The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] If we reflect on the contradiction we posed at the end of our last discussion, we must, in order to resolve it today, once again look back at the two forces, the two principles, which over time have appeared to us both as the challengers and, at the same time, as the regulators of our karma.

[ 2 ] We have seen that our karma is set in motion only when we are subjected to the influences of the Luciferic forces on our astral body, and when, through the temptation of these forces, we give rise to expressions of emotion, instinct, and passion that, in a certain sense, make us less perfect than we would otherwise be. When the Luciferic influences act upon us, they in turn provoke the Ahrimanic influences—those forces that act upon us not from within but from without, working through our interaction with the world via whatever confronts us from the outside. So it is essentially Ahriman who is challenged by Lucifer, and we human beings are actually placed so vividly within the conflict between these two principles. And we must try in life to make progress precisely by seeking, once we have fallen into the clutches of Lucifer or Ahriman, ways and means to rise higher again by overcoming what has been wrought within us. But we can see quite clearly how this interplay between Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces actually takes place around our person if we recall once more, in a slightly different form, the case we already mentioned last time: the case where someone succumbs to Ahrimanic influences, so that they experience all manner of illusions, deceptions, believing that this or that is being communicated to them in a special way or is making an impression on them in this or that direction; yet to another person who has retained their sound judgment, it is easy to see that the individual in question has fallen prey to errors and deceptions. Last time we spoke of cases where someone is subjected to clairvoyant—but in the worst sense of the word—deceptions of the spiritual world. There we explicitly stated that these are then deceptions brought about by Ahrimanic forces. And we have seen that against such delusions, which are caused by incorrect clairvoyance, there is no other—or at least no more effective—remedy than the sound judgment acquired in physical life between birth and death.

[ 3 ] What we said in the last lecture is significant and essential when dealing with clairvoyant aberrations. For clairvoyance that has not been achieved through proper training or systematic exercises conducted strictly and correctly, but rather arises from old, inherited traits, in images or hearing sounds and the like—in such incorrect clairvoyance, we can always find that it recedes, that it even ceases when the person concerned finds the opportunity and has the inclination to seriously engage in theosophical studies, to truly absorb theosophical knowledge, or even to undertake genuine, sensible, and appropriate training. Thus, in such a case, where we are dealing with aberrations of supersensible knowledge, we can say that the genuine sources of knowledge, if the person in question is open to them, will always be a help to him, capable of bringing him onto the right path.

[ 4 ] On the other hand, you must not cite what must be presented as a counterargument and what is such a trivial truth that everyone knows it. Everyone knows that if someone, through karmic entanglements, has come to develop conditions that lead to symptoms of paranoia or delusions of grandeur, they can then form a whole system of delusional ideas in their soul, which they justify as logically as possible, but which are nonetheless delusions. It can happen, for example, that someone thinks quite correctly and logically in other areas of life, yet harbors the delusion that he is being persecuted everywhere for this or that reason. He will then be able, wherever he goes, to construct the most ingenious combinations from the slightest occurrences: “There’s another clique that wants nothing more than to do this or that to me!” — And they will prove to you in the most ingenious way just how well-founded their suspicion is. Thus, someone can be a completely logical thinker and yet exhibit certain symptoms of madness within themselves. It will be quite impossible to refute such a person with logical arguments. On the contrary, if one presents logical arguments in such a case, it may happen that the delusions residing within the person in question are provoked all the more and seek even sharper evidence for what he asserts as the content of his delusion of persecution. — When speaking in the spiritual-scientific sense, things must be taken very precisely. When it was emphasized earlier, and also last time, that in the spiritual-scientific insights to which someone devotes themselves with great effort or even through a principled, systematic training, one has a counterforce against a distortion of clairvoyant powers, this refers to a completely different case than the one just described. Now the point is not to approach the person in question with spiritual scientific insights. As a rule, one seeks to approach them with arguments drawn from the realm of ordinary reason. But such a person is absolutely impervious to these. Why is that the case?

[ 5 ] When a clinical picture such as this emerges, as manifested in the symptoms described, we are dealing with a situation in which the individual is bringing to light a karmic cause stemming from previous incarnations, from past transgressions. What is to be regarded as an inner aberration does not and cannot, in this case, lie in the present incarnation, but rather in a previous one. Let us now form a picture of how something of this nature carries over from the previous incarnation into the present one.

