Anthroposophy for Dummies

[LukeJTM]

It's been a while since I last posted on here, but I hope everybody is doing well. I am just wondering if anyone understands what elemental beings are? Steiner mentions them sometimes, but it still isn't clear to me what they are actually are. For instance, here in this lecture excerpt (from Six Steps in Self-Development: The 'Supplementary Exercises') he says:

Through this awakening etheric body, we gradually learn to experience ourselves in the etheric world. In reality, every time we move - for instance, if I grasp an object or knock against it - this is an attack on the outer world. The non-esotericist has no inkling of this, for he is protected from such knowledge by the Guardian of the Threshold; but the esotericist gradually makes his etheric body independent, so that it experiences itself in the etheric world. His organs become more sensitive, and he increasingly acquires a sense of the fact that every space is filled not just with physical objects, but with a countless number of elemental beings who make themselves felt through pricking, prodding and burning. In this elemental etheric world, one has to make space for oneself everywhere through will impulses such as stretching, withdrawing, pushing, walking forwards, etc., and such movements must occur with the full awareness that one wishes this out of one's inmost being. That is the second thing: initiative in actions. Someone who cannot make space for himself in this etheric world through his initiating will can achieve as little in this world as someone in the physical world who tries to dance on a stage crowded with chairs. First, the chairs have to be removed. The second exercise teaches us how to do this in the spirit.

Here, he is, of course, describing the second will exercise - the one where you basically choose something simple to do each day, which could be clapping your hands at 12 o'clock each day, or watering plants at a certain time, or something like that. The idea I have of this is that elemental beings are spirits who live etherically within the physical elements (e.g. fire, or air) and perhaps give them their distinct inner qualities. Am I getting the right idea? What do they have to do with sensations as Steiner is describing there? I know at least that the etheric body is where we experience physical sensation and it somehow translates intention and will from the "I" and astral-body into physical movements.

[Kaje977]

It's been a while since I last posted on here, but I hope everybody is doing well. I am just wondering if anyone understands what elemental beings are? Steiner mentions them sometimes, but it still isn't clear to me what they are actually are. For instance, here in this lecture excerpt (from Six Steps in Self-Development: The 'Supplementary Exercises') he says:

Through this awakening etheric body, we gradually learn to experience ourselves in the etheric world. In reality, every time we move - for instance, if I grasp an object or knock against it - this is an attack on the outer world. The non-esotericist has no inkling of this, for he is protected from such knowledge by the Guardian of the Threshold; but the esotericist gradually makes his etheric body independent, so that it experiences itself in the etheric world. His organs become more sensitive, and he increasingly acquires a sense of the fact that every space is filled not just with physical objects, but with a countless number of elemental beings who make themselves felt through pricking, prodding and burning. In this elemental etheric world, one has to make space for oneself everywhere through will impulses such as stretching, withdrawing, pushing, walking forwards, etc., and such movements must occur with the full awareness that one wishes this out of one's inmost being. That is the second thing: initiative in actions. Someone who cannot make space for himself in this etheric world through his initiating will can achieve as little in this world as someone in the physical world who tries to dance on a stage crowded with chairs. First, the chairs have to be removed. The second exercise teaches us how to do this in the spirit.

Here, he is, of course, describing the second will exercise - the one where you basically choose something simple to do each day, which could be clapping your hands at 12 o'clock each day, or watering plants at a certain time, or something like that. The idea I have of this is that elemental beings are spirits who live etherically within the physical elements (e.g. fire, or air) and perhaps give them their distinct inner qualities. Am I getting the right idea? What do they have to do with sensations as Steiner is describing there? I know at least that the etheric body is where we experience physical sensation and it somehow translates intention and will from the "I" and astral-body into physical movements.

