What we Call our Ego

"No external name can call me, this being; a very different name can only express that: "I am the I-am!" There is no way to find elsewhere the name of the Sun-Spirit than in man. That which lives as I in man, that is the Christ-being. "( Ref . GA 109, p. 154 )

"What Christ is to the world is the ego to man. His ego is a part of Christ, out of his ego all powers emerge; but in order for them to grow and increase, they have to come together again and again in their ego. This confluence of the human powers in the ego happens in the intervals between the incarnations. Then the forces unfolded during a human life gather and consolidate, to emerge more intensified in a new incarnation. But when a person reaches a higher level of development, he learns more and more to carry out this process consciously during his earthly life. He consciously develops his powers in the service of the world, and he consciously transmits the experiences thus made to his ego, to the center of his being. They are then already implanted in the ego during earth life; He thereby presupposes the work of many years of intermediate time between his incarnations, where this gathering of the unfolded forces in the ego occurs through the help of higher beings.

As soon as man begins to consciously gather and develop forces in this way during his life, his spirit grows in the spiritual world, and he transforms more and more his whole being into an immortal one. For what he himself incorporates into his being, remains to him as a lasting part of his being. "( Lit .: GA 91, p. 255f )

"We must be clear that we have the spiritual-spiritual essence that we summarize in its center, when we say" I "or" I. "This spiritual-spiritual essence is embedded in the astral, Etheric and physical body Just as man now lives in the world, when we live inwardly we actually live in our ego, for all the activities of the soul are in some way connected with the ego in the waking man, and all appear on the same Background of the ego. " ( Ref .: GA 143, p. 49f )

Through its three lower essential elements, which are as it were given to man in a natural way, man is a creature of the divine spiritual world just like all other earthly beings. Through his ego he is called to become the creator of himself, indeed, more than that, he can only realize himself by creating himself. The ego develops in the course of repeated earthly lives , which also determine its destiny ( karma ).

In order for the ego to be able to intervene in the bodily sheaths , the ego-bearer , which is the external bodily expression for the ego, is needed. The ego-wearer appears to the clairvoyant in the human aura as a somewhat oblong bluish ball at the root of the nose behind the forehead.

A destructive hearth inside man is the prerequisite for the ego to develop and consolidate. If these forces, which are normally inaccessible to consciousness because they are below the memory level, then become the source of evil. On the other hand, all the moralforces that we develop here are already fertile germs for the future existence of Jupiter ( Ref : GA 207, p. 21ff ).

→ Main article : I-wearer

The ego builds up the ego organization that corresponds to its essence . However, this does not create self-confidence , it is only prepared by it. Self-esteem only lights up when the ego breaks down the ego organization it has formed. Only in the rhythmic change of construction and dismantling can self-esteem develop ever richer.

"Physical materiality undergoes a development of its essence, passing to weaving and living in the etheric. And life depends on the organic body being snatched from the essence of the earthly and built up by the alien universe. But this construction leads to life, but not to consciousness and not to self-consciousness . The astral body must build its organization within the physical and the etheric; the ego must do the same with regard to the ego organization. But in this structure there is no conscious unfolding of psychic life. For such to happen, it must face degradation in its construction. The astral body builds up its organs; he reduces it again by letting emotional activity develop in the consciousness of the soul; the ego builds up its ego organization; it degrades it again, because the will-activity in the self-consciousness becomes effective.

The mind unfolds within the human being not on the basis of building up the fabric, but on the degrading one. Where the spirit is supposed to work, the substance has to withdraw from its activity.

The very origin of thought within the etheric body is not based on a continuation of the etheric essence, but on its degradation. Conscious thinking does not happen in processes of formation and growth, but in those of disfigurement and withering, dying, which are continually incorporated into the etheric event.

In conscious thinking, thoughts emerge from bodily form and become human experiences as mental formations. "( Ref : GA 27, p. 16f )

→ Main article : I-consciousness

Through the ego, we confront ourselves as a self-aware nature of nature and seem to be completely separate from it at first. And yet there is an underlying mysterious relationship with the natural kingdoms. In particular, Rudolf Steiner has pointed out that the ego carries in itself the compressed forces of the mineral cosmos :

"When we speak of the ego, we must speak of the one in the man who, for example, not only has consciousness during waking, but is also present when man sleeps, which unfolds his powers into the whole universe, that irradiated and worked through and pulsed by the spiritual forces of the cosmos, when man sleeps: we carry this unconsciously into us, and if we could extirp it out of man, as we have said for the etheric body, for the astral body, we would get from this ego the whole picture of the mineral world-realm with all its different secrets of the cosmos - in this ego everything is crowded together, which is spread throughout the cosmos, so we carry the mineral cosmos within us. " ( Ref .: GA 167, p. 170 )

This is related to the fact that the development of our ego-consciousness is very closely connected with the form of the physical body . Rudolf Steiner has shown that the ego-consciousness arises from the fact that we, as it were, feel our physical form from the inside and, as we feel this limit, learn to distinguish ourselves from the world. But the human form is again an expression of the formative powers of the whole cosmos. Behind them are sublime spiritual beings, the Elohim or spirits of form , through whose sacrificial action we have received our ego, and who in nature give physical form to all that has been created. For this very reason the resurrection of the body becomes a decisive question for the human ego.

