Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts
GA 26
16. What is Revealed When One Looks Back into Repeated Lives on Earth
[ 1 ] When we are able to look back with spiritual knowledge into the former Earth-lives of a human being, we find that there are a number of such lives in which man was already a ‘person.’ His outward form was similar to what it is today, and he had an inner life of individual stamp and character. Earthly lives emerge, revealing that the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was present in them, but not as yet the Spiritual Soul; others appear, in which only the Sentient Soul was developed—and so forth.
[ 2 ] We find it so in the epochs of Earthly History, and indeed it was so long before these epochs.
[ 3 ] But as we look back still farther, we come into ages of time when it was not yet so—ages in which we find Man interwoven still, both in his inner life and in his outer formation, with the world of Divine-Spiritual Beings. Man is already there as earthly man, but he is not yet detached from Divine Spiritual Being, Thinking and Willing.
[ 4 ] And in yet earlier epochs man as a separate being disappears altogether; there are present only the Divine Spiritual Beings, bearing man within them.
[ 5 ] Man has undergone these three stages of evolution during his earthly time. The transition from the first to the second took place in the latest epoch of Lemuria; that from the second to the third in Atlantean times.
[ 6 ] Now just as in his present earthly life man bears his experiences within him in the shape of memory, so does he bear within him as a cosmic memory all that he has undergone in the way above described.
What is the earthly life of the soul? It is the world of our memories, ready at every moment to have fresh perceptions. In this interplay of memory and fresh experience, man lives, his inner life on Earth.
[ 7 ] But this inner life on Earth could not unfold at all if there were not present still in man, as a cosmic memory, what we see when we look back with spiritual vision into the first stage of his becoming Earthly Man—the stage in which he was not yet detached from Divine-Spiritual Being.
[ 8 ] Of all that took place in the world at that time, there is livingly present on the Earth today, that alone which is unfolded within the human system of nerves and senses. In outer Nature, all the forces that were then at work have died and can now only be seen in their dead forms.
[ 9 ] Thus in the human world of Thought there lives as a present manifestation something which, in order to have earthly existence, requires as its basis the very thing that was already evolved in man before he attained individual, earthly being.
[ 10 ] Every time he passes through the life between death and a new birth, man experiences this stage anew. But into the world of Divine-Spiritual Beings, which receives him again even as it once entirely contained him—into this world he now carries his full individual existence which has taken shape during his lives on Earth. Between death and a new birth, man is indeed in the present, but he is living also in all the time that he has undergone through repeated lives on Earth and lives between death and a new birth.
[ 11 ] It is different with that which lives in the Feeling-world of man. This is related to those experiences of the past which came immediately after the ones in which man was yet unmanifest as such. It is related, that is to say, to experiences which man already underwent as man but when he was not yet separated from Divine-Spiritual Being, Thinking and Willing. Man in the present could not unfold the world of Feeling if it did not arise on the foundation of his rhythmic system. And in his rhythmic system we have the cosmic memory of the above-described second stage of his evolution.
[ 12 ] Thus in the world of Feeling the ‘present’ in the human soul is working together with that which works on in him from an ancient time.
[ 13 ] In the life between death and a new birth, man experiences the contents of the epoch of which we are here speaking as the boundary of his Cosmos. What the starry heavens are to man in the physical life on Earth, his existence between his full union with the Divine-Spiritual world and his severance from it, is to him spiritually in the life between death and a new birth. In that life, there appear to him at the ‘world-boundary’, not the physical heavenly bodies, but in the place of each star the sum-total of Divine-Spiritual Beings, who, as we know, are in reality the star.
[ 14 ] Connected with the Will alone and not with Feeling or with Thought, there lives in man that which is manifested by those earthly lives which, when we look back on them, reveal already the personal, individual character. That which from cosmic sources gives to man his outer form, is preserved in this outer form as a cosmic memory. This cosmic memory lives in the human form as a totality of forces. But these are not the immediate forces of the Will; they represent that in the human organism which is the foundation of the forces of the Will.
[ 15 ] In the life between death and a new birth, this region of the human being lies beyond the ‘world-boundary.’ Man there conceives of it as of something that will belong to him once more in his new life on Earth.
