The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] My task today is to offer some remarks on human beings, so that next time we can use these remarks as a starting point for some reflections that may contribute to our understanding of the entire course of human development.

[ 2 ] We should begin with what is initially important and significant for our consideration of human beings as they stand before us on Earth. I must first note that you are aware that human beings, as they stand before us, are not merely earthly creatures, but have an origin that, if we wish to fully understand it, we must trace back to earlier stages of Earth’s development itself. You will find it described in the various writings, and it has often been mentioned here as well, that through the methods of Spiritual Science we can trace the preceding stages of development, so to speak, the previous incarnations of our Earth planet, and that we distinguish them according to the designations that have emerged as valid to us in various ways: the pre-Earth Saturn state of the Earth, the pre-Earth Sun state, and the pre-Earth Moon state. And we know that the forces present within the whole human being today do not derive solely from what was active on Earth, but that within the human being lie the legacies from the earlier incarnations of our Earth planet. They have remained; they are active in human nature. And we can only understand the whole human being if we know, for example, that the physical body received its first form on ancient Saturn, then developed further during the ancient Sun era and the ancient Moon era, and that the present form of the human body is only an Earth product. Likewise, we know of the other aspects of human nature that it is not merely what has first arisen on Earth as forces that is active within them, but rather what is thoroughly a legacy from pre-earthly times. Today, however, we shall first consider that aspect of the human being which must be taken into account insofar as the human being is an earthly creature, living here on this Earth. This is, so to speak, that which, by virtue of the Earth’s mission, is incorporated into the human being during this earthly period.

[ 3 ] Now we can initially divide what human beings primarily receive from the Earth into three parts. The first thing that humanity has from the Earth, what it owes to the Earth’s present forces, is its present Earth consciousness—that is, what is closest to humanity as it walks among us today. And the events, the facts that have occurred in the course of Earth’s development, all had to unfold exactly as they have unfolded and as we have often described them, so that human beings here on Earth could acquire their present consciousness. This consciousness is, so to speak, the most familiar to all of you, the most familiar thing you know: it is the one in which you live from waking until falling asleep; it is the one in which your thoughts, your sensations, your feelings, and your volitional impulses unfold, insofar as you are a waking human being. This consciousness, which you all know very well, was not yet possessed by human beings as such in the pre-earthly states, nor did they possess it in the early period of Earth’s development, which was, after all, merely a repetition of pre-earthly states. They acquired it gradually, or rather, it was bestowed upon them by the creative world powers and world forces.

[ 4 ] Now we know that, in order to possess this consciousness, a person must awaken, and that it is necessary for them to make use of their senses—that is, the instruments of the present human body. To do so, they must also make use of tools other than the senses in the present human body, especially if we look not only at the thoughts and mental images that human beings form, but also at the fact that human beings also have sensations, feelings, and impulses of the will in this everyday consciousness. But then we know that all this content of consciousness, all that which fills and constitutes our consciousness, requires the outer physical body, as it is an earthly body. It lives and can only live in the outer physical body. So that the mental image we form is created by the fact that what is actually the spiritual-soul human being makes use of the instruments of its physical body. From this you will now be able to easily form the idea that this particular consciousness, to which the human being awakens every morning, is precisely dependent on the earthly body. You will also be able to easily understand that the human being, in the way he creates a mental image of himself, feels, or wills within this ordinary consciousness, can only imagine, feel, and will if he has the physical earthly body as an instrument.

[ 5 ] We have spoken of this on several occasions, and you can also read about it in *An Outline of Esoteric Science*, that the states of consciousness between death and rebirth are fundamentally different from earthly states of consciousness. For consciousness changes according to its instrument, and between death and the new birth, the human being has at his disposal different instruments for his actual spiritual and soul being than when he is in the physical body. Now we know that this physical body, from which the instruments of ordinary, everyday consciousness are formed, disintegrates with death. In the sense of Spiritual Science, it would be better to say, instead of “decays,” that it is handed over to the general element of nature. For what is the dissolution of the physical body and appears as such to external observation is only an illusion, a maya. There lies a very great, mighty process precisely underlying what is called the decay or dissolution of the human body. The natural is handed over to powers that stand behind existence. But for the human being, as an earthly human being, the physical body slips away, ceases to exist with death. So that, insofar as we speak of the human being as an earthly human being, we can only say: the instrument of everyday consciousness ceases to exist for him with death.

