The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] We have come to the point in our consideration where the human being, by descending from the spiritual regions, feels that he is clothed by an etheric body and thus has a kind of preview, a glimpse of the life that awaits him here. We have seen what this can cause in terms of abnormalities and conditions for the human being. Before we go any further, we would like to answer a question that many people might have when they direct their spiritual vision up into devachan: What about the way people live together between death and a new birth? We must realize that people not only live and interact with each other here on the physical earth, but also there in the higher worlds. Just as the work of people in the spiritual realm extends down into the physical world, so do all the relationships between people, all their connections, all their relationships with each other, which are woven down here, extend up into the realm of the spiritual.

[ 2 ] Let us visualize this with a concrete example. Let us take the relationship between mother and child. The question may arise: Is there a relationship between them that lasts? Yes, there is. Much more intimate, much stronger than any relationship that can be formed here on this earth! At first, motherly love has an animalistic character, it is a kind of natural instinct. As the child grows, this relationship develops into a moral, ethical, spiritual one. When mother and child learn to think together and have common feelings, the natural instinct recedes more and more; it has only provided the opportunity for the beautiful bond to develop, in which motherly love and childlike love embrace each other in the highest sense. The mutual understanding and intimate love that develops between them extends to the spiritual realm, even if one of them dies before the other, seemingly separating the survivor from the deceased for a certain period of time. After this period of time, the bond that has been woven here is just as strong and intimate; they are together, only all the animalistic, purely natural instincts must first be cast off. What is woven here on earth as soul feeling, as soul thought, from one being to another, is not inhibited up there by the barriers that exist here. Yes, devachan even takes on a certain appearance, a certain structure through the relationships that are woven here.

[ 3 ] Let us take another example. Friendships and bonds that are born out of soul affinity are formed; they continue up to devachan. And from this, the social connections develop for the next life. So we are working on the form that devachan takes by forming soul connections here. All of us have worked in this way, weaving bonds of love from person to person. In doing so, we create something that is not only important for the earth, but also shapes the connections in devachan. One would like to say: That which happens here, through love, through friendship, through intimate understanding for one another, these are building blocks that build temples up there in the spiritual realm, and it must be an uplifting feeling for people, permeated by this certainty, to know that when bonds are already woven here from soul to soul, this is the basis of an eternal becoming.

[ 4 ] Let us assume that some other physical planet had beings who did not like each other and could form few bonds of love with each other. They would have a poor devachan. A devachan that is rich and full of content has only one planetary region where such bonds of love entwine from person to person. Those who have already reached the devachan and who cannot be perceived by ordinary people at first, have, depending on their development, a more or less distinct awareness of their belonging together with the beings who have remained here. There are even means to increase this sense of belonging. If we send our departed thoughts of love, but not of selfish love, we thereby strengthen the feeling of belonging with them.

[ 5 ] It is a mistake to assume that the state of consciousness of a person in Devachan is dim and shadowy. That is not the case. We must emphasize that the degree of consciousness that a person has attained cannot be lost again, even if certain degradations take place during certain transitions, so that a person in Devachan actually has a clear consciousness through his spiritual organs for what is happening here on earth. Occultism shows that the human being living in the spiritual realm definitely experiences what is happening here on earth.

[ 6 ] Thus we see that when we look at life in devachan in its true light, all that is unsatisfactory disappears, and that even if a person does not view it from his egoistic can still perceive it as an infinitely blissful state, quite apart from the fact that the freedom from the physical body, from the lower limbs, in which the human being is enclosed here, gives an immensely blissful feeling. That alone, that these barriers have fallen, that the human being is no longer constrained by these fetters, carries a feeling of bliss within it. So the Devachan is a time of freedom to live life to the full in all directions, in a way that is so rich, so wide, so uninhibited, as man has never known it here.

[ 7 ] We have now seen that man, on his descent to the new birth of spiritual beings, similar in rank to the folk spirits, has been clothed with a new etheric body. This etheric body is not completely adapted to man; but what he receives as a physical shell is even less adapted to him. We now want to explain in broad terms how the human being is integrated into the physical world. Some of it is not suitable for public discussion.

[ 8 ] We know that the human being, through the qualities he has, clothes himself with an astral body. Through what is in this astral body, he has an attraction to certain beings on earth. Through the etheric body, he is drawn to the nation and the family in the broader sense into which he will be born anew. Through the way he has developed his astral body, he is drawn to the maternal part of his parents. The essence, the substance, the structure of the astral body draws him to the mother. The I draws the new human being to the fatherly part of the parents. The I was there in ancient times, when the soul descended for the first time from the bosom of the deity into an earthly body. This I has developed through many incarnations. The I of one person differs from the I of another, and as it is now, it forms the special attraction to the father. The etheric body draws towards the people, towards the family, the astral body draws particularly towards the mother, the I towards the father. The whole structure, which wants to go down to the new embodiment, is based on this.