[ 16 ] In his system of nerves and senses, man is today still united with the Cosmos in the way he was when he was manifest only germinally within the Divine-Spiritual womb.
[ 17 ] In his rhythmic system, man is today still living in the Cosmos in the way he lived when he was already there as man, but not yet detached from the Divine-Spiritual.
[ 18 ] In his system of metabolism and limbs—the foundation for the unfolding of his Will—man lives in such a way that all that he has undergone in his personal individual lives on Earth, ever since these began, and in his lives between death and a new birth, works on within this system.
[ 19 ] From the forces of the Earth, man receives that alone which gives him consciousness of self. The physical bodily foundation of self-consciousness is due also to what the Earth brings about. But everything else in the human being has a cosmic origin, external to the Earth.
The sentient and thought-bearing astral body with its etheric-physical foundation, all the moving life in the etheric body, and even that which works physico-chemically in the physical body, is of extra-earthly origin. Strange as this may seem, the physico-chemical which is at work within the human being is not derived from the Earth.
[ 20 ] The fact that man evolves this extra-earthly, cosmic life within him, is due to the working of the planets and other stars. All that he thus unfolds, the Sun with its forces carries to the Earth. By the Sun, the human-cosmic element is transplanted into the earthly realms. By the Sun, man lives as a heavenly being on the Earth. And that alone, whereby he transcends his own human formation—namely, his power to bring forth his kind—is a gift of the Moon.
[ 21 ] Needless to say these are not the only influences of Sun and Moon. Lofty spiritual influences also proceed from them.
[ 22 ] When about Christmas-time the Sun increases more and more in power for the Earth, it is the yearly influence—manifesting rhythmically in the physical-earthly realm—which is an expression of the Spirit in Nature. The evolution of mankind is a single member in what we may describe as a gigantic cosmic year, as will be evident from our preceding studies. And in this cosmic year the cosmic Christmas is at the point where the Sun not only works towards the Earth out of the Spirit of Nature, but where the Christ-Spirit, the Soul of the Sun, descends on to the Earth.
[ 23 ] As in the single human being what he experiences individually is connected with the cosmic memory, so will the human soul have a right feeling of the yearly Christmas when he conceives the heavenly and cosmic Christ-Event as working on and on, comprehending it as a memory not only human but cosmic. For at Christmas-time not only man remembers in celebration the descent of Christ, but the Cosmos does so too.
(about New Year, 1925)
Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (with respect to the preceding study: ‘What is revealed when one looks back into repeated Lives on Earth’)
[ 24 ] 144. Looking back into a human being's repeated lives on Earth, we find three distinct stages. In a remote past, man did not exist with individuality of being, but as a germ in the Divine and Spiritual. As we look back into this stage we find not yet a human being but Divine-Spiritual Beings: the Primal Forces, Principalities or Archai.
[ 25 ] 145. This was followed by an intermediate stage. Man existed already with individuality of being, but he was not yet detached from the Thinking and Willing and Being of the Divine-Spiritual World. At this stage he had not yet his present personality, with which he appears on Earth as a being completely self-possessed, detached from the Divine Spiritual World.
[ 26 ] 146. The present condition is the third and latest. Here man experiences himself in human form and figure, detached from the Divine-Spiritual World; and he experiences the world as an environment with which he stands face to face, individually and personally. This stage began in Atlantean time.
Was sich offenbart, wenn man in die wiederholten Erdenleben zurückschaut
[ 1 ] Wenn das geistgemäße Erkennen zurückschauen kann in frühere Erdenleben eines Menschen, so zeigt sich, daß es eine Anzahl solcher Erdenleben gibt, in denen der Mensch schon Person war. Sein Äußeres glich dem gegenwärtigen, und er hatte ein Innenleben, das individuelles Gepräge trug. Es treten Erdenleben auf, die offenbaren, wie die Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele da war, noch nicht die Bewußtseinsseele, und solche, in denen erst die Empfindungsseele ausgebildet war und so weiter.
[ 2 ] In den erdgeschichtlichen Zeitaltern ist das so; es war auch schon lange vorher so.
