The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. A Few Words on the Mechanism of Karma in the Afterlife

[ 1 ] The Bern branch is celebrating its first five-year anniversary today, and at the same time, we are able to gather here for the first time in this space, which, by its very nature, is intended to provide a fitting setting for our spiritual endeavors and our spiritual work here in this place. If we seek such settings and if we are able to hold our smaller gatherings in such settings more and more often, this certainly means something for our spiritual endeavors. We know, of course, that such spaces have already been sought and are now available in several locations within our working area. And on this day, which is, as has just been described, solemn in two ways for us, we may well begin with a few introductory words to reflect on the significance of such a setting.

[ 2 ] In our endeavors, we keep coming back to the number three in one way or another—the holy trinity, as it is also called. And within the life of the human soul, this holy trinity is expressed in thinking, feeling, and willing.

[ 3 ] When we reflect on our thinking, we will tell ourselves: In our thinking, we must be guided by objective necessities. For if, in our thinking—whether it concerns matters of the physical plane or of the higher worlds—we do not align ourselves with these necessities, we will only be able to err; we will not arrive at the truth. In our volition, too, we must first align ourselves with what certain external moral principles tell us. Again, we must align ourselves with necessities, and we may well say that, with regard to our thinking and our volition, the necessities of the higher worlds extend down into the physical world.

[ 4 ] It is in feeling that a person truly feels free in the proper sense of the word. This is quite different from thinking and willing. In feeling and sensing, we feel most truly ourselves, so to speak, when we feel neither the compulsion of thinking nor the compulsion of willing, but when we are surrendered to whatever can be felt. Why is this so?

[ 5 ] Yes, when we think, we feel that it is connected to something, that it depends on something; when we will, we likewise feel that we are dependent; but when we feel, we are entirely within ourselves. There, so to speak, we live entirely within our soul. Why is that so? Because, ultimately, our feeling is precisely a reflection of a force that lies far, far beyond our consciousness. We must view thoughts as images of what they represent. We must develop our will in such a way that it expresses what our duty is. In feeling, we may freely live out what speaks to our soul, because feeling is, from an occult perspective, a reflection of that which does not enter our consciousness, but which lies beyond our ordinary consciousness and is immediately divine-spiritual. One might say: Through thinking and willing, the gods seek to educate human beings; in feeling, the gods allow us, albeit in a mysterious way, to participate in their own activity, in their own creation. In feeling, it is also the case that we have present within our own soul something in which the gods themselves take pleasure.

[ 6 ] Well, through a framework such as the one created here, we can continually accompany everything we are considering here with a feeling that, so to speak, brings us closer to the spiritual worlds—makes us truly intimate with the spiritual worlds. And this intimacy with the spiritual worlds must come to us from everything else we observe. Therefore, we may place a certain value on such a setting, and may immerse ourselves more and more in what such a setting can be for us. There, within such a setting, we look in all directions and feel, so to speak, the power of light and colors, which become for us revelations of what exists in the spiritual world. Certainly, what we have to say can also be understood within the trivial, dreadful spaces that are already everywhere in the present; but our soul can only become warm—truly warm—in spiritual contemplation if we have such a setting. That we are able to have such a setting here in Bern as well, after the first five years of our work, we may describe as good karma that accompanies and blesses our work. And so, on every such occasion—as this double celebration today is—let us be mindful of the significance of what Spiritual Science, what spiritual knowledge, can and should be for people of the modern age.

[ 7 ] Well, what we actually want to consider today will relate to various topics that have already been discussed on numerous occasions; but we want to discuss familiar subjects from a new perspective, because the spiritual worlds can only become fully comprehensible to us if we truly view them from a wide variety of viewpoints. Life between death and a new birth has been described in the most varied ways. Today we want to look at it in such a way that we can take into account various aspects of what I have recently been engaged with in the field of spiritual research, particularly in the last few months.

