USE O RECURSO DA TELA LATERAL PARA TRADUZIR ESTE TEXTO PARA O PORTUGUÊS, AUTOMATICAMENTE.
We all know
the deep significance of the statement: “Regarded from the spiritual-scientific
aspect a lie is a kind of murder.” I have explained that a sort of explosion
really takes place in the astral world when man utters a lie — even, in a
certain way, if he only thinks it. Something takes place in the spiritual world
when man lies, which has a far more devastating effect for that world than any
misfortune in the physical world.
>>>"Todos sabemos o profundo significado da afirmação: "Considerando o aspecto espiritual-científico, uma mentira é um tipo de assassinato". Eu expliquei (Eu, Rudolf Steiner) que realmente ocorre no mundo astral, uma espécie de explosão quando o ser humana pronuncia uma mentira - até, de uma certa maneira, se ele apenas pensa uma mentira. Algo ocorre no mundo espiritual quando o ser humano mente, o qual tem um efeito muito mais devastador para o mundo espíritual do que qualquer infortúnio no mundo físico.<<<
>>>A palestra abaixo, faz parte de um ciclo de palestras, de
mesmo nome, cujos capítulos estão no final da palestra.>>> SoniavonHomrich
The lecture
below is part of a cycle of lectures, of the same name, whose chapters are at
the end of the lecture.
THE
INFLUENCE OF SPIRITUAL BEINGS UPON MAN - GA 102
Lecture X
4 June
1908, Berlin
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA102/English/AP1961/19080604p01.html
What we
have now been studying for some time in our Group-lectures is meant as a
completion or expansion of the subjects that have occupied us during the
winter. It may well be that a remark here or there seemed somewhat aphoristic,
and we want by means of these studies to enlarge or round off thoughts and
concepts that have been aroused in us.
In the last
lecture we were particularly occupied with the presence of all sorts of
spiritual beings which are to be found, so to speak, between the
sense-perceptible kingdoms of nature that surround us. We saw especially how in
the place where the beings of different nature-kingdoms come together, where
the plant is pressed close to the stone at a spring, where ordinary stone
impinges on a metal as constantly occurs under the earth, where there is a
communion as between bee and blossom, how everywhere in such spots forces are
developed which draw various beings, whom we have called elemental beings, into
earthly existence. Moreover, in connection with these elemental beings we have
been occupied with the fact of a certain cutting off, a detaching of beings
from their whole connection. We have seen that the elemental beings called by
spiritual science “Salamanders” have in part their origin from detached parts
of animal group souls. These have, as it were, ventured too far forward into
our physical world and have not been able to find their way back and unite
again with the group soul, after the death and dissolution of the animal. We
know that in the regular course of our life, the beings of our earth, the
beings of the animal, plant, mineral kingdoms, have their “ego soul” — if one
may so call it, have indeed such ego souls as man, differing only in the fact
that the ego souls of other beings are in other worlds. We know that man is
that being in our cycle of evolution who has an individual ego here on the
physical plane — at least during his waking life. We know further that the
beings which we call animals are so conditioned that — speaking loosely —
similarly-formed animals have a group soul or group ego which is in the
so-called astral world. Further, the beings which we call plants have a
dreamless sleeping consciousness for the physical world here but they have
group egos which dwell in the lower parts of the devachanic world; and,
finally, the stones, the minerals, have their group egos in the higher parts of
Devachan. One who moves clairvoyantly in the astral and devachanic worlds has
intercourse there with the group souls of the animals, plants and minerals in
the same way as here in the physical world he has intercourse during the day with
other human souls or egos.
Now we must
be clear that in many ways man is a very complicated being — we have often
spoken of this complexity in different lectures. But he will appear more and
more complicated the further we go into the connections with great cosmic
facts. In order to realize that man is not quite the simple being which he may
perhaps appear to a naive observation we need only remember that by night, from
going to sleep to waking up, the man of the present evolutionary cycle is quite
a different being from what he is by day. His physical and etheric bodies lie
in bed, the ego with the astral body is lifted out of them. Let us consider
both conditions, and in the first place the physical and etheric bodies. They
lie there, and if we disregard the transitional state of dream, they have what
we may call a sleep consciousness devoid of content, perceptions, or dreams.