[ 3 ] Man kommt aber im Anschauen zurück zu Zeitaltern, in denen es noch nicht so war. Da findet man den Menschen noch nach Innenleben und nach der äußeren Bildung mit der Welt der göttlich-geistigen Wesen verwoben. Der Mensch ist als Erdenmensch da, aber nicht losgelöst vom göttlich-geistigen Wesen, Denken und Wollen.
[ 4 ] In noch älteren Zeiten verschwindet der losgelöste Mensch ganz; es sind nur göttlich-geistige Wesen vorhanden, die den Menschen in ihrem Schoß tragen.
[ 5 ] Diese drei Stadien seiner Entwickelung hat der Mensch während seiner Erdenzeit durchgemacht. Der Übergang des ersten in das zweite liegt in der spätesten lemurischen, der vom zweiten in das dritte in der atlantischen Zeit.
[ 6 ] Wie nun der Mensch im gegenwärtigen Erdenleben seine Erlebnisse als Erinnerung in sich trägt, so trägt er alles, was er in der geschilderten Art durchgemacht hat, als kosmische Erinnerung in sich. Was ist das irdische Seelenleben? Die Welt der Erinnerungen, die bereit ist, in jedem Augenblicke neue Wahrnehmungen zu machen. In diesem Wechselwirken von Erinnerung und neuer Erfahrung lebt der Mensch sein innerliches Erdendasein.
[ 7 ] Aber dieses innerliche Erdendasein könnte nicht zur Entfaltung kommen, wenn nicht als kosmische Erinnerung im Menschen gegenwärtig noch vorhanden wäre, was man schaut, wenn man geistig zurückblickt in das erste Stadium seines Erden-Mensch-Werdens, in dem er von dem göttlich-geistigen Wesen noch nicht losgelöst war.
[ 8 ] Von dem, was damals in der Welt geschah, ist heute auf Erden nur noch das lebendig vorhanden, was innerhalb der menschlichen Nerven-Sinnesorganisation entwickelt wird. In der äußeren Natur sind alle die Kräfte, die damals wirksam waren, erstorben und nur in toten Formen beobachtbar.
[ 9 ] So lebt in der menschlichen Gedankenwelt als gegenwärtige Offenbarung, was, um Erdenexistenz zu haben, zur Grundlage das haben muß, was im Menschen schon entwickelt war, bevor er individuelles Erdendasein erlangte.
[ 10 ] In dem Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt erlebt der Mensch jedesmal aufs neue dieses Stadium. Nur trägt er in die Welt der göttlich-geistigen Wesen, die ihn wieder aufnimmt, wie sie ihn einst in sich gehabt hat, sein volles in den Erdenleben gebildetes individuelles Dasein hinein. Er ist zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt zugleich in der Gegenwart, aber auch in aller Zeit, die er durch wiederholte Erdenleben und wiederholte Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt durchgemacht hat.
[ 11 ] Anders verhält es sich mit dem, was in der Gefühlswelt des Menschen lebt. Sie steht zu den Erlebnissen in Beziehung, die unmittelbar nach denen kamen, die den Menschen noch nicht als solchen offenbaren. Zu den Erlebnissen, die der Mensch schon als Mensch, aber noch nicht losgelöst von göttlich-geistigem Wesen, Denken und Wollen durchmacht. Der Mensch könnte gegenwärtig keine Gefühlswelt entfalten, wenn diese nicht auf der Grundlage seiner rhythmischen Organisation erstehen würde. In dieser ist die kosmische Erinnerung an das geschilderte zweite Stadium der Menschheitsentwickelung vorhanden.
[ 12 ] So wirken in der Gefühlswelt zusammen die menschliche seelische Gegenwart und das, was in ihm nachwirkt aus einer alten Zeit.
[ 13 ] In dem Leben zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt erlebt der Mensch den Inhalt der Zeit, von der hier die Rede ist, wie die Grenze seines Kosmos. Was dem Menschen im physischen Erdenleben der Sternenhimmel ist, das ist geistig in dem Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt sein Dasein, das zwischen seiner völligen Verbundenheit mit der göttlich-geistigen Welt und seinem Losgelöstsein liegt. Da erscheinen an der «Weltengrenze» nicht die physischen Himmelskörper, sondern an jedem Sternenort die Summe der göttlich-geistigen Wesen, die ja in Wirklichkeit der Stern sind.
