The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Certain deeper questions regarding the nature of karma—specifically those concerning our human influence on karma and, in particular, on the karma of others; that is, questions relating to a shift in the direction of karma on both a small and a large scale—cannot be answered, nor can one even form a conception of how they must be answered, unless one touches upon certain significant mysteries of our existence in the world in the manner we intend to do today. Such questions may perhaps arise for everyone from what has been said if you take this or that thought—which has been introduced and illuminated from one angle or another—and develop it further for yourselves.

[ 2 ] This may raise the question: What happens if, within the context of a person’s karma—based on what they have experienced and done in the past—a disease process is necessary to resolve this karmic fact, and if this person is helped through medication or another intervention in such a way that they are truly healed by human aid? What is happening here, and how does such a situation relate to the deeper understandings of karmic law?

[ 3 ] Let me note right from the start: In order to shed even a little light on this question, we must touch upon matters that lie far removed from modern science and contemporary human thought, and which can only be discussed, so to speak, among Theosophists who have prepared themselves for such matters by assimilating various truths relating to the deeper foundations of existence, and who have also developed a sense of how matters that can only be hinted at today can nevertheless be fully substantiated. Nevertheless, I would like to take this opportunity to make a request: What I am compelled to say about the deeper foundations of earthly existence—for example, what I will endeavor to express in the most precise terms, and what would immediately be false if spoken in a different context or even without any context at all, and would therefore give rise to misunderstandings—I ask that this be treated in no other way than simply by taking it in. I, too, must therefore insist, especially regarding these matters, that no one should regard them as a body of doctrine that one could pass on in any way, because only the context justifies such a presentation, and because such a presentation is justified only if it is underpinned by an awareness of how one must shape such words in order to express such things in thought.

[ 4 ] What is at stake here is the question of the deeper nature of material existence on the one hand, and the nature of spiritual existence on the other. Today we will necessarily have to acquire a deeper understanding of the spiritual and the material, and we will need to do so for a very specific reason: because we have pointed out in previous lectures that the spiritual aspect of the human being can penetrate more or less deeply into the material. Indeed, yesterday we were able to characterize the nature of the masculine by saying that in men the spiritual penetrates more deeply into the material, imprints itself more deeply, whereas in women the spiritual, in a certain sense, withdraws more and acquires a more independent existence in relation to the material. Thus we have seen that much in the outworking of karma depends on how the interpenetration of the soul and the material takes place. We have also seen how a certain disease process that occurs in an incarnation presents itself as the karmic consequence of transgressions the soul committed in earlier incarnations, in that the soul at that time processed its deeds, experiences, and impulses within itself and then, on the path between death and new birth, took on the tendency to force into the physical, into the material, that which had previously played out merely as a characteristic, as an influence of the soul. And as the human being is then permeated by such a soul that has taken in the Luciferic or Ahrimanic influence, the human physical is corrupted precisely through this. This is where the course of the illness lies. Therefore, we can say: In a sick body there is a corrupted soul that has undergone a wrong influence, a Luciferic or Ahrimanic influence; and the moment we could remove the Luciferic or Ahrimanic influence from the soul, the proper interpenetration of soul and body would occur, that is, health would be restored. — We must therefore ask: What is the nature of these two constituent elements of earthly human existence that stand before us—matter and the soul? What are they in their deeper essence?

[ 5 ] When this question is raised, people today generally believe that the answer to the question “What is matter?” What is the soul? — must be the same everywhere in the world; and I do not believe that it would be easy for a person to accept the idea that for beings who lived on the ancient Moon, the answer to the question: What is matter? What is the soul? — would have had to be quite different than for beings living on Earth. But existence is so very much in a state of development that even such things as the concepts a being can form regarding the deeper foundations of its own being are changing. And so, too, changes what must be given as an answer to the question: What is matter? What is the soul? It must therefore be emphasized from the outset that the answers given are merely answers that the earthly human being can provide and that have meaning only for this earthly human being.

