The Rudolf Steiner Archive

12. Karmic Effects: Anthroposophy as a Way of Life

[ 1 ] Today I would like to address some anthroposophical questions of life and then move from these questions of life—from the everyday to the all-encompassing and fundamental. The most fruitful gain of our striving should be that, through spiritual science, we learn more and more to assess life in its truth and reality, to judge it in such a way that this judgment itself can lead us most effectively and energetically into life, that it can place us in the position we are meant to fill according to our karma, according to what our greater or lesser mission is during the time we are incarnated in an earthly body.

[ 2 ] And so I would like to begin by discussing certain qualities in life that we encounter every day in ourselves or in our surroundings—qualities whose full scope and significance we can only grasp when we view them in the light of spiritual science. I would like to begin with two vices of life and then speak of some virtues; I would like to start with the virtues of benevolence and contentment and the vices of deceitfulness and envy.

[ 3 ] Let us first consider these two vices, which we often encounter in life. It cannot be denied that in the broadest circles, among both the simplest of people and those who, in a sense, already belong to the leaders of society, there prevails a deep, deep aversion and antipathy toward what we might call envy and deceitfulness. To name just a few such people who have been among the leaders of society, I point to the sculptor Benvenuto Cellini and to those passages in his autobiography where he says that, upon careful self-examination, he must accuse himself of various vices, but that he may nevertheless say that a deceitfulness worthy of the name has never been his own. This artist thus finds a certain satisfaction in the fact that, upon self-examination, he can exclude deceitfulness from his character traits. And Goethe once says, as the result of his self-examinations, that he must accuse himself of many things, but that envy, this ugly vice, had not actually gnawed at his heart. Thus we see, as it were, at the pinnacles of life, how deceitfulness and envy are viewed with antipathy, how it is said everywhere where one is accustomed to contemplating life more deeply, even where, so to speak, great capacities are inherent in the life of the soul: You must guard yourself against precisely these vices. — And who would deny that this profound antipathy toward deceitfulness and envy runs through all, all strata of humanity? You need only recall how deeply it would gnaw at your heart if, in a moment of truly honest and accurate self-observation, you had to say to yourself: I am an envious person. — You would certainly, if you had to admit this to yourself resolutely, already feel in this confession that you would have to take up within yourself a struggle against this envy, a fight against envy. It is a deeply rooted feeling that deceitfulness and envy are ugly human traits. Why do we actually feel this way? Yes, you see, people do not always fully why they have such a deep antipathy toward this or that. They often do not fully realize what lies dormant in the more or less subconscious part of their inner life and is undoubtedly present there. When faced with envy and deceitfulness, people feel that they are violating something connected to what is most human and of the highest human value. We need only utter a word, and we will feel this. Spiritual science is meant to gradually bring us to the realization that, apart from the individual personalities incarnated in the flesh, there is such a thing as a unified, universal humanity that dwells in the same way in all souls as the divine-human. And it is precisely spiritual science that presents this to us as a great ideal and gradually leads us to an understanding of the universal human. And on an emotional level, there is something in every human heart that, in a certain way, always expresses: Seek a bond that holds all people together, that always winds from soul to soul, and you will find it. — And the corresponding feeling is expressed in the word “compassion.” Compassion is such a universal human trait that we must say: In this compassion, the bond that runs from every soul to every soul is dimly foreshadowed. — And there, in the subconscious, one feels once again how one is violating, through deceitfulness and envy, compassion itself, and the recognition of what is common to all human beings in the most profound sense.

[ 4 ] What are we actually doing when we tell someone a lie? We are doing nothing other than erecting a barrier between ourselves and that person. What should connect us to them—the shared knowledge of some truth that ought to live in both our souls and theirs if things were right—we tear apart by telling them a falsehood. At the very moment we tell the falsehood, we fail to acknowledge that the best part of ourselves ought to live in the other as well.

[ 5 ] And when we envy someone—whether for their abilities or for other things in life—we sin against compassion in that we fail to recognize that person as what they ought to be to us: as something that belongs to us, and whose virtues, gifts, and good fortune we ought to rejoice in if we truly felt connected to them.

[ 6 ] So we sin against the most beautiful thing in human life—against compassion—when we are envious and deceitful people. And why, exactly, does this manifest itself so vehemently in dissatisfaction with these two qualities? Why is that? Well, both qualities can truly show us how what resides in our soul propagates, progresses to the outer layers of our being, and has significance for those layers.