In his reality, we see the ego especially where the ego-consciousness has not yet awakened. This is the case in the first years of childhood up to that time, which is today about the third year of life, to which we can later consciously remember and where we have become aware of ourselves for the first time. Until then, the ego works into the physical body in order to make it the only suitable tool for ego-consciousness. Externally, this activity of the ego becomes apparent in those three faculties by which man fundamentally differs from the animal , namely in the power of upheaval , in speech and in thinking . If these abilities are trained down to their physical foundations, the ego, the real ego in its full spiritual reality, for the most part no longer participates in the further earthly migration and remains in the spiritual world . What we furthermore experience as self-consciousness as our earthly self is actually only a reflection of our true spiritual self. But precisely in this, in this mere pictorial character, which thereby receives all human knowledge , lies the possibility of freedom :

"And that is the elusive mystery that the ego actually stops at the point in time when we remember it, it does not change with the body, it stops, and that is precisely why we always have it looking back, reflecting our experiences, the ego does not take our earthly walk with us, only when we have passed through the gate of death do we have to turn back the way we call Kamaloka to our birth, to our ego The body pushes itself forward in the years - the ego stays behind, the ego stops - it is difficult to grasp, because one can not imagine that in the Time stops for a while as time progresses, but it is so, the ego stops, and indeed it stays on the ground, because that ego actually does not connect with what is happening on Earth's earth but it remains connected with the forces we call ours in the spiritual world. The ego stays there, the ego basically stays in the form it is bestowed, as we know, on the spirits of form. This ego is held in the spiritual world. ( Ref : GA 165, p. 16 )

→ Main article : I-term

The ego term, which first lights up at the age of three, is the first term the child is ever aware of, but of course it can not really be grasped at this point in time. But this is the point to which one can remember later in life. It is precisely this first ego experience in which the ego concept forms itself that is a meaningful experience which one can often remember very easily later on. What remains is first the ego-sensation . Only from the age of nine does the concept of the ego as such consciously meet the child.

"In today's normal life, man recalls to a certain point in his childhood, then memory vanishes, and although he realizes he has been there before, he does not remember it, he knows that it is It is the same spiritual-psychic ego that has built up its life, but it lacks the possibility of extending its memory beyond this stage.Who looks at many child lives, it will be able to make an observation out of them From the observation of the childlike soul, one will be able to obtain the result that the memory goes back to the point where it meets the point in time where the ego-concept, the idea of ​​the self in the world of self-realization, is reached This is an extremely important fact, the moment the child no longer says it on its own: Karlchen wants it, o Mariechen wants this, but where it says: I want that - from the moment when the conscious ego-conception begins, so does the memory of the past. " ( Ref .: GA 60, p. 57 )
"He who observes the life of a child in the right way knows that between the ninth and the eleventh year there is a life-development point for the child, which, depending on how he is recognized by the educator and teacher, destiny, inner and often It is up to this point that the child differs little from his surroundings, and it must be borne in mind that the child must receive a plant described differently before the ninth year than afterwards. The child first identifies himself with everything that surrounds him, then he learns to differ, then he is actually confronted with the ego-term - before it had only an ego-sensation, we must observe how the child behaves, how it starts to formulate certain questions differently from that point in time onwards.We have to address this important point in each individual childlike individuality, because it's crucial for the whole of life that follows. " ( Ref : GA 297a, p. 26 )


The elusive self-concept is based on freedom , which is the necessary prerequisite for the development of love , which is the real mission of all Earth evolution .

It has become clear to us that the ego of man has evolved out of a group soulfulness, from a kind of comprehensive all-ego, out of which it has differentiated itself Man again would have the desire to perish with his ego into any universal consciousness, into any total consciousness, everything that makes man strive to lose his ego, to go with it into an all-consciousness, is a product of weakness I, who knows that, after he has achieved this ego in the course of cosmic development, it is now inalienable, and man must first of all strive for the strong power, if he understands the world mission, this ego ever more inward, The true anthroposophists have none of that phrase which repeatedly emphasizes the ego's absorption in an All-I ch, melting into some mush. The true anthroposophical view of the world can only present the ultimate goal of the community of the self-independent and free-self, of the individually individualized self. That is exactly the earth mission, which expresses itself through love, that the ego learns to face the ego freely. No love is perfect, which results from compulsion, from being chained together. Only if and when each self is so free and independent that it can not love, its love is a completely free gift. This is, so to speak, the divine plan of the world, to make this ego so independent that, out of freedom, it can itself bring love to the god as an individual being. It would mean that people would be on the brink of dependency if they could somehow be forced to love, if only remotely. "( Ref : GA 104, p. 156f )

The ego is purely spiritual, and it is in the nature of the mind that it must create itself and can not be created by anything other than itself. It is of the same kind as the divine power of creation itself, as it were a tiny spark of the great spiritual world-fire.

"On the other hand, it is easy to misunderstand, as if such intuitions declared the ego to be one with God, but they do not say that the ego is God, but only that it is of the same kind and essence with the divine The drop of water taken from the sea is the sea, when it says that the drop is of the same essence or substance as the sea. "If one wants to make a comparison, one can say that the drop is related to the sea Thus, the "I" behaves towards the divine: man can find in himself a divine, because his very own essence is taken from the divine. " ( Ref : GA 13, p. 67 )

In order for the spark of the human ego to be ignited, the Elohim , the very creator gods of our earthly development , had to sacrifice their ego. This happened in the Lemurian period :

"We must realize that everything that preceded the Lemurian era was actually just a repetition of Saturn's, Sun's, and Moon's existence, and that only then did the first germination-as a possibility-be put into man, so that he could accept the fourth member of his being in the evolution of the earth: the I. If we take the whole stream of human evolution, we must say: Humanity, as it has spread over the earth - you have this retransmission more exactly in the In the Lemurian period, secret science is represented by certain human ancestors of this early period of our earth today, and in the Lemurian period we must establish a point in time in which the human race can speak properly in the modern sense was, can not yet be discussed so that one could say that it was already that I in the Er the people who have incarnated ever further and further. That was not the case. Before that, man's ego was by no means separated from the substance of that hierarchy which first gave rise to this ego of man, from the hierarchy of the spirits of form. "( Ref . GA 131, p. 177f )

At that time, however, the whole Ego-substance of the Elohim did not enter human beings' earthly incarnations. Part of it was retained in the spiritual world for the later Nathan boy Jesus , who descended to his first earthly incarnation only at the turn of the century, completely untouched by the consequences of the Fall .

