Rudolf Steiner
The Birth of a New View of Humanity
1. Body, Soul, and Spirit
Whoever gazes at the rising morning sun sees the source of light at the point where heaven and earth meet. From the horizon, the rays spread out. With a single glance, the observer takes in the image of the earth as it becomes visible in the morning light, and the shining sun itself. Every object, every form that appears in the rising light is united with the source from which this light radiates.
It is different when the sun has reached its zenith. Whoever then looks at the earth no longer sees the illuminated objects and forms united with the source of light. They must shift their gaze to find this source. Only when they raise their head and look upward do they see the origin of the light. They face two realms, which, however, can be connected through themselves. They see two worlds that can be united by their soul seeking knowledge.
Let this comparison stand at the beginning of a chapter intended to show how Anthroposophy brought about the fulfillment of the worldview and view of humanity of German Idealism.
The morning sun of German Idealism shone, as it were, upon the earth and the beings living upon it—plants, animals, and humans—from the horizon of the spirit. The radiance of the morning light was to be found upon and within the earth itself. In the souls of those who, through their enthusiasm for beauty, were capable of a deeper grasp of truth, the earth and its inhabitants could be beheld in the radiance of the dawning light. From this perspective arose their works, which could be both art and science. Many who were seized by their enthusiasm and their sense of beauty experienced this union of two worlds, of heaven and earth, in their own souls as well. The spiritual light, however, of which Rudolf Steiner spoke, had, as it were, risen to its full midday height. It could no longer be discovered without the inner gaze being directed upward.
The phenomena on Earth that become visible in this light of the spirit can also only be understood from this light of the spirit. The light itself, however, is to be found in a world that extends above and around the Earth.
Human beings can gain access to both worlds. They reach the Earth through their perceptions. Through his cognitive faculties, he ascends into the world of the spirit. His inner life unites what he perceives through seeing, hearing, and touching with what he grasps through understanding from the interrelationships. He is a “citizen of two worlds” that can unite within him to form a third world. Whoever comes to this realization can find answers to many questions that arise in the human soul.
One can describe a phenomenon as it appears to us in the light; one can compare it with other phenomena, one can organize everything and bring it into a system. But if one wishes to penetrate to the true essence of the phenomenon, then one must relate it to the light itself. Only then can it reveal its true nature.
The facts lie in the world that reveals itself as the visible, audible, and tangible world of perception. The possibility of understanding these facts lies not there. From the world of perceptions, only questions confront us—an infinite number of them, all demanding answers. A person can approach this world when they learn to recognize that they are not merely a perceiving being connected to a world full of phenomena, but that they can also find inner access to that world from which the light of the spirit originates, the light that makes the phenomena visible to them in the first place.
The image of the human being stands before us in the triad of body, soul, and spirit. (23) Human beings participate in the environment in threefold ways. Perceptions convey to them the colors and forms, hardness or softness, taste or smell of things. Furthermore, phenomena reveal their essence through the qualities they present to sensory perception.
In contrast, human beings experience feelings of sympathy and antipathy, of pleasure and displeasure. Their desires are aroused, their feelings of pleasure awaken, or aversion arises, accompanied by feelings of displeasure.
But then the cognitive open up to him an understanding of the interconnection of things and phenomena among themselves and their relationship to himself. The mysterious interconnectedness of things and phenomena can become clear to him.
Thus, the human being is connected to the world in three ways. First, the phenomena themselves express themselves through their qualities. Through the human senses, these qualities extend into the inner being of the human being. The senses are like “gates of the soul,” as Rudolf Steiner calls them.
In the ever-changing experience of sympathy and antipathy, of pleasure and displeasure, a person perceives themselves. They experience the inner part they take in everything. Just as the world of phenomena expresses itself in perceptions, so does the person express themselves in inner experience. Here they learn something about themselves that connects them to the phenomena. The inner image of the world is constantly changing, now bright, now dark, now blossoming, then withering, now in rich splendor of color, then hidden in deep darkness. Human inner experience, too, is changeable. With the light, joy may enter him; with the darkness, sorrow.
But where his cognitive faculties engage with the interrelationships of things, there he enters a realm that is imperishable.
