The Nature of Man in the Light of Spiritual Science

GA 68d — 15 February 1907, Leipzig

9. The Course of Human Development from the Standpoint of Spiritual Science

You all know the Greek temple motto “Know Thyself”. It contains the deepest wisdom of life and is brought home to people again and again. Although it can be a beneficial guide through life, it can also be misunderstood. “Know Thyself” is a truth. It should not be understood as meaning that a person should brood and think within themselves, thinking that they are already a finished person. Rather, it is an invitation to develop the inner slumbering powers of the soul, to increase and expand them, to develop the talents and seeds. Striving and searching are much better tools for self-knowledge than believing that everything is already finished within us.

Let us consider how a person develops from birth to death, as it truly is.

For anyone who hears about the nature of man from a spiritual-scientific point of view, these things appear to be associated with manifold doubts and challenges. I can only give you a brief sketch here. That which the materialistic mind regards as only one link in the human being for the spiritual researcher. We call this the physical body. It is composed of the same substances and forces as minerals and stones. But a stone, a mineral, these inanimate bodies have the ability and power to maintain themselves through themselves. The physical body of man does not have that. It is precisely because of its physical and chemical powers that it is impossible for him to do so; as a corpse, he decays. We can understand the actual principle of life as an entity that fights every moment to prevent the disintegration of the physical body. We call this entity the etheric body; it is, as it were, the architect of the physical body, ordering the chemical and physical substances. In the past, it was common in natural science to speak of this principle of life as life force. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, it became fashionable to speak of living matter as if it were assembling itself, just as if a house were putting itself together out of wood and bricks. Just as a house is built according to the architect's plan, so the forces of the etheric body are used to build the physical body. The etheric body is thus the second link in the human being.

The third is the astral body. It is the bearer of all desires, passions, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. But what makes man the crown of creation is the power to say “I”, which is the fourth link in the human being. These four parts of the human entity have been observed for thousands of years and universally recognized as the expression of the forces that make up the divine human being. These four parts are explained in all schools of initiates. Pythagoras first made it clear to his students that the human being consists of these four parts, only then were they allowed to learn about the higher levels. With that, they had to take an oath: to receive the higher secrets with seriousness, dignity and fervor. This oath-like formula reads: “I swear by the one who has imprinted in our hearts the holy wisdom, the sublime pure symbol, the primal source of nature and all creation of the gods.

The human being at the lowest level, the “savage”, already has these four entities, as does the average European, an idealist like Schiller and also a spiritual person like Francis of Assisi. They differ in that the “savage” initially follows his instincts and passions and surrenders to them. The person who has progressed further in their development, in whom the I, the center of their being, has already worked on developing the three limbs and thus already had a refining effect on their desires and passions, has already realized that they can follow certain things and not others. He has developed a second limb of his astral body, and thus a fifth, his spiritual self, the manas.

But man can also work in the etheric or life body through all the impulses of art, and there he also develops a second limb, and that is the sixth limb of man: the Budhi, that is the spirit of life, are the religious impulses that transform the etheric body unconsciously. This transformation has been taking place since the human race came into being. The etheric body is the carrier of memory, of habits and of what is called conscience. This transformation takes place more slowly than that in the astral body; and these activities can be compared with the minute hand on a clock in the latter and with the hour hand in the former.

Imagine yourself back at the age of eight and compare what you have learned in terms of concepts and life experience since then. It is an enormous amount. That is the change in your astral body. But if I had a violent temper as a child, it has not changed that much. Our ego can only slowly work on the life body. This happens unconsciously. The higher disciple, however, consciously works at transformation. He receives guidance to change his habits and temper. Once the disciple has learned to consciously transform certain basic traits, for example, to change a domineering nature into a humble one, he can hope to ascend higher and higher, and higher gates will open for him. This is relatively difficult, but it is even more difficult to work within his physical body. What power does he have over his pulse, his breathing, over the functions of his physical body? What the disciple learns to develop towards higher development is the seventh limb, the spiritual man, Atma. Thus man then consists of seven limbs.

We will now consider how these seven members develop in the period from birth to death. Man begins his existence with physical birth; actually, he only continues life in the womb, but even this is only a continuation of previous life. Before physical birth, man was surrounded on all sides by the mother's body, which also supplied him with forces and juices. When the physical body emerges, it pushes back the maternal covering; while it was protected before, it now enters the physical world. The eye and ear had formed, but man could not perceive light and sound; he only learns this in the physical world. He has changed his scene through birth.

But with this birth, only the one link, the physical body, is born. Now there is a second and a third birth for man. When man is born, he is still surrounded by an invisible etheric and astral covering. Just as this covering is pushed back in the womb and at birth, so too is the etheric covering pushed back when the teeth change and the etheric body is fully born. This is the second birth. It takes place slowly and accompanies the time when the milk teeth are replaced by other teeth. When a person has left his etheric body, he is still surrounded by the astral body. The third birth occurs at puberty. Then the astral cover is pushed back and the person becomes receptive to astral influences. These are important moments that must be taken into account. The first seven years: the first epoch. The second epoch – from seven to fourteen years – is essentially different, and so is the third, from fourteen to twenty-one years. Then the human being develops his astral body in a free way through the I that lies behind it.

