The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] The content of yesterday’s lecture is of great importance both for our upcoming discussions and for understanding karmic relationships in general. Therefore—because of this crucial importance—let me briefly summarize the main points of yesterday’s lecture once again today.

[ 2 ] We assumed that views on healing and remedies had changed quite radically over a relatively short period of time during the last century. And we pointed out how, in the 16th and 17th centuries, a particular view took shape that was based entirely on the following premise: For every disease that had been given a name and that people believed could be conceptually defined, there must also be a specific remedy to be found in the world. And it was firmly believed that if the remedy in question were applied, it would necessarily have an effect on the course of the disease. We then pointed out how this view persisted to a greater or lesser extent well into the 19th century, but then set against it the absolute antithesis of this view, which found particular expression in the nihilism of the Vienna Medical School, which took its starting point from the famous physician Dietl and found its continuation in Skoda and his various students. And we characterized the nihilistic trend by saying: It not only began to harbor profound doubts about the absolute connection between this or that remedy, between these or those procedures regarding the treatment of the disease and the disease itself, but it wanted nothing more to do with such a connection. And the concept of so-called “self-healing” took root in the minds of the young doctors influenced by this school. Skoda himself, after all, uttered the statement that is significant for this school: We can diagnose a disease; we can perhaps also explain and describe it; but we have no remedy for the disease. — And this school of thought took its starting point from the fact that Dietl was able to demonstrate that, with a wait-and-see approach, a disease such as pneumonia progresses in such a way that it develops self-healing powers within a certain period of time, provided the necessary conditions are created. And he was able to demonstrate statistically that, with expectant management, just as many people were cured or died as with the administration of the otherwise customary remedies. At that time, the term “therapeutic nihilism” was by no means unjustified; for it was an absolute truth that the doctors of this school could not at all defend themselves against the patients’ belief that a remedy, a prescription, simply had to be there. The patient would not give in, nor would those around him—remedies had to be prescribed, and the adherents of this school usually helped themselves by prescribing a dilute solution of gum arabic, which, in the opinion of the school’s adherents, was supposed to have exactly the same effect as the remedies used previously. From this we have come to recognize how the modern scientific world of facts actually points toward what we might call the karmic connection in life. For we now had to answer the question: How does what one might call “self-healing” actually occur? Or rather: Why does it occur? And why, in another case, can self-healing—or any healing at all—fail to take place?

[ 3 ] If an entire school, led by medical luminaries, could fall into the trap of introducing the concept of self-healing, then anyone reflecting on this should have concluded: Thus, something is awakened in the course of the illness that leads to its overcoming! And that should have led further to investigating the more hidden causes of the course of the disease. We have now attempted to point out how such a karmic connection within human evolution can be sought in relation to the course of the disease. We have shown, however, that what a person performs in their ordinary life—good and evil deeds, sensible and senseless actions, and the right and wrong emotional attitudes they experience—that all of this does not penetrate deeply into the foundations of the human organism. And we have pointed out the reason why what is subject to moral, intellectual, and emotional judgment in ordinary life remains only on the surface of ordinary life and is not subject to the law that we were able to demonstrate in the other case: to influence the deeper forces of the human organism. We have shown that there is, as it were, a kind of barrier against the penetration of immorality into the deeper forces of the organism. And this defense against the intrusion of what we do and think into the forces of our organism lies in the fact that we accompany our actions, which we perform between birth and death, with our conscious ideas. By accompanying an action or some other experience with a conscious idea, we create a protective barrier against the result of our actions sinking down into our organism.

