Anthroposophical Guidelines 62 � 68
By Rudolf Steiner
62. Sense perception reveals only a superficial part of the being which the sense world hides under the waves of its depths. Through vivid spiritual observation of these depths, the effects of human souls� actions in long bygone times are revealed.
63. The human inner-world reveals to ordinary self-observation only a part of the realm in which it stands. Through strengthened observation it shows that it stands within a living spiritual reality.
64. In man�s destiny not only the activities of an external world are manifest, but also those of his Self.
65. In human soul-experiences not merely a Self is manifest, but also a spirit-world. The Self, through spiritualized cognition, is able to recognize that world�s solidarity with its own being.
66. The beings of the third hierarchy manifest themselves as the spiritual background to the life which emerges in human thinking. This life is hidden in human thinking activity. If it continued being active as itself, man could not attain to freedom. Human thinking begins where cosmic thinking ends.
67. The beings of the second hierarchy manifest themselves as a psychic element which is beyond humanity. Being of a cosmic-psychic nature, it is hidden from human sensibility. This cosmic-psychic nature acts in the background of human feeling. It transforms the human essence into a feeling organism in order that feeling can live in it.
68. The beings of the first hierarchy manifest themselves in a spiritual creativity which is beyond humanity. As a cosmic-spiritual world of being, it indwells the human will. These cosmic-spiritual beings experience themselves as creative in that man wills. They form the connection between the human being and the external-to-humanity world in order that man may become a free, volitional being.
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Spiritual Realms and Human Self-knowledge
The Guidelines which have been sent from the Goetheanum to the members of the Anthroposophical Society during the past weeks link the psychic gaze to the beings of the spiritual realms, to which man is related above just as much as he is to the natural realms below.
True self-knowledge of man can be the guide to these spiritual realms. And when such self-knowledge is strived for in the right way, one will find understanding for what anthroposophy imparts as knowledge derived from insight into the life of the spiritual world. One must only practice self-knowledge in the right way, and not by merely concentrating on the �inner self�.
By means of such real self-knowledge, at first one encounters what is alive in remembrance. In thought-pictures he recalls to consciousness the shadows of what he directly experienced in the past. Upon seeing a shadow, one is directed by an inner urge of thinking to the object which cast the shadow. Whoever has a remembrance of something cannot arrive so directly in his mind at the experience which persists in the remembrance. But if he really reflects on his own being, he will have to say: �It is himself, in his soul, who created the experience which cast its shadow and made him what he is.� The remembrance-shadows arise in consciousness, and they are illuminated in the soul. Dead shadows live in remembrance; living Being resides in the soul in which remembrance continues to act.
One must only be clear about the relationship of remembrance to true soul-life; and in this striving for clarity in self-knowledge one will feel that he is on the path to the spiritual world. Through remembrance one is looking at the spiritual aspect of his own soul. For normal consciousness this visualization does not truly grasp the object. One looks at something, but does not encounter reality.
By means of imaginative cognition, anthroposophy points to this reality. It guides us from shadow to illumination. It does this when speaking of man�s etheric body. It shows how the physical body acts in the thought-shadow-images; but how the etheric body lives in illumination. With his physical body man is in the sense-world, with his etheric body he is in the etheric world. He has an environment in the physical world; he also has one in the etheric world. Anthroposophy refers to this environment as the first hidden world in which man finds himself. It is the realm of the third hierarchy.
We approach language in the same way we approached remembrance. It arises from within man, as does remembrance. Through it man connects to a being as he does in respect to his own experiences in remembrance. A shadow nature is also present in words. It is stronger than the shadow nature of remembrance. In that a person casts the shadow from his experiences in remembrance, his hidden self in active in the whole process. He is present as illumination casts the shadow.
There is also a shadow-casting in language. Words are shadows. What illumines here? Something stronger illumines, for words are stronger shadows than remembrances. What remembrances can create in the human self during the course of an earth life, cannot create words. He must learn them in relationship with others. A deeper being in him than the one casting remembrance shadows must participate. Here anthroposophy speaks from inspired cognition of the astral body, as it does of the etheric body in respect to remembrance. The astral body is thus added to the physical and etheric bodies as the human being�s third component.
This third member also has a cosmic environment. It is that of the second hierarchy. A shadow-image of this second hierarchy is given in human speech. Man lives with his astral body within the realm of this hierarchy.
We can go further. In speaking man participates with part of his being; he puts his inner self in motion. What surrounds his inner self remains in repose in speech itself. The motion involved in speaking wrests itself from the human being in repose. But the whole man goes into motion when he activates his limbs. In this movement he is no less expressive than in remembrance and speech. Remembrance expresses experiences; the essence of speech is that it expresses something. Thus man in movement with his whole being expresses a �something�.
Anthroposophy describes what is thus expressed as an additional component of the human being. Through intuitive cognition it speaks of the �true self� or the �I�. It also finds its cosmic environment: that of the first hierarchy.
By moving toward his remembrance-thoughts, man is met by a primary supersensible component, his own etheric being. By grasping himself as a speaker, his astral being comes to meet him. This is no longer grasped only by what acts inwardly, like remembrance. Inspiration sees it as that which, in speaking, forms a physical act that originates in the spirit. Speech is a physical process. Fundamentally it is a function from the realm of the second hierarchy.
In the whole man in motion a more intensive physical action is present than in speaking. It is not �something� which is formed; it is the whole man. Here the first hierarchy is active in the formation of the active physical human being.
In this way true self-knowledge can be practiced. One does not grasp his own self alone in this way however. Gradually he grasps his component members: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, the self. And in grasping these elements, he gradually approaches the higher worlds in which his being unfolds � just as the three kingdoms of nature: the animal, the vegetable, the mineral belong as three spiritual realms to the cosmos as a whole.
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