But the ego and the astral body outside have, in this present cycle of
evolution, just the same dreamless sleep consciousness. The sleeping man,
whether in the members remaining here in the physical world, or in those which
are in the astral world, has the same consciousness as the plant covering of
the earth. We must occupy ourselves a little with these two separated parts of the
sleeping human being.
From other
lectures we know that the man of the present time has arisen slowly and
gradually. We know that he received the first rudiments of a physical body in
the embodiment of our Earth lying in a primeval past which we call the Saturn
evolution. We know that then in a second embodiment of our Earth, the Sun
evolution, he received the etheric or life body, that in the third embodiment,
the Moon evolution, he also received the astral body, and that in the present
Earth embodiment of our planet he acquired what we call the ego. Thus the human
being has evolved quite slowly and gradually. This physical body which man
bears today is actually his oldest part, the part that has gone through most
metamorphoses. It has undergone four changes. The first rudiment, received by
man on ancient Saturn, has gone through three modifications, on the Sun, on the
Moon, and finally on the Earth, and is expressed in man's present sense-organs.
They were quite different organs on ancient Saturn, but their first rudiments
were there while no other part of the physical body as yet existed. We can look
on ancient Saturn as a single being, entirely consisting of sense-organs. On
the Sun the etheric body was added, the physical body went through a change, and
the organs arose which we call today the glands, though at first they existed
merely in their rudiments. Then on the Moon when the physical body had
undergone a third transformation through the impress of the astral body, were
added those organs which we know as the nerve organs. And finally on the Earth
was added the present blood-system, the expression of the ego, as the nervous
system is the expression of the astral body, the glandular system of the
etheric body, and the senses system the physical expression of the physical
body itself. We have seen in former lectures that the blood system appeared for
the first time in our Earth evolution and we ask: Why does blood flow in the
present form in the blood channels? What does this blood express? Blood is the
expression of the ego and with this we will consider a possible
misunderstanding, namely, that man actually misunderstands the present physical
human body.
The human
body as it is today is only one form of many. On the Moon, on the Sun, on
Saturn, it was there but always different. On the Moon, for instance, there was
as yet no mineral kingdom, on the Sun there was no plant world in our sense,
and on Saturn no animal kingdom — there was solely the human being in his first
physical rudiments. Now when we reflect on this we must be clear that the
present human body is not only physical body, but physical-mineral body, and
that to the laws of the physical world — hence it is the “physical body” — it
has assimilated the laws and substances of the mineral kingdom, which permeate
it today. On the Moon the physical human body had not yet assimilated those
laws: if one had burnt it there would have been no ash, for there were no
minerals in the present earthly sense. Let us remember that to be physical and
to be mineral are two quite different things. The human body is physical
because it is governed by the same laws as the stone; it is at the same time
mineral because it has been impregnated with mineral substances. The first germ
of the physical body was present on Saturn, but there were no solid bodies, no
water, no gases. On Saturn there was nothing at all but a condition of warmth.
The modern physicist knows of no such condition because he thinks that warmth
can only appear in connection with gases, water, or solid objects. But that is
an error. The physical body which today has assimilated the mineral kingdom was
on ancient Saturn a nexus of physical laws. We are physical laws working in
lines, in forms, what you learn to know as laws in physics. Externally the
physical human being was manifested on Saturn purely as a being which lived in
warmth. We must thus clearly distinguish between the mineral element and the
actual physical principle of man's body. It is physical law which governs the
physical body. It belongs, for example, to the physical principle that our ear
has such a form, that it receives sound in quite a definite way; to the mineral
nature of the ear belong the sub-stances which are impregnated into this
scaffolding of physical laws.