[ 6 ] Here we have the first aspect of the earthly human being: his consciousness. If we now consider the earthly human being in his entirety, as he is, we must detach from what is commonly called consciousness in ordinary sensory life something that is by no means to be reckoned as consciousness in the same sense as ordinary mental images, feeling, and willing. We must separate that which we summarize with the term “memory.” The mental images and feelings we draw from the treasure trove of our memory, our recollections, are not subject to the same laws as the consciousness just mentioned. For this consciousness, in order to exist at all, requires the preservation of the physical body in the form it once had. And you know from various descriptions that have been given that, in terms of its substance, the physical body is constantly renewing itself; that after seven or eight years, there are entirely different physical substances within us than before; that is, the physical substances are replaced. But the form remains. And it must remain. For just as it is, it serves as a tool for ordinary consciousness. And we can develop ordinary consciousness for thinking, feeling, and willing only as long as we have the physical body in the corresponding form. But memory, our recollections, would not be able to endure for long if they were bound to the physical body. They would be able to do so at most only as long as the individual substances of the physical body can endure. That is to say, we would be able to recall at most six or seven years back if memory were bound to the physical body. But it is not. The physical body is not the instrument of memory; rather, the instrument of memory for the earthly human being is the etheric body, the etheric or Life-Body. And it is precisely this that is always at work within the earthly human being. So that always—from our first moment of consciousness until our death—that which we have just taken into our memory can remain. It is therefore this etheric or Life-Body that carries our memories, our mental images, from one epoch of life into the next. For earthly consciousness, we thus use the physical body as a tool; for memories, we use the etheric Body as a tool. We would not be able to carry the memories of our life across the time that elapses between death and the new birth if something very specific did not occur: if we did not remain for a time in the etheric or Life-Body after leaving the physical body through death. This is precisely the time—I have often described it—in which the life that has passed lies before us after our death like a great panorama, like a great tableau. We have often spoken of this tableau of life. It can only appear to us because we retain our etheric body for a time after death. For this etheric body is precisely the instrument for these memories. If we were to lose it immediately upon death or shortly thereafter, we would not be able to have this tableau. We must be able to make use of this etheric body or Life-Body as a tool, and something happens while we have this tableau of life. While we have this tableau of life in our soul after our death, this entire tableau of life is inscribed, engraved, as it were—if I may use this expression—into the general life ether that permeates space. Now it is there within it. What we held for only a few days is now, as it were, recorded in the general life-ether in which we live, in which we are always present. Because it is recorded there, because it is in there, it is precisely available for our further life between death and the new birth. And we take an extract from our etheric body with us—we know this—so that we can always establish a connection between ourselves and this tableau of life inscribed in the universal life-ether. This is, as it were, our ongoing organ, through which we can always retain the memories of our last life.

[ 7 ] From this it follows that we can have only one present moment in our consciousness at a time, and that our existence would in fact vanish with the present moment if, as earthly human beings, we could develop consciousness solely through our thinking, feeling, and willing. It is thanks to the etheric body that we are able to preserve that which lives in thinking, feeling, and willing; and we even preserve it after death in the general life-ether. Here we have the second aspect of human earthly existence, that which does not pass away with the moment like earthly consciousness, but which remains, which is preserved, so to speak, in the general life-ether. We must therefore now distinguish two aspects of the earthly human being: their earthly consciousness and their memory or recollections, which must not simply be identified with consciousness. What, then, is the third aspect?

