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Spiritual Science

Deep Dive Article

This is a subset of the material presented on the source page. I chose excerpts based on a (personal) goal to present an introductory article on the subject of group souls. —Anthony

1907-12-27-GA101 (via Steiner Wiki)

Below: internet translation of the German version, cleansed for readability (adapted terminology) - left in full below for general reference, because it is not available in full in english anywhere else (as yet).

I have edited out one small section where the initial editor (who did the translation) mentions there are some confusions and possible contradictory information. The subject matter is "deep" enough without including these additional complexities. You may consult the original source page in the header if you wish to review that particular material.

[Process of individuation - transition between animal group souls and individual soul of Man]

Yesterday we emphasized that only Man, as he lives here on the physical plane, has an individual soul and I, and that the animals that surround us have a group I, a group soul, living on the astral plane and found there as a self-contained entity. Thus, when we look at them spiritually, the animal kingdom and the human kingdom face each other as a group soul or group I and an individual I.

We must not imagine it as if there were no transitions between the individual beings in the universe. It is true that the saying that nature makes no leaps is not at all true for the occultist, but transitions can be found everywhere. And so you also find a transition between the group souls of the animal kingdom and the individual soul of Man.

It would be incorrect to imagine that the human being had a perfect individual soul when he first entered earthly existence, and that this now embodies itself again and again here on Earth in the same way. It is rather the case that modern Man is in a gradual transition from a group soul, which he had in ancient times, to the perfect individual soul, which he still does not have today. He is only on the way to the complete incorporation of his individual soul into his physical body. He will only have this perfect individual soul when earthly existence will be more or less complete. For the vast majority of people today, their I is an intermediate product between a group I and an individual I. The further we go back in time, the more the human I is still a group ego.

At the beginning of earthly existence, when the souls first descended from the divine worlds into our physical plane, the human souls were still group I's. Several people belonged together to a group that had a common soul, a group I.

[Man's bodily principles]

On the one hand, we want to capture that. On the other hand, let us now take a closer look at the limbs of human nature itself. It is well known to you, since it has been said over and over again, that Man has four members of his being: the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral body and the I. And this I, when we look at it more closely, appears to us divided into three parts, which we know under the names: sentient soul, intellectual or mind soul and consciousness soul.

The independent I first dawns in the sentient soul and in the intellectual or emotional soul, and only in the consciousness soul do we have the first announcement of the self-conscious I. Only then does what is called the fifth part of the human being, the spirit self or manas, gradually appear in the human being.

In modern Man we have the following structure:

  • the physical body, the etheric or life body, and the astral body;
  • then the sentient soul, which is as if embedded in it, is intimately connected with the astral body;
  • then the mind or intellectual soul
  • and the consciousness soul; and again in the consciousness-soul, which is the actual I-soul, integrated the spirit-self or manas.

This is roughly how we would have to imagine the people of today.

[Physical body most developed]

Now we must make it clear which of these human members is the most developed, the most perfect. Some of you have already been told by me that the physical body is the most developed, the most perfectly developed member, in the way Man is developed today. Just don't confuse "most developed and developed" with "higher type". Certainly the etheric and astral bodies are higher in degree than the physical body, but the etheric and astral bodies will only reach perfection in their development in the future. In its way, the physical body is the most perfect member of man today.

Anyone who studies the physical body, not just anatomically and physically, but penetrating his mind and heart, will stand in awe at the immense wisdom built into the physical body. Our physical body shows us the perfect, wise structure in each of its smallest members.

  • If you take just a piece of thigh bone from this physical body, for my sake, the uppermost part of the thigh bone, it is not a massive mass, it is a wise structure, wonderfully put together from small beams. If you study how the delicate beams are joined together, you will find that everything is so constructed that with the least expenditure of substance it produces the greatest amount of power to enable the torso to be supported by these two pillars of the femur. Even the most accomplished art of engineering cannot today with such wisdom build a bridge or any scaffolding where such a large amount of power is unfolded with so little expenditure of material. Human wisdom lags far, far behind this wisdom with which the human physical body is constructed. So it is with all parts of the physical body.
  • If you look at the brain with the nervous system, it's a marvel.
  • And if you look at the human heart, which is only on the way to its perfection, which will reach much, much higher degrees of perfection - it is a wonderful thing!

