learn? One has to learn to wake up without letting external impressions affect one. As a result, the ego can concentrate unhindered in the innermost part of the human being. The experiences that it then has in the face of egoistic desires that increase without limit are what all mystics call “temptation”. In order not to succumb to this danger, virtue and love, humility and devotion must therefore be developed to a high degree beforehand. Thus armed, the meditant can calmly enter this path. With the great mystics, the ego was no longer able to want at all; they were no longer able to be themselves at all, they were able to surrender themselves unreservedly to Christ and to let him think, feel, act and want within them. Paul therefore says: It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
'In other ancient mysteries, for example the Egyptian ones, we find the same method. However, the guru was always present at the initiation to protect the aspirant from the egoistic forces from outside.
The changed conditions of our present epoch make a new path necessary. Man has become more independent and must be offered the necessary means to enter the path to the inner and higher worlds without direct intervention by the teacher. The Rose Cross initiation, as it is practiced today, combines both methods, and this training, which leads to clairvoyance in the spiritual worlds, eliminates the aforementioned dangers to which the old ecstatic and mystic was exposed.
Tomorrow we will go into this in more detail and describe how the Rosicrucian disciple builds spiritual organs of perception into his soul body for exploring the spiritual foundations of the universe.