Karmic Relationships VI
GA 240
1 June 1924, Stuttgart
Lecture VI
On the last occasion, during our Waldorf School Conference, I spoke to you about karmic connections in the evolution of humanity, and to-day I want to say something more on the same subject. I shall begin with matters of which you already have some knowledge and then pass on to others less familiar to you.
When the human being passes through the gate of death, his ether-body dissolves away into the Cosmos when the physical body has been laid aside at the moment of death itself. To-day we shall not be studying this first stage after death, when the ether-body is dissolving, but the stage which follows. This can best be understood by thinking, to begin with, of the earthly life between birth and death. This earthly life runs its course in two sharply different conditions: waking and sleeping. You know from Anthroposophy that during the waking state the four members—physical body, ether-body, astral body and Ego—interpenetrate, mutually stimulating and sustaining their several functions. But in sleep the physical body and etheric body remain in the bed, leading temporarily a plant-like existence, while the astral body and Ego-organisation live independently in the spiritual world, separated from the physical and etheric bodies. We know from ordinary experience that when we are recollecting our earthly life, our remembrances are falsified in a certain sense. For when we look back with ordinary consciousness over our life, this retrospect seems to be a continuous, onward flowing stream, one event proceeding from another consecutively, and as a rule we ignore the fact that the stream of our memories is continually interrupted by the nights. In remembrance, therefore, there is a sequence of day-night-day-night; a period of clear consciousness passes over into one of darkness and this again into one of light. With the exception of dreams which arise from sleep, the part of earthly life which is spent in sleep remains, for the most part, unconscious. Generally speaking, this constitutes a third of the earthly life—if a man is not an abnormally long sleeper. Even taking into consideration the many more hours a child spends in sleep, it will be found that sleep occupies about a third of the time of life on the Earth.
We may ask: What are the Ego-organisation and astral body doing during the period of sleep? They are, it is true, in the spiritual world. But they have no awareness in that world and with the exception of dreams they remain unconscious. Moreover if the human being—constituted as he is on Earth with his ordinary consciousness—were always to have awareness during sleep he would go astray in one direction or another. A man of a more Ahrimanic disposition would go about during the day as if in a swoon, as if his consciousness had suffered a kind of paralysis; a man of a more Luciferic disposition would go about in a state of confused consciousness, with his thoughts and feelings in a perpetual jumble. Generally speaking, the human being is protected by the power known as the “Guardian of the Threshold” from becoming aware of the spiritual world around him during sleep.
When a man has passed through the gate of death, however, and after the first few days has laid aside the etheric body, he starts an existence which flows backwards, beginning with the day of death, passing then to the day before that, and so on through the whole of his life, in the direction from death to birth. But he lives backwards through the nights—the periods of sleep—not through the days. Hence the time during which his life is lived through in this backward order amounts to about one third of the span of his earthly life. If a man dies at the age of sixty, this backward ‘journey’ lasts about twenty years, that is to say, this other life is passed through three times as quickly as the life on Earth. Between death and a new birth we review the nights during which—unconsciously of course—pictures were produced which are in a sense negative images of the earthly life.
If man were not protected by the Guardian of the Threshold his experiences every night would be unendurable and bring about the consequences to which I have referred. If, for instance, he had done someone a wrong, he would feel during sleep as if he were transposed into the other man, experiencing what this other man had felt as a result of the wrong done to him. For the reason given there is no such experience during sleep. But after death, during the period referred to, it comes with very great intensity. We live backwards through our earthly life and through all the compensatory experiences for what we have done or failed to do. How comes it that we are able to live through these compensatory experiences?
In order to answer this question, attention must be called to a cosmic event. During the course of the Earth's evolution, the Moon—which was originally part of the Earth—separated and emerged from the Earth to lead an independent physical existence. Some time after the physical substances of the Moon separated from the Earth, the ancient primeval Teachers of humanity departed to the Moon. While they were on the Earth, these primeval Teachers had not incarnated in physical bodies, but only in etheric bodies. Hence the nature of their influence upon human beings was imaginative, inspirational. And all the wonderful teachings which were given in a more poetic form and contained in legends and sagas, originated in a majestic, primeval wisdom imparted by these ancient Teachers on the Earth. But the essential nature of these Teachers enabled them to withdraw to the Moon which has since been their habitation.
When the human being passes through the gate of death, he moves in very truth through the Cosmos; his being expands and expands. He passes first into the Moon sphere and encounters these great primeval Teachers as they now are. They preserve as it were a naively instinctive, innocent state of the human race. Before men succumbed to the possibility of doing evil, these primeval Teachers were present on the Earth. They take into themselves what is inscribed by us into the Akashic Chronicle during the nights we live through during our existence on Earth. They permeate it with their own being and thus make it possible for us, during the first third of our life after death when we are living through the events of earthly existence in backward order, to experience it all with greater intensity than we experienced it on Earth. Events in earthly life jolt us, impel and drive us, but those whose spiritual vision is able to witness what a dead man lives through in these first decades after his death know well that through the magical power of the great Teachers who have established their colony on the Moon, the experiences of yonder life have an intensity infinitely greater and more vivid than those of earthly life. We actually undergo all this. Suppose you once gave someone a box on the ears: after death you do not experience the feeling of satisfaction or perhaps of anger or malice occasioned in you by your action, but you are then within the other man, you experience the pain and the shock that were caused to him. You feel exactly what your action made him feel. The experience of living through such events with a dead man is deeply moving—one cannot say ‘shattering.’
Let me give you an example here. Most of you will remember that among the characters in my Mystery Plays, I have depicted that of Strader. As in the case of most of the characters in the Plays, the figure of Strader is drawn from actual life. There was a man whose life was almost exactly similar to that of Strader as depicted in the Plays. You can well imagine that I was very much interested in this personality during his physical life on Earth. He died in the year 1912, and my interest in his experiences after death began from then onwards. He had ultimately become a writer on the subject of rationalistic theology, and everything he had experienced on the Earth became infinitely more intense as he himself was experiencing the effect of his books and his rationalism. After I had shared for some time in what he was experiencing, I found it impossible to continue the character of Strader in the Plays and he dies because my interest in his earthly life was no longer there; it was eliminated by the intensity of interest in what he was experiencing after death.
An incident connected with this was that certain friends interested themselves in the writings left by the original of Strader and wanted to bring them to me. I simply could not take any interest in the matter and had to ignore it, for the simple reason that interest in the dead is so much stronger and eliminates everything else. By this I merely want to indicate that the experiences of a man after death while living through his life in backward order are much more intense than they were during his earthly existence. Earthly life is almost like a dream as compared with this other experience. It is an experience in negative, an experience of the consequences in the other person of what we have done and left undone. Hence it should not be described as altogether terrible. But at any rate a man must come to realise which of his deeds, his thoughts, his feelings, were just and which were not.
You can imagine that it is in this state of existence that the first seed of karma is formed. For when the human being realises what actually happens between death and a new birth, his judgement differs from judgement as it is on Earth.—I may already have mentioned that many years ago I met a lady who had listened to a conversation that had taken place in her presence on the subject of repeated earthly lives. She said that one life was enough for her, that she had no desire at all for any others, and she protested vehemently against the possibility of having to return again and again. I was obliged to say to her at the time: ‘Yes, it may be that this is your opinion here on Earth; but that is not the point. What matters is the judgement that is made between death and a new birth.’ As long as she was with us, she realised this, but on her travels afterwards she sent me a postcard saying that after all she did not admit that there are many earthly lives!
When the human being is undergoing these intensified experiences after death, he makes a resolve that may be expressed as follows: Owing to this and that, you have become imperfect, you are an inferior human being; and you must make compensation! Thereby the plan of karma is laid down. And such resolutions in the spiritual world between death and a new birth are realities. Just as here on Earth it is a reality that you burn yourself if you put your finger into a flame, so it is a reality in the spiritual world when you form a resolution. And you do most assuredly form it!
All these experiences are lived through in the Moon sphere. Passing through the following spheres of Mercury and Venus, man gradually approaches the Sun sphere. The Mercury sphere and the Venus sphere form the transition into the Sun sphere. But entry into the Sun sphere would not be possible if the whole burden of the evil laid upon the soul in the Moon sphere had still to be taken in tow. The Cosmos therefore provides that when the human being leaves the Moon sphere, the evil in him stays behind; it waits until he returns and is again passing through the Moon sphere. But as the human being is one with his deeds, he leaves much of himself behind. If I have done evil on the Earth, this simply makes me an inferior being; in passing through the Moon sphere I lose part of myself, leave it behind. A man who had been an out-and-out villain, who had never once done anything good—but after all, nobody like this really exists—such a man would be left behind in his entirety in the Moon sphere. But, as I say, nobody like this exists ... human beings do make progress.
With less or more qualities or defects, the human being passes, at first, into the Mercury sphere. Here too, between death and a new birth, he undergoes particular experiences which are a preparation for his existence in the Sun sphere. In physical life on Earth, a man becomes ill in one way or another. In soul and spirit he must be completely healthy when he passes into the Sun sphere. Hence in the Mercury sphere the human being is freed from all the effects that illnesses have produced upon the soul. Therefore it is the case that true medicine can only be mastered when one is able to perceive how the dead are freed from illnesses in the Mercury sphere. This can teach us what must be done for human beings on the Earth to free them from illnesses. And so, in the times of the Mysteries and of instinctive clairvoyance, medicine was regarded as a revelation from the Mercury sphere through the Mysteries. Just think: What is a God to modern man? A God is a Being who can never be seen on the Earth. This was not so in the days of instinctive clairvoyance. Mercury had his Mysteries. As you can read in the book, Occult Science, there were Mercury Mysteries. Indeed the Arch-High-Priest of the Mercury Mysteries was Mercury himself. This was brought about through a man being born whose spirit was then released by a super-human process in order to seek embodiment in another way. The body was there, and this body was used by the God Mercury in order to come to the Earth, that is to say, to reveal himself in the Mysteries. The Gods themselves were the teachers in the ancient Mysteries. The same applies to all the Gods of Greece; they were all on the Earth in this sense. The God Mercury taught men the art of medicine of which Hippocrates, later on, still preserved a tradition.
Then the human being enters into the Venus sphere where he becomes wholly aware of his incompleteness. But in the Venus sphere all that is incomplete in him is prepared for the Sun existence in which the longest period is spent. Man lives twice through the Sun sphere, but we need now speak only of the one period. He spends the longest period in the Sun existence where, to begin with, he is in the company of those souls with whom he has some kind of karmic connection and who are now, like himself, in the spiritual world. But he is also in the company of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies: Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and so on. What happens here? Inasmuch as the human being is fully conscious of his incompleteness, he works together with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies at the model and prototype of his next Earth existence. During the first half of the Sun existence he works more at the prototype of his future physical corporeality, and during the second half more at the prototype of his moral nature as it will be in his next Earth existence. This work that proceeds during the Sun existence is by no means as uniform as it seems when one has to describe it, but it is infinitely richer, more splendid and more mighty than anything that a man can experience on the Earth. On the Earth, man does not experience what is actually enclosed within his skin, but what is around him. During the Sun existence it is the exact opposite, for then man experiences everything that is within the Cosmos. Just as here on Earth we say: this is my stomach, so in yonder sphere we say: out there is my Venus. And as we say here: this is my heart, over yonder, we say: this is my Sun. The Beings of the universe become our organs. We ourselves are as the universe. While man is on Earth—I refer of course to a spiritual conception of man—he is merely filled by earthly substance. This inner world of the human being is in very truth more all-embracing, more splendid than the Cosmos outside man on the Earth. On the Earth, man is not conscious of all that is concealed within his being. But it is much greater, much more majestic than anything he sees on Earth. And what thus lies concealed within him, is revealed to him during the Sun existence. Out of what is then his world, he forms and shapes his physical and moral nature for his next life on Earth. He also works at his karma. After having learnt during the first decades after death how he has to work, he proceeds to labour at his karma. The final touch, as it were, is not given until the evil he has done is encountered again during the second passage through the Moon sphere, and to the model and prototype is added the force which impels him into the karma of a new earthly life.
In order to have more precise insight into how karma is formed, we must think of the following.—Stars—what are they, in reality? Scientists speak of the stars as if they were orbs of burning gas or the like. It is by no means so! Suppose you were on the planet Venus. The Earth would then appear to you more or less as Venus appears to you now, and you would describe the Earth as you now describe Venus; you would estimate that on the Earth—which is the theatre of man's existence—there are so and so many souls. But wherever a star shines, there are souls! There are souls on the Moon: the souls of the great primeval Teachers, intermingled in a sense with the souls of the Angeloi. On Mercury there are the souls of the Archangeloi, among whom we live when we pass through the sphere of the Archangeloi. The God Mercury is an Archangelic Being. On Venus are the Archai. And upon the Sun are the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, in whose company man forms his karma. We must see in the shining stars the outer signs of colonies of Spirits in the Cosmos. Wherever a star is seen in the heavens, there—in that direction—is a colony of Spirits.