If you compare the astral body with its impulses, instincts and passions to this perfection of the physical body, we must say: although it will one day stand higher than the physical body, it is still on a comparatively subordinate level today. In everything that Man develops today in terms of desire for pleasure, he delivers hundreds and hundreds of attacks on the physical body. Everything that Man desires and satisfies in the pleasures he procures, such as alcohol and all sorts of other things, are basically heart poisons with which he constantly attacks the wisdom and miracle structure of his physical body. It will take a long time to develop before the astral body has come close to what the physical body already has today in terms of perfection.

You know from the theory of evolution given by our theosophical cosmology that the physical body was already predisposed on Old Saturn and went through further degrees of perfection through the evolution of the Old Sun, Old Moon and Earth. You know that in the planetary stage of evolution on Old Sun, the etheric body was added, which today is one degree lower in development than the physical body. You know that the astral body was added on Old Moon; he has only the Old Moon evolution behind him and that part of the Earth evolution that we have gone through up to now. The I only came along on Earth; it is the "baby" of the four limbs of human nature.

[Future Jupiter: perfect etheric body permeated by love]

  • Actually, that wisdom of which we spoke yesterday, which runs through the group souls of the animal world, is imprinted on the physical body of Man; it has passed over to the individual physical body of Man, which is built to be full of wisdom.
  • The human etheric body is only on the way to its perfection; In the course of his earthly development he will absorb everything that he needs for his perfection. When the Earth has reached its goal, it will pass into the astral state and then into still higher states and later transform into a planet which will succeed the Earth and which we call Future Jupiter. Then the etheric body of Man will be perfect in its way, just as the physical body of Man is perfect in its kind on Earth.
  • In the next incarnation of the Earth, which we call Future Venus, the astral body of Man will have reached its perfection; it will then stand on the level on which the physical body stands today and on that in the next planetary one state of the etheric body will stand.
  • And finally, when the Earth will have reached the Future Vulcan state, then our I will have reached its consummation.

[editor: see also Schema FMC00.143 and variants on The elementary kingdoms]

So that we can actually say: on Earth the physical body of Man is only Man, on the next planetary stage of our Earth the etheric body of Man becomes Man; then he will be impregnated with what the Earth is able to give to Man: with love.

What the physical body of Man has today as its characteristic qualities he owes to the Old Moon. In occultism the Old Moon is called the cosmos of wisdom. Back then on Old Moon, what you now find in the physical body of Man was gradually being prepared. And just as our physical body was permeated with wisdom on Old Moon oon, so the cosmos of love prepares what you will find in the Future Jupiter stage of the Earth: the etheric body completely permeated by the element of love.

And just as we admire the wisdom of a piece of bone in the physical body today, so, if we may speak comparatively, the Future Jupiter people will admire the etheric body, because it is permeated with love just as the physical body on earth is permeated with wisdom. If you hold on to this, you will come to the realization that only the human physical body is really a true human being, only really stands on the human level. The human etheric body is not yet on the human level, it is still on the animal level, and the human astral body is still on the plant level. When you sleep at night and your astral body is raised, then the physical and etheric bodies sink into dreamless sleep; this is the state that the plant is in all the time. In relation to the state of consciousness, the human astral body is on the plant level.

The I is only at the level of the mineral kingdom. The state of consciousness of the I-Man is entirely on the level of the mineral kingdom. Try to examine yourself according to this truth, what knowledge you can have; try to get it right.

What can Man understand?