What had already matured to perfection in the Elohim meant a completely new, germinating beginning for us. If the Elohim sacrificed their ego, that does not mean that we simply took it over. That would not have been possible, we would have had to skip many stages of development. Rather, the sacrifice of the Elohim triggered our own ego development. There can be no question that our ego is equal to the ego that the Elohim gave. Figuratively speaking, it differs from it in the way that the point without expansion differs from the circle of an infinitely large circle. And even if our punctiform self will have once extended itself to the cosmic circle, it will differ in many ways from the ego that the Elohim once offered. World development never exhausts itself in the constant return of the same.

"In the physical world, annihilation is possible, which occurs as death; in the elemental world there is no death. Man, insofar as he belongs to the elemental world, can not die; he can only transform himself into another entity. In the spiritual world no definite transformation is possible in the strict sense of the word; for whatever the human being may transform, in the spiritual world, the experienced past reveals itself as its own conscious existence. If this memory life is to disappear within the spiritual world, it must be sunk into oblivion by the will of the soul itself. The supersensible consciousness can come to this volitional decision if it has conquered the necessary strength of soul. If this happens, then out of self-evoked forgetting, the true essence of the "I" appears to him.The superspiritual environment gives the human soul the knowledge of this "true self." Just as the supersensible consciousness can experience itself in the etheric and the astral body, so too can it experience itself in the "true self."

This "true ego" is not produced by the mind-view; it exists for every human soul in its depths. The supersensible consciousness experiences only knowingly, which is for every human soul an unconscious fact, but belonging to its essence. After physical death, man gradually becomes immersed in the spiritual environment. Within it, its essence first appears with the memories of the sensory world. Although he does not have the support of the physical-sensory body, he can consciously live in these memories, because in them they incorporate the thought-beings corresponding to them, so that the memories no longer have the sheer shadow-existence which they have in the physical world. sensual world. And at a certain point in time between death and a new birth, the thought-beings of the spiritual environment work so strongly that then, without a willpower, the described forgetting is brought about. And with that, life appears in the "true self." Clairvoyant consciousness brings about, through the empowerment of the psychic life, that as a free mental state, which to a certain extent is a natural event for the experience between death and new birth. "( Ref : GA 17, p. 87f )

The true origin of our ego, the monad , lies on the Nirvanaplan .







"So, if we have to say to one another: Man occurs on earth in the middle of the Lemurian time, and for the first time creates his own karma, he did not create individual karma before - so we must ask, where can this karma come from? because it came in as something new? -It can only come from nirvana, when something had to work its way into the world that came from nirvana, from where it is created out of "nothingness." The beings who were then the Erde befruchteten, mußten bis ins Nirvana hinaufreichen. Was die vierfüßigen Wesen befruchtete, so daß sie Menschen wurden, waren Wesen, die vom Nirvanaplan herunterkamen. Sie nennt man Monaden. Das ist der Grund, warum damals Wesen dieser Art vom Nirvanaplan herunterkommen mußten. Vom Nirvanaplan ist das Wesen, das in uns, im Menschen ist, die Monade. Hier tritt etwas völlig Neues in die Welt hinein und verkörpert sich in dem, was schon da ist und was seinerseits vollständig die Wirkung frühererIs deeds. "( Ref : GA 93a, p. 125f )










The body shells of the human being were prepared for the Planetary stages of development that preceded Earth evolution . Earth mission is now to make man the ego-bearer, ie to enable him to receive the spiritual monad into his being. That was not possible until the middle of the Lemurian era . Although previously animated human beings lived on earth , but they were not yet I-carriers. Only after the separation of the moon could human beings absorb the ego into their bodily sheaths.







"We know that the earth is the reincarnation of other planetary states, the old moon, the old sun and the old Saturn, and we know that the Earth, as it evolved gradually, was called to the three Bodies which man has gradually evolved during the earlier incarnations of the earth - on Saturn the physical body, on the sun the etheric body and on the moon the astral body -, on earth the ego, the fourth member of the human body Everything that preceded the Lemurian period was only a preparation for this earthly mission: back then, in the Lemurian age, man developed himself in such a way that he was able to form the fourth link, ego-ity The first germ grows to form an "I" in the three limbs that man has gradually acquired, so we can say: Through those changes that have taken place on earth were carried on man was so that he could become an ego-carrier. Before the Lemurian era, the earth was also populated. Humans were on Earth in a completely different form. But these were people who were not yet ego-bearers who had actually developed only what they had brought over from Saturn, Sun and Moon as the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body; and we know what the processes in the whole universe are that have led man to the maturity of his development.







We know that in the beginning of our present evolution the earth was united with the sun and with the moon, that then the sun separated first and left behind a planetary body, which has united today's earth and the present moon. But we also know that if the earth had remained with the moon, all that was present to human beings would have hardened, mummified, turned into a lignified state. In order to prevent this, everything that was in the moon of substances and essences must first be expelled. In this way the human form was saved from being hardened, man was able to assume the present form, and only after the separation of the moon was he given the opportunity to become an ego-bearer. "( Lit .: GA 114, p. 81f )







Until the separation of the moon, humanity went through a difficult phase. After the sun had already separated from the earth, the moon forces still remaining in the earth had an increasingly hardening effect on the human body shells. It became increasingly difficult for the human souls - who did not yet carry the ego - to embody themselves on earth. Many could no longer find suitable bodies for their embodiment. They had to switch to other planets in the meantime. Essentially only one main pair - Adam and Eve - was able to conquer the hardened Earth substance at this time.







