The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today we come to the experiences of people within our physical world, insofar as they are determined by the person's past life. First of all, it must be emphasized that life is not determined solely by past embodiments, but also, if only to a small extent, by the present life. This law, which we encounter in the way that a person's past, present and future are connected, is called the law of karma in spiritual science literature. It is the true law of human destiny. In the effect of the law of karma in each individual life, we have only a special case of the great law of the cosmos, because what we call the law of karma is a very general cosmic law, and its validity in human life is only a special case. When we realize any kind of connection between previous conditions and subsequent effects, we are already thinking in terms of this law. Therefore, I would like to explain the validity of this law in the cosmos in detail, and specifically for human life, in the appropriate form.

[ 2 ] If we have two containers of water in front of us and throw a red-hot iron ball into one of them, the water will sizzle and become warm. If we now take the ball out and throw it into the other container, the water will no longer sizzle or heat up. If we had thrown the ball into the second vessel straight away, the water would have sizzled and the ball would have cooled down there too; but now it can no longer be made to sizzle because the ball is no longer glowing, having already cooled down in the first vessel. The effect of the behavior of the ball in the first vessel determines its behavior in the second vessel. Thus, in physical life, cause and effect are always connected. How a thing behaves afterwards depends on what happens to it beforehand.

[ 3 ] Another example is provided by certain animals in which the organ of sight has atrophied as a result of their migrating into dark caves. In their case, the substances that previously supplied the eyes with nourishment are directed to other parts of the body because the eye no longer needs them, since it no longer needs to see. Their eyes were thus regressed, and now animals with atrophied eyes will be produced in all subsequent generations. Through their earlier immigration, they themselves determined this behavior of the organs, and their fate for their following generations was determined by what the beings did in the past. They thereby prepared their fate for the future.

[ 4 ] Likewise, it is also continuous in human life. Man determines his future by his past, and since he, as an innermost being, is not enclosed in a single embodiment, but passes through many, the causes for the things that happen to him in a particular life are to be sought in a previous life.

[ 5 ] We now want to look at the chain of cause and effect that can be understood by taking into account the sequence of human actions, thoughts and feelings in general. We often say in everyday life: thoughts are free! that is, one can think whatever one wants, without embarrassing anyone in the outside world. Here you have an important point where the one who is truly seized by spiritual impulses differs from the materialistically thinking person.

[ 6 ] The materialist believes that he hurts a person whom he hits with a stone; on the other hand, he believes that a hate-filled thought he harbors against his fellow man does not hurt the latter. But anyone who really knows the world knows that a hate-filled thought has a much, much stronger effect than a stone thrown in anger can ever have. Everything that a person thinks, feels and experiences has its effects in the astral world, and one can very closely follow in detail how, for example, a loving thought that goes out to another person works, and how quite different a hate-filled thought works. When you send out a loving thought, the seer sees a form of light forming like a kind of flower calyx that lovingly envelops the person in relation to his etheric and astral body and thus contributes to his invigoration and bliss. The hate-filled thought, on the other hand, pierces like a wounding arrow into the etheric and astral body.

[ 7 ] Many different observations can be made in this connection. In the astral world there is a tremendous difference between expressing a true thought and expressing a false one. A thought refers to some object and is true because it corresponds to that object. For example, a fact occurs somewhere, and from it an effect spreads into the higher worlds. If someone relates this fact truthfully, an astral form radiates from the teller, unites with the form coming from the fact itself, and both are strengthened. These strengthened forms serve to make our spiritual world more and more structured and full of content, as we need it if humanity is to progress. But if a fact is told in such a way that it does not correspond to the event, that it is a lie, then the thought-form of the person telling it, together with that emanating from the event, collide and are mutually destroyed. Such explosive destructions by lies work like an ulcer on the body, which destroys the organism. Thus lies kill the astral formations that have arisen and must arise, and thus inhibit or kill a part of development. In fact, everyone who speaks the truth advances the development of humanity, and he who lies hinders it. Hence there is an occult law: viewed spiritually, a lie is a murder. It not only kills an astral entity, but it is also a suicide. Everyone who lies puts obstacles in his own way. Everywhere in the spiritual world such effects can be observed. The clairvoyant also sees that everything one thinks, feels and experiences has its effects on the astral plane.