[ 6 ] People initially judge “matter” based on what they encounter in the external world in the form of various entities and objects, and on what makes an impression on them in any way. People then find that there are different kinds of matter, and I need not go into great detail here, for whatever could be said about this—if we had more time—can be found in all the relevant popular writings. I will therefore say enough for now by pointing out that matter presents itself differently to humans when they see the various metals—gold, copper, lead, and so on—or when they see that which does not belong to the class of metals. You also know that chemistry has gradually traced these materials back to certain basic constituents of matter, which it calls elements. These elements were, in fact, regarded well into the 19th century as substances that cannot be further decomposed. While we can separate any substance that presents itself to us as matter—for example, water—into hydrogen and oxygen, in hydrogen and oxygen we have before us substances that, according to 19th-century chemistry, cannot be further broken down. As many as seventy such elements have been distinguished. And you are no doubt also aware that, due to the phenomena that have been observed in connection with certain specific elements—for example, radium—or in connection with various phenomena in the study of electricity, the concept of elements has been shaken in various ways, leading to the view that what we know as the approximately seventy elements is merely a provisional boundary of matter, and that decomposition can be traced back further to a single fundamental substance, which then differentiates only through internal combination, through the internal essential element, which at one time specializes into gold, at another into potassium, calcium, and so on.

[ 7 ] These are evolving scientific theories. And just as scientific theories changed over the course of fifty-year periods in the 19th century—as it came to pass that certain physicists saw in what is supposed to be matter something to be described in terms of entities, of essences, something derived from electricity, such as the current ion theory—these are scientific fads— so too will other scientific fads exist in the not-too-distant future, and people will conceive of matter as being constituted differently. These are facts. Scientific opinions are changeable; they must also be changeable, for they depend entirely on the respective facts that have a particularly significant effect on a given era. In contrast, the teaching of spiritual science, throughout all epochs, for as long as there have been earthly cultures—and it will continue for as long as there is an earthly culture—has always held a unified, consistent view of the nature of material existence, of matter. To guide you toward what spiritual science regards as the essence of matter, of the material, I would like to say the following:

[ 8 ] You are familiar with this very common process: when we have ice, it is a solid, a solid substance. This matter is not solid by its very nature, but is a solid only due to external circumstances. It ceases to be a solid immediately when we raise the temperature accordingly; then it becomes a liquid. How a substance manifests itself in the external world does not depend on what is within it, but on the entire conditions of the surrounding universe. — Then we can continue to apply heat to this matter, and from a certain point onward, the water turns into steam. Thus we have ice, water, and steam, and by raising the temperature of the environment we have brought about what we can describe as “matter in its most diverse forms.” Thus, we must not distinguish matter, as it presents itself to us, according to an internal, constitutive nature, but we must be clear that the way matter appears to us depends on the nature of the universe’s overall constitution, and that one must not separate anything from the entire universe into individual forms of matter.

[ 9 ] The fact is, however, that the methods of modern science are entirely insufficient to achieve what spiritual science can achieve. With its current means, modern science can never take matter—which, in the form of a piece of ice, first becomes liquid and then vaporous through an increase in temperature—far enough to reach the final state attainable on Earth, into which all matter can be transformed. It is not possible today to use scientific means to create conditions that could demonstrate, for example: If you take gold and dilute it further and further, as far as you can dilute it on Earth, you will eventually arrive at this or that state. If you do the same with silver, it is the same; with copper as well, and so on. — Spiritual science can do this because it is ultimately based on clairvoyant research methods. Through this, it is able to observe one thing: how, in the, one might say, interstices of our materials, one always finds the same thing everywhere—a sameness that in fact represents the outermost limit to which any material whatsoever could be brought, whatever kind of material it may be. There truly is a state of dissolution of all matter attainable through clairvoyant research, where all matter reveals itself as this same thing; only what appears there is no longer matter, but something that lies beyond all the specialized forms of matter that surround us. And every single form of matter then presents itself as something condensed and compacted from this fundamental matter—it is, after all, no longer matter—whether it be gold, silver, or whatever form of matter you have. There is a fundamental essence of our material existence on Earth, from which all material things have come into being solely through condensation. And to the question: What is this fundamental matter of our earthly existence? — spiritual science answers: Every form of matter on Earth is condensed light! There is nothing in material existence that is anything other than light condensed in some form. Therefore, you see that for those who know the facts, there is no need to formulate a theory such as the 19th-century wave hypothesis, in which one attempted to describe light using means that are themselves coarser than light. Light cannot be reduced to anything else in our material existence. Wherever you reach out and touch a material object, you find condensed, compressed light everywhere. Matter is, in its essence, light.