[ 7 ] Envy is something that, when present in a person, manifests itself clearly in a very specific quality of the astral body during occult observation. And an envious person, even if they are able to conceal this envy from the outside world as much as possible, reveals the quality of envy in their astral body. Our astral body has very specific fundamental qualities. Although it differs from person to person and exhibits the most diverse variations among different people, it nevertheless possesses certain fundamental qualities. And when we observe it as an aura through clairvoyant vision, it possesses very specific color characteristics. These fade in a concerning manner in an envious person; they fade, becoming weak and dull. And the astral body of an envious person becomes, so to speak, deficient in the strength it should be supplying to the entire human organism.

[ 8 ] As for dishonesty, it is the case that it—and indeed every single lie—manifests itself in the etheric body. The etheric body loses vitality and life energy when a person is dishonest. This can even be observed externally. As strange as it may sound in our age, it is nevertheless true that, under otherwise identical conditions, wounds heal more slowly in people who lie frequently than in truthful people. Of course, one must not draw absolute conclusions here; there may also be other reasons. But assuming all other factors are equal, wounds are harder to heal in dishonest people than in truthful people. It is good to take such things into account in life. And this is also easily explained. The human etheric body is the actual life principle; it is what must contain the life forces. But these are undermined by deceitfulness. So that the etheric body cannot release as much life force as is necessary for healing if this etheric body has had its life force drained by deceitfulness, if it has not been constantly permeated by those movements, by those realities, that stem from truthfulness. We should take such things to heart, for we will understand life better in many respects if we do so.

[ 9 ] Now you know that we must view what approaches human beings in the light of two forces that influence human life as it develops from one incarnation to the next. We must view human life under the influence of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces. The Luciferic forces are those that act upon our astral body, that radiate their forces into our astral body and tempt us in relation to it. The Ahrimanic forces are those that tempt us in relation to our etheric body. Yes, it is Lucifer who, so to speak, grabs us by the collar when we are envious people. Envy is truly a Luciferic quality, a quality that comes from Lucifer, whereas mendacity is a quality that comes from Ahriman. For Ahriman sends forth the forces and powers that radiate into our etheric body.

[ 10 ] Now we can say: It was indeed absolutely necessary for the wise world powers to send Lucifer and Ahriman to influence us so that we might achieve independence. By causing us to abuse our independence, they are, in a certain sense, enemies of humanity’s higher development. But even though they are, in a certain sense, enemies of humanity in its higher development, they are very much on friendly terms and strike quite peculiar compromises among themselves. We can speak of these very compromises when we consider such human qualities as envy and deceitfulness.

[ 11 ] Envy! A person who is not entirely corrupt will, the moment they have to admit to themselves, “I am an envious person,” truly do everything in their power—one need not be particularly noble to do everything possible—to combat this envy. But things sometimes run much deeper than our power—which stems from consciousness—can reach. And people sometimes imagine too easily what it takes to combat such things. So it happens that they fight such things because they find them ugly, yet they do not go away; they merely change their form and reappear in another realm. They then appear in masks, in disguises. And because one hates envy so much, one fights it; but if the soul is not yet strong enough to fight it thoroughly, it disappears as envy but reappears in another form.

[ 12 ] You are all familiar with that human trait that is so common and that one might call: a tendency to criticize and find fault, a focus on the mistakes of those around us. When someone has to admit to themselves: “I am an envious person; I don’t want my fellow human beings to have advantages”—they feel bad. They feel that they must fight against it. But when they can say to themselves: “He or she has done this or that terrible thing”—then they feel that their tendency to find fault is, in a certain sense, justified; then they feel right at home. Just imagine, if that weren’t the case, how many coffee parties and beer gatherings would have to be canceled, where, when it comes down to it, so very often nothing else is done but letting this criticism and fault-finding run wild. And there, the person then finds themselves justified in their own eyes. They tell themselves: “Yes, one sees the faults; one must see them; one cannot close one’s eyes to them.” — The only question is, for what reasons do we see the faults of our fellow human beings—whether we do so with the intention of improving life, or whether we are following a tendency of our soul that is often nothing more than envy in disguise. People fight against envy because they hate it, but they cannot root it out because they are too weak. Thus it takes on the guise of fault-finding and continues its journey in the soul in this way. Then one has not fought envy; one has merely forced it into another metamorphosis. In truth, what has happened is that the human being has fought Lucifer, for he reigns over envy as over many things. But Lucifer then says to Ahriman, if I may put it this way: “Behold, dear Ahriman, humanity hates my dominion of envy; they do not wish to be envious. Now take them over in regard to this quality!” Then Ahriman says: “Yes, then I will press this into the etheric body.” — And it is pressed into the etheric body as fault-finding, as nitpicking, as misguided judgment of the surrounding world. For the power of judgment always has something to do with the movements and forces of the etheric body. There, then, the dominion over our soul passes from Lucifer to Ahriman. And so many qualities, which we would hate and fight if they appeared to us in their original form, appear in a masked form. They sometimes appear in such a way that we actually find them quite justified and even take some credit for being able to rise above and see what is right in life. Then we are truly in the clutches of the other power, the Ahrimanic power. We must not forget that a trait is far more dangerous when it appears in disguise than when it appears in its original form. Therefore, it is always good to ask, when we see this or that in life: Is this not perhaps merely another vice in disguise? — It is absolutely essential that we learn to view life in its truth in this way. Fundamentally, we can only do this if we use the guidelines provided by anthroposophical wisdom to look at life properly.