[ 8 ] We know, of course, that immediately after we have passed through the gate of death, we go through what is called the Kamaloka—that is, the period during which we are still closely connected to our feelings, our emotions, and the entire inner life of our last earthly incarnation. Gradually, we free ourselves from this connection. After all, we no longer have a physical body once we have passed through the gate of death. But even though we have shed the physical and etheric bodies, our astral body retains all the characteristics it had here on Earth; and these characteristics, which the astral body possesses because it functioned within a physical body, it must shed. This requires a certain amount of time, and that is the Kamaloka period. After this Kamaloka period, it experiences what we have called the spiritual world or Devachan. In our writings, we have characterized it more—one might say—according to what the human being experiences through the various elements that spread out around him. Let us now consider the time between death and new birth from another perspective. And let us first characterize this in general terms.

[ 9 ] When a person has passed through the gate of death, they experience the following: While we are here on Earth, we can say that we are enclosed in a specific place—namely, within our own skin—and outside of that is the space containing other things and beings. But it is not so after death; rather, after death, we first expand with our entire being, becoming ever larger and larger in our perception. This feeling—that I am within my skin, and out there is the space with the things—is an experience we do not have after death. After death, we are inside the things and beings; we expand across the space that is relevant to us. During the Kamaloka period, we expand continuously, and when the Kamaloka period is over, we are as large as the space within the moon’s orbit. So, in fact, we grow; we expand across space. Being in space, existing in space, has a completely different meaning after death than it does here in physical life. In fact, in a certain sense, during the Kamaloka period we are within the space that the moon orbits. Every single soul is there, so that all the souls who are in Kamaloka at the same time fill the space bounded by the moon’s orbit. They are all intertwined. And yet this intertwining is by no means a physical togetherness; rather, the sense of being together, the feeling of being with one another, depends on something entirely different from the mere filling of a shared space. Two souls may be in the same space after death and yet be infinitely distant from one another; that is, their experience is such that they need know nothing of one another, while other souls are likewise in the same space but feel a sense of kinship, feel together, and experience one another. Everything depends on inner relationships, not on external spatial connections.

[ 10 ] And in the times to come, when Kamaloka comes to an end, human beings will settle into even greater spaces. They will continue to expand ever further. When human beings have expanded to such an extent that Kamaloka comes to an end and they have, so to speak, expanded across a celestial space so vast that the moon’s orbit would mark its boundary, then within this vast space—which human beings must traverse after death during the Kamaloka period— there remains behind—as if shed by the human being—everything that the human being has ever done during their earthly life in such a way that it expresses their true inclination toward earthly life, their longing, their passion for earthly life. Man must go through all of this, but he must also leave all of this behind in the lunar sphere or in the Kamaloka. So when man lives on after death and later recalls this lunar sphere, he will find inscribed there everything he had here in terms of sensual affections and passions, everything that unfolds in the life of the soul, because of which he feels sympathetically drawn to physicality. They leave all of this behind in the lunar sphere. It remains there; the human being cannot erase it so quickly. The human being also takes it along as a force, but it remains inscribed in the lunar sphere. So that, so to speak, our debt account—every human being’s debt account—remains inscribed in the lunar sphere.

[ 11 ] Then we expand further. As we expand further, we enter a second region, which occultism calls the Mercury sphere. It is not possible here to go into greater detail with a diagram of this, but let us first consider these things as they are, without a diagram. The Mercury sphere is a sphere larger than the Moon sphere. If we wish to enter this sphere after death, we do so as human beings in a wide variety of ways. One person—this can be examined precisely with the appropriate methods of Spiritual Science—one person who was immoral or of a low moral disposition settles into this Mercury sphere in a completely different way than the person who is of a moral disposition. The former cannot, in this Mercury sphere—that is, in the time that follows the Kamaloka period, as we have previously described—find those people who, like him, or before him, or shortly after him, have also left the physical plane and are likewise in the spiritual world. Thus, he enters the spiritual world in such a way that he cannot find those who were dear to him, with whom he would like to be. He becomes a hermit of the spiritual world, the Mercury sphere—the person who was of an immoral disposition here on Earth. The morally inclined person, however, becomes what one might call a sociable being. There, above all, he finds those people who were close to him on Earth as soul beings.

