The Rudolf Steiner Archive

18. Physical Illnesses and Cosmological Laws

[ 1 ] The following questions were raised: Why do imperfection, evil, pain, and illness exist in the context of karma? Isn’t karmic balance also brought about by the thoughts of a benevolent human spirit? After all, the idea of a forgiving God seems more plausible than that of a strictly just one.

[ 2 ] The following can be said in response to these questions: Our concept of God, [as it appears from the theosophical point of view], includes the idea that individual personalities are guided to their highest perfection over the course of time—not in some indefinite manner, but in such a way that they reach the divine ultimate goal along a specific path of development.

[ 3 ] In our cosmos, we are dealing with seven planetary stages of development: Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, then the Earth; later, the Earth will transition to the next stage of development, the fifth, then the sixth, and finally the seventh. We can gain some understanding of three of these seven planetary states: the Moon, the Earth, and the future planet Jupiter. We call our planet, the Earth, the Cosmos of Love, and the next one, Jupiter, the Cosmos of Fire. In the preceding planetary state, the Moon state, we see the Cosmos of Wisdom.

[ 4 ] We call the most highly evolved beings of the present Earthly state the “Masters of Love and Compassion.” The “Masters of Wisdom” were the most highly evolved beings of the Lunar stage; they guided the wise structure of the human organs through the cosmic forces of karma in such a way that, for example, hunger and thirst arise at the right time. If these “Masters of Wisdom” were to appear in our time, they would come with too much wisdom. After all, a piano maker must carry out his work in the workshop; in the concert hall, his work would only cause mischief. Thus, the same activity can be good in one place and bad in another. This also applies to these “Masters of Wisdom”; since they possess too much wisdom, they would consequently cause mischief here on Earth, just as the piano builder would cause mischief in the concert hall. If the “Masters of Love and Compassion” were to carry too much of our Earth with them into the next stage of planetary development, they would become a kind of “Brothers of the Shadow,” for this next epoch will have the task of refining the Manas element up to the level of Budhi. All these purified karmic feelings will then flow together into a single power that will strive toward the Primordial Spirit that flows through and permeates our planet. Everything that modern humans feel will converge in the next state in a purified form like flames, and these many individual flames will unite into a single, all-encompassing fire. And so this planet is called the Cosmos of Fire, formed from the purified feelings of human hearts as they harmoniously resonate with one another.

[ 5 ] This cosmos of fire relates to our earthly cosmos just as the latter relates to its predecessor. The essential must first pass through wisdom, then through love, and finally it must be absorbed into the fire. This is the goal toward which the Primordial Spirit, which flows through the cosmos, strives. It wants humanity to experience all the intermediate stages. Humanity is not merely to attain perfection; rather, it is also necessary to let it pass through all the individual stages so that it may experience the richness of existence. These intermediate goals could not be achieved if there were no diversity in time and space. In space, different stages of existence exist side by side. But beings also live one after another in time, passing through different epochs and different stages. Thus, the Primordial Spirit strives for diversity in time and space. It allows beings to progress toward perfection through themselves. It allows beings to truly go through the individual lessons.

[ 6 ] Karma can therefore only operate in such a way that the one—the perfect—corresponds to the other—the imperfect. Imagine a child who must develop in order to become perfect in preparation for its future adulthood. It must first learn everything. It must learn to stand and walk; it must learn to keep its balance; in the process, it will often fall. If falling were not associated with pain, then falling would have no effect in terms of perfecting its abilities. In order to perfect itself, imperfection must be present in life. Every fact must be linked to another in such a way that this first fact becomes a lesson for us, that it teaches us something. This is what Theosophy shows us. All the intermediate stages of our planet are a process of learning through which we ascend to the highest degree. We must therefore view life as a process of learning. The divine Primordial Spirit gives us the opportunity to learn as much as possible from life. A God who were only forgiving would prevent us from learning.

[ 7 ] Every action becomes a source of insight. It would not be so if the swing of the pendulum to one side were not linked to its swing to the other. It is necessary for the pendulum to be able to swing in both directions so that we are not guided like puppets by the hand of a creator. Because the full diversity of human life does not manifest itself in certain stages of our development, something must occur in other stages that resembles the pendulum swinging to the other side.

[ 8 ] Now there are physical illnesses. We cannot, in essence, comprehend the origin of physical illnesses. We can only understand that accidents happen to us; but the fact that our body simply becomes ill of its own accord, without any accident befalling it, is something we cannot readily grasp. In occultism, the “Brothers of the Shadow” are also regarded as the bearers of evil diseases that act from within; and we can look for the cosmic-karmic origin of physical illnesses that arise without external cause in the same direction. An excess of wisdom in the wrong place leads to a straying into evil. In the physical realm, this means an excessive intervention in the organs by the Masters of Wisdom. They, however, should concern themselves only with wisdom and not delve into the physical sphere of the organs in the present earthly condition. In precisely this way, the Masters of Wisdom, when they do here what they rightly did at an earlier stage, become the cause of physical illnesses. This principle of wisdom, which, as it were, overturns itself, is the origin of physical evil.

[ 9 ] Our cosmos of love, compassion, and goodwill was preceded by the cosmos of wisdom, in which beings devoted their activities to the development of the physical body. The fact that they still extend their activities into our cosmos is what causes illness. Illnesses, both physical and moral evils, can be traced back to this common origin. This is a fact revealed to us by occult historical research.

[ 10 ] I have shown how, through external research, our age has reached a point where spiritualization through theosophy has become necessary. Western science has come to the very gates of theosophy and is now knocking, for it cannot find satisfactory solutions on its own.

[ 11 ] Lombroso’s research, for example, is valid in itself; in his work, the physical and the psychological appear closely intertwined. He closely links illness and physical abnormality in criminals. Lombroso found purely physical abnormalities and irregularities in the constitution of criminals; he measures skulls, looks for asymmetries and abnormalities, and states that where a moral transgression exists, a physical disharmony can also be found. In this way, he brings moral and physical illness very close together. Thus, physical science arrives at convictions to which occultism also leads. But Theosophy knows that in the case of moral and physical illnesses, there is a karmic intrusion of the Lunar epoch into our earthly one; these are cosmic-karmic effects that come to light in this deep penetration into the physical body.

[ 12 ] Now you will see why those who possess the ability to see into the astral realm can be very different from doctors who do not have this ability. During the Lunar Epoch, everything that happened back then was much closer to the astral than it is today; the astral forces were much more active, much more fluid, and much more powerful. The astral seer can therefore trace the connection that exists between our world and the Lunar Epoch. He must look from the physical effects into the astral causes. One must try to imagine this in a picture. Let us imagine that the astral had been water and had now frozen, so that one can see in the ice everything that was there before. A physician like Paracelsus, who possessed this vision, was able to discover a whole range of healing processes that are incomprehensible to the ordinary physician. He was able to determine the causes of physical illnesses through his vision—that is, to see the causes of illnesses in previous epochs of development. He said that one must cure not only the earthly but also the sidereal human being; in our terms, this means that one must also cure the astral aspect of the human being. Paracelsus sees the relationship between the effect of the physical remedy he uses and the cause of the illness, and he also sees the effect of this remedy. The ordinary physician discovers the effect only through experimentation.

[ 13 ] You see, then, how that which appears on Earth as imperfection is no longer imperfect for us when we understand it as resulting from the influence of wisdom that was once appropriate, but has now entered our era. What is perfect in our era may be imperfect in an earlier or later one. Jesus says: Why do you call me perfect? Only the Father in heaven is perfect. — No single being is perfect; it is only imperfect—in the place and at the time where it finds itself.