[ 13 ] Now we must say: Whatever appears in life as this or that vice—whether in its true form or in disguise—we often see it already having a karmic effect within a single incarnation. We do not need to wait for the transition from one incarnation to the next. We can already see in a single incarnation the karmic effect of a trait that appears at some point in a person’s life. And those who truly wish to observe life and pay a little attention to the fact that one does not come to know life by forgetting tomorrow what happened today, but rather by taking into account the longer periods of human life—they will find karma already at work even within a single incarnation, within a single life. It is truly necessary to pay very, very careful attention to how the sins of life, in essence, only reveal themselves after decades. But human beings are a forgetful race. Of all the races that begin with the human race and extend up into all the higher worlds, human beings are truly the most forgetful race. Even if we have known someone for decades, we forget what came to light ten years ago; we are very happy to let it fade from memory. I may have already mentioned a small example here, but it can once again show us how we must view life over longer periods of time if we wish to recognize it in its true form—a brief aside I would like to insert. It concerns the time when I had the opportunity to observe many children in various families. When raising children, one has to observe not only the children one is raising oneself, but also the more or less young offspring of uncles, aunts, nieces, and nephews, and so on. And there one can take note of many things for life. Well, it was a long time ago, and fashions change. Back then, when I was raising children, it was fashionable for caregivers to sometimes give small children quite a few glasses of red wine with their meals during the day to fortify them. That was the way it was; people considered it a good thing. If one had made a note of it back then—that this or that child received red wine and the other did not—one can now, when one has the opportunity again, as I always try to do, observe what has become of these children and gather some peculiar insights. I can say: the two-, three-, and four-year-old children of that time—now people aged twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and twenty-nine—who were given red wine as children are fidgety, nervous people who sometimes find it extraordinarily difficult to find their way in life. Of course, one must not limit one’s observations to just five years. It is so common today to try this or that, and if it shows some success in the coming months, it quickly becomes a widely used remedy. People are forgetful in this area as well. They have also forgotten how many remedies have gone out of fashion after five years. But, as I said, if one extends one’s observations over decades, then one can really sense how life works. There is truly a great difference between the children who were given red wine back then and those who were not. But one would first have to conduct observations over three decades, so to speak, to see this. And that is indeed the case. I have woven this in to show that if one wants to see karma at work, it is necessary not to be forgetful, but to extend one’s observations over longer periods of time. The same applies to what manifests itself more in a spiritual sense.

[ 14 ] If one considers the second half of a person’s life in connection with the first, one can certainly see that if a person was deceitful or envious during a certain period, or harbored envy under the guise of a critical nature, the karmic effect of this becomes evident as early as the second half of life. Deceitful people always display a very specific karmic effect of deceitfulness in one incarnation: a certain shyness, an inability—one might say—to look people straight in the eye. This certainly comes to pass. Just try to observe this phenomenon. You will find it confirmed. Folk proverbs sometimes have a deep, wise core. It is not for nothing that people in many regions say one must be wary of a person who cannot look another in the eye. For that is the karmic effect of deceitfulness.

[ 15 ] Envy, on the other hand—or envy masked as a tendency to find fault and nitpick—manifests itself in a later stage of life within the same incarnation in such a way that the person in question has a tendency to be unable to stand on their own two feet, so that they have a longing to lean on others, need advice on every little thing, and would prefer to always run to someone else to ask for advice. Independence in life is lost through envy, nitpicking, and fault-finding. Such a person becomes emotionally weak.