[ 12 ] It depends on whether we are with someone; not on physical space, since we all occupy the same space, but on our state of mind. We become recluses even though we occupy the same space as others, and we remain recluses because we cannot find our way to others, even though we are in the same space. We become recluses when we bring an immoral attitude into it; we become sociable beings when we bring a moral attitude into it. In the Kamaloka, in the lunar sphere, we encounter other difficulties regarding sociability; but in general, one may form a mental image of a person who can become either a hermit or a sociable being, depending on the nature of their soul. The one who was a pronounced egoist on Earth, who actually knows only the satisfaction of his desires and passions, will not easily be able to find in the lunar sphere the beings who were close to him on Earth. But the person who, even if only in a sensual sense, has passionately loved something outside of themselves will, at least during the Kamaloka period, not be a completely lonely being; rather, they will find other beings who were close to them. But in general, in these two spheres it is not possible to find other human beings other than those who were already close to us on Earth. The others remain unknown to us. So the condition, so to speak, for us to come together with other human beings is that we were together with them on Earth. Whether we come together depends on the moral. But even moral endeavors cannot take us much beyond that realm which leads to those people to whom we were already close on Earth. The relationships with these people whom we meet there after death have the peculiarity that they cannot be changed after death.

[ 13 ] We need to have this mental image: Here in life, we always have the opportunity to change our circumstances and relationships. Let’s suppose: for a certain period of time, we did not love a person as much as they deserved. The moment we realize this, the moment we come to our senses, we can let true love take hold, if we are strong enough. We lack this opportunity after death. If, after death, we encounter a person to whom we showed too little love or unjustified love on earth, we do indeed see this; we perceive the matter much more clearly than here on earth; but we cannot change it. It must remain as it is. This is precisely what is peculiar about it: that relationships in life have a certain constancy. Because they become something enduring, the power through which karma is ordered develops within our soul. So if we have loved a person too little for fifteen years, we recognize this, and as we experience it, we develop the power to do things differently when we are reincarnated on Earth; in this way, we develop the power and the will for karmic balance. That is the technique of karma. Above all, we must be clear about one thing. In the early stages after death—that is, during the lunar and Mercury periods, and also during the next period, which will be described shortly—we live in the spiritual world in such a way that our life depends on the manner in which we lived here on Earth, in the physical world; but in such a way that not only our consciousness, as we have it on Earth, is taken into account, but also our subconsciousness. Just as we live here on Earth normally, in the waking state, so do we live in our I. Beneath our I-consciousness lies the astral consciousness, the subconsciousness. And this sometimes acts quite differently on Earth, without the person being aware of it, than the higher consciousness, the ego-consciousness.

[ 14 ] Let’s take the most obvious example. Two people live here in the best of terms. It often happens that one of them develops a certain appreciation for Spiritual Science, while the other, who lives with him and was previously indifferent to Spiritual Science, now develops a particular hatred for it. This hatred need not be present throughout the entire soul; it may well be that it exists only in the ego-consciousness, not in the astral consciousness. In the astral consciousness, the person who increasingly talks himself into this furious hatred may actually love it and long for it without realizing it. This is entirely possible. Such contradictions exist in human nature. If one examines one’s astral consciousness, one’s subconscious, there may well be a sympathy hidden even from oneself for the very thing one hates in one’s conscious mind. After death, this becomes particularly significant; for after death, the human being becomes true to himself in this regard. Someone who, here on earth, has convinced themselves to hate Spiritual Science no matter how much, yet loves it in their subconscious, and who throughout their entire life has rejected everything connected with it, often harbors the most burning love for Spiritual Science. This can mean deep pain in their Kamaloka life, since they know nothing and thus have no thoughts of remembrance. For in the first period after death, one lives primarily on memories. Thus, after death, a person does not depend merely on what torments him or what brings him joy—on what lives in his ego-consciousness—but also on what has developed in his subconscious. There, the person truly comes into his own in this regard.