In the first epoch, physical organs have to be formed up to a certain point. Although the human being continues to grow even then, the growth up to the seventh year and after is very different. The change of teeth is a kind of final year. By then, the human being has been given the direction that he retains, the basis of his form remains. What a person has not developed by the age of seven can no longer be made up for. Only one aspect is to be considered. Up to the age of twenty-one, development will be more educational in nature, then it will take on a different character. What makes it so that the organs of the human being receive the right imprint? The surrounding world does it. Goethe says that the eye is formed by light itself. Light is the creator, the shaper. The ear forms sound and so on. What light and air can create in a human being is most intensively formed in the first epoch until the teeth change. A suitable environment is creative for the physical body of the human being.

For example, it is not irrelevant whether a child is surrounded by invigorating or dulling colors. A nervous, excited child should therefore be surrounded by lively colors, reddish, reddish-yellow colors. It depends on what has a creative effect on the child. Here is an example. If you look sharply at a white cloth with red spots and then look away from it, you perceive the opposite color and see green spots. This green has a beneficial effect. Therefore, an excited child should wear a red dress, while a calm child should be dressed in dull colors. It depends on the stimulation of the inner forces. A perfect doll does the child a disservice, because the imagination is no longer active. And the child has a sense of well-being in shaping the internal organs, and that is what is taken away from him. The child must take pleasure in its surroundings. You cannot do enough to bring joy and happiness into the first epoch of life. Not asceticism.

Another thing is love. The love that surrounds the child blends into its etheric and astral sheaths. It even brings favorable instincts.

Here I would like to mention food. Do not think that children should be overfed with eggs. This food spoils the favorable instincts for nourishment. The less a child is overfed with eggs, the healthier its instincts for nourishment will be. Spiritual science is considered a practical thing that gives you practical guidance here in life.

In the second epoch – from the change of teeth to sexual maturity – the astral body is actually born. Until now, the life body – ether body – has been shrouded; now everything that is memory and habit must emerge so that the child can become a useful member of human society. If you want to influence the child with something similar before then, it would be like trying to supply light and sound to the child in the womb from the outside. You cannot do it. But it is the time until the seventh year when joy and pleasure, desire and instinct are guided in the right direction. You have to write two magic words in his heart: imitation and example. These are the two forces at work. A role model must be given, not a command.

Here is an example. The parents discovered that their well-behaved child had taken their money. The parents called it stolen. But the child had bought gifts for poor children. He had done what he saw his parents doing. In the physical environment, nothing should be done that the child should not imitate. Teaching is of no use at this age; it only takes effect when the etheric body is uncovered. Jean Paul calls the example the greatest slogan of education. You may ask a world traveler, and he will say that he has learned more from his mother or wet nurse in his early years than from all his travels. Under the protection of the outer physical environment, which love works into the outer shell, infinite powers develop. Jean Paul also says here: Look at the child, it learns the language and also the spirit of the language in inner education. What would man have achieved for later language formation if such power were preserved for him. The child has language-forming power; for example, it calls the person who makes the bottles, the flascher - and other things. The worst thing is if you don't keep the right order in education. Jean Paul says: “Consider the words the child uses” and then ask whether his father can explain it philosophically. This is how the talent for imitating letters comes about, but the child only learns to understand the meaning of the letters after the seventh year.

During the time between the seventh year and sexual maturity, memory, inclination and character are transformed. There are three aspects to consider: thinking, willing and feeling. These are fed by different teachers. The thinking that he has instinctively developed through the etheric body must be transformed. He has learned language, but now the meaning of what is spoken must be taught to him, the meaning of what he has imitated in forms. Therefore, didactic instruction should not be started too early, only when it is imaged in the child. Then the feeling and mind should be worked on with things that are called history. Try to let the child look up to the great personalities of world history. Religion is to be made the indispensable basis of education. The human being undergoes a process of will formation that appears to him as the primal being of the divine essence. The absorption of pictorial representations must form concepts, not the abstract form. Today it is not easy for the teacher to find the comparison for death, like from chrysalis to butterfly: the chrysalis opens and out flies the moth. In this way, the soul separates from the body at death. What one believes oneself has an effect on the child. Goethe says: “Everything that is transient is only a parable.” This is the image of the butterfly. There is a point of view where the spiritual person really believes it. Then the child is shown the supersensible image through a sensory image.