[ 16 ] Now, when we consider a single incarnation, these characteristics and their karmic effects confront us on a spiritual level. We will shortly take a closer look at how these karmic effects play out as we move from one incarnation to the next.

[ 17 ] But now, so as not to be one-sided, let us also consider some positive traits: benevolence and contentment. Everyone knows what a benevolent person is. A benevolent person is someone who feels a certain sense of satisfaction when another person succeeds, achieves this or that, or when they notice good qualities in this or that person. Benevolence is present when one, so to speak, experiences what the other is experiencing as if it were one’s own. This benevolence, in turn, has a very specific effect on our astral body—namely, pretty much the opposite of the effect of envy. We see how the lights of the astral body shine brightly when a person expresses benevolence. The astral body becomes brighter and more radiant when feelings of goodwill are present in a person’s soul. The aura becomes more luminous, more radiant, and thus richer; it becomes more saturated within itself, and is then able to infuse the person first with something like soul warmth and then even with a sense of well-being.

[ 18 ] And when we see a contented person before us—someone who is not inclined to be grumpy about everything from the outset, to be dissatisfied with everything—then the etheric body reveals certain specific qualities to us. It is important that we, in turn, take this into account in a certain way. For we should really be clear about how much of our dissatisfaction actually depends on ourselves. Some people can’t do enough to seek out everything that might make them dissatisfied. And we feel that it is not only happier natures, but also better natures, that are capable of paying close attention to the fact that even when terrible things keep coming our way, we still have reasons to be happy about this or that. Such reasons do exist. And if someone refuses to admit that they exist, that is entirely their own fault. Contentment, especially when brought about by a better quality of our soul, strengthens the etheric body in terms of its life force. And again, it is the case—assuming all other conditions are the same —that wounds or other ailments heal more easily in a contented person who has good reason to be easily satisfied and not to get overly upset about what befalls them, than in the gloomy and discontented person who gets upset about everything and walks away dissatisfied with everything, as said, all other things being equal. Now we can also see quite clearly in a single lifetime—and it is important that we take such things into account when we are educating others—that in someone who, at a certain stage of life, is so thoroughly imbued with contentment and strives to seek out the things that can satisfy them, perhaps despite pain and suffering, a karmic effect occurs in that same life, albeit only after decades, which manifests itself notably in the fact that such a person, who has thus strived to attain contentment during a certain phase of their life, radiates a certain soothing balance of life into their surroundings. You know that this exists. There are people in whose presence others inevitably become restless, and others who, simply by being there, calm others. People who have strived to be content during a certain phase of their lives earn, as a karmic effect for a subsequent phase of the same life, this ability to have a harmonizing effect on their surroundings—to be, so to speak, benefactors to their environment simply by their very presence.

[ 19 ] Benevolent people—as we can always observe—who have strived to be benevolent, achieve the karmic effect that, in a later phase of life, everything that depends on them and that they intend to do succeeds remarkably well. It sometimes seems inexplicable to us that some people succeed at everything, that they feel up to whatever they undertake, while others do not succeed, and everything they touch fails. This leads back to the karmic cause of goodwill or ill will. You can observe these things, which I present to you as guidelines, in life. If you eliminate the sources of error that exist, you will see that life confirms what I have said.

[ 20 ] When we now pass from one incarnation to another, we must say: In an incarnation, karmic effects can actually manifest only in the soul, and do manifest only in the soul. There the effects of envy manifest in certain weaknesses and in a lack of independence, the effects of deceitfulness in shyness, and the effects of goodwill and contentment, just as I have described to you. In a single incarnation, we simply do not have those profound, deep-seated influences on our physical constitution that would allow us to progress with the karmic effects beyond a soul-level foundation. These things only begin to affect the body—its structure and constitution—in the next incarnation. And while we make ourselves spiritually dependent in one incarnation through envy and a tendency to criticize, these qualities have a weakening effect on the constitution of the body, carrying it over into the next incarnation in a weakened state. A weak body is built up by one who was formerly plagued by envy or by masked envy, by a tendency to criticize, by nitpicking.

