The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] Reflections such as those we must undertake today and in the coming days can very easily give rise to certain misunderstandings. We will be dealing with various questions of illness and health from the perspective of karma, and given the polarized nature of current trends in this very field, a misunderstanding of the spiritual-scientific foundations could easily take hold when this chapter—the connection between illness and health and karma—is addressed. You know, of course, that in the broadest circles, the discussion rages with considerable intensity and passion whenever questions of health and illness are considered. You are all well aware of how strongly both laypeople and certain doctors take sides against what is called scientific medicine. On the other hand, it is easy to see how the representatives of scientific medicine may be directly challenged by many unjust attacks, so that they do not merely succumb to a kind of passion when it comes to—which is their right —to stand up for what science has to say on the matter, but that from this side, too, a rather fierce battle is being waged today against whatever is said from perspectives other than those represented in official medicine regarding the field in question. Theosophy or spiritual science will only be able to fulfill its lofty tasks if it maintains an unbiased and objective judgment in such a field, which is often obscured by discussions. Anyone who has heard similar lectures from me will know how little I care about joining the chorus that today seeks to discredit what is called “conventional medicine.” Nor can there be even the remotest question of aligning with this or that political faction in the case of spiritual science.

[ 2 ] Perhaps it is appropriate to emphasize at the outset, particularly on this occasion, that the achievements regarding the facts and actual research into phenomena—especially in the field of disease and human health issues—in recent years and decades truly deserve just as much praise, recognition, and admiration as numerous other scientific findings. And regarding what has actually been accomplished in this field, it may also be said: If anyone has reason to rejoice over what medicine has achieved in recent years, it is precisely the spiritual sciences. On the other hand, however, it must also be emphasized—as is particularly true for the natural sciences—that the achievements, actual findings, and discoveries sometimes find very few accurate and satisfactory interpretations and explanations in what are currently considered scientific opinions. This is, after all, the most striking feature of our time in many areas of scientific research: that the opinions and theories have not kept pace with the sometimes marvelous factual findings. And only the light emanating from the spiritual sciences will bring clarity to what has been achieved in this field in recent years.

[ 3 ] Having said that, it should be clear that this is not a matter of simply joining in a cheap attack on what can be achieved today in the field of scientific medicine. However, it must also be said that the remarkable facts that have come to light cannot bear fruit in our time for the benefit of humanity, because, on the other hand, opinions and theories with a distinctly materialistic slant prevent this fruitfulness. Therefore, it is far better for Theosophy to modestly state what it has to say than to intervene in any partisan struggle. This will stir up far fewer passions than are already aroused today.

[ 4 ] If we are to gain any perspective on the questions that concern us, we must first recognize that the causes of any phenomenon must be sought in the most diverse ways—both immediate and remote causes—and that when it comes to to seek karmic causes for health issues, will have to deal somewhat with the more distant causes that do not lie on the surface. Let us clarify this through a comparison. If you reflect on the comparison, you will already arrive at what is actually meant.

[ 5 ] Let us suppose that someone takes the view that “we have come so wonderfully far” in this field today, and completely despises the views on health and illness that have emerged over the past centuries. If you try to get an overview of issues related to illness and health, you will get the impression that experts in this field generally hold the view: What has come to light in this field over the past twenty to thirty years is a kind of absolute truth that, while it can be supplemented, can never be subject to the same dismissive judgment that such critics unfortunately pass on most of what has preceded it in this field in terms of human thought and endeavor. For example, it is often said: “It is precisely in this field that we find the most blatant superstition in times past”—and quite shocking examples are then cited of how, in centuries past, attempts were made to cure this or that. It is considered particularly bad when one comes across expressions that, in their original meaning, have long since been lost to modern consciousness, yet have nevertheless crept into it, and with which, as modern people think, one cannot make sense of them. Thus some say: There were times when every illness was attributed to God or the devil! It is not as bad as such speakers make it out to be, because they do not know what complex of views was meant by such a concept as “God” or “devil.” We can make this clear to ourselves through a comparison.