[ 10 ] From the perspective of spiritual science, we have thus highlighted one aspect of the matter. We must therefore view that which underlies all material existence in the light. And when we look at the material human body, it too, insofar as it is material, is nothing other than something woven from light. Insofar as the human being is a material being, he is woven from light.

[ 11 ] Let us now turn to the other question: What is the nature of the soul? — If we were to investigate the substantial, the true fundamental nature of the soul in a similar way using the methods of spiritual science, it would become clear to us — just as all material things are merely compressed light — that all the seemingly diverse soul phenomena on Earth present themselves to us as modifications, as manifold transformations of what must be called, if we truly grasp the fundamental meaning of this word: love. Every impulse of a soulful nature, wherever it may arise, is in some way modified love. And when we have, as it were, interwoven the inner and the outer in the human being, imprinted them into one another, we have woven his outer physicality from light, and his inner soul life we have woven in a spiritualized way from love. Love and light are indeed, in some way, interwoven in all manifestations of our earthly existence. And anyone who seeks to understand these things from a spiritual-scientific perspective asks, first and foremost: How are love and light interwoven to some degree?

[ 12 ] Love and light are the two elements, the two components, that permeate all earthly existence: love as the spiritual aspect of earthly existence, light as the external, material aspect of earthly existence.

[ 13 ] But now, precisely at this moment, what occurs is that for the two elements of light and love—which, following the general course of worldly existence, would otherwise stand side by side—there must be a mediator who weaves one element into the other, who weaves light into love. This must be a power that, so to speak, has no particular interest in love—a power that weaves light into the element of love—a power that is concerned only with giving light the greatest possible expansion, a power that thus allows light to shine into the element of love. Such a power cannot be an earthly power, for the Earth is precisely the cosmos of love. The Earth has the mission of weaving love into everything. Thus, everything that is truly connected to earthly existence has no interest that is not in some way touched by love.

[ 14 ] But the Luciferic beings have precisely this interest; they are the ones who remained behind on the Moon, the cosmos of wisdom. They are particularly interested in weaving light into love. That is why the Luciferic beings are indeed at work wherever our inner being—which is actually woven from love—comes into contact in any way with light, wherever it is present in any form; and light, after all, confronts us in all material existence. As soon as we come into contact with light in any way, the Luciferic beings appear, and the Luciferic weaves itself into love. It is through this that human beings have entered into the Luciferic element in the first place in the course of their incarnations: Lucifer has interwoven himself with the element of love. So that into that which is woven from love, the element of Lucifer presses itself, which alone can bring us that which not only allows love to be a complete surrender, but which permeates love with wisdom, so that it is a love permeated with wisdom from within. For otherwise, without this wisdom, love would be a self-evident force for which the human being could not be responsible.

[ 15 ] In this way, however, love becomes the true power of the self, into which the Luciferic element—which otherwise existed only outside in the material world—is woven. This is what makes it possible for our inner being—which, in earthly existence, ought to be imbued with the quality of love in its fullest extent—to be permeated by all that else which we may call the working of Lucifer, and which, from this side, leads to a permeation of the outer material world, so that love is not only interwoven with what is woven from light, but such love arises that is permeated by Lucifer. By taking in the Luciferic element, the human being interweaves material existence in their own physicality with a spiritual quality that is indeed woven from love, but into which the Luciferic element is woven. Love interwoven with the Luciferic element, which permeates the material world—this is the cause of illness working from within. And in connection with everything we have previously cited as a necessary consequence of the illness arising from the Luciferic element, we may now say: What we must see as such a consequence in pain—we have indeed seen how pain is a consequence of the Luciferic element—shows us the effect of karmic law in such a way that the effect of an act or a temptation originating from Lucifer plays out karmically in such a manner that what is to lead to the overcoming of the effect in question manifests itself in the pain.

[ 16 ] But what about this: are we allowed to help in such a case? Are we allowed to help here? Are we allowed to remove, in any way, everything that has forced its way in from the Luciferic element, along with all its consequences, from the pain?

