The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Part of the Contemplation: What is Revealed when one Looks Back into the Previous lives between Death and the New Birth?

[ 1 ] In the previous consideration, the entire human life was traced in such a way that the soul's gaze was directed to the successive lives on earth. The other point of view, which can shed even brighter light on what the first reveals, is to consider the successive lives between death and a new birth.

[ 2 ] This also shows that the content of these lives, as it is in the present, only goes back to a certain point in time of the earth's development. This content is determined by the fact that man carries through the gate of death the inner power of self-consciousness acquired in life on earth. As a result, the human being also faces the divine-spiritual beings, into whose midst he enters, as a full individuality.

[ 3 ] This was not the case in a previous period. Man was not yet far advanced in the development of his self-consciousness. The power acquired on earth was not sufficient to bring about the detachment from the divine-spiritual world up to the individual existence between death and new birth. Although man was not in the divine-spiritual beings, he was within their sphere of activity in such a way that his will was essentially their will, not his.

[ 4 ] Before this period lies another, in which, looking back, one does not encounter man in his present spiritual-soul condition at all, but the world of divine-spiritual beings, in which man is only germinal. These are the elemental forces (Archai).

[ 5 ] And indeed, if one traces one's life back, one does not encounter one divine-spiritual being, but all those who belong to this hierarchy.

[ 6 ] In these divine-spiritual beings lives the will that man should become. The will of all is involved in the becoming of each individual human being. In their choral cooperation lies the world goal of the emergence of human form, for man still lives unformed in the divine-spiritual world.

[ 7 ] It may seem strange that the whole choir of divine-spiritual beings is already at work for a human being. But the Exusiai, Dynameis, Kyriotetes, Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim hierarchies had already worked in this way in the past through the development of the moon, sun and Saturn, so that the human being could come into being.

[ 8 ] What arose earlier, a kind of pre-human, on Saturn, the sun and the moon, did not have a uniform form. There were such pre-humans who were organized more according to the limb system, others who were organized more according to the chest system, still others who were organized according to the head system. These were after all real human beings; they are only called pre-humans here in order to distinguish them from the later stage where the balanced confluence of all systems appears in the human form. The differentiation in these pre-humans goes much further. One can speak of heart people, lung people and so on.

[ 9 ] The Hierarchy of Primordial Forces regards it as its task to lead all these pre-humans, whose soul life also corresponded to their one-sided form, into the general human form.

[ 10 ] From the hand of the Exusiai they take over the human being. These had already in thought created a unity out of human multiplicity. Only with the Exusiai was this unity still an ideal form, a world-thought form. The Archai formed the etheric form from it, but in such a way that this etheric form already contained the forces for the emergence of the physical form.

[ 11 ] A powerful thing is revealed when we look at these facts. Man is the ideal of the gods and the goal of the gods. But this contemplation cannot be the source of arrogance and arrogance in man. For he may only ascribe to himself, as coming from him, what he has made of himself with self-consciousness in earthly life. And this, expressed in cosmic terms, is little compared to what the gods have created as the basis of his own being out of the macrocosm, which they themselves are, as a microcosm, which he is. The divine-spiritual beings stand opposite each other in the cosmos. The visible expression of this confrontation is the form of the starry sky. They wanted to create what they are so together in a unity as man.

[ 12 ] To properly understand what the Hierarchy of the Archai accomplished when they created the human form in their choir, it must be remembered that there is a vast difference between this form and the physical body of man. The physical body is what takes place physically and chemically in the human being. This happens in the present human being within the human form. This itself, however, is spiritual through and through. It should be solemn to perceive a spiritual being with physical senses in the physical world as a human form. For those who can see spiritually, this is because they see in the human form a real imagination that has descended into the physical world. If one wants to see imaginations, one must pass from the physical world into the next spiritual world. But then one becomes aware of how the human form is related to these imaginations.

[ 13 ] The emergence of this human form is found by the retrospective view of the human soul as the first period when it observes the lives between death and new birth. At the same time, the deeper relationship between man and the hierarchy of the Archai is revealed.

[ 14 ] In this period we can already speak of an intimation of the difference between life on earth and life between death and new birth. The hierarchy of the Archai works in rhythmic epochs on the development of the human form. At one time it directs the thoughts that guide the will of the individual more towards the extraterrestrial cosmos. The other time she looks down on the earth. And from the interaction of what is inspired by the extraterrestrial cosmos and the earth, the human form is formed, which is thus the expression of the fact that man is both an earthly and an extraterrestrial cosmic being.

[ 15 ] The human form, as it is described here as the creation of the Hierarchy of the Archai, comprises not only the outer contours of man and the surface design as it is given in the boundary of the skin, but also the design of forces which lies in his posture, in his ability to move adapted to the conditions of the earth and in the ability to use his body as a means of expression for his inner being.

[ 16 ] The fact that man can fit himself into the gravitational conditions of the earth in an upright position, that he can maintain his balance within these gravitational conditions in free movement, that he can wrest his arms and hands from the heaviness and use them in freedom, this and many other things which lie within, but are nevertheless formed: all this man owes to this creation of the Archai Hierarchy. All this is prepared there in the life which can also be called for this period that between death and new birth. It is prepared here in such a way that man then has the ability in the third period, in our present, during his life between death and new birth, to work on this creation for his earthly existence himself.

Goetheanum, around the turn of the year 1925. (January 18, 1925)

Further guiding principles issued by the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum (with reference to the preceding consideration: What is revealed when one looks back on the repeated lives between death and new birth?)

[ 17 ] 147. The lives between death and new birth also show three periods. In the first, man lives entirely in the hierarchy of the Archai. It is from them that his later human form is prepared for the physical world.

[ 18 ] 148. The Archai thus prepare the human being to later develop free self-consciousness; for this can only develop in beings who can bring it to expression through the form that is created here from an inner impulse of the soul.

[ 19 ] 149. This shows how the germs of human characteristics and human powers, which come to revelation in our world age, are predisposed in long-past vast ages and how the microcosm grows out of the macrocosm.