I'm not exactly sure what Steiner is referring to specifically, but elemental beings are generally considered to be the beings that directly shape the mineral and animal kingdoms. There are many different kinds of these beings, but the term "elemental beings" usually refers to salamanders, sylphs, undines, and gnomes which have a formative influence on the four elements. (As far-fetched and fantastical as it may sound at first, these beings are very real)

[AshvinP]

It's been a while since I last posted on here, but I hope everybody is doing well. I am just wondering if anyone understands what elemental beings are? Steiner mentions them sometimes, but it still isn't clear to me what they are actually are. For instance, here in this lecture excerpt (from Six Steps in Self-Development: The 'Supplementary Exercises') he says:

Through this awakening etheric body, we gradually learn to experience ourselves in the etheric world. In reality, every time we move - for instance, if I grasp an object or knock against it - this is an attack on the outer world. The non-esotericist has no inkling of this, for he is protected from such knowledge by the Guardian of the Threshold; but the esotericist gradually makes his etheric body independent, so that it experiences itself in the etheric world. His organs become more sensitive, and he increasingly acquires a sense of the fact that every space is filled not just with physical objects, but with a countless number of elemental beings who make themselves felt through pricking, prodding and burning. In this elemental etheric world, one has to make space for oneself everywhere through will impulses such as stretching, withdrawing, pushing, walking forwards, etc., and such movements must occur with the full awareness that one wishes this out of one's inmost being. That is the second thing: initiative in actions. Someone who cannot make space for himself in this etheric world through his initiating will can achieve as little in this world as someone in the physical world who tries to dance on a stage crowded with chairs. First, the chairs have to be removed. The second exercise teaches us how to do this in the spirit.

Here, he is, of course, describing the second will exercise - the one where you basically choose something simple to do each day, which could be clapping your hands at 12 o'clock each day, or watering plants at a certain time, or something like that. The idea I have of this is that elemental beings are spirits who live etherically within the physical elements (e.g. fire, or air) and perhaps give them their distinct inner qualities. Am I getting the right idea? What do they have to do with sensations as Steiner is describing there? I know at least that the etheric body is where we experience physical sensation and it somehow translates intention and will from the "I" and astral-body into physical movements.

Hi Luke,

One way to approach elemental beings is to consider the persistent tendencies that we mentioned in the other thread. Steiner has mentioned that every mental image we condense from the intuitive potential of existence can become incorporated into the perspective of an elemental being. However, if we imagine these as little entities roaming around in space, we are on the wrong track. Our thoughts don't exist in discrete spatial locations, either left or right of our perspective, yet they often constellate patterns that repetitively draw our attention back to their content. We call the relatively stable patterns opinions, beliefs, outlooks, and ideologies (in contrast to a melody that gets temporarily 'stuck in our head', for example). In ordinary consciousness, we have very little awareness of these patterns and how they shape our perception, understanding, and actions within the flow. Even the persistent melody continues to bounce around in our imagination when we are unaware of it. With higher development (via guidelines indicated in the esoteric lessons, for example), we become much more sensitive to the existence of these patterns and how they influence our soul and physical flows (the latter are felt as more and more overlapping, like two sides of the same coin). These persistent tendencies become like an overarching context that tightly constrains the potential transitions of our first-person state to new states. Of course, not all tendencies are unhealthy, as they serve important stabilizing functions in our experiential flow. For instance, we rely on repetitive inner tendencies to perform routine mental and physical operations without relearning the relevant inner gestures each time.

In the domain of 'outer' nature, we are dealing with persistent tendencies at a deeper scale that took shape many epochs ago. In other words, here we are dealing more with the collective karma of humanity that still carries momentum from prior ages. These are symbolized by the elemental beings associated with the core elements and the 'laws of nature', as the intellect perceives the latter. They are generally healthier patterns that provide critical support for our intuitive steering through the constraints of sensory life. However, if we remain too dependent on these natural patterns to direct our soul life, we devolve into a more animalistic mode of existence. In that sense, "elemental" generally symbolizes receded spiritual activity that has settled into relatively persistent, repetitive patterns. That contrasts with "archetypal" spiritual activity, which remains, from our ordinary perspective, in a state of potential, with flexibility and leeway to take different paths toward goal states. Insofar as the receded patterns create the conditions for a compounding memory flow (not necessarily how we experience memory images constrained by the physical organism), we can speak of coherent perspectives or "beings". In other words, we speak of "beings" when there is continuity of awareness and some sense of more or less consciously steering the experiential flow toward certain goal states. These beings may not have any sense that they unfold their activity within the context of a wider human organism that is steering toward its (hopefully) less myopic goal states.