[ 6 ] Let’s say two people are talking to each other. One of them tells the other: “I just saw a room that was completely full of flies.” Now someone tells me that this is perfectly natural; and I believe that too, because the room is very dirty, and that’s how the flies thrive. It is quite understandable that one would assume this is the reason for the flies’ presence, and I also believe that the person who says the flies will no longer be in the room once it is thoroughly cleaned is absolutely right! — But now someone else has said that he knows another reason why there are so many flies in the room; and he can’t describe the cause any other way than that a thoroughly lazy housewife has been living in that room for a long time. — But just look at what boundless superstition this is: that laziness is some kind of personality that need only wave its hand, and then the flies would come in! Surely the other explanation is more correct, the one that attributes the presence of the flies to the accumulated dirt!

[ 7 ] The situation is not much different in another field when one says: Someone has fallen ill because they have contracted an infection from some kind of germ; if the germs are eliminated, the cure is achieved. Yet there are still people who speak of some spiritual cause that lies deeper! Surely one need do nothing more than drive the germs away! — It is no more superstition to speak of a spiritual cause in the case of illness, while acknowledging everything else, than it is to see the cause of the presence of flies in a thoroughly lazy housewife. And one need not rail against it when one says: The flies will no longer be there once the house is cleaned. It is not a matter of one fighting the other, but of learning to understand one another and to accommodate what one wants and what the other wants. This must certainly be taken into account when speaking rightly of the immediately obvious causes and when speaking of the more distant causes. The objective theosophist will by no means take the position that laziness need only give a kind of signal for the flies to enter the room; he will know that other material factors also come into play, but that everything which manifests itself materially has spiritual backgrounds, and that these spiritual backgrounds must be sought for the benefit of humanity. But those who would like to join the struggle should also be reminded that spiritual causes cannot always be understood in the same way, nor can they be combated in the same manner as ordinary material causes. Nor should one think that by combating the spiritual causes one is relieved of the duty to combat the material causes; for otherwise one could leave the room dirty and need only take up arms against the housewife’s laziness.

[ 8 ] When we consider karma, we must speak of the connections between events that occur in a person’s life at an earlier time and how they affect that same person at a later time. When we speak of health and illness from the perspective of karma, this means nothing other than: How can we conceive that a person’s state of health or illness is rooted in that person’s past deeds, actions, and experiences? And how can we conceive that their present state of health or illness is connected to future effects that will recur in the same being?

[ 9 ] People today would prefer to believe that an illness is connected only to its most immediate causes. For the fundamental principle of our modern worldview in all areas is, after all, the pursuit of convenience; and stopping at the most immediate causes is a convenient thing to do. That is why, particularly with regard to illnesses, only the most immediate causes are taken into account—and this is most often done by the patients themselves. For how can one deny that the patients themselves are inclined to seek such convenience? This circumstance gives rise to so much dissatisfaction when there is a belief that the illness must have the most immediate causes, which must be found by the knowledgeable physician; and if the physician cannot help, he has botched something. Much of what is said today in this field stems from this complacency of judgment. Whoever understands how to view karma in its far-reaching effects will increasingly broaden their perspective from what is happening today to events that lie relatively far in the past. And above all, they will come to the conviction that a thorough understanding of a situation affecting a person is only possible if one can broaden one’s perspective to include what lies further in the past. This is particularly the case with sick people.

[ 10 ] When we speak of sick people and healthy people alike, the question naturally arises: How can we even begin to understand what it means to be sick?