[ 6 ] To do this, we must consider how our soul development actually proceeds. As outer human beings, we consist of a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body; over time, through the work of the ego, we have built into these sheaths the feeling soul into the feeling body, the intellectual or emotional soul into the etheric body, and the conscious soul into the physical body. What we develop within ourselves as the three soul members, we have built into the three sheaths; this now lives within these three sheaths. Now let us suppose that in some incarnation we are led astray by the influence of Lucifer—that is, by developing within ourselves egoistic or other drives, desires, and instincts attributable to the Luciferic influence—to the point that we burden our soul with transgressions. These transgressions may now be in the feeling soul, in the intellectual or emotional soul, or even in the conscious soul. This is then the cause that is present in one of the three soul members in some subsequent incarnation. Let us assume there is a fault that is based particularly on the powers of the intellectual soul. This is then transformed in the state between death and new birth in such a way that what the intellectual soul has committed, for example, manifests its effect in the etheric body. This has been worked into the etheric body during the passage through death up to the new birth. So in the new incarnation we encounter an effect in the etheric body that can be traced back to a cause in the intellectual soul in a previous incarnation. Now, however, the intellectual soul of the next incarnation works independently again in this incarnation, and there is a difference depending on whether the person committed that transgression earlier or not. If they committed it in a previous incarnation, they now have a flaw in their etheric body. This is now more deeply rooted; it is not located in the intellectual soul, but in the etheric body. But whatever a person can develop on the physical plane as rationality or intelligence affects only their intellectual soul; it does not affect how their intellectual soul acted in a previous incarnation and what has already been worked into the etheric body. Therefore, it can happen that the forces of the intellectual soul, as they now present themselves to us in a human being, function logically intact, so that the actual human inner being is entirely intact; yet, through the interaction between the intellectual soul and the diseased part of the etheric body, an error is projected from this etheric body in a certain direction. In such cases, one can indeed influence the intellectual soul using the arguments available on the physical plane, but not the etheric body directly. Therefore, you cannot achieve anything through logic or persuasion, just as you cannot do anything with logic if you place a person in front of a convex mirror so that the person sees their distorted image in it, and you then try to prove to them that they are wrong to see the image that way. After all, they see a distorted image. Likewise, it is not up to the person to misunderstand something in a pathological way, for their otherwise healthy logic is not reflected in a healthy way from their etheric body.

[ 7 ] In this way, we carry within us the karmic effects of past incarnations in our deeper constitution. And we can even pinpoint exactly where, in a specific part of that constitution—such as here in our etheric body—the defect is present. In this we see what we have been challenged to confront and then transformed through the Luciferic influence in a previous incarnation. And in the interval between death and new birth, the transformation takes place from the inner to the outer, and then Ahriman works against us from within our own etheric body. This shows us how Ahriman is drawn to our own etheric body by Lucifer. The earlier transgression was a Luciferic one, but what has been transformed is such that, as it were, we receive the reckoning for it in the next incarnation through Ahriman. And then the matter is that the human being must expel this damage to his etheric body from within himself. This can only happen by intervening more deeply into his constitution than is possible with the ordinary means of external reason in a single incarnation.

[ 8 ] Anyone who goes through something like this—for example, succumbing to the symptoms of paranoia in a particular incarnation—will, when they pass through the gate of death once more, find all the deeds they have committed as a result of their Ahrimanic impairment laid out before them, and they will see them in all their absurdity. This will again be the power that thoroughly heals them for their next incarnation. For they can only be healed by the fact that what they have done under the influence of the corresponding symptoms subsequently appears absurd to them in the outer world. With this, you have provided something that we can do to bring about such a healing. If someone suffers from such delusions, you will be least able to dissuade them from their delusions through logical arguments. You will only provoke their opposition all the more. But you will achieve something, especially if such a condition manifests in early youth, if you place the person in situations where the consequences of his symptoms appear blatantly nonsensical to him, if you confront him with facts that he himself brings about and that rebound on him as blatantly nonsensical. In this way, you can, in a certain sense, bring about a cure.

