The Rudolf Steiner Archive

15. Man’s Journey Through the Spheres of the Cosmos After Death

[ 1 ] When I spoke here during my last visit about life between death and a new birth, we attempted to consider the connection between this life and the great cosmic order. I tried to show how the path traversed between death and a new birth actually leads through the cosmos, through the spheres of the cosmos. Let us briefly look back at what we sought to emphasize at that time.

[ 2 ] The initial period after death—as has already been mentioned—is actually filled for the human being with a kind of connection to the last earthly life. It is a kind of growing out of one’s last earthly life, so that in fact, in these first moments after death, everything that affected the human astral body during earthly life continues. Whatever occupied this human astral body—the nature of the emotions, the nature of the passions, the nature of the feelings—continues. And because the human being here in physical incarnation consciously experiences all these things only when within their physical body, the experience of all these forces present in the astral body is naturally quite different as the human being passes through the realm that lies between death and a new birth. In normal cases—though there are many exceptions—this experience is essentially permeated in the early stages after death by a certain deprivation, caused by the fact that the human being must live in their astral body without having their physical body at their disposal. The human being yearns to still have their physical body; this keeps the person, for a shorter or longer time—one may well call it that—in the normal case within the sphere of the Earth. The entire Kamaloka actually lies in the sphere between the Earth and the Moon’s orbit; but the Kamaloka that is truly significant for the human being lies much closer to the Earth than, say, the Moon’s orbit.

[ 3 ] Souls that have not developed much of what constitutes sensations and feelings that, so to speak, transcend earthly life remain connected to the sphere of earthly life for quite a long time, bound by their own desires. If a person—and this is, one might say, easy to see even from the outside—has spent an entire life developing only those feelings and sensations that can be satisfied through the physical organs and through earthly circumstances, then they cannot help but remain connected to the earthly sphere for a certain extended period of time. One can remain connected to the earthly sphere through entirely different impulses and desires than one usually imagines. For example, highly ambitious people who are particularly concerned with achieving this or that status within earthly conditions, who place the greatest value on having such status—which depends on the judgments of earthly humanity—thereby develop an attachment in their astral body that makes them, so to speak, earthbound souls for a long time. There are manifold reasons that hold people back in the earthly sphere in this way. And by far the most of what is conveyed to people from the spiritual worlds through mediumship actually originates from such souls and is essentially what these souls strive to shed.

[ 4 ] It is not even always necessary to assume that such souls remain bound to Earth due to entirely base motives, although that is usually the case; it may also be concern for those left behind on Earth. Such concerns for friends, relatives, and children left behind can also, in a certain way, act as a kind of heaviness and hold the soul back in the earthly sphere. And it is good to draw attention specifically to this point, for the reason that, if we take this point into account, we can thereby also help the deceased in a certain way. If we know, for example, that a deceased person may feel this or that concern for the living—and one can indeed know quite a lot in this regard—then it is good for the further development of the deceased to relieve them of this concern. One truly lightens the life of a deceased person by, for example, relieving them of the worry about a child they have left behind without care. So when one does something for the child, one is in fact relieving the deceased of a worry, and this is precisely a true act of love. For let us just create a mental image of the situation. Such a deceased person does not have the means at hand to actually remedy their worries; he is often unable to do what might alleviate the situation of any child, relative, or friend left behind from his world, and he is often—and this is an extraordinarily distressing feeling for the clairvoyant observer in many cases—condemned to bear this worry until the situation of the one left behind improves on its own or through circumstances. So if we do something to improve it, the result is that we have rendered a true service of love to the deceased.

[ 5 ] It has often been observed that a person has passed away while still harboring plans for this or that in life. They were deeply committed to such a resolution. We help them when we try, for our part, to do what they would have liked to do. These are all things that are actually not difficult to understand, but which really ought to be taken seriously, because they are entirely consistent with clairvoyant observation.