[ 11 ] When spiritual scientific research proceeds directly and makes use of clairvoyant perception, it will always, when dealing with human illnesses, observe irregularities—not only in the human physical body, but also in the higher aspects of the human being, in the etheric body and the astral body. And in a case of illness, the clairvoyant researcher will always have to consider what role the physical body on the one hand, and the etheric body and the astral body on the other, might play in the specific case; for all three aspects of the human being can be involved in the illness. Now the question arises: What insights can we gain into the nature of the illness? — The easiest way to approach this is to consider how broadly the concept of “illness” may be extended at all. Those who like to speak in all sorts of allegorical and symbolic terms, even where they do not belong, may be left to their own devices when they speak of diseases in connection with minerals or metals, saying, for example, that when rust eats away at iron, this is a disease of the iron. One must simply be clear that such abstract concepts cannot lead to a truly fruitful understanding of life; they can only lead to a kind of playful insight into life, but not to an understanding that truly engages with reality. Anyone who wishes to arrive at a real concept of disease and also a real concept of health must be careful not to speak of minerals and metals as being capable of falling ill.

[ 12 ] The situation is quite different, however, when we turn to the plant kingdom. There, we can certainly speak of plant diseases. But plant diseases, in particular, are of special interest and importance for a realistic understanding of the concept of “disease.” With plants, unless one approaches the subject in a playful manner, it is not easy to speak of internal causes of disease. To the same extent that one can speak of internal causes of disease in animals and humans, one cannot speak of them in plants. Diseases in the plant kingdom will always have to be attributed to external causes, to this or that harmful influence of the soil, insufficient light, to this or that effect of the wind, and to other elemental and natural forces. Or such plant diseases will have to be attributed to the influence of parasites that attach themselves to the plants and damage them. And within the plant kingdom, we are justified in saying that the concept of an “internal cause of disease” is fundamentally without merit. — Of course, since I cannot spend half a year discussing this topic, it is not possible for me to provide countless examples to support what I have just indicated. But the deeper we delve into plant pathology, the more we will see that the concept of an “internal cause of disease” cannot be applied to plants, but rather that we are dealing with external triggers and damage, with external influences.

[ 13 ] Now, in the plant as it first appears to us in the external world, we have before us a being that reveals a structure consisting of a physical body and an etheric body. And at the same time, we have before us a being that, so to speak, draws our attention to the fact that such a being with a physical body and an etheric body is, in principle, fundamentally healthy, and that it must wait until it suffers external damage if it is to become ill. This is entirely consistent with the findings of spiritual science. While, through the methods of clairvoyant research in the animal and human kingdoms, we can quite definitely perceive changes within the being itself—in the supersensible parts — we can never say, in the case of a diseased plant, that the original etheric body itself has been altered, but only that all manner of disturbances and harmful influences have penetrated from the outside into the physical body and, in particular, into the etheric body. The findings of spiritual science fully justify the general conclusion we arrive at: that in what is relevant to plants—namely the physical body and the etheric body—there is something originally healthy. But it is something else entirely how the plant, when it suffers external damage, is able to employ every possible means to defend itself against the damage in its growth and development, to heal itself. Observe, for instance, when you cut a plant, how it attempts to grow around the damaged area, to bypass whatever stands in its way and causes it harm. And we can almost feel it with our own hands how an inner defense, a healing power, is present in the plant when external damage occurs.

[ 14 ] Thus we see that in the etheric body and physical body of the plant we have before us something capable of responding to external damage with inner healing powers. This is an extraordinarily important fact if one wishes to gain clarity in this field. A being such as the plant, with a physical body and an etheric body, thus shows us not only that the physical body and the etheric body originally contain within themselves principles of health—as much as is necessary for the development and growth of the being in question—but such a being even shows us that there is a surplus of such forces, which can manifest themselves as healing powers when damage comes from the outside. — Where, then, must these healing powers come from?

[ 15 ] If you cut into a purely physical body, the damage will remain. It will be unable to do anything on its own to heal the damage, so to speak. That is why we cannot speak of an illness in the case of a purely physical body, and least of all of the possibility that illness and healing might be related to one another. We can see this most clearly when an illness manifests in a plant. There we must seek the principle of inner healing power in the etheric body. This, in turn, is demonstrated most eminently by the findings of spiritual science.