[ 8 ] Everything that a person has in terms of inclinations, temperament, and lasting character traits, and what one thinks not only temporarily, radiates continuously not only into the astral world, but also into the devachanic world. A person with a cheerful temperament is a source, a center for certain processes in the devachanic world. A person with a gloomy nature has the effect of increasing the essences and substances that are associated with people's gloomy nature. Thus spiritual science shows us that we do not stand alone, but that our thoughts continually evoke forms that shade the devachanic world and permeate it with all kinds of substances and essences. All four regions of the devachan world – the continental, the oceanic, the atmospheric and the realm of original ideas – are constantly influenced by human thoughts, feelings and perceptions. The higher regions, where the Akasha Chronicle already plays a role, are influenced by their deeds. What happens externally plays a role even in the highest regions of Devachan, which we have called the world of reason.

[ 9 ] We will thus understand how, during his descent to a new embodiment, the human being reassembles his astral body and integrates himself. Everything he had thought, felt and sensed had become part of the astral world. It had left many traces there. If he had thought many true thoughts, these traces helped to compose his astral body. What he has integrated into the lower Devachan world as his temperament and so on, that composes the new etheric body, and what he has accomplished in terms of deeds, contributes from the highest parts of Devachan, where the Akasha Chronicle can already be found, to the stationing and localization of the physical body. These are the forces that bring a person to a certain place. If you have done someone harm, this is an external fact that goes up into the highest parts of Devachan. It acts as forces that the person has left behind when they are re-integrated into a physical body, and pushes them, albeit under the guidance of higher beings, to the place where they can now experience the effect of their actions in the physical world.

[ 10 ] Everything we experience externally without being particularly affected internally has an effect on our astral body in the next embodiment and draws in corresponding feelings, sensations and thought peculiarities. If one has used one's life well, has seen and learned much, has acquired extensive knowledge, then the result is that in the next life the astral body is reborn with special talents in these directions. Thus, experiences and learnings are expressed in the next embodiment in the astral body. But what one feels, senses, experiences in terms of pleasure and suffering, what is the inner experience of the soul, has an effect on the etheric body in the next embodiment and causes a lasting inclination in it. Those who experience much joy will have an etheric body with a temperament inclined towards joy. Those who endeavor to do many good deeds will, through the feelings that are developed in the process, have developed a talent for good deeds in their next life. They will also have a carefully developed conscience and will be a morally inclined person.

[ 11 ] That of which the etheric body is the carrier in this life, the lasting character, the abilities and so on, that appears in the next life in the physical body, and in such a way that, for example, a person who has developed bad inclinations and passions in his life is born in the next life with an unhealthy physical body. On the other hand, a person who has good health, who is able to endure a lot, has developed good qualities in their previous life. Someone who is constantly prone to illness has cultivated bad instincts in themselves. Thus, we have it in our power to create our own health or illness, insofar as they lie in the predisposition of the physical body. One need only eradicate all bad inclinations and then prepare a good, strong body for the next life.

[ 12 ] With all the details, one can observe how what was present in one's inclinations in one life works in one's physical body in the next life. A life that has the tendency to love everything around it, that lovingly responds to every being, a life that pours out love, will have a physical body in the next embodiment that will look young and blooming for a long time. Love for all beings, the development of sympathy, causes a youthful physical body. A life full of hatred and full of antipathy towards other beings, a life that is critical of everything and wants to withdraw from everything, will, as a result of these tendencies, cause the physical body to age prematurely and develop wrinkles. Thus the tendencies and passions of one's life are transferred to the physical body of the next incarnation.

[ 13 ] One can see into the details, and there one could find how an acquired sense of acquisition, which is instinctive, which always seeks to scratch together, can, by becoming an inclination, produce a disposition to infectious diseases in the physical body in the next life. We can definitely observe such cases where a pronounced tendency towards infectious diseases can be traced back to a strong sense of acquisition in the past, which of course has the etheric body as its carrier. On the other hand, an objective striving within humanity, which wants to achieve nothing for itself, which works for humanity with the pronounced sense of working for the whole, such an inclination in the etheric body brings about a pronounced strength against infectious diseases in the next life.

[ 14 ] In this way one can see through the world to a high degree in its development and into its interior, if one knows the connection between the physical and the astral world. Many people, for example, complain about pain and suffering. But from a higher point of view, they have no right to complain about it, because when they are overcome and one is ready for a next embodiment, then suffering and pain are the sources of wisdom and composure and an overview of things. Even in a more recent writing, which has arisen from the materialistic point of view of the present time, we find the saying that in the physiognomy of every thinker there is something like crystallized pain. What the materialistically thinking writer says has long been known to the occultist, for the greatest wisdom in the world is acquired through the calm endurance of pain and suffering. This creates wisdom in the next incarnation.