[ 4 ] We then pointed out the significance of those experiences that have been irretrievably forgotten. There is no longer any possibility of bringing them back into conscious mental life; rather, we had to say that such experiences, precisely because they lack the protective shield of consciousness, penetrate in a certain way into our inner organization and can there influence the formative forces of our organism. And we were able to point to the forms of illness that lie even closer to the surface: neurosis, neurasthenia, and the like. Even hysterical states are illuminated in this context. We said that the causes of such states must be sought in the forgotten images that have fallen out of the complex of consciousness, which have sunk down into the inner self and—like intrusions into our soul life—manifest themselves as illnesses. — We have pointed out the immense significance of the period extending from birth to the point when a person can recall their experiences, and attention was drawn to how what has been forgotten earlier continues to exert an influence in the living organism by, as it were, forming an alliance with the deeper forces of the organism and, from there, influencing our organism itself. A complex of ideas, a series of experiences, must therefore sink down into the deeper strata of our being before it can take effect in our organism. We have then pointed out how this sinking down occurs most thoroughly when a person has passed through the gate of death and lives through the subsequent existence between death and new birth. There, all experiences are transformed in their qualities into forces that now act as organizing agents. And what the human being has sensed and felt in the time between death and new birth, this is taken up into the formative forces that are involved in the new building up of the body when the human being now enters existence anew. There, within the formative forces, they now have the result of what they previously had in their soul life, perhaps even in their conscious imaginative life. And now we could point out that the human being, with their imaginative life imbued by the ego, oscillates back and forth between two influences: between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic influence. When a human being commits a transgression caused by qualities of his astral body, by evil emotions, anger, and the like, he is driven to act by Luciferic forces. When such actions then follow the path just described—that is, when they become formative forces—we find them in the formative forces that now underlie the new physical body as Luciferic causes of disease. We have then seen how the human being succumbs to the Ahrimanic forces, which act more from the outside. And again we had to say of the Ahrimanic influences that they are transformed into formative forces, into shaping forces of the newly built organism that comes into being when the human being enters existence through birth. And to the extent that Ahriman’s influences intermingle with the formative forces, we can speak of predispositions to illness of an Ahrimanic character. We then pointed out in detail how these forces, which develop in this way, work. And I have shown you radical examples of this working, because radical examples make the concept clearer and more sharply defined. I said, suppose a person has done everything in their previous life that could lead only to a low sense of self-worth and self-confidence, that they have conditioned their ego in such a way that it held no value in itself, dissolved only into generalities, and so on. Such a person, after death, takes up the tendency to overcome that resistance and to absorb the forces that will enable him, later in the course of the incarnation, to make his ego stronger and more complete. This works in such a way that he then seeks out circumstances that enable him to fight against that which is good, to fight against it with a weak sense of self, so that a weak sense of self can be strengthened through that resistance. And it is true that such a tendency leads the person, so to speak, to seek out opportunities for cholera, because in it they have before them something that offers them the opportunity to overcome those resistances. And in the overcoming of these resistances lies what can lead, in the next incarnation or even upon healing in the same incarnation, to a stronger sense of self or to powers that gradually allow a stronger sense of self to mature through self-education. We have then said that in a disease such as malaria, the opportunity is given to balance out something that the soul has cultivated in a previous life as an excessive sense of self through its actions and feelings. — Those of you who have participated in earlier reflections on our theosophical life will be able to visualize such a course of events. It has always been said that the human ego finds its physical expression in the blood. Now, the two diseases we have just discussed are connected with the blood and the laws governing the blood; they are connected in such a way that in the case of cholera, a thickening of the blood occurs. It is this thickening that can be described as the resistance that the weak sense of self must undergo and through which it seeks to develop itself. Likewise, you can see that in malaria a kind of blood breakdown takes place, and that an overpowered sense of self needs the opportunity to be reduced to absurdity—that in the breakdown of the blood, an overpowered ego is led to nothingness in its striving. This is provided for in the breakdown of the blood. — Of course, these things are extraordinarily closely interconnected within the organism; but if you consider them, you will come to understand them.

[ 5 ] From all this, we concluded: If we have an organism formed by a soul that has within itself the tendency to overcome this or that in one direction or another, this tendency leads the human being to imprint within themselves the potential for illness, but also, at the same time, the potential to fight against the illness, because illness is caused by no other reason than to provide the possibility of healing. And healing occurs when, in accordance with his overall karma, a person acquires such powers through overcoming the illness in question that he can truly advance himself through his work on the physical plane for the remainder of his life until death. That is to say, if the powers to be aroused are so strong that he can achieve on the physical plane precisely what the illness was intended to bring about, then the person continues to work with the strengthened powers that have flowed to him from the healing process—powers he did not possess before. But if his overall karma is such that, although he intended to shape his organism so that by overcoming the illness in question he would draw upon forces leading to his perfection, yet because circumstances are manifold, he has simultaneously had to allow the organism to remain weak in another direction, then the situation may arise where the very forces that the person draws out and applies during the healing process do strengthen him, but not to the extent that he is yet ready to handle the work on the physical plane. Then, when he passes through the gate of death, he will use the portion he has already gained—since it is not usable on the physical plane—and he will attempt to add to his powers what he could not add on the physical plane, in order to manifest these powers in the formation of his next body when he is reborn.