[ 16 ] For around the wound of a plant, the plant’s etheric body begins to lead a much more active life than it did there before. It brings forth entirely different forms and develops entirely different currents. What is extraordinarily interesting is that we are, in a sense, challenging the plant’s etheric body to heightened activity when we inflict damage on the plant’s physical body.

[ 17 ] While this does not define the concept of illness, it does bring us closer to understanding the nature of illness, and it gives us some insight into the inner workings of healing.

[ 18 ] Now let us proceed—always guided by inner, clairvoyant observation—and try to understand, in a rational way, the external phenomena to which spiritual science leads us. Then we can now move on from the harm we inflict on plants to certain harms we inflict on animals, which are thus beings that already possess an astral body. If we proceed in a general sense, we will see that in the case of higher animals we can perceive relatively very little—and increasingly less the higher the animal stands—of what is evident to a great extent in plants: namely, the response of the etheric body to external harm. If we inflict gross injuries on the physical body of a lower or even a higher mammal—for example, by tearing a leg off a dog or the like— then we will find that the dog’s etheric body cannot respond with its healing power as readily as the etheric body of a plant responds to damage inflicted upon the plant in a similar manner. But even in the animal kingdom, this can still be observed to a great extent. — Let us suppose we descend to very low animal beings, to newts or similar creatures. You can cut up such lower animal beings; if we cut off certain organs from such a being, it is, one might say, not particularly unpleasant for the animal. The organs regrow very quickly, and the animal soon looks just as it did before. Something similar to what happens in plants has occurred here: we have stimulated a certain healing power in the etheric body. Who would deny that the challenge of developing healing powers in the etheric body would pose a considerable risk to health in humans or higher animals? The lower animal, on the other hand, is merely challenged in its etheric body to allow another limb to grow out of its interior through its etheric body. Now let us ascend a little further.

[ 19 ] If, for example, we cut off a limb from a crab, the crab is not immediately able to grow another limb from within itself. But when they molt the next time, when they reach the next transitional stage of their life, a stump will already begin to grow in place of the severed limb; by the second time, it will already be larger, and if the animal were to molt often enough, the limb would be replaced by a new one. — Here you have the phenomenon that in such an etheric body, more is required to trigger the inner healing power. And in higher animals, this is no longer the case to the same extent. If we mutilate a higher animal, it cannot initially summon this healing power from its etheric body. But it must be emphasized again and again—and this is a significant point in a current scientific debate—that if you mutilate an animal and the animal has offspring, these mutilations are not passed on to the offspring; the next generation has its limbs intact again. When the etheric body transmits its properties to the offspring, it is stimulated once more to produce a complete organism. In the case of the newt, the etheric body is still active within the same animal; in the case of the crab, it is active only during molting; in higher animals, the same process occurs only in the offspring; there, the etheric body replaces what was mutilated in the preceding generation. We must therefore consider such phenomena in nature step by step; then it will become clear to us that even when heredity passes from ancestors to descendants, we must still speak of a healing power in the etheric body, and that the etheric body is inherited in such a way that it once again produces the whole, undivided animal. Here, so to speak, you have an exploration of the nature of the healing forces in the etheric body.