Now that we
have become clear about this and realize particularly how the sense-organs,
glands, nerves and blood are the expressions of our fourfold nature, let us
turn again to the observation of the sleeping human being. When man is asleep
the physical and etheric bodies lie on the bed, the astral body and the ego are
outside. But now let us remember that the astral body is the principle of the
nervous system and the ego that of the blood system. Thus during the night the
astral body has deserted that part of the physical body of which, so to say, it
is the cause — namely, the nervous system. For only when the astral body
membered itself into man on the Moon could the nervous system arise. Thus the
astral body callously leaves what belongs to it, what it is actually due to
maintain, and in the same way the ego deserts that which it has called into
life. The principles of the blood and of the astral body are outside and the
sleeping physical and etheric bodies are absolutely alone. But now nothing of a
material physical nature can subsist in the form which has been called forth by
a spiritual principle when this spiritual principle is no longer there. That is
quite out of the question. Never can a nervous system live unless astral beings
are active in it, and never can a blood system live unless ego-beings are
active in it. Thus you all meanly desert in the night your nervous and blood
systems and relinquish them to other beings of an astral nature. Beings which
are of the same nature as your ego now descend into your organism. Every night
the human organism is occupied by beings fitted to maintain it. The physical
body and the etheric body which lie on the bed are at the same time
interpenetrated by these astral and ego beings; they are actually within the
physical body. We might call them intruders, but that is in no sense correct.
We ought in many ways to call them guardian spirits, for they are the
sustainers of what man callously deserts in the night.
Now it is
not so bad for man to leave his bodies every night. I have already said that
the astral body and the ego are perpetually active in the night. They rid the
physical body of the wear and tear which the day has given, which in a broad
sense we call fatigue. Man is refreshed and renewed in the morning because
during the night his astral body and ego have removed the fatigue which were
given him by the impressions of daily life. This all-night activity of the
astral body in getting rid of the fatigue substances is a definite fact to
clairvoyant perception. The ego and astral body work from outside on the
physical and etheric bodies. But in the present cycle of his evolution man is
not yet advanced enough to be able to carry out such an activity quite
independently. He can only do so under the guidance of other, higher beings. So
the human being is taken every night into the bosom of higher beings, as it
were, and they endow him with the power of working in the right way on his
physical and etheric bodies. These at the same time are the beings — that is
why we may not call them intruders — who care for man's blood and nerve systems
in the right way in the night.
As long as
no abnormalities arise the co-operation of spiritual beings with man is
justified. But such irregularities can very well enter and here we come to a
chapter of spiritual science which is extraordinarily important for the
practical life of the human soul. One would like it to be known in the widest
circles and not only theoretically but as giving the foundation for certain
activities of the human soul life. It is not generally imagined that the facts
of the soul life have a far-reaching effect. In certain connections I have also
called your attention to the fact that it is only when viewed in the light of
spiritual science that events in the life of the soul can find their true
explanation. We all know the deep significance of the statement: “Regarded from
the spiritual-scientific aspect a lie is a kind of murder.” I have explained
that a sort of explosion really takes place in the astral world when man utters
a lie — even, in a certain way, if he only thinks it. Something takes place in
the spiritual world when man lies, which has a far more devastating effect for
that world than any misfortune in the physical world. But things which one
relates at a certain stage of spiritual-scientific observation, characterizing
them as far as is possible then, gain more and more clearness and confirmation
when one advances in the knowledge of spiritual science.
Today we
shall learn of another effect of lying, slandering, although these words are
not used here in the ordinary crude sense. When more subtly, out of convention,
for in-stance, or out of all sorts of social or party considerations, people
color the truth, we there have to do with a lie in the sense of spiritual
science. In many respects man's whole life is saturated, if not with lies, yet
with manifestations bearing an untruthful coloring. The enlightened materialist
can at any rate see that an impression is made on his physical body if he
receives a blow on the skull from an axe, or if his head is cut off by the
railway, or he has an ulcer somewhere or is attacked by bacilli. He will then
admit that effects are produced on the physical body. What is not usually
considered at all is that man is a spiritual unity, that what happens in his
higher members, the astral body and ego, has positive effect right down into
his physical nature. It is not considered, for instance, that the uttering of
lies and untruthfulness, untruth even in the affairs of life, has a definite
effect on the human physical body. Spiritual vision can experience the
following: If a person, let us say, has told a lie during the day, its effect
remains in the physical body and is to be seen by clairvoyant perception while
the person sleeps. Let us suppose this person is altogether un-truthful, piling
up lies, then he will have many such effects in his physical body. All this
hardens, as it were, in the night, and then something very important happens.