"What happened to those souls who could not find bodies?" They were caught up with the other planets that had now formed out of the common substance, so there were certain souls who were raptured to Saturn, others who were raptured to Saturn Jupiter, Mars, Venus, or Mercury, so that there was an earth time in which only the strongest souls could come to Earth during the great earth-winter.The weaker souls had to be taken care of by the other planets belonging to our solar system.







Indeed, during the Lemurian epoch, there was a period of time when, at least approximately, one could say: There was one pair of human beings, one main couple, who had the strength to overcome this unruly human substance and settle on the earth to embody, as it were, to persevere through the whole earth time. But that was also the time when the moon separated from the earth. And by this separation of the Moon, it became possible again for the human substance to be refined and made fit again to accept human souls that were weaker, so that the offspring of this one main pair were again able to be in softer substance than those who were before had lived the lunar separation. Then gradually all the souls who had risen up to Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and so forth, came back to earth, and with the multiplication of men from one main pair, it happened that the souls went to and fro returned from the cosmos to the earth and formed themselves as the descendants of the first main pair. "( Ref : GA 114, p. 83 )







The fall of man and the separation of the moons also led to the separation of the sexes and the associated individualization of the people. Only now could humans gradually mature into ego carriers. However, as a result of the fall, part of the Adam soul and the associated pure etheric forces - the tree of life - were retained in the spirit world . For the first time, these forces could embody themselves on earth through the Nathan boy Jesus and thus prepare the incarnation of Christ on earth.







"That was, so to speak, the Adam soul, not yet touched by the human guilt that was not yet entangled in what caused the people to fall down, these primordial powers of Adam individuality were kept there, they were there, and they were now directed as a "makeshift self" where the child was born to Joseph and Mary, and in the early years this baby Jesus had in himself the power of the original ancestor of earthly humanity. " ( Ref .: GA 114, p. 89 )







However, this Nathan Jesus had no actual ego; He still preserved that pure state that lies before the ego development. The same ego-powers that were denied to the Nathan boy Jesus reoccurred in John the Baptist , the born again Elijah .







"Such an ego as the ego of John the Baptist is born into a body directly under the direction and guidance of the great mother-lodge of humanity, the central place of earthly spiritual life." From the same place came the John-I, from which also the soul-being for the baby Jesus the Gospel of Luke, except that those attributes were given to the Jesus that were not yet permeated by the egoistic ego, that is, a young soul is directed to where the born-again Adam is to be incarnated.







It will seem strange to you that here once a soul could be directed from a large mother's lodge to a place without a properly trained self. For the same ego, which is basically denied to the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke, is given to the body of John the Baptist, and this both, which lives as soul beings in the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke and what lives as I in the Baptist John, that from the beginning has an inward relationship. "( Ref : GA 114, p. 106f )







All these preparatory steps were necessary to prepare the actual ego birth on earth.






















The actual ego-birth on earth took place only through the death of Christ on Golgotha , through the Mystery of Golgotha :







"On a Friday, April 3, 33, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the Mystery of Golgotha ​​took place, and there also took place the birth of the I in the sense we have often characterized, and it does not matter on which earthly point man lives, or what religion he belongs to, what came into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha ​​is valid for all men, as it is for all the world that Caesar died on a certain day, and not It is another simple fact of occult life that the Mystery of Golgotha ​​took place on this day, and that it has to do with the birth of the ego That's a fact of a very international kind. " ( Ref : GA 143, p. 163 )







What exactly is meant by this becomes clear from Rudolf Steiner's preface to the 1912/13 calendar:







"This is the basis for the assumption of" spiritual science, "which sees in the given year the moment in which humanity's development has entered into the forces by which the human ego is without symbol through the powers of its own imagination in itself Before this point in time man needed, in order to grasp himself and to think into the world, ideas that are taken from the external perception.The preparation for this point in time lies, on the one hand, in the ancient Hebrew culture, which On the other hand, in the Greek intellectual life, which prepared the time both in its artists and in its worldly ways by grasping man by presenting himself as an earthly being, and in his philosophy by not becoming a world external pictures, but characterized by ideas which originated only as a thinking consciousness of the human interior (Thales to Aristotle). The Christian confession expressed the feeling of this fact of mankind by putting the "Mystery of Golgotha" at the appropriate time "the death and resurrection of Christ." ( Ref . Posts 37/38, p. 39 )










"Nowhere except in Central Europe is" I "said, if one means one's own self, one's own essence, it has been directed by the Folk Spirit, manifesting itself as a linguistic spirit, the whole evolution, gradually adding to its own essence But I, "I-Ch," is Jesus Christ, it is in Jesus Christ in that, in that in the "I" Jesus Christ is pronounced in his first letter, that is expressed symbolically, which is in the Central European Spirit-being lies intimately connected with the most inward experience Every time one utters "I," one pronounces the initial letters "Jesus Christ." If one only looks at those things that are still considered fantastic today, the If one were to direct spiritual eyes, one would already find how unconsciously the spirits of the higher hierarchies always work into human evolution, and then find something meaningful in the things that one accepts today just like that. " ( Ref : GA 159, p. 217 )







"The Christ himself must effectively become alive in the human ego, and in Central Europe, as in no other European language, the whole development gradually inclines toward being called the" I. "And I am" I, "like a mighty symbol in the intimate interplay of that which can be the most sacred of the mind with this mind itself, that stands there in Central Europe: I = I-CH - Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ and at the same time the human I. Thus the Volksgeist, inspiring the people, works in characteristic words to express what the underlying facts are. " ( Ref : GA 159, p. 193 )
















"The first Christian initiate of Europe, Ulfilas , has put into the German language himself that man found in the language the" I. "Other languages ​​express this relation to the ego by a particular form of the verb, for example, in Latin. amo », but the German language adds the ego.« I »is: J.Ch. = Jesus Christ.That is deliberately put into the German language, it is not coincidence.They are the initiates who have created the language Just as in Sanskrit the AUM stands for the Trinity , so we have the sign "I" for the interior of man, thus creating a center through which the passions of the world can be transformed into rhythm I rhythmise this center is literally the Christ.