[ 21 ] However, having considered what spiritual science generally reveals to us, we must also acknowledge that it is certainly no coincidence when we are brought together with this or that person in a new incarnation. We are led into the family, into the environment with which we have a connection. And so you will not find it very strange when I say: If someone was an envious person in one incarnation, they will be reborn with the people—whether they are their parents or others—whom they envied, whom they judged or slandered, whom they reproached. He is reunited with them. And we may be brought together in this way by being led into this environment with a weak constitution. Here the matter becomes very practical; here the doctrine of karma is brought into the practice of life. Then we can say, when a human child is born with a weak constitution: This is the consequence of the envious disposition from a previous incarnation, and we—we are the ones who were envied, and this human child has been karmically brought together with us because we are the ones whom it pursued with its envy and its love of gossip. This is fruitful if we tell ourselves: If karma has any meaning at all, then it is justified to view the matter in this way. So let us look at it this way for once.

[ 22 ] Of course, the matter only becomes meaningful when we ask ourselves: What should we do in the face of such a weak human being? We need only ask ourselves: What does seem to us, morally speaking, to be the best course of action even in ordinary life, when someone persecutes us with their envy and their tendency to criticize? Perhaps it is not always possible to do what is best in ordinary, everyday life. But what seems to us to be the best?—Well, certainly, forgiveness seems to us to be the very best. One might say: Our life may not be such that we can always forgive, but forgiveness is undoubtedly the best, and the most effective and also the most fruitful thing in life is forgiveness. If we can already say of ordinary life: It is best to forgive, even if we cannot always do so, then it becomes clear that, under all circumstances, the true application of the principle of forgiveness is most appropriate when we must acknowledge, as a karmic effect from past incarnations, what I have said. When a weak human child has been born into our environment or brought together with us, we must then say to ourselves: Since karma is not meant to remain merely a theoretical idea, we must consider that we were the envied ones, the ones who were scolded. Now, under all circumstances, we can practice the feeling of forgiveness in the depths of our hearts. — We can, so to speak, envelop such a human child in an atmosphere of feelings of forgiveness that are constantly renewed. If one were to do this in life, if one felt united with people who are weak, and were not merely to grasp the idea of forgiveness theoretically, but to constantly rekindle in the soul the feelings: I have something to forgive you for, I want to forgive you, and to continually renew this feeling, then that would be a practical introduction of the anthroposophical attitude into life. One would already see the effect. Try putting this into practice, and you will see that the people whom you forgive in this way—and the feeling of forgiveness, renewed again and again—when they are born into our environment in a state of weakness, will then blossom; that our feeling has a healing, life-giving effect upon them. And in this way we can become healers, bringing health to the people with whom karma has brought us together. Thus, anthroposophy becomes fruitful when we do not merely regard it as a collection of ideas that interest us. It is, in essence, quite selfish when we begin to become enthusiastic about anthroposophy because the ideas of anthroposophy inspire us, appear true to us. For what are we satisfying then? We are satisfying our longing for a harmonious worldview. That is very beautiful. But the greater thing is when we permeate our entire life with what arises from these ideas; when the ideas enter our hands, every step we take, and everything we experience and do. Only then does anthroposophy become a principle of life, and until it does, it has no value.

[ 23 ] We can speak in a similar way regarding the other characteristics. For example, if we were deceitful people in one incarnation and are reborn, we will be brought together precisely with those whom we may have lied to relentlessly. It is quite common, if one is a serious student of the occult, to find that a human child is born into an environment with which it cannot establish a proper relationship—an environment that does not understand the child and which the child does not understand. It is sometimes the case that we have a peculiar effect on our surroundings. I don’t know if you’ve observed this yet, but it actually extends far beyond just human beings. There are certain people: when they want to grow flowers, those flowers thrive; they have a knack for it. It is precisely because they are the ones growing the flowers that they thrive. Other people can do whatever they want: the flowers wither away. That happens. There are simply far more mysterious relationships between the individual beings of existence than is commonly thought. These mysterious relationships exist, of course, primarily from person to person. And when karma brings us together with a child who has lied to us brazenly in a previous incarnation, it is the case that we find it difficult, so to speak, to establish a relationship with this child. We should bear this in mind. We must not judge this merely according to our temperament, but we must judge it karmically. We should say: This stems from the fact that we may have been lied to often by this human child. Now we can in turn help this human child, strengthen and invigorate them.

[ 24 ] What is the best way to forgive something—for example, when someone tells you a lie? The best way to forgive is to teach them the truth. By correcting the lie, you are doing some good, but you have not helped the person move forward. You help them move forward by trying to teach them a useful truth. One must follow a certain approach in dealing with people; that is what helps them progress. If we are compelled to view the matter from a karmic perspective, it is particularly advantageous that we strive to be truly honest with those people with whom we are karmically connected—people we know cannot relate to us because they are shy toward us. Then we will see how these people, in turn, blossom under our openness and how this openness is of great benefit to them. Thus we see how we can gain principles of life when we view the workings of karma in a practical way.

