Karmic Relationships II
GA 236
11 May 1924, Dornach
Lecture IX
We shall continue for a time to study the laws prevailing in the development of human karma, and I shall say something to-day about the inner aspect of the shaping of karma, of the part of karma that is connected especially with the moral, ethical and spiritual life.
You must remember that directly we look beyond the physical world—and this is always so in studying karma—the karmic connections are spiritual. Even when they take effect in the physical, for example in illness, whatever is karmic in an illness has a spiritual cause. So that under all circumstances we come to the spiritual whenever we approach the study of karma. To-day, however, we shall turn our attention more particularly to the ethical aspect of karma, to the workings of karma in the life of soul.
I have already told you that the forming of karma is connected with those Beings who in very ancient times of evolution were actually present on the earth and who departed from the earth at the time of the separation of the moon, taking up their abode in the cosmos as Moon-inhabitants, Moon Beings.
What we call Moon—of which the physical part as ordinarily described is no more than an indication—must be regarded as the bearer of certain spiritual beings, the most important of whom once lived on earth as the great primeval Teachers. It was they who established among men on earth that ancient wisdom of which I have so often spoken. These Beings were on the earth before the separation of the moon. In those times they infused the primeval wisdom into man who acquired it through a kind of inner illumination. And the way in which these Beings worked was altogether different from the way in which men can work on the earth to-day.
The activity of these ancient, primeval Teachers among men must in truth be described as a kind of magic, taking effect inasmuch as the influence of the human will upon happenings in the external world was infinitely greater than is possible to-day. Nowadays the will can work on the external world only through physical means of transmission. If we want to push some object we must put our will into operation through the arms and hands. But in the days of the primeval Teachers the human will still had a direct and immediate action upon processes in the outside world, upon the very processes of nature. It was a kind of action that we should now call magical. But in point of fact the last vestiges of this power of the human will persisted until comparatively recent times. Rousseau, for example, tells us that in certain warmer regions he was able to paralyse and even kill toads which came near him, simply by fixing them with his gaze. This power of the human will which in warmer climates persisted until the 18th century, has diminished through the course of the ages and has now vanished. But in ancient Egypt man was still able to influence and promote the growth of plants through his will. And when the primeval Teachers were on the earth, even inorganic processes of nature could be brought under the sway of the human will.
These things of course depended upon a true, instinctive insight into the connections of world-existence which remain completely hidden from the crude, material science of modern times. It is evident, however, that the influence of warmth upon the working of the human will must be taken thoroughly into account, for Rousseau, who was able, in warmer regions, to kill toads with his gaze, subsequently tried in Lyons to stare at a toad in the same way, supposing that it would at least be paralysed. But the toad was not paralysed; on the contrary it fixed its eyes upon him and he himself became partially paralysed and had to be restored to life by snake-poison administered by a doctor.
This way of activating the will is of course dependent upon an instinctive knowledge of the whole environment of man.
Out of their own spiritual foundations the primeval Teachers possessed a totally different, far deeper and more penetrating knowledge of nature than is within the reach of man to-day. They were endowed with powers which cannot be comprised in natural laws. Nor was this necessary when the primeval Teachers were working on the earth, for nothing in the least resembling modern natural science was then in existence. It would have seemed utterly pointless and nobody would have understood its purpose. For in those days all such activity was founded upon a far deeper, more inward knowledge and understanding than is possible to-day.
These primeval Teachers transferred the scene of their work from the earth to the moon and as everything in the cosmos is interconnected, a mighty task is now allotted to them within the nexus of cosmic happenings. They are Beings who have a great deal to do with karma, with the forming and shaping of human karma. For an essential part of the weaving of karma is to be observed when, after having laid aside his etheric body a few days after death, the human being lives through his sleeping life (not his waking life) backwards. When he passes through the gate of death he has, first of all, a clear retrospective vision of what he has experienced in life—a grand and majestic panorama in pictures. After a few days this panorama slowly fades away as the etheric body dissolves in the cosmic ether, and then an actual journey backward begins.
Earthly existence flows in such a way that although we grasp it in remembrance as a unity, this is an illusion. Life does not flow onwards uninterruptedly. We live through the day consciously, the night unconsciously; the day consciously, the night unconsciously, and so on.
When in remembrance man thinks back over his life, he forgets that the nights are always there between the days. During the nights a very great deal happens to the soul, to the astral body and ego, only man knows nothing about it. What happens to him while he is unconscious during the nights in earthly existence, this he lives through in a backward course after death, so that time actually seems to him to be flowing backwards; in full consciousness he lives backward through the nights.
As approximately a third of life is spent in sleep, this backward journey is also lived through in a third of the time of the earthly life. If, therefore, a man has reached the age of 60, some 20 years have been spent in sleep and the backward journey lasts for about 20 years. Then he enters the Spirit-land proper, into a different form of existence. This backward journey, this vision of what has happened during the nights, is lived through after death in such a way that the great and significant difference between its experiences and those of ordinary sleep is strikingly apparent.
With the exception of the dreams rising out of sleep which do not, after all, reproduce the experiences of earthly life very faithfully but in an illusory, fantastic shape—with the exception therefore of the dreams welling up from the night-life, the human being has little consciousness of all the manifold happenings in which he is involved. In earlier lectures here I have described what happens to the human being during sleep; but after death he experiences it with extraordinary clarity and definition. This life in the soul-world after death is much richer in impressions than earthly life. The pictures a man experiences and how he himself is involved in them—all this comes to him with extraordinary intensity; there is nothing dreamlike about it. It is experienced, if I may put it so, as a kind of photographic negative. If you caused suffering to some person during your earthly life, you experienced this infliction of suffering as it proceeded from yourself. You experienced what proceeded from yourself, was done by yourself. But journeying backward after death you do not feel what you experienced during earthly life, but you slip as it were into the other person and feel what he experienced as the result of your action.
To take a drastic example.—If you gave someone a box on the ears, you do not experience what you felt in earthly life as you planned and carried out this act, but on the backward journey you experience, instead, the feelings of the other person whose ears you boxed. You live through it as your own experience, and indeed with extraordinary concreteness, with greater intensity. No impression on earth is as powerful as the impressions along this backward course after death for a third of the time of the earthly life. During this period the whole karmic fulfilment of what was done in life is experienced—from the standpoint of the other man. You live through the whole karmic fulfilment, but not, of course, as earthly experience—that will come in the subsequent life on earth. Even though it is not as intense as regards the action as it will be in a later incarnation, you experience the impression more strongly than could be the case in any earthly life.
This is a very striking fact. It is the intense reality of the experiences that is so remarkable.
But even if the human being were able to unfold in his ego and astral body the degree of strength that is his when he passes through the gate of death, he would experience this whole backward journey at most as a very vivid dream. And he might expect it to be so if, after death, he were merely to look at the earthly life and what it has made of him. But this backward journey is not a vivid dream; it is an experience of far greater intensity than any experience in earthly existence. Only now there is no physical body, no etheric body, through which man's experiences are mediated to him on earth.
Just think what you would experience on earth with your ordinary consciousness if you had no physical body and no etheric body. You would flit over the earth with now and again a dream arising; then you would sleep again, and so it would continue.
It is easy to conceive that after his earthly life a man who had reached the age of 60 lives through a dream continuing for 20 years; but what he lives through is by no means a dream, it is an experience of the greatest intensity. What makes this possible? It is because the moment a human being has passed through the gate of death, has laid aside his etheric body and begins his backward journey, the Moon Beings draw near him and with their ancient magical powers they pass into him, into his experiences, and impregnate his pictures with cosmic substance.
If I may use an analogy, what happens is just as if I were to paint a picture. In the first place it is simply a picture and doesn't cause actual pain—provided it is not too hideous—and even then the impression is only a moral or aesthetic one. It hurts nobody. But suppose I were to paint a picture, let us say, of three of you here and the picture were permeated with some magic power causing these three to step from the picture and carry out everything they had planned against others. You would react with more force and vigour than anthroposophists are wont to reveal! So it is after death. The experiences are full of living force, living activity, because these Moon Spirits permeate the pictures with their own substantiality; they saturate these pictures with a super-reality of being.
After death, therefore we pass through the region of the Moon Beings and what we experience as the balancing-out of our own deeds is stamped with mighty force in the cosmic ether. This backward journey—when it is described not merely in principle as in the book Theosophy, but when one tries to describe it as concretely as I want to do now—this backward journey after death is extraordinarily interesting and a highly important section of life.
In our time the experiences that may come to a human being during this period after death are particularly complicated. Just think how essentially the whole constitution of soul of these Moon Beings differs from that of the inhabitants of the earth. These Moon Beings with whom we have so much to do after death once imparted to men that primeval wisdom which in our time has completely faded away. As I have often explained, men could not have attained their freedom if the mighty wisdom of these primeval Teachers had remained. It has faded away and been replaced by something else, namely, abstract thinking. The human being to-day thinks in concepts which no longer have any very real relationship with the spiritual world. Let me repeat an example I gave on another occasion.—Aristotle has bequeathed to us ten concepts which were really a survival of ancient wisdom: Being, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Position, Space, Time, Possession, Action, Suffering. He called them the ‘Categories’. They are ten simple concepts. These ten concepts are generally enumerated in our text-books of Logic. In classical schools they have to be learned by heart; professors of philosophy are familiar with them. But nothing more is known than just the ten concepts by name: Being, Possession, Position, Space, Time, and the rest. To what does such knowledge amount? These ten concepts seem tedious and dry to a modern man. But to one who perceives their significance they are no more tedious than are the 22 or 23 letters of the alphabet: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, ...
Just think of it.—If you knew nothing more about the alphabet than a, b, c, d, e, f, g, up to z, if you knew this and nothing more, what would you make of Goethe's Faust? You would open the book and find these 22 signs scattered about in manifold permutations and combinations. Faust contains nothing but these 22 signs inter-connected in different ways. And if you knew nothing more, if you had never learnt to read but merely opened the book and saw these signs, just think how different it would be from what it is now, when you can take Faust and read it. That is a different matter altogether! No book in the world contains anything except these 22 signs and yet just think what you can make of them! The whole world of the mind is open to you because by juggling with these 22 letters you can apply them.
But the logicians who have accepted the ten Categories to-day: Being, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Space, Time, Position, Possession, Action, Suffering—these men know as little to what these Categories really apply as someone who has never learnt to read and simply recognises a, b, c, d, e, f, knows of all the books of the world. It is exactly the same thing. For these ten concepts of Aristotle's Logic have to be understood in such a way that they can be applied in manifold permutations, just as the letters are manipulated in the physical world by multifarious combinations and permutations. Then, with these ten concepts we read in the spiritual world. They are the letters.