[ 6 ] With this in mind, it remains for us to offer some insight into those forms of illness that lead neither to a complete recovery nor to death, but rather to chronic conditions, a kind of wasting disease, or the like. Here, however, there is something that is of the utmost importance for most people to know. What has occurred is that, through the healing process within the human physical body, the only possible outcome has been achieved—that is, in a certain sense, the illness has been overcome. But in another sense, it has not been overcome; that is to say, while everything that needed to be balanced between the etheric body and the physical body has indeed been achieved, the disharmony that existed between the etheric body and the astral body has not been balanced. This remains, and the person oscillates back and forth between attempts to heal and being unable to heal. In such a case, it is always of the utmost importance that the person make the most of whatever genuine healing has been achieved. And this is what happens least of all in life. For it is precisely with such illnesses, which become chronic, that the person finds themselves caught in a veritable vicious cycle. If, in such a case, the person were able to isolate the part of their constitution that has undergone a certain degree of healing—to let it live on its own, so to speak—and if they could withdraw from it whatever is still churning and out of order, which in such cases usually pertains more to the inner soul, then the person would be able to help themselves greatly. But the most diverse factors work against this, namely the fact that when a person has had some illness and a chronic condition remains, they continually live under the influence of this condition, and that—if I may put it bluntly—they can never really thoroughly forget their condition, never really gets around to withdrawing from this condition that which within them is not yet healthy and treating it for themselves; rather, they are prompted by what might be called the constant thinking about the other part of the organism to, as it were, bring their healthy part back into some kind of connection with the formerly diseased part and thus irritate it anew. This is a special process. And to make this process clear to you, I would like to explain the spiritual-scientific facts—what the clairvoyant consciousness sees when someone has gone through an illness and has retained something in the process that can be described as chronic. The same thing happens, incidentally, even when there was no particularly noticeable acute illness, but rather when a chronic condition sets in without any acute illness having been particularly noticed. Then one can indeed see that in most cases a certain fluctuating state of equilibrium emerges between the etheric body and the physical body—a back-and-forth oscillation of forces that should not be, yet with which one can still live. In this back-and-forth oscillation of forces between the etheric body and the physical body, the person in question is constantly irritated and thereby filled with persistent states of agitation. The clairvoyant consciousness constantly observes these states of agitation emerging in the astral body, and they continually intrude into the half-sick and half-healthy part of the organism, thereby creating not a stable but an unstable equilibrium. Through this intrusion of astral states of agitation, the human condition—which could otherwise be much better—is in fact greatly worsened. Please bear in mind that in this case the astral does not coincide with consciousness, but rather coincides primarily with what are inner psychological agitations that the patient, however, does not wish to admit to himself. Because in such a case the inhibitory factor of the ideas is absent, these states and affects—the emotional upheavals, the constant states of weariness, of being dissatisfied with oneself—do not always act as conscious forces, but rather as organizing, life-giving forces that reside in the deeper essence of the human being and constantly irritate the half-healthy, half-sick part. If the patient in question could truly, through strong will and spiritual cultivation, bring himself to forget his condition at least for a certain time, he would derive such satisfaction from this that he could then draw the strength from this satisfaction to continue doing so. If he could forget his condition, completely disregard it, and say with strong will: I will not concern myself with my condition now! — and if he were then to apply the spiritual powers thus freed to something of spiritual content that uplifts him, that satisfies him inwardly in his soul, if he were to free these powers—which otherwise are always occupied with experiencing the feelings of pain, pressure, and stinging and all that goes with it—then this would grant him great satisfaction. For if one does not dwell on these feelings, one has the energies free; then they are available. Of course, it does not help much if one merely tells oneself that one does not want to notice this constriction and stinging and so on; for if one does not apply the energies thus freed to something spiritual, the former states will soon return. But if one applies the freed-up energies to a spiritual content that fully engages the soul, then one will notice that, through a complex process, one achieves what our organism would otherwise achieve on its own—without our intervention—in overcoming the disease process. It is, of course, natural that the person concerned must then take care not to fill their soul in a way that is directly connected to the very illness they are suffering from. If, for example, someone suffers from a weakness in their eyes and, in order not to think about this weakness, occupies themselves with reading a great deal to absorb mental energy, it goes without saying that this cannot lead them to their goal. But you need not go quite that far to find the so-called small examples of this. Everyone can observe for themselves, when they have a minor ailment, how much it helps them if they manage to forget their ailment—namely, a forgetting brought about by engaging in other activities. This, then, is a positive, healthy forgetting! There you already have an indication that we are not entirely powerless against the karmic effects of our transgressions in past lives, which manifest themselves in illnesses. For we must tell ourselves: If we admit that what in life between birth and death is subject to moral, emotional, and intellectual judgment cannot penetrate so deeply in a single life as to become the cause of an organic illness, but that in the time after death until the new birth it can sink so deeply into life as to cause illness, then it must surely also be possible to transform this process back into a process of consciousness!