[ 9 ] They can also have a healing effect when you yourself have assimilated the truths of spiritual science to such an extent that they have become an integral part of your soul. If they have become your possession to such an extent that they stand or fall with your entire personality, then you possess them as the strongest possible faith; then your entire personality radiates these spiritual-scientific truths. With these truths, which flow into the life between birth and death and fill it, yet which nevertheless transcend this life itself—these insights are from the supersensible world—with them you can achieve deeper effects than with external rational truths. While you cannot make headway with external logical arguments, if you apply the truths of spiritual science and have enough time and opportunity to do so, you will, however, be able to exert such an influence on the person in question that you can, so to speak, accomplish in a single incarnation what can otherwise only happen indirectly from one incarnation to the next: namely, to work from the intellectual soul into the etheric body. For the truths of the physical plane are incapable of bridging, even in the slightest, the gulf between the feeling soul and the feeling body, between the intellectual soul and the etheric body, or even between the conscious soul and the physical body. Therefore, you will always find that no matter how much wisdom a person may acquire on the physical plane regarding the sensory world, this wisdom will have very little connection to their emotional life—to what we call the permeation of their feeling body with the corresponding impulses and passions. This is why it happens that someone may be a highly learned person, may possess great theoretical knowledge about the things of the physical world, may have become an old professor—and yet have not achieved an inner transformation of their instincts, feelings, and passions that play out in the emotional body. He may, in fact, know a great deal about the physical world and yet be a blatant egoist, because he absorbed the impulses for this in his youth. — Of course, external physical science and the inner development of the sensory body and etheric body can very well run parallel to one another. And likewise, a person can take in intellectual truths, various things that can be absorbed as forces of the emotional soul in relation to the physical plane, but they cannot bridge that deep chasm that exists between the intellectual soul and the etheric body. In other words, you will find time and again: When someone takes in external truths, no matter how much they learn—you will rarely find that what they have learned truly exerts an influence on the formative forces of their body.

[ 10 ] In a person upon whom these truths have such an effect that they take hold of his entire being, you will be able to observe that, over the course of ten years, his physiognomy changes; you will be able to read on his forehead how he has struggled—how, for example, he has wrestled with certain doubts in his heart. Or you can also notice it in their gestures, for example, if they have become a calm person through their own behavior. This penetrates into the formative forces of the organism, and the organism is affected in its finest parts. What a person takes in spiritually affects even the finest parts of their constitution. If what captures the mind does not merely point to the physical plane, then after ten years the person is also a different person. But the change lies in the normal direction, in the way dispositions develop and change in ordinary, everyday life. One may perhaps develop a different facial expression over the course of ten years; but if one has not inwardly leaped across the abyss, it is due to external influences. In that case, it is not a force that seizes the person from within that transforms them. From this we can see that only the spiritual, which truly connects with our innermost being, is capable of acting transformatively upon the formative forces even in the time between birth and death; but that this transition, this crossing of the abyss, certainly takes place within the karmic process between death and a new birth. If, for example, what the feeling soul has experienced is sunk into those worlds we pass through in the interval between death and a new birth, then it certainly asserts itself in the next incarnation as a formative, shaping force.

[ 11 ] In this way, we have come to understand the mutual interaction between Ahriman and Lucifer. And now we ask ourselves: How does this interaction manifest itself when the things in question are somewhat further apart—for example, when the Luciferic influence must not only cross the gulf from the intellectual soul to the etheric body, but must, so to speak, travel a longer path?

[ 12 ] Let us suppose that in one lifetime we are particularly strongly under the influence of Lucifer. In such a case, our entire inner being has become considerably more imperfect than it was before, and during the Kamaloka period we are then so acutely aware of this that we say to ourselves: You must do something truly powerful to compensate for this imperfection! — We thus take this tendency into ourselves and, in the next or one of the next incarnations, use what have now become formative forces to shape our new organism in such a way that it must have the tendency to bring about a balance for what we have previously experienced. But let us suppose that what triggered the Luciferic influence was caused by an external factor, was an external desire. Then Lucifer must have been present as an influence once again. The external factor could not have affected us if Lucifer had not been at work within us. We therefore have within us the tendency to restore balance to what we have become under the Luciferic influence.

