Splitting of the personality

From AnthroWiki

The splitting of the personality is a necessary consequence of the splitting of the soul forces in a correspondingly advanced spiritual training, which leads to the complete separation of the soul forces of thinking, feeling and willing, which are normally more or less closely connected with each other:

„However, great changes take place in the secret disciple with the above-mentioned finer bodies (etheric body, astral body). Such changes are connected with certain developmental processes of the three basic forces of the soul, with willing, feeling and thinking. Before the secret training of the human being, these three forces are connected in a quite definite way, regulated by higher world laws. Man does not will, feel or think in any arbitrary way. When, for example, a certain idea appears in the consciousness, it is followed by a certain feeling according to natural laws, or it is followed by a decision of the will which is lawfully connected with it. One enters a room, finds it dull and opens the windows. One hears one's name called and follows the call. You are asked and answer. One sees a foul-smelling thing and gets a feeling of unwillingness. These are simple connections between thinking, feeling and willing. But if you look at human life, you will find that everything in this life is based on such connections. Indeed, a person's life can only be described as "normal" if one notices in it such a connection between thinking, feeling and willing that is founded in the laws of human nature. One would find it contradictory to these laws if, for example, a person felt a sense of pleasure at the sight of a malodorous object or if he did not answer questions. The success that one expects from a correct education or appropriate instruction is based on the assumption that one can establish a connection between thinking, feeling and willing in the disciple that corresponds to human nature. When certain ideas are taught to the trainee, it is done on the assumption that they will later enter into lawful connections with his feelings and decisions of will. - All this is due to the fact that in the finer bodies of the human soul the centres of the three forces, thinking, feeling and willing, are connected with each other in a lawful way. And this connection in the finer soul organism also has its image in the grosser physical body. In this, too, the organs of the will are in a certain lawful connection with those of thought and feeling. A certain thought therefore regularly calls forth a feeling or an activity of the will. - In the higher development of the human being, the threads which connect the three basic forces are interrupted. At first this interruption takes place only in the finer organism of the soul; but with still higher ascent the separation extends also to the physical body. (In the higher spiritual development of man, for example, his brain actually breaks up into three separate parts. The separation, however, is such that it is not perceptible to ordinary sensory perception and cannot be detected even by the most acute sensory instruments. But it does occur, and the clairvoyant has means of observing it. The brain of the higher clairvoyant is divided into three independently functioning entities: the brain of thought, feeling and will).

The organs of thinking, feeling and willing then stand completely free for themselves. And their connection is now not established by any laws implanted in them, but must be taken care of by the awakened higher consciousness of the human being himself. - This is the change which the secret disciple notices in himself, that no connection is established between an idea and a feeling, or a feeling and a decision of the will, and so on, unless he himself creates such a connection. No impulse leads him from a thought to an action unless he freely causes this impulse within himself. He can now stand completely numb before a fact which before his training inspired him with ardent love or the most vehement hatred; he can remain inactive with a thought which before inspired him to an action as if of its own accord. And he can perform deeds out of decisions of the will for which a man who has not passed through the secret training would not have the slightest inducement. The great achievement which is granted to the secret pupil is that he attains perfect mastery over the interaction of the three soul forces; but this interaction is also placed entirely under his own responsibility.

Only through this transformation of his being can the human being enter into conscious contact with certain supersensible forces and entities. For his own soul forces have a corresponding relationship to certain basic forces of the world. The power, for example, which lies in the will, can have an effect on certain things and entities of the higher world and also perceive them. But it can only do this when it has become free from its connection with feeling and thinking within the soul. As soon as this connection is loosened, the effect of the will emerges externally. And so it is with the forces of thinking and feeling. When a human being sends me a feeling of hatred, this is visible to the clairvoyant as a fine cloud of light of a certain colouring. And such a clairvoyant can ward off this feeling of hatred in the same way as the sense-man wards off a physical blow that is struck against him. Hatred becomes a tangible phenomenon in the supersensible world. But the clairvoyant can only perceive it by being able to send outwards the power that lies in his feeling, just as the sensual man directs outwards the receptivity of his eye. And so it is with far more significant facts of the sensuous world as with hatred. Man can enter into conscious intercourse with them through the exposure of the fundamental forces of his soul.“ (Lit.:GA 10, p. 184ff)

This change in the life of the soul does not only begin when one does regular meditation exercises, but already when one receives esoteric knowledge and tries to understand it:

„For this must be taken quite seriously, that already at the moment when we receive esoteric knowledge, our mere understanding of the esoteric causes in us a different relation of thinking, feeling, willing than we are accustomed to for everyday consciousness.“ (Lit.:GA 270a, p. 65)