The sprouting plant will wither away again after a short time. The phenomenon, as it appeared on earth, will then have vanished. The joy that lived within the human being while contemplating this plant has likewise vanished. It can only reappear as a memory—that is, as a form of knowledge that can in turn awaken a certain joy. But what has revealed itself to his understanding as the law of plant growth, as the harmony in which this beauty manifests itself, that is enduring. It is independent of human feelings. Even if he could never again behold nature, never again experience its beauty, he would still always carry within himself the knowledge of the law underlying plant growth and plant beauty. Thus, the human being participates in the world in threefold ways. Rudolf Steiner described this in the clearest terms: “By ‘body’ here is meant that through which the things of the environment reveal themselves to the human being, as in the above example the flowers of the meadow. By the word ‘soul’ is meant that through which he connects things with his own existence, through which he feels pleasure and displeasure, delight and aversion, joy and pain in them. By ‘spirit’ is meant that which becomes manifest within him when, in Goethe’s words, he regards things as ‘as it were divine beings.’ — In this sense, the human being consists of body, soul, and spirit.”
All three—body, soul, and spirit—are like a divine gift to the human being. With gratitude, he regards his body as that which connects him to the world of phenomena. If a disability arises in this body, whether congenital or acquired, this signifies a loss for the human being. The color-blind person cannot connect with one aspect of the world of phenomena; the deaf person cannot connect with another.
Human beings can also be grateful for the soul bestowed upon them. It is only through the life of the soul that inner participation in the world becomes possible. What would their life be without joy, without suffering? Both are equally necessary for the inner being of the human being; both enrich their existence.
His gratitude for the spirit dwelling within him can be particularly profound. It is through the spirit that the true connection between human beings and the world is revealed. In it, human beings find a fixed point for their lives amidst the ever-changing phenomena and the constantly shifting feelings of the soul.
In the body, the transience of the phenomenal world is expressed; in the soul, the transience of our inner relationship to these phenomena; in the spirit, knowledge is attained of the eternity of creation that works within the human being and in the world. What has been found by the spirit seeking knowledge is enduring truth, even if the phenomena change or the feeling soul transforms. Rudolf Steiner expresses this in beautiful words: “Man looks up at the starry sky: the delight his soul experiences belongs to him; the eternal laws of the stars, which he grasps in thought and spirit, do not belong to him, but to the stars themselves. Thus, the human being is a citizen of three worlds. Through his body, he belongs to the world that he also perceives with his body; through his soul, he builds his own world; through his spirit, a world is revealed to him that is exalted above the other two.” (14)
The doctrine of body, soul, and spirit does not sound like a rational theory, but like a powerful earthly-heavenly chord. In the sounds of this chord, the human being lives in his temporal and eternal being.
The mighty sound of this chord reaches from the earth far into the cosmos. It resounds in the human soul and awakens the inner being, which begins to find itself in its own, half-hidden world of feelings. On the one hand, it touches the earth with its manifold manifestations; on the other, it reaches into the universe, whose eternal laws are revealed to it through recognition.
Why was it of such great importance that the teaching of the threefold nature of the human being be made known in all clarity? Because a true understanding of the human being is not possible unless it is based on the trinity of body, soul, and spirit. Our time, which has above all lost sight of the human being—even though it has acquired so much external knowledge—does not know this trinity, or knows it only in a very inadequate form. It is to be found in the wisdom of all ancient cultures. Wherever mystery wisdom was the mother of knowledge, it is found in one form or another.
Both Plato and Aristotle clearly distinguish between two souls, as they put it. One soul that bears only the good within itself, a thinking soul, and another that is also capable of evil, a feeling, sensuous soul. Paul speaks of a pneumatic and a psychic human being, thereby reflecting the view of the Hebrews.
The immense struggle waged over this principle of the Trinity—both regarding the divine Trinity and the tripartite nature of the human being—cannot be described here in full detail. Rudolf Steiner repeatedly referred to this struggle, which is depicted in many of his lectures and books. A clear, summary treatment can be found in the work of the theologian Johannes Geyer (15) in his essay “A Council Decision and Its Cultural-Historical Consequences.” Here, we shall merely point out the significance of the resolution adopted at that council, the Eighth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 869. This resolution clearly prohibits the continued view of the human being as a threefold being. The resolution is directed against the doctrine of the “two souls,” which was condemned as heresy, specifically on the basis of what the Bible allegedly teaches on the matter. It has already been suggested that this is incorrect, for example, in relation to Pauline Christianity.