When the human being has lived through the Sun existence, he enters into the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere. He has already, in the Sun sphere, begun to work at his karma. But as well as this—in order that he shall find the load of evil that belongs to him when, later on, he goes back through the Moon sphere, and in order that karma may be prepared in such a way that it can be fulfilled on Earth—he needs to live with the Spirits indwelling Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Moreover when highly characteristic human destinies are being worked out, it is the case that the final stage of the development of karmic connections takes place in the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere or the Saturn sphere. Karma can, of course, be worked out when the human being comes again into the Venus sphere, and also into the Mercury sphere. Between death and a new birth man works at his karma, together with the Beings of the planetary systems. And it is exceedingly interesting to investigate this.
Today the time has come to speak more openly, with greater freedom and frankness, of many spiritual facts. The Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum was held in order to introduce this esoteric character which should now imbue the whole Anthroposophical Society. Therefore, when I was able to speak to you on the last occasion, I began to explain all kinds of karmic connections. Let it not be thought that one is delving with clumsy fingers into the life of man when attempts are made to speak of interesting human phenomena from the point of view of their karmic connections. For thereby the world becomes for the first time transparent, full of light—not poorer but richer, more splendid in content.
I should like to speak today about an individual who was incarnated about the second century A.D. in Rome, as it then was, and who with great sensitiveness of perception had witnessed the willing martyrdom suffered by the Christians in their efforts to promulgate their cause in the Roman Empire. This individual had also witnessed the terrible injustices and the many forms of depravity and corruption which were so rife in the Roman Empire at that time. Numberless manifestations of Good and Evil were witnessed and experienced by this individual. With the methods of spiritual research which enable such happenings to be recognised, we find this individual drawn into the tumultuous happenings which at that time, during the second half of the second century A.D., were experienced in the Roman Empire in connection with the spread of Christianity. There is something extremely moving about this individual when the eye of spirit is directed upon him in the way I explained last time with reference to other individuals in their repeated earthly lives.
In this individual who lived to a very great age and who had witnessed so much Good in deeds of supreme sacrifice in the sphere of germinating Christianity, and so much that was evil and bad in Roman life at that time, there arose a kind of realisation which was also a question: Where is the balance, the mean? Is there only the wholly Good and the wholly Evil in the world?
With the consciousness of Imagination and Inspiration one can follow quite clearly how this individual was subsequently reborn in the eleventh century, as a woman. The experiences undergone in the life as a woman levelled out the hard, steel-like angularity of soul which had developed during the Roman incarnation when he had reached a great age. This trait was softened and mellowed and became a faculty of inner, thoughtful contemplation of Good and Evil. This individual then came again to the Earth in the eighteenth century and was born as the German poet, Friedrich Schiller.
And now study Schiller's life and see how it develops, striving to find a middle condition, a balance, a mean. Schiller needed Goethe before he could get rid of all that had remained in him from the conviction that there is only Good, there is only Evil. Read Schiller's dramas, and you will understand them if you think of his earlier incarnation.
What circumstances lie behind Schiller's life and outlook? The experiences he had undergone in the Roman incarnation continued to be alive within him, but he had subsequently incarnated as a woman in the Middle Ages. And then, in his life between death and a new birth, it was in the Saturn sphere that the most significant development of his karma took place.
Initiation-knowledge, of the degree that can be attained only in advanced age, is necessary in order to understand the essential nature of the Saturn sphere. The question may be asked: How is it possible to acquire knowledge of life on the stars and the like? I have told you that when the human being reaches Imaginative consciousness, he beholds his whole life in a great tableau. But he also beholds it divided into epochs. When Inspiration is attained, and the emptied consciousness wipes out this tableau, something shines out of every such epoch. Instead of beholding his own life between birth and the seventh year, a man beholds, at this place in the life-tableau, the happenings of the Moon existence—he can look into these happenings. In the tableau of the second epoch which lies between the change of teeth and puberty, the Mercury existence shines through all the happenings. The events of the school period, seen as they are backwards in this tableau, lead into the Mercury existence. How aptly and truly were the functions assigned to the several planets in the days of instinctive wisdom on the Earth! Statistics reveal that the human being is most healthy, not in the years between birth and the change of teeth, nor after puberty, but during the school period as it is called (between the ages of seven and fourteen), because that is the time when Mercury works most strongly into the human being in his Earth existence. In the tableau arising from the epoch stretching between puberty and about the twenty-first or twenty-second years, the processes and Beings belonging to Venus are seen. Again it was genius that ascribed to Venus the initial stages of the sex life. The Sun existence shines through the epoch lying between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, the Mars existence through the epoch lying between the years forty-two and forty-nine; the Jupiter existence through the epoch from forty-nine to fifty-six; and the Saturn existence through the epoch from fifty-six to sixty-three. Truth to tell, even an Initiate cannot see the circumstances of life between death and a new birth in which Saturn plays a part, until he has passed the sixty-third year of his life. Before then it is possible to learn about this existence in many different ways; but in actual vision it is possible to behold these happenings and their connections only when one has passed the sixty-third year of life. So you will realise why it is that I am only now speaking of matters connected with the Saturn existence.
As I said, Schiller developed his karma above all in the sphere of Saturn. To behold this Saturn existence in the way I have indicated, causes great amazement, because it is so different from anything one can experience on the Earth. In the consciousness of the Beings on Saturn there is only Past; there is no Present at all. But the Past is revealed in great majesty. Let me try to make a comparison with something that might happen on the Earth—it does not happen, but hypothetically it is possible. Imagine that you have no idea what you look like, you know only that you exist. You act, you do something—you do not see this at the time, you see it only when it has become the Past. You walk: you do not see your own steps or the movements you make; but immediately afterwards these movements change into a snowman—and you draw the whole movement after you when you look round and see what you have been doing! Such is the life of these strange Spirits upon Saturn. They are never aware of what they do out of an immediate resolve of the Present, but they perceive it only when it has become the Past. This is a difficult conception for the ordinary consciousness, but it is so nevertheless. Individualities like that of Schiller, who are also forming their karma, live in similar conditions of existence. Such individuals develop a wonderful vision of the Past. And so the soul of Schiller, before he was born in the year 1790, lived in the spiritual world with a majestic vision in retrospect of all the Past that was connected with his own karma. And then, on the Earth, this changed into the reaction: the vision of the Past is now transformed into enthusiasm for ideals of the Future. Schiller's ideals of the Future arose from his activity in connection with his karma during his Saturn existence.
And now let us take another life. During an incarnation in Greece, a certain individual had had a great deal to do with Greek plastic art and also with the Platonic philosophy. As a young man he was filled with enthusiasm for plastic art which he was able to view with the eye of spirit, and his colossal artistic powers were able to translate into art what he perceived spiritually. After other incarnations had been lived through, we find this individuality developing his karma in the Jupiter sphere. The Jupiter Beings differ from the Saturn Beings. The Jupiter Beings are unlike the men of Earth. When a man of Earth wants to grow wise, he must undergo inner development, he must struggle, battle inwardly and overcome; through periods that are filled with active development the human being on Earth struggles to acquire an unpretentious form of wisdom. Not so the Jupiter Beings. They are not ‘born’ as earthly beings are born, they form themselves out of the Cosmos. Just as you can see a cloud taking shape, so do the Jupiter Beings form themselves in the etheric and astral worlds, out of the Cosmos. Neither do they die. They interpenetrate one another, do not, as it were compete with each other for space. These Beings are, so to speak, wisdom that has become real and actual. Wisdom is innate in them; they cannot be other than wise. Just as we have circulating blood, so have the Jupiter Beings wisdom. It is their very nature. Among them too, karma can be shaped. The individuality of whom we are speaking, who lived through one of his most important earthly lives in ancient Greece, passed through the Jupiter sphere, came into contact with the wisdom of the Jupiter sphere where his karma was shaped, and was born again in the eighteenth century as Goethe. Such is the origin of the wonderful combination of Greek culture and wisdom that is present in Goethe.
When history is studied in this way, when we try to glean from the Mysteries and from secrets of the Cosmos what is happening on the Earth, I do not think that the Earth's history loses significance thereby. Prosaic professors may always be insisting that it is much more to the point to depict Goethe as the man he actually was in life, than to waft him away into a higher sphere! In richer epochs of evolution, when instinctive clairvoyance still survived, men spoke, openly as well, of how life in the heavens is revealed through human acts and human existence. In this respect we must get away from that abstract mentality which makes us think we are mere worms looking upwards from the Earth, believing only what the astronomers and astro-physicists have to say about the stars. In our civilisation and culture, with all their heavy trials, it is urgently necessary to understand the battle that is being waged between men who strive for the Spirit in order to comprehend spiritual law in the Cosmos, and men who have no desire for such knowledge, who limit themselves to the Earth, not only in the sphere of natural science but also in what is called ‘cultural’ or ‘spiritual’ history at the universities where documents alone are studied—for documents too are records only of happenings in the physical, material world. A decision will most certainly have to be taken in the course of Earth-evolution. Either degeneration of the spiritual life will intensify, and an illness of which I have been speaking for years—even in public lectures—will become more and more widespread. Very little is said about it as yet in medical literature, but it will none the less exist in life—its name is Dementia professoralia (Academic dementia)—or the human being will have to unfold enthusiasm for knowledge of the Supersensible. And this will also lead him to realisation of the connection between the Cosmos and the life of man.
I want to give you a third and rather more complex example. In an earlier life on Earth, a certain individuality was incarnated in India, when India was already in decline, and in that incarnation assimilated much knowledge of a kind accessible to one with extremely poor physical sight. Such details must be studied, for, as I have often said, it is details which lead to perception of the real connections. This individuality lived through various other incarnations which were, however, less important than the characteristics developed in him in India, where his extremely poor sight allowed him to see the lotus flowers and all the blossoms only with blurred outlines. His whole vision was clouded, lacking in clarity. His knowledge of life was of the kind that is inevitable when sight is blurred and the deeper qualities of things unprobed. The karma of this individuality was developed in a complicated way. He unfolded in the Mars sphere, to begin with, qualities that made him into a regular squabbler in the spiritual world! He also worked a great deal at his karma in the Mercury sphere, developing qualities of wit, of satire. And, in the background of all this, picture to yourselves a non-European world. The individual in question tends to be reborn in Europe. He passes through the Mars sphere—battle; through the Mercury sphere—critical, subtle thinking and perception. Having developed still other characteristic qualities in the Venus sphere—it is a particularly complex karma—and with the tendency to evade the physical, while at the same time strongly permeated with spirituality, this individual in the nineteenth century becomes Heinrich Heine.
Just try to realise the understanding that arises of every verse written by Heine, of the very language, words and form, when we know: this is, in reality, a product of the Mars sphere, the Venus sphere, the Mercury sphere. All of it really originates in the Cosmos. Karma is formed and fashioned in the Cosmos; it is lived out upon Earth.
And so, looking backwards upon the life-tableau of man, we perceive the Moon sphere, the Mercury sphere; from the 21st to the 42nd years the Sun sphere, then the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere. (I cannot now go into the still later periods; there too one sees something, but I cannot enter into it now). We see that all these spheres have something to do with karma. Ordinary consciousness does not know that man has within him the workings of the Mercury sphere, Moon sphere, and so on. Yet karma is brought into being by what is thus within man; he is impelled by these forces to live out his karma in his own particular way. Heinrich Heine unfolded and developed his karma in the Venus sphere, the Mercury sphere, the Mars sphere; and it is these same beings of the Venus sphere, Mercury sphere, Mars sphere which work through his earthly bodily nature in order to help him to fulfil his karma. And so, by virtue of his karma, the whole being of man stands within the Cosmos, gives expression to the Cosmos here on Earth—in one case in this way, in another in that.
These things must be studied with a free and wide outlook. When I say to you that Goethe, in the Jupiter sphere, transformed what he had absorbed in ancient Greece into deep, instinctive wisdom, which comes out in all his creations because living beings are at work—this will have a different result in another case. At the time when the culture of ancient Mexico had fallen deeply into decline, though the echoes of the Mysteries and their cults still persisted, there lived a certain individual. He came into close contact with the magic arts, the decadent manifestations of the Mystery epoch in ancient Mexico, and he understood the sense in which such beings as Quetzalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoca, Taotl, had been living realities. Orthodox books on cultural history as a rule mention hardly anything more than the names of these Beings. Nevertheless there was a time when men had living conceptions of all these Gods, of Quetzalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoca, Taotl; they had actual connection with super-sensible Beings. These matters were understood by the individual to whom I am referring; and comparatively quickly, without an intermediate incarnation, he was born again in the nineteenth century as the occultist Eliphas Lévi, having passed through the Jupiter sphere in his life between death and a new birth. In ancient Mexico he had been connected with such things as sorcery, magic arts, and the like, and had absorbed an outworn, decadent kind of knowledge. A peculiar, primitive form of wisdom—an inferior wisdom—was in this case transformed in the Jupiter sphere into the kind of content we find in the books of Eliphas Lévi. Whereas the Jupiter sphere produced in Goethe, as the fruit of the earlier incarnation, a mellow, Olympic fire, and great wisdom, Eliphas Lévi dabbles with a kind of charlatanism in all sorts of magical formulae and the like.