[ 7 ] The question can also be posed as follows: If illnesses play out as a karmic effect of spiritual or other experiences caused or experienced by the soul—that is, if they are the transformation of such causes—can we not also imagine—or do spiritual facts tell us nothing about this—that the product of this transformation, the illness, is avoidable, avoidable insofar as, instead of the healing process—instead of what is drawn out of the organic regions and brought forth as illness for our education—we substitute the spiritual counterpart, the spiritual equivalent thereof? That, if we are wise enough, we transform the illness into a spiritual process and carry out the self-education that we are meant to undertake through the illness, so to speak, through the powers of our soul?

[ 8 ] I would like to illustrate once again with an example that such matters belong to the realm of facts. However, it must be noted here that only examples that have been examined from a spiritual-scientific perspective are cited; these are not hypotheses, but actual cases. Therefore, you cannot exactly expect me to provide a complete picture, because I am not presenting hypotheses, but rather cases that must be accepted as such. Let us suppose that in a later life a personality contracts measles, and we seek the karmic connection of this case. We find that this case of measles occurred as a karmic effect of certain events in a previous life, which we might describe as follows: In a previous life, the individual in question was one who did not care much for the external world, not exactly in a grossly selfish sense, but who was nevertheless very much preoccupied with himself; a personality, in other words, who did a great deal of research and reflection, but not on the facts of the external world, but who remained within the inner life of the soul. Even today you find many people who believe that by being self-contained, by brooding and so on, they can arrive at the solution to the world’s mysteries. In the case of the personality I am referring to, the issue was that they sought to cope with life by brooding inwardly over how one should behave in this or that situation. The weakness of the soul that resulted from this over the course of life led to forces being generated in the life between death and rebirth that exposed the organism to a bout of measles at a relatively late stage of life.

[ 9 ] Now we can ask ourselves: On the one hand, we have the measles outbreak, which is the physical-karmic effect of a past life. But what about the state of the soul? After all, the past life also produces a certain state of the soul as a karmic effect.

[ 10 ] This state of the soul manifests itself in such a way that the individual in question, in the very life in which they contracted measles, was subjected to self-deception time and time again. You must therefore regard these self-deceptions as the psychological-karmic consequence of that earlier life, and the onset of measles as the physical-karmic consequence of that life.

[ 11 ] Let us now assume that this individual had succeeded, before the measles struck, in doing something to improve themselves thoroughly—that is, to acquire such strength of soul that they would no longer be susceptible to all manner of self-deception. Then this inner strength, cultivated in this way, would have meant that the measles could have been prevented, because what had already been brought about in the organism during the formation of this constitution would have been balanced out by the stronger spiritual forces that would have been developed through self-education. Of course, I cannot spend half a year discussing these matters; but if you were to look widely at life and consider all the details that present themselves as experiences from this starting point, you would always find that external knowledge would fully confirm—down to every detail—what has been said here. And what I have just said about measles can lead to insights that explain why measles is precisely one of the common childhood diseases. For the characteristics that have been mentioned occur in very many lives. In certain periods of time, in particular, they have been rampant in many lives. And when such a personality enters existence, they will want to make amends in this area as quickly as possible, and in the time between birth and the usual onset of childhood diseases, in order to undergo organic self-education by going through measles; for, as a rule, there can be no question of spiritual education at this age.