[ 14 ] Mit dem Willen allein, nicht mit Gefühl und Denken verbunden, lebt im Menschen dasjenige, was die Erdenleben aufweisen, die sich beim Beobachten schon als persönlichindividuell offenbaren. Was dem Menschen aus dem Kosmos heraus seine äußere Gestalt gibt, das erhält sich in dieser äußeren Gestalt als kosmische Erinnerung. Diese lebt in der menschlichen Gestalt als Kräfte. Es sind das nicht unmittelbar die Kräfte des Willens, sondern das, was in der menschlichen Organisation die Grundlage der Willenskräfte ist.
[ 15 ] In dem Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt liegt dieses Gebiet des menschlichen Wesens außerhalb der «Weltengrenze». Der Mensch stellt es da vor als dasjenige, das ihm beim neuen Erdenleben wieder eigen sein wird.
[ 16 ] In seiner Nerven-Sinnes-Organisation ist der Mensch heute noch so mit dem Kosmos verbunden, wie er es war, als er noch innerhalb des Göttlich-Geistigen nur keimhaft sich offenbarte.
[ 17 ] In seiner rhythmischen Organisation lebt der Mensch heute noch so im Kosmos, wie er lebte, als er als Mensch schon vorhanden, aber noch nicht losgelöst vom Göttlich-Geistigen war.
[ 18 ] In seiner Stoffwechsel-Gliedmaßen-Organisation, als der Grundlage der Willens-Entfaltung, lebt der Mensch so, daß in dieser Organisation alles nachwirkt, was er seit der Zeit der persönlich-individuellen Erdenleben in diesen und in den Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt durchgemacht hat.
[ 19 ] Aus den Kräften der Erde hat der Mensch nur dasjenige, was ihm das Selbstbewußtsein verleiht. Auch die physische Leibesgrundlage dieses Selbstbewußtseins stammt aus dem, was die Erde bewirkt. Alles übrige im Menschenwesen ist außerirdischen-kosmischen Ursprungs. Der empfindende und gedankentragende Astralleib und seine ätherisch-physische Grundlage, alle Lebensregsamkeit im Ätherleib, ja sogar, was im physischen Leib physisch-chemisch wirkt, ist außerirdischen Ursprungs. So befremdend dies auch sein mag: das innerhalb des Menschen wirksame Physisch-Chemische stammt nicht aus der Erde.
[ 20 ] Daß der Mensch dieses außerirdische Kosmische in sich entwickelt, ist Wirkung der Planeten und sonstiger Sterne. Was er so entwickelt, das trägt die Sonne mit ihren Kräften zur Erde. Das Menschlich-Kosmische wird durch die Sonne in den Bereich des Irdischen versetzt. Durch sie lebt der Mensch als Himmelswesen auf der Erde. Nur dasjenige, wodurch er über seine Menschenbildung hinausgeht, die Fähigkeit seinesgleichen hervorzubringen, ist eine Gabe des Mondes.
[ 21 ] Selbstverständlich sind dies nicht die einzigen Wirkungen von Sonne und Mond. Von ihnen gehen auch hochgeistige Wirkungen aus.
[ 22 ] Wenn die Sonne um die Weihnachtszeit immer mehr an Kräften für die Erde gewinnt, so ist dieses die im Physisch-Irdischen rhythmisch sich offenbarende Jahreswirkung, die ein Ausdruck des Geistes in der Natur ist. Die Menschheitsentwickelung ist ein einziges Glied in einem gewissermaßen gigantischen Weltenjahr. Das geht aus den vorangehenden Ausführungen hervor. In diesem Weltenjahr ist Welten-Weihe-Nacht da, wo die Sonne nicht bloß aus dem Geiste der Natur heraus zur Erde wirkt, sondern wo die Seele der Sonne, der Christus-Geist, auf die Erde niedersteigt.
[ 23 ] Wie im einzelnen Menschen das individuell Erlebte mit der kosmischen Erinnerung zusammenhängt, so wird die alljährliche Weihnacht von der Menschenseele richtig empfunden, wenn das himmlisch-kosmische Christus-Ereignis als fortwirkend gedacht und wie eine nicht bloß menschliche, sondern kosmische Erinnerung aufgefaßt wird. Nicht bloß der Mensch gedenkt festlich zu Weihnachten des Christus-Niederstieges, sondern auch der Kosmos.