The earthly life is, of course, the decisive factor in what the stars are able to make of our karma. But the stars, that is to say the Beings who live where the stars indicate their existence, the stars transform into karma those things which, here on Earth, become elements in the constitution of karma.
It is in this way that we shall try more and more to deepen Anthroposophy. And if a great deal seems paradoxical and strange—as it certainly will—we must not mind it. In the paradoxical and the strange lies the truth. Man's life is based upon foundations that are deeper and more complex than is usually believed. In order to understand it, our thoughts must not be fettered to the Earth but take wings out into the expanses of the Cosmos. On the Earth man gazes at matter and too easily forgets the Spirit. The opposite is the case as soon as only a little Imaginative knowledge leads us to the realms of the heavens. There quite certainly we forget matter and begin gradually to behold the Spirits, as did the simple Shepherds in an ancient, primitive time, and as was the case on into the Middle Ages when, instead of inscribing external signs on maps of the heavens, men drew figures and forms, because they actually beheld these figures in Imaginative knowledge.
Anthroposophy deepens our inner perceptions too, as I have repeatedly said. Just think of it! If we make the attempt with the kind of knowledge I have described, we begin to gaze upon the destiny of a single human being with holy awe. For what is it that works in the destiny of each human being? In very truth it is star-wisdom—all-embracing star-wisdom! Nothing can enable us to behold the working of the Gods in the universe with deeper or truer feelings than to behold it in the destiny of a man. A world-justice flows through Eternity in the existence, the deeds, the thinking, of the Gods weaving behind the being of man.
That is what I wanted to say to you today concerning karma.
Zweiter Vortrag
Den Worten des Herrn Dr. Unger sage ich meinen besten Dank. Sie werden es mir glauben, daß es mich sehr befriedigt, wiederum unter Stuttgarter Freunden sprechen zu können.
Das letzte Mal, als ich gelegentlich unserer Waldorfschultagung hier sprechen durfte, betrachtete ich vor Ihnen einiges, das sich auf Zusammenhänge karmischer Natur in der Menschheit und ihrer Entwickelung bezieht. Ich möchte heute gerade einiges in Fortsetzung jenes Vortrages sagen, dabei von mehr oder weniger Ihnen Bekanntem ausgehen, um dann zu Unbekanntem überzugehen.
Wir wissen ja, daß der Mensch, wenn er durch die Todespforte tritt, zunächst durchzumachen hat die Tatsache der Zerstreuung seines ätherischen Leibes in den Kosmos, nachdem er im Todesaugenblicke selbst den physischen Leib abgelegt hat. Nun, diese erste Etappe nach dem Tode, die Ablegung oder eigentlich Zerstreuung des ätherischen Leibes in den Kosmos, wollen wir heute nicht betrachten, sondern dasjenige, was darauf folgt. Und das kann am besten verstanden werden, wenn wir zunächst einen Blick auf das menschliche Erdenleben werfen, wie es sich abspielt zwischen der Geburt und dem Tode. Dieses menschliche Erdenleben durchläuft ja zwei scharf voneinander getrennte Zustände: das Wachen, das Schlafen. Nun wissen Sie aus den verschiedenen anthroposophischen Betrachtungen, daß der Wachzustand dadurch entsteht, daß die vier für den heutigen Menschen wesentlichen Glieder - der physische Leib, der ätherische Leib, der astralische Leib und das Ich — ineinandergefügt sind, in ihren Tätigkeiten gegenseitig sich anregen und stützen; daß aber der Schlafzustand dadurch entsteht, daß im Bette liegenbleiben der physische Leib und der ätherische Leib, die gewissermaßen provisorisch, vorübergehend ein Pflanzendasein führen, während der astralische Leib und die Ich-Organisation selbständig in der geistigen Welt, losgetrennt vom physischen und ätherischen Leibe, leben. Nun wissen Sie aber aus der gewöhnlichen Lebenserfahrung, daß der Mensch, wenn er die Erinnerung zurückschickt in sein Erdenleben, eigentlich diese Erinnerung in einem gewissen Sinne fälscht. Denn wenn wir zurückblicken mit dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein in unser Erdenleben, dann erscheint uns der Rückblick wie ein kontinuierlich fortwirkender Strom; ein Ereignis geht aus dem anderen hervor, und wir geben dabei zumeist nicht acht, daß wir es ja gar nicht zu tun haben mit einem solchen fortwirkenden Strom von Erinnerungen, sondern daß der Erinnerungslauf fortwährend unterbrochen ist durch die Nächte, so daß wir eigentlich die Erinnerung so sehen müßten: Tag, Nacht, Tag, Nacht; immer sozusagen ein Helles, gewissermaßen fortgesetzt in einem Dunklen, dieses wieder fortgesetzt in einem Hellen und so weiter. Unbewußt zum größten Teile, mit Ausnahme der Träume, die aufsteigen aus dem nächtlichen Schlafe, bleibt derjenige Teil des Erdenlebens, den wir verschlafen: es ist in der Regel ein Drittel des Erdenlebens, wenn der Mensch nicht gerade eine Schlafratte ist. Man kann durchaus zusammenzählen - auch wenn man in Betracht zieht, wieviel mehr das Kind schläft —, was geschlafen wird: man bekommt ungefähr ein Drittel der Lebenszeit auf der Erde heraus.
Zunächst können wir uns fragen: Was machen die Ich-Organisation und der astralische Leib während dieser Schlafenszeit? Sie befinden sich ja in der geistigen Welt. Aber sie nehmen in der geistigen Welt nicht wahr, sie bleiben, wie gesagt, mit Ausnahme der Träume, unbewußt. Der Mensch würde auch, wenn er, so wie er nun einmal mit seinem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein auf der Erde beschaffen ist, im Schlafe immer wahrnehmen würde, nach der einen oder anderen Seite beirrt werden: entweder nach der Seite, daß sein Bewußtsein wie von Ohnmacht befallen erschiene während des Tages, daß er in einer Art Lähmung des Bewußtseins herumginge, wenn er ein mehr ahrimanisch veranlagter Mensch ist, oder aber, daß er mit verworrenem Bewußtsein herumginge, mit einem Bewußtsein, in dem sich die Gedanken und Empfindungen überschlagen, wenn er ein mehr luziferisch veranlagter Mensch ist.
Der Mensch ist im allgemeinen durch das, was man den «Hüter der Schwelle» nennt, behütet davor, in der Nacht die um ihn liegende geistige Welt wahrzunehmen. Allein wenn der Mensch durch die Todespforte gegangen ist und die ersten Tage verbracht hat, in denen er den Ätherleib abgelegt hat, dann tritt er zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt in ein Dasein, das rückwärtslaufend ist, wo wir mit dem Todestage beginnen, weitergehen zum vorhergehenden Tage und so weiter, und so das Leben noch einmal durchleben, doch jetzt in der Richtung vom Tode bis zur Geburt hin. Nun aber durchleben wir nicht die Tage, sondern wir durchleben die Nächte. Daher nimmt auch die Zeit, in der wir in dieser Weise rückwärts das Leben verbringen, ungefähr ein Drittel unserer Lebenszeit in Anspruch. Bei einem Menschen, der sechzig Jahre alt geworden ist und dann stirbt, dauert diese Rückwärtswanderung etwa zwanzig Jahre. Dreimal so schnell wird also dieses Leben durchlebt als das Erdenleben. Und dann durchleben wir dieses Leben zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt so, daß wir hinschauen auf die Nächte, in denen sich, allerdings unbewußt, Bilder erzeugt haben, die in einer gewissen Weise negative Abbilder des Lebens sind.
Wäre der Mensch nicht durch den «Hüter der Schwelle» behütet, so würde er jede Nacht - aber in einer Art, die er nicht ertragen kann, von der er solche Folgen haben würde, wie ich sie eben beschrieben habe -, jede Nacht würde er so erleben, wenn er jemandem etwas Böses getan hat, wie wenn er sich hineinversetzen müßte in den anderen Menschen, in das, was der empfindet und erlebt durch das Böse, das er ihm zugefügt hat. Der Mensch ist dann während des Schlafes richtig in demjenigen Wesen darinnen, dem er das eine oder das andere zugefügt hat. Nur durchleben wir aus dem angegebenen Grunde das während des Schlafes nicht. Aber nach dem Tode erleben wir es in der gekennzeichneten Zeit, und wir erleben es sehr, sehr stark. Wir leben da das Erdenleben zurück und erleben überall die Ausgleichserlebnisse für dasjenige, was wir getan oder unterlassen haben. Wodurch erleben wir diese Ausgleichserlebnisse?
Um diese Frage zu beantworten, müssen wir auf ein kosmisches Erlebnis hinweisen. Sie erinnern sich ja, daß ich Ihnen öfters ausgeführt habe, wie im Laufe der Erdenentwickelung sich der Mond, der ursprünglich ein Glied in der Erdenentwickelung war, von der Erde getrennt hat. Ich habe das erst vor kurzem hier dargestellt, wie der Mond aus der Erde herausgegangen ist und ein selbständiges physisches Dasein gebildet hat. Aber auch das habe ich schon erwähnt, daß einige Zeit nachdem der Mond seine physische Natur von der Erde getrennt hat, nachgezogen sind die ganz alten Urlehrer der Menschheit, die, solange sie auf der Erde waren, nicht in einem physischen Leib verkörpert waren, sondern nur in einem ätherischen Leib. Sie wirken daher imaginierend, inspirierend auf die Menschen ein. Und alle die wunderbaren Lehren, die in ein mehr poetisches Gewand gehüllt sind, die in den Sagen der Völker enthalten sind, die rühren her von einer auf der Erde vorhandenen großartigen, majestätischen Urweisheit, die von den Urlehrern der Menschheit erteilt wurde. Aber diese Urlehrer konnten sich vermöge ihrer Natur zurückziehen nach dem Monde, und da leben sie seither.
Wenn nun der Mensch durch die Pforte des Todes geht, durchlebt er tatsächlich den Kosmos. Und er durchlebt tatsächlich den Kosmos so, daß er sich mit seinem Dasein immer mehr und mehr vergrößert. Zunächst wächst er in die Mondensphäre hinein. Aber indem der Mensch nach seinem Tode zunächst in die Mondensphäre hineinwächst, kommt er zusammen mit dem, was diese großen Urlehrer jetzt sind. Diese großen Urlehrer bewahren gewissermaßen einen naiv-instinktiven unschuldigen Zustand des Menschengeschlechtes. Bevor die Menschen in die Möglichkeit, Böses zu tun, verfallen sind, waren diese Urlehrer auf der Erde da. Daher sind sie es, welche dasjenige aufnehmen, was während der Nächte, die wir innerhalb des Erdendaseins durchleben, in die Akasha-Chronik hineingeschrieben wird; sie durchdringen es mit ihrer eigenen Wesenheit und lassen es uns dann in dem ersten Drittel beim Rücklauf durch das Leben nach dem Tode stärker erleben als die Ereignisse des Lebens hier auf der Erde. Wer hineinschauen kann in das, was ein Toter in diesen ersten Jahrzehnten nach dem Tode durchlebt, der weiß, daß die Erdenerlebnisse ja robust genug sind, sie stoßen und sie treiben uns, was aber da durchlebt wird durch dieMacht magisch wirkender Lehrer, die auf dem Monde ihre Kolonie aufgeschlagen haben, das wirkt viel stärker, das übertönt, das überfärbt die irdischen Erlebnisse. Und wir machen wirklich das durch. Sagen wir, Sie haben
einem Menschen eine Ohrfeige gegeben: wenn Sie zurückleben, so erfahren Sie nicht das Wohlbehagen, den Zorn oder Groll, dem die Ohrfeige entsprungen ist, sondern Sie kriechen in den anderen hinein, erleben, wie es ihm wehgetan hat, wie es sein Gemüt erschüttert hat, Sie spüren genau das, was er durchlebt hat. Die Ereignisse mitzumachen mit einem Toten, hat schon etwas, man kann nicht sagen Erschütterndes, aber etwas einen außerordentlich stark Berührendes.