[ 12 ] From this you can see that we can truly say that, in a certain sense, illness can be transformed back into a spiritual process. And this is what is so immensely significant: when this process is taken up into the soul as a guiding principle, it generates a perspective that has a healing effect on the soul. In our time, one need not be particularly surprised that we have so little influence on the soul. And anyone who views the present age from the perspective of spiritual science will understand why so many medical professionals, so many doctors, can become materialists—that is, lose hope in the power of spiritual influence. For the majority of people do not concern themselves at all with anything that possesses a life-giving power. All the material circulating in popular literature today has no life-giving power for the soul. That is why those who wish to work for spiritual science also sense something profoundly healing in this theosophical work, because spiritual scientific knowledge can once again offer humanity something that pours into the soul in such a way that the soul is drawn away from what the physical organism has formed. One must simply not confuse what appears at the beginning of such a movement with what the movement can truly be. Indeed, things are brought into the theosophical movement that are also rampant in the outer world; that is to say, when people become theosophists, they often bring to theosophy precisely the same interests they have in the things of the outer world, as well as all the vices they possess there. Much of the dark side of our age is carried into it. But then, when any dark sides manifest in the individuals concerned, people say that Theosophy caused it. That is, of course, a very cheap explanation!

[ 13 ] When we see the karmic thread stretching from one incarnation to the next in this way, we have, in fact, grasped the truth only from one side. Many questions will arise for those who develop a sense of how the karmic thread extends from incarnation to incarnation, and these will be addressed in the course of these lectures. Above all, the following question must be addressed: How does one distinguish between an illness for which external causes can be identified and one that is entirely rooted in the human constitution itself, so that one believes one can dismiss what is present by saying that the illness arose entirely on its own and that there is no external cause?—That is not quite how things stand. But from a certain perspective, it is nevertheless justified to say that there are illnesses for which a person is particularly predisposed due to their inner constitution. For numerous symptoms, however, one can certainly point to external causes. Of course, not for everything that happens to us, but for many things that befall us from the outside—for example, when we break a leg, we must cite external causes. We must also count among the external causes what is brought about by the weather, as well as the numerous cases of illness whose causes are to be found in poor urban housing. Here a vast field opens up before us once again. And for those who view the world through the lens of experience, it is also understandable today that the current trend in medicine is to seek the causes of disease in external influences, particularly in germs, of which a witty gentleman has not without reason said: Today diseases come from germs, just as it was once said that diseases come from God or the devil. In the 13th century, it was said that diseases came from God; in the 15th century, it was said that they came from the devil. Later, it was said that they came from the humors, and today it is said that diseases come from germs. These are the views that have succeeded one another over the course of time.

[ 14 ] We must therefore speak of external causes of human illness or health. And here, people today may be easily tempted to use a word that is, in essence, very likely to throw our entire worldview into disarray. If someone who was previously in perfect health goes to a region infested with influenza or diphtheria and subsequently falls ill, people today will certainly be inclined to say that the person in question contracted the pathogen by going to that region, and they will then readily use the word “chance.” People today are quick to speak of chance influences. — The word “chance” is truly a crux, a cross to bear for every worldview. And as long as one does not even attempt to clarify what is so easily labeled as chance, one will not be able to advance toward a reasonably satisfactory worldview. Thus, we now stand at the starting point of the chapter “Natural and Accidental Diseases of Man.” But there is no way around it: we must begin today by attempting to shed a little light on the word “chance.”

[ 15 ] Isn’t chance itself something that might make us suspicious of what people today tend to think of it? I have pointed out before that a witty man in the 18th century was not entirely wrong when, speaking of the custom of erecting monuments to great discoverers, inventors, and so on, he remarked that, if one were to view the course of history objectively, one would have to erect the vast majority of monuments to “chance”! And strangely enough: if one delves into history, one can make curious discoveries about what lies behind chance. I have told you that the invention of the telescope is due to the games children played with optical lenses in an optical workshop; this led to a constellation of events through which someone brought the telescope into being. One could also point to the famous lamp in the Cathedral of Pisa, which had been oscillating before thousands upon thousands of people with the same regularity as it did before Galileo. But it was Galileo who first tested how the oscillations corresponded to the rhythm of his blood circulation, and through this he arrived at the discovery of the laws of the pendulum. Had we not had the laws of the pendulum, our entire cultural life would have taken on a different character. Try to see if you cannot find meaning in human development, and whether you would still want to say that mere chance was at work, for example in Galileo’s case, and led him to this important discovery. But let us take another case.