[ 17 ] The answer to the question regarding the nature of the soul leads us to the conclusion that we may only do this if we find a remedy for a person who carries the Luciferic element within them as the cause of illness, a remedy capable of expelling the Luciferic element in the appropriate manner. What is the one remedy that must act more powerfully so that the Luciferic element is removed in the right way? What is defiled by the Luciferic element of our Earth? — Love! Therefore, we can only provide real help by imparting love, so that the karmic element may unfold in the appropriate and correct way. Thus, ultimately, in everything that becomes a cause of illness in this regard, we must see in the element of love—which has been impaired in the soul by the Luciferic influence—something to which we must contribute. We must instill love so that what flows in as an act of love can be of help. All acts of healing that are based more or less on what can be called psychic healing processes have this character of infused love. In some form, what is applied in psychic healing processes is connected with the infusion of love. It is love that we instill in another person as a balm. Ultimately, it must be possible to trace it back to love. And that is indeed possible. It can be traced back to love when we set simple psychological factors in motion, when we prompt another person, perhaps merely to restore their depressed state of mind. All of this must have its impulse in love, ranging from simple healing processes to what is often referred to today, in a layman’s way, as “magnetism.”

[ 18 ] What, in reality, does the healer communicate to the person who is to be healed? It is—to use a term from physics—an “exchange of tensions.” What lives within the healer, namely certain processes in the etheric body, is brought into a kind of polarity with the person to be healed by entering into a certain relationship with them. Polarity is brought about in exactly the same way as you would otherwise bring about polarity in a more abstract sense, when you induce one kind of electricity—the positive—and the corresponding other, the negative, appears in a certain way. Polarities are brought about. And this is to be understood in the most eminent sense as an act of sacrifice. One does indeed evoke within oneself a process that is not merely intended to have significance within oneself—otherwise one would merely be evoking a process; in this case, however, the process is intended to evoke in the other a polarity to the first process. And this polarity—which naturally depends on the healer and the one to be healed being brought into connection in some sense—of evoking this other process in the other person is, in the truest sense, the sacrifice of a force that is nothing other than transformed love force, an act of love in some form. That is what actually works in such psychic healings: the power of love transformed in some form. And we must therefore be clear that without the underlying power of love, the matter will always have something about it that cannot lead to the right goal. But love processes do not always have to proceed in such a way that the person is fully aware of them in ordinary daily consciousness; they also take place in the subconscious layers. Even in what can be regarded as the technique of healing processes, even in the way, for example, hand movements are performed, how they are technically systematized—even there it is already inherent that they are a reflection of an act of sacrifice. So even where we do not immediately perceive the connection in a healing process, where we do not see what is being done, there is still an act of love, even if it is entirely transformed into technique.

[ 19 ] Thus we see that, because the soul’s fundamental nature is love, we can intervene with psychological healing factors—processes that may seem to lie very much on the periphery of the human being—and that through such healing factors, what is love in its fundamental nature is enriched with what it needs as love. Here we see the help from one side, the help we are permitted to provide because we must offer support to the human being so that, having fallen into the clutches of Lucifer, he may also free himself from them again. Because the fundamental nature of the soul is love, we are indeed permitted to influence karma in its direction.

[ 20 ] Now—on the other hand—let us ask: what has become of the material substance woven from light, in which the soul is embedded? What has happened to the material substance of the human being, woven from light?

[ 21 ] Let us consider the physicality of a human being, the outer human being in his material corporeality. If a substance of love—one permeated by Lucifer or Ahriman—were not imprinted into the material realm from the soul through the karmic process, but only a pure substance of love were to flow in, then we would not be able to perceive this substance of love as contaminating or corrupting the matter woven from light. If only love were to flow into matter, it would flow into the human physical body in such a way that it could not be corrupted; it is only because love can flow in that has absorbed Luciferic or Ahrimanic forces that the matter woven from light can become worse than it was originally intended to be. Thus, it can only be due to the Luciferic or Ahrimanic impairments that have flowed into human beings during successive incarnations that we find in the human organism something that is not as it ought to be. If it were as it ought to be, it would constitute healthy human matter; but since it has absorbed the effects of Ahriman and Lucifer, it can be a diseased physical body.

