The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture XVI

[ 1 ] If one wants to understand the entire workings of karma, which is what we now intend to do, one must be able to grasp the concept of what is called “nirvana.” There is much involved in fully understanding the meaning of nirvana, but we will try to get a preliminary idea of it.

[ 2 ] In humans, there is actually very little of what could be called freedom in any action, because humans are actually the result of their past deeds. In the broadest sense, this is the case. In order to become what they are, the entire natural kingdoms first had to be created. The mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms that they once had within themselves were gradually brought forth from within. Added to this is what they have added during the time since the first third of the Lemurian race. Everything they have done, every thought and feeling that has passed through their soul, also belongs to their past and becomes their karma. We look into a past that is simultaneously building up around us in its effects. The whole world around us is nothing other than the effect of past deeds. In the same way, human beings are now preparing what is to happen in the future.

[ 3 ] Nevertheless, we are constantly confronted with things that are not entirely the effects of past deeds, but which bring something new into the world. A particular person, let us take Mr. Kiem for example, is the effect of past deeds. The Theosophical Society is also the effect of past deeds, and the fact that he is brought together with it is also such an effect. But something new happens through Mr. Kiem's relationship to the Theosophical Society; this in turn is the cause of future deeds. When light shines against a stick, a shadow is created behind it. This is actually something new. When one considers this effect, one says to oneself that something new has happened. The relationship between things is something new: the formation of shadows.

[ 4 ] Everything that people usually think about, they think about things, about what has become. But they can also think about such relationships, about something that has not been brought about by the effects of the past, but only occurs in the present. But this happens very rarely, because people cling to the old, to what has accumulated around them. Relationships that appear as something completely new will very rarely form the content of human thoughts. But those who want to work on the future must have thoughts that result in new relationships between things. Only thoughts about relationships between things can be something new. This can best be seen in art. What the artist creates does not actually exist. The mere form that the sculptor works out does not really exist; it is not a product of nature. In nature, there is only the form pulsated by life. The mere form would contradict the laws of nature. The artist builds something new out of relationships. The painter paints what occurs through relationships: light and shadow; he does not paint what is really there. He does not paint the tree, but an impression that is evoked by depicting all the relationships to the tree.

[ 5 ] In practical action, too, one notices that human beings usually do not create anything new. The majority of people only do what has already been done. Only a few people create out of moral intuition, bringing new duties and new deeds into the world. The new comes into the world through circumstances. That is why it has often been said that elementary moral action lies in circumstances. Such moral action consists, for example, in deeds brought about by the relationship of goodwill. Most actions are based on the old; even in actions and events where something new occurs, one usually still bases oneself on the old. Upon closer examination, this is usually the case. Only those actions are free in which the person does not act on the basis of the past, but in which he is confronted only with what can come into the world through the combining and productive activity of his reason. In occultism, such actions are called creating out of nothing. All other actions are created out of karma. These are two opposites: karma and the opposite of karma, nothingness — an activity that is not based on karma.

[ 6 ] And now imagine a person who is initially determined by karma; by actions, thoughts, and feelings from the past. Imagine him then so advanced that he has erased all karma, that is, he faces nothingness. If he still acts, occultism says that he acts out of nirvana. The actions of a Buddha or a Christ, for example, were carried out out of nirvana, at least in part. Ordinary people only approach this when they are inspired artistically, religiously, or by world history. Intuitive creation comes from “nothingness.” Those who want to achieve this must become completely free of karma. They can then no longer draw their impulses from what humans usually draw them from. The mood that then overtakes them is one of godliness, a state also known as nirvana.

[ 7 ] How does a person ascend to nirvana? Let us look back to the time of the Lemurians. There we have human beings, as they are on Earth, initially walking on all fours. These beings, in whom human beings were embodied at that time as “pure human beings” (as monads), walked on all fours. As the monads were embodied in them, these beings gradually stood up and raised their front limbs. Only now does karma begin. Karma as human karma only became possible when humans began to use their hands for work. Before that, no individual karma was created. This was a very important stage in human development, when humans changed from horizontal beings to vertical beings and thus had their hands free. In this way, they developed into the Atlantean era.

[ 8 ] At the next stage, humans learned to use their language. First they learned to use their hands, then they learned to use language. Through their hands, humans fill the environment with deeds; through language, they fill it with words. When humans die, what they have done and said in the environment remains alive. Everything that humans have done remains as their karma. But what humans have said remains not only as their own karma, but as something else entirely.