Goetheanum, zu Neujahr 1925.
Leitsätze Nr. 144 bis 146
(11. Januar 1925)
(Mit Bezug auf die vorangehende Betrachtung: Was sich offenbart, wenn man in die wiederholten Erdenleben zurückscbaut)
[ 24 ] 144. Schaut man in die wiederholten Erdenleben eines Menschen zurück, so gliedern sich diese in drei verschiedene Stadien: ein ältestes, in dem der Mensch noch nicht individuell-wesenhaft, sondern als Keim in göttlich-geistiger Wesenheit vorhanden ist. Man findet da beim Zurückschauen noch nicht einen Menschen, sondern göttlich-geistige Wesen (die Urkräfte, Archai).
[ 25 ] 145. Daran schließt sich ein mittleres Stadium, in dem der Mensch zwar schon individuell-wesenhaft vorhanden ist, aber noch nicht losgelöst von Denken und Wollen und Wesen der göttlich-geistigen Welt. Er hat da noch nicht seine gegenwärtige Persönlichkeit, die damit zusammenhängt, daß er ein völlig eigenes Wesen in seiner Erderscheinung, losgelöst von der göttlich-geistigen Welt, ist.
[ 26 ] 146. Als drittes Stadium tritt erst das gegenwärtige auf. Der Mensch erlebt sich in seiner Menschengestalt, losgelöst von der göttlich-geistigen Welt; und er erlebt die Welt als Umgebung, der er individuell-persönlich gegenübersteht. Dieses Stadium beginnt in der atlantischen Zeit.
What is revealed when one looks back into the repeated earth lives
[ 1 ] If spiritual cognition can look back into a person's previous earthly lives, it becomes apparent that there are a number of such earthly lives in which the person was already a person. His outward appearance resembled the present one, and he had an inner life that bore an individual character. There are earth lives that reveal how the intellectual or emotional soul was there, not yet the consciousness soul, and those in which the sentient soul was first formed, and so on.
[ 2 ] This is the case in the geological ages; it was also the case long before that.
[ 3 ] But when we look back, we return to ages in which it was not yet so. There we find man still interwoven with the world of divine-spiritual beings according to his inner life and outer formation. Man is there as an earthly human being, but not detached from the divine-spiritual being, thinking and willing.
[ 4 ] In even older times, the detached human being disappears completely; there are only divine-spiritual beings who carry the human being in their womb.
[ 5 ] Man has gone through these three stages of his development during his time on earth. The transition from the first to the second lies in the latest Lemurian period, that from the second to the third in the Atlantean period.
[ 6 ] Just as man carries his experiences in the present life on earth as a memory, so he carries everything he has gone through in the manner described as a cosmic memory. What is the earthly life of the soul? The world of memories, which is ready to make new perceptions at every moment. In this interaction of memory and new experience, man lives his inner earthly existence.
[ 7 ] But this inner earthly existence could not come to fruition if there were not still present in man as a cosmic memory what one sees when one looks back spiritually to the first stage of his becoming man on earth, in which he was not yet detached from the divine-spiritual being.
[ 8 ] Of what happened in the world at that time, only that which is developed within the human nervous-sensory organization is still alive on earth today. In external nature, all the forces that were active at that time have died and can only be observed in dead forms.
[ 9 ] So there lives in the human world of thought as present revelation that which, in order to have earthly existence, must have as its basis that which was already developed in man before he attained individual earthly existence.
[ 10 ] In the life between death and new birth, man experiences this stage anew each time. Only he carries into the world of divine-spiritual beings, which receives him again as it once had him within itself, his full individual existence formed in earthly life. He is between death and new birth at the same time in the present, but also in all the time he has gone through repeated earth lives and repeated lives between death and new birth.
[ 11 ] The situation is different with what lives in the emotional world of the human being. It is related to the experiences that came immediately after those that do not yet reveal the human being as such. To the experiences that the human being already undergoes as a human being, but not yet detached from divine-spiritual being, thinking and willing. Man could not develop an emotional world at present if it did not arise on the basis of his rhythmic organization. The cosmic memory of the second stage of human development described above is present in this organization.