Again, it is important to understand that no separate "elemental beings" exist in some part of space as discrete (but subtle) entities that create these repetitive tendencies; rather, our first-person experience of differentiated tendencies is all there is, and we artistically symbolize their differentiated influences with names like demon, phantom, egregore, etc. in the soul life, or gnomes, undines, etc. in physical-sensory life. This is how all esoteric terminology originally took shape, but since the modern intellectual perspective has become so tightly conditioned by its spatial intuition, it often imagines these beings as subtle entities existing 'side by side' with other spatial objects. That inevitably leads us to conceive of these entities and their influences as independent of our first-person soul flow, which then raises irresolvable questions about what they are, where they come from, how they create the elements, and so on. We are only safe when we strive to understand all spiritual scientific terminology as artistic expressions of the lawful patterns we intuitively discern through our first-person lived flow of experience along the scales of existence. That becomes possible only when we strive to become more conscious of the scale-axis through meditative exercises, otherwise we remain tightly merged with the intellectual-sensory scale and all talk of spiritual beings necessarily remains as abstract, floating puzzle pieces.

[Cleric]

Here, he is, of course, describing the second will exercise - the one where you basically choose something simple to do each day, which could be clapping your hands at 12 o'clock each day, or watering plants at a certain time, or something like that. The idea I have of this is that elemental beings are spirits who live etherically within the physical elements (e.g. fire, or air) and perhaps give them their distinct inner qualities. Am I getting the right idea? What do they have to do with sensations as Steiner is describing there? I know at least that the etheric body is where we experience physical sensation and it somehow translates intention and will from the "I" and astral-body into physical movements.

Hi Luke, here's one more angle on the question.

When we think about elemental beings, we usually employ mental imaging similar to what we use when we picture atoms. Except, with elemental beings, we tend to imagine more alive atoms. This, however, doesn't lead far. What we do is simply take replicas of visual experiences as we know them from our bodily life, and fill the canvas of imagination with them.

A more difficult-to-follow (demands certain meditative effort), but more fruitful direction can be presented in the following way. Let's try to loosely conceive of the potential of what existence could be – not what existence can be as if looking at it from above, as some perceived process, but as first-person existence. It is as if we try to superimpose other humans' first-person inner life over ours. The overlaid sensations will feel like blurry noise, but still, there are some commonalities. For example, all these sensations would still feel like they fill a more or less human-like shape experienced from within. This gives us an idea of what is meant by saying "what existence could be". Now we should simply continue this mental exercise further and expand until we include all the infinite variety of forms of existence. Notice, we do not ask what outer worlds/environments can support such experiences of existence. We focus entirely on the innerly experienced shape of existence. If we move in this direction asymptotically, we can imagine that we approach something like bright light that fills the infinite experiential space – a symbol not only for visual experience but for the full spectrum of what might be possible for experience.

Now we can think the opposite way. Starting from this infinite and unconstrained potential of what a moment of existence could be, how do we filter a differentiated one out? To understand this, we can use a metaphor with mathematicians. They are so engrossed in thier ideas that they have lost awareness of embodied existence. They live entirely in mathematical intuition and try to figure out the mystery of existence. Each has their own idea. However, they are so invested in that idea that it could be said it is the shape of their being. They are not human beings who arrange mathematical objects in their mind. They have left that behind while they were sinking into deeper and deeper meditation. Now one may feel something like, "I am two-foldness. The mystery of existence feels to me as composed of polarities."

Now the other mathematicians represent alternative ideal perspectives. Another one may feel that everything consists of triples, and so on. However, these perspectives are not external beings that carry their own thoughts in their heads. Instead, these ideal shapes of first-person existence are as if superimposed, just like we can have alternative theories in our mind. They are alternative prisms through which the infinite potential can be delineated. Except, I repeat, these mathematicians don't use their number intuitions to make pictures of an outer world. It is their innermost I-ness that has that shape. And the intuition of what we are is at the same time the intuition of what existence is. This is true even in ordinary life. When the materialist says "I'm just a material brain", the ego indeed tries to feel itself in the shape of a brain.

