The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture XI

[ 1 ] Today, we want to illustrate how karma works and clarify how it behaves in the so-called three worlds. All other worlds except these three are of little relevance to human development, but the physical, astral, and mental worlds are. During the waking state, we are in the physical world; there, in a certain sense, we have the physical world purely before us. We only need to direct our senses outward to have the physical world purely before us. But the moment we look at the physical world with interest, encounter it with our senses, we are already partly in the astral world and only partly really in the physical world. Only the beginnings of living purely in the physical world are present in human life; for example, when one contemplates a work of art purely contemplatively, without the desire to possess it. Such contemplation of a work of art is an important spiritual act when one works on it purely as a mental task, forgetting oneself. This pure, self-forgetful living in the physical world is very rare. Humans rarely contemplate nature in pure contemplation, but feel many other things in the process. Nevertheless, selfless living in physical nature is the most important thing, because only through this can humans have self-awareness; in all other worlds, ordinary humans are still immersed in a world of unconsciousness.

[ 2 ] In the physical world, humans are not only self-aware, they can also become selfless. However, their daily consciousness is not yet selfless if they do not forget themselves. It is not the physical world that prevents them from doing so, but the influence of the astral and mental worlds. But when they forget themselves, their individuality disappears and they find their self spread out before them. At present, however, humans can only develop this self-consciousness without distinctiveness in physical life. We call this self-consciousness the I. Humans can only become self-conscious in relation to their environment. Only when they gain senses for a world do they become self-conscious in that world. Now they only have senses for the physical world, but the other worlds constantly play into their self-consciousness and cloud it. When sensations play into it, it is the astral world; when humans think, the mental world plays into their consciousness.

[ 3 ] Most people's thoughts are nothing more than reflections of their surroundings. In very few cases does a person have thoughts that are not related to their surroundings. Only when their senses awaken to the mental world do they have such higher thoughts, so that they not only think the thoughts, but see them as beings around them. Then they have the self-awareness of the mental world, as possessed by the chela, the initiate. When people try to make the physical world around them disappear, then all their instincts, passions, emotions, and so on, most of them are left with no thoughts at all. Let us just try to imagine everything that influences human beings insofar as they live in space and time. Let us try to call to mind everything that is connected with the place where we live and the time in which we live. Everything that the soul constantly thinks about depends on space and time. All of this has a transitory value. Therefore, human beings must move from merely reflecting the sensual to allowing eternal thoughts to live within themselves in order to gradually develop devachanic senses. A sentence such as the one from “Light on the Path”: “Before the eye can see, it must wean itself from tears,” applies to all times and all places. When we allow such a sentence to live within us, something beyond space and time lives within us. This is a means, a power, to gradually awaken the devachanic senses in the soul and to awaken the senses to the eternal in the world.

[ 4 ] This is how the human being relates to the three worlds. However, the human being has only gradually come to this situation. He was not always in the physical world; he only gradually became physical and only gradually acquired senses. Before that, they were on the higher planes. They came down to the physical world from the astral plane and before that from the mental plane. We divide this into two sections, the lower mental plane or rupaplan, where everything is already differentiated, and the upper mental or arupaplan, where everything is still undifferentiated, in seed form. Human beings descended from the arupa plane through the rupaplan and the astral plane to the physical plane. It was only on the physical plane that human beings became self-conscious. On the astral plane, they are not yet self-conscious, and on the rupaplan and arupa plane, they are even less so. On the physical plane, human beings encountered objects from outside for the first time, directly in their environment. When a being encounters objects from outside, then the beginning of self-awareness is made. On the higher planes, life was still entirely confined to the inner world. When human beings lived on the astral plane, they had only one reality, which arose from their own inner life. There he had a true image consciousness. Even if this was vivid, in reality it was only images that arose within him. Today's dreams are a faint remnant of this. If, for example, an astral human being had approached salt, the salt would have had an unconscious effect on him and an image of it would have arisen within him. The image of the salty taste would have arisen within him. If he had approached another person whom he found likable, he would not have seen them from the outside, but a feeling of sympathy would have arisen within him. This life in the astral was a life of complete selfhood and separateness. Only on the physical plane can the human being give up his separateness by perceiving objects through the sense organs, merging with the environment, with the non-I. This is the importance of the physical plane. Without entering the physical plane, the human being would never have been able to give up his separateness and turn his senses outward. In fact, this is where the work of selflessness begins. Anything other than pure contemplation of external physical things still belongs more to the ego. One must accustom oneself to living just as selflessly on higher planes as one has begun to do on the physical plane, even if only sparingly so far. The objects of the physical plane compel man to become selfless and to give something to the object that is not “I.” With regard to desires, to what lies in the soul, man still follows his cravings. He must learn on the physical plane to renounce, to de-personalize his desires. That is the first stage.

[ 5 ] The next stage is to orient oneself not according to one's own desires, but according to those that come from outside. When human beings consciously and of their own free will do not orient themselves according to the thoughts that arise within them, but consciously devote themselves to foreign thoughts, then they rise up to the Devachan plane.

[ 6 ] Therefore, we must seek something outside ourselves in the higher worlds in order to devote ourselves to it, as we do to objects in the physical world. This is how we must view the desires of the Initiates. The secret student learns to recognize the desires that are right for humanity, and he follows them, just as one is compelled by external forces to follow sensual objects. Culture and education of desires lead us to the astral plane.

[ 7 ] When we become selfless in our thoughts and allow the eternal thoughts of the Masters of Wisdom to flow through our soul — through concentration and meditation on the thoughts of the Masters — then we also perceive the thoughts of our environment. The secret disciple can already be a master on the astral plane, but on the mental plane only the higher masters can do so.