[ 6 ] There are, of course, still many things that can keep a person anchored, so to speak, in the Earth’s etheric sphere for a long time. But then they grow beyond this etheric sphere, and I have already described, in part, how this process of growing beyond it takes place. We must, after all, reformulate our concepts if we are to understand life between death and a new birth. It is not exactly disruptive when we speak of the dead in terms adapted to earthly conditions—terms, so to speak, drawn from these conditions—since we do, in fact, have a language specifically for earthly conditions. And even if what we can express in words about life after death is only figuratively true, what is thus put into words need not necessarily be incorrect.

[ 7 ] One must, for example, take into account that any characterization as if the deceased were confined to a single place, as if the deceased were as confined as one living in a physical body, is never entirely correct, because in fact the experience after death, just like the experience within initiation, is a stepping out of the body, connected with an expansion of the entire soul being. And when we follow a soul that has arrived at the lunar sphere, as we say, then in fact, if we were to define its physical boundaries, the body is essentially the expansion of the scope of experience. This body extends over an entire sphere, which is then outwardly bounded by the orbit of the moon. Human beings do indeed grow spiritually to gigantic proportions; they grow into the spheres, and the spheres of the departed are not separated from one another in the same sense as earthly human beings, but are spatially nested within one another. Their separation from one another is based on the fact that their consciousnesses are separated from one another; so that they can be completely nested within one another without being aware of each other.

[ 8 ] What was said during my last visit regarding the feeling of loneliness or sociability after death refers to the relationships between consciousnesses. It is not as if the dead person were on an isolated island, in a mental image; rather, they permeate the other person, of whom they know nothing, even though they are in the same space.

[ 9 ] Now we must consider what is primarily at stake once the Kamaloka is complete. When a person begins their devachanic existence in the actual lunar sphere, the Kamaloka is, strictly speaking, not yet entirely complete. This does not, however, preclude the fact that within this lunar sphere certain matters are, so to speak, settled—matters that are significant not only as Kamaloka experiences but also for the person’s entire subsequent life when they re-enter existence through birth. If we wish to consider what is added in the Kamaloka experiences, it can be characterized in the following way: The human being, while going through life here between birth and death, can be so active within this life, so to speak, that he essentially brings forth from his soul everything that is predisposed within him; that he does not, so to speak, fall short of his predisposition. After all, the human being can fall short of his predisposition in the most manifold ways. Oh, there are many people in life who, when we observe them with the spiritual gaze, present themselves to us in such a way that we can rightly say: This person could actually have achieved something quite different in life, given their abilities and predispositions, than what they have achieved; they have fallen short of their potential.

[ 10 ] There is something else to consider. There are people who set themselves the most diverse of goals throughout their lives. So it need not be merely a matter of disposition, but of resolutions that may be small or may be grand. How much is undertaken by people in life that never actually comes to fruition! Indeed, there are things that are such that they need not entail any reproach for human life. To illustrate just how significant these things can be, I would like to draw attention to something that some of our friends are already familiar with: namely, that Goethe undertook a poetic work in his “Pandora” with which he got stuck. I have already attempted to characterize what happened to Goethe with “Pandora” by stating: It was precisely because of the greatness that lived within him—and which conceived the intention for this “Pandora” but could not develop from within itself what would have actually realized that intention—that Goethe was prevented from completing this “Pandora.” It was not because of his smallness, but in a certain sense because of his greatness, that he was prevented from completing “Pandora” and other works. He left them unfinished. The play we have shows that, in terms of external artistic standards, Goethe set such high demands on himself that he simply lacked the strength to carry out his grand vision with the same ease as the play he did succeed in completing. This is an unfulfilled intention, and it certainly belongs in the realm of unfulfilled intentions.

[ 11 ] So we can say: On the one hand, there is the possibility that a person falls short of their potential due to laziness or other forms of character or intellectual neglect—but there is also the possibility that a person falls short of their intentions in matters both large and small. Everything that a person carries within themselves, so to speak, as an imperfection—it is a noble, great imperfection when a poet does not complete a “Pandora,” but it is an imperfection for the person himself—everything that a person carries within themselves as imperfections, he engraves into the Akashic Records all the way up to the lunar sphere; and for the seer’s gaze, it is indeed a rich selection to allow everything buried between Earth and Moon in terms of human imperfections to take effect upon oneself. There, faithfully recorded, is everything that can be buried in terms of human noble and ignoble imperfections. There we find recorded instances that indicate to us how a human being, through their physical health and through a physical constitution well-suited for intellectual gifts, could have achieved something they did not achieve. What they could have become but were not when they passed through the gate of death—that is recorded there in the Akashic Records.