These hardenings, these “enclosures,” in the physical body are not at all
agreeable to the beings who from higher worlds must take possession of the
physical body in the night and carry out the functions otherwise exercised by
the astral body and ego. The result is that in the course of life and by reason
of a body diseased — one might say — through lies, portions of those beings who
descend into man at night become detached. Here we have again detachment
processes and they lead to the fact that when a man dies his physical body does
not merely follow the paths which it would normally take. Certain beings are
left behind, beings which have been created in the physical body through the
effect of lying and slander, and have been detached from the spiritual world.
Such beings, detached in this circuitous way, now flit and whir about in our
world and belong to the class that we call “phantoms.” They form a certain
group of elemental beings related to our physical body and invisible to
physical sight. They multiply through lies and calumnies, and these in actual
fact populate our earthly globe with phantoms. In this way we learn to know a
new class of elemental beings.
But now,
not only lies and slanders but also other things belonging to the soul life
produce an effect on the human body. It is lies and slanders which so act on
the physical body that a detaching of phantoms is caused. Other things again
work in a similar way on the etheric body. You must not be amazed at such
phenomena of the soul: in spiritual life one must be able to take things with
all calmness. Matters, for example, which have a harmful result on the etheric
body are bad laws, or bad social measures prevailing in a community. All that
leads to want of harmony, all that makes for bad adjustments between man and
man, works in such a way through the feeling which it creates in the common
life that the effect is continued into the etheric body. The accumulation in
the etheric body caused through these experiences of the soul brings about
again detachments from the beings working in from the spiritual worlds and
these likewise are now to be found in our environment — they are “spectres” or
“ghosts.” Thus these beings that exist in the etheric world, the life world, we
see grow out of the life of men. Many a man can go about amongst us and for one
who is able to see these things spiritually, his physical body is crammed, one
might say, with phantoms, his etheric body crammed with spectres, and as a rule
after a man's death or shortly afterwards all this rises up and disperses and
populates the world.
So we see
how subtly the spiritual events of our life are continued, how lies, calumnies,
bad social arrangements, deposit their creations spiritually among us on our
earth. But now you can also understand that if in normal daily life the
physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego belong together, and the
physical body and etheric body have to let other beings press in and act upon
them, then the astral body and the ego are not in a normal condition either. At
any rate they are in a somewhat different position as regards the physical and
etheric bodies. These two have in sleeping man the consciousness of the plants.
But the plants on the other hand have their ego above in Devachan. Hence the
physical and etheric bodies of sleeping man must likewise be sustained by
beings which unfold their consciousness from Devachan. Now it is true that
man's astral body and ego are in a higher world, but he himself also sleeps
dreamlessly like the plants. That the plants have only a physical and an
etheric body and that man in his sleeping condition possesses further an astral
body and ego, makes no difference as regards the plant-nature. True, man has
been drawn upwards into the spiritual, the astral world, but yet not high
enough upwards with his ego, to justify the sleep-condition. The consequence is
that beings must now enter his astral body too when the human being goes to
sleep. And so it is: influences from the devachanic world press all the time
into man's astral body. They need not in the least be abnormal influences, they
may come from what we call man's higher ego. For we know that man is gradually
rising to the devachanic world, in as much as he approaches ever nearer to a
state of spiritualization, and what is being prepared there sends its
influences into him today when he sleeps. But there are not merely these normal
influences. This would simply and solely be the case if human beings were fully
to understand what it is to value and esteem the freedom of another. Mankind at
present is still very far removed from that. Think only how the modern man for
the most part wants to over-rule the mind of another, how he cannot bear
someone else to think and like differently, how he wants to work upon the
other's soul. In all that works from soul to soul in our world, from the giving
of unjustifiable advice to all those methods which men employ in order to
overwhelm others, in every act that does not allow the free soul to confront
the free soul, but employs, even in the slightest degree, forcible means of
convincing and persuasion, in all this, forces are working from soul to soul
which again so influence these souls that it is expressed in the night in the
astral body. The astral body gets those “enclosures” and thereby beings are
detached from other worlds and whir through our world again as elemental
beings. They belong to the class of demons. Their existence is solely due to
the fact that intolerance and oppression of thought have in various ways been
used in our world. That is how these hosts of demons have arisen in our world.