Sehen Sie, ich möchte dafür ein Beispiel anführen. Die meisten von Ihnen werden sich erinnern, daß ich unter den Gestalten meiner Mysterien diejenige des Strader gezeichnet habe. Diese Gestalt des Strader ist so wie die meisten Gestalten der Mysterien der Wirklichkeit abgelesen. Eine Persönlichkeit hat es gegeben, die fast genau so gelebt hat, wie Strader in meinen Mysterien dargestellt worden ist. Sie können sich auch denken, daß ich für diese Persönlichkeit in ihrem physischen Erdendasein ein großes Interesse hatte. Nun ist sie 1912 gestorben. Von da ab fing mein Interesse an für ihr Erleben nach dem Tode. Alles, was diese Persönlichkeit, die ein theologisch-rationalistischer Schriftsteller zuletzt geworden ist, hier auf der Erde erlebt hat, erschien in viel stärkerem Maße, indem er selber die Wirkung seiner Bücher, seines theologischen Rationalismus und so weiter erlebte. Nachdem ich einige Zeit dasjenige mitgemacht hatte, was er erlebte, war es mir nicht mehr möglich, in den Mysterien die Gestalt des Strader fortzuführen: er stirbt im Drama, weil das Interesse nicht mehr für das Erdenleben aufzubringen war, das ausgelöscht war gegenüber dem Interesse an dem, was er nach dem Tode erlebte.
Es stellte sich noch ein kleines Nebenereignis ein: Einige Freunde interessierten sich sehr stark für den Nachlaß jenes Vorbildes des Strader, setzten sich dafür ein, wollten mir das vorführen. Ich konnte kein Interesse dafür gewinnen. Ich mußte vorbeigehen, mußte alles überhören aus dem einfachen Grunde, weil das Interesse an dem Toten ein viel vehementeres ist, alles andere auslöscht. Ich will nur darauf hinweisen, wie der Mensch in diesem Rücklauf des Lebens viel stärker, viel intensiver erlebt, als er auf der Erde erlebt. Es ist das Erdenleben fast wie ein Traum gegenüber diesem Erleben. Aber es ist eben das negative Erleben, das Erleben der Folgen in dem anderen von dem, was wir getan und unterlassen haben. Daher darf es auch nicht als ein bloß schauderhaftes Leben dargestellt werden. Aber immerhin, der Mensch muß schon gewahr werden, welche von seinen Taten, welche seiner Gedanken, Empfindungen gerecht waren, welche ungerecht.
Nun können Sie sich denken, daß da der erste Keim gebildet wird zu dem Karma. Denn wenn der Mensch sieht, wie es zugeht zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, urteilt er anders als wir. Ich habe es vielleicht schon einmal erwähnt, wie ich vor vielen Jahren eine Dame kennenlernte, die sich ein Gespräch anhörte, das in ihrer Gegenwart über die wiederholten Erdenleben geführt wurde. Sie sagte: Nachdem sie das eine gekostet habe, möchte sie nicht weitere Erdenleben haben, und hat sehr gewettert gegen die Möglichkeit, immer wiederzukommen. Da habe ich ihr sagen müssen: Ja, es mag sein, daß Sie hier auf der Erde dieses Urteil haben; aber darauf kommt es nicht an, sondern es kommt auf das Urteil an zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt. — Das hat sie zunächst für die Zeit, die sie da war, eingesehen, dann aber eine Karte von der Reise geschrieben: sie gäbe doch nicht die wiederholten Erdenleben zu!
Der Mensch, wenn er dieses intensive Erleben nach dem Tode hat, faßt dann eben den Entschluß, der etwa sich so ausdrücken läßt: Du bist durch dieses und jenes unvollkommen geworden, ein minderwertiges Menschenwesen; du mußt das wiederum ausgleichen! Damit ist der Vorsatz zum Karma gegeben. Und Vorsätze in der geistigen Welt, im Leben zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, sind Realitäten. Geradeso wie es hier eine Realität ist, daß Sie sich verbrennen, wenn Sie mit dem Finger in die Flamme greifen, so bedeutet es in der geistigen Welt, wenn Sie einen Vorsatz fassen, eine Realität, die sich verwirklicht. Und Sie fassen den Vorsatz sicher!
Das alles aber erlebt der Mensch in der Mondensphäre. Durch die nächsten Sphären, die Merkur- und Venussphäre, gelangt er dann allmählich dahin, in die Sonnensphäre kommen zu müssen. Die Merkur- und Venussphäre bilden für ihn den Übergang, um in die Sonnensphäre zu kommen. Aber da kann man zunächst nicht hinein, wenn man den ganzen Anhang, die ganze Last des Bösen, das sich einem während der Mondensphäre auf die Seele gelegt hat, mitschleppen wollte. Da ist denn die Einrichtung im Kosmos getroffen, daß beim Weggehen aus der Mondensphäre das Böse zurückbleibt. Das wartet, bis wir zurückkommen: da gehen wir wieder durch die Mondensphäre zurück. Aber mit dem Bösen lassen wir ein gutes Stück von uns selbst zurück, denn der Mensch ist ja eins mit seinen Taten. Wenn ich irgend etwas Böses vollbracht habe hier auf der Erde, werde ich dadurch nur minderwertig; beim Durchgang durch den Mond auf die geschilderte Weise verliere ich ein Stück meiner selbst, ich lasse ein Stück meiner selbst zurück. Ein Mensch, der ein ausgepichter Bösewicht wäre, wie es solche gar nicht gibt, der niemals etwas Gutes getan hätte, würde in der Mondensphäre ganz zurückgelassen werden. Nun, das gibt es nicht: die Leute kommen weiter.
Dann tritt man als mehr oder weniger vollständiger oder unvollständiger Mensch zunächst in die Merkursphäre ein. Auch in der Merkursphäre erlebt man zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt etwas Besonderes; etwas, was aber schon zu dem Sonnendasein vorbereitet. Sehen Sie, hier im physischen Erdenleben wird man ja auch in der einen oder anderen Weise krank. In die Sonnensphäre muß man ganz gesund an Seele und Geist kommen. Daher wird man in der Merkursphäre von alledem, was die Seele von ihren Krankheiten an sich trägt, befreit. Daher ist es auch so, daß wirkliche Medizin nur gelernt werden kann, wenn man sich anschaut, wie die Toten in der Merkursphäre von den Krankheiten befreit werden. Daraus kann man entnehmen, was man auf der Erde für die Menschen zu tun hat, um sie von Krankheiten zu befreien. Deshalb war immer in den Zeiten, wo es Mysterien und instinktives Hellsehen gab, die Medizin angesehen worden als etwas, was aus der Merkursphäre herunter durch die Mysterien geoffenbart wird. Denn sehen Sie: Was ist für die heutigen Menschen ein Gott? Ein Gott istein Wesen, das man niemals auf der Erde sehen kann. Das war es für die Menschen der instinktiv hellsehenden Urzeiten nicht. Merkur hatte seine Mysterien. Es gab Merkurmysterien, Sie können das nachlesen in meiner «Geheimwissenschaft». Ja, der allererste Hauptpriester der Merkurmysterien war Merkur selber. Das war dadurch bewerkstelligt worden, daß ein Mensch geboren wurde, dessen Geist durch einen übermenschlichen Vorgang befreit wurde, um auf eine andere Weise eine Verleiblichung zu suchen. Der Körper war da: diesen Körper benutzte der Gott Merkur, sich auf der Erde zu verkörpern, das heißt, sich in den Mysterien zu zeigen. Es waren schon die Götter in den alten Mysterien die Lehrer. So ist es für alle Götter Griechenlands, sie waren alle auf der Erde. Und dieser Gott Merkur hat den Menschen die Medizin gelehrt. Hippokrates hat eine spätere Tradition davon noch bewahrt.
Dann kommt der Mensch in die Venussphäre. In der Venussphäre ist es so, daß der Mensch ganz gewahr wird, wie er unvollständig ist; aber dieses Unvollständige wird nun gerade in der Venussphäre für das Sonnendasein bereitet, wo man am längsten darinnen ist. Man ist zweimal darin, doch brauchen wir nur von dem einen Mal zu sprechen. Man ist am längsten im Sonnendasein darinnen. In diesem Sonnendasein ist man erstens mit den Seelen zusammen, mit denen man irgendeine karmische Gemeinschaft hat und die jetzt in der geistigen Welt sind, die ebenso Gestorbene sind wie man selbst; man ist aber auch zusammen mit den Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien, mit Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes und so weiter. Was geschieht da? Da arbeitet der Mensch, indem er sein Unvollständiges in seinem Bewußtsein gewahr wird, mit den Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien zusammen an dem Muster und Urbild seines folgenden Erdendaseins, und zwar arbeitet er in der ersten Hälfte des Sonnendaseins mehr das Urbild der physischen Körperlichkeit aus, in der zweiten Hälfte mehr das Urbild seines moralischen Erdendaseins. Diese Arbeit während des Sonnendaseins, sie ist tatsächlich nicht etwa so einförmig, wie es scheint, wenn man sie schildern muß, sondern sie ist ungeheuer viel reicher, viel großartiger und gewaltiger als alles, was der Mensch auf der Erde erleben kann. Der Mensch erlebt hier auf der Erde nicht das, was unmittelbar in seiner Haut eingeschlossen ist, sondern das, was um ihn ist. Während des Sonnendaseins ist es gerade umgekehrt: da erlebt der Mensch alles, was im Kosmos ist. Wie wir hier sagen: Dies ist mein Magen -, so sagen wir dann: Da draußen ist meine Venus -; wie wir hier sagen: Dies ist mein Herz -, so sagen wir: Dies ist meine Sonne. — Die Wesen des Weltenalls werden unsere Organe. Wir werden selber wie das Weltenall, und der Mensch, der hier auf der Erde steht — aber im Geiste erfaßt -, der nur ausgefüllt ist von der irdischen Erdensubstanz, der ist dann unsere Welt. Und diese innere Welt des Menschen, sie ist wahrhaftig umfassender, grandioser als der außermenschliche Kosmos hier auf Erden. Was der Mensch alles in sich birgt, das ist auf Erden dem Menschen unbewußt. Aber es ist viel größer als das, was der Mensch auf der Erde sieht. Und was er hier auf der Erde in sich birgt, es wird ihm offenbar während des Sonnendaseins. Und aus dem, was da seine Welt ist, arbeitet er heraus die Gestaltung seines physischen und moralischen Wesens für das nächste Erdendasein. Da wird nun auch für das Karma gearbeitet. Nachdem wir kennengelernt haben, wie wir zu arbeiten haben in den ersten Jahrzehnten nach dem Tode, wird hier an dem Zustandekommen dieses Karma gearbeitet. Ich möchte sagen: der letzte Schliff kommt erst zustande, wenn wir unser Böses beim zweiten Durchgang durch die Mondensphäre wiederfinden und dann zu dem, was Vorsatz ist, zu dem, was Ausarbeitung ist im Urbilde, auch die Kraft hinzubringen, auf der Erde uns in einem neuen Erdenleben in das Karma hineinzustürzen.
Nun, um noch genauer einzusehen, wie das Karma eigentlich ausgearbeitet wird, müssen wir folgendes beachten. Sterne, was sind sie denn eigentlich? Die physischen Wissenschafter reden von den Sternen, als ob das brennende Gaskugeln oder dergleichen wären. Das ist aber alles nicht der Fall. Denken Sie sich nur, Sie wären auf der Venus. Dann würde Ihnen die Erde ungefähr so erscheinen, wie Ihnen jetzt die Venus erscheint, und Sie würden halt dann die Erde so beschreiben, wie Sie jetzt die Venus beschreiben, würden übersehen, daß hier auf der Erde, die der Schauplatz der Menschen ist, so und so viele Menschenseelen sind. Geradeso sind da, wo jeder andere Stern leuchtet, Seelen. Es sind Seelen auf dem Monde: die Seelen der großen Urlehrer, und diese schon etwas untermischt mit den Seelen der Angeloi. Auf dem Merkur: Seelen der Archangeloi; mit denen lebt man zusammen, wenn man die Sphäre der Archangeloi durcheilt -— Gott Merkur ist ein Erzengelwesen. Dann auf der Venus die Archai. Während der Sonne — Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes: namentlich mit denen zusammen formt man sich sein Karma. Man muß das, was da in den Sternen leuchtet, nur ansehen als das äußere Zeichen für Geisterkolonien, die im Kosmos sind. In der Richtung, wo wir einen Stern sehen, müssen wir wissen, daß eine Geisterkolonie da ist.