[ 9 ] Let us look back to the time when humans did not yet speak, but only acted. At that time, actions were something that came only from the individual personality. This immediately ceases to be personal when language begins. For now humans communicate with each other. This is an immensely important moment in Atlantean development. From the moment the first sound was uttered, human karma remained in the world. As soon as people speak to each other, something communal flows from the whole of humanity. Then the purely personal individual karma passes into the general karma of humanity. With the words we spread around us, we actually spread more than ourselves. The whole of humanity lives in what we say. Only when the deeds of the hands become selfless will they also be selfless for the whole of humanity. But with speech, human beings cannot perform completely selfish deeds, otherwise it would have to belong to them alone. A language can never be completely selfish, whereas the deeds of the hands usually are. The occultist says: What I do with my hands can only be my deed; what I speak, I speak as a member of a people or tribe.

[ 10 ] Thus, our life creates remnants around us, personal rudiments through the deeds of our hands, and human rudiments through what lives on from our words. This must be kept very clearly apart. Everything in nature around us, the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, is there as a result of earlier deeds. What is built up around us through our deeds is actually something new coming into the world. With every human being, something comes into the world, a new impact, and new impacts also come through the whole of humanity.

[ 11 ] So when we say that human beings appeared on Earth in the middle of the Lemurian epoch and created their own karma for the first time – previously they had not created any individual karma – we must now ask: Where could this karma come from, since it was something new? It can only come from Nirvana. At that time, something had to come into the world that came from Nirvana, from where creation arises out of “nothingness.” The beings that fertilized the earth at that time had to reach up to Nirvana. What fertilized the four-footed beings so that they became human beings were beings that came down from the Nirvana plane. They are called monads. That is why beings of this kind had to come down from the Nirvana plane at that time. The being that is within us, within human beings, is the monad from the Nirvana plane. Here something completely new enters the world and embodies itself in what is already there and what is itself entirely the effect of earlier deeds.

[ 12 ] We therefore distinguish between three stages. The first is that of external deeds performed by the hands; the second is that which is brought about by spoken words, and the third is that which is brought about by thought. And thought is something even more comprehensive than what is brought about by spoken words. Thought is no longer, as language is, different among different peoples, but belongs to all of humanity.

[ 13 ] Thus, man rises from actions through words to thoughts, and thus he becomes an increasingly universal being. There is no general norm of action, no logic of actions. Everyone must act for themselves. But there is no purely personal language. Language belongs to a group. But thought belongs to all of humanity. Thus, we have three stages in human beings, progressing from the particular to the general: deeds, words, thoughts.

[ 14 ] Insofar as he expresses himself in his environment, man leaves behind the traces of the whole human spirit as thoughts; the traces of a human group soul as words; the traces of his special human nature as actions. This is most clearly expressed by pointing out the effects of what is brought about by these individual stages. An individuality is like a thread that runs through all personal manifestations in the various incarnations. An individuality creates for further incarnations. A people as a language community creates for new peoples. Humanity creates for a new humanity, for a new planet. What a person does for themselves personally has significance for their next incarnation; what a people says has significance for the next subrace, for the next incarnation of the people. And when there will be a world in which all our thinking no longer lives as thinking, but appears in the effects of this thinking, then that is a new humanity, that is, a new planet. Without these broad perspectives, we cannot understand karma.

[ 15 ] What we think has significance for the next planetary cycles. Now consider this thought: Will the human race that remains after us and inhabits a future planet still think? Just as a new race will not speak the same language as the previous one, so future humanity will no longer think. It is ridiculous to ask ourselves what the deity is. Humans on the next planet will not think, but will perceive their environment through other activities, in a completely different form than on this planet. Thinking is something that belongs to us. When we explain the world through thought, this explanation of the world is only for us. This is of enormous significance because humans see how they, as humanity, are woven into the thread of karma and live and weave within the entire fabric.

[ 16 ] When the Eastern occultist considers such things, he says: Our whole life is as if we were surrounded by boundaries through action, speech, and thought. If we think all this away, there is hardly anything left for the ordinary person. That he then still has something is the result of esotericism, when he has gone beyond all this. What remains then is the experience of nirvana.

[ 17 ] The planetary spirit, which represents the essence of the world, is now incarnated in thought, but will be incarnated as something else in the future.