But in our time the concepts are known by name and that is all—which is equivalent to knowing nothing more of the alphabet than the letters in their sequence. Think what you would miss if you could not read but only knew a, b, c, d! Correspondingly, men miss everything that is in the spiritual world if they are unable to manipulate and apply the ten concepts of Aristotle in all manner of ways, in order to read in the spiritual world.
In this connection something very droll has been happening among philosophers for a long time. About the middle of the Middle Ages there lived a very astute and clever man, by name Raymond Lully. From tradition he still knew something about this permutation of the categories of logic, of the fundamental concepts of logic, and he gave out what he knew—clothing it in the form of pictures as was customary in those times. What he really wanted to say, or rather, what he would have said if he had expressed the reality, was this: My contemporaries are all blockheads, because they only know a, b, c, d; they do not know how to read with the fundamental concepts, the root concepts. A man must understand in his head how to combine these fundamental concepts as letters are combined into words and sentences. Then he can read in the spiritual world.—Raymond Lully did not say this in such direct words for that was not the custom in his days. He said: Write the fundamental concepts on slips of paper, then take a kind of roulette, spin it and the concepts will be thrown about among each other; and then read. Then there will be results.
This, however, was only an analogy, for he did not really mean anything like a dead, mechanical roulette; he meant the spiritual head which must manipulate and combine these concepts. But those who heard of it took the analogy literally and have laughed about it ever since, considering it to be a piece of childishness on the part of Raymond Lully. The childishness, however, is purely on the side of modern philosophy which does not understand what was meant.
Practically everything that in olden days was brought to humanity by the primeval Teachers whom we know as the Moon Beings, has been lost. But during his backward journey in the first period after death the human being becomes acquainted in a very special way with this knowledge. He knows then how these ancient Sages thought, what kind of wisdom they possessed. Hence the graphic, concrete reality of his experiences during this period.
But in our time things have become complicated and confused owing to a kind of lack of understanding. Human beings, who since the fading of the primeval wisdom have been living here on earth with their abstract concepts, have not the power to understand the inner soul-constitution of these primeval Teachers since they entered the Moon-existence.
When a modern scholar is passing through this period of his life after death, be speaks a very different language from these primeval Teachers who, as I shall describe to you in more detail, have a very great deal to do with the shaping of karma. These primeval Teachers and the men of to-day who die imbued with modern culture and the fruits of modern civilisation do not really understand one another.
It is extremely difficult to form a clear conception of these things, for observation of what is happening to human beings in this connection is by no means easy. But in characteristic cases observation is possible: for instance, one can study two men who died not so very long ago and who have gone their way backward after death, two men who were steeped in modern culture and who nevertheless were very different from each other.
We can take a man who was brilliant in his own way, a scientist of average calibre like Du Bois-Reymond, or someone of the same type, and observe his backward journey after death. Another personality, too, can be observed in the same way. A very interesting personality as regards this backward journey through the soul-land is the one who hovered before me while I was composing my Mystery Plays and who took shape in the character of Strader. Strader in the Mystery Plays is an image of an actual person who in his youth entered the monastic life but subsequently abandoned it and worked in the field of rationalistic philosophy as a professor in a University. This man—he was responsible for a number of writings—has all the abstraction of a modern thinker, but his thoughts are extraordinarily penetrating, full of warmth and vigour. It does one good to find this quality of heart in a modern thinker.
The full-blooded vigour of Hegel, for example, who could present the highest abstractions with tremendous depth of emotion but also with utmost concreteness, is of course no longer possible to the same extent in a man of to-day. Hegel was a thinker who was able to imbue concepts and ideas with such concrete reality that he could, so to speak, hack wood with them. But the man to whom I am now referring revealed something of the same heart-quality in handling abstract concepts. As I said, his life hovered before me when I was shaping the figure of Strader in the Mystery Plays.
When this man died his backward journey was particularly interesting to me. A fact to be taken thoroughly into account was that all his thinking had a certain theological bent. Like that of a modern scientist, or at least a natural philosopher, it was entirely abstract, but all the time there was this nuance of theology (coming of course from earlier incarnations) and his thinking was lit by a gleam of consciousness that it is possible to speak, at least, of the reality of a spiritual world.
Hence this man's thinking has more affinity with the soul-constitution of the Moon Beings than has the thinking of an average scientist like Du Bois-Reymond, for example. When such men are passing through the soul-world, through the Moon sphere, one can perceive a marked lack of understanding—it is like someone who lives in a foreign country and never learns the language; the others do not understand him and he does not understand them. This, broadly speaking, is the fate of a man who is a typical product of modern civilisation when he enters upon this backward journey after death.
But it was rather different in the case of this personality, the prototype of Strader.—I have to resort to earthly language although it is utterly inadequate when applied to what I am here describing.—When, after death, this personality was journeying backward through the course of his life, it could be observed that the Moon Beings took a certain interest in the way he was bringing his thoughts, his abstract thoughts, into the soul-world. And he, in his turn, experienced a very remarkable awakening, an awakening in which he seemed to be saying to himself: ‘Ah, now I see that all I fought against is, in reality, quite different.’ (He had fought against many things that were traditional).—‘I see now that it only gradually came to be what it is, because the ancient truths have become abstract words. I was often fighting against windmills; now, however, I see realities.’
Something of extraordinary interest is happening here—and a whole number of such men in modern life might be cited as examples. There is something extremely interesting in this backward journey after death where the foundations of karma are laid.
An even more striking figure in this connection is the philosopher Jacob Frohschammer, who wrote Die Phantasie als Weltprinzip (Imagination as a World-Building Principle). I have often mentioned him. There was still a great deal of inner substance in his abstract concepts, but, like the man just described, he was an abstract thinker. He could, however, so little tolerate the abstractions of modernism—I do not now mean ‘modernism’ in the terminology of Roman Catholicism—that he simply refused to acknowledge concepts as world-building forces; he would acknowledge only imagination. He said: imagination is working everywhere; the plants grow, the animals exist and so forth, through imagination. In this respect Frohschammer's book is extraordinarily interesting.
It is wonderful to observe how such a personality, who has still retained much of what was alive in cultural life before the modern, abstract way of thinking became customary, is able to blend with the substance of the Moon Beings. Investigations of this kind are profoundly interesting because a closer insight into the laws of the evolution of karma grows out of them. And when one is drawn by a certain sympathy to such a personality—as I myself was drawn to the prototype of Strader in the Mystery Plays—it is the warmth of soul by which one is united with him that makes it possible to share the experiences of this very significant journey after death.
The fact that the impressions are so strong for the man who is passing through these experiences has an after-effect, too, upon the person who is following them with knowledge. And that in itself is a very remarkable thing. For it becomes evident how much more impressive are the experiences after death than those of earthly life. I ask myself to-day in all earnestness: If I should wish to add a fifth Mystery Play to the four already written, would it be possible for me again to include the figure of Strader, now that for some considerable time I have watched these pictures of what Strader's prototype experienced after death? ... It would be quite impossible, because the moment I want to present the earthly figure, where the impressions are far less intense, the pictures of the impressions experienced by Strader's prototype after death are there before me. And they are far, far stronger; they blot out what was there during the earthly life.
I can observe this quite clearly in myself. As you may imagine, I took an extraordinary interest in the life of this man, for he was the prototype of Strader. He has since died and the impressions coming to him, after death, are incomparably more interesting to me than anything I can find out or describe about him while he was alive.
When I think about my Mystery Plays I realise that because of the vivid impressions of this prototype of Strader in the life after death, the character of Strader is the one that fades away from me most completely of all. This does not apply to the same extent to the other characters in the Plays. You see there how what is here on earth aligns itself in true observation with what is beyond the earth, and how the effect of such things enables one to realise the tremendous intensity of the life after death on this backward journey. The sheer intensity of it blots out the impressions of earthly life.
Still more can be said about these matters. I am not speaking here of anything that has been invented, but of realities. We may know a man very well in his earthly life and then experience what he has to undergo in the backward journey after death. Everything takes a different form because of the intensity of the pictures. If we have been exceedingly interested in a man's earthly life—as I was in that of a man who died a number of years ago—then our whole relation to the earthly life changes; it has an entirely different character when we subsequently share in the experiences of the personality in question during the backward journey after death. And many things in the earthly relationships are only now revealed in their whole truth.
This is all the more the case when the relationships in the earthly life were not of a spiritual nature; when they were, when they were essentially spiritual, there is, as it were, a continuous, onflowing development. If, however, there had been, for example, a human relationship without agreement in ideas and thoughts, then in certain circumstances this relationship may be transformed after death into something quite different, into an entirely different life of feeling and the like. The cause of this change is the vividness of the pictures which then appear.
I am describing these things in order to call up before you a concrete image of types of realities differing from those of earthly existence. There are many different types of realities. And when, so to speak, the deeds of the Moon Beings flow into the pictures which a man himself shapes, this reality is such that it appears even more wonderful than the subsequent reality when the man is passing through the spiritual world proper and in union with the Hierarchies is concerned with the elaboration of the results of his earthly life; this state of existence runs a much simpler course because it is a kind of continuation. But the radical transformation of the human being after death, due as it is to the fact that he enters into relation with Beings who left the earth long ago and founded a kind of Moon colony in the cosmos—this is something that with tremendous forcefulness discloses to us a reality which, because it follows immediately after the life on earth, is closely related to and yet essentially different from earthly reality.
When human beings cling too strongly to earthly things it may be difficult for them to find their bearings in the sphere of the Moon Beings. Something happens then which I will describe in the following way. Picture to yourselves the earth here, the moon there.—Now the active moon-influences which are, in reality, reflected sun-influences, penetrate just so far into the earth ... At this point they cease. The moon-influences do not penetrate very deeply into the earth, actually only as far as the roots of the plants spread in the soil. The moon-influences are not really active below the stratum of the roots of plants. There is only a shallow layer up here where the moon-influences are held fast. Sun-influences, of course, penetrate deeply into the earth. The warmth of the sun in the summer is preserved; when you lay potatoes in the soil the sun's warmth is still there during the winter. The sun-influences penetrate deeply into the earth, the moon-influences only as far as the level of the roots of plants ... a shallow layer.
The moon-influences, rising up like mist from this shallow layer, may cause human beings who have to pass after death into the Moon sphere—the soul-world—but are unable to understand the Moon Beings, to be trapped by this shallow stratum of moon-influences and they can actually be seen by sensible-super-sensible perception wandering about as ghosts, as spectral shades.
The legends and poems which tell of these things are based upon reality, but in order to form a sound judgment in this domain we must be entirely free from superstition, we must proceed with critical deliberation and accept only what can be put to the test.
In this backward journey after death which lasts for a third of the time of the earthly life, karma is prepared. For the Moon Beings mingle in these ‘negatives’ of a man's deeds, also of his deeds in the life of thought. The Moon Beings have a good memory and they inscribe into the cosmic ether every experience they share with the human being.