Thus we
have learnt again today to know of beings which are just as real as the things
which we perceive through our physical senses, and which very definitely
produce effects in human life. Humanity would have advanced quite differently
if intolerance had not created the demons which pervade our world, influencing
people continually. They are at the same time spirits of prejudice. One
understands the intricacies of life when one learns about these entanglements
between the spiritual world in the higher sense and our human world. All these
beings, as we have said, are there, and they whiz and whir through the world in
which we live.
Now let us
remember something else which has also been said before. We have pointed out
that in the man of the last third of the Atlantean age, before the Atlantean
flood, the relation of etheric body to physical body was quite different from
what it had been earlier. Today the physical part of the head and the etheric
part practically coincide. That was quite different in ancient Atlantis; there
we have the etheric part of the head projecting far out — especially in the
region of the forehead. We now have a central point for the etheric and
physical parts approximately between the eyebrows. These two parts came together
in the last third of the Atlantean age and today they coincide. Thereby man is
able to say “I” to himself and feel an independent personality. Thus the
etheric and physical bodies of the head have joined together. This has come
about so that man could become the sense being that he is within our physical
world, so that he can enrich his inner life through what he takes in through
sense impressions, through smell, taste, sight, and so on. All of this becomes
embodied in his inner being so that having obtained it he can use it for the
further development of the whole cosmos. What he thus acquires can be acquired
in no other way, and therefore we have always said we must not take Spiritual
Science in an ascetic sense, as a flight from the physical world. All that
happens here is taken with us out of the physical world and it would be lost to
the spiritual world if it were not collected here first.
But
humanity is now getting nearer and nearer to a new condition. In this
Post-Atlantean age we have gone through various culture epochs: the old Indian,
the ancient Persian, lying before the time of Zarathustra, then the epoch which
we have called the Babylonian-Assyrian-Chaldean-Egyptian, then the Greco-Latin,
and now we stand in the fifth culture-epoch of the Post-Atlantean age. Ours
will be followed by a sixth and a seventh epoch. Whereas in the course of past
ages and up to our own time the united structure of our etheric and physical
bodies has always grown firmer, more closely united inwardly, man is approaching
a period in the future when the etheric body gradually loosens itself again and
becomes independent. The way back is taken. There are people today who have a
much looser etheric body than others. This loosening of the etheric body is
only right for man if during his different incarnations in those culture-epochs
he has absorbed so much into himself that when his etheric body goes out again
it will take with it the right fruits from the physical sense world of the
earth, fruits suitable for incorporation into the increasingly independent
etheric body. The more spiritual are the concepts which man finds within the
physical world, the more he takes with him in his etheric body. All the
utilitarian ideas, all the concepts bound up with machine and industry which
only serve outer needs and the outer life, and which man absorbs in our present
earthly existence, are unsuitable for incorporation in the etheric body. But
all the concepts he absorbs of the artistic, the beautiful, the religious — and
everything can be immersed in the sphere of wisdom, art, religion — all this
endows man's etheric body with the capability and possibility of being
organized independently. Since this can be seen in advance, it has often been
emphasized here that the world-conception of spiritual science must send its
impulses and activities into practical life. Spiritual science must never
remain a conversational subject for tea-parties or any other pursuit apart from
ordinary life; it must work its way into the whole of our civilization. If
spiritual-scientific thoughts are one day understood, then men will understand
that everything our age accomplishes must be permeated by spiritual principles.
Many human beings, among them Richard Wagner, fore-saw in certain fields such a
penetration with spiritual principles. Some day men will understand how to
build a railway-station so that it streams out truth like a temple and is in
fact simply an expression suited to what is within it. There is still very much
to do. These impulses therefore must be effective and they will be effective
when spiritual-scientific thoughts are more fully understood.
I still
have a vivid recollection of a rectorial address given about twenty-five years
ago by a well-known architect. He spoke about style in architecture and uttered
the remarkable sentence: “Architectural styles are not invented, they grow out
of the spiritual life!” At the same time he showed why our age, if indeed it
produces architectural styles, only revives old ones and is incapable of finding
a new style because it has as yet no inner spiritual life. When the world
creates spiritual life again then all will be possible. Then we shall feel that
the human soul shines towards us from all we look at, just as in the Middle
Ages every lock on a door expressed what man's soul understood of outer forms.