[ 22 ] How, then, can we expel from the outside the corresponding influences that have flowed in from within through an incorrect spiritual state, through an incorrect substance of love? What happens to the physical body when something incorrect flows into it? For spiritual science, this results in something that, in some way, turns woven light into its opposite. Light has its opposite in some form of darkness. Everything that—as strange as it may sound—actually appears as a defilement of that which is woven from light is a darkness or gloom woven into it by Ahrimanic or Luciferic influence. Thus we see darkness woven into the human material. But this darkness was only woven in because this human physical body became the vehicle for what lives through the incarnations as the “I.” That was not there before. Only a human physical body can specifically have these degenerations. They were not present before in what the light had woven.

[ 23 ] Today, human beings derive the basis for the material world from what they have gradually projected outward from within themselves in the course of evolution. These are the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms. These also contain the various materials—that is, what has been woven from light for earthly existence. But in all these materials there is not yet that which, in the course of human karma, has been able to enter human material existence from within the human being. We therefore have in the three kingdoms around us something that human beings, through their Luciferic or Ahrimanic influence, have never been able to contaminate of their own accord, insofar as they act from their substance of love. There is nothing of them within it, so that what is contaminated in the human being with regard to its purity has been able to spread out in its purity. If, for example, we have a mineral substance outside, a salt or something else, this is a substance that human beings also carry or can carry within themselves; but in them it is interwoven with what we might call the love substance defiled by Ahriman or Lucifer. Outside, however, it is pure. Thus every substance outside differs from what human beings carry as substance within themselves. Out there, it is always different from what it is within the human being, because within the human being it is interwoven with the Ahrimanic and Luciferic influences. That is the reason why, for everything that the human being can more or less corrupt in his or her outer substantiality, there must be something to be found out there that represents the corresponding substance in its pure state, without the human corruption being present within it. What exists in the world without damage is the external remedy for the corresponding damage. If you introduce this into the human being in the right way, then you have the specific remedy for the corresponding damage.

[ 24 ] There you have, quite objectively, what you administer to the human body as a remedy. There you have characterized the damage as specific darkness, that which is not yet dark as the pure light woven from the outside—and you see why you can remove the darkness within the human being, the dark matter, if you can impart to them pure matter woven from light. Thus, in the pure matter woven from light, we have a specific remedy for the damage.

[ 25 ] The point is now—and it has often been pointed out that this is an error to which theosophy, in particular, must not fall prey—that it would be narrow-minded to deny that, in such cases, there is actually something that can be administered as a specific remedy effective on this or that organ for this or that ailment. It has, of course, often been said that the organism possesses the powers to help itself; but even if what the Vienna School of nihilistic therapy has asserted is correct—that the healing process is initiated by invoking counterforces—we can nevertheless assist the healing process through specific remedies. Here we see a parallelism at work that can be described from the perspective of spiritual science.

[ 26 ] From what I have described, for example regarding diphtheria, you can see that this is something that has affected the astral body in a particularly significant way in terms of karmic causes. Now we find something most closely related to this astral body in the human environment, in the animal kingdom. Therefore, in the case of those forms of illness that are eminently close to the astral body, you will always find that medical science, unconsciously and out of a dark impulse, seeks remedies derived from the animal kingdom. For such diseases whose cause lies in the etheric body, medical science turns to remedies from the plant kingdom. And an interesting lecture could now be given, for example, on the relationship of Digitalis purpurea to certain heart diseases. These are things that, insofar as they are based on reality, are not merely correct for five years and then begin to be wrong, as a physician said and as is indeed the case when conclusions are drawn solely from external symptoms. But there is a certain treasure trove of remedies that always traces back to some connection with spiritual science, which has been handed down without people knowing where it came from. Just as astronomers today do not know that the Kant-Laplace theory originated in the secret schools of the Middle Ages, so people do not know where the true treasures of healing often come from. — And causes of disease related to the nature of the physical body then lead to the use of remedies from the mineral kingdom.