[ 16 ] Let us consider what Luther’s Bible translation means for the civilized nations of the European world. Let us realize what a profound influence it has had on religious sentiment and thought, and, on the other hand, on the development of what we call the German written language. I merely wish to state this fact, without discussing how one should view it; I wish only to emphasize that it has had this profound influence. You must now try to see some meaning in the education of humanity that has been brought about over several centuries by Luther’s Bible translation. If you try to see a meaning in it, then set alongside whatever you can say as insightfully as possible about the meaning of development from the 16th to the 17th century the following fact:

[ 17 ] Luther had, up to a certain point in his life, deeply engaged with everything that might lead his own personality to a kind of divine sonship through the reading of the Bible. He had moved away from the Augustinians’ custom of reading primarily the Church Fathers to the joy of reading the Bible itself. But everything now pointed to the fact that the sense of being a child of God was to be kindled in his soul as a comprehensive feeling. And from this perspective, he devoted himself to his theological teaching during his first period in Wittenberg. The fact I now wish to emphasize is that Luther had a certain reluctance to obtain the degree of Doctor of Theology, and that in a chance conversation, when he was once sitting with an old friend from the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt, he was actually persuaded to earn the doctoral hat in theology. For him, however, this meant a renewed and repeated study of the Bible. Thus, that chance gathering with his friend led to a renewed study of the Bible and then to everything that was expressed as a result.

[ 18 ] Try to reconcile the meaning of what has been hinted at over the past few centuries with the fact that Luther once sat down with that friend and allowed himself to be persuaded to earn his doctorate in theology: You will be forced to make a strangely grotesque juxtaposition between the meaning of the development and the chance occurrence.

[ 19 ] What you will first gather from what has been said is that the significance of chance may, after all, be somewhat different from what is commonly thought. It is usually thought that chance is something that cannot be fully explained by the laws of nature or the laws of life, so to speak, that it constitutes a kind of surplus beyond what can be explained. Now add to what has just been said the fact that has already helped us understand so many aspects of life: that the human being, in his individuality, has been subject since his earthly existence to the two forces of the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic principles. These forces and principles are constantly at work within human beings, whereby the Luciferic forces act more by seizing the innermost part of the human astral body, while the Ahrimanic forces act more through what the human being receives as external impressions. The Ahrimanic forces are at work in what we receive from the external world; and the Luciferic forces are at work in what arises and acts within the soul as pleasure or displeasure, as emotions, and so on. Now both the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic principles lead us to succumb to delusions; the Luciferic principle leads us to succumb to delusions about our own inner being, to misjudge our own inner being, to see an illusion within ourselves. It will not be difficult for you, if you observe life sensibly, to become aware of this Maya in your own soul life. Try to observe how infinitely often a person convinces themselves that they are doing this or that for this or that reason. But they usually do it for a completely different reason, one that lies much deeper; yet they explain the action to which they are driven by anger and passion in their conscious mind in a completely different way. In particular, they try to dismiss what is not valued in the world. And when a person is driven to do something out of purely selfish motives, you will often see that they drape a selfless cloak over their crude, selfish impulses and explain why it had to happen. But the person usually does not even realize that they are acting this way. When they do realize it, the beginning of an improvement usually sets in, accompanied by a certain sense of shame. The worst part is that the person is driven to do something from the depths of their soul—and then invents a motive for why they performed the action in question. Modern psychologists have also noted this. But it is only because there is so little psychological education today that such grotesque interpretations of these truths arise, as is the case with today’s materialistic psychologists. They arrive at quite peculiar interpretations of life.

[ 20 ] A researcher of the human mind who observes such a fact will, of course, perceive its true significance and characterize it in such a way that the two elements—consciousness and the deeper forces at work beneath the threshold of consciousness—are indeed seen to interact. But if a materialistic psychologist notices it, he will treat the matter differently. He will immediately spin out a theory about the difference between the pretext a person adopts for an action and the actual motive. — For example, when a psychologist speaks about the student suicides so frequently noted today, he says that whatever is cited as a pretext for them is not the actual motive; the actual motives lie much deeper: they usually lie in a misguided sex life. These are transformed so that they then feign this or that reason to the consciousness.