[ 8 ] The second link differs from the first in that it does not simply let the things that are experienced pass by, but rather retains them. The third aspect of the earthly human being, in turn, differs significantly from the second. When you consider your thoughts, insofar as they become memories, you will say to yourself: These thoughts, which have become memories, possess a very specific characteristic. — Everything entrusted to memory has one peculiarity, namely, that during life it is your personal property, that it is your personal content. You carry what you carry as a memory through life and until death as your innermost possession within yourself; you carry it as a possession within your personality until death. And you will easily be able to form the thought—which is, of course, obvious—that what you carry within your memory, within your recollections, means nothing in the external world, is nothing in the external world, at least as long as you live. It is within you, and it only begins to be something in the external world after you have passed through death: there it is inscribed into the general life-ether. But what is it in the general life-ether? There it is the record of your personality. It is what remains of your personality as that which is an inner experience during life, and after death it is, for the immediate eternity, what is recorded in the life-ether for your personality. There it is written down. What a person has experienced inwardly in life becomes an outer experience for the life-ether after the person’s death. It is thus the case with our memories that we may carry these memories, this memory within ourselves as our inner treasure until death, and that from death onward—as it were, as a revealed mystery—it is inscribed in the life-ether and lives within it, and that we remain connected to it because we have taken an extract from the Life-Body with us and can always look back on what we experienced there. Thus, in a certain sense, the world of our experiences remains within us through our memories and our memory during our earthly life; thus, we remain connected to our earthly life in the world-ether after death.

[ 9 ] The situation is different, however, with that which does not remain merely our inner experience, which does not remain merely our recollection or memory, but which has already become an external fact during our lifetime. In essence, every step we take during this earthly life becomes an external fact. For it is not merely that we take the step and can then remember it, but in taking the step, we leave our mark on the earth. We rush through the air. I would say that even in the external physical sense, our entire external life is at the same time an external act. Our whole life becomes external reality. But how much more does our life become external reality when we look up from our external physical existence to our moral existence! Whether we have a good heart and perform this or that good deed—that becomes a very external fact indeed. When we have a good heart and perform this or that act of compassion, this or that act of shared joy, then what we have done is not merely something that lives on within us, but something that lives on in other people, in our entire surroundings. We continually imprint the traces of our existence in our earthly life upon the whole of existence. The person with whom we were together, toward whom we performed an act of compassion or joy, carries the effect of our actions with them. What we have felt and done lives on outside of us in the other person. If you reflect on this idea, you will discover how what a person lives through does not belong solely to them—just as their memories do not belong solely to them—but rather, what they experience inwardly continually passes into the outer world, continually exerting an effect in the outer world.

[ 10 ] What we communicate to the outside world in this way during our lifetime is not inscribed in our etheric body in the same way as our memories. Our etheric body is too intimately and intensely connected with our entire personality for these actions—these effects of human experience—to be inscribed within it. It would not do a person any good, even during their earthly life. For if, for example, some act of cruelty or some evil deed were directly inscribed in the etheric body, the person would have to feel throughout their entire life that they had committed that deed. Then this would represent a force within his etheric body, and he might have to suffer from this evil deed as it burrows into his life forces—which means it would make him sick, unhappy, paralyze him, and so on. If our deeds were to do the same in our etheric body as our thoughts do, human life on Earth would be impossible. But just as the etheric body is the instrument for our thoughts, insofar as they become memories and are incorporated into the memory, so too is our astral body the instrument for our deeds. They spring from our astral body. Everything that a human being does, and incorporates as an effect of the external world as I have described, is bound to the instrument of the human astral body. Just as his everyday consciousness is bound to the physical body, and his memories and memory are bound to the etheric body, so too, no matter how subtle the astral body may be, everything a human being does—every action that has an effect in the external world—is performed through the human astral body. The consequence of this is that it also remains connected in a certain way to this astral body, just as memory remains connected to the etheric body. If, as we have seen, we still live in our etheric body after death, then the tableau of memories forms; that is to say, the memories of our recently past life remain bound to our etheric body. When we have shed our etheric body some time after death and what our personality initially preserved in terms of memories and the contents of memory has been entered into the general life-ether, we still live entirely in our astral body. We have often described how the human being must live on in their astral body for a long time. In this astral body, we are indeed—as has also been described frequently—connected to the external effects of our life. This is also evident externally in that, after death, a person must relive in reverse the world of their deeds—everything they have ever done or accomplished toward other beings on Earth. For a period we have described as amounting to roughly one-third of their past life, they feel as though they are passing through, in their astral body, their earthly deeds—through everything they have accomplished on Earth. And just as—after we have shed our etheric body a few days after death—our personal memories are inscribed into the general life-ether, so too, during the time when we are still connected to the astral body, all our deeds are inscribed into the general astrality of the worlds. There they remain, and we stay connected to them just as we remain connected to the memories of our personality, which are inscribed as a lasting record in the world ether; only our deeds are, so to speak, entered into a different world record. As we relive the deeds of our last life, all of this is entered into the general world astrality, and we remain connected to it. Through our astral body, we thus remain permanently connected to our deeds, insofar as we are earthly human beings.