[ 12 ] So the human spiritual present and that which continues to work in it from an ancient time work together in the emotional world.
[ 13 ] In the life between death and a new birth, man experiences the content of time, of which we are speaking here, as the boundary of his cosmos. What the starry sky is to man in his physical life on earth, that is his spiritual existence in the life between death and a new birth, which lies between his complete connection with the divine-spiritual world and his detachment. It is not the physical celestial bodies that appear at the "world boundary", but the sum of the divine-spiritual beings at each star location, which are in reality the star.
[ 14 ] With the will alone, not connected with feeling and thinking, there lives in man that which the earthly lives exhibit, which already reveal themselves as personally individual when observed. What gives man his outer form out of the cosmos is preserved in this outer form as cosmic memory. This lives in the human form as forces. These are not directly the forces of will, but that which is the basis of the forces of will in the human organization.
[ 15 ] In the life between death and new birth, this area of the human being lies outside the "world boundary". Man presents it there as that which will be his own again in the new life on earth.
[ 16 ] In his nervous-sensory organization, man today is still connected with the cosmos as he was when he was still only germinating within the divine-spiritual.
[ 17 ] In his rhythmic organization, man still lives in the cosmos today as he lived when he was already present as a human being, but not yet detached from the divine-spiritual.
[ 18 ] In his metabolic-limb organization, as the basis of the unfolding of the will, man lives in such a way that everything he has gone through since the time of his personal-individual earthly lives in these and in the lives between death and new birth continues to have an effect in this organization.
[ 19 ] From the forces of the earth man has only that which gives him self-consciousness. The physical body basis of this self-consciousness also comes from what the earth brings about. Everything else in the human being is of extraterrestrial-cosmic origin. The sentient and thought-bearing astral body and its etheric-physical basis, all vitality in the etheric body, even what works physically and chemically in the physical body, is of extraterrestrial origin. As disconcerting as this may be, the physical-chemical that is active within the human being does not originate from the earth.
[ 20 ] The fact that man develops this extraterrestrial cosmic within himself is the effect of the planets and other stars. What he develops in this way is carried to earth by the sun with its forces. The human-cosmic is brought into the realm of the earthly by the sun. Through it man lives on earth as a heavenly being. Only that by which he goes beyond his human formation, the ability to bring forth his own kind, is a gift of the moon.
[ 21 ] Of course, these are not the only effects of the sun and moon. They also have highly spiritual effects.
[ 22 ] If the sun gains more and more power for the earth around Christmas time, this is the annual effect that reveals itself rhythmically in the physical-earthly, which is an expression of the spirit in nature. The development of mankind is a single link in a gigantic world year, so to speak. This can be seen from the foregoing. In this world year, world consecration night is where the sun not only works out of the spirit of nature to the earth, but where the soul of the sun, the spirit of Christ, descends to the earth.
[ 23 ] Just as in the individual human being the individually experienced is connected with the cosmic memory, so the annual Christmas is correctly perceived by the human soul when the heavenly-cosmic Christ-event is conceived as continuing and understood as a not merely human but cosmic memory. It is not only man who commemorates the descent of Christ at Christmas, but also the cosmos.
Goetheanum, on New Year's Day 1925.
Guiding Principles No. 144 to 146
(January 11, 1925)
(With reference to the preceding consideration: What is revealed when one builds back into the repeated earth lives)
[ 24 ] 144 If one looks back into the repeated earth lives of a human being, these are divided into three different stages: the oldest, in which the human being is not yet present as an individual being, but as a germ in divine-spiritual essence. Looking back, we do not yet find a human being, but divine-spiritual beings (the elemental forces, Archai).
[ 25 ] 145 This is followed by a middle stage in which the human being is already present as an individual being, but not yet detached from the thinking and willing and beings of the divine-spiritual world. He does not yet have his present personality, which is related to the fact that he is a completely separate being in his earthly appearance, detached from the divine-spiritual world.
[ 26 ] 146 The third stage is the present one. Man experiences himself in his human form, detached from the divine-spiritual world; and he experiences the world as an environment that he faces individually and personally. This stage begins in the Atlantean period.