The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Theosophy and Rosicrucianism VI

[ 1 ] When a person, within the spiritual realm that we discussed yesterday, has come so far that they have, so to speak, transformed all the abilities and talents that they acquired during their life on earth, then the time comes when they are ready for a new embodiment. We must realize that in what confronts us in a human being, we have two things before us. One is what reproduces itself in the course of physical inheritance, and the other is what he brings with him into this world from his previous lives.

[ 2 ] We will have to describe man's descent into this world, although you must not be put off by the word 'descent', because it is not a spatial descent, but an evolution out of the world around us. Yesterday we saw how this spiritual world is not to be sought in some other world, but how it is also here around us, only that today's man lacks the ability to perceive this spiritual world. Out of this spiritual world develops what is called a new embodiment. We have seen that man has retained from his previous life an essence of both his etheric and astral bodies, an overview of his experiences; and what he has already ennobled within his astral body, he has taken with him into the spiritual world. Only what has not been ennobled has fallen away.

[ 3 ] We will gain a better understanding of reincarnation if we also consider some aspects of life after death. We have seen that immediately after the onset of physical death, the human being still lives in his etheric body for about three and a half days, and that during these three and a half days, the past life arises before him as in a kind of tableau. Then the etheric body dissolves, and then the time of the Kamaloka begins: this is the time of purification and cleansing of all astrality in need of purification and cleansing.

[ 4 ] But now I must still mention one more experience. The moment this image of remembrance arises immediately after death, the person has a significant experience. The person has the sensation of suddenly becoming larger, as if he were quickly breaking through his surface and growing out into space. This feeling does not fade away again until the new birth. Man feels as big as the world to which he belongs, as big as the whole universe. Therefore you can also get an idea of how it is possible that man sees and feels his body as something alien, because he sees his passions as it were outside his body. It is a strange feeling, this being spread out through space.

[ 5 ] Then something even more difficult to understand comes into it. During this entire Kamaloka period, man feels as if he were really divided up in space. It is easier to understand it this way: During the Kamaloka period, as I have described it, when a person relives their life back to childhood, they feel everything they have experienced as if in a mirror image. In this way, a person really feels the slap they gave someone at the time; they really feel as if they are part of the space that the other person occupied. If, for example, you died here in Kassel and the other person whom you slapped at the time lives in Paris, then you feel as if a piece of you is there. And so you feel as if you are divided up in space; you feel as if you are in pieces everywhere where you have something to look for, so to speak. This is to be understood in such a way that you feel nothing in the space between Paris and Kassel. So that when you consider all the events of your life in this way, you feel literally fragmented throughout the entire passage through the period after death.

[ 6 ] The following may serve as an analogy: a wasp consists of two parts, a front part and a rear part connected by a very thin thread. Imagine this hind part as being completely severed, and yet the wasp drags it along with it. This is roughly how you can visualize the above description: you feel as if you consist of individual pieces, and there is no connection between these pieces. But when a person enters devachan, he feels the same way as immediately after death, as if he occupied the whole universe.

[ 7 ] But when a person in devachan has transformed all his predispositions into talents and abilities, then the ego feels an attraction to the physical earth again and strives to descend to a physical embodiment on earth again. First, the ego surrounds itself with an astral body. This happens in such a way that it draws everything astral to itself: it is like a contraction. It is as if you hold a magnet to iron filings: just as the iron filings are attracted to each other in certain figures, so the ego attracts the astral to itself. But it has received impressions from all the experiences it has had during its passage through the realm of souls and spirits, and all these form the basic forces that contribute to the construction of the new astral body. So this new astral body takes with it everything that the person has gone through in previous lives and in Kamaloka. All the impressions he has had there have a decisive influence on his integration into his new astral body.

[ 8 ] Now the human being has only the astral body; but now he must also have the other members. The astral body has been formed solely by its own attractive powers. Before conception, the human being is clothed only with this astral body. The seer therefore constantly sees these astral human germs waiting for their birth or conception. He sees them flying around at a tremendous speed: bell-shaped forms move through space at a tremendous speed. Distances do not play any role at all; they move so fast that distances do not play a role.