He can understand the physical laws of the mineral kingdom by which he can build machines and factories, erect structures, and so on. All this happens according to the physical laws of the mineral kingdom.

[From current mineral to future plant consciousness and mastery of the laws of the etheric]

Even when it comes to plants, Man rightly says that he cannot understand life itself with his intellect. The time will come when Man will understand plants in the same way he understands minerals today; then he will also be able to construct the plant as he constructs his cathedrals and houses and his machines according to the laws of the mineral kingdom today. They are all laws of the mineral kingdom that permeate the I. Science is waiting for its ideal of producing living beings in the laboratory to be fulfilled. It will not be able to do this unless mankind has reached a certain necessary level of moral development. It would be terrible if mankind were able to do this today. Just as a watch is made today according to mineral laws, as a house is built, so in the future Man will create living things according to the laws of life. But then he will have to be able to imprint life itself on the living. Anyone who will then be standing at the laboratory table will have to be able to transfer those - let's call it: vibrations that are in his own etheric body - to what is to be enlivened. If he is a good Man, he transmits the good; if he is a bad person, he transmits the bad.

But there is a sentence in occultism: the knowledge of the White Lodge, which is called the secret of life-generation, is not handed over to mankind before Man has learned the secret of sacramentalism. 'Sacramentalism' is an expression of the fact that human action must be imbued with moral perfection, with holiness.

Only when the laboratory table where he carries out his work becomes an altar for man and his action sacred will he then be ready for this knowledge to be handed over to him. Think of the people of today with all their materialism - how far is their laboratory table from an altar today!

You see the consciousness of Man being elevated from mineral consciousness to plant consciousness. Again it is an occult statement: Man will only attain the state of plant consciousness when he will no longer be able to separate his own well-being from the well-being of all other people. As long as the individual seeks his well-being at the expense of other people, the situation has not arisen in which consciousness could be raised a step higher.

[recap]

So we stand with the physical body on the level of the actual human being, with the etheric body on the animal level, with the astral body on the plant level and with the I on the mineral level.

Of these truths we want to hold fast: With our etheric body we are on the level of the animal.

In the course of earthly existence, the etheric body changes more and more to the human level. He permeates himself more and more with that love which can no longer separate the well-being of the individual from the well-being of others.

Just as we first worked out the physical body and raised it to the level of the human being, so the etheric body, and later also the astral body and the I, will rise to the human level.

The I is still on the mineral level; it was first incorporated into Man on Earth.

[expression in the physical body]

  • The physical body of the human being has first of all the revelation of the physical body itself expressed within itself. We find the physical principle expressed in the physical body when we consider the sense apparatus. So you have a kind of photographic camera in your eye and a kind of piano in your ear. In short, in the sense organs the physical principle expresses itself.
  • If we look at the human glands, we find the expression of the etheric body expressed in them,
  • in the nervous system we have the expression of the astral body, and
  • in the blood we have the expression of the I ... "Blood is a special fluid!". Whoever has the blood has the human I. If the devil has blood in Man, then he has the I.

In this way every other member expresses itself in the physical body of Man, insofar as it protrudes. The blood pulsates unconsciously because the I, insofar as it is active in it, is unconscious of its physical processes.

[expression in the etheric body]

Just as the nature of the other members expresses itself in the physical body, the nature of the other members also expresses itself in the etheric body, only it does not express itself there 'humanly' but rather 'animally', namely in the form of certain animals, in a form that bears some resemblance to our outer animal forms. Thus

  • what lies beneath the etheric body, the physical body, expresses itself like a silhouette; this part of the etheric body, in which the physical member of the human being expresses itself, is called the "Man" (it is written on the blackboard).
  • The astral body, the sentient soul that expresses itself in the etheric body, is called the "lion" because of the similarity of its etheric form;
  • the intellectual soul, which expresses itself in the etheric body, is called the "bull" or the cow, and
  • the consciousness soul with the spirit self because of the resemblance that it has in its etheric form for the clairvoyant sight, the "eagle".