[ 11 ] What I have just described—what connects us to our actions—is karma. This is, in reality, what karma is: what is recorded from our life’s deeds in the general astral realm of the world. You can also infer from this that there is a strong moral impetus in such knowledge; indeed, it would be nothing short of slander to say that Spiritual Science does not offer the most moral foundation for life. To what extent does a strong moral impulse lie in such foundations of knowledge as have just been expressed? You have seen, after all, that ultimately our deeds during life are recorded in the general astral realm of the world after death. If we have done anything wrong during our life, and we do not make amends for it karmically—insofar as we have the power to do so—in this very life—for suppose we were striving to balance out any immoral acts already in our earthly life, then we would spare ourselves the entry into karma—then everything we cannot balance out is entered into karma after death and remains connected to us. Insofar as we, as earthly human beings, possess the earthly astral body, we, as human beings, have our karma,

[ 12 ] Thus we have the third aspect of the earthly human being. The first is consciousness, which has the physical body as its instrument. The second is recollection and memory, which has the etheric body or Life-Body as its instrument. And the third, which belongs to the earthly human being just as much as his consciousness belongs to him in the physical earthly body, is karma. In this respect, the earthly human being consists of three members: his earthly consciousness, his memory, and his karma; and without these three members, the earthly human being is not an earthly human being. A being that would walk about on Earth and would not develop in the physical body a consciousness such as that of the earthly human being would not be a human being. And a being on Earth that would not develop on Earth a memory such as that of the earthly human being would not be a human being. And a human being who would walk about and would not create karma through life in the earthly body would not be an earthly human being. This is what constitutes the true earthly human being: that he develops consciousness through the physical body, that he develops memory and recollection through the etheric or Life-Body, and that he creates karma through the astral body. Thus we have, as it were, distilled what it is about the human being that makes him an earthly human being. We must add a fourth element, which we know first came to light on Earth: the ego itself, that ego which we know passes from incarnation to incarnation, which we therefore know is within us when we develop our earthly consciousness, that it is within us when we store memory image upon memory image in our memory, but that it also lies within us when we accumulate karma from incarnation to incarnation. The I is present everywhere. But it is present within these three members of the earthly human being. How, then, can we further characterize this earthly human being?