Another consequence of this development is therefore that we learn to look back from our higher being to our lower, earthly personality:

„Therefore, it is important really to note that the moment clairvoyance begins and one thereby ascends to the revelation of higher worlds, there is really a kind of splitting of the personality. The one personality that one is on the physical plane, one leaves behind. One is now another personality by ascending to a higher world. And just as we are looked at in the higher world by the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, as we are perceived by the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, so we look at our ordinary personality from our higher point of view itself. We, having gone out with the higher being from the lower being, look as a higher being at our lower being. So that when we want to say something valid for the higher worlds, we do well to wait until we are in a position to say: "That is you, whom you see in your clairvoyant field, that is you" - this "that is you" corresponds on the higher plane to the "that is I" on the physical plane. On the higher plane, this "That I am" transforms itself into "That you are". There is actually more to what has just been said than is usually thought. Imagine that you were looking back from your present point of view to the time when you were eight or thirteen or fifteen years old, and you were trying to reconstruct a small part of your life from memory from the eighth, thirteenth or fifteenth year. Vividly imagine this looking back into your own thought world, reconstructing the memories from the thought world. Now visualise the feeling you now have towards that eight- or thirteen- or fifteen-year-old boy or girl who was yourself. Vividly visualise your present feeling towards these past experiences. As soon as one comes up from the physical plane into the higher world, the moment in which we are now living immediately becomes such a memory as the one just characterised. One looks back on what one is now on the physical plane and on what one can still become in the rest of one's physical life, just as you look back from the present point of view on the experiences of the eighth, thirteenth, fifteenth year. It is quite true: what we feel, what we think, what we imagine, what we act on the physical plane, at the moment we enter the higher world, all that we sum up under our self on the physical plane is a memory. We look down on the physical plane and, as soon as we live in the higher world, we have become a memory. And just as we keep apart a present standpoint of our experience from one that has long since passed, so we must keep apart that which we experience in higher worlds and that which we experience on the physical plane.“ (Lit.:GA 154, p. 98f)

If this splitting of the personality occurs in an abnormal way, which can also happen spontaneously without specific spiritual training through a strong mental shock, then this can lead to the appearance of our double. This applies especially to our present age of the consciousness soul, since today the three soul forces are already very largely separated from each other through natural development.

„Man will gradually feel as if something were walking beside him, something that thinks with him, listens with him, even speaks with him if he is not very strong inwardly. It is a second self that emerges, a double that one has put outside oneself. The more seriously a person has followed the esoteric path, the more of his old self he puts out of himself, that is, like the snake he sheds one skin after the other. These skins - comparatively speaking - become a second body, a double that never leaves one in life. In the ancient Egyptian mysteries, the person who has put his double out of himself was called the "Kha-man". The double is chained to the Kha-man to constantly remind him of how his former life was or how he still is. This is not always a pleasant sensation. But the consciousness of always carrying this double with him will make him aware of his faults, so that he should mend his ways. He should constantly feel this presence, otherwise it would become dangerous and he would forget, above all his high ideals and intentions, what his inner life actually is and what his faults are. It would be life-threatening under certain circumstances even for a high initiate, in spite of his high aspirations, if he were to forget this double for even a moment. He would actually be liable to lose his physical body by death, in much the same way as one who, absorbed in a sublime problem, would forget to pay attention to his body and as a result of this inattention would be run over. The stronger the double occurs, the better it is for our development, for otherwise we would be indulging in great illusions about ourselves. For we are not able to see and recognise our own progress in our development; only the one who is our teacher can do that. Let us remember that passage in the story of creation where the Elohim, having created man together, ascended to the sun. Only then could they judge their work, which we find expressed in the words: "And they looked upon their work, and saw that it was good." They had reached their perfection, and therefore they could judge their work.“ (Lit.:GA 266b, p. 274f)

„Through this double we get to know thoroughly all that we have to put out of ourselves. He shows it to us again and again. All the insincerity, unkindness, egoism and other bad qualities that are in us come to us through the experience of this double. And the fact that we still carry these qualities around with us, that we cannot yet shake them off, causes the feeling of unease that the double gives us. As long as we still had these bad qualities within us, in our subconscious, as it were in the depths of the sea of our soul, we did not yet become aware of them in all their strength. But when the spiritual man develops and grows more and more, when he looks admonishingly at these qualities of our soul, they have a tormenting effect through their presence, which this spiritual man can no longer tolerate. And therefore it is very good when the feeling of tormenting uneasiness arises very strongly, for by this means we get rid of this double most quickly.“ (Lit.:GA 266b, p. 279f)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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