This dogma, through which the threefold nature was reduced to a twofold nature of body and soul, can be viewed as a confirmation of an impulse that had been at work from Rome since the first post-Christian centuries. Throughout Christian history, a struggle between two Christian-spiritual currents can be traced. On the one hand stands Christianity, which draws upon the mystery wisdom of antiquity, including the Greek wisdom of Plato, and which was represented primarily by the Evangelist John, Paul, the Gnostics, and the Manicheans. Opposed to this is the Christianity that strives for worldly power and finds its symbolic expression in Rome.
We must pause for a moment to consider the important question of why a power such as Rome had to oppose the deepest spiritual current that Christianity carried within it. The answer can only be found by looking at the overall course of human development, as will be explained below. For here one encounters the great laws of development that can be discerned in the course of human history and whose can only be fully grasped in their significance when viewed as purely historical phenomena, free from sympathy and antipathy. Rome’s struggle against the spiritual currents that carry within them the ancient cosmic knowledge has a profound significance. For the further development of humanity toward spiritual freedom would not have been possible had attention not been diverted for a time from the cosmic origin of the human being and directed toward its earthly nature. Therefore, it was necessary for the doctrine of the threefold nature of the human being to disappear in order to give rise to a view of humanity which encompassed only body and soul: the body as the earthbound part of the human being to which the soul is bound, and which can be redeemed only through a higher power, represented by the Church.
Where the doctrine of the spiritual nature of the human being had been lost, full human interest could be directed toward the physical-bodily realm. The age of natural science, which would not dawn until many centuries later, is deeply connected to this Roman impulse. The preparation for such an age, founded entirely on all that the earthbound human intellect observes and contemplates, lies where the light of spiritual revelation has been obscured.
The Roman citizen felt full of pride as a representative of the state, whose power each individual carried within himself as a reflection. Just as the Hellenic people represented the spiritual culture of their nation and saw their true purpose in the afterlife of the high ideal of beauty and wisdom, so the Roman felt himself to be a true representative of his people only when he expressed the power of the Roman state in his own person. Roman law regulated and determined human life and nature. Instead of being a divine being created from cosmic forces, the Roman became a citizen of the most powerful empire on earth.
On this path of human development toward an earthly self-consciousness, knowledge of the spiritual realm gradually faded away. Yet the spirit did not allow itself to be driven from the earth without a struggle. Continuously, within small or larger groups of people or in individual personalities, a conception reemerged that corresponded to the cosmic knowledge of humanity. Like Ariadne’s thread, this knowledge of the spirit runs through history, from person to person, from community to community. Gnostics and Manicheans, the so-called heretical groups of the late Middle Ages, the Knights Templar and the Rosicrucians—all must be mentioned in this context. (16) External history certainly reports on the struggle waged against them, speaks of their eradication and destruction, but knows little or nothing of their actual significance.
Little is known, too, of the significance of the aforementioned council, although its influence on human development was immeasurably great.
The supersensible human being—that is, the human being who is not accessible to sensory perception— disappeared from consciousness. What remained was the sensory human being, limited by everything that is perceptible about him. This material-physical human being, who carries within himself the soul that has become impure through the Fall, was an object that could only be redeemed through the power of the Church.
This “abolition of the spirit,” as Rudolf Steiner once described the essence of this 869 dogma, was to find a peculiar continuation some 1,000 years later. After the spirit had been abolished as a supersensible reality, the part of the human being that connects spirit and body—the soul—was also banished to the realm of hypothesis. The great philosophers and psychologists up to the mid-19th century had accepted the soul as a self-evident reality, which manifested itself through the soul’s faculties or powers, most commonly distinguished as thinking, feeling, and willing. In the second half of the 19th century, however, a science of the soul emerged that completely abandoned this self-evident reality. Following in the footsteps of modern scientific methods, an experimental science of the soul developed that set itself the task of to investigate so-called mental life through scientific experimentation. For such a science of the soul, only the measurable remained as reality. The names Wundt, Ebbinghaus, and Ziehen are associated with the emergence of this experimental psychology.