[ 13 ] We know that the human being on Earth first discovered the awakening of the “I” only on Earth. But we also know that the physical body first took shape during the ancient Saturn period of the Earth, and that although the Earth period transformed the physical body differently following the lunar evolution, the physical body is not a product of the Earth. We know this, however, also of the etheric body, which received its first rudiments during the ancient Sun period, and also of the astral body, which indeed received its first rudiments on the ancient Moon. So let us imagine this human being: he came over, as the Earth began, from a pre-earthly evolution, consisting of a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body. From what he has become in the course of Earth’s evolution, his physical body has become the instrument of Earth consciousness, his etheric body the instrument of personal memory, and his astral body the bearer of karma. We have, as it were, peeled away what the earlier states have given the human being in his physical body, etheric body, and astral body, and what the Earth has only worked into this threefold human being through its mission. Let us keep this quite clearly distinct. Let us say to ourselves: this physical body of the human being is indeed a wonderful thing, something quite marvelous. It has become so wonderful because it has actually changed its state three times through the pre-earthly incarnations. If it had remained as it was after the end of the old Lunar period, it would still possess all the inner qualities it has; only it would not have been transformed in such a way that it could generate within itself the instruments of earthly human consciousness. Thus, in addition to the physical body, he not only possesses the perfection he had after the Lunar period, but has also been transformed into the bearer of human earthly consciousness. Likewise, the etheric body possesses all the perfections it already had within itself, but it was only during Earth development that it developed those powers that make it the bearer of human personal memory. The astral body acquired certain perfections on the old Moon, but the fact that it became the instrument for the creation of karma—that it acquired only during earthly processes. The I, so to speak, is the only aspect in the human being that has been endowed with its powers, with all that it is, during the Earth mission. Thus, in the I alone, we can observe, so to speak, everything that the Earth itself has wrought in the human being.

[ 14 ] So what, exactly, does this “I” actually add to the human being? Let us suppose that the human being had received all the things that the earthly mission had given him, but that the “I” had not been awakened. What I am saying now is, of course, an impossible hypothesis, for the “I” had to be added to the human being. But let us suppose that a being could have acquired, without developing the “I,” the qualities we have just described as the earthly qualities of the physical, etheric, and astral bodies. Even if it had not been possible on Earth to develop such qualities in the physical, etheric, and astral bodies, such a development would nevertheless have been possible on other planets, and for spiritual science it is possible to study such states on other planets even in their reality. It would thus be a being capable of developing a consciousness similar to that which a human being develops upon awakening—a being that imagines, feels, and wills—only it would not attribute these mental images to an “I,” nor would it attribute the sensations, the feelings, or the impulses of the will to an “I.” But still, it would be possible for such a being to have a consciousness like that of Earth humans, to have memories, for the mental images to remain in memory, and to have karma. This would not be possible for an Earth human, but let us assume that we could imagine such a being. So what would all of this consist of? Consciousness, memory, and karma. Now, these three things are present in human beings: consciousness, memory, karma. But in addition, the “I” is also present. What, then, happens through this “I”? Since karma is essentially brought about through the astral body, what happens through the “I” itself, by virtue of the fact that it is, so to speak, caught up in its karma?

[ 15 ] What happens through the ego itself is, one might say, something even more serious than human karma. For karma, insofar as it remains karma, remains connected to us. And if we have committed certain acts in any given life, these remain as our karma, and we can balance them out in a later life. It is actually our astral body that causes our karma to persist. Our ego is also a spiritual power, a spiritual being. What this ego now brings forth from within itself—just as the astral body brings forth karma—are not things that remain forever connected to the human being, but rather things that detach themselves from the human being. We have also been able to draw attention to this on several occasions: it is the thought-forms that detach themselves from the human being. While that which is inscribed in our karma remains connected to us and is embedded in the later earthly state, there is still something special that is brought about specifically by the human ego and passes over into the other world just as our memories pass into the general life-ether. Just as our karma is inscribed into the general astrality of the world, so too does that which our ego now forms—and which we know as thought and feeling forms—go out into the world. These are something special apart from karma. Karma is something we retain as connected to us. But there are also such products that detach themselves from us, albeit initially only as forms, so that they detach themselves as spiritual forms and continue to live on outside.

[ 16 ] What, then, lives on after we are gone? What lives on after us is: first, our personal memory itself; second, our karma; third, the forms of our thoughts. However, while we remain connected to the first two, with the last it is the case that these forms detach themselves from us, becoming independent as forms. Thus, just as lifeless forms go out into the world as forms, so the products of our ego live on in the external world. We will pick up on this point next time and continue these reflections.