[ 15 ] And here we have one of the points where we can see how Spiritual Science, when properly understood, is truly called upon to intervene fruitfully in the whole of human life. You see, the person who has passed through the gate of death cannot change anything in their relationships with the beings around them, nor can the others around them. A state of immutability has set in. But where change can still occur is in the realm of relationships between the deceased and those still living. The living, who are still here on the physical plane, are, so to speak, if they were connected in any way—that is, if both they and the now deceased were here—the living are the only ones who can alleviate the pain, who can soothe the torment of those who have passed through the gate of death. And in a large number of cases, what might be called specifically for this situation—reading aloud to the deceased—has proven fruitful. It has truly proven effective: someone has died; here in life, for whatever reason—whether the one mentioned or others—they did not engage with Spiritual Science. The one left behind may know from Spiritual Science that the deceased may have had a burning interest in Spiritual Science. If the one left behind now goes through thoughts inwardly with the deceased, as if the deceased were standing before him, with the thought that the deceased is standing before him, this is a great benefit for the deceased. We can indeed read aloud to the deceased. This bridges, so to speak, the gulf that exists between the living and the dead. Consider how, when the two worlds—the world of the physical plane and the spiritual world that a person passes through between death and rebirth—which are so separated by people’s materialistic mindset, are brought together, this directly impacts life! When Spiritual Science ceases to be mere theory and becomes a direct impulse of life—that is, what Spiritual Science is meant to be—then there is no separation, but rather direct communication. Reading aloud to the dead is one of the instances in which we can enter into a direct relationship with the dead, in which we can help them. Those who have shunned Spiritual Science will always remain in the torment of longing for it if we do not help them here. But we can also help them from here, if they have such a longing at all. In this way, the living can help the dead.

[ 16 ] In a certain sense, it is also possible for the dead to make themselves heard by the living, even though the living today do little to connect with the dead. But that is where Spiritual Science will intervene directly in human life, becoming a true elixir of life. If we wish to understand how the dead can influence the living, we must perhaps begin with the following consideration.

[ 17 ] What does a person actually know about the world? We know remarkably little when we observe things here on the physical plane while in a mere waking state. A person knows only what unfolds before their senses and what they can make of it with their intellect. He knows nothing of the rest. For the most part, he believes that nothing else could exist beyond what he can observe through his physical senses. But there is much that does not happen and yet is extraordinarily significant. What does that mean?

[ 18 ] Let us suppose that we are accustomed to going to our shop every day at eight o’clock in the morning. One day, however, we are exactly five minutes late. Nothing happens except that we arrive five minutes late. But upon closer consideration, if we take all circumstances into account, we might come to realize that on that very day, had we left at the right time, we would have been run over; that is, if we had left at the right time, we would no longer be alive. Or, as is also possible—and has happened—someone was dissuaded by a friend from taking a trip on the Titanic. He might say: If he had gone then, he would have perished! That this was karmically determined is another matter. But just think, when you look at life this way, how much you know about life. If none of what could have happened actually did happen, you simply do not know it. The infinite possibilities that exist in the world of realities—people do not take these into account. You might say: That is certainly not significant! It is not significant in terms of external circumstances; what is more significant is that we did not perish. But I would like to point out that we could have known: there was a high probability that we could have perished if, for example, we had not missed a train involved in a disaster. One could list all sorts of possible cases, but these occur time and again on a small scale. Certainly, for the external course of events, we need only know what we can observe. But suppose we know for certain that something could have happened if we hadn’t missed the train. Then such an experience makes an impression on our mind, and we say: How was I preserved there by a benevolent fate in a strange way! Imagine all these things that approach human beings as possibilities. How infinitely richer the life of the soul would be—and how rich it would be if a person could know all this, whereas now they only take in the meager reality of what has actually happened—if they could know everything that plays into life without actually happening.