Let's say that there are twelve mathematicians with twelve thories. Unlike arrogant human beings, they do not fight to prove whose perspective is right. They feel that perspectives exist in the first place because they are incomplete. They are like different angles for intuiting the mystery of existence, yet, as we align with one angle, we feel that we cannot reconcile with the others. The mathematicians seek to attune their perspectives, as if to see through all twelve at the same time, thus becoming one. This answers the Question in the only way it can satisfy a being – to know the potential for existence is to merge with it, which means to evolve out of the relative perspectives by finding what they have differentiated from.

Thus, one mathematician feels that there are twelve complementary viewpoints on the great mystery. In fact, the mathematicians are the viewpoints (they are not some distinct beings that have a subjective viewpoint). So what does one viewpoint experience? The superimposed intuition of the others. For example, the two-ness wants to feel what its experience is a two-ness of. It's two-ness of the intuition of all other n-nesses. But then, if we continue and look into one of these n-nesses, what is it made of? The intuition of all others that complement it. And so on. A nice metaphor for this is the fractal, even as simple as the Sierpinski triangle. There we can ask, "What is it made of?" Well, out of copies of itself. But what are the copies made of? We see how we can never reach a fundamental atom. All we have are relations of the Unknown. It's similar with our mathematicians. Existence can be anything. But then, it is as if we say: "I don't know what existence is or could be, but let's consider that there could be twelve complementary viewpoints on that mystery." None of these viewpoints sees the essence of the mystery (just like we don't see what the fractal is made of), but grasps the recursive relations into which such viewpoints can be experienced. Why twelve? It's just an example. It's just a fractal seed. Others will give possibilities for different relations of the Infinite.



So these recursive perspectives are not simply static forms, but moments of becoming. From the mathematician's perspective, they are only possibilities – what existence could be intuited as. Yet they invite the possibility - what if my moment of existence can be followed through the prism embedded deeper in the recursive relations? Through particular detuning (just like the twelves are detuned from the One), it is possible that the recursive relations are dephased in such a way that they form strange interference patterns. Remember https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XfSXRG

This is important to grasp. In a sense, we are not geometrically partitioned beings, like fractal cells of the recursion. We are still one with the mathematician's perspective, or even the One toward which all strive, but the recursive reflections become so complicated that the initial clear intuition is obscured, and now at the forefront comes the interference, similar to Moiré patterns. Just like the twelve, this dephasing has a beginning and resolution. It's rhythm within rhythm.

So what are elemental beings? We can understand them in a truthful way only when we approach the mathematician's perspective. Consider a path that can be potentially traced as we follow the reflections. Each such path can be a unique sequence, as if it were a different way of following the reflections. It's like saying "The two-ness that I am is made of three (and others), which is made of seven (and others), ..." These different ways of following the reflections give the sense of multiplicity, because the deeper we go, the more alternative sequences we leave around. An elemental being can be thought of as one such zooming path. It is elemental because, in a way, it is like infinitely many elemental 'pixels' that constitute the intuition of the mathematician's perspective. Yet, from that perspective, there's no question of believing that these are some fundamental entities that build up reality from the ground up. Instead, these are the infinite elemental perspectives that can be traced when we start with a certain n-ness of the Unknown. They are 'beings' because when these elemental perspectives are traced, they feel like something, even though not having self-reflection.

I know this is a lot, and open to many misunderstandings, but I hope it at least gives an indication about the inner stance that we must assume if we are to have proper relation to these questions. For example, if we now simply imagine such vortices sinking into the infinite multiplicity, we are still nudging Moiré patterns of which our everyday images consist. But if we stare deeply into the experience of, for example, an infinitesimal point of color, we may say: "This color point is the limit at infinity where the intuition of the mathematician (in whose consciousness my aliased human experiences are embedded and dephased) sinks when the reflections are followed in a certain way." Just stating that intellectually doesn't make it reality, but it is something that we can meditate on.

So what Steiner says fully corresponds to the facts. Our inner perspective is woven of these intuitive paths sinking into the infinite multiplicity. There're no empty spaces. Everything that we experience as phenomena is, in a sense, an elemental 'line of sight' of a higher perspective. And correspondingly, these lines of sight can be traced back toward their higher origin. The different classes of elemental beings originate at different levels of Moiré interference. What we have described, which emerges from the highest perspectives, can be thought of as the warmth elemental lines of sight.