We pass through the life between death and a new birth and then, on the return journey when we come back once more into the Moon sphere we find everything inscribed there. And we bear it all with us into our life in order to bring it to fulfilment by means of our earthly will.
This, my dear friends, is what I wanted to place before you to-day as a theme of study.
Neunter Vortrag
Es werden uns nun noch eine Zeit hindurch die gesetzmäßigen Zusammenhänge innerhalb der menschlichen Karmaentwickelung beschäftigen, und ich werde heute zunächst die innere Konfiguration in der Bildung des Karma etwas auseinandersetzen, und zwar desjenigen Teiles des Karma, der es vorzugsweise mit der moralischen, mit der ethischen und mit der geistigen Seite des menschlichen Lebens zu tun hat.
Nur müssen Sie dabei berücksichtigen, daß in dem Augenblicke, wo man hinausschaut aus der physischen Welt — und das tut man ja, indem man das Karma betrachtet, und die karmischen Zusammenhänge sind geistige, auch wenn sie sich im Physischen, sagen wir zum Beispiel in Krankheiten ausleben —, dann dasjenige, was dem Karma angehört bei einer Krankheit, eben geistig verursacht ist. Also unter allen Umständen kommt man in das Geistige hinein, wenn man an die karmische Betrachtung heranrückt. Aber wir wollen heute einmal den ethisch-geistigen, den seelischen Teil des Karma besonders ins Auge fassen.
Es ist ja schon einmal von mir darauf aufmerksam gemacht worden, wie das Karma, die Karmabildung, zusammenhängt mit jenen Wesenheiten auf der Erde, welche in sehr alten Zeiten der Erdenentwickelung auf der Erde selbst vorhanden waren, und die dann mit dem Mondenaustritt von der Erde weggegangen sind, um weiter im Weltenall als eine Art von Mondbewohner, Mondwesenheiten eben auf dem Monde ihren Wohnplatz zu haben.
Wir müssen dasjenige, was wir Mond nennen, wovon ja der physische Teil, der gewöhnlich beschrieben wird, nur, ich möchte sagen, eine Andeutung ist, wir müssen ja den Mond ansehen als den Träger gewisser geistiger Wesenheiten, von denen eben die wichtigsten diese sind, die einmal als die großen Urlehrer die Erde bewohnt haben, die auf der Erde jene Urweisheit unter den Menschen begründet haben, von der ich des öfteren gesprochen habe. Diese Wesenheiten waren also einmal auf der Erde. Sie waren da, als der Mond noch nicht von der Erde getrennt war. Da haben sie, so wie ich es früher einmal beschrieben habe, den Menschen die Urweisheit gewissermaßen eingeflößt, so daß die Menschen durch eine Art innerer Erleuchtung zu dieser Urweisheit gekommen sind. Und die Art, wie diese Wesen gewirkt haben, ist durchaus verschieden von der Art, wie heute auf der Erde von Menschen gewirkt werden kann.
Denn sehen Sie, man würde die Art der Wirksamkeit dieser alten Urlehrer unter den Menschen eigentlich als eine Art magischer Wirkung bezeichnen müssen, als Wirkungen, die dadurch geschehen sind, daß der menschliche Wille noch einen wesentlich größeren Einfluß gehabt hat, auch auf das, was äußerlich geschehen kann, als er heute haben kann. Heute kann ja der Wille nur durch physische Übertragung auf die Außenwelt wirken. Wir müssen, wenn wir einen Gegenstand stoßen wollen, den Willen entfalten, durch unseren Arm und durch unsere Hand müssen wir an den Gegenstand anstoßen. Die unmittelbare Wirkung des Willens auf äußere Vorgänge, die wir heute als Naturvorgänge bezeichnen würden, die war aber zur Zeit der alten Urlehrer noch vorhanden in einer Weise, die wir heute als magische Wirkungen bezeichnen würden. Man kann etwa folgendes sagen: Die letzten Reste solcher Wirkungen des menschlichen Willens ragten ja noch herein bis vor einer verhältnismäßig kurzen Zeit. So zum Beispiel erzählt uns ja noch Rousseau, wie er in gewissen wärmeren Gegenden in der Lage war, Kröten, die in seine Nähe gekommen sind, einfach dadurch, daß er sie scharf mit dem Blicke fixierte, bis zur Lähmung, ja bis zum Sterben zu bringen. Diese in wärmeren Gegenden noch bis ins 18. Jahrhundert hineinreichende Wirksamkeit des menschlichen Willens ist ja immer mehr und mehr hingeschwunden. Sie war noch in der alten Ägypterzeit vorhanden als Einwirkung des menschlichen Willens auf das Wachstum der Pflanzen; der Wille konnte noch das Wachstum der Pflanzen befördern. Und als die alten Urlehrer auf Erden waren, da war es durchaus möglich, auch leblose Naturprozesse in die Gewalt des menschlichen Willens hereinzubringen.
Diese Dinge hängen natürlich davon ab, oder hingen davon ab, daß man auch eine genaue instinktive Einsicht in die Zusammenhänge der Welt hatte, die ja der heutigen groben Wissenschaft ganz verborgen bleiben. Daß zum Beispiel Wärmewirkungen für die Wirkungen des menschlichen Willens stark in Betracht kommen, geht ja wiederum daraus hervor, daß derselbe Rousseau, der imstande war, in wärmeren Gegenden Kröten durch seinen Blick zu töten, es auch später in Lyon versucht hat, einer Kröte ins Gesicht zu schauen so, daß er meinen konnte, sie würde durch seinen Blick wenigstens gelähmt. Und siehe da, nicht die Kröte wurde gelähmt, sie guckte ihn mit aller Schärfe ihrerseits an, und er wurde in einer gewissen Weise gelähmt und mußte erst wieder durch Schlangengift vom Arzt zum Leben gebracht werden. Es hängt diese Art, den Willen zu entfalten, durchaus zusammen mit der Berücksichtigung der instinktiven Erkenntnis dessen, was in der Umgebung des Menschen ist.
Aber es haben schon die alten Urlehrer aus ihren geistigen Unterlagen heraus eben eine ganz andere, intensive, eindringlichere Naturerkenntnis besessen, als die heutigen Menschen sie haben. Kurz, diese Urlehrer waren tatsächlich begabt mit etwas, was sich in Naturgesetze eben nicht fassen läßt. Man brauchte es auch damals, als die Urlehrer auf Erden walteten, nicht in Naturgesetze zu fassen, denn die heutige Naturwissenschaft hat es damals natürlich nicht gegeben. Sie wäre auch den Leuten dazumal höchst wertlos erschienen, man hätte gar nicht begreifen können, was man damit will. Denn alles Wirken beruhte eben auf einem viel innerlicheren Erkennen und Wissen von den Dingen, als das heute sein kann.
Diese Urlehrer, wie gesagt, veränderten den Schauplatz ihres Wirkens von der Erde nach dem Mond hinein und haben nun, da ja im Weltenall alles zusammenhängt, eine große Aufgabe im Zusammenhange des ganzen Weltgeschehens. Und sie sind es, welche mit dem Karma, mit der Karmabildung des Menschen außerordentlich viel zu tun haben. Denn ein wichtiger Bestandteil in der Karmabildung ist derjenige, den wir beobachten können, wenn der Mensch nach dem Tode, nachdem er seinen Ätherleib nach wenigen Tagen abgelegt hat, dann zurücklebt — nun nicht sein waches Leben, sondern sein Schlafesleben. Wenn also der Mensch durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen ist, so ist ja zunächst ein heller Rückblick vorhanden in einem mächtig großen Tableau auf das, was der Mensch im Leben durchgemacht hat. Aber das ist ein bildhaftes Zurückblicken. Es löst sich nach einigen Tagen der Ätherleib auf im allgemeinen Weltenäther, und dann schwindet so langsam hin dieser.Rückblick. Dann aber beginnt ein wirkliches Zurückschauen.
Nicht wahr, unser Leben während unseres Erdendaseins verfließt so, daß, wenn wir es auch als eine Einheit in der Erinnerung auffassen, das natürlich eine Täuschung ist; denn das Leben verfließt nicht als eine Einheit, sondern wir erleben immer bewußt Tag, unbewußt Nacht, bewußt Tag, unbewußt Nacht und so weiter. Wenn dann der Mensch sich zurückerinnert, so vergißt er, daß die Nächte immer dazwischenliegen. In diesen Nächten geht viel vor mit dem Seelischen, mit dem Astralleib und mit dem Ich, nur weiß der Mensch davon nichts. Was da vorgeht, was der Mensch also während des Erdenlebens unbewußt durchlebt, das durchlebt er bei einem Rückgange so, daß ihm die Zeit dann nach dem Tode wirklich wie zurückgehend erscheint; da durchlebt er dann in voller Bewußtheit die Nächte.
Daher erlebt er diesen Rückgang, weil man etwa ein Drittel des Lebens verschläft, auch eben in einem Drittel der Lebenszeit. Wenn also einer sechzig Jahre alt geworden ist, hat er ungefähr zwanzig Jahre verschlafen, und er erlebt dann diesen Rückgang in zwanzig Jahren ungefähr. Dann geht es in das eigentliche Geistgebiet hinein, und der Mensch lebt dann auf eine andere Weise. Aber diesen Rückgang, das Anschauen desjenigen, was in den Nächten geschieht, das erlebt der Mensch zunächst nach dem Tode. Er erlebt es aber so, daß es einem zunächst auffallen muß, wie groß, bedeutsam sich dieses Rückerleben unterscheidet von dem gewöhnlichen Erleben während der Nacht.
Mit Ausnahme der aus dem Schlaf herauftauchenden Träume, die ja nicht sehr treu wiedergeben, was im Erdenleben durchgemacht wird, sondern es in einer sehr illusorischen, phantastischen Weise oftmals wiedergeben, mit Ausnahme also dessen, was als Träume heraufwurlt aus dem nächtlichen Leben, hat ja der Mensch wenig Bewußtsein von all dem Mannigfaltigen, das mit ihm vorgeht. Ich habe es in früheren Zeiten ja auch hier beschrieben, was mit ihm vorgeht während des Schlafes; aber nach dem Tode erlebt das der Mensch mit einer außerordentlichen Klarheit, mit einer außerordentlichen Anschaulichkeit. So daß man sagen kann, dieses Leben in der Seelenwelt nach dem Tode, das ist eigentlich ein eindrucksvolleres als das Erdenleben. Die Bilder, die man erlebt, die Art, wie man selber drinnensteht in diesem Erleben, ist eine außerordentlich intensive, gar keine traumhafte, sondern eine außerordentlich intensive. Und man erlebt eigentlich alles so, daß man es, ich möchte sagen, von dem Gesichtspunkt einer Art photographischen Negativs erlebt. Wenn Sie also jemandem während des Erdenlebens ein Leid zugefügt haben, so haben Sie während des Erdenlebens die Zufügung dieses Leides von sich aus erlebt. Sie haben dasjenige während Ihres Erdenlebens erlebt und getan, was von Ihnen ausgeht. Wenn Sie aber da zurückleben, dann erleben Sie nicht das, was Sie erlebt haben während des Erdenlebens, sondern wie durch Hinüberschlüpfen in den anderen, was der andere erlebt hat, dem Sie die Sache zugefügt haben.