All western nations have developed the activity, the passions. An impulse from the east must come to bring in the same calm. A harbinger of this is already Tolstoy's book "About doing nothing". In the activity of the West we often find chaos. This is still increasing.The spirituality of the East should bring a center to the chaos of the West. What is practiced for a long time as karma, that goes into wisdom. Wisdom is the daughter of Karma. All Karma finds its balance in wisdom. A wise man who has arrived at a certain level is called a sun hero, because his heart has become rhythmic. His life is an image of the sun, which travels through the sky in rhythmic paths.







The word "AUM" is the breath. The breath is in the Word, as the Holy Spirit to Christ, as the Atma to the Self. "( Ref . GA 93a, p. 29f )






















"The very essence of the" I "is independent of all external things, and therefore its name can not be called to it by any external appearance." Those religious confessions which consciously maintained their connection with supersensory intuition call, therefore, the designation "I" "Unspeakable name of God." For the very implied is pointed out when that term is used, and no external has access to that part of the human soul which is hereby contemplated. "Here is the" hidden sanctuary "of the soul Being can gain an entrance with which the soul is of the same kind. "The God who dwells in man speaks when the soul recognizes himself as I." ( Ref . GA 13, p. 66f )







The intuition of one's own self in the sense of Fichte is so important because, with regard to this "self," man in general remains without any thought content, if he does not give himself such a thought from within, for the rest of the world content, for all perception Feeling, wanting and so on, which constitute the content of ordinary existence, fills the outer world with man, and in Fichte's words he needs basically nothing but the "machine of nature," which manages his business without his intervention " [3] But the " I "remains empty, no outer world fills it with content, if it does not come from within, the knowledge" I am "can never be anything but the most intimate inner experience of man Thus, in this sentence, there is something within the soul that can only speak from the inside, but just as this apparently completely empty affirmation of one's self occurs, so do all the higher occult experiences They become more content and livelier, but they have the same form. Through the ego experience, as represented by Fichte, one can first of all get to know the type of all occult experiences in a purely mental field. It is therefore right to say that the "I am" the God begins to speak in man. And just because this happens in a purely mental form, so many people do not want to acknowledge it. "( Ref . GA 35, p. 57f )







What lives as I in man is the essence of the " I-am, " of Christ :
















"The Israelite people should not picture their gods - why? No external name can call "me," this being; a very different name can only express that: "I am the I-am!" There is no way to find elsewhere the name of the Sun-Spirit than in man. That which lives as I in man, that is the Christ-being. "( Ref . GA 109, p. 154 )






















It would be wrong to define the individual ego by its demarcation from other egos or from the totality of the cosmos . As a purely creative principle, the ego eludes any delimitation or definition . In a very specific way the ego is one with the whole whose individual expression it is. Figuratively, one can imagine the human Iche as a multitude of superimposed infinite great circles, all of which extend to infinity, and yet each has its own color and its own distinctive center, in which the infinity is uniquely reflected. This image is a suitable meditation object to enlighten about the true nature of the ego.







"Another such word is the word" I. "This word occupies a special position among all the words of human language.At the age of three, man learns to use that word, but this is an age in which there is no actual ego Therefore, one first learns to speak this word automatically, but the birth of the ego does not take place until the age of 21. What appears there, however, is still not the true ego throughout life As an ordinary person, it is not until after death that every person uses the word "I." only provisionally.This provisional use of the word "I" must be particularly conscious of the meditant only gradually find the way to the true I by first learning to experience it through all its three envelopes. " ( Ref : GA 266c, p. 471 )







Evolutionary history, the ego is the youngest of all the essentials and therefore still very little matured. It was first assessed during our earthly planetary developmental stage. If we look up to the divine world from our ego, we must do so with the utmost modesty, but at the same time - of our own free will - create the obligation to develop our own self and to become a creative source in the service of future world development close. For that, too, is inextricably linked to the nature of the spirit: to be constantly giving away to the world. Spirit is engaged in sacrificial love. Only from the immeasurable divine love could the whole creation spring forth, and only when man makes a spark of this love in him, he can realize his individual ego.
















"One must already lose one's earth-ego in order to get one's true true self in intuition, and one who does not develop this devotion can not approach this true self." One would like to say: The true I will not be sought if it should appear, if it should reveal itself, and it hides itself when it is sought, for it is found only in love, and love is the surrender of one's own essence to the alien essence how a strange being is found. " ( Ref .: GA 84, p. 142 )







The ego develops through the deeds it sets on earth. This evolution can not be accomplished during a single earthly life, but takes place in a whole series of successive earthly incarnations. This has already been pointed out by Lessing in his education of the human race (§ 92 - § 100). The deeds of one life condition the predisposed abilities and the future fate of the ego in the further life on earth. The human ego is subject to the laws of reincarnation and karma .







Our present self-consciousness still has little idea of ​​the true spiritual nature of our ego. Fatal strikes seem to strike the human being as unintentionally and unexpectedly as if by chance - and yet spring from the free determination of our true higher ego, who through these trials and challenges seeks suitable ways for his further development. The further the true self-knowledge of man progresses, the more he can become the conscious executor of his destiny from the insight into the intellectual developmental needs of his individual being. The destiny, the karma, which works out of the unconscious depths of the soul, gradually becomes the conscious law of the soul, which gives itself the individual human spirit. This conscious law of the human soul is also called Dharma by an Indian term. The next goal of human development is to transform karma more and more into Dharma through repeated earthly lives. Once this goal has been attained, man, as the Buddha for the first time has said, no longer needs any further earthly incarnations for his future development, but from there onwards proceeds on a purely spiritual path of development.







