The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Part of the Contemplation: What is Revealed when One Looks Back into the Previous Lives between Death and New Birth?

[ 1 ] In a second period, the human being passes from the realm of the Archai into that of the Archangeloi. However, he is not as physically and spiritually connected to them as he was previously to the Archai. His connection with the Archangeloi hierarchy is more spiritual. But it is so intimate that for this time one cannot yet speak of man being detached from the divine-spiritual world. The archangel hierarchy gives man that for his etheric body which corresponds to the form in the physical body, which he owes to the Archai. Just as the physical body is adapted to the form of the earth in order to be the bearer of self-consciousness on it, so the etheric body is adapted to the extraterrestrial cosmic forces. The earth lives in the physical body, and the starry world lives in the etheric body. What man carries within himself of inner forces in order to be on earth in such a way that he simultaneously snatches himself from the earth with posture, movement and gesture, he owes to the creation of the archangels in his etheric body. Just as the earthly forces can live in the physical body through its creation, so the forces that flow towards the earth from all sides from the cosmos live in the etheric body. The earth forces that live in the physically appearing form are those that make the form a relatively closed and solid one. The outlines of the human being remain fixed with subordinate metamorphosis for life on earth; the faculties of movement solidify into habits and so on. -There is constant mobility in the etheric body, which is a reflection of the changing constellations of the stars during human life on earth. The etheric body is already shaped according to the changes of day and night in the heavens, but also according to the changes that take place between the birth and death of the human being.

[ 2 ] Adaptation of the etheric body to the celestial forces does not contradict the gradual detachment of the starry heavens from the divine-spiritual powers, which has been spoken of in the change considerations. It is true that in very ancient times the will of the gods and the intelligence of the gods lived in the stars. In later times, these have passed over into the "calculable". The gods no longer have an effect on man through what has become their work. But man gradually enters into his own relationship with the stars through his etheric body, just as he enters into such a relationship with earthly gravity through his physical body.

[ 3 ] What man incorporates when he descends from the spirit world to be born on earth, his etheric body, which receives into itself the extra-terrestrial cosmic forces, is created in this second period by the Hierarchy of the Archangeloi.

[ 4 ] An essential thing that the human being receives through this hierarchy is the affiliation to a group of people on earth. People are differentiated across the earth. Looking back into this second period, we do not have before us today's differentiation of races and peoples, but a somewhat different, more spiritual one. One that stems from the fact that the star forces impinge on the various places on earth in different constellations. On the earth, in the distribution of land and water, in the climate, in plant growth and so on, the starry sky lives. In so far as man must adapt to these conditions, which are on earth as celestial conditions, this adaptation belongs to the etheric body, and its formation is a creation of the choir of the Archangeloi.

[ 5 ] But it is precisely during this second period that the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers enter human life in a special way. This entry is necessary, even though at first it appears as if it would push man below his essence.

[ 6 ] If man is to develop self-consciousness in earthly life, he must detach himself from the divine-spiritual world from which he originally emerged to a greater extent than this can happen through this world itself. It happens at the time when the archangels work on him, because the connection with the spiritual world is no longer as strong as it was during the work of the Archai on him. Lucifer and Ahriman are more equal to the more spiritual forces emanating from the archangels than the stronger ones of the archai.

[ 7 ] It is through the Luciferic powers that the etheric design is imbued with a stronger inclination for the starry world than it would have if only the divine-spiritual powers originally connected with man were at work. And it is through the ahrimanic powers that the physical design becomes more entangled in the earthly gravity than would happen if these powers could not work.

[ 8] Through this the seed of full self-consciousness and free will is laid in man. Even if the ahrimanic powers hate free will: in man they cause the germination of this free will by tearing him away from his divine-spiritual world.

[ 9 ] First, however, in this second period, what the various hierarchies from the seraphim to the archangels have brought about in man is more pressed into the physical and etheric body than could happen without Luciferic and Ahrimanic influence. Without this influence, the effect of the hierarchies would remain more in the astral body and in the ego.

[ 10 ] This does not result in the more spiritual grouping of humanity across the earth that the archangels are striving for.

[ 11 ] In its being pressed into the physical and etheric body, the spiritual forces are transformed into their opposite. Instead of the more spiritual differentiation, that of races and peoples emerges.