Also, wenn ich ein drastisches Beispiel wähle, so erleben Sie, wenn Sie jemandem eine Ohrfeige gegeben haben, nicht das, was Sie während des Erdenlebens im Beabsichtigen dieser Ohrfeige, im Verabreichen dieser Ohrfeige, in der Schmerzlosigkeit dieser Ohrfeige für Sie, wenn Sie sich nicht dabei durch starke Anstrengung an der eigenen Hand einen Schmerz zugefügt haben, erlebten, sondern statt dessen, was Sie da bei der Verabreichung einer solchen Ohrfeige erlebten, erleben Sie nun bei diesem Rückgehen alles das, was der andere, dem Sie die Ohrfeige verabreicht haben, erlebt hat. Sie erleben es als Ihr Erlebnis, und zwar in einer außerordentlichen Anschaulichkeit, in einem verstärkten Maße erleben Sie es.
So daß in der Tat der Mensch, wenn er diesen Rückgang macht, sich sagt: Oh, das ist außerordentlich eindrucksvoll, was ich da erlebe! Und kein Eindruck auf der Erde wirkt eigentlich so mächtig ein wie die Eindrücke dieses rückwärtsgerichteten Lebens nach dem Tode in dem Dritteil der Lebenszeit. So daß Sie in dieser Zeit eigentlich die ganze karmische Erfüllung dessen, was Sie im Leben selber getrieben haben, erleben; das alles erleben Sie vom Standpunkte des anderen aus. Also Sie erleben die gesamte karmische Erfüllung Ihres Lebens, nur noch nicht als Erdenleben - das werden Sie im nächsten Leben tun -, aber Sie erleben es, wenn es auch in bezug auf das Tun nicht so intensiv ist, wie es später im Erdenleben sein wird, Sie erleben es mit Bezug auf den Eindruck eben stärker noch, als es in irgendeinem Erdenleben der Fall sein könnte.
Nun, das ist etwas Auffälliges, meine lieben Freunde. Es ist wirklich, ich möchte sagen, die Durchsättigtheit, die Stärke des Erlebens da etwas ganz Außerordentliches, etwas Merkwürdiges.
Wenn aber der Mensch nur diejenige Kraft in seinem Ich und in seinem astralischen Leibe entwickeln könnte, die er hat, wenn er durch die Pforte des Todes geht, so würde er diesen ganzen Rückweg höchstens wie einen sehr lebendigen Traum erleben. Erwarten könnte man eigentlich zunächst nach dem Erdenleben, wenn man nur auf das Erdenleben schaut und auf das, was das Erdenleben aus einem machen kann, wenn man gestorben ist, daß man diesen Rückweg als einen sehr, sehr lebendigen Traum erlebt. Das ist aber ganz und gar nicht der Fall. Es ist nicht ein lebendiger Traum, es ist ein außerordentlich intensives Erlebnis, vie] intensiver, als die irdischen Erlebnisse sind.
Nun hat man keinen physischen Leib, man hat keinen Ätherleib, durch die man doch auf der Erde seine Erlebnisse hat. Denken Sie sich nut, was Sie überhaupt auf Erden erleben würden mit dem gewöhnlichen Bewußtsein, wenn Sie keinen physischen und keinen Ätherleib hätten. Sie würden so hinhuschen über die Erde, daß ab und zu ein Traum auftritt; dann schlafen Sie wieder weiter und so fort.
Nun kann man sich wohl vorstellen, daß ein Traum, den ein Sechzigjähriger nach dem Erdenleben durch zwanzig Jahre hat, kontinuierlich fortdauert; aber es ist eben kein Traum, es ist ein ganz energisches, intensives Erleben. Und woher kommt das? Sehen Sie, das kommt daher, daß in dem Augenblicke, wo der Mensch durch die Pforte des Todes durchgegangen ist, seinen Ätherleib abgelegt hat, in diesem Augenblicke, wo er diese Rückwanderung antritt nach dem Tode, sogleich diese Mondenbewohner an ihn herankommen, und sie sind es, die mit ihrer alten magischen Macht, mit der Weltsubstanz seiner Bilder in ihn hineinfahren, in sein Erleben hineinfahren.
Sehen Sie, es ist gerade so, was einem da passiert, wenn ich einen Vergleich brauchen darf, wie wenn ich ein Bild malen würde. Da male ich zunächst nur ein Bild - das tut keinem Menschen weh, wenn es nicht gar zu scheußlich ist, und da ist es ja auch nur ein moralischer Eindruck -, das tut also keinem Menschen weh. Aber denken Sie sich, ich male meinetwillen drei von Ihnen hier auf einem Bild, und es würde dadurch, daß mit einer magisch wirkenden Kraft das Bild durchsetzt würde, geschehen, daß diese drei aus dem Bilde hervortreten und sogleich alles dasjenige ausführen, was sie etwa im Schilde führen gegen irgend jemanden hier. Sie würden intensiver, mächtiger, regsamer auftreten, als Anthroposophen gewöhnt sind aufzutreten. So ist es. Das ganze Erleben ist mit einer ungeheuren Regsamkeit verbunden, weil diese Mondenwesen mit ihrem ganzen Sein die Bilder, die da erlebt werden, durchdringen, ich möchte sagen, mit einem «Übersein» durchdringen und sättigen.
So daß wir also durch die Region dieser Mondenwesen durchgehen nach dem Tode. Dadurch aber wird ganz mächtig im Weltenäther dasjenige fixiert, was wir in dieser Weise als den Ausgleich für unsere eigenen Taten, so wie ich es eben geschildert habe, erleben. Und gerade dieses Zurückgehen, wenn man es nicht bloß prinzipiell schildert, wie ich es in meiner «Theosophie» getan habe, sondern wenn man es so konkret anschaulich zu schildern versucht, wie ich es jetzt tun möchte, gerade dieses Rückleben ist außerordentlich interessant, wie überhaupt das Rückleben des Menschen unmittelbar nach dem Tode ein außerordentlich wichtiger Teil des Lebens schon einmal ist.
In unserer Zeit sind ja in der Tat die Erlebnisse, die da ein Mensch haben kann, noch in einem ganz besonderen Maße kompliziert. Denken Sie nur einmal daran, wie ganz andersartig die gesamte Seelenverfassung dieser Mondenwesen eigentlich ist gegenüber den Erdenbewohnern. Diese Mondenwesen, mit denen wir also, wie ich geschildert habe, so viel nach dem Tode zu tun haben, sie haben den Menschen jene Urweisheit gegeben, die gerade in unserem Zeitalter verglommen ist, die eigentlich nur bis zum 3., 4. nachchristlichen Jahrhundert etwas intensiver noch gedauert hat, dann in Tradition vorhanden war, dann aber ganz verglommen ist. Ich habe es ja öfter ausgeführt, wie die Menschen nicht zu ihrer Freiheit hätten kommen können, wenn ihnen die großartige, gewaltige Urweisheit dieser Urlehrer geblieben wäre. Also, sie ist verglommen. Es ist etwas anderes, das abstrakte Denken ist an die Stelle getreten. Der Mensch denkt heute in Begriffen, welche eigentlich gar nicht mehr viel zu tun haben mit der geistigen Welt. Ich möchte da noch einmal einen Vergleich gebrauchen, den ich schon einmal hier gebraucht habe: Aristoteles hat zehn Begriffe aufgestellt, die eigentlich noch die Überbleibsel der alten Weisheit waren: Sein, Menge, Eigenschaft, Relation, Lage, Raum, Zeit, Haben, Tun, Leiden. Er hat sie die Kategorien genannt. Es sind zehn einfache Begriffe. Diese zehn einfachen Begriffe stehen ja gewöhnlich in unseren Schullogiken. Die Gymnasiasten müssen sie auswendig lernen, die Professoren der Philosophie kennen sie. Aber man kennt eben nur diese zehn Begriffe: Sein, Haben, Lage, Raum, Zeit und so weiter. Aber was weiß man, wenn man diese zehn Begriffe kennt? Diese zehn Begriffe sind natürlich für den heutigen Menschen etwas Langweiliges, aber für den, der sie in ihrer Bedeutung durchschaut, sind sie nicht langweiliger als es die zweiundzwanzig oder dreiundzwanzig Buchstaben unseres Alphabetes sind.
Wenn Sie nichts wüßten vom Alphabet als: a, b, c, d, e, f, g und so weiter bis zum z, stellen Sie sich vor, was der Goethesche «Faust» für Sie wäre! Sie schlagen das Buch auf, finden da überall in dem Buch in der verschiedensten Weise durcheinandergewürfelt diese zweiundzwanzig Zeichen. Sonst enthält ja der «Faust» nichts anderes als diese zweiundzwanzig Zeichen, nur immer in verschiedener Weise zusammengesetzt. Aber wenn Sie nichts weiter wüßten, wenn Sie nie lesen gelernt hätten, sondern nur das Buch aufschlagen und diese Buchstaben kennenlernen würden, denken Sie, wie anders das wäre als jetzt, wo Sie lesen können, und nun den «Faust» in die Hand nehmen! Das ist doch etwas anderes. Aber kein Buch der Welt, das Sie lesen können, enthält etwas anderes als diese zweiundzwanzig Zeichen, und doch, was machen Sie mit diesen zweiundzwanzig Buchstaben, wenn Sie lesen können! Die ganze sinnliche Welt wird Ihnen aufgeschlossen dadurch, daß Sie durch die Art und Weise, wie Sie sie jonglieren, zusammenwürfeln, wie Sie diese zweiundzwanzig Buchstaben verwenden. Aber die Logiker, die heute zehn Kategorien: Sein, Quantität, Qualität, Relation, Raum, Zeit, Lage, Haben, Tun, Leiden aufgenommen haben, die wissen nicht mehr, wozu diese Kategorien gehören, als einer, der nie lesen gelernt hat, sondern in allen Büchern der Welt nur immer a,b, c,d,e, f und so weiter sieht. Es ist ganz dasselbe. Denn diese zehn Grundbegriffe, diese zehn logischen Begriffe des Aristoteles muß man so kennen, daß man sie in der verschiedensten Weise verwenden kann, so wie für die physische Welt die Buchstaben in der verschiedensten Weise zusammengesetzt werden. Dann liest man mit diesen zehn Begriffen in der geistigen Welt. Es sind Buchstaben!
