Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge II

GA 90b — 15 October 1905, Hamburg

XXXVI. The Spiritual Development of Man

Yesterday we discussed the composition of the human body up to the development of the ego, and today we come to the development of the spiritual man. Here we are presented with perspectives for further development, which we cannot overlook and fully comprehend in their ultimate goal in our present consciousness.

The human ego has undergone profound changes over time, changes that are in line with equally profound changes on our earth. It would be a mistake to think that people in earlier times looked exactly the same or were at exactly the same stage of spiritual development as people today. A being that we would hardly call human today populated the early earth. It was only with the end of Atlantis that the human ego had developed to such an extent that one can speak of a conscious ego. We know the place, near present-day Ireland, where the human ego has elevated itself to such an extent that one can speak of a conscious ego, of a consciousness soul.

It was only from this point in time that the physical conditions of the earth had developed to such an extent that one could speak of a separation of air and water. Only these ancient Irish were able to see the sun as we see it.

Before that time, during the Atlantic and Lemurian periods, people lived in a kind of air-water ocean, a mixture of air and water that is best compared to fog, through which the sun shone only as a kind of cold disk, as we see it on very foggy days. There was no sunshine or rain. Our old Germanic saga speaks of that time as of “Nifelheim.”

The soul had not yet developed outwards at that time. It did not see an object as such, it felt it more and actually experienced it only inwardly. If we encountered an unpleasant person at that time, we did not see him as a human being, but experienced a color appearance that touched us unpleasantly. We can best compare this with the feeling of pain; we do not see the pain either, we only feel it.

Even though it was primitive, language was already present at that time and enabled us to express our feelings. Man had intellect, but this intellect was not a reflected consciousness; the human soul had only developed into an intellectual soul.

In ancient Lemuria, the earlier period of our Earth, man had only inner feeling, no language. He had only a sentient soul. The state of our globe was even more fluid than that. Man did not yet have feet for locomotion; he would not have been able to use them in the surrounding elements. His movement was more like swimming; in those days man breathed through gills, just like fish today. He had no lungs, for balancing he used an air bubble.

But even during these periods, man had developed his sentient soul, his intellectual soul and his consciousness soul to the animal. Only then did the ego sprout up within the soul, through a continued transformation, a continued unification of the astral body, which was continuously supplied to man by the cosmic forces of its development.

It was only at the end of the Atlantean period that man could begin to develop consciously. Only now did the work begin from the inside out, whereas before it was only a matter of developing strength from the outside in. We must realize that the three stages discussed earlier do not represent a transformation product, nor an actual development of the human ego, but rather a separation of the sentient, intellectual and conscious soul as parts of the human soul. It is only with consciousness that the animal in the astral body is transformed and transmuted. The result of the consciousness work of the ego on its astral body is the spirit self or manas.

At this stage, man had only moral concepts, logic - in short, pure intellectual work - he had the possibility to transform his ego, but only in relation to his astral body.

Religion and art, the pure joy of beauty, had a stronger effect than moral concepts; they generated the spirit of life or Budhi. Here we see a direct spiritualization of the etheric body, no longer of the astral body.

A chela, a disciple, consciously transforms his body; he wants to transform everything, to spiritualize everything, right down to the life body. He has finished learning when his life body has become a life spirit. Man has his moral concepts under control, he can learn from experience, but he can only think of transforming and spiritualizing those qualities that have their seat in his ether body - temperament, habits, character, memory - in the highly developed stage. But he learns this extremely slowly.

To understand this, let us compare it to our childhood. We learned a great deal very quickly about what we already knew ten years ago, but we changed our character very little. The temperamental impulses that we had as children have, for the most part, remained with us into our old age; even our handwriting has basically remained the same.

The chela's task is to speed up this change, this transformation of the life body, in a word: to become a different person, to redevelop the main forces of the etheric body, so to speak, to get it under the control of consciousness.

This transformation of the physical body into a spiritual body is even more difficult. All the functions of our physical body take place completely unconsciously at our present stage of development. We know, for example, that our pulse rate slows down quite significantly from childhood to adulthood, but this slowing down takes place completely unconsciously. We have no control over it. Everything in our body undergoes a change without our knowledge, without our will.

It is up to progressive development to make these changes in our life functions conscious. Thus it is possible, in particular, for the advanced person to consciously change their breathing and so on. There is a conscious union with the cosmic power that has built our physical body. The Atman or the spiritual person arises. At such a level of development, the chela has long since completed his task. The master has created this level.

But all these changes presuppose the ego, just as lung breathing is only to be seen as an external expression of the emergence of the ego, [...] so the attainment of complete control over one's physical functions is the external expression of the emergence of the spiritual man.

Looking back over what has been said, we see how the structure of the human body is first formed unconsciously through the natural forces, how the development and formation of the ego takes place, and how the conscious ego then, through the active powers of the chela and the master, brings about a conscious purification and transformation of the body, a complete spiritualization. The result is the opening up of new worlds. Twice the feeling of a new birth is repeated. The feeling when the life body is transformed into the life spirit and the physical body into a spiritual life corresponds to the feeling when the child leaves the mother's womb.

All major religions are based on this tripartite division of the spiritual man into Atman, Budhi and Manas. In the Christian religion, Atman corresponds to the Father, Budhi to the Son – Word, Manas to the Holy Spirit.