[ 25 ] What we described earlier as the effect of goodwill even within a single lifetime can be understood as bringing about something akin to a harmonization of life—though initially on a spiritual level. In people in whom this carries over from one incarnation to the next, we find that they are indeed born with a happier constitution, which we might call “skillful.” Benevolence and contentment in one incarnation bring about flexibility and skill in another. It is true that this is the case, for it can always be demonstrated in the field of occult research. And one can very well observe oneself and experience some of how the previous incarnation carries over into the present one. We can be quite certain that this is the case with people whose fingers are completely unsuited to sewing on a button that has come off themselves, or with people who, when they are supposed to carry a glass into the cupboard, manage to knock it happily to the floor—I am exaggerating a bit now. But in finer nuances, there are very many people who are so constituted that they simply cannot help but move their fingers in the wrong way, so that they are always making clumsy mistakes. This has a profound significance for life: whether one can use one’s physical instrument skillfully or whether it presents one with treacherous obstacles at every turn, so to speak. This is extraordinarily important. And when we see a clumsy child growing up, we must assume in most cases that in a previous incarnation they lacked contentment and goodwill. When we see dexterity emerge, so that when a person undertakes something, they already know exactly how to do it beforehand, then that is most certainly the karmic effect of goodwill and contentment.

[ 26 ] When we look at it this way, we can say: In fact, we can influence one incarnation from another in a wonderful way. This opens up the possibility for us to truly begin working on our next incarnation. And we will change many things for our next incarnation if we once seriously resolve to observe whether we might not have just a little bit of fault-finding and criticism within us. If we try to examine ourselves to see if we have even a little bit of that within us, we will find that we actually have it to a considerable degree. It is already a good start if we try to examine ourselves to see if we have even a little bit of it within us. Then the process of working on ourselves begins. And we may protect ourselves from being born weak and pale in our next incarnation; we may already protect ourselves in this life from becoming, so to speak, dependent human beings,

[ 27 ] When we consider these things, we will say to ourselves: It is no longer mere fantasy to view the individual incarnations as links in the chain of human existence and to regard the Earth truly as a kind of training ground through which we learn to make use of what is offered to us in each incarnation in such a way that we rise higher and higher, advancing further and further. For why, after all, do we incarnate? We can best grasp this by asking ourselves about the two major differences, the great distinctions that exist between our incarnations in ancient pre-Christian times and our present incarnations, which unfold after the Christ impulse has come. For there is indeed a very, very significant difference.

[ 28 ] The best way to describe this difference between our incarnations in ancient pre-Christian times and our current incarnations is to say: When we look back at the incarnations of people in pre-Christian times, to a certain extent the souls of that era had all retained something of what all souls possessed at the beginning of earthly incarnations. All souls possessed a natural clairvoyance, a capacity to look into the spiritual world. And the progress of incarnations consists precisely in the fact that this legacy from the spiritual world, stemming from a spiritual origin, has gradually been lost, that human beings have stepped out more and more onto the physical plane, and that the spiritual world has increasingly faded from their lives. The Christ impulse means that, if we find the way to take Christ into ourselves and connect him with our ego, we begin once again to ascend more and more toward what we were at the beginning—only richer. That at the end of our incarnations we will once again be in the spiritual realm as we were at the beginning of our incarnations is brought about by the reception of the Christ force, if we use our next incarnations in such a way that we take in more and more of the Christ. These are the great differences between pre-Christian and post-Christian incarnations. We are actually still in a transitional period regarding this. We have been deeply driven out of all normal human perception onto the physical plane, onto mere physical perception, and today is actually a high point in terms of physical perception. For the Christ impulse is only just beginning, and in subsequent incarnations people will truly take in the Christ; they will come to cherish these incarnations because they give them the opportunity to experience what can only be experienced through earthly existence: the absorption of the Christ impulse into the soul. We can observe this even in great personalities, in the enormous difference, so to speak, between the incarnations before the Christ impulse on Earth and those afterward. I would like to share a specific example with you.