Spiritual science will not be understood till it meets us everywhere in this
way as if crystallized in forms. But then mankind too will live as spirit in
the spirit. Then, however, man will be preparing more and more something that
he takes with him when he again rises into the spiritual world, when his
etheric body becomes self-dependent. Thus must men immerse in the spiritual
world if evolution is to go further in the right way.
Nothing
symbolizes the permeation of the world with the spirit so beautifully as the
story of the miracle of Pentecost. When you contemplate it, it is as though the
interpenetration of the world with spiritual life were indicated prophetically
through the descent of the “fiery tongues.” Everything must be given life again
through the spirit, that abstract intellectual relation which man has to the
yearly festivals must also become concrete and living again. Now, at this time
of Pentecost, Whitsuntide, let us try to occupy our souls with the thoughts
that can proceed from today's lecture. Then the Festival, which as we know is
established on a spiritual foundation, will again signify some-thing living for
man when his etheric body is ripe for spiritual creation. But if man does not
absorb the Whitsuntide spirit then the etheric body goes out of the physical
body and is far too weak to overcome what has already been created, those
worlds of spectres, phantoms, demons, which the world creates as phenomena
existing at its side.
THE
INFLUENCE OF SPIRITUAL BEINGS UPON MAN. GA 102
https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA102/English/AP1961/index.html
Lecture I, January 06,
1908
Beings of the astral plane and
Devachan. The group souls of animals, plants, minerals. Benevolent and
malignant beings of Mars, Moon, Venus. The inventive and the wild Saturn
beings. Different influences of these beings upon the earth and upon man.
Chyle, lymph, and blood as body of beings of other planets. Working of the
Saturn spirits through the sense organs; (Perfumes). Saturn and liver; the
Prometheus myth.
Lecture II. January 27,
1908
Planets and Zodiac, Time and
Duration. Saturn as dawn of our planetary condition. Its origin as sacrifice of
the Zodiac. Ascending and descending forces of the Zodiac. All spiritual beings
have seven members of their being. Christ, the Mystical Lamb, has life-spirit
or Budhi as lowest member.
Lecture III. February
15, 1908
Origin of our solar system from
the standpoints of natural science and spiritual science. The Kant-Laplace
theory. The earlier embodiments of the Earth as deeds of spiritual beings,
standing at different levels of evolution. Additional spiritual beings and
laggard spiritual beings. Separation of the sun, and the planets Uranus,
Saturn, and Jupiter as dwelling places of spiritual beings. The Mars transit
and iron. Separation of moon, its connection with the Sun-spirit, Yahve. The
Venus and Mercury beings as teachers of man. The activity of Mars in the
sentient soul, Mercury in the intellectual soul, Jupiter in the consciousness
soul.
Lecture IV. February
29, 1908
The warmth element on ancient
Saturn. The spirits of Form sent their life-giving forces to Saturn; first
inception of man's physical body. Myth of Chronos and Gaea. On the Sun the
Spirits of Form sacrifice the etheric body, on the Moon, the astral body, and
bring about the first inception of the human etheric and astral bodies. On the
Earth “trickling in” of the ego in Lemurian Age. In the course of the Atlantean
Age, the ego takes hold of man's astral, etheric, physical bodies and there
arise sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul, spirit-self, and
life spirit. The Mystery of Golgotha.
Lecture V. March 16,
1908
World evolution through Saturn,
Sun, Moon, and Earth. Recapitulation of earlier conditions at the beginning of
Earth evolution. Man as the first-born, prior to the animal, plant, and mineral
kingdoms. Origins of light and air, heart, systems of breathing, nerves,
glands, and bones. The “dance of matter” to the measure of the harmony of the
spheres. Albumen formation. Origin of sense organs. Origin of ash after the sun
separation. Formation of the mineral through thought, which makes tone into the
Word.