Aber es ist allmählich so geworden in unserem Zeitalter, daß man nur noch die Begriffe kennt, was dasselbe ist, wie wenn man vom Alphabet eben nur die Aufeinanderfolge der Buchstaben kennen würde. Denken Sie, was Ihnen entgehen würde, wenn Sie nicht lesen könnten, sondern nur a, b, c, d sähen. Es entgeht den Menschen dementsprechend alles, was in der geistigen Welt ist, wenn sie nicht die nur modifizierten Begriffe des Aristoteles in der verschiedensten Weise verwenden können, um in der geistigen Welt lesen zu können.
In dieser Beziehung ist sogar den Philosophen seit langer Zeit etwas Urdrolliges passiert. Es gab in der Mitte des Mittelalters einen sehr gescheiten Mann, Raimundus Lullus, der noch etwas aus der Tradition gewußt hat von diesem Versetzen der logischen Kategorien, der logischen Grundbegriffe, und er hat das, was er gewußt hat, bekanntgegeben, aber nach der Sitte der damaligen Zeit im Bilde. Aber wenn er die Wirklichkeit ausgesprochen hätte, würde er gesagt haben: Meine Zeitgenossen sind alle Hohlköpfe, denn sie wissen nur a, b, c, d zu sagen, nicht zu lesen mit den Stammbegriffen, mit den Grundbegriffen. Man muß verstehen, mit dem Kopf diese Grundbegriffe so in Verbindung zu bringen, wie man sonst die Buchstaben in Verbindung bringt zu Worten und Sätzen. Dann kann man in der geistigen Welt lesen. - Aber das hat er nicht so direkt gesagt, das war die Sitte der damaligen Zeit nicht. Sondern er sagte: Man schreibe auf Zetteln die Grundbegriffe auf, und dann nehme man so eine Art Roulette, dann drehe man, dann werden diese Begriffe untereinandergewürfelt, und dann lese man. Dann kommt etwas dabei heraus.
Das war aber nur ein Vergleich, denn er hat eigentlich nicht eine tote Roulette gemeint, sondern den geistigen Kopf gemeint, der diese Begriffe durcheinanderwürfeln soll. Aber diejenigen, die davon gehört haben, die haben die Geschichte ernst genommen und lachen seit jener Zeit darüber. Sie finden, das ist etwas ungemein Kindisches gewesen von Raimundus Lullus. Kindisch ist es aber nur von seiten der neueren Philosophie aus, die nicht weiß, um was es sich dabei handelt.
Sie sehen, es ist tatsächlich fast alles verlorengegangen von dem, was in älterer Zeit der Menschheit von diesen Urlehrern überbracht worden ist, die heute von uns als die Mondenbewohner angesprochen werden müssen. Und es macht der Mensch eigentlich in einer besonderen Art die Bekanntschaft mit diesem andersartigen Wissen bei dieser rückläufigen Wanderung unmittelbar nach dem Tode. Da weiß er eigentlich auf eine solche Art, wie diese Urweisen gedacht und gewußt haben. Daher das Anschauliche, das so konkret Auftretende.
Aber eben in unserer Zeit werden die Sachen etwas verwickelt. Aus dem Grunde verwickelt, weil eine Art Nichtverstehen vorhanden ist zwischen den Menschen, die nun hier auf Erden - seit die Urweisheit verglommen ist — in ihren abstrakten Begriffen leben, und zwischen dem, was diese Urlehrer jetzt, nachdem sie mit dem Mondensein verbunden sind, als ihre Seelenverfassung haben.
Es ist schon dieses der Fall: wenn so ein moderner Naturgelehrter dieses Leben durchmacht, da spricht er eine andere Sprache als diese Urlehrer, die eigentlich, wie ich es weiter noch ausführlich schildern werde, mit der Bildung seines Karma sehr viel zu tun haben. Diese Urlehrer und die Menschen, die heute aus der modernen Zeitbildung, Zeitzivilisation heraus sterben, verstehen sich nicht recht.
Man kann über solche Dinge außerordentlich schwer Auffassungen bekommen, denn die Beobachtung dessen, was da vorgeht mit Menschen, ist ja nicht besonders leicht. Aber in charakteristischen Fällen kann man schon Anschauungen bekommen. Und so kann sich zum Beispiel eine Anschauung ergeben, meine lieben Freunde, wenn man zwei Menschen betrachtet, die, sagen wir, in der neueren Zeit gestorben sind und in dieser Weise die Rückwanderung gemacht haben nach dem Tode, die also in gewissem Sinne ganz drinnenstehen in der modernen Zeitbildung und doch wiederum in einem hohen Grade voneinander verschieden sind.
Sehen Sie, da kann man einen genialen, in seiner Art genialen, aber immerhin doch dutzendmäßigen modernen Naturgelehrten nehmen, wie etwa Du Bois-Reymond oder so jemanden, und kann diesen Rückgang betrachten. Man kann aber auch eine andere Persönlichkeit betrachten. Und eine sehr interessante Persönlichkeit für diesen Rückgang durch diese Seelenwelt ist diejenige Persönlichkeit, die mir einstmals vorgeschwebt hat beim Abfassen meiner Mysterien, als ich die Strader-Figur gebildet habe. Strader in den Mysterien ist ja das Abbild einer ganz konkreten Persönlichkeit, die tatsächlich in ihrer Jugend in das Mönchtum hineingegangen ist, aber aus dem Mönchtum wiederum sich herausentwickelt hat und dann in einer Art modernaufklärerischer Philosophie gewirkt hat, auch als Universitätsprofessor in dieser modern-aufklärerischen Philosophie gewirkt hat.
Nun, diese Persönlichkeit — sie hat eine Menge Schriften geschrieben - ist eigentlich in ihrer ganzen Begriffsentwickelung abstrakt, so von rechter Abstraktheit eines modernen Denkers, aber eindringlich, außerordentlich eindringlich, sehr herzhaft. Das ist ja eigentlich etwas Wohltätiges, wenn man beim modernen Denker auf etwas trifft, was herzhaft ist.
Natürlich, so herzhaft, wie zum Beispiel Hegel war, der mit ungeheurer Emotion, aber auch mit ungeheurer Anschaulichkeit das Allerabstrakteste hinstellte, so herzhaft ist der moderne Mensch ja nicht mehr; Hegel war ja eigentlich ein Mensch, der mit Begriffen Holz hacken konnte, der so fest die Begriffe hinstellen konnte, so konkret, daß er mit Begriffen Holz hacken konnte, aber in dieser Konkretheit natürlich kann das der moderne Mensch nicht mehr. Aber der, den ich meine, der hatte schon etwas Herzhaftes in der Handhabung der abstrakten Begriffe. Nun, mir war natürlich, weil, wie gesagt, mir die-dieses Leben vorschwebte, als ich die Strader-Figur gestaltete in meinen Mysterien, mir war ganz besonders interessant die Rückwärtswanderung des Lebens bei dieser Persönlichkeit. Da kam nun sehr in Betracht, daß diese Persönlichkeit alles, was sie dachte, doch mit einem gewissen theologisierenden Zug wiederum dachte, ganz abstrakt, wie ein moderner Naturforscher oder wenigstens Naturdenker von der einen Seite, daß aber mit einem etwas theologisierenden Zug wenigstens überall etwas durchleuchtet — es kommt das natürlich aus früheren Inkarnationen derselben Persönlichkeit - von dem Bewußtsein, daß man doch von einer realen geistigen Welt wenigstens sprechen kann.
So haben die Begriffe dieser Persönlichkeit in einem größeren Sinne eine Verwandtschaft mit dem, was die Seelenverfassung bei den Mondenwesen ist, als sie ein gewöhnlicher Dutzendgelehrter, wie zum Beispiel Du Bois-Reymond, hat. Und so kann man sehen, daß bei diesen Dutzendgelehrten ein Durchgehen durch diese Seelenwelt, durch diese Mondensphäre wirklich ein richtiges Nicht-Verstehen ist, wie wenn einer in einem fremden Lande lebt und niemals die Sprache dort lernt: die anderen verstehen ihn nicht, er versteht sie nicht. So ungefähr ist das für den Menschen, der ganz aus der modernen Zivilisation herauswächst, wenn er nun diese Rückwanderung durch das Leben antritt.
Aber für diese Persönlichkeit, ich möchte sagen für das «Urbild» meines Strader, ist das doch etwas anders gewesen. Und gerade an ihm konnte wahrgenommen werden bei der Rückwärtswanderung, wie die Wesen, die dem Monde angehören, ein außerordentliches - ich muß mich natürlich irdischer Ausdrücke bedienen, obwohl sie ungeheuer trivial sind im Verhältnis zu der Sache, die ich schildern muß -, wie diese Wesen ein gewisses Interesse entwickelten für die Art und Weise, wie er seine Gedanken, seine abstrakten Gedanken da hineinbrachte in diese Seelenwelt. Und er wiederum, er erlebte ein merkwürdiges, ein ganz merkwürdiges Aufwachen, ein Aufwachen, das sich so ansah, als ob er sich sagte: Ach, alles, was ich da bekämpft habe - und er hat viel bekämpft von dem, was traditionell war -, das ist gar nicht so, das ist ja eigentlich im Grunde genommen ganz anders. Das ist ja nur nach und nach so geworden, weil die alten guten Weisheiten zu abstrakten Worten geworden sind, und ich habe eigentlich vielfach gegen Windmühlen gekämpft. Jetzt sehe ich aber Realitäten.
Sehen Sie, da beginnt etwas, wo namentlich bei solch einer Persönlichkeit - und man kann im modernen Leben eine ganze Reihe solcher Persönlichkeiten zeichnen — diese Rückwärtswanderung, wo das Karma zunächst veranlagt wird, außerordentlich interessant wird für das Leben.
Eine noch auffälligere Persönlichkeit in dieser Beziehung ist der Philosoph, der «Die Phantasie als Grundprinzip des Weltprozesses» geschrieben hat, ich habe ihn auch öfter erwähnt, Jakob Frohschammer. Er hatte eigentlich noch sehr viel von innerer Durchtränktheit der abstrakten Begriffe in sich, war aber auch, ähnlich wie der, den ich jetzt beschrieben habe, eine Art abstrakter Denker. Aber er konnte selber die Abstraktheiten des Modernismus so wenig vertragen — ich meine jetzt nicht den Modernismus in katholischer Terminologie -, daß er eben gar nicht die Begriffe als weltgestaltende Mächte gelten lassen wollte, sondern die Phantasie. Er sah überall die Phantasie wirksam: die Pflanze wächst auf, die Tiere sind da durch die Phantasie und so weiter. In dieser Beziehung ist ja das Buch von Frohschammer außerordentlich interessant.