In his “Physiological Psychology”, published in 1874, Wundt sets forth this new standpoint very clearly. Previously, he explains, the word “soul” referred to a personal being. That time is now past. “The personification of substances and the substantialization of concepts have become obsolete. Psychological concepts have evolved from metaphysical substances into logical subjects. Thus, we regard the soul above all merely as the unified context of immediate inner experience—a conception that is the result of the conceptualization practiced by language itself, yet purified of those additions of an immature metaphysics that natural consciousness, and in its wake: as it evolves, carries into the concepts.”
The old faculties of the soul must also disappear. It was regarded as a final mythological legacy that concepts such as feeling, understanding, and the like still bear a trace of the old concept of power. Understanding, for example, was regarded as the power through which we are able to recognize truths, memory as the power that preserves ideas within us. According to Wundt, one can very well conceive of a psychology in which there is no longer any mention at all of sensibility, understanding, memory, etc. Only that which presents itself to our immediate perception and can be classified into the broad categories of ideas, feelings, and drives may form the basis of a genuine study of the soul. No metaphysical soul, no powers or faculties of the soul, but only the concept of “soul” as a general term, defined solely by various characteristics that appear in experience, classified under different headings.
For the modern consciousness, such a presentation holds a strong appeal because it is associated with the impression of objective scientific rigor. And indeed: from a certain standpoint, one can also ascribe value to this “abolition of the soul.” It cleansed human feelings of a certain inclination toward supernatural fantasy, just as the dogma of 869 directed human thought in its development toward the Earth. Both were necessary. But necessary only in the service of another, much greater task: to lead humanity, once they have fully come down to Earth, back to their true spiritual and soul nature, of which they will then no longer carry the knowledge within themselves as a powerful tradition, but will have acquired it through their own efforts.
Thus, such a struggle against the spirit and against the soul can be regarded as necessary for the greater whole of human development. But it will be even more important to resume the struggle at the right moment, now for the spirit and for the soul, so that something which is partly justified does not, through its unchecked proliferation, become a destructive force. A process of liberation carried too far leads to isolation. Whoever is freer than free loses themselves in nothingness.
In this sense, the new doctrine of the threefold nature of the human being—the doctrine of body, soul, and spirit—is an event that represents a milestone on the path of human development. The year 869 and the era in which experimental psychology arose were milestones on the path that led downward. Rudolf Steiner’s proclamation of the true image of the human being is a momentous turning point and thus the first milestone on the path that can lead upward again. The whole human being—body, soul, and spirit—who lives with his inner being in the two worlds of physicality and spirit, on Earth and in the cosmos at the same time, in whose inner being a powerful earthly-cosmic chord resounds—this human being can once again take his place in the whole of the world.
German idealism, and above all the titanic work accomplished by Goethe and Schiller, formed the bridge for Rudolf Steiner. Both through the idea of metamorphosis and through the thoughts in the “Aesthetic Letters,” access to a true understanding of the human being is opened.
In the realm of active natural forces, Goethe distinguished two laws, which he termed “polarity” and “intensification.” The colors perceived by our eyes arise between two polar opposites: light and darkness. Light originates from the sphere surrounding the Earth, darkness from the Earth itself. Where light and darkness meet, colors are born. Yellow where light outshines darkness, blue where darkness overshadows light. These two representatives of light and darkness can strengthen, “intensify,” and then become orange and orange-red on the one hand, and indigo and blue-violet on the other. This intensifying moment finds its expression in red.
The eye perceives only colors on Earth. Light itself is invisible, just as absolute darkness is. The brightest white still has a yellow or blue hue compared to sunlight, and the darkest black has a gray or brown hue in relation to absolute darkness.
Thus, humans see only colors. Through colors, they are guided in two directions: toward light and toward darkness. The actual realm of their visual perceptions is thus an intermediate realm that extends between light and darkness, between the extraterrestrial and the terrestrial.
Goethe also examines the plant world in this way. There, too, the same polarity prevails, there, too, the intensification. The plant root penetrates the darkness of the earth; in the opposite direction, toward the light, the plant unfolds to open its blossoms in full light.
The plant is connected to the earth, but as a living being. It is spatially bound to the ground, from which it nevertheless constantly withdraws dynamically. In this contrast, the true plant unfolds, once again in an intermediate realm between heaven and earth.
In this context, it is surely no coincidence that Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis matured in Italy. On his way south, the idea of the primordial plant finally dawned on him in Palermo, after he had already taken an important step forward in the botanical garden of Padua.