[ 19 ] It is as if you were to turn your gaze to a wheat field and observe the ears of wheat—the countless grains of wheat, of which only a relatively small number are sown again, while countless others do not grow into new stalks with ears, but take a different path. What is possible for us stands in the same relationship to what actually comes to be as the many grains of wheat that do not become ears again do to those that do. This is how it is in reality; for what is possible in life is immensely rich. And those moments when particularly important things happen to us in the world of the possible—these are the propitious moments when the dead can draw near to us. Let us suppose that someone leaves five minutes too early and is thereby spared from dying at the very moment when misfortune would have overtaken them, or when something joyful would have overtaken them—something that has thus eluded us. It is in this moment that what the dead themselves communicate to us can drift into life like a dream image. But human beings live coarsely. They care only for the coarse, not for the subtleties of life that play into and occur within this life. In this regard, Spiritual Science refines our feelings and sensibilities. Then human beings will feel those who are dead reaching into their lives, and they will be connected to them. The gulf between the living and the dead will be bridged by Spiritual Science, which truly becomes an elixir of life.

[ 20 ] The next sphere—that is, the next stage after death—is the so-called Venus Sphere. In this Venus Sphere, we become hermits if we were irreligious in this life. We become sociable beings through the religious disposition we bring with us. Depending on our ability to feel our devotion to the Holy Spirit here in the physical world, we will find all those who share the same disposition toward the spiritual-divine. In this Venus Sphere, people are grouped according to their religious and worldview beliefs. Here on Earth, it is still the case that both religious striving and religious experience are the deciding factors. In the Venus sphere, grouping is based solely on religious and philosophical beliefs. Those who share the same worldview are in large, powerful communities in the Venus sphere; they are not hermits. Hermits are those who cannot develop any religious feelings or impulses at all. Thus, those whom we in our time call monists and materialists will not become sociable but rather solitary beings; each will spend their time in the Venus sphere as if in their own cage, and a monist alliance is entirely impossible in this sphere, because the very nature of the monist creed condemns the individual to solitude. This is a fact, not merely a figment of the imagination, that everyone is locked in their own cage. This is intended to educate the soul regarding reality in contrast to the fantasy of monism that it has adopted here. Overall, one can say: We can come together with those who share our worldview and faith. Other creeds in the Venus Sphere are difficult for us to understand.

[ 21 ] Then comes the Solar Sphere. That is the next stage. In the Solar Sphere, the only thing that can help us is that which reconciles the various creeds, that which can form a bridge from one religious creed to another. Well, when it comes to building this bridge from one creed to another, people have their own views and cannot easily grasp how one can find a genuine understanding even of those who think and feel differently. Theoretically, this understanding has been called for many times; but when the call is to be put into practice, the matter takes on a different character.

[ 22 ] One may then observe that some who belong to the Hindu religion, while speaking of the common essence of all religions, mean by this common essence only what is contained within the Hindu or Buddhist religion. The adherents speak of the Hindu and Buddhist religions with a particular kind of egotism, and when they speak of them, they are caught up in group egotism. — One could insert here a beautiful legend about group egotism found among the Estonians.

[ 23 ] The Estonians have a very beautiful legend about the origin of languages: God wanted to grant language to humankind through fire. A great fire was said to have been kindled, and language was to emerge from the peculiar sounds of the fire—which people were to listen to—and from the sounds they would hear there. So the deity summoned the peoples of the earth, that the peoples might learn their languages. But before the others were summoned, God took the Estonians aside, and to them he taught the divine-spiritual language, that is, a higher language. Only then did the others approach, and they were allowed to listen to the fire, and as they heard the fire burning, they learned to understand the sounds. The individual peoples whom the Estonians particularly liked came first, while the fire was still burning quite strongly. When the fire was already nearing its end, the Germans arrived, for the Estonians do not particularly love the Germans. And then one could hear from the fire, which was already crackling: “Deitsch, peitsch, deitsch, peitsch.” Then came the Lapps, whom the Estonians do not love at all, and all one could hear was: “Lapps shuffling.” And since the fire was nothing but ashes by then, the Lapps uttered the most vile language, because the Estonians were mortal enemies with the Lapps. — So you can see how the Estonians express all their group egoism there.