The idea that the human ego evolves through the acts it sets out of free will is already based on Rudolf Steiner's philosophy of freedom . As a basic maxim of the free man applies to him:







"Living in the love of action and letting go in the understanding of the foreign will is the basic maxim of the free people." ( Ref : GA 4, p. 166 )







"... the oriental wisdom went beyond not experiencing the ego, but to overcome it, to extinguish it. [...] Yes, my dear friends, whoever seeks salvation in the ego is self-seeking Selfishness is ego-seeking Deity Selfishness, ie egoism, is about finding the ego As long as one seeks the ego, as long as one develops selfishness, and freed from selfishness only finding, finding the ego, has found it, then One can no longer be tormented by selfishness, egotism, in finding the ego lies the only real overcoming of selfishness, and who today, after the Mystery of Golgotha, still wants to flee the self, who still says the same thing today as People in ancient India have said that they are thrown back from the ego into the craving for the ego, who is in the habit of selfishness. [...] As long as the ego had not entered the evolution of humanity, that is, before the Mystery of Golgotha , had to to refine egoism. There was oriental wisdom in the place. To speak today in this way means to shove the ego out in front of you, and in the back grips a Lucifer and pushes you into selfishness; and you do not notice that! "( Ref . GA 167, p. 281f )







First apocalyptic seal







The ego is a double-edged sword and is represented in the apocalypse of John by the sharp, double-edged sword that comes from the mouth of the Son of Man.










"He who does not understand that this ego is a double-edged sword, will scarcely understand the whole meaning of the evolution of mankind and of the world." On the one hand, this ego is the cause of men hardening in themselves, that which is at their disposal may be involved in external things and in inner goods, in the service of this ego, and it is the ego that causes all human desires to satisfy that ego as such, as this ego strives to do to bring in a part of the earthly possession of the earth as his property, as this ego strives to drive away from its territory all other Ichs, to fight it, to fight it: that is the one side of the ego, but on the other side we must not forget that this ego is at the same time that which gives man his independence, his inner freedom, which in the truest sense of the word e In this ego its dignity is founded. It is the attachment to the divine in man [...]







Thus the ego will be the pledge of the highest goal of man. But it is at the same time when it does not find love, when it hardens, the seducer who plunges it into the abyss. Then it is what separates people from each other, what calls them to the great war of all against all, not only to the war of peoples against peoples - because then the concept of the people will no longer have the meaning that it has today - but to the war of the individual against the individual in the most varied fields of life, to the war of the estates against the estates, the castes against the castes, the sexes against the sexes. In all areas of life the ego will become a bone of contention, and therefore we may say that the ego on the one hand can lead to the highest and on the other to the deepest. That's why it's a sharp, double-edged sword. And the one who has brought to man the full Ego-consciousness, the Christ Jesus, he is, as we have seen, symbolically represented in our apocalypse as the one who has the sharp, double-edged sword in his mouth.







We put it as a great achievement of man that he could ascend to this free ego-concept just through Christianity. The Christ Jesus has brought this ego to its full extent. Therefore, this ego must be expressed by the sharp, double-edged sword that you know from one of our seals. And that this sharp, double-edged sword passes out of the mouth of the Son of Man is again understandable, for when the human being has learned to pronounce with full consciousness, the ego has been given to rise to the highest, to sink into the deepest. The sharp, double-edged sword is one of the most important symbols that we encounter in the Apocalypse. (First seal.) "( Ref : GA 104, p. 156ff )







The aura of man with ego body or ego carrier







→ Main article : I-wearer







The ego-bearer is the fourth essential element of earthly embodied man and thus the external expression for the ego. To the clairvoyant , the ego-bearer appears as an egg-shaped bluish ball at the root of the nose behind the forehead, slightly elongated.







"The ego-body shows itself to the clairvoyant as a blue hollow sphere between the eyes, behind the forehead." When man begins to work on it, rays emanate from this point. " ( Ref : GA 95, p. 154 )







"Again, this expresses itself to the seer in a peculiar manner: when he examines the astral body, everything is in continual motion except for a single small space, which remains, like a somewhat elongated egg-shaped bluish ball, slightly behind the forehead It is found only in the human being, in the educated it is no longer as perceptible as in the uneducated, it is most evident in savages who are deep in civilization, at this point there is nothing in truth, an empty space. As the center of the flame, which is empty, appears blue through the halo of light, so also does this dark empty place appear blue, because the auric light shines all around, which is the external expression for the ego. " ( Ref : GA 95, p. 17 )







"The ego-bearer, the fourth member of the human being, is like a kind of oval figure whose origin can be traced back to the forebrain, where it is visible to the psychic as a bluish-glowing sphere Like a space-egg, one could say that plays into man, a kind of blueness. "How is this ego-carrier to be seen? Only when the clairvoyant is able to conquer also the astral body of man, only then can he The three other bodies are shared by the human being with the three kingdoms of nature, the mineral kingdom, plant and animal kingdom, but by the ego-bearer he differs from them, thus he is the crown of creation. " ( Ref : GA 109, p. 183 )







The ego-carrier has matured until the age of 21 . According to the original plan of creation , the ego-consciousness should awaken only at this age. In fact, however, it awakens much earlier due to the Luciferian influence, namely around the age of three . This creates an often painful disharmony between the inner emotional experience and the outer organization of the human being.
