So you have here (scheme) the four signs of the Apocalypse – Man, lion, bull, eagle – as the four expressions of the human etheric body.

You can see from this that those of our ancestors who devised these deep symbols, these animal symbols for the human being, did not create them out of their imagination, philosophy or speculation, out of any ingenuity, but out of the world of facts, out of the occult world of facts have created out.

[evangelists and four group souls]

Christianity imagined that the evangelists did not have the souls of ordinary human beings, but that they comprised entire groups of people, and compared Matthew to the human being, Mark to the lion, Luke to the bull and John to the inner soul character the eagle. This stems from that resemblance which Christian esotericism ascribed to the souls of the individual evangelists.

We will understand this even more precisely when we see that Man is engaged in a descent on the one hand and an ascent on the other.

  • Here on Earth, in the deepest point of materialism, Man acquires the disposition for the individual soul. Man has descended from the old days, when a more precise distinction was made between the individual group souls: man-man, lion-man, bull-man, eagle-man.
  • When people ascend again in the future, they will retain their individual souls and, on a higher level with a higher consciousness, will again develop what they previously only had in dim consciousness, the four group souls. Therefore, in Christianity, these qualities are ascribed to the evangelists.

[group souls characteristics]

Let us hold on to this concept of human group souls for a while longer. These group souls lived themselves out much more than in space, than in juxtaposition, in time, in succession. If we consider the animal group souls, then we say, if we take a group of lions or a group of whales: they have their common group soul next to each other on the astral plane. But when we look at human group souls, we must focus more on time. A human group soul is in the etheric, so to speak, at the border between the physical and the astral plane, is born at a certain time and is transformed in turn at a certain time.

These four group soul types that we have discussed are only the four main types, but there are innumerable intermediate levels. We have only given the most characteristic forms man, lion, bull, eagle, which can appear in all possible mixtures.

[evolution of group souls]

[editor: The Cherusci were a Germanic tribe that inhabited parts of northwestern Germany in the 1st century BC and 1st century AD]

Consider a group of people, say a tribe; let's take any of the ancient Central European tribes, for example the Cherusci tribe. Such a tribe arises once, and it perishes. The materialistic observer of the world only sees something abstract in what the Cherusci tribe is, a concept that holds them together. But that is something unreal. The occultist sees in the Cheruscan tribe a group soul which arises, "is born" at the time when the Cheruscan tribe enters history; it grows as Cheruscan power grows, and "dies" when the Cheruscans disappear from history. Behind the evolving tribe of the Cherusci the occultist sees an evolving etheric being.

Now there is a difference between an etheric entity and a physical entity here on Earth. A physical entity is born on the physical plane, grows, reaches a peak of life, and dies again. Birth and death are the characteristics of beings on the physical plane. It is not so with the beings who live on the higher planes. If we follow the animal group-souls on the astral plane through thousands of years, their origin and death cannot be expressed by the words "birth" and "death". It's based on something completely different. It is based on transformation, metamorphosis. If you meet an animal group-soul on the astral plane today with clairvoyant faculties and remember one of its previous incarnations, as it was with this animal group-soul 1500 years ago, it will not appear to you as if you were looking at a younger person. Of course you see the group soul also going through youth, middle life and old age, but it does not give up its consciousness in old age, it does not die. She is constantly changing without going through death. You can trace the animal group soul back to primeval times - you only find metamorphosis, not birth and death.

Something similar is the case with such group souls as that of the Cheruscan tribe. When the Cheruscan tribe appears as a number of physical people on the physical plane, the Cheruscan soul has just formed; but she was not born, but was formed, transformed, out of another time. It grows with the power of the Cheruscan, culminating when the Cheruscan tribe reaches its zenith, and when the Cheruscan tribe in history on the physical plane degenerates and disappears, the Cheruscan soul arises anew in youth, around the soul of another tribe to become; she metamorphoses herself.