Nachdem der Mensch das Sonnendasein durchgemacht hat, kommt er in die Marssphäre, in die Jupitersphäre, in die Saturnsphäre. Da hat er ja schon angefangen, in der Sonnensphäre, an seinem Karma zu arbeiten. Aber er bedarf außerdem — damit er nachher sein Böses findet, wenn er zurückgeht durch die Mondensphäre -, er bedarf, um das Karma so vorzubereiten, daß es sich auf der Erde realisieren kann, der Geister, die in diesen Planetensphären leben, der Geister, die auf dem Mars, der Geister, die auf dem Jupiter, der Geister, die auf dem Saturn leben. Und namentlich wenn es sich darum handelt, recht charakteristische Menschenschicksale auszuarbeiten, dann ist es schon so, daß das letzte an der Ausarbeitung dieser karmischen Zusammenhänge gerade in der Marssphäre, Jupitersphäre oder Saturnsphäre geschieht. Allerdings, es kann auch an dem Karma noch gearbeitet werden, wenn der Mensch wieder zurückkommt in die Venussphäre, auch in der Merkursphäre. Der Mensch arbeitet zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt mit den Wesenheiten des Planetensystems an seinem Karma. Und dieses zu verfolgen, wie da an dem Karma gearbeitet wird, das ist außerordentlich interessant.
Es ist heute nun einmal die Zeit gekommen — wie ich von dieser Stelle aus schon einmal hier ausführte —, wo in einer offeneren, freieren Weise, unverhüllt von manchen geistigen Tatsachen gesprochen werden soll. Die Weihnachtstagung am Goetheanum war dazu da, um diesen Zug von Esoterik einzuleiten, der in der Gegenwart durch die ganze Anthroposophische Gesellschaft gehen soll. Daher habe ich, als ich das letzte Mal unter Ihnen sprechen durfte, schon begonnen mit der Erklärung von allerlei karmischen Zusammenhängen. Man soll nicht glauben, daß man gewissermaßen mit grober Hand hineingreift in das Menschenleben, wenn man sich bemüht, gerade interessanten menschlichen Erscheinungen gegenüber von den karmischen Zusammenhängen zu sprechen. Dadurch wird die Welt erst durchsichtig, lichtvoll, und damit wahrhaftig nicht ärmer, sondern reicher, großartiger.
So möchte ich Sie denn heute hinweisen auf eine Menschenindividualität, die mit einem ungeheuer offenen Sinn etwa im zweiten nachchristlichen Jahrhundert in dem heutigen Italien, also dem damaligen Rom inkarniert war, dazumal alles das mitgemacht hat, was an opferwilligem Märtyrertum von denjenigen durchgemacht worden ist, die als Christen sich im Römischen Reiche allmählich durchsetzen wollten, die auch durchgemacht hat die grausamen Ungerechtigkeiten, die Verderbtheiten, die Versumpfungen, an denen das Römische Reich dazumal schon so reich war. Eine Fülle von Gutem und Bösem hatte sich auf die Empfindungen dieser Individualität ergossen. Und wenn man hinschaut mit den Mitteln der Geistesforschung, durch die man so etwas erkennen kann, dann findet man diese Individualität wirklich wie, ich möchte sagen, in Lebensstürmen hineingezogen in dasjenige, was dazumal in der zweiten Hälfte des 2. nachchristlichen Jahrhunderts im Römischen Reiche bei der Ausbreitung des Christentums erlebt wurde. Und gerade bei dieser Individualität liegt etwas außerordentlich Ergreifendes vor, wenn man den geistigen Blick auf sie richtet in der Art, wie ich es das letzte Mal für andere menschliche Individualitäten in ihren wiederholten Erdenleben auseinandergesetzt habe.
Gerade bei dieser Individualität, die im hohen Alter ihr Leben beschloß, liegt das vor, daß sie, nachdem sie soviel, ich möchte sagen, eines höchsten opferwilligen Guten bei dem aufkeimenden Christentum gesehen hatte und unendlich viel Böses, Schlechtes in dem damaligen Römertum, zu etwas kam wie zu einem Urteil und einer Frage: Wo ist denn das Mittelmaß? Gibt es nur ganz Gutes und ganz Böses in der Welt? - Man kann deutlich mit dem imaginativen, inspirierten Bewußtsein verfolgen, wie diese Individualität dann im 11. nachchristlichen Jahrhundert als Frau wiedergeboren wurde. Durch die Erlebnisse in der Frauenpersönlichkeit glich sich auf der einen Seite das Scharfe, Eckige wieder aus, zu dem diese Persönlichkeit während ihres römischen Lebens in hohem Alter gekommen war, wurde weich, wurde zum inneren sinnenden Betrachten des Guten und Bösen. Dann kam sie wieder, diese Persönlichkeit, im 18. Jahrhundert und wurde geboren als der deutsche Dichter Friedrich Schiller. Und nun versuchen Sie einzudringen in Schillers Leben, wie es sich herausarbeiter: erst zu einem Mittelmaß der Lebensauffassung; wie er dann Goethe dazu brauchte, um abzustreifen alles dasjenige, was er mitgebracht hat von der Überzeugung: es gibt nur Gutes, es gibt nur Böses. Lesen Sie seine Dramen, und Sie werden sie verstehen, wenn Sie in dieser Weise zurückblicken auf sein früheres Erdenleben. Aber welchem Umstande haben wir das zuzuschreiben? Wir haben das dem Umstande zuzuschreiben, daß Schiller, in dem noch dasjenige lebendig war, was er im römischen Leben durchgemacht hatte, nachdem er aber schon durchgegangen war durch die Fraueninkarnation im Mittelalter, dann sein Karma in der Zeit zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt besonders ausgestaltete in der Saturnsphäre.
Diese Saturnsphäre in ihrer besonderen Eigentümlichkeit und Wesenheit kennenzulernen, dazu ist eigentlich die Initiationswissenschaft eines höheren Alters notwendig. Denn sehen Sie, Sie können die Frage aufwerfen: Wie lernt man denn überhaupt kennen, was da auf den Sternen und so weiter lebt? Nun, ich habe Ihnen geschildert: Wenn der Mensch aufsteigt zum imaginativen Bewußtsein, dann schaut er in einem großen Tableau sein ganzes Leben, aber er schaut es auch in Epochen geteilt. Erlangt man die Inspiration und kommt wieder zum leeren Bewußtsein, so daß man auslöschen kann dieses Tableau, dann leuchtet aus jeder Epoche etwas auf. Statt daß man sein eigenes Leben zwischen der Geburt und dem siebenten Lebensjahre schaut, erblickt man an dieser Stelle des Lebenstableaus die Geschehnisse des Mondes: da kann man hineinblicken in die Geschehnisse des Mondes. — In der zweiten Lebensepoche glänzt gewissermaßen durch alles dasjenige, was sich abspielt zwischen dem Zahnwechsel und der Geschlechtsreife, das Merkurdasein. Dieses Leben der Schulzeit in diesem Tableau nach rückwärts gesehen, führt einen eben in das Merkurdasein. Bedenken Sie, wie geistreich eigentlich in der Zeit der instinktiven Weisheit auf der Erde den einzelnen Planeten ihre Funktionen zuerteilt waren! Die Statistik lehrt, daß der Mensch am gesündesten ist nicht in den Jahren zwischen Geburt und Zahnwechsel, auch nicht nach der Geschlechtsreife, sondern während der Schulzeit, weil da die Zeit ist, wo Merkur in den Menschen am meisten hereinwirkt, auch in das Erdendasein. — In der nächsten Epoche, zwischen der Geschlechtsreife und dem einundzwanzigsten, zweiundzwanzigsten Jahre ungefähr, sieht man die Vorgänge und Wesenheiten der Venus. Wieder ist es geistreich, daß der Geschlechtssphäre, wenn sie zu wirken beginnt, die Venussphäre zugeteilt wurde. — Zwischen dem einundzwanzigsten und zweiundvierzigsten Jahre das Sonnendasein; zwischen dem zweiundvierzigsten und neunundvierzigsten Jahre das Marsdasein; zwischen dem neunundvierzigsten und sechsundfünfzigsten Jahre das Jupiterdasein und zwischen dem sechsundfünfzigsten und dreiundsechzigsten Lebensjahre das Saturndasein. Und eigentlich kann man alle Zusammenhänge, die sich abspielen, an denen der Saturn beteiligt ist, für das Leben zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt auch als Initiierter erst sehen, wenn man über das dreiundsechzigste Lebensjahr hinaus ist. Vorher kann man auf die verschiedenste Weise von diesem Dasein erfahren; aber aus eigener Anschauung im Zusammenhang die Dinge sehen kann man erst, wenn man das dreiundsechzigste Lebensjahr überschritten hat. Nun werden Sie begreifen, warum ich erst jetzt spreche über etwas, was mit dem Saturndasein zusammenhängt.
Also, Schiller arbeitete sich sein Karma ganz besonders in der Sphäre des Saturn aus. Dieses Saturndasein zu schauen, auf diese Weise, wie ich es hier angedeutet habe, das gibt nun allerdings einen, ich möchte sagen, im höchsten Grade bestürzenden Eindruck, weil es so verschieden ist von dem, was man auf der Erde erleben kann. Auf dem Saturn ist in dem Bewußtsein der dortigen Wesenheiten nur Vergangenheit, gar nicht Gegenwart. Aber die Vergangenheit ist in einer großartigen Weise da. Sehen Sie, wenn ich es vergleichen soll mit etwas, was auf der Erde geschehen könnte — es geschieht natürlich nicht, aber hypothetisch geschehen könnte -, so müßte ich sagen: Denken Sie sich einmal, Sie haben keine Ahnung, wie Sie ausschauen, Sie wissen nur, daß Sie sind. Sie handeln, Sie tun: Sie sehen das auch nicht, erst wenn es vergangen ist. Denken Sie sich, Sie gehen: Sie sehen Ihre eigenen Schritte nicht, die Bewegungen nicht; aber gleich hinterher verwandeln sich diese Bewegungen in ein Schneemännchen, und Sie ziehen die ganze Bewegung nach, wenn Sie sich umblicken, und schauen, was Sie getan haben. So ist das Leben dieser besonderen Geister auf dem Saturn. Sie nehmen nie dasjenige wahr, was sie aus dem unmittelbaren Entschluß der Gegenwart tun, sondern sie sehen es erst, wenn es vergangen ist. Es ist für das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein schwer vorzustellen, aber es ist so. In einem solchen Dasein sind auch die Individualitäten, die mit einer solchen Individualität wie der Schillerschen das Karma formen. Solche Individualitäten nehmen dann auf ein wunderbares Hineinschauen in Vergangenheiten. So daß die Schillersche Seele, bevor sie 1759 geboren worden ist, in der Tat in der geistigen Welt mit einem grandiosen Rückblick auf alles Vergangene war, das mit dem eigenen Karma zusammenhängt. Beim Hereingehen auf die Erde verwandelt sich das in die Reaktion: das Schauen des Vergangenen verwandelt sich in das Fassen, in das enthusiastische Fassen von Zukunftsidealen. Und so entstanden die Schillerschen Zukunftsideale aus seiner karmischen Arbeit im Saturndasein.
Nehmen wir ein anderes Leben, ein Leben, das einmal in einem Erdendasein in Griechenland vorhanden war, dort viel zusammengekommen ist mit plastischer griechischer Kunst, aber auch mit platonischer Philosophie, namentlich mit riesigem Enthusiasmus in einem Jünglingsdasein aufgenommen hat plastische Kunst, die zu gleicher Zeit geistig geschaut werden kann, wobei das geistig Geschaute wiederum mit ungeheurem innerem Künstlertum in Künstlerisches übersetzt werden kann: Wir haben, nachdem sie auch durch andere Inkarnationen gegangen war, diese Individualität beim Ausbilden des Karma zu verfolgen in der Jupitersphäre. Die Jupiterwesen sind anderer Art als die Saturnwesen. Die Jupiterwesen sind nicht so wie zum Beispiel die Erdenmenschen. Wenn der Erdenmensch weise werden will, dann muß er eine innerliche Entwickelung durchmachen, ringen, innerlich kämpfen, Überwindungen durchmachen, kurz, in Zeiten, die von Entwickelung erfüllt sind, rankt sich der Mensch auf der Erde zu einer bescheidenen Weisheit hinauf. Bei den Jupiterwesen ist es anders; die werden überhaupt nicht so geboren wie die Erdenwesen, sondern sie gestalten sich heraus aus dem Kosmos. So wie Sie eine Wolke anschauen, die sich herausformt, so formen sich die Jupiterwesen auf eine ätherisch-astralische Art aus dem Kosmos heraus. Dann sterben sie nicht, sie durchdringen einander, darum haben sie Platz. Aber sie sind sozusagen realisierte Weisheit. Sie werden mit der Weisheit geboren und können gar nicht anders als weise sein. Geradeso wie wir Blutzirkulation haben, haben sie Weisheit. Es ist ihre Natur; so sind nun einmal diese Jupiterwesen. Unter denen kann nun wiederum das Karma geformt werden. Diese Individualität, die eines der wichtigsten Erdenleben hatte im alten Griechenland, ging durch die Jupitersphäre, wurde berührt von alledem, was Weisheit des Jupiter ist, bildete sich da ihr Karma und wurde wiederum geboren im 18. Jahrhundert als Goethe. Daher dieser wunderbare Zusammenschluß von Griechentum und Weisheit bei Goethe.