[ 9 ] Now comes the clothing with an etheric body; but this is something with which man is no longer clothed by his own powers alone. The inherent powers of the etheric body can no longer take care of it, but for this, man needs the help of certain spiritual beings to assist him. You get an idea of these entities when you think about the fact that you sometimes use words that you usually do not associate with any idea, for example, the words 'national soul' or 'national spirit'. Today, when you pronounce these words, you do not imagine anything or you think of something very abstract. But the seer has a different idea about it. 'In fact, there are beings as true as we ourselves are true — higher entities that do not come to embodiment in the flesh and that are nothing other than the souls of a people or tribe. It is not just a vague term when one speaks of the national spirit; the national soul is a real being, only it has no physical body, but its lowest link is the etheric body. Then this national spirit has an astral body, I, Manas, Buddhi, Atma, and then a still higher link, which man does not achieve, which Christian esotericism calls the Holy Spirit and which Theosophy is accustomed to calling the Logos.

[ 10 ] Thus the seer can address the spirit of the people as he addresses other men. Today one has no real conception of such things and only believes that this word designates a summary of the characteristics of the individual peoples; but this is not true, it has a real reality. Due to the materialistic attitude, the understanding of such things had to be lost, but it will be regained. Today, humanity tends to dismiss such things as empty concepts. But it was bound to come to this. And so a book had to be written in our time that is, so to speak, the opposite of the theosophical view. This book had to be written, and it is also much admired: it is 'The Critique of Language' by Fritz Mauthner. Fritz Mauthner is a spirit that dissolves everything that lies above the sensual. Only a radical thinker abandoned by all good spirits could write like this, who had the courage to break with everything that is spirit and reality. Future centuries will have to turn to this book in particular if they want to know how people thought at the turn of this century.

[ 11 ] The soul of the people is real reality: it spreads out like a mass of fog, and all the etheric bodies of the individual people of the respective nation are embedded in it, and their forces flow into the etheric bodies of the individual people.

[ 12 ] Now there are spirits precisely of this rank of the folk soul that help to put together the etheric body of the new soul. This being ensures that the person is guided to a particular nation that is best suited for them. Now this etheric body does not always fit perfectly, and the disharmony you find in life very often stems from the fact that the human being cannot make his etheric body through his own efforts alone. This complete harmony will only take place at a much later stage of the earth's development.

[ 13 ] This transformation with the etheric body takes place at a tremendous speed, which you cannot even imagine from a physical point of view. And then the human being is led by even higher beings to that pair of parents who can give him the appropriate material for his physical body.

[ 14 ] Today's materialistic man, who sees how the son resembles his parents, will not be able to believe that something else connects with this body inherited from the parents. Of course we resemble our ancestors through the body, but that does not contradict what has been said. Let us consider a special case: the Bach family. In the course of two hundred and fifty years, more than twenty-nine musicians of greater or lesser importance emerged from this family. The materialist will say: “There you have it, that's what is inherited!” The Bernoulli family produced eight mathematicians in a short period of time. How is that? We understand this best when we consider the inheritance conditions. Since this is easier to understand with musicians, let us look at the Bach family. Let us assume that a young Bach, in his earlier incarnation, had been in Rome, had developed his abilities and wanted to re-incarnate. Let us assume that he had brought with him the greatest musical abilities as a result of his previous incarnations: if he did not find a well-trained ear, he would not be able to make use of all his abilities; without a well-trained ear, he would be just as helpless as a virtuoso without an instrument. It was absolutely necessary for this individuality to incorporate itself into such a body, which has a good organ for these inherited talents. But the outer form of the inner and outer organs is hereditary, and this individuality, if it wanted to become a musician, had to have a well-developed organ of hearing for the coming life. Where can it get it most easily? In a family of musicians. So she is led to where she can find the best organ for the further development of her talents, and that was precisely the parental couple of Johann Sebastian Bach at the time.

[ 15 ] What about the Bernoulli brothers? Mathematical thinking is not based on the structure of the brain, because mathematical logic is no different from other logic. Rather, mathematical talent is based on the particularly precisely developed organization of the three semi-circular canals. This is an organ, not much larger than a pea, embedded in the middle of the rock bone, and it consists of three semicircular canals that correspond exactly to the three-dimensional space. So if one canal is exactly vertical, the second is from right to left, and the third from front to back. All three are therefore perpendicular to each other at an angle of exactly ninety degrees. This precise alignment is what matters: the more accurate the right angle, the better the organ works. If the organ is damaged in any way, dizziness occurs and you can no longer orient yourself in space. And mathematical talent, or the ability to exercise mathematical talent, is based on a particularly fine formation of these channels. And this organ is inherited in the same way as the musical ear.