[ 20 ] Now we can ask the question: Why is it that the further up we go in the animal kingdom—and this also applies when we look at the human realm from the outside—the more effort the etheric body must exert just to bring forth healing powers at all? — This is because the etheric body can be connected to the physical body in a variety of ways. There is, so to speak, a closer connection and a looser one between the physical body and the etheric body. Take, for example, a lower animal, the newt, in which a severed limb immediately regrows. Here we must assume a loose connection between the etheric body and the physical body. And this applies to an even greater extent in the plant world. There we must say: The connection is such that the physical body is not capable of acting back upon the etheric body, so that the etheric body remains unaffected by what happens in the physical body, and that the etheric body is, in a certain sense, independent of the physical body. Now the nature of the etheric body is one of activity, of bringing forth, of promoting growth. It promotes growth up to a certain limit. The moment we cut off a limb in plants or lower animals, the etheric body is immediately ready to replenish the limb, that is, to unfold its full activity. But what must be present if it cannot unfold its full activity? Then it would have to be more bound to the activity of the limb in question. And this is indeed the case with higher animals. There is a much more intimate, denser connection between the etheric body and the physical body. When the physical body forms its shapes, these shapes—that is, what exists in the physical realm—in turn affect the etheric body.

[ 21 ] To put it simply: In very low-level animals or plants, external influences do not affect the etheric body; they leave it untouched and lead an independent existence. As soon as we come to higher animals, the forms of the physical body exert a reverse influence on the etheric body; there the etheric body is completely adapted to the physical body, and when we injure the physical body, we simultaneously injure the etheric body. Then, of course, the etheric body must employ deeper forces, because it must first restore itself and only then the affected limbs. Therefore, we must appeal to deeper healing forces when we approach the etheric body of a higher animal. But what is the reason for this? Why is the etheric body of a higher animal so dependent on the forms of the physical body?

[ 22 ] The further we proceed up the animal scale, the more we must take into account not only the activity of the physical body and the etheric body, but also that of the astral body. In lower animals, the astral body plays an exceptionally minor role. That is why lower animals still have so much in common with plants. The higher we ascend, the more the astral body comes into play. However, it now functions in such a way that it makes the etheric body dependent on itself. A being like a plant, which has only a physical body and an etheric body, has little to do with the external world; stimuli are exerted, but they do not express themselves in inner processes. Where, on the other hand, an astral body is active, external impressions are reflected in inner processes. A being whose astral body is not active is more inwardly closed off from the external world. The more active the astral body is, the more a being opens itself to the external world. Thus, the astral body connects a being’s inner life with the external world. The increasing activity of the astral body means that the etheric body must expend much greater forces to compensate for any resulting damage.

[ 23 ] But if we now ascend from the animal to the human, there is something else to consider. In this astral body, it is not merely the prescribed activities that are imprinted and carried out, as is more often the case with animals: the animal lives more according to a fixed course, more according to a fixed life program. You cannot easily say of an animal that it is particularly indulgent in its instincts or that it is capable of greater moderation in its instincts. It follows its life program. What is expressed in the animal is subject to a kind of typical program. Human beings, however, are capable—precisely because they have ascended higher on the ladder of development—of living out all manner of distinctions—between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and evil. In the most varied ways, they come into contact with the external world through purely individual circumstances. All these kinds of contacts leave an impression on his astral body. And the consequence is that the interaction between the astral body and the etheric body must now also be shaped by these external experiences. So if a person leads a dissolute life in any respect, this leaves an impression on his astral body. But we have seen that the astral body in turn influences the etheric body—how, will depend on what has been imprinted upon the astral body. Therefore, we can now understand that the human etheric body is altered depending on whether the person leads this or that kind of life within the bounds of good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsehood, and so on. This exerts an influence on the human etheric body.

[ 24 ] Now let us recall what happens when a person passes through the gate of death. We know that the physical body is shed and that what remains is the etheric body, which is now connected to the astral body and the I. Once a period of time has passed after death—measured only in days—the main substance of the etheric body is cast off as a second corpse; however, an extract of the etheric body remains, which is taken along and preserved for all time to come. In this extract of the etheric body is now contained, as in an essence, everything that has entered it during life—for example, from a dissolute life—or what the human being has absorbed as the result of right or wrong thinking, acting, and feeling. This is what the etheric body contains, and this is what the Because the animal has no such experiences at all, it naturally cannot carry anything across the threshold of death in the same way. When the human being then enters existence again through a birth, the essence of their former etheric body is something that pours back into their new etheric body, permeating the new etheric body as it is formed. Therefore, in their new existence within the etheric body, human beings carry within it the results of how they lived in their previous life. And since the etheric body is the builder of an entirely new organism after a new birth, all of this now also imprints itself upon their physical body. Why can this imprint itself upon the physical body?