[ 12 ] Now I ask you not to form a mental image of the end of “Pandora” being engraved in the lunar sphere, but rather that the fact corresponding to Goethe’s astral body is engraved there—if we consider within this astral body that he had a comprehensive intention and carried out only a part of it. All such things are engraved between the Earth and the Moon. But also all the small things that belong to this region. Whoever, let us say, has formed a resolution but has not carried it out before passing through the gate of death, engraves the failure to fulfill this resolution into the region between Earth and Moon. We can characterize quite precisely what is revealed to the clairvoyant gaze there. A promise, for example, that one has not kept, is only buried later, actually only in the sphere of Mercury. But what is a resolution is buried in the sphere of the Moon. For that which affects not only us alone but directly other people does not immediately engrave itself in the lunar sphere, but only later. But that which affects us, leaves us behind in our development, and endows us with an imperfection in our personal development—that engraves itself within the lunar sphere.

[ 13 ] It is particularly important that, in addition to everything else I said here last year, we also consider the fact that our imperfections—specifically those imperfections that, according to the preconditions, need not have existed—are embedded in the corresponding lunar sphere.

[ 14 ] One must by no means form a mental image of it as a terrible thing, under any circumstances, to have something like this buried in the lunar sphere. For in a certain sense, what is buried there may well be among the most valuable and significant things. We will discuss the meaning of this embedding in the Akashic Records shortly. I merely wish to point out that as the human being continues to expand into the other spheres, he embeds other aspects of himself—whether imperfections he has acquired or imperfections he has possessed—into the corresponding spheres. After all, the human being grows out from the lunar sphere into the Mercury sphere. I am speaking here always in the sense of occultism, not in the sense of astronomy. Thus, the human being imprints something everywhere in the Mercury sphere, the Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn spheres, and beyond. Most of these imprints, however, are, so to speak, within the solar sphere; for we have already seen last time that outside the solar sphere, the human being essentially has to contend with what is actually not at all within his individual control.

[ 15 ] Thus, after having more or less resolved the ties that still bind him to the earth, the human being journeys through the spheres of our planetary system and beyond, between death and a new birth. And it is precisely in this encounter with the forces that lies what is necessary for his development between death and a new birth. And when I spoke last time about how the human being comes together with the higher hierarchies and must receive their gifts, then outwardly—that is, spiritually outwardly—this passing before the beings of the higher hierarchies and receiving their gifts is, as it were, an expansion out into the world space. And when the human being has expanded in this way, he then contracts again, becoming smaller and smaller, until he has truly become so small that he can unite as a spiritual seed with what comes from father and mother. This is indeed the wondrous mystery: that when a human being passes through the gate of death, he in fact becomes, so to speak, an ever-widening sphere, that he expands his spirituality—that is, the possibilities of life within his soul—that he becomes gigantic and then contracts again. What lives within us is in fact drawn together from a cosmic realm—one might say, from a planetary realm—and we carry within us quite literally what we have lived through in a planetary realm.