[ 13 ] But now we have seen that the Luciferic influence in one incarnation provokes the Ahrimanic influence in the next incarnation, that it draws it in, so that the two are in a state of constant interaction with one another. The Luciferic influence, however, is such that we could say: It manifests itself to us in consciousness, that is, we can still reach down with our consciousness, albeit precariously, into our astral body. We have said that when pain brings itself to our consciousness, this is a Luciferic influence. But we cannot reach down into those regions that we can describe as the consciousness of our etheric body and our physical body. We do indeed have a consciousness even in dreamless sleep, but it is of such a low degree that in ordinary life a person is not in a position to know anything at all about this consciousness. But that is by no means a reason for us to do nothing in this consciousness. This consciousness is normally possessed, for example, by the plant, which consists only of a physical body and an etheric body. The plant lives continuously in a dreamless sleep consciousness. Our consciousness of the etheric body and the physical body is also present during waking hours; but we cannot descend to it. That this consciousness can act, however, is shown to us, for example, when we perform somnambulistic actions—nightwalking actions—in our sleep of which we know nothing. It is this dreamless sleep consciousness that performs these actions. Ordinary ego-consciousness and astral consciousness do not reach down to the level where, for example, the actions of the sleepwalker are carried out.

[ 14 ] But we must not assume, simply because we live in ego-consciousness and astral consciousness during the day, that the other forms of consciousness do not coexist with us. We are simply unaware of them. Let us now suppose that, through a Luciferic influence in a previous incarnation, we have provoked a strong Ahrimanic influence; then this Ahrimanic influence will not be able to act upon our ordinary consciousness. But it will take hold of the consciousness that resides in our etheric body, and this consciousness will then be able to lead us not merely to a certain organization of our etheric body, but even to actions that play out in such a way that the consciousness of our etheric body tells us: You can now only remove from yourself what the Luciferic influence, to which you so powerfully succumbed in your previous incarnation, has wrought within you; and you can do this by now committing an act that lies exactly in the opposite direction to the earlier Luciferic transgression!

[ 15 ] Let us suppose that we have been led by a Luciferic influence to move from a previous religious or spiritually oriented standpoint to one where a person says: “I want to enjoy life here!”—where, in other words, they have thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the material world. Then such a thing provokes the Ahrimanic influence in such a way that exactly the opposite is brought about. It then happens that as the person goes through life, they seek out a point where they can leap back from the sensory life into the spiritual. There they have fallen into the sensory with a leap—here they want to leap back into the spiritual life. The higher consciousness does not notice this; but the mysterious subconscious, which is chained to the physical body and the etheric body, now drives the person to seek out the place where one can wait out a thunderstorm, where there is an oak tree, a bench beneath it, and—the lightning strikes! Here his subconscious has caused the human being to fulfill what he did in a previous incarnation. Here we have the reverse. Thus we understand an effect under a Luciferic influence in a previous life, and as a consequence an influence of Ahriman in the present life. Ahriman must be at work here for the purpose of causing us to shut down our higher consciousness to such an extent that, in this case, our entire being follows only the consciousness of the etheric body or the physical body.

[ 16 ] In this way, we come to understand various things that also happen in life. But we must not, for example, when someone dies or suffers a serious injury, attribute every such case to something similar. That would be to understand karma in a very narrow way. But there are indeed currents within our Theosophical Movement that interpret karma in a rather narrow way; they believe that karma truly offers something that leads to a higher perspective, yet they do not truly understand it. They interpret karma in such a way that, if it were truly as they conceive it, the entire world order would have to be specially arranged for every single human being, so that it might serve the harmonious course and the balancing of each individual in human life; that is, in a given life, circumstances would always be brought together in such a way that a precise balance must be created for what arose in a previous life. But this point of view is untenable. What if someone were to stand before a person who has suffered a misfortune and say to them: “This is your karma; this is the karmic effect from a past life; you brought this upon yourself back then!” — But if the person in question now experiences this or that stroke of good fortune, then the other says: “That goes back to a good deed you did in the past!” — But if this is to have any real value, the one who speaks thus would first have to see what happened in the past life that is said to have produced this effect. Had he placed himself in that past life, he would see there the causes arising from that life, and would then have to look to the later incarnation if he wished to perceive the effects. From this, however, the following logically follows for us: In every incarnation, events occur that constitute the first occurrences in the life of every human being, as it unfolds from incarnation to incarnation, and these will find their karmic balance in the next life. When one then looks at the effects in the next life, one can look back at the causes. But if a misfortune occurs now and one cannot find any causes for it in a previous life by any means, then one must tell oneself that the effect will simply take place in a later life. Karma is not fate! Something from every life is carried over into the later ones.