[Phoenix - group soul rising and perishing]

Physical birth and physical death do not exist when we consider souls on higher planes. Birth and death as we know them exist only on the physical plane, not on the higher planes. Occult wisdom has expressed this well, taking great care with numbers.

Attempts have been made to establish an average number of times when a group-soul, as belonging to a particular human community, arises, metamorphoses out of another, grows and reaches its climax, to again undergo a downward evolution and then transform itself into another group-soul.

If the average age of Man is set at 75 years - this number taken as lunar years - and multiplied by 7, the life of a human group soul results in its four types, until its next transformation. 7 here means generations. If we consider that we are dealing with lunar years, we come to about 500 years. And so it was said in occultism: The life of a group soul lasts 500 years; after 500 years it becomes someone else, it rebirths itself without losing consciousness.

If we look at the I of such a group soul and look for a means of expressing the I externally in the physical, then it is the blood. For the occultist, blood is the expression of fire [editor: or warmth], substance glowing through with fire. Just as the human physical body is the expression of the [element] earth, the etheric body the expression of the water, the astral body the expression of the air, so is the I which is not yet chained to egoism; the expression of fire.

We therefore say - we will discuss this tomorrow - that the blood found death through egoism. Man's I "consumes itself in its own fire," by itself. This is an occult expression. Only when Man overcomes egoism does he attain immortality.

The human group I is consumed in its own fire. When 500 years are up, it burns up and creates a new form out of itself. This was represented in occultism as the group I generally living 500 years, then being burned up and revived out of its own fire, and this was called the 'Phoenix Bird'. The beautiful legend of the phoenix bird has its actual background here. The phoenix is the group I with the characteristics of the four types, which burns up and restores itself after seven generations - a generation reckoned at 75 lunar years of life. This is the real background of the phoenix saga.

There you have fresh proof that such old legends as the one about the phoenix are created out of the deepest occult facts. It is not here to speculate, but to show what has been taught in the occult schools down the ages, and what constitutes real actual experience of which the occult signs and sigils are the expression. Again and again, when we hear such expressions of occult truth and compare them with what humanity has given us in its signs and symbols, we are reminded of how much human consciousness has created before it became intellectual consciousness. People love to believe that we have already come a long way today. But his intellect lags behind the creative consciousness of the prehistoric world, which only the initiates had, and they hid it in the sagas. The symbols of the four beasts are not made up; not thought is the starting point, the origin of it, but looking.

[worlds and planes of consciousness]

When I say: the group soul is in the etheric on the border between the physical and the astral plane - you must not imagine a border line. If we start from the physical plane, we have here (it is drawn) seven subdivisions of the physical plane; then there would be seven subdivisions of the astral plane. Of these, the three lowest coincide with the three highest on the physical plane. We must consider the astral plane with the physical plane in such a way that the three uppermost parts of the physical plane are at the same time the three lowest parts of the astral plane.

We can speak of a fringe zone, that is, that which our souls cannot leave after death if they are still chained to Earth by desires. They are called kamaloka.

In the occult signs, symbols and seals, which we have chosen here as the first examples, we certainly see something gained from the depths of occult facts, and you would be completely wrong if you read the deep wisdom of the past in the occult schools would fail to recognize or consider them in any way to be overcome by our modern wisdom. Wherever you encounter the wisdom of occult teachings in the form of signs or symbols, it always shows itself in such a way that it is confirmed by direct occult observation. An example of how the doctrine of the occult worked in relatively recent times is that symbolic meanings have been secreted into names and words, but in such a way that underlying them was a real meaning: facts of the higher world. We will not go back to the origin of word formation in the sense of philology; what I am going to say now is not something you can check with philology. Even if philology found it wrong, the word symbolism would still be correct.

[mirror-reversal in astral world]

The further you ascend from the physical plane through the astral world into the spirit world, the more everything presents itself to you as a reflection of the physical plane, which you must first learn to read.