[ 8 ] Human beings initially appear before us as physical beings. They live simultaneously in the astral and mental worlds, but are only self-aware in the physical world. They must traverse the entire physical world until their self-awareness is imbued with everything the physical world can teach them. Here, human beings say to themselves: I. They connect their self with the things around them, they learn to expand it through contemplation, it flows out and becomes one with the objects they have completely understood. If we had already understood the entire physical world, we would no longer need it; we would have it within us. But humans currently only have a part of the physical world within them. The human being who is born as a Lemurian in his first incarnation, who only just directs his I toward the physical world, does not yet know much about it. But when the last incarnation of the human being comes, he must have united the entire physical world with his I.

[ 9 ] In the physical world, humans are left to their own devices; no one guides them; in truth, they are forsaken by God. When they emerged from the astral world, the gods abandoned them. They were to learn to become their own masters in the physical world. Therefore, they can only live here as they actually live: oscillating between error and truth. They must grope their way and find their own path. Now they grope largely in the dark. Their gaze is turned outward, they are free among things, but they are also exposed to error. On the astral plane, human beings did not have such freedom; there they were urged and driven by the powers behind them. Like a kind of marionette, he still hung on the strings of the gods; they still had to guide him there. Insofar as man is still a spiritual being today, the gods still live in him. Freedom and bondage are still strongly mixed. Desires change constantly. This weighing up and weighing down of desires comes from within. These are the gods working in man.

[ 10 ] Human beings are even less free on the rupaplan of the mental world, and even less free on the arupaplan of the higher mental world. Human beings gradually become free on the physical plane the more they have become incapable of error through knowledge.

[ 11 ] To the same extent that one plows through and recognizes the physical plane, one gains the ability to carry the things one has learned in the physical world up to the arupa plane. The arupa plane is formless in itself, but takes on forms through human life. Human beings gather lessons on the physical plane and carry them, as forms that have become fixed in the soul, to the Arupa plane. In the Greek mysteries, the soul was therefore called a bee, the Arupa plane a beehive, and the physical earth a field of flowers. This was taught in the Greek mysteries.

[ 12 ] What drove the soul down to the physical plane? It was desire, craving; one never descends to a lower plane except through desire. Before that, the soul was in the astral world; the astral world is the world of desire. Everything that the gods planted in human beings in the astral world was the pure world of desire. The most outstanding thing about these pre-Moorish beings was their desire for the physical. At that time, human beings were very greedy for the physical; they had an unconscious, blind greed for the physical within them. This greed can only be satisfied by gratification. Through the ideas, through the insights they gain, through what humans have learned about the physical world, this greed for the physical fades away.

[ 13 ] After death, the soul goes to the astral plane and from there to the rupa and arupa planes. It stores what it has acquired there. What it has not yet brought with it from the physical world, what is still unknown, drives it back down again, creating the craving for new incarnations. How long it remains on the Arupa plane depends on the extent of what the human being has gained on the physical plane. In the case of the savage, this is very little, so only a faint glimmer occurs on the Arupa plane. Then he descends again to the physical world. Those who have learned everything here in the physical world no longer need to leave the Arupa plane, no longer need to return to the physical plane, because they have done their duty in the physical world.

[ 14 ] In terms of their astral nature, human beings today still belong half to the astral world. Half of the astral skin is broken through and they perceive the physical world through the senses. When they reach the point of living on the astral plane as they now live on the physical plane, learning to make observations in a similar way, they also carry the perceptions of the astral plane up to the Arupa plane. What they then carry up from the astral plane flows from the arupa plane even higher, over to the next higher plane, the buddhi plane. What they achieve today on the rupa plane through meditation and concentration, they also take with them to the arupa plane and pass it on to even higher planes.

[ 15 ] What is astral in human beings is half open to the physical world and half open to higher worlds. Where it is open to the physical world, it is determined by the perceptions of the sensory world. On the other side, it is determined from above. The same is true of the mental body. This is also determined partly by the outside world and partly by the inner world through the gods, the devas. Because this is so, human beings must dream and sleep.

[ 16 ] Now we can also understand the nature of sleep and dreaming. Dreaming means turning to the inner Deva forces. Human beings dream almost all night long, but they do not remember it. During sleep, the mental body is continuously determined by the Devas. Human beings do not yet have self-awareness on the higher planes, so they are not self-aware in their dreams. They begin to become self-aware on the astral plane. In deep sleep, they are on the mental plane. There, they are not yet self-aware. Only on the physical plane are human beings awake. There, the ego is present, living out its life on the physical plane. The astral ego cannot yet live out its life on the physical plane, so the astral ego must temporarily leave the human being. They must sleep so that it can leave. The states of dreaming and sleeping are only a repetition of earlier development. On the astral plane, humans dreamed; on the mental plane, they slept. They repeat these states every night today. Only when he has acquired senses for the other planes does he no longer dream or sleep, but perceives realities there. The secret student learns to perceive such realities on the astral plane. He then has a reality around him there. Those who develop even higher also have a reality around them in deep sleep. Then the continuity of consciousness sets in.

[ 17 ] One must understand this series of subtle concepts in order to comprehend why human beings come back down again after having been on the higher planes. What they do not yet know, what they have not yet recognized, what Buddhists call avidya, ignorance, drives them back into physical existence. Avidya is the first of the karmic forces. According to Buddhist teaching, there are twelve karmic forces that drive human beings down. Together, these are called nidanas. As human beings gradually descend, the karmic effects come into play. Avidya is the first effect. It is the opposite pole of a person coming into the physical plane. When they enter the physical plane and connect with something there, this evokes a reaction. Action always evokes reaction. Everything a person does in the physical world also evokes a reaction and has a repercussion as karma. Action and reaction is the technique, the mechanism of karma.