[ 24 ] Most peoples are much the same when they speak of wanting to penetrate to the very essence of the various religious communities. And it must indeed be said that, in this respect, Christianity is fundamentally different from other faiths. If, for example, the West were just like the Hindu religion, the old Wotan would still reign as the national god. But the West did not choose a ruling god who could be found within the West, but one who is to be found outside it. This is a fundamental difference from Hinduism and Buddhism. Thus, in many respects, Western Christianity is not permeated by religious egoism; it is religiously much more selfless than the Eastern religions. Therefore, the correct understanding and perception of the Christ impulse is also what brings people into a proper relationship with their fellow human beings, regardless of their inner religious beliefs.

[ 25 ] In the sphere of the sun, between death and new birth, it truly means having an understanding of what enables us to enter into a relationship, so to speak, not only with people of the same faith, but with all people, because this Christianity—if we take it so broadly as to view it in connection with the Old Testament religion—never teaches one-sidedness. Attention has been drawn to something that is of the utmost importance and necessity to recognize: You will recall that one of the most beautiful words in the New Testament, spoken by Christ, recalls the Old Testament—the words: “You are gods.” Christ points out to people that within every human being lives a divine core, a god: You are all gods. You are like gods. — A lofty teaching of Christ is to point out to humanity its divine nature, that it can be like God. You can be like God—a wonderful, grand, and deeply moving teaching of Christ! Another being has spoken these same words, and it is part of the Christian creed that another being has put forward the same thing. Lucifer, at the beginning of the Old Testament, approached humanity, and the temptation consists in his taking as his starting point the words: “You will be like God.” Lucifer utters the same words at the outset of the temptation in Paradise, and again, Christ Jesus says them—exactly the same words! Here we touch upon one of the deepest, most significant points of the Christ-confession, the point where it is, so to speak, pointed out that it does not merely depend on the content of any given words, but that it depends on which being, within the context of the world, utters a particular word. That is why it also had to be shown in the last Mystery Play: Lucifer can say the same sentences, and they are something entirely different when Ahriman says them, and something else again when Christ says them. Here we touch upon a profound mystery of world existence, and it is important that we acquire an understanding of that which is expressed precisely through this “You are gods,” “You will be like God”—spoken once from the mouth of Christ, and another time from the mouth of Lucifer.

[ 26 ] We must certainly take into account that, between death and rebirth, we will also live for a time in the solar sphere, and that in this solar sphere we will need a very thorough understanding of the Christ impulse. We must bring this with us from Earth; for Christ was once on the Sun, but, as we have heard, he came down from the Sun and has now united with the Earth. Consequently, we must carry him up into the solar era, and then we can be a social being with the Christ impulse and understand him in the solar sphere.

[ 27 ] But we must learn to distinguish—and we can only do so now through anthroposophy—between Christ and Lucifer. For what we bring with us from Earth in our understanding of Christ does indeed lead us up to the Sun and, within the solar sphere, serves as a guide from human soul to human soul, so to speak, without distinction of faith or creed; but we encounter another being in the solar sphere who speaks the same words, which essentially have the same meaning: this being is Lucifer. And we must have acquired this understanding of the difference between Christ and Lucifer, for Lucifer must now accompany us through the further spheres between death and new birth.

[ 28 ] You see, in this way we pass through the lunar, Mercury, Venus, and solar spheres. In each of these spheres, we first attain that which we have brought with us in terms of inner power. In the lunar sphere, it is the emotions: instincts, passions, and sensual love that connect us to this sphere. In the Mercury sphere, we encounter all our moral imperfections; in the Venus sphere, our religious imperfections; and in the Sun sphere, that which separates us from everything “human.”