[ 17 ] Once we understand this, we will also find it understandable that a person can discover new events in their life that are meaningful and significant. Let us remember that the great events in the course of human development can only come about because they are carried forward by specific individuals. At a specific point in time, individuals must take up the intentions of the development. Consider how medieval development would have unfolded if Charlemagne had not intervened at a specific time, or how the spiritual life of ancient times would have unfolded if Aristotle had not been active at a specific time. Consider that if you wish to understand the course of human development, you must place Aristotle within the context of the time in which he lived; for without him, much would have turned out differently later on. — From this we see that such personalities as Charlemagne, Aristotle, Luther, and so on had to live in the respective era not for their own sake, but for the sake of the world. Their personal destinies are therefore intimately interwoven with what happens in the world. But can we therefore say that what they do corresponds to what they have previously earned or what they have previously done wrong?

[ 18 ] Take the case of Luther: You cannot attribute everything he experienced and endured solely to his karmic debt; you must realize that what is meant to happen at a specific point in human development occurs through the intervention of certain individuals. These individuals must be brought down from the spiritual world regardless of whether they are sufficiently ready for themselves to be brought down, for they are brought down for the purposes of human development. And perhaps a karmic path must be interrupted or extended prematurely so that the personalities in question can be placed into life at a specific point in time. Destinies are then imposed upon people that need not have anything to do with their previous karma. But once a person has been placed in life in this way and has done what one can do between birth and death, this creates karmic causes. Just as it is true that a Luther is placed into life for the sake of humanity and may endure fates that have nothing to do with his earlier karma, so it is true that what he accomplishes there will again have something to do with his later karma. Karma is a universal law, and everyone must live through it. But we must not understand it in such a way that we look back only to past incarnations; rather, we must understand it in such a way that we must also look forward. Therefore, we can certainly say: From this point of view, it may well be that only a later life can justify previous incarnations, in that things have already befallen us that do not lie at all within our karmic line.

[ 19 ] Let us consider the following case, which actually occurred: During a natural disaster, a number of souls met their end. We need not believe that it was their karma that they all perished together; for that would be a very simplistic assumption. It is not necessarily the case that everything can be traced back to past misdeeds. There is a documented case where a number of people perished in a natural disaster. However, this led to these people feeling a bond with one another in a later time, and through their shared fate, they proved strong enough to undertake a common endeavor in the world. That catastrophe was the cause of their having thoroughly broken the habit of clinging solely to material things in their later lives, so that they brought with them into their later lives a mindset that led them to the spiritual.

[ 20 ] What happened in this case? If we go back to their previous life, we find that a particular event occurred: they perished together in an earthquake. At that moment, the futility of material things was thrust before their souls, and a spiritual outlook developed within them. In this we see how people who were meant to bring something spiritual to the world were prepared for it through such an event, which reveals to us the wisdom of evolution—an event that has been scientifically investigated and actually took place. — Thus we can show that we are seeing free will enter human life for the first time, and that even in the case of the death of one or more people in a catastrophe or accident, we must not always attribute a person’s premature death to a previous debt, but that such an event can occur as the primary cause and that compensation takes place in the next life.

[ 21 ] However, other cases are also possible. It may happen that someone has to end a life prematurely in two or three consecutive incarnations. This can occur because this individual is called upon to bring something to humanity through three incarnations—something that can only be brought if one lives in the physical world with the forces that arise in a body that is still developing. It is quite different whether one lives in a body that develops until the age of thirty-five or in a body of a later age. For up to the age of thirty-five, a person directs their energy into the physical body, so that they develop their strength from within. But then, beginning at the age of thirty-five, a phase of life begins in which a person progresses only inwardly and must continually struggle with their life forces against external forces. These two halves of life are quite different from one another when we look at the inner organization. Let us now assume that, according to the wisdom of human development, we need such people who can only flourish if they do not have to struggle against what presses against us in the second half of life; then it may be that their incarnations are cut short prematurely. Such cases do exist. And we ourselves have already pointed out at our gatherings an individuality that appeared successively as a great prophet, as a significant painter, and as a great poet, and always ended its life with an early death, because what this individuality had to accomplish in three incarnations was only possible by the incarnations being cut short before it could fully immerse itself in the second half of life. In this you have the peculiarity of the entanglement of human individual karma and general human karma.