  • It is easiest for the student to learn from numbers. Assuming you have the number 543 here on the physical plane, this number is to be read as a mirror image on the astral plane, ie 345. Likewise, all other things and events are to be read as mirror images.
  • I will choose a crass example right away: Here on the physical plane you can follow how the old hen lays the egg and how the young hen develops from the egg. If you look at the same event on the astral plane, you have to go backwards: first you have the young hen, the hen keeps getting smaller and smaller and finally goes into the egg.
  • Time also goes backwards. You see how tremendously confusing this must be to the student at first sight.
  • You see the passions that emanate from Man as in a tableau; they radiate from the center. The reflected passions appear as if nothing but animals rushed at you. Man sees the lower passions as all sorts of wild animals, like mice, rats and so on around him. If the student has not learned this, and the first experience of it dawns on him when he sees his own passions rushing towards him as mice and rats, then pathological states such as paranoia and so on can easily occur.

[example illustration]

What I have now told you as a fact about the relation of the higher worlds to the lower worlds, one tried to express symbolically in the theory of evolution with a play on words. When human beings entered their existence on earth, they entered a physical state from a spiritual state - through Eve. In Eve one saw that state where spiritual humanity became physical and therefore also sinful. If mankind is to be led up to the spiritual again, and if the contrast to the woman who brought the mortal into the world is to be expressed, then what is to bring the immortal back into mankind must be expressed the other way around; the name must be reversed. Therefore the angel of God addresses Mary with the words "Ave, Maria!" – Eve becomes Ave; this reversal is symbolic. Whatever a more or less perverse philology says against it is not important. It is important to show how the symbolic can have an effect in word composition in occultism.

The attempt was made with this combination of words to make Man, by uttering the words, aware of the occult fact that the currents of the physical and spiritual worlds have opposite directions. This has a very deep meaning. Don't see anything arbitrary behind it. The best thing you can see behind it is that people were instructed to recognize the occult laws in their language. By allowing people to do such exercises in order to recognize the occult laws in language, they work consciously or unconsciously on their occult training. The principle of symbolism is at the same time a principle of training.

1908-06-01-GA102

quote A - origin of elementals of nature

We have seen how such elemental beings come into existence as a sort of irregularly severed parts of group souls. We need only remember what was said at the end of the lecture and we shall have placed the nature of such elemental creatures before our spiritual eyes. We were considering one of the last formed species of these elementary beings. We pointed to the fact that each animal form — or to put it differently — a totality of similarly formed animals is represented by a group soul. We have said that these group souls play the same role in the astral world as our human soul — in so far as it is I-endowed — in the physical world.

The human I is really a group I which has descended from the astral plane to the physical plane, and thus becomes an individual I.

The animal I are still normally on the astral plane, and what is here on the physical plane as the separate animal possesses only physical body, etheric body, and astral body. The I is in the astral world, similarly formed animals being members of their group I. We can realize from this fact how birth and death in human life have not the same significance in the life of the animal. For when an individual animal dies, the group soul or group I remains alive. It is just the same as if — assuming that it were possible — a man lost a hand and was capable of replacing it. His I would not say: ‘I have died through the loss of my hand’; it would feel that it had renewed a limb. So the group I of the lions renews a limb when a lion dies and is replaced by another. Thus we can understand that birth and death have not at all the significance for the animal group souls as they have for the human being of the present cycle of evolution. The group soul of the animals knows changes, metamorphoses; knows, so to speak, the severing of the members which then extend into the physical world, the loss of these members and their renewal.