[ 16 ] Since I discussed some aspects of the passage through the Mercury, Venus, and Sun spheres during my last visit here, I would like to speak today—because this topic has received even less attention—about the passage through the Mars sphere. When a person has passed through the solar sphere and then enters the Mars sphere, they actually enter into conditions in our present age that are quite different from those of a relatively short time ago. Especially when one observes such things with the clairvoyant eye, one sees how the things that were said in ancient times—based on the clairvoyance originally present in humanity—regarding the members of the planetary system are by no means without a real basis. If, in ancient times, Mars was seen as a member of our planetary system associated with all that is warlike and aggressive in human development, this essentially corresponds to reality. All the fanciful speculations put forward today by physical astronomy regarding possible life on Mars are, in essence, devoid of any real basis. The beings whom we might, if we wish to use the term, describe as the Martians are of a completely different nature than Earth humans; they cannot be compared to them at all. And the most essential characteristic of these beings was, in fact, always—right up until the seventeenth century—aggressiveness, bellicosity, and a spirit of attack, so that, if we may use the term, Martian culture was essentially a warlike culture. Everything was based on the rivalry and competition of souls pouncing upon one another. And what the human being experienced in the interval between death and a new birth during the passage through Mars was quite literally an encounter with aggressive forces; these aggressive forces, so to speak, passed into his soul. And when he was then born again and was particularly predisposed to develop these aggressive forces on Earth, this must be attributed to his passage through the sphere of Mars.

[ 17 ] In this regard, life is actually quite complicated. When we observe life on Earth, don’t we, we live among the beings of the three kingdoms of nature and among human beings. Through various means, we come into contact with souls who, through their actual life after death, still maintain a certain connection with the Earth; but in between, one always encounters spiritual beings who are actually quite foreign to the Earth. And the more a clairvoyant gaze develops, the further the initiate sees, the more souls alien to the Earth one encounters, the more one realizes that there are beings passing through the Earth’s sphere who, one might say, are not normally connected to earthly life. But this is no different for us Earthlings than it is for the inhabitants of the Moon, through whose lives we also pass between death and a new birth. In a certain sense, when we pass through the sphere of Mars, for example, we are ghosts to the inhabitants of Mars; we pass through there as beings foreign to their sphere. But in a certain stage of their existence, the beings of Mars are also quite bound to pass through our Earth sphere; they pass through it, and those endowed with a certain initiation encounter them, so to speak, through the appropriate states during their passage through the Earth sphere. It is a continuous passing by of one another among the beings of our planetary system. While we live on Earth between birth and death and often think that we are surrounded by nothing but the beings of the various kingdoms of nature, the passers-by from all the other planets of our planetary system are present in our surroundings. Likewise, at a certain time between death and a new birth, we are passers-by among the other planetary beings, if we may put it that way. — It is simply that we humans on Earth have to develop precisely the most essential aspect of what is our mission within the present world cycle. Thus, other beings are assigned to the other planetary worlds. But we must also touch upon the other planetary worlds between death and a new birth. So when speaking generally of devachanic life, it must certainly be said that when we describe this or that aspect of devachanic life in such general terms, what remains unspoken—though true—is that this takes place in some sphere of our planetary system. That is an essential part of it. Thus, at a certain time in our lives between death and a new birth, we pass through the sphere of Mars.