Rome gave him the powerful revelation of the works of art of ancient Greece. We can gain a deep insight into the hidden laws of human development when we see how Goethe travels through the land that bears the remnants of the ancient Roman Empire, and how he discovers precisely there the forces that would later form the foundation for overcoming the spiritual power of that empire. Viewed in this light, Goethe’s Italian journey is an event that became of the utmost significance for all of humanity.
Following this journey, the spiritual bond with Schiller also begins to form. The “Aesthetic Letters” are, with regard to the human being, a continuation of what Goethe’s idea of metamorphosis signifies for living nature. In Schiller, too, we find “polarity” and “intensification,” but now in the development of the human being. Where is the true human being to be found? Once again in an intermediate realm that stretches between two worlds: on the one hand, the “formative forces,” on the other the “material forces.” Between them stands the human being, seeking his true freedom. Here the trinity of body, soul, and spirit is clearly foreshadowed. Sensual life is connected to the material forces, thinking to the formative forces. In the middle stands the human being, who brings the “urge to play” to fruition and awakens to freedom in the realm of beauty.
The doctrine of body, soul, and spirit is also most closely connected with the idea of freedom. The human being, who according to the doctrine of the dogma of 869 consists only of body and soul, would never have the possibility of attaining inner freedom. Freedom can only arise in a realm that lies between two opposing forces. In the interplay of these two forces, a balance can be found that must always must be conquered anew by the human being. Freedom arises from this interplay.
The two-part human being has only an unfree body, to which the soul is partly bound and therefore also remains unfree, while for the rest it receives peace in a divine world, and from there the powers to overcome earthly bondage. God overcomes the power of darkness, even within the human being. Every doctrine of duality must arrive at this view in one form or another.
It is one of the greatest cultural-historical impressions to see how, in Rudolf Steiner’s concept of the threefold social order—which was prepared by Goethe and Schiller— a truth is announced that can draw upon both the clarity of the natural sciences and the grandeur and depth of the spiritual sciences. The separate realms of the natural and moral world orders are united through it, namely by the fact that the human soul discovers itself in these two worlds.
Mystery wisdom knew the same idea in ancient times, yet it was not possible for people to attain it freely. The spiritual powers revealed everything necessary for the future of humanity to people who had been prepared for it through a long tradition within certain lineages. Humanity thus lived in spiritual bondage. Under the influence of the forces described above, this spiritual bondage became an earthly one. Instead of being woven into the world of divine light forces as a small light, humanity was now bound to the earth and its darkness. The light being could still be faintly discerned in the soul, yet only the Deity could liberate this light. The thought of a spiritual birth in the beyond had to sustain him in his earthly struggle.
Ever since anthroposophy presented the doctrine of body, soul, and spirit as a teaching that is both natural and moral, and above all as a truly human teaching, the problem of freedom has also become a human problem; indeed, one may say it has become the first and most important problem.
Let us now briefly consider the three constituent elements of the human being: body, soul, and spirit. For a complete exposition, reference must be made to Rudolf Steiner’s major works. (14, 17)
The human body, the subject of scientific inquiry in recent centuries, seems to be the easiest to understand. It is formed by natural forces and built up from natural forces. It stands within the other three kingdoms of nature—the mineral, the plant, and the animal—and seems to be connected to all of them, without, however, belonging entirely to any one of the three. It carries within itself the elements of solid, liquid, and gaseous states, as well as heat, without being entirely bound to any of these elements. If one examines these relationships more closely, one sees that the human body consists only partly of solid substance. About four-fifths of it consists of liquid.
Such a distinction between liquid and solid substance can lead to important conclusions when we explore the physical nature of the human being in a way that seeks to go beyond the purely physical and chemical. First of all, the great difference in the general properties of solids and liquids on Earth becomes apparent. Stones, crystals, metals—the entire mineral kingdom is characterized by a certain stillness, an immutability of form. The crystal will always look the same; the rock will tower in the same shape for centuries. Changes occur only through external influences. Their location on Earth is also unchanging; here, too, change occurs only when external forces intervene or when the entire Earth organism is set in motion.