[ 15 ] No one who flees the pain of life, who does not want to endure it, can create the basis for wisdom. Yes, if we look further, we cannot even complain about illnesses. When you look at them from a higher perspective, from the point of view of eternity, they look quite different. Diseases that one endures often appear in the next life as a special beauty in the physical, so that much physical beauty found in people is achieved through illness in the previous life. This is the connection between the injury of the body through illness, especially through external circumstances, and beauty. The words of the French writer Fabre d'Olivet can be applied to this very remarkable connection: When you look at human life, it often appears like the formation of a pearl in an oyster. The pearl is only formed when the oyster is sick. — This is also the case in human life: beauty is karmically connected with and is the result of disease. But if I were to say that those who develop bad passions create a disposition for disease, then it must be strictly emphasized that this refers to the inner disposition for disease. If one becomes ill because, for example, one works in a place with polluted air, then that is different; one can also become ill as a result of that, but it is not connected with the disposition of the physical body.

[ 16 ] Everything that is a fact on the physical plane, everything that is done, that lives itself out, that has an effect in the physical world, from the step and the hand movement to the most complicated processes, for example the construction of a house, comes to man in a later embodiment as a real physical effect from outside. You see, we live from the inside out: what lives in the astral body as joy, pain, desire and suffering reappears in the etheric body; what is rooted in the etheric body in lasting instincts and passions appears in the physical body as a disposition. But what one does here, using the physical body, appears as external destiny in the next embodiment. Thus what the astral body does becomes the fate of the etheric body, the etheric body becomes the fate of the physical body, and what the physical body does comes back as an effect from outside in the next embodiment as a physical reality.

[ 17 ] There you have established the exact point at which external fate intervenes in human life. This effect of fate is something that may not occur for a long time, but it must surely come to the person. If one follows a person's life through various incarnations, one can always see that his life is prepared by beings who are active in the incorporation of his physical body, so that he is led to a certain place so that his fate may befall him.

[ 18 ] Here is another example from real life: at a medieval court of the Femgericht, there were a number of judges who pronounced the sentence and carried it out themselves. They killed a person. They went back into the past embodiments of the judges and the person killed, and it turned out that they had all lived at the same time, with the executed man as the chief of a tribe, and he had had those who were now the judges executed. This act in their previous physical life created the connection between the persons; it created forces that have an effect even in the Akashic Records. When a person comes to embodiment again, these forces cause him to be born again at the same time and in the same place as the person with whom he is so closely connected, and bring about his destiny. The Akasha Chronicle is indeed a source of power in which everything that one person has to work off on another is written down. Some people can sense these processes, but very few are aware of them.

[ 19 ] A person is in a job, for example, that seems to make him happy and satisfied. He is driven out of it by something, cannot find another job in the same place, and is thrown miles away, to another country, where he has to embark on a new career. There he finds a person with whom he has to enter into some kind of relationship. What has happened here? The person has once lived with the other person they have now met. They once owed them something. This is recorded in the Akasha Chronicle, and the forces have led them to this place so that they can meet this person and repay their debt.

[ 20 ] Between birth and death, man is constantly surrounded by such a connection of forces, which spiritually envelop him from all sides, and these are the directing powers of his life. So you see that you actually carry the effects of past lives within you all the time, that you are always experiencing the effects of previous embodiments.

[ 21 ] So you must realize that you are guided in your life by powers that you yourself do not know. What affects the etheric body are forms that you yourself have produced earlier on the astral plane, and what affects your destiny are entities, forces on the higher parts of Devachan that you yourself have inscribed in the Akasha Chronicle. These forces or entities are not unknown to the occultist; they are fully placed in the hierarchy of similar entities. You must realize that you feel the effects of other entities in the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body. Everything you do involuntarily, everything you are pushed to do, happens through the agency of other entities. It does not happen out of nothing. The various limbs of human nature are continually really permeated and filled by other entities, and the initiated teacher has a good deal of the exercises done to expel them, so that the person may become freer and freer.