[ 29 ] Some time ago, I was invited to speak for a few days at our southernmost European branch—I mean, insofar as we are speaking of Rosicrucian Theosophy—in Palermo. And as I sailed into Sicily from Naples, I already had the distinct feeling that there was something to be learned there about occult realities that are difficult to investigate solely in the North. For there is a personality, an individuality, who appeared—whom I cannot name at present—who played a certain role at the turn of the Middle Ages and the modern era, who caused quite a stir in our region and in neighboring areas, and about whom the occultist often wonders: What was the situation regarding this personality’s previous incarnation? — That was an important research question for me, and strangely enough, I had the hope that, precisely upon entering Sicily, I might perhaps learn something about this question through the occult research possible there. And that was indeed the case very soon. Of course, what is being told here is something intimate, but within our branches there is no longer any need to hold back completely when it comes to these intimate matters. There is something permeating the entire spiritual atmosphere of Sicily—I do not mean the external, but the spiritual atmosphere—something very, very strange. And the pursuit of this strange phenomenon ultimately led to its origin, to a great sage who worked in Sicily, who is dismissed with a few words in the history of philosophy, but about whom, in fact, very little is actually known exoterically. It is Empedocles.

[ 30 ] If one were to characterize Empedocles as an occultist—and that is precisely what I intend to do here—then one must say: In some respects, Empedocles was far ahead of his time; he was too mature for his era. In other respects, however, he was unable to transcend his time. There was a deep conflict within his soul. Empedocles is truly a great, multifaceted personality. In Sicily, he was active not only as a philosopher, not only as a leader of the mysteries, but also as a statesman, as an architect, as all sorts of things—he was a kind of organizer, this wonderful Empedocles. So Empedocles lived in Sicily some four or five centuries before the Christ impulse, and he was ahead of his time insofar as he had the urge to delve into the material world. People had never before delved into matter so superficially as they do today. When people spoke of water, as Thales did, for example, they meant something spiritual. Empedocles was the one who, in a certain sense, anticipated a materialistic principle by composing all of existence from the four elements, which he, however, conceived of in material terms. And through the mixing and separating of this matter, he conceived of the constitution of the world. The spiritual was lost to him because—precisely as an occult personality, looking back over his incarnations—he should have found the Christ impulse; he would have been called to do so. When we look back today into the Akashic Records, we find the Christ impulse at a very specific point; but he who lived before the Christ impulse could not do so. He could not receive it as an earthly impulse, for he had not yet been physically present. That was what Empedocles lacked; it could not pour into his soul. He lacked the counterbalance to the materialism flaring up within him. But because he was, after all, a personality with strong impulses—albeit the impulses of the occultist—this led him to act out this disharmony. That is what turned out to be the truth. That led him—just as one would otherwise, when seeking the truth, wish to unite with the spiritual in the mind—to want to be one with the materiality of the four elements. And he threw himself into Etna. He truly threw himself into it to be one with the elements. Materially, he sought identification with the Divine, which appeared to him in the material image. And I would like to say: This product of Empedocles’ burning in the fiery floods of Etna is still very much present in the atmosphere of Sicily today as a fertilizing force, like the effect of a sacrifice. There is something great and mighty present, but it stems from this, one might say, false, smug, misplaced in time—do not misunderstand the term “false”—materialism. Empedocles, who, looking back, could not find Christ, although he should have found him, casts his life aside. Hence it came to pass that he revived in such a remarkable way at the dawn of the modern era and then lived quite differently there. The time has not yet come to speak of the personality into which he was reborn. This offers a wonderful insight into what the Christ impulse actually is in the course of evolution. Between Empedocles’s earlier and later incarnations, the Christ event stands right in the middle. And in Empedocles’s individuality, one can see—by comparing the two incarnations—what effect this has: whether, as a spirit belonging to the modern era, one can look back and find the Christ impulse, or whether one does not find it. That makes a tremendous difference. Just as souls in ancient times had to go back from incarnation to incarnation to see how they had allied themselves with the divine-spiritual being in earlier incarnations, so must we have the opportunity, when we go back from our own incarnation and trace the time from our birth to our previous death and again from that to our previous birth and so on — to find the Christ impulse in this way. The spiritual researcher, in particular, must find it. This Christ impulse kindles a light within him, whereas otherwise he would be plunged into darkness at that moment, and everything that existed would lie in darkness. We need the Christ impulse precisely in the field of spiritual research like a torch; otherwise darkness comes, otherwise we cannot look clearly into the true reasons of the Akashic Records of ancient times. This can be observed in a wonderful way in an example such as that of Empedocles. There one gets a sense of how these incarnations follow one another in our earthly existence; how, so to speak, humanity has moved in a descending direction up to the Christ impulse, how it has stepped further and further out onto the physical plane, and how we are now in the process of gradually ascending into the spiritual realm. The last great spirit of descent is the great Buddha; the first great impulse for ascent is that of Christ Jesus, and perhaps nothing else allows one to feel so deeply within the immense difference between the Buddha principle and the principle of Christ Jesus as when one contemplates what the great Buddha once said to his innermost disciples, referring to his enlightenment, which is symbolically called the enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. There the Buddha says: When I look back on past incarnations, I see how I set out from the divine-spiritual source of the world, how I went from incarnation to incarnation, always dwelling with my spiritual core within the outer temple of the body, descending into the physical world. But now, in this incarnation, I have found the possibility of no longer having to return to another incarnation. From one physical body to another I have gone; in every incarnation the Deity has erected the temple of my body for me. But now, as I am embodied in it for the last time, I feel how the beams are cracking in this physical body, and that I no longer need to return to such a temple. — For he proclaimed that the true striving must be directed toward emerging from this earthly existence, no longer having any connection with this temple of the body, but striving out of it toward the final incarnation, in order to live on only in the spiritual realm. This was the final reference to the descent of humanity, to the memory that people may have of primordial wisdom, of that which stands at the beginning of the human race.