Es ist ganz wunderbar: eine solche Persönlichkeit, die noch sehr viel in sich hat von dem, was da war in der Zivilisationsentwickelung, bevor die ganze moderne philiströs-abstrakte Art zu denken eingetreten ist, wächst eben noch in innigerer Weise mit der Substanz der Mondenwesenheiten zusammen. Und solche Studien sind schon außerordeutlich interessant, weil sich an sie anknüpft ein genauerer Einblick in die Entwickelungsgeserze des Karma. Und gerade wenn man mit einer gewissen Teilnahme einer solchen Persönlichkeit zugetan ist, wie es bei mir der Fall ist gegenüber dem Urbilde des Strader in den Mysterien, so ist es die Wärme, die Seelenwärme, in der man mit einer solchen Persönlichkeit verbunden ist, die es einem möglich macht, gerade diese so bedeutungsvolle Wanderung nach dem Tode mit durchzuerleben.
Da hat tatsächlich die Tatsache, daß die Eindrücke so starke sind auf den, der sie nach dem Tode durchmacht, noch eine Nachwirkung bei dem, der so etwas dann erkennend verfolgt. Und da ist schon etwas sehr Merkwürdiges. Gerade in einem solchen Verfolgen zeigt sich, wieviel eindrucksvoller diese Erlebnisse nach dem Tode sind als die irdischen Erlebnisse.
Ich frage mich zum Beispiel heute in allem Ernste: Wäre es möglich für mich, nachdem ich längere Zeit gerade diese Bildgestaltungen, die dieses Urbild des Strader nach dem Tode durchgemacht hat, mit angesehen habe, wenn ich etwa, so wie ich die vier Mysteriendramen gemacht habe, im weiteren Fortgang ein fünftes machen wollte, die Gestalt des Strader zu schildern, sie weiter darzustellen? Es wäre mir gar nicht möglich, denn in dem Augenblicke, wo ich die irdische Gestalt darstellen will, die viel weniger intensiv an Eindrücken ist, sind die Bilder da von den Eindrücken, die das betreffende Urbild nach dem Tode durchmacht. Die sind viel intensiver, die löschen dasjenige aus, was im irdischen Leben dasteht.
Und ich konnte das an mir durchaus beobachten. Während ich auch für die Lebensäußerungen der betreffenden Persönlichkeit — Sie können sich das ja denken, weil sie eben das Urbild meines Strades ist — ein außerordentliches Interesse hatte, während sie lebte - sie ist ja nun seither verstorben -, überwiegt jetzt das Interesse für die Eindrücke, die diese Persönlichkeit nach dem Tode hat, weit alles das, was ich über diese Persönlichkeit irgendwie im Leben ausfindig machen kann, oder schildern kann oder dergleichen.
Ja, ich muß sagen, wenn ich selber zurückdenke an meine Mysteriendramen: durch die lebendigen Eindrücke von diesem Urbilde meiner Strader-Gestalt in ihrem Leben nach dem Tode verlöscht sich mir während bei den anderen Gestalten das fast gar nicht der Fall ist — dasjenige, was die Gestalt des Strader ist, am allermeisten. Da sehen Sie, wie sich für eine wirkliche, reale Beobachtung wirklich in Realität nebeneinanderstellt dasjenige, was auf Erden ist, und das, was außerhalb der Erde ist, und wie man an der Wirkung, die solche Dinge haben, schon beurteilen kann, daß dieses Leben nach dem Tode in der Rückwärtswanderung ein ungeheuer intensives ist: es löscht durchaus irdische Eindrücke aus.
Ja man kann über solche Dinge sogar noch mehr sagen. Es kann zum Beispiel folgendes der Fall sein - ich erzähle auch bei diesen Dingen nicht irgend etwas Konstruiertes, sondern durchaus Realitäten -: Man kennt sehr gut einen Menschen hier im Erdenleben, man erlebt dann das, was er bei der Rückwärtswanderung durchzumachen hat, wie alles eine andere Gestalt annimmt, weil die Bilder dieser Rückwärtswanderung so außerordentlich intensiv sind. Und man kann sogar sagen, daß, wenn man sich außerordentlich interessiert hat, wie das bei mir der Fall war bei einem Menschen, der vor einer Anzahl von Jahren gestorben ist, für sein Erdenleben, so nimmt die ganze Beziehung zu diesem Erdenleben eine andere Form an, wenn man nachher miterlebt, was die betreffende Persönlichkeit nach dem Tode in der Rückwärtswanderung durchmacht. Eine ganz andere Form nimmt das an! Und manches in den irdischen Beziehungen stellt sich dann erst in seiner vollen Wahrheit ein.
Das ist um so mehr der Fall, wenn die Beziehungen im Erdenleben nicht geistiger Natur sind. Wo sie geistiger Natur sind, wo sie vom Geistigen durchtränkt sind, ist ja eine Art kontinuierlicher Weiterentwickelung vorhanden. Wenn sie aber so sind, daß zum Beispiel, sagen wir, ohne eine Übereinstimmung in den Anschauungen eine menschliche Beziehung vorhanden ist, dann setzt sich sofort nach dem Tode unter Umständen diese menschliche Beziehung in etwas ganz anderes um, in eine ganz andere Art von Gefühlsleben und so weiter. Das wird durch diese Lebendigkeit der Bilder, die da auftreten, eigentlich hervorgerufen.
Ich schildere solche Dinge aus dem Grunde, damit ich in Ihnen, meine lieben Freunde, eine konkrete Vorstellung hervorrufe von der Art und Weise, wie andere Arten von Realitäten da sind als diejenigen, die auf der Erde vorhanden sind. Es gibt eben die verschiedensten Arten von Realitäten. Und daß überall in die Bilder, die der Mensch von sich aus machen kann, die Taten der Mondenwesen einfließen, diese Realität ist für die Betrachtung eigentlich wunderbarer als die spätere, wenn der Mensch durch die Geisteswelt durchgeht, wo er es in der Auswirkung seines irdischen Lebens mit den höheren Hierarchien zu tun hat, was man viel leichter begreift, weil das eine Art Fortsetzung ist. Aber diese radikale Umänderung des Menschen nach dem Tode dadurch, daß er mit Wesen in Beziehung tritt, die längst von der Erde weggegangen sind und auf dem Monde eine Art kosmischer Kolonie begründet haben, das ist etwas, was in einer außerordentlich starken Weise uns mit einer der irdischen Realität sehr naheliegenden - denn man macht es ja unmittelbar nach dem irdischen Leben durch - und doch wiederum von der irdischen grundverschiedenen Realität bekannt macht.
Wenn nun die Menschen gar zu stark an dem Irdischen hängen, dann kann es sogar sein, daß sie es schwer haben, in diese Region sich hineinzufinden, wo die Mondenwesen sind. Da tritt dann das Folgende ein, das ich etwa in der Art charakterisieren möchte: Denken Sie sich, hier wäre die Erde (siehe Zeichnung, weiß), da der Mond (rot). Nun ist es ja so, daß die Mondenwirkungen, die eigentlich die reflektierten Sonnenwirkungen sind, gerade noch so weit in die Erde hineinwirken, dann hören sie auf zu wirken (gelb). Die Mondenwirkungen gehen nicht sehr weit in die Erde hinein, aber gerade noch so weit hinein, als die Pflanzenwurzeln in der Erde sich ausbreiten. Unter die Pflanzenwurzel-Schichte — und das ist ja eine sehr dünne Schichte gehen die Mondenwirkungen eigentlich nicht hinunter.
Und es ist eigentlich nur eine kleine Hülle hier oben, wo die Mondenwirkungen festgehalten werden. Sonnenwirkungen gehen ja tief in die Erde hinein. Von der Sonnenwärme während des Sommers erhält sich die Wärme noch; wenn Sie die Kartoffeln in Gruben legen, da haben Sie noch die Wirkung während des Winters. Von den Sonnenwirkungen geht viel hinein in die Erde, von den Mondenwirkungen nur so weit, als die Pflanzenwurzel geht — eine dünne Schichte.
Es kann aber geschehen, daß Menschenwesenheiten nach dem Tode, wenn sie in die Mondenregion hinein sollen, in die Seelenwelt, und doch nicht recht sich verstehen können mit den Mondenwesen, gebannt werden von dieser dünnen Schichte von Mondenwirkungen, die dann aus der Erde gewissermaßen heraufrauchen, und dann eigentlich da für ein wirkliches sinnlich-übersinnliches Wahrnehmen wie eine Art Gespenster, wie Nachwirkungen des Menschen herumwandeln.
Die Sagen und Dichtungen, die von solchen Dingen existieren, die beruhen ja durchaus auf Realitäten. Man muß nur, um solche Dinge beurteilen zu können, ganz frei von Aberglauben sein, überall kritisch vorgehen, überall nur diejenigen Dinge nehmen, die sich prüfen lassen.
Bei diesem Durchgang, der also ein Drittel des Erdenlebens dauert, bereitet sich zunächst das Karma vor. Denn die Mondenwesen nehmen ja teil an diesen negativen Bildern, die der Mensch von seinen Taten entwirft, auch von seinen Gedankentaten, und diese Mondenwesen haben ein gutes Gedächtnis, da sie ja alles das, was sie da erleben mit dem Menschen, in den Weltenäther eintragen.
Wir gehen nun durch das Leben zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt hindurch, kommen wieder zurück. Da finden wir, wenn wir zurückkommen in die Mondenregion, alles das verzeichnet. Wir nehmen es in unser Erdenleben herein, auf daß wir es dann mit dem Erdenwillen ausführen.
Das ist zunächst dasjenige, was ich als eine grundlegende Betrachtung heute, meine lieben Freunde, vor Sie hinstellen möchte. Karmabildung beim rückläufigen Durchleben des Erdenwandels unmittelbar nach dem Tode
Ninth Lecture
We will now be occupied for some time with the lawful connections within the development of human karma, and today I will first of all discuss the inner configuration in the formation of karma, namely that part of karma which is primarily concerned with the moral, ethical and spiritual side of human life.
You just have to bear in mind that the moment you look out of the physical world - and that is what you do by looking at karma, and the karmic connections are spiritual, even if they manifest themselves in the physical, let us say for example in illnesses - then that which belongs to karma in an illness is caused spiritually. So under all circumstances one enters into the spiritual when one approaches the karmic consideration. But today we want to focus in particular on the ethical-spiritual, the spiritual part of karma.
I have already pointed out how karma, the formation of karma, is connected with those beings on earth who were present on earth itself in very ancient times of earthly development, and who then departed from earth with the exit of the moon in order to have their dwelling place further in the universe as a kind of moon dwellers, lunar beings on the moon.
We must regard that which we call the moon, of which the physical part, which is usually described, is only, I would like to say, a suggestion, we must regard the moon as the carrier of certain spiritual beings, of which the most important are these, who once inhabited the earth as the great primal teachers, who established on earth that primal wisdom among men, of which I have often spoken. These beings were once on earth. They were there when the moon was not yet separated from the earth. As I have described earlier, they instilled the primordial wisdom into people, so to speak, so that people came to this primordial wisdom through a kind of inner enlightenment. And the way in which these beings worked is quite different from the way in which people can work on earth today.