Ich glaube nicht, daß, wenn wir Geschichte so studieren, daß wir das, was auf der Erde geschieht, aus den Mysterien, aus den Geheimnissen des Kosmos heraus begreifen, die Erdengeschichte an Wert verliert. Mögen da immerhin trockene Professoren kommen und sagen: Nun ja, es ist doch viel lebensvoller, den Menschen Goethe zu nehmen, wie er sich darbietet, als ihn so hinaufzuheben in eine höhere Sphäre! - In besseren Zeiten der Menschheitsentwickelung, als es noch ein instinktives Hellsehen gegeben hat, da redeten die Menschen auch offen von der Art und Weise, wie sich durch Menschenhandlungen, Menschendasein hier auf der Erde das Himmelsdasein offenbart. Wir müssen zurückkommen, wir müssen aus dieser Abstraktheit herauskommen, wo wir glauben, wir seien solche Regenwürmer, die da auf der Erde stehen und hinaufschauen und nur dasjenige sehen, was die Astronomen und Astrophysiker von den Sternen sagen. Und dieser Kampf wird schon unbedingt verstanden werden müssen, der in unserer so schwergeprüften Zivilisation und Kultur vor sich geht zwischen den Menschen, die nach dem Geiste ringen, um den Kosmos in seiner Geistgesetzmäßigkeit zu durchschauen, und denjenigen Menschen, die nichts wissen wollen davon; die sich auf die Erde beschränken nicht nur in Naturwissenschaft, sondern auch in dem, was die Leute an den Universitäten Geisteswissenschaft nennen: da studiert man Dokumente, also auch dasjenige, was nur physisch-sinnlich da ist. Es wird schon eine Entscheidung kommen im Laufe der Erdentwickelung. Entweder geht unser Niedergang im Geistigen immer weiter und weiter vor sich, und eine Krankheit, von der ich seit Jahren spreche, auch in öffentlichen Vorträgen gesprochen habe, eine Krankheit wird sich immer mehr und mehr ausbreiten - es steht noch nicht viel von ihr in medizinischen Büchern, aber um so mehr im Leben: die «dementia professoralis» —, oder aber der Mensch wird sich bequemen müssen, aufzunehmen in seinen Enthusiasmus die Erkenntnisse des Übersinnlichen. Damit dringt er auch in den Zusammenhang zwischen dem Kosmos und dem menschlichen Leben ein.
Ich möchte Ihnen noch ein drittes Beispiel vorführen, das etwas komplizierter ist. Da hat man es zu tun mit einer Individualität, die in einem früheren Erdenleben verkörpert war in Indien, als Indien schon im Niedergange war, und in diesem Erdenleben allerlei aufgenommen hat, was sie aufnehmen konnte bei einem außerordentlich schlechten physischen Sehvermögen. Man muß schon auf solche Einzelheiten eingehen. Und Einzelheiten sind es zumeist - ich habe darauf das letzte Mal aufmerksam gemacht -—, wodurch man in die Zusammenhänge schauend hineinkommt. Diese Individualität hat dann auch verschiedene andere Erdenleben durchgemacht, die aber weniger maßgebend waren als dasjenige, was veranlagt in ihr war gerade dadurch, daß sie in Indien mit einem wegen des schlechten Sehens etwas oberflächlichen Blick die Lotosblumen und -blüten mehr sehnsuchtsvoll im Nebel gesehen hat als in deutlicher Klarheit, überhaupt das Leben so kennengelernt hat, wie man es kennenlernt, wenn man so drüber hinwegschaut, wenn man nicht eingeht auf die Dinge. Diese Individualität hat dann ihr Karma auf eine komplizierte Weise ausgebildet. Zunächst wurde in der Marssphäre alles dasjenige ausgebildet, was diese Persönlichkeit zu einer Art Kampfhahn auf geistigem Gebiete machte. Dann hat diese Persönlichkeit sehr viel an ihrem Karma gearbeitet in der Merkursphäre, aufgenommen Witz, Satire in der Merkursphäre. Und denken Sie sich im Hintergrunde eine nichteuropäische Welt: die Individualität tendiert dazu, in Europa wiedergeboren zu werden, sie geht aber durch die Marssphäre durch: Kampf; durch die Merkursphäre: schneidendes kritisches Denken und Empfinden. Nachdem sie dann noch besondere Eigenschaften ausgebildet hat in der Venussphäre - es ist ein ganz besonders kompliziertes Karma — und über das Physische wie hinwegschaut, aber doch außerordentlich stark durchgeistigt ist, wird diese Persönlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert Heinrich Heine. Nun versuchen Sie sich einmal recht hineinzuversetzen in das Verständnis, das man für jede Strophe bei Heinrich Heine gewinnt bis in die Sprache, bis in die Gestaltung, bis in die Worte, wenn man weiß: das ist eigentlich in der Merkur-, Venus-, Marssphäre erzeugt, stammt eigentlich alles aus dem Kosmos. Im Kosmos wird eben das Karma gebildet und geformt; hier auf der Erde wird es ausgelebt. Und wenn man so zurückblickt auf dieses Lebenstableau: man schaut die Mondensphäre, Merkursphäre; von der Geschlechtsreife bis zum einundzwanzigsten, zweiundzwanzigsten Jahre die Venussphäre; vom einundzwanzigsten bis zum zweiundvierzigsten Jahre die Sonnensphäre, dann die Marssphäre, Jupitersphäre, Saturnsphäre - auf die folgenden Jahre kann ich nicht eingehen, da sieht man schon auch etwas, aber ich kann jetzt nicht darauf eingehen -, da erblickt man, daß diese Sphären etwas zu tun haben mit dem Karma. Das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein weiß nicht, daß das im Menschen ist: Merkursphäre, Mondensphäre und so weiter. Doch wird von dem, was da im Menschen ist, das Karma bewirkt; da wird der Mensch hingetrieben zu der Art, wie sich das Karma auslebt. Wenn also Heinrich Heine drüben durch Venus-, Merkur-, Marswesen sein Karma ausgestaltet hat, so sind es dieselben Venus-, Merkur-, Marswesen, die durch seine irdische Leiblichkeit wirken, damit sie ihm helfen, dieses Karma zu erfüllen. So steht der Mensch - gerade durch sein Karma - seiner ganzen Wesenheit nach in dem Kosmos darinnen, lebt hier auf der Erde den Kosmos aus. Narürlich der eine so, der andere so.
Diese Dinge müssen mit einem freien, umfassenden Sinne beobachtet werden. Wenn ich Ihnen sage: Goethe hat das, was er im alten Griechenland veranlagt hatte, umgewandelt in der Jupitersphäre in das instinktiv Weisheitsvolle, das kommt ja aus allem hervor, was er geschaffen hat, durch die Wesen, die dort wirken, so geschieht das bei einem anderen wieder anders. Da lebte, als die mexikanische Kultur sehr im Niedergange war, eine Individualität; es waren noch die Nachklänge und auch der Kultus aus den Mysterien da. Sehr stark lebte darinnen, in all dem Magischen, Dekadenten einer Mysterienzeit Mexikos eine Individualität, die sehr genau wußte, wie es sich mit der Lebendigkeit von Quetsalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoka, Taotl verhält. Die gewöhnlichen Kulturhistorien enthalten gewöhnlich kaum mehr als die Namen. Aber von all diesen Göttern, Quetsalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoka, Taotl, gab es ganz lebendige Vorstellungen, Beziehungen des Menschen zu überirdischen Wesenheiten. Das durchschaute die Individualität, die ich meine, wurde dann verhältnismäßig schnell ohne ein Zwischenerdenleben wiederum geboren, lebte im 19, Jahrhundert als der magischokkulte Eliphas Levi, nachdem er im Leben zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt durch die Jupitersphäre gegangen war. Zauberisches, Magisches, Abgelebtes hat er im alten Mexiko aufgenommen. Das hat sich in der Jupitersphäre so umgestaltet, daß sich dieses Eigentümliche, aber Weisheitsvoll-Primitive - eine Weisheit minderer Sorte ergeben hat, wie es in den Büchern von Eliphas L£vi ist. Dasselbe, was bei Goethe in der Jupitersphäre dieses milde olympische Feuer, diese überragende Weisheit hervorgebracht hat wegen des früheren Erdenlebens, das bringt bei Eliphas Levi ein etwas scharlatanhaftes Herumreden in allerlei Zaubersprüchen hervor. Maßgebend für das, was die Sterne aus unserem Karma machen, sind schon die Erdenleben. Aber die Sterne - das heißt die Wesen, die da sind, wo die Sterne das Dasein dieser Wesen anzeigen -, sie gestalten dasjenige zum Karma um, was sich auf der Erde hier zum Karma veranlagt.
Sehen Sie, in dieser Art wird nun versucht, Anthroposophie immer mehr und mehr zu vertiefen. Und es wird schon hingenommen werden müssen, daß manches paradox klingt, befremdend klingt. Aber das Paradoxe und Befremdende ist eben die wirkliche Wahrheit. Denn das Menschenleben ist tiefer und komplizierter gegründet, als man gewöhnlich meint. Um es zu verstehen, darf man nicht auf der Erde bleiben mit seinen Gedanken, muß von der Erde hinausschweifen in die Weiten des Kosmos. Und wie man auf der Erde nur zu leicht den Geist vergißt und die Materie schaut, so ist das Gegenteil der Fall, sobald man wirklich nur mit ein wenig imaginativer Erkenntnis in den Sternenhimmel kommt. Da vergißt man ganz sicher die Materie und schaut allmählich die Geister, wie es schließlich in der alten primitiven Zeit die armen Hirten getan haben, wie es bis in das Mittelalter herein war, wo man nicht bloß äußere Zeichen hingezeichnet hat auf die Himmelssphäre, sondern Figuren, weil man in der Tat diese Figuren in imaginativer Erkenntnis schaute. Anthroposophie vertieft schon auch die Empfindung, wie ich öfters sagte. Denn denken Sie einmal: wenn man es mit solcher Erkenntnis versucht, wie ich sie geschildert habe, dann schaut man auf das Schicksal eines Menschen hin. Was sieht man da alles! Da beginnt man eigentlich auf das Schicksal eines jeden Menschen mit heiliger Scheu zu schauen. Denn was wirkt in dem Schicksale eines jeden Menschen? Umfassende Sternenweisheit! Ganz umfassende Sternenweisheit! Durch nichts schaut man in einer so ergreifenden, in die Seele tief einschneidenden Weise das Wirken der Götter im Weltenall, als wenn man es schaut im Schicksale des Menschen, in dieser durch das Ewige hindurch wellenden, umfassenden Weltgerechtigkeit, die eigentlich das hinter dem Menschenwesen webende Dasein, Tun und Handeln und Denken der Götter ist. Das wollte ich Ihnen heute vom Karma sagen. Das Karma der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft und der Inhalt der anthroposophischen Bewegung.
Second Lecture
I would like to thank Dr. Unger for his words. You will believe me when I say that it gives me great satisfaction to be able to speak again among friends in Stuttgart.
The last time I was allowed to speak here on the occasion of our Waldorf school conference, I spoke to you about a number of things that relate to connections of a karmic nature in humanity and its development. Today I would like to say a few things in continuation of that lecture, starting from what is more or less known to you and then moving on to the unknown.
We know that man, when he passes through the gate of death, must first go through the fact of the dispersion of his etheric body into the cosmos, after he has laid aside the physical body himself at the moment of death. Now, this first stage after death, the shedding or actually the dispersion of the etheric body into the cosmos, is not what we want to look at today, but what follows. And this can best be understood if we first take a look at human life on earth as it takes place between birth and death. This human life on earth passes through two sharply separated states: waking and sleeping. Now you know from the various anthroposophical observations that the waking state arises from the fact that the four members essential for the human being today - the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego - are joined together, stimulating and supporting each other in their activities; but that the state of sleep arises from the fact that the physical body and the etheric body remain in bed, leading, as it were, a provisional, temporary plant existence, while the astral body and the ego organization live independently in the spiritual world, separated from the physical and etheric bodies. Now you know from ordinary life experience that when a person sends his memory back to his life on earth, he actually falsifies this memory in a certain sense. For when we look back with ordinary consciousness into our earthly life, then the retrospect appears to us like a continuously flowing stream; one event emerges from the other, and we usually do not pay attention to the fact that we are not dealing with such a continuously flowing stream of memories, but that the course of memory is constantly interrupted by the nights, so that we should actually see memory in this way: Day, night, day, night; always a light, as it were, continued in a dark, which in turn is continued in a light, and so on. What remains unconscious for the most part, with the exception of the dreams that arise from nightly sleep, is that part of earthly life that we sleep through: as a rule it is a third of earthly life, if the human being is not exactly a sleeping rat. You can definitely add up - even if you take into account how much more the child sleeps - what is slept: you get about a third of life on earth.
