The Rudolf Steiner Archive

On repeated earth lives and karma. Of the astral body of man and of the spiritual world. Of ahrimanic entities

[ 1 ] It is particularly difficult for the soul to recognize that there is something in the life of the soul that is as external to the consciousness of the soul as the so-called external world in the ordinary sense. It resists it - unconsciously - because it believes that its own being is endangered by this fact. It instinctively turns its spiritual gaze away from this fact. The fact that the newer science theoretically concedes the matter as such is not yet a full experience of this fact with all the consequences of the inner grasp of it and of penetrating itself with it. If the consciousness can come to feel this fact full of life, then it learns to recognize an inner core in the soul being, which is independently essential in relation to everything that can develop in the realm of the conscious soul life between birth and death. Consciousness learns to know a being in its subsoil as whose creature it must feel itself to be. And as its creature it must also feel the body with all its powers and qualities, which is the bearer of this consciousness. In the course of such an experience the soul learns to feel the maturing of a spiritual entity within it, which withdraws from the influences of conscious life. It comes to feel how this inner entity becomes more and more powerful, but also more independent, in the course of life between birth and death. It learns to recognize that within this life between birth and death this entity relates to the rest of experience in the same way as the germ developing in the plant being relates to the entirety of the plant in which it develops. Only the plant germ is a physical being, the soul germ a spiritual one. - The pursuit of such an experience then leads to the recognition of the idea of the repeated earth lives of the human being. The soul can sense in its core of being, which is to a certain degree independent of itself, the germ of a new human life, into which this germ will carry over the fruits of the present one, when it will have experienced in a spiritual world after death those conditions of life in a purely spiritual way, which cannot be granted to it when it is enveloped by a physical earthly body between birth and death.

[ 2 ] From this thought then necessarily follows the other, that the present sensory life between birth and death is the result of other long-past earth lives in which the soul has developed a germ, which after death continued to live in a purely spiritual world until it had matured to take on a new earthly life through a new birth, just as the plant germ becomes a new plant after it has been under different living conditions for a time, detached from the old plant in which it was formed.

[ 3] The supersensible consciousness learns through the corresponding soul preparations to immerse itself in the process, which consists in the fact that in a human life a nucleus develops that is independent in a certain way, which carries the fruits of this life over into subsequent earth lives. - In a pictorial, essential way, as if it wanted to reveal itself as a being of its own, a second self emerges from the floods of the soul, which appears to be independent, superior to the being that was previously addressed as its own self. It appears like an inspirer of this self. The human being flows as this latter self together with the inspiring, superior one.

[ 4 ] What the supersensible consciousness thus sees through as a fact, the ordinary consciousness lives in without knowing it. Again, it requires the strengthening of the soul in order to maintain itself now not only in the face of a spiritual outer world with which it merges, but even with a spiritual entity which it is itself in a higher sense, and which nevertheless stands outside of what it must necessarily feel as its self in the sense world. (The way in which this second self rises from the floods of the soul in a pictorial, essential way is quite different for the various human individualities. In my scenic soul paintings "The Gate of Initiation", "The Trial of the Soul", "The Guardian of the Threshold" and "The Soul's Awakening", I tried to depict how different human individualities work their way through to the experience of this "other self".

[ 5 ] Although the soul knows nothing of the inspiration of its "other self" in ordinary consciousness, this inspiration is nevertheless present in the depths of the soul. Only this inspiration is not one in thoughts or inner words; it works through deeds, through processes, through an event. It is this "other self" that leads the soul to the details of its life's destiny, and which evokes the abilities, inclinations, dispositions, etc. in it. - This "other self" lives in the totality of the destiny of a human life. It goes along with the self, which has its conditions between birth and death, and shapes human life with everything that is joyful, uplifting or painful. By uniting with this "other self", the supersensible consciousness learns to say "I" to the totality of life's destiny in the same way that the physical human being says "I" to his own being. What is called "karma" with an oriental word: it grows together in the manner indicated with the "other self", with the "spiritual I-being". The course of a person's life appears inspired by his own permanent being, which continues from life to life; and the inspiration takes place in such a way that the life destinies of a subsequent earthly being arise as the consequence of the preceding earthly lives.