[ 21 ] Such a thing can often be true. But no one who has been even slightly influenced by a truly deeper psychological way of thinking would ever turn it into a comprehensive theory. Such a theory can easily be refuted, for the person in question would have to consider: If it is truly the case that the pretext is nothing and the motive is everything, then one would have to be able to apply this to this psychologist as well and say: So what you are presenting here and developing as a theory is merely a pretext for you as well; if we look for the deeper reasons, perhaps the reasons you have given are of exactly the same nature. — Had such a psychologist seriously learned why a judgment based on a conclusion such as: All Cretans are liars —, and that such a judgment is flawed when a Cretan himself utters it; had he learned the reason why this is so, he would also have learned what strange circular arguments result from the fact that, in certain fields, one can reduce assertions back to oneself. But the fact is that throughout almost the entire scope of our literature, there is an extraordinarily low level of truly deep education. Consequently, people usually no longer notice what they themselves are doing. That is why it will be absolutely necessary, especially for the humanities, that such logical confusions be avoided in every respect. Modern philosophers who deal with the science of the soul are the least likely to avoid such logical confusions. And our example is a typical one of this. In it we see the tricks that Luciferic influences play on human beings, so that they transform their inner life into a Maya and so that they can delude themselves into believing in motives entirely different from those that actually prevail within them.

[ 22 ] In this area, people should strive to practice stricter self-discipline. Today, people tend to use words very lightly. But words are also a terrible seducer. And if a word simply sounds nice and gives even the slightest impression that a sentence describes a charitable act, then the very sound of the sentence will be enough to tempt one to believe that the motive in question resides in the soul, whereas in reality the egoistic principle may lie behind it, of which the person concerned need have no inkling at all, because he has no will whatsoever to pursue true self-knowledge. Thus we see Lucifer at work on the one hand. How, then, does Ahriman work on the other hand?

[ 23 ] Ahriman is the principle that interferes with our perceptions and draws itself into us from the outside. Now Ahriman exerts his strongest influence in those cases where we feel: Here your thinking can no longer keep up; there you stand at a critical point with your thinking, where your thoughts become tangled like a ball of yarn. — There the Ahrimanic principle seizes the opportunity to penetrate into us, as through a crack in the outer world. When we follow the course of world events and look at the more revealing ones—for example, when we trace modern physics back to the moment when Galileo sat before the swinging church lamp in the Cathedral of Pisa—we can weave a web of thought across all events that easily explains the matter to us; everywhere, things will become clear to us. But there, at the point where we come to the swinging church lamp, our thoughts become entangled. There is the window through which the Ahrimanic forces penetrate us most strongly, and there our thinking ceases to grasp from the phenomena what reason and understanding can bring to bear on the matter. But there also lies what is called chance. It sits there, where Ahriman becomes most dangerous to us. People call those phenomena “coincidental” in which they can most easily be deceived by the Ahrimanic influence.

[ 24 ] Thus, human beings will come to understand that it is not inherent in the nature of things when they are led to speak of chance in any given situation, but rather that it depends on them and their development. And he will gradually have to train himself to penetrate Maya and illusion—that is, to penetrate those realms where Ahriman is most active. And precisely where we are dealing with significant causes of illness and with a light that is to shine upon the course of many illnesses, there we will need to approach these phenomena from this perspective. There we will first seek to understand to what extent it is no coincidence when a person happens to be riding the very train that could kill them, or how things stand such that a person is exposed at a specific time to some externally acting pathogen or another cause of illness. And if we can investigate these matters with sharpened insight, we will be able to comprehend even more deeply the true nature and the full significance of illness and health for human life.

[ 25 ] Today I had to explain in greater detail how, within the human being, Lucifer leads to illusion, and how Ahriman interferes with external perceptions and leads to Maya there; how it is an effect of Lucifer when a person deceives themselves with a false motive, and how the false assumption regarding the world of appearances—the deception by Ahriman—leads us to the assumption of chance. I had to lay this foundation before I can show how karmic events, the results of past lives, also work within the human being and also explain phenomena where seemingly random external causes seem to be at work in the production of diseases.