First of all, we can ask ourselves: What are the ego organization and the astral body doing during this sleeping time? They are in the spiritual world. But they do not perceive in the spiritual world, they remain unconscious, as I said, with the exception of dreams. Even if man, as he is with his ordinary consciousness on earth, were always to perceive in sleep, he would be misled to one side or the other: Either to the side that his consciousness would appear to be faint during the day, that he would walk around in a kind of paralysis of consciousness, if he is a more ahrimanically inclined person, or that he would walk around with a confused consciousness, with a consciousness in which thoughts and sensations roll over each other, if he is a more luciferically inclined person.
The human being is generally protected from perceiving the spiritual world around him at night by what is called the “guardian of the threshold”. But when man has passed through the gate of death and has spent the first days in which he has laid aside the etheric body, then between death and a new birth he enters an existence that runs backwards, where we begin with the day of death, go on to the previous day and so on, and so live through life once more, but now in the direction from death to birth. Now, however, we do not live through the days, but we live through the nights. Therefore, the time in which we spend life backwards in this way takes up about a third of our lifetime. For a person who has reached the age of sixty and then dies, this backward journey takes about twenty years. So this life is lived through three times as quickly as life on earth. And then we live through this life between death and a new birth in such a way that we look at the nights in which images have been created, albeit unconsciously, which are in a certain way negative images of life.
If man were not protected by the “Guardian of the Threshold”, he would experience every night - but in a way that he cannot bear, from which he would have such consequences as I have just described - every night he would experience when he has done something bad to someone, as if he had to put himself in the other person's place, in what he feels and experiences through the evil that he has done to him. During sleep, the human being is then really inside the being to whom he has inflicted the one or the other. Only, for the reason given, we do not experience this during sleep. But after death we experience it in the marked time, and we experience it very, very strongly. We relive our life on earth and experience everywhere the compensatory experiences for what we have done or failed to do. How do we experience these compensatory experiences?
To answer this question, we must refer to a cosmic experience. You will remember that I have often explained to you how in the course of the earth's development the moon, which was originally a link in the earth's development, separated from the earth. I have only recently described here how the moon left the earth and formed an independent physical existence. But I have already mentioned that some time after the moon separated its physical nature from the earth, the very old primal teachers of humanity followed, who, as long as they were on earth, were not embodied in a physical body, but only in an etheric body. They therefore have an imaginative, inspiring effect on people. And all the wonderful teachings that are clothed in a more poetic guise, that are contained in the legends of the peoples, stem from a magnificent, majestic primal wisdom that existed on earth and was imparted by the primal teachers of humanity. But these primal teachers were able to retreat to the moon by virtue of their nature, and there they have lived ever since.
When man now passes through the gate of death, he actually lives through the cosmos. And he actually lives through the cosmos in such a way that he enlarges more and more with his existence. At first he grows into the lunar sphere. But by first growing into the lunar sphere after his death, man comes together with what these great primal teachers now are. These great primal teachers preserve, so to speak, a naively instinctive innocent state of the human race. Before people fell into the possibility of doing evil, these primal teachers were there on earth. Therefore, they are the ones who record what is written into the Akashic Records during the nights that we live through within our earthly existence; they permeate it with their own essence and then allow us to experience it more strongly in the first third of our return through life after death than the events of life here on earth. Anyone who can look into what a dead person lives through in these first decades after death knows that the earthly experiences are robust enough, they push us and they drive us, but what is lived through there through the power of magically working teachers who have set up their colony on the moon, that has a much stronger effect, that drowns out, that over-colors the earthly experiences. And we really do go through that. Let's say you have
Slap someone in the face: when you live back, you don't experience the sense of well-being, the anger or resentment from which the slap originated, but you crawl into the other person, experience how it hurt them, how it shook their mind, you feel exactly what they went through. There is something, you can't say shattering, but something extraordinarily moving about sharing the events with a dead person.
You see, I would like to give you an example. Most of you will remember that among the figures in my Mysteries I drew that of Strader. This figure of Strader, like most of the figures in the Mysteries, is taken from reality. There was a personality who lived almost exactly as Strader was portrayed in my Mysteries. You can also imagine that I had a great interest in this personality during his physical existence on earth. She died in 1912. From then on I became interested in her experience after death. Everything that this personality, who finally became a theological-rationalist writer, experienced here on earth, appeared to a much greater extent when he himself experienced the effect of his books, his theological rationalism and so on. After I had experienced what he experienced for some time, it was no longer possible for me to continue the figure of Strader in the Mysteries: he dies in the drama because I could no longer muster the interest for his life on earth, which was extinguished in comparison to the interest in what he experienced after death.
A small side event occurred: some friends were very interested in the legacy of Strader's role model, took an interest in it and wanted to show it to me. I couldn't gain any interest in it. I had to pass by, I had to ignore everything for the simple reason that the interest in the dead man is a much more vehement one, it extinguishes everything else. I only want to point out how man experiences life much more strongly, much more intensely in this return of life than he experiences on earth. Life on earth is almost like a dream compared to this experience. But it is precisely the negative experience, the experience of the consequences in the other of what we have done and failed to do. Therefore it must not be presented as a merely dreadful life. But nevertheless, man must become aware of which of his deeds, which of his thoughts and feelings were just and which were unjust.
Now you can imagine that this is where the first seed of karma is formed. For when man sees what happens between death and a new birth, he judges differently from us. I may have mentioned before how many years ago I met a lady who listened to a conversation that was held in her presence about repeated earth lives. She said that after she had tasted one, she did not want to have any more earth lives, and railed against the possibility of coming back again and again. Then I had to say to her: Yes, it may be that you have this judgment here on earth; but that is not what matters, what matters is the judgment between death and a new birth. - She initially recognized this for the time she was there, but then wrote a map of the journey: she would not admit to repeated earthly lives!
When a person has this intense experience after death, he makes a decision that can be expressed like this: You have become imperfect through this and that, an inferior human being; you must make up for it again! This is the resolution for karma. And resolutions in the spiritual world, in life between death and a new birth, are realities. Just as it is a reality here that you burn yourself when you reach into the flame with your finger, so in the spiritual world, when you make a resolution, it means a reality that is realized. And you make the intention safely!
But man experiences all this in the lunar sphere. Through the next spheres, the Mercury and Venus spheres, he then gradually reaches the point where he has to enter the solar sphere. The Mercury and Venus spheres form the transition for him to enter the solar sphere. But you can't enter there at first if you want to drag along the whole attachment, the whole burden of evil that has settled on your soul during the lunar sphere. The cosmos is set up in such a way that evil remains behind when we leave the lunar sphere. It waits until we return: then we go back through the sphere of the moon. But with the evil we leave a good part of ourselves behind, for man is one with his deeds. If I have done something evil here on earth, I only become inferior as a result; when I pass through the moon in the way described, I lose a piece of myself, I leave a piece of myself behind. A person who was an out-and-out villain, as there are no such things, who had never done anything good, would be left behind completely in the lunar sphere. Well, there is no such thing: people move on.
Then one enters the Mercury sphere as a more or less complete or incomplete human being. In the sphere of Mercury, too, you experience something special between death and a new birth; something that already prepares you for your existence on the sun. You see, here in physical life on earth you also become ill in one way or another. One must enter the solar sphere completely healthy in soul and spirit. Therefore, in the sphere of Mercury, one is freed from everything that the soul carries with it from its illnesses. Therefore, real medicine can only be learned by observing how the dead are freed from illness in the sphere of Mercury. From this we can see what has to be done for people on earth in order to free them from illness. That is why in the times when there were mysteries and instinctive clairvoyance, medicine was always regarded as something that is revealed from the Mercury sphere down through the mysteries. For you see, what is a god for people today? A god is a being that can never be seen on earth. It was not for the people of the instinctively clairvoyant primeval times. Mercury had its mysteries. There were Mercury mysteries, you can read about them in my “Secret Science”. Yes, the very first main priest of the Mercury Mysteries was Mercury himself. This was accomplished by the birth of a human being whose spirit was liberated by a superhuman process in order to seek a different kind of incarnation. The body was there: the god Mercury used this body to embody himself on earth, that is, to show himself in the Mysteries. The gods were already the teachers in the ancient mysteries. So it is for all the gods of Greece, they were all on earth. And this god Mercury taught people medicine. Hippocrates still preserved a later tradition of this.
Then man enters the sphere of Venus. It is in the Venus sphere that man becomes fully aware of how incomplete he is; but this incompleteness is now prepared for the solar existence precisely in the Venus sphere, where one is in it the longest. One is in it twice, but we need only speak of the one time. One is in it the longest in the solar existence. In this sun existence one is firstly together with the souls with whom one has some kind of karmic communion and who are now in the spiritual world, who are also deceased like oneself; but one is also together with the beings of the higher hierarchies, with Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes and so on. What happens there? There the human being, by becoming aware of his incompleteness in his consciousness, works together with the beings of the higher Hierarchies on the pattern and archetype of his subsequent earthly existence, namely, in the first half of the solar existence he works out more the archetype of physical corporeality, in the second half more the archetype of his moral earthly existence. This work during the sun's existence is actually not as monotonous as it seems when one has to describe it, but it is tremendously richer, much more magnificent and more powerful than anything man can experience on earth. Here on earth man does not experience that which is directly enclosed in his skin, but that which is around him. During the sun's existence it is just the opposite: there man experiences everything that is in the cosmos. As we say here: This is my stomach -, so we then say: Out there is my Venus -; as we say here: This is my heart -, so we say: This is my sun. - The beings of the universe become our organs. We ourselves become like the universe, and the human being standing here on earth - but grasped in the spirit - who is only filled with the earthly substance of the earth, is then our world. And this inner world of man is truly more comprehensive, more grandiose than the extra-human cosmos here on earth. What man holds within himself is unconscious to man on earth. But it is much greater than what man sees on earth. And what he holds within himself here on earth becomes apparent to him during his existence in the sun. And from what is his world there, he works out the shaping of his physical and moral being for the next earthly existence. Work is now also being done for karma. After we have learned how we have to work in the first decades after death, we are now working on the creation of this karma. I would like to say that the finishing touches are only applied when we find our evil again during the second passage through the lunar sphere and then, in addition to that which is intentional, to that which is worked out in the original form, we also bring the strength to plunge into karma on earth in a new earthly life.
Now, in order to understand even more precisely how karma is actually worked out, we must consider the following. Stars, what are they actually? Physical scientists talk about stars as if they were burning balls of gas or something similar. But that is not the case. Just imagine you were on Venus. Then the earth would appear to you approximately as Venus appears to you now, and you would describe the earth as you describe Venus now, overlooking the fact that there are so and so many human souls here on the earth, which is the scene of humanity. Just as there are souls where every other star shines. There are souls on the moon: the souls of the great primal teachers, and these are already somewhat mixed in with the souls of the Angeloi. On Mercury: souls of the Archangeloi; you live together with them when you pass through the sphere of the Archangeloi -- God Mercury is an archangel being. Then on Venus the Archai. During the Sun - Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes: especially together with them one forms one's karma. One must regard what shines in the stars only as the outer sign of spirit colonies that are in the cosmos. In the direction where we see a star, we must know that a colony of spirits is there.
After man has passed through the solar existence, he enters the sphere of Mars, the sphere of Jupiter, the sphere of Saturn. He has already begun to work on his karma in the solar sphere. But he also needs - so that he will later find his evil when he goes back through the lunar sphere - to prepare the karma so that it can be realized on earth, he needs the spirits who live in these planetary spheres, the spirits who live on Mars, the spirits who live on Jupiter, the spirits who live on Saturn. And especially when it is a matter of working out quite characteristic human destinies, then it is already the case that the last part of the working out of these karmic connections takes place precisely in the sphere of Mars, Jupiter or Saturn. However, karma can still be worked on when the human being returns to the Venus sphere, also in the Mercury sphere. Between death and a new birth, man works on his karma with the beings of the planetary system. And it is extremely interesting to follow how karma is worked on.
The time has come today - as I have already mentioned here - when some spiritual facts should be spoken of in a more open and frank manner. The Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum was there to initiate this procession of esotericism that is to run through the whole Anthroposophical Society in the present. That is why, the last time I was allowed to speak to you, I began by explaining all kinds of karmic connections. One should not believe that one is, as it were, reaching into human life with a rough hand when one endeavors to speak of karmic connections in relation to interesting human phenomena. Only then does the world become transparent, full of light, and thus truly not poorer, but richer, more magnificent.