[ 31 ] Oh, it must move us deeply when we see the Buddha standing there, saying: “From temple to temple of the body I have walked; now I feel that this is the last time.” If we compare this—setting aside all metaphysical implications—with an intimate word that Christ spoke to his closest disciples, with the words: ‘Tear down this temple, and in three days I will rebuild it’—then we see that in the Buddha there was a great longing for the beams of the temple of the body to crash down so that there would no longer be a need to return to it; whereas in Christ there was the promise: ‘Tear it down, and I will rebuild it in three days.’ Love for the earthly world is expressed in the subsequent incarnations of human beings, in which they find the opportunity to build up their physical temple again and again, so that they may learn anew and ascend to higher realms; so that when the Earth has reached its goal, the Earth itself will become a corpse, so to speak, shedding the soul-bound nature of all humanity, just as our body sheds the soul when we pass through the gate of death. By then, however, humanity will have ascended higher and higher. Because humanity will have been Christianized, they will be capable of passing over to new stages of existence as a whole. Christ’s statement does not mean that he himself intends to return to the physical body, but that he will return to the principle of building the body, that he will remain with earthly existence until the end of the Earth.

[ 32 ] I tried to express this through the words spoken by Theodora, the seer in the Mystery Drama, where you can see how Christ will become more and more familiar to human life, even though he does not return to a physical body. But He is experienced in the physical temples of human beings. And in his words, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days,” lies the promise: Yes, I will make it come true that I may enter into the souls of human beings, so that more and more people may come who can say, in the spirit of Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me!”

[ 33 ] Thus we see how, on a small scale, we can regard spiritual science as a principle of life by gaining the ability to perceive, even between birth and death, the karmic effects of certain qualities of our character and soul, and by seeing how these qualities carry over into the physical constitution of our next incarnation. And so we see how spiritual science, on a larger scale, sets before us the loftiest ideals and tells us what we will become—Christianized human beings—when the Earth becomes a corpse and falls away from the soul-life of humanity, when humanity will be called to advance to other planetary states. Spiritual science can thus provide us with the greatest ideals, and it can flow into the smallest circumstances of life. In this way it becomes practical for every aspect of life, and it can and should become so more and more. When we become anthroposophists in the sense that all our behavior—even when it occurs in this or that sphere of life that seems so far removed from actual anthroposophical activity —is permeated in every detail by an anthroposophical attitude, by anthroposophical feeling and thinking, only then has what can be called the fulfillment of our being through anthroposophy come to pass. Anthroposophy must not be regarded merely as a theory; it must also be regarded as a way of life, but as a way of life that requires learning. And fundamentally, we must be clear that we must strive, through the true concrete content of anthroposophy—if it is to be a way of life for us—not to say: “I understand this about anthroposophy, and that is the right thing”—but rather that we must first become deeply, deeply acquainted with what spiritual science has to say to us. Then it must become a life force for us. And it can only do so if we allow it to permeate us. Then, however, it will do so in the smallest and the greatest things; then the perspective for the connections of human progress and for the smallest facts of everyday life will open up to us.