[ 22 ] We can go even deeper and identify certain karmic causes within the collective karma of humanity, the effects of which will manifest in later times; in this context, the individual must see themselves as part of this collective karma. If we consider post-Atlantean development, we find the Greco-Latin period lying in the middle; it was preceded by the Egyptian-Chaldean period, and followed by our own as the fifth cultural epoch. Our era will be followed by a sixth and then a seventh cultural epoch. But I have also pointed out on other occasions that, in a certain sense, a cycle takes place in the succession of the various cultures, so that the Greco-Latin culture stands apart as a special one, but that the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch is then repeated in our own. Now I have also already emphasized in this cycle how Kepler lived in our cultural epoch and how, in an earlier time, the same individuality lived in an Egyptian body and was then permitted, under the influence of the Egyptian priest-sages, to direct its gaze upward toward the vault of heaven, so that the mysteries of the stars were revealed to it as if from above. She then brought this forth again in her Kepler incarnation, which was placed there where the fifth epoch in a certain sense repeats the third.

[ 23 ] But it goes even further. From the perspective of spiritual science, one can truly say that most people today still view the development of the world and human life with a kind of blindness. You could trace these correspondences, these repetitions, this life in cycles down to the finest details. If one takes a certain point in human development, which falls around the year 747 B.C., one has there a kind of hypomochlion, a kind of zero point, and what lies before and after this point corresponds to one another in a very specific way. We can go back to a time in Egyptian development and find there certain ceremonial laws and commandments that appeared as “commandments of the gods.” And that is what they were. They were commandments that required the Egyptian, for example, to perform very specific ablutions during the day—ablutions regulated by ceremonial customs and ritual prescriptions. And the Egyptian was told that he could only live as the gods intended if he performed so many ablutions on this or that day. This was a divine commandment that found its expression in certain purity cults. And when we then enter a somewhat less hygienic period in the interim and now, in our own time, encounter hygienic measures such as those currently imposed on humanity for materialistic reasons, we see in ourselves a true repetition of what perished in a corresponding era in Egypt. The fulfillment of the past in the collective karma presents itself in a most remarkable way. Only the overall character is always different. In his Egyptian incarnation, Kepler had turned his gaze upward to the starry sky; and what this individuality saw there, it expressed in the great spiritual truths of Egyptian astrology. In its reincarnation during the age to which the task of materialism fell, the same individuality expressed these facts in a manner appropriate to our age—in the three materialistically tinged Keplerian laws. —In ancient Egypt, the laws of purification were “divinely revealed” laws. The Egyptian believed he fulfilled his duty to humanity only by taking care of his purification in the most incredible ways at every opportunity. This is emerging again today, but under entirely materialistic influences. The person of today does not think that he serves the gods when he observes such rules, but that he serves himself. Yet the former is emerging again.

[ 24 ] Thus, everything in the world comes to pass, and in a certain sense, in a completely cyclical manner. And now you will begin to suspect that the matters we summarized together last time as a contradiction are not as simple as one might be inclined to assume. If, at a certain time, people were unable to take certain measures against epidemics, those were times when people could not do so because the epidemics were meant to act according to the general, wise plan of the world, so that human souls might find an opportunity to balance out what had been brought about by the Ahrimanic influence and by certain earlier Luciferic influences. If different conditions are now brought about, this, too, is subject to certain great karmic laws. We can conclude from this that we must truly not view these questions superficially.

[ 25 ] How does this all fit together: We said that when a person seeks out an opportunity to contract an epidemic or an infection, this is the necessary counteraction to a previous karmic cause. Are we then permitted to take hygienic and other measures to prevent this?