[ 27 ] Even these analogical perspectives can thus offer a clue to the matter. Therefore, through our connection with the world around us, human beings have the possibility of receiving help from two sides: on the one hand, by being taught modified love in the psychological healing processes, or on the other hand, through light modified in various ways in those processes that are in some way connected with external healing processes. Everything that can be done is accomplished either through inner psychic means, through love, or through external means, through light condensed in some way. And once science has advanced to the point where it learns to believe in the supersensible and in the principle that matter is light condensed in some way—then, based on this principle, a spiritual light will be shed on the systematic search for ways in which human beings can be helped through external means. From this we see that what has been gradually added to the treasury of healing over long periods of time from the mystery schools of ancient Egypt and ancient Greece contains not merely nonsense, but that a sound core is present in these matters everywhere. Theosophy is not there to take a certain side, to say, for example: This is a direction that teaches people poison! — The word “poison” has a downright suggestive effect today, and people do not consider how relative this word is. What, after all, is a poison? Any substance can be a poison. It all depends on the method of administration and the amount consumed at once. Water is a potent poison if one drinks ten liters at once. This effect, understood chemically from within, is not particularly different from administering any other substance to a person. It always depends on the amount, for all these concepts are relative.

[ 28 ] From what we have come to understand today, we can say: We can be glad that even for the harm that human beings can take into themselves, in all that surrounds us as nature—as we now view the world process—the healing must somehow be found, so that human beings can overcome the harm again. And this is also a beautiful feeling we can have toward the external world: We can rejoice in the external world not only because it gives us blooming flowers or lets the mountains shine in the radiance of light, but we can also rejoice in it because everything around us stands in such an intimate relationship to what can be described as good or evil within human beings themselves. In nature, we can rejoice not only in what first appeals to us; but the deeper we penetrate into what has condensed down to external material existence, the more we will find: this nature that delights us also contains within itself the powerful healer for everything that human beings can inflict upon themselves as harm; somehow, the healer is hidden within nature. It is simply a matter of not merely understanding the language of the healer, but also obeying it and truly putting it into practice. And today, in most cases, we do not have the opportunity to obey the language of healing nature because the misrecognition of the light, because the darkness that has also mingled itself into knowledge, has in many respects brought about conditions that do not permit us to follow the pure language of nature. And so we must be clear about this: where help cannot be provided in a given case, where suffering cannot be alleviated due to karmic connections, this does not mean that it could not be alleviated at all.

[ 29 ] Here, too, we see a remarkable connection that once again makes the entire vast world, including human beings, appear to us as a single entity. In the statement: “Matter is woven light; the soul is, in some way, diluted love”—herein lie the keys to countless mysteries of earthly existence. But these apply only to earthly existence and to no other realm of worldly existence. In doing so, we have demonstrated nothing less than that when we give karma any change of direction, we connect in one case or another with precisely those elements that constitute our earthly existence: on the one hand with light that has become matter, on the other hand with love that has become the soul. We draw the remedy either from our surroundings, from light that has become dense, or from our own soul, from the healing act of love, the act of sacrifice, and then heal with the soul power gained from love. We connect with what is right at the very core of the Earth when we connect, on the one hand, with light, and on the other, with love. All earthly conditions are, in a sense, states of equilibrium between light and love. And what is unhealthy is a disturbance in the balance between light and love. If the disturbance lies in love, we can help by unfolding the power of love itself; and if the disturbance lies in the light, we can help by somehow obtaining from the universe that light which can dispel the darkness within us.

[ 30 ] There you have the fundamental elements of human aid. They show how everything in earthly existence is based on a balance of opposing or contrasting elements. Light and love are, in fact, opposing elements. But ultimately, everything that takes place in our earthly life—both spiritual and material—rests upon their interweaving. Therefore, we should not be surprised if, in all areas of human life, development proceeds from epoch to epoch in such a way that the balance tilts particularly to one side, as it were, and then attempts are made to restore it to the other side; in other words, if our development proceeds in a way that resembles a wave. In fact, our development resembles a kind of wave motion: it goes down and it goes up, and the disturbed state of equilibrium is always balanced by what, on the other side, constitutes the corresponding opposite swing of the pendulum that goes beyond the equilibrium point. If you consider that human life everywhere involves a disturbance of equilibrium in one direction or another, then you will find that you can thereby shed light in some way even on the most intimate cultural processes. If you consider an epoch in human development where certain damages arose because people looked only inward and not also outward—as, for example, in the Middle Ages, where the strong flowering of mysticism led to the neglect of the external and resulted in misunderstandings not only in cognition but also in action— then you will see, on the other hand, that era follow in which mysticism is absolutely intolerable, but instead one turns one’s gaze to the external world in order to do everything that causes the pendulum to swing back to the other side. There you have transitions between the Middle Ages and modern times. And you will be able to find such disturbances of the state of equilibrium in the most manifold ways.