[ 12 ] Without the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influence, people on earth would see themselves differentiated from heaven. The groups would behave towards each other in their lives like beings who willingly give and take spiritual things from each other in love. In races and peoples, the gravity of the earth would appear through the human body; in the spiritual grouping, a mirror image of the divine-spiritual world would appear.

[ 13 ] With all this, the later full self-consciousness in human development had to be predisposed beforehand. This again meant that the ancient human differentiation, which existed when man once passed from the hierarchy of the Exusiai to that of the Archai, was preserved in a certain form, albeit in a milder form.

[ 14 ] Man has experienced this stage of development as if in a cosmic school of feeling and perception. He has not yet developed the knowledge that this is an essential preparation for his later self-consciousness. But the sentient observation of his developmental powers at that time was nevertheless important for the integration of self-consciousness into the astral body and ego.

[ 15 ] With regard to thinking, this happened at that time, that man was endowed by the Luciferic powers with the tendency to sink further into the old forms of the spiritual and not to adapt to the new forms. For Lucifer always endeavors to preserve the former forms of life for man.

[ 16 ] And thus man's thinking developed in such a way that in the lives between death and new birth he gradually developed the ability that formed thoughts in him in ancient times. At that time this faculty could see the spiritual, even though it was like the mere sense perception at present. For the physical then carried the spiritual on its surface. Now, however, the ability to think that was preserved at that time can only function as sensory perception. Gradually the ability to rise to the spiritual through thinking diminished. And this only became fully apparent when, in the age of the consciousness soul, the spiritual world was shrouded in complete darkness for man. Then it happened that in the nineteenth century the best naturalists, who could not become materialists, said: nothing remains for us but to investigate only the world which can be investigated by measure, number and weight and through the senses; but we have no right to deny a spiritual world which is hidden behind this sensuous one. Hence the hint that there could be a bright world unknown to man where he only stares into the darkness.

[ 17 ] As Lucifer shifted the thinking in man, so Ahriman shifted the will. It was endowed with a tendency towards a kind of freedom that it should only have entered later. This freedom is not real but the illusion of freedom. Mankind lived in this illusion of freedom for a long time. This gave it no opportunity to develop the idea of freedom in a spiritual way. People oscillated back and forth between the opinions that man was free or that he was spun into a rigid necessity. And when real freedom came with the dawning age of consciousness, it could not be recognized because for too long, cognition had been spun into the illusion of freedom.

[ 18 ] Everything that sank into the being of man in this second stage of the development of life between death and a new birth, he carried as a cosmic memory into the third stage, in which he still lives at present. In this stage he stands in a similar relationship to the Hierarchy of the Angeloi as he stood to that of the Archangeloi during the second. Only the relationship to the Angeloi is such that full independent individuality comes about through them. For the Angeloi - now not the choir, but one for one human being - confine themselves to bringing about the right relationship of life between death and new birth and earthly life.

[ 19 ] An initially curious fact is that for the individual human being in the second stage of his development of the lives between death and new birth the whole hierarchy of the Archangeloi is at work. Later this hierarchy is responsible for the guidance of the tribes. And there is an archangel for a people as the spirit of the people. The elemental forces remain active in the races. And again, for a race, a being from the hierarchy of the elemental forces acts as a racial spirit.

[ 20 ] So the present human being also contains the cosmic memory of previous stages of this experience in the life between death and new birth. And this cosmic memory is also clearly present wherever spirit-led phenomena occur in the physical world, such as in races and peoples.

Goetheanum, turn of the year 1925.
Guiding Principles No. 150 to 152
(January 25, 1925)

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

[ 21 ] 150. In a second period of the development of the lives between death and new birth, man enters the realm of the Archangeloi. During this period the germ of later self-consciousness is laid in the soul, after it has been predisposed in the formation of the human form in the first period.

[ 22 ] 151. During this second period, man is pushed deeper into the physical by the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences than would happen without these influences.

[ 23 ] 152. In the third period the human being enters the realm of the Angeloi, who, however, only exert their influence in the astral body and the ego. This period is the present one. What happened in the first two periods lives on in the development of man and explains the fact that within the age of the consciousness soul (in the nineteenth century) man stares into the spiritual world as into a complete darkness.