[ 6 ] Thus man learns to recognize himself as an "other entity", one which he is not in his sensual being, and which expresses itself in this sensual being only through its effects. When consciousness enters this world, it is in a realm that can be described as the spiritual realm in contrast to the elementary realm.

[ 7 ] As long as one feels oneself in this realm, one finds oneself standing completely outside the circle in which all experiences of the sensory world take place. One looks back from another world to the one one has left, so to speak. But one comes to the realization that as a human being one belongs to both worlds. The sense world is perceived as a kind of mirror image of the spiritual world. But as a mirror image in which the processes and entities of the spiritual world are not merely reflected, but which, although it is a mirror image, leads an independent life in itself. As if a person saw himself in a mirror and, by seeing himself, the reflection gained independent life. - And one gets to know spiritual entities which bring about this independent life of the mirror image of the spiritual world. These spiritual entities are perceived as belonging to the spiritual world according to their origin, but which have left the scene of this world and develop their field of activity in the sense world. Thus we are confronted with two worlds which interact with each other. The spiritual world should be referred to here as the upper, the sensory world as the lower world.

[ 8 ] In the lower world one gets to know the designated spiritual entities by having, as it were, transferred one's point of view to the upper world. One type of these spiritual entities presents itself in such a way that one finds in it the reason why man experiences the sense world as a material one. One recognizes that everything material is in truth spiritual, and that the spiritual activity of those beings solidifies and hardens the spiritual of the sensory world into the material. As unpopular as certain names are in the present, they are needed for that which one sees as real in the spiritual world. That is why the beings who bring about this materialization of the sense world are called the ahrimanic beings. Now with regard to these ahrimanic beings it also shows that they have their very own area in the realm of the mineral. In the mineral kingdom these entities rule in such a way that in this kingdom they fully manifest what they are by nature. - In the plant kingdom and in the higher kingdoms of nature they accomplish something else. This other thing only becomes comprehensible when we consider the realm of the elemental world. Seen from the spiritual realm, this elementary world also appears like a reflection of this spiritual realm. However, the independence of the mirror image in the elementary world is not as great as that of the physical sense world. In the former, the spiritual entities of the ahrimanic kind dominate less than in the sense world. But these ahrimanic entities develop from the elementary world, among other things, that effectiveness which finds its expression in the destruction and death of existence. It can almost be said that for the higher kingdoms of nature the ahrimanic entities have the task of bringing about death. Insofar as death is part of the necessary order of existence, the task of the ahrimanic entities is founded in this order.

[ 9 ] But when one observes the activity of the ahrimanic entities from the spiritual realm, one learns that something else is connected with their work in the lower world. Because they have their scene in this world, they do not feel bound to the order that would apply to their powers if they worked in the upper world, where they have their origin. They strive for an independence in the lower world that they could never have in the upper world. This expresses itself particularly in the effect of the ahrimanic entities on man, in so far as man forms the highest natural kingdom of the sense world. They strive to make the life of the human soul, insofar as it is bound to the human being's senses, independent, to tear it away from the upper world and to incorporate it completely into their own world. The human being as a thinking soul has its origin in the upper world. The thinking soul that has become spiritually seeing also enters this upper world. The thinking that unfolds in the sense world and is bound to it has within it that which is to be described as the influence of the ahrimanic entities. These entities want to give sense thinking a kind of permanent existence within the sense world. By bringing death through their powers, they want to snatch the thinking soul from death and allow only the other beingness in man to flow into destruction. According to their intentions, however, the human thinking power should remain in the realm of the senses and take on an existence that should become more and more similar to the nature of the Ahrimanic.

[ 10 ] In the lower world, what has just been described expresses itself only through its effect. Man can strive to let himself be permeated in his thinking soul with the forces which recognize the spiritual world, which know themselves to be alive and present in it. But he can also turn away from such forces with his thinking soul, can only use his thinking to grasp the sensory world. The temptations to the latter come from the ahrimanic forces.