[ 18 ] Just as the Earth undergoes a process of development—a descending phase leading up to the Christ Mystery and an ascending phase following the Mystery of Golgotha—so too do the other planets undergo their own form of development. And just as, so to speak, from the year 33 onward—it is not entirely precise, but roughly speaking—an ascending development begins on Earth, that is, since that is the actual focal point of Earth’s development, so on Mars the beginning of the seventeenth century was this focal point, and all conditions develop, so to speak, up to this point on Mars in a sort of descending line, and from there onward in a completely different, ascending line. For at that time something extraordinarily significant happened, particularly for Mars. In connection with our Earth’s development, we have come to know the extraordinary figure of Gautama Buddha. We have emphasized that this Buddha’s development unfolded in such a way that he was a Bodhisattva until, in the 29th year of his life, he was elevated to the status of Buddha, which determined that he would not be reincarnated in a physical earthly body again. From other lectures you will have seen that the Buddha later continued to work down from the spiritual world into the earthly sphere. We know that he worked into the astral body of the boy Luke-Jesus. But this Buddha also worked into earthly life in other ways, without incarnating in a physical body. For example, in the seventh and eighth centuries, in a mystery school in southeastern Europe, where—for people who were more or less clairvoyant at the time—teachers could be not only those individuals who were incarnated in the physical world, but also those who worked their way down from spiritual heights solely through their etheric bodies. It certainly happens that more advanced human beings can be taught by such individuals who no longer assume a physical body, or who do not assume one at all. Thus, the Buddha was a teacher in such a mystery school, and among his students at that time was the one who was later—that is, in his next incarnation—born as Francis of Assisi. And many of the qualities that we see so powerfully emerging in the life of Francis of Assisi can be traced back to the fact that Francis of Assisi was a disciple of the Buddha. So we see how the Buddha continued to work from spiritual heights into the earthly sphere even after the Mystery of Golgotha, how he was connected to the life that holds significance for human beings between birth and death. But then, as the seventeenth century approached, the Buddha withdrew from earthly life, and then the Buddha accomplished a similar event for Mars—though not of such magnitude as the Mystery of Golgotha, yet that which corresponds to the Mystery of Golgotha on Mars. Thus, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Buddha became the Redeemer of Mars, that is, he became the individuality who was to infuse a sphere of peace into this aggressive element of Mars. And since that time, the Buddha impulse has been present on Mars just as the Christ impulse has been present on Earth since the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 19 ] The Buddha’s destiny on Mars was not the passage through death, as is the case with the Mystery of Golgotha, but in a certain sense it was also a kind of crucifixion, consisting in the fact that this wonderful individuality, which, in accordance with the preconditions of its earthly life, radiated peace and love everywhere, was placed right in the midst of what was completely foreign to it: the aggressive, the warlike element of Mars. The Buddha was to have a pacifying effect on Mars. And for the seer’s gaze, there is something tremendously striking when two moments are compared: that moment when, so to speak, within his earthly existence, the Buddha ascended to the highest peak he could reach within that existence—when, in his eightieth year, after having lived fifty years on Earth as the Buddha—just having been raised to Buddhahood—on a wondrous moonlit night, on October 13, 483 B.C., how his being breathed out into the silvery moonlight that shone over the Earth. This, which is also outwardly like a manifestation of the breath of peace radiating from the Buddha, testifies to us the culmination of the Buddha’s development within his earthly existence. It is a wondrous moment, and there is something deeply moving about it when one compares it to the moment, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the Buddha arrived on Mars with the full sum of his powers of peace and love, in order to radiate his peace and love within that aggressive element and thereby gradually inaugurate the ascending development of Mars. So that, while a soul that passed through Mars before the time of the Buddha Mystery was primarily endowed with aggressive qualities, it now undergoes something fundamentally different if it truly has the capacity to receive something from the forces of Mars. To avoid any misunderstanding in this regard, it must be pointed out that just as the whole Earth is not yet fully Christianized today, so too has Mars not yet become a planet of peace. That will take a long time, so that if the soul has cause to take in aggressive elements, there is still ample opportunity to do so; but the event in question must be grasped in the mind’s eye. The more the Earth moves toward a kind of material development, the less one would be able to admit—if one truly understands Earth’s development—that it would be natural to be a follower of the Buddha in human life on Earth between birth and death, in the sense that the Buddha had his followers in pre-Christian times.

[ 20 ] Within the course of human evolution on Earth, the possibility of undergoing a development such as that of Francis of Assisi is gradually being lost; this will become less and less possible, and will fit less and less into the prevailing culture; but between death and a new birth, the human soul has the opportunity to undergo this. And if it did not sound so grotesque, one could certainly say it, because it corresponds to a fact: Between death and a new birth, for a certain period of time while passing through the sphere of Mars, every human soul has the opportunity to be a Franciscan or a Buddhist and to absorb all those forces that can flow into the human soul from such feeling and experience. Thus, the passage through Mars can be of very special importance for the human soul. But wherever a person goes, they inscribe their perfections and imperfections, depending on how they correspond to the characteristics of that sphere.