[ 9 ] It may happen that the astral body is drawn to a maternal part, but the I does not want to go to the corresponding father. In this case, it continues its journey until it finds a suitable parent pair.

[ 10 ] In the present cycle of development, the ego represents the element of will, of sentient impulses; in the astral body are the qualities of imagination, the qualities of thinking. The latter will therefore be inherited from the mother, as they say, and the former from the father. And so we see that the individuality that wants to embody itself selects, through its unconscious forces, the parental couple that is to give it the physical body.

[ 11 ] The process described here is essentially complete by about the third week after conception. Although this human being, consisting of I, astral body and etheric body, is close to the mother who carries the fertilized human germ within her from the moment of conception, it works from the outside. At about the third week, the astral and etheric bodies intercept the human germ and begin to collaborate in the formation of the human being. Until then, the development of the physical human body takes place without the influence of the astral and etheric bodies; from then on, they collaborate in the development of the child and themselves structure the further formation of the human germ. We see, then, that what was said of the etheric body applies to an even greater extent to the physical body, that here a harmonious attunement can take place even less easily. This important fact sheds light on much of what is going on in the world.

[ 12 ] We have so far described the ordinary person of the present day in his normal development. This does not quite apply to a person who has begun an occult development in a previous incarnation. The higher he has come, the earlier is the time when he begins to work on his physical body in order to make it more suitable for the mission he has to fulfill here on earth. The later he comes to this, the less he will be able to control his physical body. In the case of highly developed human individuals, who are the leaders and guides of the spiritual part of our world, such an interception already takes place at conception. For them, nothing happens without their intervention. They guide their physical body until death and begin to work on the new one as soon as the first impetus is given.

[ 13 ] The substances that make up the physical body are constantly changing. After about seven years, every particle has been renewed. The substance is exchanged, the form remains. Between birth and death, we must constantly give birth to the substance anew; it is the changing element. That which one develops beyond death between birth and death remains and forms a new organism.

[ 14 ] What a person does unconsciously between birth and death, the initiate does consciously from death to the new birth: he consciously forms his new physical body. Birth is therefore only a radical event for him. He only exchanges the substances once, but thoroughly. This explains the great similarity of the form of such individualities from one incarnation to another, whereas there is absolutely no similarity between the forms of their various incarnations in the case of those who are less developed. The higher a person develops, the more similar the two successive incarnations are. This can certainly be observed with clairvoyant vision. There is a very specific term for this relationship, which a person enters at a higher level of development. It is said that he is not born into another body at all, just as it is not said of the ordinary person that he receives a new body every seven years. It is said of the master: he is born into the same body. He uses it for centuries, even millennia. This is the case with the vast majority of leading individuals. An exception is made for certain masters who have their very special mission. For them, the physical body remains intact, so that death does not occur at all. These are the masters who are responsible for the transition from one race to another.

[ 15 ] Two other questions now arise: how long does the stay in the other worlds last, and what is the sex in successive embodiments.

[ 16 ] Occult research shows that on average a person returns in a period of 1000 to 1300 years. The reason for this is that when a person returns, he finds the face of the earth changed and can thus experience new things. The changes that take place on our Earth are closely connected with certain star constellations; that is a very important fact. At the beginning of spring, the sun rises in a certain sign of the zodiac. 800 years before Christ, the sun first rose in the constellation of Aries, the Lamb, and even earlier in the neighboring constellation of Taurus, the Bull. It takes about 2160 years to pass through a constellation. In occultism, passing through all twelve signs of the zodiac is called a world year.

[ 17 ] The ancient peoples always felt deeply what was connected with this passage of the zodiac. It permeated their souls, and they felt devoutly: The sun comes up in spring, nature, which has rested in winter, renews itself. The divine ray of the spring sun awakens it from a deep sleep. This young springtime power united with the constellation from which the sun was shining. They said: It is the bringer of the newly invigorated sun, the newly creative power of God. And so, to people of a time now two millennia in the past, the lamb appeared as a benefactor of humanity. All lamb legends arise around this time. Divine concepts are associated with this symbol. In the first centuries, the Redeemer Himself, Christ Jesus, is depicted in the symbol of the cross, with the lamb below it. It was only in the sixth century that the Redeemer was depicted hanging on the cross. The well-known Jason saga, the obtaining of the golden ram's skin, the Golden Fleece, also has its origin in this.