[ 22 ] The beings that permeate the astral body and make it unfree are called demons. You are constantly permeated by such demons in your astral body, and the beings that you yourself create through your true or false thoughts are those that gradually grow into demons. There are good demons that arise from good thoughts. But bad thoughts, especially untrue and lying ones, produce demonic figures of the most terrible and hideous kind, which, if one may express it thus, infest the astral body. Likewise, the etheric body is permeated by entities from which the human being must free himself. These are the spectrums or ghosts. Finally, there are those that permeate the physical body, and these are the phantoms. Besides these three, there are still other entities that drive the ego back and forth. These are the spirits, just as the ego itself is spirit. In fact, man is the creator of such beings, which then, when he comes down to earth, determine his inner and outer destiny. These beings animate the course of life in such a way that you feel everything that your astral body has produced in demons, your ether body in ghosts and your physical body in phantoms. All this has a relationship to you, it strives towards you when you are re-embodied.

[ 23 ] There you see how religious documents express these truths. When the Bible speaks of the expulsion of demons, it is not an abstraction, but is to be understood literally. What did Christ Jesus do? He healed those possessed by demons, he extracted the demons from the astral body. These are real events and it is to be taken quite literally. Socrates, that enlightened spirit, also speaks of his demon, which worked in his astral body. It was a good demon; one must not imagine demons as being only bad entities.

[ 24 ] But there are also terrible, pernicious demons. All lying demons work as if they were throwing people back in their development. Since in world history, when great personalities tell lies, these lying demons are always created, and grow into quite powerful entities, they are spoken of as the spirits of hindrance or obstruction. In this sense, Faust says to Mephistopheles: “Father, thou art of all hindrances!”

[ 25 ] The individual human being, as he is interwoven with all of humanity, has an effect on the whole world when he speaks the truth or lies, because whether he produces demons of truth or demons of lies has very different effects. Imagine a nation consisting entirely of liars. They would populate the astral plane with nothing but lying demons, and these in turn can express themselves in the physical plane in the form of epidemics. Thus there is a certain form of bacillus, as the bearer of infectious diseases, which comes from the lies of humanity. They are nothing other than physically embodied lying demons. So you see that the lies of the past appear in world karma in a certain host of beings. You can see how much truth there is in myths and legends from a passage in Faust. There you will find a connection between vermin and lies, also in the role that rats and mice play in connection with the spirit of lies, Mephisto. In the legends, wonderful connections between the spiritual and physical worlds are often preserved.

[ 26 ] We still have to talk about many other things in order to understand the law of karma. The spiritual science movement has emerged from a certain intimate knowledge of the law of karma. You have just seen how things that lie in the etheric body affect the physical body in the next life. Thus, the attitude, the inclination to think, in a very specific way of thinking, affects the physical body, and so it is not unimportant for a subsequent incarnation whether you are spiritual or materialistic in your attitude. A person who knows something of higher worlds – he only needs to believe in the higher worlds – has in his next life a centered physical body, whose nervous system appears calm, and which he has under control, right down to the nerves. A person, on the other hand, who only wants to accept what is in the world of the senses, passes this attitude on to his physical body and in the next embodiment has one that is prone to nervous disorders, a fidgety physical body that has no firm center of will. The materialist disintegrates into mere details; the spirit holds together, for it is the unity.

[ 27 ] The disposition comes to light in the next incarnation through fate in the individual, but it continues through the generations, so that the sons and grandsons of fathers who were materialistic must suffer from the bad nature of the nervous system and nervous diseases. A nervous age like ours is the result of the materialistic attitude of the last century, and as a counter-current the great teachers of humanity have recognized the necessity of letting the spiritual attitude flow in.

[ 28 ] Materialism has also penetrated into religion. Or are those who believe in the spiritual worlds but lack the will to recognize them not materialists? This is materialism in religion, which wants the mystery of the six-day work — as the great evolution of the world is lived out in the six-day work of the Bible — to unfold before its eyes, and which speaks of Christ Jesus as a “historical personality” and passes by the mystery of Golgotha. Materialism in science is only a consequence of materialism in religion; it would not exist if religious life were not permeated by materialism. Those who are too lazy to delve into religious matters today are the same ones who have created materialism in science. And the nervous breakdowns caused by this materialism are affecting entire tribes, entire peoples, as well as the individual lives of people.

[ 29 ] If the spiritual current does not gain enough power to also take hold of the lazy and the complacent, then the karmic consequence of nervousness will gain more and more influence on humanity, and just as there were epidemics of leprosy in the Middle Ages, so in the future, caused by the materialistic attitude, severe nervous diseases, whole epidemics of madness, will occur, and whole nations will be affected by them.

[ 30 ] Thus, by realizing this area of the Law of Karma, spiritual science should not be something to argue about, but a remedy for humanity. The more humanity becomes spiritual, the more everything associated with nervous system and soul diseases will be eradicated.