An Outline of Occult Science

by Rudolf Steiner

All that is life in the sense-world belongs to the ocean-region of the spiritual world. To the physical [pg 078] eye, life appears in its effects in plants, animals, and men. To spiritual vision, life is a flowing substance, like oceans and rivers, diffused through the spirit-world. A still better comparison is that of the circulation of the blood in the body; for whereas seas and rivers are seen to be irregularly distributed in the physical world, a certain regularity in distribution of the flowing life reigns in the spirit-world, as in the circulation of the blood. This “flowing life” is simultaneously heard as spiritual sound.

The third region of the spirit-world is its “atmosphere.” What is known in the physical world as “feeling” is also present there, permeating everything like the air on the earth. We must imagine a rushing sea of feeling. Pain and sorrow, joy and rapture, flow through this region, like wind and storms in the atmosphere of the physical world. Imagine a battle fought on earth. There confront one another not merely human forms, as seen by the physical eye, but feelings opposed to feelings, passions to passions; pain fills the battlefield just as much as do the forms of men. All that is seething there of passion, pain, and the joy of victory is not only perceptible in its effects as revealed to the physical senses; it may be seen with the spiritual senses as an atmospheric process in the spirit-world. Such an event in the spiritual world is like a thunderstorm in the physical, and the perception of these events may be compared to the hearing of words in the physical world. For this reason it is said that as the air envelops and permeates earthly things, [pg 079] so do “interweaving spiritual words” pervade the beings and events of the spirit-world.

And still further observations are possible in this spirit-world. What may be compared to light and heat in the physical world is there too. That which permeates everything in the spirit-world, as earthly things and beings are permeated by heat, is the world of thought itself. There, however, thoughts must be regarded as living and independent beings. What is understood by man in the manifested world as thought is but a shadow of what lives as a thought-being in the spirit-world. Imagine thought, as it now exists in man, raised out of him and as an active, energetic being, endowed with an inner life of its own, and you have a feeble illustration of that which fills the fourth region of the spirit-world. In the physical world between birth and death what man understands as thought is but the manifestation of the thought-world as it is able to mould itself by means of the instruments afforded by the bodies. All such thoughts cherished by man, that carry with them an enrichment of the physical world have their origin in this region. By such thoughts are meant not only the ideas of great inventors and men of genius; but those ideas found in every individual which he does not owe solely to the external world, but through which he, so to speak, transforms that world.

In so far as feelings and passions are concerned, the cause of which lies in the outer world, these feelings are perceptible in the third region of the spirit-world; [pg 080] but everything which so lives in a man's soul as to make him a creator,—influencing, transforming and fertilizing his environment,—is manifest in its original and intrinsic form in the fourth division of the spirit-world.

That which exists in the fifth region may be compared to physical light. In its archetypal form it is wisdom in manifestation. Beings who diffuse wisdom throughout their surroundings, as the sun pours light on physical beings, belong to this realm. Whatever is illuminated by their wisdom stands forth in its true meaning and significance for the spiritual world, just as the colour of a physical object is seen when the light falls upon it. There are still higher regions of the spirit-world, which will be described later in this work.

Into this world the ego is plunged after death, together with the results it carries with it out of physical life. And these results are still united with that part of the astral body which is not cast off at the end of the time of purification. In fact, only that part falls away which, in its desires and wishes, turned, after death, toward physical life. The plunging of the ego into the spiritual world, with what it has acquired in the physical world, may be compared to the planting of a grain of seed in the soil in which it can mature. As the grain of seed draws substances and forces from its surroundings in order that it may develop into a new plant, so the condition of the ego, when implanted in the spiritual world, is one of development and growth.

Hidden within that which is perceived by an organ, there lies the force whereby that same organ was formed. The eye perceives light; but without light there would be no eye. Creatures spending their lives in darkness do not develop organs of sight. Thus the whole of man's physical body is created out of the hidden forces of that of which he becomes conscious through his bodily organs. The physical body is built up by the forces of the physical world, the etheric body by those of the life-world, and the astral body is formed out of the astral world. Now when the ego is transferred to the spirit-world it is met by just those forces which remain hidden to physical perception.

What appear to man's view in the first region of the spirit-world are the spiritual beings that are always surrounding him, and that have built up his physical body. Thus in the physical world man perceives nothing but the manifestations of those spiritual forces which have formed his own physical body. After death he is in the very midst of these moulding forces, which, previously hidden, now appear to him in their true forms. In the same way, in the second region, he is in the midst of the forces by which his etheric body was organized, and in the third region there pour in upon him the potencies out of which his astral body was formed. The higher regions of the spirit-world also direct toward him those forces from which he was built in the life between birth and death.

These denizens of the spiritual world are at present [pg 082] working in co-operation with that which man has brought with him as the product of his last life, which now becomes a germ; and through this co-operation man is, first of all, built up anew as a spiritual being. The physical and etheric bodies are still joined in sleep; the astral body and the ego are, it is true, outside them, but still connected with them. Whatever influences the astral body and the ego receive, in such a state, from the spiritual world, can serve only to recuperate the forces exhausted during the waking state.

But when the physical and etheric bodies have been laid aside, and, after the time of purification, also those parts of the astral body still bound by their desires to the physical world, then everything pouring in upon the ego from the spiritual world is not only a reforming but a reorganizing force. After a certain period, to be dealt with in later chapters, the ego again gathers round it an astral body which will be able to live in such an etheric and physical body as man possesses between birth and death. A man can once more pass through birth and renew his earthly existence, in which, however, will be incorporated the results of his former life. Until the rebuilding of his astral body, man is a witness of his reconstruction. As the powers of the spirit-world are not manifested to him through external organs, but from within outward, like his own ego in self-consciousness, he is able to observe that manifestation as long as his attention is not turned to an outer world of perception. But from the moment [pg 083] that the astral body is reconstituted, his attention is turned outward; the astral body once more craves an outer etheric and physical body. It is thus turned away from the inner revelations. For this reason there is now an intermediate state, during which man is immersed in unconsciousness. Consciousness can emerge again in the physical world only when the necessary organs for physical perception are formed.