[ 25 ] Spiritual scientific research shows us that we can, to some extent, discern from the form of a human body that comes into being through birth what deeds a person has performed in a previous life. But will we also find a completely rational explanation for what has presented itself to us as a diminishing healing power in the ascending evolutionary series of animals? Since we cannot speak of an animal bringing with it at birth a reincarnated individuality from a previous earthly existence, we will find only the general astral body of that animal species at work, and this will limit the healing powers of the etheric body in that animal. In the case of human beings, however, we find that not only their astral body but also their etheric body is imbued with the results of the deeds of their previous life. And because the etheric body has the power in itself to bring forth what it has carried within from earlier times, we will also understand that when another force now arises within it, it will also be able to incorporate into the entire structure of the organism what it brings with it from previous incarnations. And we will now understand how our actions from one life can influence our state of health in the next life, and how we must often look for a karmic effect of our actions from a previous life in our state of health. But we can approach the matter in yet another way.

[ 26 ] We might ask: Does everything we do in the life between birth and death have the same effect on our etheric body? — Even in ordinary life, you can perceive a tremendous difference between the effect of what we experience as conscious human beings and various other experiences on our actual inner constitution. This gives rise to a highly interesting fact that can be properly elucidated by spiritual science, but which can also be understood quite rationally. In the course of their life, human beings have a whole sum of experiences that they consciously take in and connect with their ego. These become ideas within them, and they process these ideas. But now consider how an infinite number of experiences, impressions, and sensations never even reach the level of an idea, yet are actually present within the human being and exert an influence on them. It will often happen to you that someone says to you: “I saw you on the street today; you even looked at me!”—and you know nothing of it. This is often the case. Such an event has naturally made an impression. Your eye did indeed see the other person; but the immediate impression did not reach the level of a mental image. — There are countless such impressions, so that our life actually divides into two parts: into a series of life-soul experiences consisting of conscious mental images, and into one that we have never fully brought into clear consciousness. But there are further distinctions: You will easily be able to distinguish between impressions you have had in your life that you can recall—that is, impressions that have been made on you in such a way that they can always enter your memory—and impressions you have had that you cannot recall.

[ 27 ] So our inner life can be divided into very different categories. And there is indeed a very significant difference between these categories when we consider their effect on the inner being of the human being. — Let us now focus for a few minutes on human life between birth and death. If we observe this closely, we see that there is a vast difference between those ideas that can repeatedly enter our consciousness and those that have been forgotten, so that they have not actually developed into memories. This difference can be most easily illustrated by the following. Think of an impression that evoked a clear idea in you. Let us assume it is an impression that aroused joy or pain in you—that is, an impression accompanied by a feeling. Let us note that most impressions—in fact, all impressions made upon us—are accompanied by feelings. And these feelings are not merely expressed on the conscious surface of life; they penetrate deeply into the physical body. You need only think back to how one impression makes you turn pale, another makes you blush. The impressions affect even the circulation of the blood. And now turn to what either does not enter consciousness at all or only fleetingly—and does not make it to memory. Here spiritual science shows us that such impressions are by no means accompanied by any fewer similar stirrings than the conscious ones. If you receive an impression from the external world that, had you received it consciously, would have startled you—perhaps causing your heart to pound—the same impression, even if it does not become conscious, is not without effect. But it does not merely make an impression; it also penetrates into the physical body. There is even the peculiar phenomenon that an impression which evokes a conscious idea encounters a kind of resistance when it works its way into the deeper human organism; but if the impression simply acts upon us without our bringing it to conscious awareness, then nothing hinders it, yet it is no less effective for that. Human life is far richer than what we are consciously aware of.