So today I would like to draw your attention to a human individuality that was incarnated with a tremendously open mind in the second century AD in what is now Italy, in what was then Rome, the sacrificial martyrdom endured by those who, as Christians, were gradually trying to assert themselves in the Roman Empire, who also went through the cruel injustices, the depravities, the marshes in which the Roman Empire was already so rich at that time. An abundance of good and evil had poured down on the sensibilities of this individuality. And if you look at it with the means of spiritual research, through which you can recognize such things, then you really find this individuality, I would like to say, drawn in storms of life into that which was experienced in the second half of the 2nd century AD in the Roman Empire with the spread of Christianity. And it is precisely with this individuality that there is something extraordinarily gripping when one directs one's spiritual gaze towards it in the way that I last described for other human individualities in their repeated lives on earth.
It is precisely in the case of this individuality, who ended her life in old age, that after she had seen so much, I would like to say, of a supreme sacrificial good in the burgeoning Christianity and an infinite amount of evil, bad in the Romanity of that time, she came to something like a judgment and a question: Where is the mediocrity? Is there only good and evil in the world? - One can clearly follow with the imaginative, inspired consciousness how this individuality was then reborn as a woman in the 11th century AD. Through the experiences in the female personality, on the one hand, the sharp, angular nature to which this personality had come during her Roman life in old age was balanced out again, became soft, became an inner contemplation of good and evil. Then he returned, this personality, in the 18th century and was born as the German poet Friedrich Schiller. And now try to penetrate Schiller's life, how it developed: first into a mediocre view of life; how he then needed Goethe to strip away everything that he had brought with him from the conviction that there is only good, there is only evil. Read his dramas and you will understand them if you look back in this way to his earlier life on earth. But to what do we attribute this? We have to attribute it to the circumstance that Schiller, in whom that which he had gone through in Roman life was still alive, but after he had already passed through the female incarnation in the Middle Ages, then particularly shaped his karma in the time between death and a new birth in the sphere of Saturn.
To get to know this sphere of Saturn in its particular peculiarity and essence, the initiation science of a higher age is actually necessary. For you see, you can raise the question: How does one get to know what lives on the stars and so on? Well, I have described it to you: When a person ascends to imaginative consciousness, he sees his whole life in a large tableau, but he also sees it divided into epochs. If one attains inspiration and comes to empty consciousness again, so that one can erase this tableau, then something lights up from each epoch. Instead of looking at one's own life between birth and the seventh year of life, one sees the events of the moon at this point in the tableau of life: one can look into the events of the moon. - In the second epoch of life, everything that takes place between the change of teeth and sexual maturity, the existence of Mercury, shines through. Seen backwards in this tableau, this life of the school years leads us into the Mercury existence. Consider how ingeniously the individual planets were assigned their functions in the time of instinctive wisdom on earth! Statistics teach that man is healthiest not in the years between birth and the change of teeth, nor after sexual maturity, but during the school years, because that is the time when Mercury has the greatest influence on man, also on his earthly existence. - In the next epoch, between sexual maturity and about the twenty-first or twenty-second year, one sees the processes and essences of Venus. Again, it is ingenious that the Venus sphere was assigned to the sexual sphere when it begins to work. - Between the twenty-first and forty-second year the solar existence; between the forty-second and forty-ninth year the Martian existence; between the forty-ninth and fifty-sixth year the Jupiter existence and between the fifty-sixth and sixty-third year the Saturn existence. And actually one can only see all the connections that take place, in which Saturn is involved, for the life between death and a new birth as an initiate when one is over the age of sixty-three. Before that, one can experience this existence in the most varied ways; but one can only see things from one's own perspective in context when one has passed the age of sixty-three. Now you will understand why I am only now talking about something connected with Saturn's existence.
So, Schiller worked out his karma especially in the sphere of Saturn. To see this Saturnian existence in this way, as I have indicated here, makes, I would say, an extremely startling impression, because it is so different from what one can experience on earth. On Saturn, in the consciousness of the beings there, there is only the past, not the present at all. But the past is there in a magnificent way. You see, if I were to compare it with something that could happen on earth - of course it doesn't happen, but hypothetically it could happen - I would have to say: Think about it, you have no idea what you look like, you only know that you are. You act, you do: you don't see that either, not until it has passed. Think of yourself walking: You do not see your own steps, you do not see the movements; but immediately afterward these movements turn into a snowman, and you trace the whole movement when you look around and see what you have done. Such is the life of these special spirits on Saturn. They never perceive what they do from the immediate decision of the present, but only see it when it has passed. It is difficult for the ordinary consciousness to imagine, but it is so. In such an existence there are also the individualities which form karma with such an individuality as Schiller's. Such individualities then take on a wonderful insight into the past. So that Schiller's soul, before it was born in 1759, was indeed in the spiritual world with a grandiose retrospective view of everything in the past that is connected with its own karma. On entering the earth this is transformed into a reaction: the seeing of the past is transformed into the grasping, into the enthusiastic grasping of future ideals. And so Schiller's ideals of the future arose from his karmic work in Saturn's existence.
Let us take another life, a life that was once present in an earthly existence in Greece, where it came together a great deal with plastic Greek art, but also with Platonic philosophy, namely with enormous enthusiasm in a youthful existence, plastic art that can be seen spiritually at the same time, whereby what is seen spiritually can in turn be translated into something artistic with tremendous inner artistry: We have, after it had also passed through other incarnations, this individuality to follow in the formation of karma in the Jupiter sphere. The Jupiter beings are of a different kind than the Saturn beings. Jupiter beings are not like, for example, earth people. If the earth man wants to become wise, then he must undergo an inner development, struggle, fight inwardly, undergo overcoming, in short, in times that are filled with development, the man on earth climbs up to a modest wisdom. With the Jupiter beings it is different; they are not born at all like the earth beings, but they form themselves out of the cosmos. Just as you look at a cloud that forms itself, so the Jupiter beings form themselves out of the cosmos in an etheric-astral way. Then they do not die, they permeate each other, that is why they have space. But they are, so to speak, realized wisdom. They are born with wisdom and cannot help but be wise. Just as we have blood circulation, they have wisdom. It is their nature; that is how these Jupiter beings are. Karma can be formed among them. This individuality, which had one of the most important lives on earth in ancient Greece, passed through the Jupiter sphere, was touched by all that is the wisdom of Jupiter, formed its karma there and was born again in the 18th century as Goethe. Hence this wonderful fusion of Greekness and wisdom in Goethe.
I do not believe that if we study history in such a way that we understand what happens on earth from the mysteries, from the secrets of the cosmos, the history of the earth loses its value. May dry professors come along and say: "Well, it is much more vital to take the human being Goethe as he presents himself than to lift him up into a higher sphere! - In better times of human development, when there was still an instinctive clairvoyance, people also spoke openly about the way in which heavenly existence is revealed through human actions, human existence here on earth. We have to come back, we have to get out of this abstractness where we believe that we are such earthworms who stand there on earth and look up and only see what the astronomers and astrophysicists say about the stars. And this battle that is going on in our civilization and culture, which has been so severely tested, between those people who struggle for the spirit in order to see through the cosmos in its spiritual lawfulness, and those people who want to know nothing about it; who limit themselves to the earth not only in natural science, but also in what people at the universities call spiritual science: there one studies documents, thus also that which is only there physically and sensually. A decision will have to be made in the course of the earth's development. Either our decline in the spiritual will go on and on, and a disease of which I have spoken for years, also in public lectures, a disease will spread more and more - there is not yet much of it in medical books, but all the more in life: the “dementia professoralis” - or else man will have to make himself comfortable to include in his enthusiasm the knowledge of the supersensible. In doing so, he will also penetrate the connection between the cosmos and human life.
I would like to give you a third example, which is somewhat more complicated. Here we have to do with an individuality that was embodied in a previous earthly life in India, when India was already in decline, and in this earthly life took in all kinds of things that it could take in with extraordinarily poor physical eyesight. You have to go into such details. And it is mostly details - I drew attention to this last time - through which one comes to see the connections. This individuality has then also gone through various other earthly lives, but these were less decisive than that which was predisposed in it precisely because in India it saw the lotus flowers and blossoms more longingly in the mist than in clear clarity, with a somewhat superficial view because of its poor eyesight, and generally got to know life as one gets to know it when one looks over it in this way, when one does not enter into things. This individuality then formed its karma in a complicated way. First of all, everything that made this personality a kind of fighting cock in the spiritual field was formed in the Martian sphere. Then this personality worked a great deal on its karma in the Mercury sphere, absorbing wit and satire in the Mercury sphere. And imagine a non-European world in the background: individuality tends to be reborn in Europe, but it passes through the sphere of Mars: Struggle; through the Mercury sphere: incisive critical thinking and feeling. Having then developed special qualities in the Venus sphere - it is a particularly complicated karma - and looking beyond the physical, but nevertheless extremely strongly spiritualized, this personality becomes Heinrich Heine in the 19th century. Now try to really put yourself into the understanding that you gain for every verse in Heinrich Heine, right down to the language, right down to the form, right down to the words, when you know: this is actually created in the sphere of Mercury, Venus, Mars, everything actually comes from the cosmos. Karma is formed and shaped in the cosmos; here on earth it is lived out. And if you look back at this tableau of life: one looks at the Moon sphere, Mercury sphere; from sexual maturity to the twenty-first, twenty-second year, the Venus sphere; from the twenty-first to the forty-second year, the Sun sphere, then the Mars sphere, Jupiter sphere, Saturn sphere - I cannot go into the following years, one can see something there too, but I cannot go into it now - one sees that these spheres have something to do with karma. Ordinary consciousness does not know that this is in man: the sphere of Mercury, the sphere of the moon and so on. But karma is brought about by what is there in man; man is driven towards the way in which karma lives itself out. So if Heinrich Heine over there has shaped his karma through Venus, Mercury and Mars beings, then it is the same Venus, Mercury and Mars beings that work through his earthly corporeality to help him fulfill this karma. Thus man - precisely through his karma - stands in the cosmos according to his whole being, lives out the cosmos here on earth. Naturally, one in this way, the other in that way.
These things must be observed with a free, comprehensive sense. When I say to you that Goethe transformed what he had been predisposed to in ancient Greece into the instinctive wisdom in the Jupiter sphere, that comes out of everything he created through the beings who work there, it happens differently with another. When Mexican culture was very much in decline, there lived an individuality; the echoes and also the cultus from the Mysteries were still there. In all the magical, decadent aspects of Mexico's mystery period, there was a very strong individuality that knew exactly what the vitality of Quetsalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoka and Taotl was all about. Ordinary cultural histories usually contain little more than the names. But of all these gods, Quetsalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoka, Taotl, there were quite vivid mental images, relationships of man to supernatural beings. This saw through the individuality that I mean, was then born again relatively quickly without an inter-earth life, lived in the 19th century as the magico-occult Eliphas Levi, after he had passed through the Jupiter sphere in life between death and a new birth. He absorbed the magical, the magical, the expired in old Mexico. This was transformed in the Jupiter sphere in such a way that this peculiar, but wisdom-full primitive - a wisdom of a lesser kind, as it is in the books of Eliphas L£vi - resulted. The same thing that in Goethe's Jupiter sphere brought forth this mild Olympian fire, this superior wisdom because of the earlier life on earth, brings forth in Eliphas Levi a somewhat charlatan-like babbling in all kinds of magic spells. Earth lives are already decisive for what the stars make of our karma. But the stars - that is, the beings who are there where the stars indicate the existence of these beings - they transform into karma that which is predisposed to karma here on earth.
You see, this is how anthroposophy is now being attempted to be deepened more and more. And it will have to be accepted that some things will sound paradoxical, disconcerting. But what is paradoxical and disconcerting is the real truth. For human life has a deeper and more complicated foundation than we usually think. In order to understand it, one must not remain on earth with one's thoughts, one must wander out from the earth into the vastness of the cosmos. And just as it is all too easy to forget the spirit on earth and look at matter, the opposite is the case as soon as you really enter the starry heavens with just a little imaginative insight. Then one quite certainly forgets matter and gradually sees the spirits, as the poor shepherds did in the old primitive times, as it was until the Middle Ages, where one did not merely draw external signs on the celestial sphere, but figures, because one actually saw these figures in imaginative cognition. Anthroposophy also deepens perception, as I have often said. For just think: if you try it with such knowledge as I have described, then you look at the fate of a human being. What you see there! You actually begin to look at the fate of every human being with holy awe. For what is at work in the destiny of every human being? Comprehensive star wisdom! Completely comprehensive star wisdom! Through nothing can one see the work of the gods in the universe in such a poignant way, in a way that cuts deep into the soul, as when one sees it in the destiny of man, in this comprehensive world justice that waves through the eternal, which is actually the existence, action and thinking of the gods that weaves behind the human being. That is what I wanted to tell you today about karma. The karma of the Anthroposophical Society and the content of the anthroposophical movement.