[ 21 ] And it is true: whatever perfections and imperfections we possess are faithfully inscribed in the Akashic Record between death and a new birth. Everything is recorded there. One of our characteristics is recorded in the lunar sphere, other characteristics are inscribed in the Venusian sphere, others in the Martian sphere, others in the Mercurial sphere, others in the Jovian sphere, and so on. And when we then return, slowly drawing ourselves together, we encounter everything we inscribed upon leaving, and thus our karma is technically prepared. If, on the way back, we find: ‘We had this or that imperfection,’ then we can engrave into our own being—not erase, but first engrave into our own being—a copy of what we have just engraved into the Akashic Records. It is not yet erased there. Now we arrive down on Earth. Because we have within us everything we inscribe into ourselves on the return journey—and we are, in a certain sense, compelled to inscribe, if not everything, then at least a great deal—our karma develops; but up above, everything is still inscribed. And now, strangely enough, these inscriptions interact. These inscriptions are engraved in spheres—the lunar, Venusian, and Mercurian spheres, and so on. These spheres make certain movements, so that the following can occur: A person has engraved a certain imperfection into the lunar sphere. While passing through the sphere of Mars, he has engraved a character trait of his own there by acquiring a certain aggressive element that he did not previously possess; he has engraved that there. Now he continues on, returning once more to Earth. By living here on Earth, he has indeed incorporated into his karma what he has imprinted; but at the same time, it is written above him. Up there is Mars, which stands in a certain constellation relative to the Moon; the outer planets indicate the mutual positions of the spheres. Since Mars stands in a certain constellation relative to the Moon, his aggressive entrenchment and his imperfection stand, so to speak, in the same constellation. The consequence of this is that they interact when they are in succession, and that this is the moment that can indicate where, in the next life, through the aggressive force of Mars, he will undertake what has remained imperfect. Thus, the position of the planets actually indicates what the human being has first inscribed into these spheres themselves. And when we read the positions of the planets astrologically, as well as the position of the planets relative to the fixed stars, this is like a kind of indication of what we ourselves have inscribed. It does not depend so much on the outer planets—what affects us is what we have engraved into the individual spheres. Here you have the actual reason why the constellations of the planets do have an effect, why they indicate effects on human nature: because the human being passes through them. And when the Moon is in a certain position relative to Mars and to a fixed star, this constellation works together; that is, the virtue of Mars works together with the Moon and the fixed star upon the human being, and through this, what can happen through their interaction comes to pass.

[ 22 ] Thus, it is essentially our moral legacy—so to speak—that is deposited between death and a new birth, which reappears karmically in a new life as a constellation of stars in our destiny. This is the deeper reason for the constellation of stars and its connection to human karma. Thus, when one considers the life of a human being between death and a new birth, one realizes how this person is actually connected to the entire universe, and how profoundly significant this connection is.

[ 23 ] And human beings are connected, I would say, with a certain sense of necessity, to what lies outside the solar sphere. Let us consider the sphere of Saturn in particular. If a human being, let us say, has endeavored in the present earthly life to engage with concepts of Spiritual Science, then the passage through the sphere of Saturn is actually particularly significant for their next life; for in this sphere the conditions are created whereby the human being can transform the forces he acquires here through knowledge of Spiritual Science or anthroposophy into forces that then plastically shape his physical form, so that in his next life he carries within himself, as a natural predisposition, a tendency toward the spiritual simply by virtue of his constitution. So now it may be that a person grows up; he has been raised as a materialist or as a Protestant or as a Catholic. Spiritual Science approaches him; he is receptive to it, does not reject it for this or that reason: then he has taken it in inwardly and spiritually. Now he passes through the gate of death; he enters the sphere of Saturn. As he passes through it, he absorbs such forces that, so to speak, in his next life he is a natural spiritual person, showing an inclination toward the spiritual in everything even as a child.