[ 28 ] There is a time in human life when such impressions—which have such a vivid effect on the human organism yet are not subject to memory—are experienced in particularly rich measure. Throughout the entire period from birth to the moment when memory begins, countless rich impressions have been made on the human being, all of which remain within the person and have also shaped the person during this time. They have the same effect as conscious impressions; but, especially when they are forgotten, nothing stands in their way from what otherwise takes its place in the soul life as conscious ideas and thereby forms a barrier, as it were. And these unconscious impressions penetrate to the very depths. Now one can often find confirmation in external life that there are moments in human life when the second kind of inner effects comes to expression. There are many events in later life that you cannot explain. You cannot figure out at all how you came to have to experience this or that in precisely this way now. For example, you experience something that makes such a shattering impression on you that you cannot explain at all how a relatively indifferent experience can make such a shattering impression. If you now investigate, you may find that precisely during the critical period—between birth and the last point in time you can remember—you had a similar experience, which you have, however, forgotten. No memory of it remains. At that time you had a deeply moving experience; it lives on and connects with the present one, intensifying it. And what would otherwise have shaken you far less now makes a particularly strong impression. — Anyone who realizes this will form an idea of how infinitely responsible early childhood education is and how it casts its very significant shadows or even lights onto later life. Thus, something from the past carries over into later life.

[ 29 ] It may turn out that such childhood impressions—especially if they were repeated—influence one’s entire outlook on life to such an extent that, from a certain point onward, a mood disturbance sets in that is inexplicable and can only be explained by looking back and realizing which impressions from earlier times cast their light or shadow into later life; for it is these that now find expression in a lasting emotional disturbance. One will then find that the events which did not pass the child by indifferently and which already made a special impression on the child at that time have a particularly strong effect. — We can therefore say: If emotions, feelings, and sensations play a particularly significant role in the impressions that are later forgotten, then these emotions and outpourings of feeling are especially effective in bringing such similar experiences to the surface.

[ 30 ] Now recall the descriptions I have often given of life during the Kamaloka period. After the human being has shed the etheric body as a second corpse, he relives his entire past life, passing through all the experiences he has had; but he does not pass through them in such a way that they remain indifferent to him. Precisely during the Kamaloka period, because the human being still possesses his old astral body, the experiences he has gone through evoke the deepest emotional responses. — Let us suppose, for example, that someone dies at the age of seventy and relives their life back to the age of forty, when they slapped someone. There they experience the pain they inflicted on the other person. This gives rise to a kind of self-reproach; this remains as a longing, and they carry this longing into the next life in order to make amends for this matter in a later life. And you can understand that, since such astral experiences exist in this time between death and new birth, what we experience as an action is imprinted all the more surely and deeply upon our inner being and contributes to the formation of the new physical body. If, then, we can be so deeply affected in ordinary life by certain experiences—especially when they are emotional impressions capable of causing a disturbance of the mind—we will understand that the far stronger impressions of the kamaloka life can imprint themselves in such a way that they affect the very organization of the physical body in a new incarnation.

[ 31 ] Here you see an intensification of a phenomenon that, upon close observation, you can already find in life between birth and death. Such ideas, which are not held in check by consciousness, can lead to further irregularities in the soul: to neurasthenia, to symptoms resembling nervous disorders, and perhaps even to mental illness. All these phenomena present themselves to us as causal connections between earlier and later events and provide us with a vivid picture of this.

