Notes from Mathilde Scholl 1904–1906

GA 91 — 1 September 1906

11. The Interconnection Between the Three Worlds and the Natural World

As man stands before us, he contains three beings within himself; he is a citizen of three worlds, physical, mental, and spiritual. But man is self-conscious only in the physical. While he is self-conscious in the physical world as a single individual, the other beings in nature do not have this self-consciousness in the physical world as single individuals. The beings, which he has left behind him as stages of his ascent, have no self-consciousness in their individual appearances. He has gained his self-consciousness at the expense of these other beings. His development is a development to freedom at the expense of the other unfree kingdoms of nature left behind by him.

Each of these kingdoms of nature possesses one or more properties and powers which make it related to man. With the mineral kingdom he shares the mineral existence, the three-dimensional indie-appearance by condensation to the mineral existence, the becoming objective in comparison with the environment, the physical form, which is mineral in its composition, the physical substance and corporeality. Now everything that was too much for him of this physical, mineral substance and corporeality, he left behind, and from this the mineral environment arose. We observe this process of excretion of the superfluous physical substance and its passing over into the mineral world now still likewise with the human being. If his whole physical corporeality has become superfluous or an obstacle to his further development, it falls away from him altogether; death occurs, and the physical body is returned to the mineral world from which it was taken.

Secondly, man possesses - like the plant kingdom around him - the ability to grow and reproduce himself, which elevates him above the mineral kingdom. He acquired the ability to grow by absorbing food from his environment and adding it to his body to give him new strength. With the fact that he could take up new things - by the food - was also connected that he could produce new things - the production power - which appeared with him first as physical self-producing power. The reproduction power is basically only the antipole of the food intake. When man still led a vegetable existence, he, like the plant, on the one hand took up nourishment from the environment, and on the other hand he grew from within into the environment. At that time the taking in of the food was an inhalation of the environment, and the exhalation meant the growing into the environment, the reproducing of oneself, as it can be observed now also with the plant. What was superfluous at this reproducing in substances, that remained to the mineral world. The plant world stands around us as an image of these forces of nourishment and of the residual processing of the nourishment taken up and transformed into growth and reproduction. It is a stage [from] which man has ascended and which he has left behind as the second on the way of his development. But it is also a stage which he is to reach again in the future. It is exemplary for him. He is to learn once again, like the plant, to absorb dispassionately the forces of the environment and then - after he has allowed them to pass through him, and by surrendering his innermost being, imbued with these forces, to sweep them out - to return these forces to the environment in a more elevated way. He should perform alchemy with the forces of the environment in himself, which brings them all into beautiful harmony, transforming even the base into pure, clean gold. This he can do when he has reached the point where he recognizes himself also as a force in the cosmos, which is needed for the further development of the cosmos; when he no longer wants his force for himself, in order to build himself up physically from the environment, in order to satisfy his desires, and likewise to reproduce himself for the satisfaction of his own desires. It is a special power; it lies in its individuality. Being individuality means nothing else than being a special, undivided cosmic force. All cosmic forces are individualities. Minerals, plants and animals are not individualities. But higher individualities work through them and in them. All natural forces are conscious expressions of individualities. The more such cosmic forces are formed, the more beautiful and harmonious the universe becomes. It was perfect from the very beginning, but the evolution of the universe is one of diversity and beauty. Beauty is to crown cosmic existence.

How the development can and shall proceed selflessly and harmoniously, beautifully designed, beneficial for the environment, man shall learn from the plant kingdom, to which he once belonged without self-consciousness, without own will - dependent on higher powers - but selfless and chaste, without desire. Now he is to enter the state of plant existence on an elevated level, self-conscious, gifted with his own will, with purified, chaste creative power. The plant sits firmly in the soil; it cannot live without the soil in which it is rooted; thus it is dependent on the physical world. Man should take root in the spiritual; from it he should draw his nourishment. He is to take root and revive and flourish in the spiritual, independent of the physical world.

The firm ground in the spiritual is his I; therein he is rooted; he is to live in the spiritual light and blossom through wisdom, and bear fruit through his own divine will. The development should make him free, give him his own will, but finally his own will for spiritual life. There he leads an existence similar to the plant, but independent, free, in harmony with the development plan of the cosmic individualities and forces. On a higher level, therefore, the plant kingdom represents what he is to strive for as his life, his activity in the world. It is the symbol of the higher life. And the mineral kingdom, in its tranquility and lack of desire, represents all that is necessary for this life and its expressions, the formative substance in which man will then live, from which he will build himself up, from which he will take up forces, material, in order to transform this through alchemy into a living thing. Everything mineral will then pass through him again and emerge from him vegetable. He will awaken the dead to life. He will then release the mineral kingdom, which remains under the spell and is solidified, from this spell. While he now lives on living things and destroys the living things in order to build himself up, and produces only mineral things, he will then feed on minerals and produce living things. While now he brings pain and disharmony to the world through his life, he will then spread joy and harmony around him.

Man can do this only when he has completely mastered his etheric body and all the powers of his etheric body have become free. Then he can lead this vegetable existence on a higher level. He then lives in his life body itself, he is then life, the Word, Christ, Budhi. He can then turn his life outward in the same way, give it to the environment continuously, as he now sends out his desires into the environment. His physical body is now a reflection of his desire body. He was even more so in earlier times. The sense organs are the outwardly turned desires which connect him with the physical. Man's will now rests in his desires and enters the environment through them. Therefore, the physical body is now still an image, an expression of the will living in the desire. Later, the physical body will be an image, an expression of the will dwelling in life.

Now man takes in the environment through the senses, which are the organs of the astral body, the desire body, and he uses his reproductive power only for reproduction in the physical. Later, when he has become selfless, after the purification of the astral body, a reversal of forces will take place in him. What is now used for reproduction in the physical will be lifted up to the spiritual power of reproduction through the Word, the creative sound; and the organs which served reproduction will be transformed into those which receive life from the environment. The physical body will then be an image of life, of the physical body. It will then be alive, vegetable. Desire brought man death; desire is the very thing that kills. Devotion brings him life. It builds him the immortal body, which only generates itself out of itself. The whole development is a development to life. Development means life.

All now what is stored up in the animal kingdom in forces shows us the stage which was necessary to lead man into physical existence. The animal kingdom is the stored-up desire of man. To the extent that he overcomes his desires, to the extent that he has a liberating effect on the animal kingdom. The power accumulated in the animal kingdom, the passion, which in man increased to self-conscious passion, must gradually be absolved again by purification of human nature and there be used as power and transformed into life. Then, through inner alchemy, he shapes the harmonious life of the plant kingdom out of the passion of the animal kingdom and the tranquility of the mineral kingdom. Out of the inactive and the chaotic he then crystallizes in living forms the living, harmonious, beautiful.

In the mineral kingdom is embodied wisdom, the wise thought; in the animal kingdom is embodied power; in the plant kingdom power and wisdom shall blossom united into beauty.

That is why man himself had first to separate all these kingdoms, so that he could afterwards, as an individuality, as a free, cosmic force, fashion out of these kingdoms, which are at the same time a means of ascent, a model and a field of action for him, a beautiful cosmos. Then the wisdom of the mineral kingdom and the power of the animal kingdom will enter completely into the vegetable life. Man will then be the builder who uses these forces and reshapes them into a beautiful, spiritualized world-temple full of life and harmony.