For you see, one would actually have to describe the kind of effectiveness of these old primal teachers among men as a kind of magical effect, as effects which happened through the fact that the human will still had a considerably greater influence, also on what can happen externally, than it can have today. Today the will can only have an effect on the external world through physical transmission. If we want to push an object, we have to develop our will; we have to push the object with our arm and our hand. The direct effect of the will on external processes, which today we would call natural processes, was still present at the time of the ancient primal teachers in a way that today we would call magical effects. We can say the following: the last remnants of such effects of the human will were still present until a relatively short time ago. Rousseau, for example, still tells us how in certain warmer regions he was able to paralyze toads that came near him, even to the point of death, simply by fixing them sharply with his gaze. This effectiveness of the human will, which in warmer regions still lasted until the 18th century, has increasingly disappeared. It was still present in ancient Egyptian times as the influence of the human will on the growth of plants; the will was still able to promote the growth of plants. And when the ancient primal teachers were on earth, it was quite possible to bring even lifeless natural processes under the control of the human will.
These things of course depend, or depended, on the fact that one also had an exact instinctive insight into the connections of the world, which remain completely hidden from today's crude science. That, for example, the effects of warmth are of great importance for the effects of the human will is evident from the fact that the same Rousseau, who was able to kill toads in warmer regions with his gaze, also tried later in Lyons to look a toad in the face in such a way that he thought it would at least be paralyzed by his gaze. And lo and behold, it was not the toad that was paralyzed, it looked at him with all its sharpness, and he became paralyzed in a certain way and had to be brought back to life by the doctor with snake venom. This way of developing the will is definitely connected with the consideration of the instinctive knowledge of what is in a person's environment.
But even the ancient primal teachers possessed a completely different, more intense, more penetrating knowledge of nature from their spiritual foundations than people have today. In short, these ancient teachers were indeed gifted with something that cannot be expressed in natural laws. Even back then, when the primal teachers ruled on earth, it was not necessary to put it into natural laws, because today's natural science did not exist back then, of course. It would also have seemed extremely worthless to people back then, they would not have been able to understand what it was all about. Because all work was based on a much more inner recognition and knowledge of things than can be the case today.
These original teachers, as I said, changed the scene of their work from the earth to the moon and now, since everything in the universe is connected, have a great task in the context of all world events. And it is they who have an extraordinary amount to do with karma, with the formation of human karma. For an important component in the formation of karma is that which we can observe when the human being, after death, having laid down his etheric body after a few days, then lives again - now not his waking life, but his sleeping life. So when the human being has passed through the gate of death, there is initially a bright retrospective view of what the human being has gone through in life in a mighty tableau. But this is a figurative looking back. After a few days the etheric body dissolves into the general world ether, and then this retrospect slowly fades away. But then a real looking back begins.
Not true, our life during our earthly existence flows in such a way that, even if we perceive it as a unity in memory, this is of course a deception; for life does not flow as a unity, but we always consciously experience day, unconsciously night, consciously day, unconsciously night and so on. When man then remembers back, he forgets that the nights are always in between. During these nights much goes on with the soul, with the astral body and with the ego, but man knows nothing of it. What goes on there, what the human being unconsciously lives through during his life on earth, he lives through during a regression in such a way that time after death really seems to him to be receding; he then lives through the nights in full consciousness.
Therefore he experiences this decline, because one sleeps away about a third of one's life, even in a third of one's lifetime. So when someone is sixty years old, he has slept through about twenty years, and he then experiences this decline in about twenty years. Then it goes into the actual spiritual realm, and the person then lives in a different way. But this regression, the contemplation of what happens in the nights, is experienced by man first after death. But he experiences it in such a way that one must first notice how great and significant this re-experience differs from the usual experience during the night.
With the exception of the dreams that emerge from sleep, which do not very faithfully reproduce what is experienced in earthly life, but often reproduce it in a very illusory, fantastic way, with the exception of what comes up as dreams from nightly life, man has little awareness of all the manifold things that happen to him. I have also described here in earlier times what happens to him during sleep; but after death man experiences it with an extraordinary clarity, with an extraordinary vividness. So that one can say that this life in the world of the soul after death is actually more impressive than life on earth. The images that one experiences, the way in which one finds oneself in this experience, is extraordinarily intense, not dreamlike at all, but extraordinarily intense. And you actually experience everything in such a way that you experience it, I would say, from the point of view of a kind of photographic negative. So if you have inflicted suffering on someone during your life on earth, you have experienced the infliction of this suffering yourself during your life on earth. During your life on earth you experienced and did that which emanated from you. But when you live back there, you do not experience what you experienced during your life on earth, but as if by slipping over into the other person, what the other person experienced to whom you inflicted the thing.
So, if I choose a drastic example, when you have given someone a slap in the face, you do not experience what you experienced during your life on earth in intending this slap, in giving this slap, in the painlessness of this slap for you, if you did not inflict pain on your own hand through strong exertion, but instead of what you experienced when you administered such a slap, you now experience in this return everything that the other person to whom you administered the slap experienced. You experience it as your experience, and you experience it in an extraordinary vividness, to an intensified degree.
So that, in fact, when a person makes this regression, he says to himself: Oh, that is extraordinarily impressive, what I am experiencing! And no impression on earth actually has such a powerful effect as the impressions of this backward-directed life after death in the third part of life. So that during this time you actually experience the whole karmic fulfillment of what you yourself have done in life; you experience all this from the point of view of the other. So you experience the entire karmic fulfillment of your life, just not yet as an earth life - you will do that in the next life - but you experience it, even if it is not as intense in terms of doing as it will be later in earth life, you experience it with regard to the impression even more strongly than it could be the case in any earth life.
Well, that is something striking, my dear friends. It is really, I would like to say, the saturation, the strength of the experience there is something quite extraordinary, something strange.
But if man could only develop the power in his ego and in his astral body that he has when he passes through the gate of death, he would experience this whole way back at most like a very vivid dream. One might actually expect after earthly life, if one only looks at earthly life and at what earthly life can make of one when one has died, that one would experience this way back as a very, very vivid dream. But that is not the case at all. It is not a vivid dream, it is an extraordinarily intense experience, much] more intense than earthly experiences are.
Now you don't have a physical body, you don't have an etheric body, through which you have your experiences on earth. Just think what you would experience on earth with your ordinary consciousness if you had no physical and no etheric body. You would scurry about the earth in such a way that every now and then a dream would occur; then you would go back to sleep and so on.
Now you can well imagine that a dream that a sixty-year-old has after life on earth lasts continuously for twenty years; but it is not a dream, it is a very energetic, intense experience. And where does that come from? You see, it comes from the fact that at the moment when the human being has passed through the gate of death, has laid down his etheric body, at that moment when he begins this return journey after death, these inhabitants of the moon immediately approach him, and it is they who enter him with their old magical power, with the world substance of his images, who enter his experience.
You see, what happens to you, if I may use a comparison, is like painting a picture. At first I only paint a picture - that doesn't hurt anyone if it's not too horrible, and then it's only a moral impression - so it doesn't hurt anyone. But imagine that I paint three of you here in one picture for my sake, and it would happen that these three would emerge from the picture with a magical force and immediately carry out everything they might be up to against anyone here. They would appear more intense, more powerful, more active than anthroposophists are accustomed to appear. That is how it is. The whole experience is connected with a tremendous activity, because these lunar beings permeate the images that are experienced with their whole being, I would like to say, permeate and saturate them with an “overbeing”.
So that we pass through the region of these lunar beings after death. In this way, however, that which we experience in this way as the compensation for our own deeds, as I have just described it, is fixed quite powerfully in the world ether. And it is precisely this going back, if one does not merely describe it in principle, as I did in my “Theosophy”, but if one tries to describe it as concretely and vividly as I would like to do now, precisely this return life is extraordinarily interesting, just as the return life of the human being immediately after death is an extraordinarily important part of life in general.
In our time, the experiences that a person can have are indeed complicated to a very special degree. Just think of how completely different the entire soul constitution of these lunar beings is compared to the inhabitants of earth. These lunar beings, with whom we have so much to do after death, as I have described, have given mankind that primordial wisdom which has just faded away in our age, which actually only lasted somewhat more intensively until the 3rd, 4th century AD, was then present in tradition, but then faded away completely. I have often explained how people would not have been able to achieve their freedom if they had been left with the great, powerful original wisdom of these original teachers. Well, it has faded away. It is something else, abstract thinking has taken its place. People today think in terms that no longer have much to do with the spiritual world. I would like to use a comparison that I have used here before: Aristotle set out ten concepts that were actually the remnants of ancient wisdom: Being, quantity, property, relation, location, space, time, having, doing, suffering. He called them the categories. They are ten simple concepts. These ten simple concepts are usually found in our school logic. Grammar school pupils have to memorize them, professors of philosophy know them. But we only know these ten concepts: being, having, position, space, time and so on. But what do you know if you know these ten terms? These ten concepts are of course boring for people today, but for those who understand their meaning, they are no more boring than the twenty-two or twenty-three letters of our alphabet.
If you knew nothing of the alphabet but: a, b, c, d, e, f, g and so on up to z, imagine what Goethe's “Faust” would be to you! You open the book and find these twenty-two characters jumbled up everywhere in the book in the most diverse ways. Otherwise “Faust” contains nothing but these twenty-two characters, only always put together in different ways. But if you knew nothing else, if you had never learned to read, but only opened the book and got to know these letters, think how different it would be from now, when you can read, and now take “Faust” in your hand! That is something else. But no book in the world that you can read contains anything but these twenty-two characters, and yet what do you do with these twenty-two letters when you can read! The whole sensory world is opened up to you by the way you juggle them, by the way you throw together how you use these twenty-two letters. But the logicians, who today use ten categories: Being, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Space, Time, Situation, Having, Doing, Suffering, they know no more what these categories belong to than one who has never learned to read, but only ever sees a,b, c,d,e, f and so on in all the books of the world. It is quite the same. For one must know these ten basic concepts, these ten logical concepts of Aristotle, in such a way that one can use them in the most diverse ways, just as the letters are put together in the most diverse ways for the physical world. Then one reads with these ten concepts in the spiritual world. They are letters!
But it has gradually become the case in our age that we only know the concepts, which is the same as if we only knew the sequence of letters in the alphabet. Think what you would miss if you could not read, but only saw a, b, c, d. Accordingly, people miss out on everything that is in the spiritual world if they cannot use Aristotle's modified concepts in the most diverse ways in order to be able to read in the spiritual world.