From this point of view, I would like to talk about a matter that is being presented very strangely today. What concern does the “stork's nest” pose? Our highly enlightened contemporaries say today that we must not teach children such lies. That is not the case. In five hundred years, our descendants will say of us: What strange people they are, who have crudely depicted the physical event. That is much more of a lie. The stork's nest image comes from a time when it was known that the process found spiritual expression in it. From the spiritual realm, the soul comes down, and that is the most important thing in this process. All going down and all going up is associated with flying beings. So it was also the flying being, the stork. The little song “Fly, beetle, fly” and so on - “Pommerland” means children's land – tells us about the flying scele that the mother brings out of the children's land. All fairy tales bring spiritual truth in a form that the child can understand. What is important is that the powers be developed. If in the first epoch the two magic words imitation and example must work, then in the second epoch it is succession and authority. The question of schooling will become a question of the teacher. Each person must choose the teacher who allows him to follow in the footsteps to Mount Olympus. What the child believes is what matters. The truth must be expressed in person, must have become flesh. Authority is the magic word in which the child's conscience, character and temperament are vividly recreated in the teacher.

With sexual maturity, the astral body is born. What confronts the human being in the world is laid bare within him. The time of the birth of the astral body is when the sexes become aware of what separates them; the child himself becomes acquainted with the relationship between male and female and learns to distinguish between them. Therefore, at that time, as little as possible of all this should be dealt with in theory. It is a mistake to think that a person only needs a period of exposure to the world from the age of fourteen onwards in order to become mature enough to judge for themselves. The astral body must mature, mature under the authority of the world, which has to add what it has to give. And then comes into consideration what the maturation brings about, the forces. From the fifteenth to the sixteenth year, ideal forces must be developed, life forces and desires. Whatever his ideal is, that is his strength. As the astral body matures, the muscular system strengthens. And just as school ends with sexual maturity, so the apprenticeship ends with the twenty-first year. After the apprenticeship, the birth of the free ego actually follows. It is there that the human being enters the world as an independent worker, where the wandering time begins. He must learn to work independently before he has matured, to influence life as a master.

During all this time, the human being is in a state of growth, and just as the human being continues to grow in his external organs until the age of twenty-eight, or even thirty, he also has an inner growth, because the body is the expression of the soul. This is how a person develops a foundation. First, the child develops by imitating a role model, then by following authority in their apprenticeship, and in their travels in free association. Then comes a time when everything in the person is exposed; this is the actual time of manhood and womanhood. From then on, the influence from outside ceases to a certain extent. At the age of thirty, fat begins to accumulate in the body and the person begins to broaden. This is a sign that the forces to be active within have diminished.

In the thirty-fifth year, the person begins to process the forces within him or herself beneficially. Until then, he works on the temporal part of his soul, which he brought with him from previous embodiments. From the age of thirty-five onwards, he begins to work on the eternal part of his soul. That is why everything we have learned only bears fruit from the age of thirty-five onwards, and we have something to give to the world. It is the time when we become firm within ourselves and gain weight within ourselves. If up to that time man must learn through the world and through life, then only from the thirty-fifth year onwards can the world learn from him. The youth should be advised, but only he who has risen above the sun's height can advise. Then he can give more than he takes from it. This is because the astral body comes out with sexual maturity, then it can work inwardly in its etheric body. As long as the muscles are still growing, this is not possible. When the muscles are no longer left to the body itself, the life body – ether body – becomes more and more solid, and it gives what is worked in it to the environment. Particularly gifted people can do this before the age of thirty-five, but it only has weight from the age of thirty-five. The ancient Greeks would never have allowed a person to guess before that time. Doing well, but not guessing. In all secret schools, all students before the age of thirty-five only entered the preparatory program.

Only when the powers had been released could they rise higher. When man grows old in this world, he only becomes young for the immortal one. It is a great fortune – a healthy developed person, he will have something modest around him and will choose his hero until then, whom he will emulate to reach Olympus. In particular, this must be a cause for great caution when young people with the highest knowledge of the world want to work in the world. This requires maturity and standing in the spiritual world. More and more, people internalize themselves, and there are no specific periods for this. Those who undergo a certain training – even if their hair has already turned white and their skin is wrinkled and withered – may still be the youngest. Those who have the youth of the soul will acquire the greatest powers even in old age. Even when memory declines, the formative power begins to weaken, the power of ideals dies, then one saves one's strength for all that, and they serve the cultivation of the immortal. Old age withers outwardly and brings forth the eternal in man.

This is also proof of human continuity. What grows and develops is the indestructible, incorruptible core of the human being. The more the environment loses interest in it, the more important what the person says and thinks at this age is for the world. That is why the ancients took the elders as their guides, also for the social order. They had the say, the thinking, that should remain, the imperishable in the perishable.

That is why spiritual science allows us to see this life in the right light. It gives us not only theories, but something that gives us strength and security in life, confidence in the great future of the world. Then the course of a person's life, with its ascents and deaths, has something very meaningful about it when we know how to live with this wisdom, according to the sublime saying: know thyself. It shows him how the world creates him and how he works out of himself. It shows us how we owe our existence to the world, but also that we can give. The bliss of taking and giving shows us this path.