"What happens if we hold together the two facts: the one that the real ego-bearer of man is born in the twentieth and twenty-first years, with the one that we mentally call ourselves as one of the third and fourth years? Here it happens that in the present cycle of its development man has a sense of his own, a feeling, which does not correspond to his inner organization, as it has become, for the consciousness of the ego occurs at the third and fourth years, but the organization of the ego is only in its twentieth and twenty-first year.-This fact is of fundamental importance to the understanding of man.publishing this fact abstractly as spiritual-scientific knowledge, one will not be particularly excited about it, but because that fact is true , there are many experiences that people know very well, but not in the light of this fact Everything that man can experience in the discord between external organization and inner experience, in suffering and pain in life, in that certain things are not possible for him by virtue of his organization, in disharmony between what he wishes and wants and which, what he can do, the fact that he can have ideals that lead beyond his organization, all this leads back to the fact that the consciousness of our ego takes a very different path than the bearer of our ego. In this respect, we are a twofold human being: an outward man who is organized to develop his egoity in the twentieth or twenty-first year, and an inner soul-man emancipated from his outward organization as early as the fourth and fifth years of his psychic life , Emancipation of the ego-consciousness from the external organization takes place in childhood. "( Ref : GA 143, p. 120f )







The warm blood is the immediate physical expression of the human ego. It originated in the Lemurian period in connection with the Luciferian seduction . The prerequisite for the formation of the red blood was the iron that Mars gave Earth in its first half of development. Lucifer has a direct influence on the blood ( blood is a very special juice - fist) and seduces man to egoism , but also enables him to be self-reliant.




In the blood, a constant battle rages between life and death. The blue bloodstream kills every moment the life that flows in the red blood. Only by the constant generation and destruction of the blood can our ego become anchored in the physical existence. The blood gives the consciousness of the ego to the human being by becoming physical only for a short moment and then shooting back into the spiritual. Lucifer interferes with this process.







The blood enabled man to become more and more integrated into material existence. But there had to be a time when the surplus blood and thus the excess egoism had to be sacrificed. This happened through the sacrifice of Christ on Golgotha . The clairvoyant gaze shows how the blood, in its finest parts in the heart, continually eats away, that is, returns to the etheric state from which it originally condensed. This ethereal blood continually flows from the heart to the head.










Sunbathing and ganglion system







The main point of attack of the I in the nervous system of the physical body is the solar network or the associated sympathetic nervous system (ganglia system); the ego is thereby bound to the abdominal organs. The ego becomes aware of it only very, very dully subliminally. Since the ganglia system co-determines the whole circulation of the blood , this does not contradict the fact that the ego has its expression in the blood.







"Suppose, then, first, that we are dealing with the ego-nature of man, with that member of the human being that we call the ego." This ego-nature is, of course, completely supersensible, for it is the supersensible thing we are first, but it works through the sensuous: that which causes the ego to function, chiefly in the intellectualistic sense, in human physical nature, is the nervous system called the ganglia system, the nervous system that emanates from the solar plexus Ganglion system, this solar system of braiding (see drawing, black), which unfolds an activity which, at first, seems to have nothing in particular to do with what might be called nerve-life in the materialistic sense I-activity That man, when he begins to occult himself to look, the center of the ego in the head, this does not contradict this, since we are dealing with the ego-element of man with something supersensible, and the point in which man experiences the ego is different from the point of attack, through which the ego preferably works in man.







The meaning of the word: The ego acts through the point of application of the solar network - one must be completely clear. This meaning lies in the following: The ego of man himself is actually endowed with a very dull consciousness. The ego-thought is something other than the ego. The ego-thought is, in a sense, that which strikes as a wave into consciousness, but the ego-thought is not the actual ego. The real ego, as a visual force, intervenes through the sun's web into the whole organization of man.







Certainly one can say that the ego is distributed over the whole body. But its main point of attack, where it particularly interferes with human figuration, with the human organization, is the solar network, or rather, because they all belong to the branches, the ganglia system, this subconscious nervous process that takes place in the ganglia system. Since the ganglion system co-determines the whole circulation of the blood, this does not contradict the fact that the ego has its expression in the blood. In these things one has to take exactly what has been said. It is something else to say that the ego intervenes through the ganglia system in the educational forces and in the whole living conditions of the organism, as if it is said that the blood with its circulation is the expression for the ego in man. Human nature is complicated.







In order to bring the meaning of what is said fully before the soul, it is good to answer the following question: What is the relation of the ego to this ganglia system and everything connected with it? How is this ego anchored to a certain extent in the abdominal organs of man? It is so that when a person lives in a normal, healthy state, this ego is as tied up as it is in the solar network and everything connected with it. It is bound by this solar braid. What does that mean? This human ego, which came to man in the course of earth evolution as a gift of the spirits of form, was, as we know, exposed to the Luciferic temptation. Just as man has this ego, as it is infected by Luciferic forces, it would actually be the bearer of evil forces. This must necessarily be recognized truthfully. Not by its nature is the ego the bearer of evil forces; but by the fact that the ego is infected by Luciferic seduction with Luciferic powers, it is in itself the bearer of really evil forces, of forces which are inclined by the Luciferic infection, of that which the thought-life of the ego means to evil distort. Man has been able to think since he received an I. If there had been no Luciferian temptation, he would think well of all things. But as Luciferic temptation has existed, the ego does not think well, but is infected with Luciferism, just as it is in the earth's evolution: treacherous, treacherous. It thinks that everywhere it wants to put itself in the light and everything else in the shade. It is infected with all sorts of egoisms. That's the way the ego is, because it's luciferically infected. What now lives as a ganglion system, as a sunbeam in man, has already come over from the Moon's evolution, and in a sense represents the house for the I; there the ego fits in a certain way. It can therefore be tied up, tied up. And so the following fact is present: through its Luciferian infection the ego has a tendency to behave maliciously, to behave in a lie, to put itself in the light, the other in the shade; but it is tied up by the nervous system of the abdomen. There it has to parry. Through the nervous system of the abdomen, the literally advancing powers that have come up through Saturn's, Sun's, and Moon's evolution, force the ego not to be a demon in the evil sense of the word. So that we carry our ego within us so that it is tied to the abdominal organs. "( Ref . GA 174, p. 126ff )