[ 16 ] The brain thinks about space in the same way as it thinks about philosophy, for example; but whether someone has a sense for spatial forms depends on these three semi-circular channels. Thus, an individuality gifted with great mathematical talent will embody itself in a family in which this organ is best developed, and that was the case in the Bernoulli family.

[ 17 ] To be morally capable, too, requires the right instrument. An individual with a high sense of morality will therefore seek out those parents who promise to give their child the best instrument for this. The adage that is often used in a superficially trivial way, “You cannot be too careful in choosing your parents”, is true in the deepest, most serious sense, for the child, so to speak, chooses its parents. Now some people might object: Where does that leave us with motherly love? After all, it comes from the fact that the mother knows that the child is a part of herself. Seen in the right light, motherly love does not suffer in any way. On the contrary, it is only understood more deeply. Why is the child born of this particular mother? Because it is led by its spiritual qualities to the spiritually similar mother, and it loves the mother even before conception; the mother's love is, so to speak, the requited love of this primary affection. Such an insight is therefore even a deepening of this concept.

[ 18 ] Now it depends essentially on the qualities of the father and mother how they provide the opportunity for an embodiment; and here the father and mother work differently. When the person comes down to a new birth, the ego, which has more willpower, is more attracted to the father, and what has more astral powers is more attracted to the mother. The father therefore has more influence on the ego, the will and the character, and the mother has more influence on the astral body, that is, on the power of imagination. It is best, of course, when both parents are a good match for the individuality that wants to embody itself.

[ 19 ] But in the descent, those forces also come into play that are imprinted on the human being during the ascent. All this forms forces of attraction, and he will be drawn into the sphere that has always been related to him. He will therefore be led to those people with whom he has had something to do in the past. I will give you an example based on a real case. There was once a case in which four or five judges of a court passed death sentences on one person, who was then executed. Now spiritual science was applied and the past lives of these six people were investigated, and it turned out that all these men had been together on earth before, but in such a way that the executed man was their chief and the others were executed by him. So the last execution was a kind of compensation. This case in particular illustrates the law of karma very clearly. Thus the various forces that man has attracted to himself in his previous life work together; at re-embodiment they determine not only the condition of his body but also the place where he is born and his later fate. Even more than with the etheric body, dissonances often appear in the physical body.

[ 20 ] These are all things that show how the human being is clothed with the three bodies in his re-embodiment, and in each embodiment the I works on the astral body, ether body and physical body. How he rises to this high perfection, we will hear later. But the astral and etheric bodies are transformed more and more, and more and more becomes manas from the refined astral body, buddhi from the refined etheric body, and atma from the refined physical body. This is how one can imagine the ever-increasing perfection of man from incarnation to incarnation.

[ 21 ] This is most beautifully expressed in the Lord's Prayer, which can only be rightly understood if it is understood in the genuine Christian sense, as it was understood by Paul's secret school. It was this school that explained the Lord's Prayer in the genuine Christian sense. It said to its pupils: Imagine the higher members of human nature, which come into development through man's ever-increasing ennoblement of his three lowest members. Now, early Christianity regarded these three higher members — manas, buddhi, atma — as man's divine nature. By developing these three higher parts more and more, man approaches the Godhead. From this point of view, the early esoteric Christians called the three highest parts the Divine Nature, and they called the Highest Atma: the Father. This is the lowest part of the Divinity in man: the Father in Heaven. This Father is what all people develop into; it is the center of the creation of the world. It is best to imagine creation in the Christian sense by visualizing sacrifice. Imagine your mirror image and assume that you could be so unselfish as to give your life to the reflection in the mirror. That is how one must imagine selfless creation: that one is absorbed in what has been created. Imagine the Father-Spirit in the center of a reflecting hollow sphere, and then the image of God will appear to you in a thousandfold way. Thus the old esoteric Christian said: Look at the world: all beings, what are they but the mirror images of God! And in their esoteric lore they called this reflecting Divinity “the Kingdom,” that is, God reflecting everywhere. Now develop your feeling further. When you see God in everything, then you have dissolved the Godhead into an enormous number of details, and if you want to distinguish them, then you have to give each one a name. This name must be hallowed, because every single creature is, after all, a reflection of the Godhead.