In this respect, something original happened even to philosophers a long time ago. In the middle of the Middle Ages there was a very clever man, Raimundus Lullus, who still knew something from tradition about this shifting of logical categories, of basic logical concepts, and he made known what he knew, but according to the custom of the time in the image. But if he had spoken the reality, he would have said: My contemporaries are all blockheads, because they only know how to say a, b, c, d, not to read with the root concepts, with the basic concepts. You have to understand how to connect these basic concepts with your head in the same way that you connect letters to words and sentences. Then you can read in the spiritual world. - But he didn't say that directly, that wasn't the custom at the time. Instead, he said: You write down the basic terms on pieces of paper, and then you take a kind of roulette, then you spin the dice, then these terms are thrown together, and then you read. Then something comes out of it.
But that was just a comparison, because he wasn't actually referring to a dead roulette, but to the mental head that is supposed to mix up these terms. But those who heard about it took the story seriously and have been laughing about it ever since. They think that Raimundus Lullus was being incredibly childish. But it is only childish from the point of view of modern philosophy, which does not know what it is all about.
You see, almost everything has actually been lost of what was brought to mankind in older times by these primal teachers, who today must be addressed by us as the inhabitants of the moon. And man actually makes acquaintance with this different kind of knowledge in a special way during this retrograde migration immediately after death. There he actually knows in such a way how these primordial sages thought and knew. Hence the vivid, the so concrete appearance.
But in our time, things are becoming somewhat convoluted. For the reason that there is a kind of incomprehension between the people who now live here on earth - since the primal wisdom has faded away - in their abstract concepts, and between what these primal teachers now have as their soul constitution after they are connected with being on the moon.
This is already the case: when such a modern natural scientist goes through this life, he speaks a different language than these primal teachers, who actually, as I will describe in detail further on, have a lot to do with the formation of his karma. These original teachers and the people who die today out of modern time formation, time civilization, do not really understand each other.
It is extremely difficult to gain an understanding of such things, because observing what happens to people is not particularly easy. But in characteristic cases you can get an idea. And so, for example, my dear friends, a view can emerge if you look at two people who, let us say, died in more recent times and in this way made the return journey after death, who are therefore in a certain sense completely inside the modern formation of time and yet are again very different from each other.
You see, you can take a brilliant modern natural scientist, ingenious in his way, but still a dozen or so, such as Du Bois-Reymond or someone like that, and look at this decline. But you can also look at another personality. And a very interesting personality for this decline through this world of souls is the personality that I once had in mind when I wrote my Mysteries, when I formed the Strader figure. Strader in the Mysteries is the image of a very specific personality who actually entered monasticism in his youth, but who in turn developed out of monasticism and then worked in a kind of modern Enlightenment philosophy, and also worked as a university professor in this modern Enlightenment philosophy.
Now, this personality - he wrote a lot of writings - is actually abstract in his entire conceptual development, the right kind of abstractness of a modern thinker, but forceful, extraordinarily forceful, very heartfelt. That is actually something beneficial when you encounter something heartfelt in a modern thinker.
Of course, modern man is no longer as heartfelt as Hegel was, for example, who presented the most abstract things with tremendous emotion, but also with tremendous vividness; Hegel was actually a man who could chop wood with concepts, who could present the concepts so firmly, so concretely that he could chop wood with concepts, but of course modern man can no longer do that in this concreteness. But the one I am referring to had something hearty in his handling of abstract concepts. Now, of course, because, as I said, I had this life in mind when I created the Strader figure in my Mysteries, I was particularly interested in the backward migration of life in this personality. It came into consideration that this personality thought everything he thought with a certain theologizing trait, quite abstractly, like a modern natural scientist or at least a natural thinker on the one hand, but that with a somewhat theologizing trait at least something shines through everywhere - of course this comes from earlier incarnations of the same personality - from the awareness that one can at least speak of a real spiritual world.
So the concepts of this personality have in a greater sense a kinship with what the constitution of the soul is in the lunar beings than an ordinary dozen scholars, such as Du Bois-Reymond, have. And so one can see that with these dozen scholars, passing through this soul world, through this sphere of the moon, is really a real non-understanding, as when one lives in a foreign country and never learns the language there: the others do not understand him, he does not understand them. That's roughly how it is for a person who has grown out of modern civilization when he embarks on this return journey through life.
But for this personality, I would say for the “archetype” of my Strader, it was somewhat different. And it was precisely in him that it could be perceived during the return journey how the beings belonging to the moon developed an extraordinary - I must of course make use of earthly expressions, although they are tremendously trivial in relation to the matter I have to describe - how these beings developed a certain interest in the way he brought his thoughts, his abstract thoughts, into this world of souls. And he, in turn, experienced a strange, a very strange awakening, an awakening that looked as if he was saying to himself: Oh, everything that I have fought against - and he has fought against much of what was traditional - that is not so at all, that is actually basically quite different. It just gradually became like that because the old good wisdom became abstract words, and I was actually tilting at windmills a lot. But now I see realities.
You see, this is where something begins to happen, especially with such a personality - and you can draw a whole series of such personalities in modern life - this backward migration, where karma is first determined, becomes extraordinarily interesting for life.
An even more striking personality in this respect is the philosopher who wrote “The Imagination as the Basic Principle of the World Process”, Jakob Frohschammer, whom I have mentioned several times. He actually still had a great deal of the inner saturation of abstract concepts in him, but was also, like the person I have just described, a kind of abstract thinker. But he himself could tolerate the abstractions of modernism so little - I don't mean modernism in Catholic terminology - that he didn't want the concepts to be the powers shaping the world, but rather the imagination. He saw the imagination at work everywhere: the plant grows up, the animals are there through the imagination and so on. In this respect, Frohschammer's book is extraordinarily interesting.
It is quite wonderful: such a personality, which still has a great deal in it of what was there in the development of civilization before the whole modern philistine-abstract way of thinking came in, grows together in a more intimate way with the substance of the lunar beings. And such studies are already extraordinarily interesting, because they are linked to a more precise insight into the developmental laws of karma. And especially if one is attached to such a personality with a certain participation, as is the case with me towards the archetype of the Strader in the Mysteries, then it is the warmth, the warmth of soul, in which one is connected with such a personality, which makes it possible for one to experience precisely this so significant migration after death.
The fact that the impressions are so strong on the one who goes through them after death actually still has an after-effect on the one who then follows something like this in a recognizing way. And there is something very strange about that. It is precisely in such a pursuit that it becomes apparent how much more impressive these experiences are after death than the earthly experiences.
For example, I ask myself today in all seriousness: Would it be possible for me, after I have watched for a long time these pictorial formations that this archetype of Strader has undergone after death, if I wanted, as I have done with the four mystery dramas, to make a fifth in the further course, to portray the figure of Strader, to portray it further? It would not be possible for me, because at the moment when I want to portray the earthly figure, which is much less intense in terms of impressions, the images are there of the impressions that the archetype in question undergoes after death. They are much more intense, they erase what is there in earthly life.
And I could certainly observe this in myself. While I also had an extraordinary interest in the life expressions of the personality in question - you can imagine this, because it is the archetype of my degree - while it was alive - it has now passed away - now the interest in the impressions that this personality has after death far outweighs everything that I can somehow find out about this personality in life, or can describe or the like.
Yes, I must say, when I myself think back to my mystery dramas: through the vivid impressions of this archetype of my Strader figure in its life after death, that which is the figure of Strader extinguishes itself for me the most, whereas with the other figures this is almost not the case at all. There you see how, for a real, actual observation, that which is on earth and that which is outside the earth are really juxtaposed in reality, and how one can already judge from the effect that such things have, that this life after death in the backward migration is a tremendously intense one: it definitely extinguishes earthly impressions.
Yes, one can say even more about such things. For example, the following can be the case - I am not talking about something contrived here either, but quite realities -: You know a person very well here in earthly life, you then experience what he has to go through in the backward wandering, how everything takes on a different form, because the images of this backward wandering are so extraordinarily intense. And one can even say that if one has taken an extraordinary interest, as was the case for me with a person who died a number of years ago, in his life on earth, then the whole relationship to this life on earth takes on a different form when one subsequently experiences what the personality in question goes through after death in the backward migration. It takes on a completely different form! And some things in earthly relationships only then become apparent in their full truth.
This is all the more the case when the relationships in earthly life are not of a spiritual nature. Where they are of a spiritual nature, where they are imbued with the spiritual, there is a kind of continuous further development. But if they are such that, for example, let us say, a human relationship exists without an agreement in the views, then immediately after death this human relationship may be transformed into something quite different, into a quite different kind of emotional life and so on. This is actually caused by the vividness of the images that appear.
I am describing such things so that I can evoke in you, my dear friends, a concrete idea of the way in which there are other kinds of realities than those that exist on earth. There are many different kinds of realities. And the fact that the deeds of the moon beings flow everywhere into the pictures which man can make of his own accord, this reality is actually more wonderful for observation than the later one, when man passes through the spiritual world, where he has to do with the higher hierarchies in the effects of his earthly life, which is much easier to understand because it is a kind of continuation. But this radical change of man after death, in that he enters into relationship with beings who have long since departed from earth and have established a kind of cosmic colony on the moon, is something which in an extraordinarily strong way acquaints us with a reality very close to earthly reality - for one goes through it immediately after earthly life - and yet again fundamentally different from earthly reality.
If now men are too strongly attached to the earthly then it can even be that they have difficulties to find their way into this region where the moon beings are. Then the following occurs, which I would like to characterize something like this: Think of the earth here (see drawing, white) and the moon there (red). Now it is the case that the lunar effects, which are actually the reflected effects of the sun, work just so far into the earth, then they stop working (yellow). The lunar effects do not go very far into the earth, but just as far as the plant roots spread out in the earth. The moon's effects do not actually go below the plant root layer - which is a very thin layer.
And it is actually only a small shell up here where the lunar effects are retained. Solar effects go deep into the earth. The warmth of the sun during the summer is still retained; if you put the potatoes in pits, you still have the effect during the winter. Much of the effects of the sun goes into the earth, of the effects of the moon only as far as the plant root goes - a thin layer.
But it can happen that human beings after death, when they are to enter the lunar region, into the soul world, and yet cannot really understand each other with the lunar beings, are banished by this thin layer of lunar effects, which then smoke up from the earth, so to speak, and then actually walk around there for a real sensual-supersensible perception like a kind of ghosts, like after-effects of man.
The legends and poems that exist about such things are based on realities. In order to be able to judge such things, one must only be completely free of superstition, proceed critically everywhere, take only those things that can be tested.
In this passage, which thus lasts a third of life on earth, karma prepares itself first. For the lunar beings take part in these negative images that man creates of his deeds, also of his thought deeds, and these lunar beings have a good memory, as they enter everything they experience with man into the world ether.
We now go through life between death and a new birth and come back again. There, when we return to the lunar region, we find everything recorded. We take it into our earthly life so that we can then carry it out with the earthly will.
First of all, this is what I would like to put before you today, my dear friends, as a fundamental consideration. The formation of karma during the retrograde experience of the earthly change immediately after death