[ 31 ] In this regard, I would like to point out that, in times such as ours, a characteristic trait of many people is that they have completely forgotten and lost all awareness of what might be called a consciousness of the spiritual world. That is to say, there are numerous people in our time who completely disregard the existence of a spiritual world and who therefore reject any thoughts of the spiritual world. In such a time—and indeed in times like these—the opposite of this is always present in a certain sense. I would like to characterize this in a very simple way.

[ 32 ] If there are people on the physical plane who become so entangled in the physical that they completely forget the spiritual, then those people who live in the spiritual world between death and rebirth have, on the other hand, the opposite impulse, which is brought about as if by a karma that works from the physical plane into the spiritual plane: namely, the impulse to engage in some way with things that play a role in the physical world from the spiritual world. This is in fact the basis of various influences into the physical world on the part of people who are in the period before a new birth. These people then influence the physical world in whatever way the means happen to present themselves, indirectly through those people who are more receptive to these influences from the spiritual world. — If one is to bring clarity to these matters, one will indeed have to reject much of what is recounted from this or that quarter as revelations from the spiritual world by people who are between death and a new birth. And one will be able to clearly distinguish the characteristic cases where the dead—in order to swing the pendulum to the other side—are very strongly inclined to somehow demonstrate to people in a tangible way: There is indeed a spiritual world! Just as there are people in our time who are completely deluded, who have woven so much darkness into their spiritual lives that they want to know nothing at all about the spiritual world, so there are dead people who, out of this very lack, feel the urge to influence the physical world. Such things happen most frequently when people on the physical plane do nothing at all to facilitate them. And most characteristic are the events that occur spontaneously, without artificial intervention—events that arise, so to speak, as manifestations from the spiritual world. Hence the connection between people in the materialistic realm on the one hand, and the urge that exists to influence the physical world instructively from the spiritual realm on the other.

[ 33 ] You will find much evidence to support this in our friend Ludwig Deinhard’s book *The Mystery of Man*. It compiles and systematizes much of what you need right now—information that is so scattered throughout today’s scientific literature that it is not possible for everyone to gather it together. Therefore, it is wonderful that this book offers a compilation of precisely this aspect of spiritual scientific facts, which, as you can now see, are in a profound sense even characteristic of our time. In particular, you will find, to your great good fortune, a characteristic account of a researcher who, during his earthly life here, tried everything possible to arrive at proof of the spiritual world through materialistic methods — the late Frederick Myers, who, after his death, felt a strong urge to show people here what he had strived for, through revelations from the spiritual world and with help from the spiritual world.

[ 34 ] This is meant to illustrate the idea that in the world and in our earthly existence, we witness a constant disruption of balance followed by a search for balance. In our earthly existence, the two elements of light and love are the deepest components of this ever-disrupting and ever-restoring balance. And in human karma, from incarnation to incarnation, the two elements of light and love act to balance the disturbed states of equilibrium. For, fundamentally speaking, in the karma that winds its way through all incarnations, we have disturbed states of equilibrium, and in light and love we have the constant attempt to restore that equilibrium. Until, one day in the distant future, humanity, through the passage of its incarnations, will finally have reached the point of forming a final state of equilibrium attainable through the Earth, which will lead to humanity having fulfilled its earthly mission and earthly existence evolving into a new planetary form.

[ 35 ] Thus, I have attempted to explore a subject without which a deeper understanding of karmic connections and laws is impossible. I have therefore not shied away from addressing today, for the time being, the mysterious foundations for which our modern science is still far from ready: that matter is, in truth, interwoven light, and that the soul is, in some sense, love in a rarefied form. These are ancient occult truths, but truths that will remain valid for all future ages and will prove fruitful in human development—not only for knowledge but also for human activity and action.