We have said, however, that there are certain animal forms which go too far in the process of severing, which are no longer in a position to send back to the astral plane what they bring down to the physical plane. When an animal dies what falls away must be entirely exhausted in the surrounding world, while the soul and spirit nature of the animal must stream back into the group soul, to be extended afresh and grow to a new individual entity. There are in fact certain animal forms which cannot send everything back into the group soul; and these parts which remain over, which are cut loose, torn loose from the group soul, then lead an isolated life as elemental beings. Our evolution has gone through the most varied stages and at each stage such elemental beings have been separated off, so you can well imagine that we have a fairly large number of such elementals around us in what we call the super-sensible world.

quote B - about future groupings of souls

Then, however, the time will also have come when a fairly great number of representatives of humanity will be ripe to acknowledge the super-sensible worlds of which the spiritual-science world-conception speaks today. Such a phenomenon as that of the bee-life in connection with what can be known of the super-sensible worlds offers a wonderful answer to the great riddle of existence. These things are of great importance from yet another side. It will become increasingly indispensable to grasp the nature of the group souls, and such knowledge will play a great role even in the purely external evolution of humanity. If we go back thousands and thousands of years we find man himself as a being still belonging to a group soul. Human evolution on our Earth is from the group soul nature to the individual soul. Man advances through the gradual descent of his I-endowed soul into physical conditions, there having the opportunity of becoming individual. We can observe different stages in the evolution of mankind and see how the group soul gradually becomes individual.

...

[describing the fact that arithmetic is a form of truth beyond sympathy and antipathy]

Continually wider regions will be grasped by this form of truth and more peace can come to mankind if truth is grasped in this manner.

The human being has grown out of the group soul condition and emancipates himself from it increasingly.

If we look at groups instead of the souls, we have family connections, connections of tribe and nation, and finally connected races. The race corresponds to a group soul. All these group connections of early humanity are what man outgrows and the more we advance the more the race conception loses its meaning.

We stand today at a transitional point; race will gradually disappear entirely and something else will take its place. Those who will again grasp spiritual truth as it has been described will be led together of their own free will. Those will be the connections of a later age.

The human beings of earlier times were born into connections, born into the tribe, the race. Later we shall live in the connections and associations which men create for themselves, uniting in groups with those of similar ideas while retaining their complete freedom and individuality.

To realize this is necessary for a right understanding of something like the Anthroposophical Society. The Anthroposophical Society is intended to be a first example of such a voluntary association, although we may be well aware that it has not yet reached very far. The attempt had to be made to create a group in which men find themselves together without the differentiation of the ancient group soul's nature and there will be many such associations in the future. Then we shall no longer have to speak of racial connections but of intellectual-ethical-moral aspects with regard to the associations that are formed. The individuals voluntarily allow their feelings to stream together and this again causes the forming of something which goes beyond the merely emancipated man. An emancipated human being possesses his individual soul which is never lost when it has once been attained. But when men find themselves together in voluntary associations they group themselves round centres. The feelings streaming in this way to a centre once more give beings the opportunity of working as a kind of group soul, though in quite a different sense from the early group souls. All the earlier group souls were beings who made man unfree. These new beings, however, are compatible with man's complete freedom and individuality. Indeed, in a certain respect we may say that they support their existence on human harmony; it will lie in the souls of men themselves whether or not they give as many as possible of such higher souls the opportunity of descending to man. The more that men are divided, the fewer lofty souls will descend into the human sphere. The more that associations are formed where feelings of fellowship are developed with complete freedom, the more lofty beings will descend and the more rapidly the earthly planet will be spiritualized.

So we see that if Man is to acquire any idea of future evolution, he must have a thorough understanding of the character of the group soul element. For otherwise, if his individual soul keeps itself aloof too long on the Earth, and does not find the link of companionship, it could come about that it lets the chance of union go by. It would then itself become a sort of elemental being, and the elemental beings originating from man would be of quite an evil nature. Whereas those which have arisen from the earlier kingdoms are very useful for our orderly course of nature, the human elemental beings will by no means possess this quality.

We have seen that such severed beings arise in certain border regions, and they arise also on the boundary made by the transition from the group soul nature to the independent group associations where the connections are of an aesthetic, moral, intellectual character. Wherever such connections arise, group beings are there.

∴