The ego, in a sense, does not accompany our earthly wandering during the earthly incarnation but remains in the spiritual world at that moment, to which we can consciously recall. This moment is around the age of three. Only after death , when we have reached Kamaloka backwards through time at this moment, we meet our true self again. During our earthly existence we do not even experience our true self, but only its shadowy earthly image:







"We learn to express our ego at a certain time of our childhood, and we gain a relationship with that ego from the time we recall it in later years, and we know it from a variety of humanities considerations: until then the ego has It has a formative and creative effect on us until the moment when we have a conscious relationship to our I. In the child, this ego is also there, but it works in us, it first forms the body within us Supernatural powers of the spiritual world When we have passed through conception and birth, it still manages to spend some time, which lasts years, on our body, until we have our body as a tool so that we can consciously grasp ourselves as an ego There is a deep mystery connected with this entry of the ego into human body nature, and we ask man when he meets us: How old are you? - He gives us as his age to the years that have elapsed since his birth. As I said, here we touch on a certain mystery of spiritual science, which will become clearer and clearer to us in the course of the next time, but which I only want to mention today, as it were, to communicate. So what man gives us as his age at a certain time of his life, that refers to his physical body. He tells us nothing but; his physical body has been in development so long since his birth. The ego does not participate in this evolution of this physical body. The ego stops.







And that is the elusive mystery that the ego actually stops at the point in time to which we remember. It is not changed with the body, it stops. Precisely because of this, we always have it before us that, looking through it, it reflects our experiences. The ego does not participate in our earthly migration. Only when we have passed through the gate of death do we have to turn back the way we call Kamaloka until our birth to find our ego again, and then take it on our further journey. The body advances in the years - the ego stays behind, the ego stops. It is difficult to understand because one can not imagine that something will stop in time as time progresses. But it is like that. The ego stands still, and indeed it remains grounded, because this ego in fact does not connect itself with what comes from the earthly existence to man, but because it remains connected with those forces which we call ours in the spiritual world , The ego stays there, the ego basically stays in the form it is bestowed, as we know, on the spirits of form. This ego is held in the spiritual world. It must be kept in the spiritual world, otherwise we as human beings would never be able to reach the original task and original goal during our earthly evolution of the earth. What man has undergone here on earth through his Adam nature, of which he bears a mark in the grave, when he dies as Adam, that is attached to the physical body, etheric body and astral body, comes from this. The ego waits, waiting with all that is in it, the whole time that man passes through on earth only looks at the further development of man - as man recovers himself when he passes through the gate of death gone by making the way back. That is, we remain - in a sense that is meant - with our ego, as it were, back in the spiritual world. It should be aware of this humanity. And she could only become aware of it by the fact that in a certain time from those worlds to which man belongs, out of the spiritual worlds, the Christ came down and prepared himself in the body of Jesus, in the way we know it - twice - what should serve as his body on earth. "( Lit .: GA 165, p. 15ff )
















"Now you will say: But we have our ego, our ego has grown old with us, our astral body, our thinking, feeling and willing have also grown old with us." When one is sixty years old, it is his I have also become sixty years old.-If we had our true, our actual self before us in the ego of which we speak daily, then the objection would be justified, but we have in the ego of which we speak daily It is not our real ego before us, but our real ego, that stands at the starting point of our earthly life: our physical body becomes, say, sixty years old, reflecting backwards through the mediation of the etheric body, always from the point in time in which the physical body lives, the mirror image of the true ego, this mirror image of the true ego, which we get back from our physical body at every moment, which in truth comes from something that does not reach the earth n went with us, we see. And this mirror image we call our ego. Of course, this mirror image grows older, because it ages that the mirror apparatus, the physical body, is gradually no longer as fresh as it was in early childhood, then at last becomes rattled, and so on. But the fact that the ego, which really is only the mirror image of the true ego, also shows itself to be old, only comes from the fact that the mirroring apparatus is no longer so good when we have grown old with the physical body. And the etheric body is that which now always depends on the present, as in perspective, on our true self and on our astral body, which does not even go down into the physical world. "( Ref . GA 226, p. 14f







The crystalline earth element , the highest manifestation of the mineral kingdom , which first came into existence when the moon emerged from the earth , is quite different from the solidifying viscous monster substance that had existed until then. The crystalline earth substance is harder and denser than the ancient monastic matter, but it is completely open and transparent to the highest spiritual forces that come from cosmic realms that reach far beyond the confines of our planetary system into the fixed star sky , even coming from areas that lie beyond space and time . In the medieval mysteries one spoke rightly of the crystal sky, which forms the border to the super-spatial and over-temporal world.







The crystal- forming forces, which come from a world area beyond the already created, as it were outside of the creation , are closely related to the creative ego-forces, which from now on people could increasingly adopt. The ego is, as it were, a crystal-like, geometrically shaped being.







"When the astral body is taken out of the physical body, it takes on complicated plant forms, and the ego of man is a purely mineral, crystal-formed being, it is quite geometrically shaped. In form, man is man in the physical body, in the etheric body he is actually animal, plant-like in the astral, and mineral in the ego. " ( Ref .: GA 342, p. 123 )







https://www.waldorflibrary.org/journals/15-gateways/414-springsummer-2001-issue-40-the-young-child-from-birth-to-seven