[ 24 ] Thus, every phase we pass through between death and a new birth involves the task of transforming what we take in spiritually during a lifetime into forces that can then become physical powers, endowing us with certain abilities between a new birth and death. Yesterday, of course, I could only go as far as is possible in a public lecture when I noted that Raphael, at his birth, already possessed Christian impulses as a matter of course. So one must not imagine that Raphael brought with him any Christian concepts—I never said “concepts,” but “impulses”—that Raphael brought Christian concepts or mental images with him. Impulses are carried over from one life to another, so that what is conceptually absorbed in one life is united with the human being in a completely different way and then manifests as forces; so that the ability to create precisely his delicate, meaningful Christian figures came from Raphael’s earlier incarnations; that was what allows him to be described as a kind of born Christian. Most of our friends know, of course, that before Raphael underwent this incarnation, he underwent that of John the Baptist, and it was there that the impulses entered his soul, which then emerged in his life as Raphael, so to speak, as Christian impulses innate to him, existing from birth. It must always be said that one can really miss the mark quite badly through superficial speculation, through all sorts of external comparisons, when speaking about successive incarnations. To the clairvoyant eye, they appear such that one would usually not suspect that one life is the cause of the next. So, in order for anything we take in spiritually in one incarnation to be able to unfold such forces in the next incarnation that we can work into the physical aspect of our predispositions, the passage between death and a new birth is necessary, because we cannot transform on Earth—we cannot transform, through all earthly forces, what we experience only soulfully on Earth—into such forces that can work on the human being, that can plastically shape the human being itself. Human beings, in their totality, are by no means earthly beings; rather, in their physical form, they would appear horrifying to present-day human ideas if all the forces available within the earthly sphere itself could be used for their plastic shaping. When a human being enters existence through birth, they must carry within themselves the forces of the cosmos; these must continue to work so that they can assume the human form at all. Within the earthly sphere, there is no possibility of bringing forth such forces that can plastically form human figures. This is what must be taken into account. Thus, in what he is, the human being certainly bears within himself the image of the cosmos, not merely the image of the Earth, and it is a complete betrayal of the human being’s nature to derive this solely from the forces of the Earth—that is, to study only what can be observed externally in the realms of the Earth through the natural sciences, and takes no account of the fact that what prevails in what the human being receives on Earth is also what he brings with him from the supersensible spheres as he passes through birth, traversing them between death and a new birth. And within this sequence of spheres, everything of the kind described the day before yesterday also takes place. There the human being becomes a servant of one or another of the powers of the higher hierarchies.

[ 25 ] Now, of particular importance is everything that is, so to speak, inscribed on the Akashic Record tablet between the Earth and the Moon. For among other things, all imperfections are inscribed there—and I ask you to bear in mind that in the inscription of these imperfections, the primary consideration is that everything is recorded there that, so to speak, has significance for one’s own human development, that which, so to speak, propels humanity forward or holds it back. But by being inscribed into the lunar sphere—that is, by being recorded in the Akashic Records between the Earth and the Moon—it further acquires significance for the entire development of the Earth. So we have our life on Earth: we have this life on Earth surrounded by the lunar sphere; in the Akashic Record of the lunar sphere, we have recorded imperfection upon imperfection, including, for example, the imperfections of great spirits. An immensely interesting example for clairvoyant observation is, for instance, Leonardo da Vinci. He is a spirit of such great, all-encompassing power as very few spirits of this rank on Earth possess; but what he actually accomplished externally, in relation to what he intended, has in many ways remained unfinished. In fact, none of the similar minds left as much unfinished as Leonardo da Vinci. And the result was that an immense amount was imprinted by Leonardo da Vinci into the lunar sphere. So much has been imprinted there that one must say of many things: What is imprinted there—one does not even know how it could have ever flourished to perfection on Earth!

[ 26 ] I would like to draw your attention to something that struck me as truly extraordinary when I was studying Leonardo da Vinci. I was, in fact, scheduled to give a lecture in Berlin specifically on Leonardo da Vinci. It was very, very meaningful to me to observe one particular aspect of his work. It is indeed somewhat painful to see today the increasingly fading patches of color in the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, which truly cast only a shadow of what these paintings once were. When one considers that Leonardo da Vinci spent sixteen years painting this work and the way he painted, one gets a certain impression. It is well known that he would sometimes stop for long periods, then go there, sit in front of the painting for a long time, make a few brushstrokes, and leave again. It is also well known that he sometimes saw no way to express what he wanted to express, that he suffered from terrible depression because he could not express what he wanted to express in the painting, When a new prior had come to the monastery—a pedantically strict prior who had little understanding of art—this was at a time when Leonardo da Vinci had already been working on the painting for a long, long time. The prior was impatient and said, “Why can’t the painter finish it?” and reproached him, even complaining to Duke Ludovico. The Duke told this to Leonardo da Vinci, and Leonardo replied: “I have no idea at all whether I will be able to finish the painting; for all the other figures I have models in nature, but for Judas and for Christ I have no models—at most for Judas: there, if no other presents itself, I can take the prior. But for Christ I have no model.”