Lecture VI. March 24,
1908
The time reversal in the
recapitulation of evolutionary conditions. Transformation of the systems of
blood, senses, nerves in the course of evolution. The personality consciousness
on the Earth in contrast to the Moon consciousness. The group souls and memory
through generations. The group souls of the Moon. The Moon as planet of wisdom,
the Earth as planet of love. On Jupiter love will have became nature as wisdom
has on the Earth. Ascent of the Spirits of Wisdom to Spirits of the Revolution
of Times. Individuality and personality of man in passing through the
incarnations. Christ as Sun Being, as Mystical Lamb, as the great Sacrifice of
the Earth. The Spirits of Wisdom and Yahve, the Lord of Form. Impulse of the
laggard spirits. The future spiritualizing of the material as Resurrection of
the Flesh. Old and New Testament. Christianity as religion of humanity is
greater than all religions.
Lecture VII. April 20,
1908
The spiritual hierarchies above
man. The different realms of consciousness of man and the hierarchies. Lowest
stage for the Angels: the plant kingdom; for the Archangels: the animal
kingdom. Angels are guardian spirits of individual men, Archangels are folk
spirits, Archai, time spirits. For these, men form the lowest kingdom of their
scale of consciousness. Satan, the unlawful, Yahve, the lawful, Prince of this
World. The highest spirit is Christ. He uses no compulsion, the human being
must come to him voluntarily.
Lecture VIII. May 16,
1908
The understanding through feeling
of spiritual-scientific knowledge. The threefold nature of man: body, soul, and
spirit. Beings higher than man possess soul and spirit, the animals, body and
soul. The elemental beings too have body and soul, though the body is
invisible. Goblins, Gnomes. Fourfold nature of man: physical body, etheric
body, astral body, and ego. As physical substance continues upwards as etheric
body, astral body, so it does downwards in the direction of the sub-physical
members of the Goblins, Gnomes, Sylphs, Undines. The origin of such beings.
Human beings who unite too strongly with the bodily nature can become elemental
beings in the Jupiter evolution. The myth of Ahasuerus. The “Sixteen Paths of
Perdition.” Gnomes, Sylphs, Undines are laggard beings of earlier stages of
evolution; Salamanders are cut off from animal group souls. They are ego-like.
Lecture IX. June 01,
1908
Birth and death in animal and
man. Group souls know only metamorphoses, not death. Connection between bees
and sylphs. The evolution of human souls from group souls to individuality in
its various degrees. Old Testament, Germanic mythology. Men grow away from
connection with family, tribe, folk, race. In the future, spiritual truth will
create the union between individualities. The group souls of the future will
not impair the freedom of the individual. The origin of elemental beings at
border regions: Nymphs and Undines at the meeting of water and rock, Gnomes at
the meeting of metal and earth, Salamanders through relationships of man and
animal.
Lecture X. June 04,
1908
The four systems of man's
physical body: senses system as expression of the physical: Saturn. Glandular
system as expression of the etheric: Sun. Nervous system as expression of the
astral: Moon. Blood system as expression of the ego: Earth. In sleep, when
astral body and ego are outside the physical and etheric bodies, man's nerve
and blood systems are cared for by spiritual beings. According to man's
behaviour during the waking state, these beings can be supplanted by elemental
beings. Thus arise phantoms through lies and slander, spectres through bad
social conditions and organizations, demons through intolerance, compulsion of
opinions, and so forth. The increasingly firm establishment of the etheric body
in the physical body; towards the future a loosening of the etheric body takes
place again. Inner spiritual life will again give style to man's environment.
The future permeation of the world with spirit is symbolized by the Whitsuntide
event.
Lecture XI. June 11,
1908
Man's union with spiritual beings
through art. Architecture as union with the etheric bodies, (Greek temple),
music as union with the astral bodies of spiritual beings. In sleep man enters
into relationship with beings who provide him with forces for daily life. In
the interaction between the inner soul nature and these spiritual beings man
can grasp the space forces which take the form of architecture for the physical
body, as well as the form forces which take the form of sculpture for the
etheric body, painting for the sentient soul. The harmonies of the spheres take
the form of music for the intellectual soul. The words of the spiritual world
which the consciousness soul receives in the night take the form of poetry in
the day consciousness. Richard Wagner and his relation to art. His attempt to
unite Shakespeare and Beethoven. Glance into future times when all external
things in man's surroundings (e.g rail-way stations, and so forth), will again
be image of the spiritual reality. The mission of Spiritual Science in the
evolution of mankind.
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