[ 29 ] Now, then, we enter the other spheres, which the occultist knows as the spheres of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. There, Lucifer is our guide; there we enter a world that enriches us with new powers. Just as we have the Earth beneath us here, so do we have the cosmos within the Sun beneath us there. We grow into the divine-spiritual worlds, and as we grow into these divine-spiritual worlds, we must keep in mind what we have brought with us from the Christ impulse. We can only acquire this on Earth, and the more strongly we have acquired it, the further we can carry it out into the cosmos. Then Lucifer approaches us. He leads us into the world into which we must go, so that we may be prepared for a new incarnation. And what we cannot do without, so that Lucifer does not become a danger to us, is the understanding of the Christ impulse—that which we have heard from Christ during our time on Earth. Lucifer already approaches us in the time between death and birth, but we must have taken in the Christ during our time on Earth. Then we grow into the other spheres that lie beyond the Sun. We become ever larger and larger, so to speak; we have the sun beneath us and the entire vast, mighty starry sky above us. We grow into the vast expanse of space, out into the cosmos up to certain limits. And as we grow outward, the cosmic forces from all the stars act upon us. We take in the forces from the entire mighty world of stars into our powerfully expanded being.

[ 30 ] We reach a certain limit. Then we contract once more and re-enter what we have gone through. We pass through the spheres of the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon until we once again approach the Earth, and until that which was carried out into outer space contracts once more into a seed that forms into a new human being within a human mother. This happens again when the human being has expanded out into the distant reaches of space and has absorbed the cosmic forces there.

[ 31 ] This is the mystery of human existence after death, between death and rebirth. After passing through the gate of death, the human being, starting from the small space of the Earth, has grown larger and larger, expanding out to the spheres of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. There we have expanded out into outer space; we become, as it were, a giant sphere as spiritual beings. Then, after we as souls have absorbed the forces of the universe and the stars, we contract again, and then we have the forces of the starry world within us. Here we have an explanation from spiritual research for the fact that an imprint of the entire starry sky can be found in this compressed mass of our brain. Indeed, our brain holds a profound mystery.

[ 32 ] And there is another mystery here: the human being has thus contracted, has incarnated in a physical body, into which he came through a pair of parents. This is how far the human being has come, for there, while expanding into the cosmos, he inscribed all that constituted his characteristics. When we stand on Earth and look out at the starry sky, there are not merely stars there, but our characteristics from past incarnations. If, for example, we were ambitious in past incarnations, that ambition is inscribed in the world of the stars. It is recorded in the Akashic Records, and when you stand at a certain point here on Earth, that ambition comes to you through the relevant planet in this or that position; it exerts its influence. And this is the moral of the story: that astrologers do not merely see stars and stellar influences, but that they say: There lies your vanity, your ambition, your immorality, your laziness; and now something you have inscribed in the stars is, in a certain way, working its way back down from the world of the stars and determining your fate. That is why we inscribe what is in our soul into the vast cosmos, and from there it acts back upon us from the cosmos while we are here on Earth, while we walk here on Earth between birth and death. These things touch us deeply when we truly understand them, and they explain so much to us.

[ 33 ] You see, I have spent a great deal of my life studying Homer, but when I was tasked last late summer with examining these relationships between death and rebirth and came to the conclusion that the relationships between one death and the next birth remain unchanging, I had to say to myself at one point: the Greeks call him the Blind Man because he was a great seer. He says: life after death takes place in the place where there is no change. A wonderfully apt phrase. One only begins to understand this phrase when one takes it out of the occult mysteries. And the further one advances in this inner struggle, the clearer it becomes that the ancient poets were the greatest seers of all and have enshrined many things in their works, the understanding of which requires much.

[ 34 ] I would like to mention something that happened to me in early autumn and that is quite telling. At first I resisted doing so because it is quite unexpected. But it is one of those cases where objectivity prevails.

[ 35 ] In Florence, there is a tomb by Michelangelo for Lorenzo and Giuliano Medici. The two brothers are depicted there, along with four allegorical figures. These figures are very well known. But the fact that something wasn’t quite right with this group struck me immediately when I saw it for the first time. It was immediately clear to me that the one described as Giuliano is actually Lorenzo, and vice versa. It is obvious: since the figures can be removed, they were mixed up at some point and the mistake was not noticed. That is why Lorenzo is described as Giuliano and vice versa. But what matters here are the four allegorical figures.

