II. Lucifer and Ahriman

The other stream arises through the fact that man is not merely soul and body. As a being of soul and body his existence takes its course in time as we have again shown. But man is also a being of spirit and soul. And through his soul-spirit nature he is not merely in the realm of time which has just been characterised but in the realm of duration. And there again he is very different from what he thinks. There he goes through no development, he is the same being from birth to death, but his thinking, feeling and willing are something very different from how they appear to him. His thinking and also a part of his feeling is a transposing of himself into cosmic regions where the conflict of gods takes place (I described this in a recent lecture [ 15th September 1918 (not translated). ]), and again willing and a part of feeling is the transposing of oneself into another region of the cosmos where the conflict of gods takes place I said to you that to reflect and ponder means transposing oneself into a certain region of spirituality and taking part in certain conflicts of one order of spirits with another; similarly willing means taking part in certain conflicts—even though in one or another case these conflicts may have come to a standstill. It is a profound truth presented in one of the Mystery Dramas, The Portal of Initiation, that while processes of soul and spirit are enacted in us great cosmic events are happening Just as man in the age of materialism will have no notion of his soul-body nature that runs its course in time, so will man know nothing of this spirit-soul element that acts in the realm of duration, but appears quite different from his thinking, feeling, willing in ordinary life and seen in ito reality, takes place as spirit-conflicts, However paradoxical it may sound to the materialistic thinker, when you form a thought it is very different from what it appears to you in maya. Let us suppose that you form a thought, let us say a thought on what we considered in the last lecture—a thought on space. The moment you think about space, even in the abstractness of the modern concept of space, the moment your spirit fills itself with the space-thought, you transpose your soul into a spiritual region where Ahriman is engaged in a mighty fight against hierarchies of a different nature. You could not have the thought of space without living in a region where Ahriman fights against other hierarchies. And when you develop a desire, if you say, for instance, I will go for a walk, even when it is such an insignificant determination as this, as soon as you set this will in action, you place yourself spiritually in a region where the Luciferic spirits fight against spirits of other hierarchies. Seen from the aspect of initiation-science, what takes place in the world is essentially different from its shadowy reflection, which we know in our maya-existence, between birth and death. For, my dear friends, what we perceive thus as maya is nothing more than something that can be compared with the wave-ripples on the surface of the sea. I put the picture before you in the last lecture: the ripples of the waves on the surface of the sea would not be there without the sea beneath and the air above. The forces that produce the ripples of the waves are in the sea, in the air, and the rippled waves are only the image of the forces striking together from above and below, So is our life in maya between birth and death nothing else than a striking together of two forces. On the one hand the spiritual conflicts which in truth take place in the realm of duration when we think, feel, will; on the other hand the course of evolution in time which consists in our comprehending only in later years the thinking life of youth. Our life in fact is a nothingness if we do not look on it from the confluence and conjunction of these two true realities. Behind our life are these two true realties.