[ 32 ] If we now take this concept a step further, we can say: What we perform as actions in this life is transformed in the afterlife into a powerful emotion, and this emotion, which is now weakened by no physical perception and inhibited by no ordinary consciousness—for the brain is not necessary here—and which is experienced through the other, more deeply penetrating form of consciousness, now causes our deeds and our entire being from the previous life to appear in our constitution and organization in a new life. Therefore, we will be able to understand that a person who, in one incarnation, thought, felt, and acted very selfishly, when he sees before him after death the fruits of his selfish thinking, feeling, and acting, is filled with powerful emotions directed against his former actions. This is indeed the case. He develops tendencies within himself that are directed against his own being. And these tendencies, insofar as they have arisen from a selfish nature in the previous life, express themselves in a weak constitution in the new life. “Weak constitution” is taken here in terms of the essence, not the outward appearance. We must therefore be clear that a weak constitution can be traced back karmically to selfish actions in a previous life.

[ 33 ] Let us continue. Suppose that, in a given life, a person exhibits a particular tendency toward dishonesty. This is a tendency that stems from a deeper structure of the soul. For if a person were to rely solely on what is present in their most conscious life, they would not actually lie; only emotions and feelings arising from the subconscious lead to lying. Here we are already dealing with something deeper. If a person was a liar, the actions arising from that lying will in turn generate the most intense emotions in the afterlife against the person themselves, and a strong tendency against lying will emerge. Then, in their later life, the person will bring with them not only a weak constitution, but—as spiritual science shows us—a constitution that is, so to speak, incorrectly constructed, one that exhibits irregularly formed internal organs within the finer constitution. Something there does not quite fit together. This is due to a previous tendency toward deceitfulness. — And where did the tendency toward deceitfulness itself come from? For in the tendency toward deceitfulness, the human being already possesses something that is also not right.

[ 34 ] We have to go back even further. And here spiritual science shows that a flighty life, one that knows neither devotion nor love—that a superficial life in one incarnation—expresses itself in a tendency toward deceitfulness in the next incarnation; and this tendency toward deceitfulness manifests itself in the third subsequent incarnation in the form of malformed organs. — Thus we can trace the karmic effects of three successive incarnations: superficiality and flightiness in the first incarnation, a tendency toward deceitfulness in the second, and a predisposition to physical illness in the third incarnation.

[ 35 ] Here we see karma at work in health and illness. — What has just been said is presented in such a way that the facts themselves have been drawn from spiritual scientific research. The aim is not to formulate theories, but rather to present observed cases that can be examined using the methods of spiritual science.

[ 36 ] We have thus first pointed out the most ordinary of facts—the healing powers of the etheric body in plants. We then showed how, with the addition of the astral body in animals, the etheric body becomes less effective, and we further saw how, through the incorporation of the ego—which develops an individual life in good and evil, truth and falsehood—the astral body, which merely inhibits the healing powers as one ascends the animal kingdom, adds something new to the human being: the karmic influences of illness flowing into it from the individual life. In plants, there are no internal causes of disease yet, because the disease is still external and the healing powers of the etheric body act unimpeded. In lower animals, we still have an etheric body with such healing powers that it can even replace limbs; but the higher we ascend, the more the astral body imprints itself on the etheric body, and thereby the astral body restricts the healing powers of the etheric body. But because animals do not reproduce through reincarnation, what is in the etheric body is not connected to any moral-intellectual or individual qualities, but to the general type. In humans, however, what the individual experiences in their ego between birth and death extends into the etheric body.

[ 37 ] Why, then, do childhood experiences manifest themselves only in mild illnesses when it comes to the emotional effects mentioned? Because we will be able to find the causes of much of what manifests itself in neurasthenia, neurosis, hysteria, and so on, within the same lifetime. The causes of more severe cases of illness, however, we will have to seek in a previous life, because it is only during the transition to a new birth that what is experienced morally and intellectually can truly be implanted into the etheric body. In general, the etheric body in humans cannot incorporate deeper moral effects within a single life, although we will yet come to know individual exceptional cases—and even very significant ones.

[ 38 ] Thus, there is a connection between our conduct—whether good or evil, moral or intellectual—in one incarnation, and our health or illness in the next.