[ 36 ] If one starts by considering the figure of “Night,” this wonderful “Night”—indeed, as long as one clings to the notion that one is dealing with an allegory—one cannot make sense of it. But if one creates a mental image of what one knows about the human etheric body in its full activity in such a way that one asks: If the astral body and the I were free and the etheric body were to seek the gesture that corresponds to it most of all, what kind of gesture would result?—then one receives the answer: A gesture such as that which Michelangelo gave to “Night” would result. - Indeed, this “Night” is so conceived that it provides the most wonderful expression of the free, independent etheric body, which manifests itself in the physiognomy of the physical body when the astral body and the ego are outside. This figure is not an allegory, but actually the human being, depicted in relation to the physical and etheric bodies when the astral body and the ego are outside. Then one understands the figure in this posture, which is the historically most accurate expression of the etheric body in its liveliness.

[ 37 ] And if one proceeds from this assumption, one arrives at the grotesque conclusion in the “Day” figure: When the ego is most active, when it is least influenced by the astral, etheric, and physical bodies, this peculiar turn, this gesture that Michelangelo gave to the “Day” figure, emerges. When the astral body acts on its own, without being dependent on the physical body, the etheric body, and the ego, the gesture of the “Morning” figure emerges; and for the physical body, which acts independently of the other three members, the gesture of “Evening Twilight” emerges.

[ 38 ] For a long time I resisted this realization; at first I thought it was madness; but the more one delves into it, the more what one sees in this writing cast into the stone compels one to acknowledge this truth. Not that Michelangelo knew this; but it found its way into his intuitive creative process. Then one also understands the meaning of the legend that tells how, when Michelangelo was alone in his workshop, the figure of “Night” came to life, so that it walked about. It is precisely a special illustration of the fact that we are dealing with the etheric body. The spiritual permeates everything, both in human evolution and in art, and so on. One truly begins to understand the sensory realm only when one understands the way in which the spiritual works into sensory reality.

[ 39 ] There is a quote by Kant that is very beautiful. Kant says: There are two things that have made a profound impression on me: the starry sky above me and the moral law within me. — It makes a profound impression when one realizes that both are one and the same. For between death and birth we are poured out into the starry space and take its forces into ourselves, and when we are in the physical body, these forces we have absorbed are active within us as our moral impulses. When we stand there and gaze at the starry sky, we can say: The forces that live and weave out there in the cosmos—in them we live and weave in the time between death and new birth. And this is now the guiding law of our moral life. Thus, the starry sky outside and the moral law within us are one and the same reality, merely two sides of this reality. We live through the starry sky between death and new birth, and the moral law between birth and death.

[ 40 ] When we grasp this, Spiritual Science immediately becomes a form of devotion, like a powerful prayer; for what is a prayer other than that which connects our soul with the divine-spiritual that permeates the world.

[ 41 ] This prayer is what a prayer can be today. We must attain it by living through the sensory world. As we consciously strive for this, what we can know naturally becomes a prayer. There, spiritual insight immediately becomes feeling, experience, and sensation. And that is what it should become. Then, no matter how much it may work with concepts and ideas, ideas and concepts ultimately become prayer-like pure sensations, pure feeling. But that is what our time needs. Our time needs the direct transition from contemplation to the experience of the cosmos, where contemplation itself becomes like a prayer. While the contemplation of the outer physical world becomes ever drier, ever more scholarly, ever more abstract, the contemplation of spiritual life becomes ever more heartfelt, ever deeper, becomes downright ever more prayer-like—and not through one-sided sentimentality, but through its own nature. Then the human being will not merely know, based on abstract ideas, that he has within himself the Divine that weaves through and lives within the cosmos; but he will know, as he progresses in his understanding, that he has truly experienced it in the life between the last death and the new birth. He will know: what he lived through there, he now has within himself as the riches of his life.

[ 42 ] These are the kinds of insights that are directly linked to recent research, yet which can help us understand our own development. Then Spiritual Science will one day be able to transform itself into a truly spiritual lifeblood. We will speak of these things more often in the future.