[ 22 ] In these three, man develops into God. But you must not believe that man becomes God. Take a drop from the sea: it is of the same essence as the sea, but it is not the sea. So too, the drop of divinity within us is of the same essence as the divinity, but it is not the divinity. By developing the three highest members more and more, man becomes more and more one with the kingdom, for the spiritual world comes down to him. There you have the first three petitions of the Lord's Prayer: firstly, in calling upon the Father, secondly, in imploring that the kingdom should come to us, and thirdly, in sanctifying the name. Then we will always strive not to perform any action that is not in harmony with the Father-Spirit from which we have sprung and to which we are developing when we develop the three higher members within us. And in contrast to the three higher members, esoteric Christianity now considers the four lower members of man, which must also become more and more perfect.

[ 23 ] The physical body consists of the same substances as the outer nature, which also continually migrate in and out of this physical body. And they must continually migrate in and out if the physical body is to remain healthy.

[ 24 ] The etheric body has powers that, just as the physical body is interrelated with all of external nature, are likewise interrelated with the collective soul of the people. If the physical body is to be in order, then physical substances must daily enter and leave it. If the etheric body is to be in order, it must not develop as an individual, but must bring itself into harmony with the whole national soul and all higher beings.

[ 25 ] The word “guilt” is related to the word “debt”. Debts are something that shows you quite clearly that you do not stand alone, but that you have a social context, that you owe something to your fellow human beings. What can now bring disorder into the human astral body, that was seen by the original Christian esotericism as something that affects its inclinations and passions, drives and desires; and everything that can bring these into disorder is expressed by the word “temptation”. Guilt, then, is something that brings a person into relationship with the social community, while temptation is something that any person can fall into as an individual being.

[ 26 ] If physical substances did not enter and leave our physical body, that physical body would come into disorder: “Give us our daily bread.” If the etheric body did not harmonize with the soul of the people, that is, if it did not harmonize with the whole social structure, then it would also come into disorder: “Forgive us our debts.” If man were to fall into the error of succumbing to every temptation that approaches him, then his astral body would be thrown into disorder: “Do not lead us into temptation.”

[ 27 ] The ego can fall into those errors that are called “evil”. These transgressions of the I – that is, our self – include everything that a normal and healthy sense of self transforms into evil, that is, into selfishness. Thus all excesses of selfishness, of egoism, belong there: “Deliver us from evil.”

[ 28 ] The physical body can develop in a healthy way if we provide it with the daily bread in the right way. The etheric body can develop in a healthy way if we bring ourselves into harmony with the social body in which we live in the right way. The astral body can develop in a healthy way, that is, it can be purified and cleansed if we overcome all temptations. The I can develop in a healthy way if we make an effort to transform all egoism into altruism, all selfishness into selflessness.

[ 29 ] Thus we see in the Lord's Prayer a prayer that encompasses the development of the whole human being.

[ 30 ] Now someone might object – and you will even often encounter this objection: The Lord's Prayer is a prayer given by Christ Jesus as a prayer for everyone. What use is such an interpretation, of which most people know nothing?

[ 31 ] The naive person does not need to know anything about it either. Look at the rose. The highest wisdom has built the rose, and yet the most naive person can enjoy it. Knowledge of this wisdom is not necessary. And so it is with the Lord's Prayer. It has its power on the human mind, even if the naive mind knows nothing about it. But the Lord's Prayer would never have this power if it had not been drawn from this deepest wisdom. All the great forms of prayer are, like this greatest form, created out of the deepest wisdom, and the power of these forms of prayer is based on this alone. If you think that it is a matter of speculation, then that is not true. Rather, the Being that gave us the Lord's Prayer has placed this deep power within it.

[ 32 ] So you see how only with the help of spiritual science can one understand what one practices daily, and the power of which humanity has been experiencing for two millennia.

[ 33 ] But now the time has come in the evolution of humanity when it can no longer progress without this deepening of understanding. In the past, that is to say until now, humanity could feel the spiritual forces that lie in this prayer without knowing its deeper meaning. But now humanity has progressed so far in its development that it must ask, and therefore the answer must now be given to it.

[ 34 ] The Christian religion will not lose value as a result, but on the contrary will reveal itself in all its depth for the first time. Through the greatest wisdom, the religious contents will be conquered anew. One example of this is the esoteric interpretation of the Lord's Prayer. It shows us the path that man must follow through his many embodiments. The four lower petitions, when he walks in their meaning, help him to accomplish the work that leads to the formation of his higher members of being, as expressed in the first three petitions.