[ 27 ] But that is not what I mean here; rather, I mean the following: Even if one looks at the figure of Judas in the painting—which has now faded to a mere shadow—one sees a shadow on the figure that cannot be explained by anything, not by incident light, and so on. Now, occult investigation reveals the following: It shows that, just as Leonardo da Vinci intended, the painting was never on the wall. He wanted to render everything else according to the play of light and shadow, but Judas was to be characterized in such a way that one would believe darkness reigned over his face from within, not through the external distribution of light and shadow. And with Christ, it was to be such that the light on his face was alive, coming from within. One should believe that the face glows from within. Here Leonardo da Vinci encountered a disharmony, and it never turned out the way he intended. Here one actually has something that emerges when one considers the many things still originating from Leonardo today, embedded in the lunar sphere; here one has something that could not be realized at all in the earthly sphere. If one now traces the entire period following Leonardo da Vinci, it becomes evident that Leonardo da Vinci continued to exert an influence through a whole series of minds that followed him. Even superficially, in Leonardo’s writings, one can find things that have emerged among natural scientists, and also among artists in later times; the entire subsequent era stands under the influence of Leonardo da Vinci. And here it becomes apparent that it is the ingrained imperfections that have now had an inspiring effect on the souls of his successors, the people who lived later, after Leonardo da Vinci.

[ 28 ] For the age that follows, the imperfections of the preceding one are even more important than its perfections. The perfections are there for contemplation; but what has been perfected on earth to a certain degree has, so to speak, reached an end; it has come to a conclusion in its development; but that which was imperfect is the seed of the subsequent divine development. And here we come to one of the remarkable, grandiose contradictions: The best thing for the age to come is the fruitful imperfect—but precisely the fruitful, the justified imperfect of the earlier time. The perfect of an earlier time is, so to speak, for enjoyment; but the imperfect—that imperfect which stems from the great ones who have remained behind—is for the creative work of the coming age. And that is why it seems to be inscribed with immense wisdom that this remains in the vicinity of the Earth, indeed inscribed in the Akashic Records between the Earth and the Moon. And here we then come to the point where, in a certain sense, the statement can be understood: that perfection signifies, for the most diverse epochs, the end of evolution, of an evolutionary current; imperfection, however, under certain circumstances, the beginning of an evolutionary current. And for what is, in this sense, the imperfect, human beings must actually be especially grateful to the gods.

[ 29 ] What is the purpose of reflections such as those offered today? The aim is precisely to make the connection between human beings and the entire macrocosm increasingly comprehensible, to show how human beings truly carry the macrocosm within themselves as if rolled up, and how they can also have relationships with what surrounds them spiritually. And then, when we gain insight into such things, they can transform into a feeling that permeates the human being, so that he associates this knowledge with a sense of his dignity—a dignity that does not make him conceited, but rather makes him responsible, inspiring him not to believe that he may squander his powers in the universe, but that he must use them. Of course, it must be pointed out that no one gains anything by saying: If I have abilities, I would rather leave them imperfect. — Nothing would be gained by this; for what would in fact occur is that the person would find themselves in situations corresponding to what I explained the day before yesterday. If a person were to intentionally leave imperfections within themselves, they would indeed inscribe these as well, but they would inscribe them in such a way that they are not illuminated, and thus cannot take effect. Only those imperfections that are inscribed in such a way that their imperfection was a necessity, not an intention born of convenience—only such imperfections can have the effect described.