[ 26 ] The question is profound, and we must first gather the proper material to resolve it. We must be clear that wherever—whether simultaneously or over longer periods of time—the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic principles interact or oppose one another, certain complications arise in human life. And these complications manifest in such a way that they confront us in the most diverse cases and in the most varied forms, so that we will not find two cases that are alike. But when we study human life, we will find our way through it in the following manner: If we seek out the interplay of Lucifer and Ahriman in the specific individual case, we will find a thread everywhere to guide us through this connection. But in doing so, we must make a sharp distinction between the inner and the outer human being. We have already had to make a sharp distinction today between what plays out in the intellectual soul and what manifests in the etheric body as an effect of the intellectual soul. We must observe the course in which karma unfolds, and at the same time we must be clear that we nevertheless have the possibility, through corresponding karmic influences, to act upon the inner being in such a way that a different karmic balance is prepared for the future through the inner being. Through this, it becomes possible for the following to occur:

[ 27 ] It is quite possible that, especially in a previous life, a person may have experienced sensations, feelings, and so on that drove them to act unkindly toward their neighbors. Let us imagine, for example, that they went through a situation where, through karmic effect, they absorbed unkindness into themselves. It may well be that, as we proceed along a descending path, we generate evil—that is, we first follow a downward course so that the opposing force may develop, enabling us to rise again. Let us assume, then, that a person, through devotion to certain influences, has inclined toward a certain lack of love; then this lack of love manifests in a later life as a karmic effect and forms inner forces within his constitution. Now we can do two things, consciously or unconsciously; for our culture is not yet advanced enough to do this consciously. We will be able to take precautions with such a person so that those qualities in their constitution that stem from unkindness are driven out. We can do something there that serves as an antidote to the effect in the outer constitution that manifests as unkindness; but this will not always eliminate all unkindness in the soul; it will only remove the outer organ of unkindness. For if we do nothing further, we have done only half the work, perhaps none at all. We may have helped the person physically, outwardly; but we have not helped them spiritually. By removing the organ for unkindness from their outer physical body, they can no longer act out that unkindness; they must retain it within their inner being for a future incarnation.

[ 28 ] Let us suppose that, out of a lack of love for others, a large number of people felt compelled to ingest certain infectious agents in order to succumb to an epidemic. Let us further suppose that we could do something to combat the epidemic. In such a case, we would prevent the outer physical body from expressing the lack of love, but we would not thereby have removed the inner inclination toward lack of love. But let us imagine the case where, when we eliminate the external organ of unkindness, we take on the obligation to act upon the soul in such a way that we also remove the soul’s inclination toward unkindness. The organ of unkindness is killed in the eminent sense—in the external physical sense—in smallpox vaccination. Here, for example, is what has been researched from a spiritual-scientific perspective: In a certain cultural period, smallpox appeared when there was a general tendency to develop a higher degree of selfishness and lack of love. Smallpox appeared then, even in the external physical body; that is a fact. In Theosophy, one is absolutely obligated to speak the truth.

[ 29 ] Now we can understand that vaccination has emerged in our time. But we can also understand something else: namely, that even among the finest minds of our time there exists a kind of aversion to vaccination. This corresponds to an inner state; it is the outward expression of an inner reality. And we can now say: If, on the one hand, we destroy the organ, we would also have the obligation, as a counterpart to this, to reshape the materialistic character in this person through appropriate spiritual education. That would have to be the necessary counterpart. Otherwise, we are only doing half the work. Indeed, we are only doing a work for which the human being himself will have to create the counterpart in some way in a later incarnation, if he carries the smallpox virus within him and has created within himself the disposition that makes one virtually prone to smallpox. If one has eliminated the susceptibility to smallpox, one has considered only the outer aspect of karmic effect. If one practices hygiene on the one hand, one must feel the obligation, on the other hand, to give something for the soul to the people whose constitution one has transformed. Vaccination will not harm anyone who, after vaccination, receives a spiritual education in later life. We have tipped the scales too far if we aim only at one side and attach no value to the other. This is essentially what is felt in circles where it is said: Where hygienic measures go too far, only weak natures would be propagated. This is certainly unjustified; but you see, the essential point is that one must not undertake one task without the other.

[ 30 ] This brings us to an important law in human development, which operates in such a way that the outer and the inner must always be in balance, and that one must not focus solely on one aspect while neglecting the other. Here we are looking at a broader context, and we have not even yet addressed the question: How do hygiene and karma relate to one another? You will see that the answer to this question leads us even deeper into the realm of karma. And we will also see how karmic connections exist between a person’s birth and death, and furthermore, how other personalities play a role in a human life, and how human free will and karma are in harmony.