[ 18 ] Before 800 BC, the sun passed through the constellation of Taurus, and so we have the worship of the bull Apis in Egypt and of the bull Mithras in Persia. Even earlier, the sun passes through the constellation of Gemini. In Indian and Germanic myths we really find the reference to the pair of twins. The twin rams with which Donar, the god, rides are a last remnant of this. Then finally we come back to the time of Cancer, which brings us close to the ancient Atlantic flood. An old culture perished, a new one arose. This is indicated by a certain occult sign, the swirl, which also represents the cancer symbol and can be found in every calendar.

[ 19 ] Thus, the nations have always had a clear awareness of what is going on in the sky, parallel to the changes on the earth below. When the sun has passed through a constellation, the earth has also changed its face so that it is valuable for man to live anew. Therefore, the time of re-embodiment depends on the advance of the spring equinox. Approximately the time it takes the sun to pass through such a sign of the zodiac is the time during which the human being is incarnated twice, once male and once female. For the experiences and events that a person can undergo in a male or female organism are so fundamentally different for the spiritual life that he incarnates in the same part of the world once as a female and once as a male. And that gives us a time between two incarnations of about 1000 to 1300 years on average.

[ 20 ] This also answers the question of gender: it usually alternates. This rule is often broken, so that sometimes three to five, but never more than seven, same-sex incarnations follow each other. It contradicts all occult experience to say that seven consecutive same-sex incarnations are the rule.

[ 21 ] Before we study the karma of the individual, we must consider a basic fact. There is a collective karma, one that is not determined by the individual, although it balances itself out over the course of his incarnations. A concrete example will follow here.

[ 22 ] When the Huns poured into European countries from Asia in the Middle Ages, causing disturbing wars, this also had a spiritual significance. The Huns are the last remnants of the old Atlantean peoples. They are in a state of deep decadence, which manifests itself in a certain process of decay of their astral and etheric bodies. These putrefactive substances found a good mother soil in the fear and terror that they caused in all peoples. As a result, they inoculated their astral bodies with such decaying substances, and this was now transferred to the physical body in a later generation. The skin absorbed the astral substance taken up, and the result was a disease of the Middle Ages: leprosy. The physical doctor would, of course, cite physical causes for this leprosy. I do not want to refute what the doctor says, but the doctor is faced with the following logical conclusion: in a scuffle, someone injured another with a knife, he had an old feeling of revenge against him. Now one person says that the injury was caused by the feeling of revenge, the other says that the knife was the cause. — Both are right. The knife was the last physical cause, but behind it lies the spiritual one. Those who look for spiritual causes will always accept the physical ones. We see here how historical events have a significant effect on entire generations, and we learn how we can intervene to improve health conditions over the long term.

[ 23 ] In the last centuries, technical progress has led to the development of an industrial proletariat among our European population, and with it an enormous amount of class and social hatred has developed. These sit in the human being's astral body and have a physical effect as pulmonary tuberculosis. This knowledge is a result of occult research. We are often unable to help the individual under such collective karma. We often have to watch with a heavy soul as the individual suffers; we cannot make him healthy or happy because he is connected with the collective karma. Only by improving the collective karma can the individual be helped. We should not try to uplift the individual egoistic self, but work in such a way that we serve the welfare of all mankind.

[ 24 ] Another example, which directly concerns the present time, is as follows: Occult observations have shown that among the astral beings who took part in the various battles of the Russo-Japanese War, there were deceased Russians who worked against their own people. This is due to the fact that in the last days of the development of the Russian nation many noble idealists were destroyed by dungeons and the scaffold. They were people of high ideals, but not developed enough to be able to forgive. They went to their death with a strong sense of revenge against those who had caused their death. This had to be worked off in their Kamaloka period, because only there do such feelings of revenge work themselves out. After their death, from the astral plane, they filled the souls of the fighting Japanese with hatred and revenge against the people to whom they themselves had belonged. Had they already been in Devachan, they would have said: I forgive my enemies!” For in the devachan they would have recognized in the clouds of hatred and revenge that met them from the outside the horror and unworthiness of such feelings. Thus occult research shows us how whole nations are influenced by their ancestors.

[ 25 ] The ideal aspirations of modern times cannot achieve their ideals because they only want to work with physical means on the physical plane. For example, the peace society that wants to bring about peace only with physical means. Only when we learn to work on the astral plane as well, only then can we recognize which means are the right ones. Only then can we work in such a way that when a person is born into the world again, he will find it in such a way that he can work fruitfully in it.