Water is entirely different. Just as stillness and immobility belong to the solid, so constant motion belongs to water. Water comes from the clouds and flows down to the earth. It flows from the mountains into the valleys, gathers in lakes and seas, rises to the sky, and condenses again into clouds. Thus, water is constantly in motion, not only in its spread across the earth, but also in its ascent and descent between heaven and earth. Just as the solid exhibits an earthbound quality and is compelled by its own weight to immutability and immobility, so the liquid is in constant, changing motion between earth and heaven.
Rudolf Steiner pointed here to two distinct spheres of force, which are not distinguished in conventional scientific thinking. (18) The first sphere of force is governed by the Earth as its center. Here, the representative force is gravity, which influences everything that has substance on Earth. Gravity acts toward the center of the Earth, that is, as a central or centripetal force. The second sphere of force has its point of origin in the extraterrestrial realm. The forces considered here act from the surroundings, from the circumference of the celestial vault. These forces thus have an opposite direction. They act outward into the extraterrestrial, the cosmic, and are therefore peripheral or centrifugal forces. The effects of these two force fields are expressed in the contrast between solid and liquid. The stone is not only bound to the Earth by gravity, but it also owes its solid, unchanging form to this centripetal force, which makes it a compact mass. Water is partly bound to the earth. Gravity pulls it down again and again, yet just as often it is drawn upward from the earth by the extraterrestrial, peripheral forces and rises toward the heavens once more. This interplay of centripetal and centrifugal forces, this up-and-down movement between heaven and earth, characterizes water.
Let us now return to the human being. In his body, we find the solid substance again in everything that has a supporting, protective function. The solid element is most evident in the skeleton. It consists of potassium and phosphorus salts, as we also find them in nature. On the outside of the body are the protective nails and the hard, mineral teeth. Throughout the organism, too, we find supporting and protective tissues and cellular components. Because the human being carries this solid element within, they possess a certain form that, while mobile, can function as a body that does not dissolve into a formless whole. Like all other parts of the body, the human face has specific forms and contours by which it is recognizable.
The liquid element in the human organism behaves quite differently. If we consider blood, lymph, or any other tissue or cellular fluid, we will always find them in constant motion. The fluid either flows through the entire organism, as with blood and lymph, or, in conjunction with the major fluid stream, through the individual organs and cells. In this fluid stream, there is not a moment of rest or standstill. Whether a person is sleeping or awake, walk or sit, the fluid within them is always in motion. And here, too, the interplay of peripheral and central forces is evident.
The solid matter in the human body is completely integrated into the central force complex; the fluid flows through the entire organism between the center and the periphery, from top to bottom and from bottom to top. Compared to the earthbound substance of the skeleton, the fluid surrounding it is in an earthly-cosmic flow.
By distinguishing in this way between the solid and the fluid, we have simultaneously encountered another contrast of the utmost significance: that between death and life.
Just as immobility and rigidity of form are characteristics that bear the mark of the dead, so mobility and changing form point to the life forces. There is no living organism on Earth, however small and unremarkable it may be, that does not contain flowing fluid within itself. Even in the smallest single-celled organism, one will find fluid that flows from the center to the periphery and from the periphery back to the center. If we remain within the realm of perceptible phenomena, we may say that life in the organism is characterized by the movement of fluid. Forces must therefore be at work in the fluid flowing through the organism, that are directly related to the life forces, and may even be regarded as the life forces themselves. If we observe how a living organism arises, this conclusion is quite obvious. The human embryo is formed and developed entirely within a fluid environment. At birth, it emerges from the fluid for the first time. Even later, we see in the organism a fluid that constantly forms and builds organs. From the flowing blood and lymph, the muscles, the skeleton, and the organs take shape. From all that which is fluid, later semi-fluid, and then still soft and pliable, the solid forms arise.
This connection between life forces and moving fluid within the organism is one of the most important insights one can gain. The rigid, solidified organism of death, which rests entirely within the realm of earthly gravity, stands in contrast to the living, mobile organism, which is situated within the interplay of Earth and the cosmos.
This line of thought leads to the question of where, in reality, the realm of life is to be found. Human beings and other living creatures live on Earth. But does this life, in the strictest sense, belong to this Earth? Is not the Earth rather the typical representative of the forces of death, characterized by heaviness and immobility? Does not a tendency to overcome this heaviness arise wherever life manifests itself—in plants, animals, and humans? And are not precisely these forces that overcome heaviness—which are at the same time life forces—connected to the fluid, which is no longer bound to the Earth but moves between Earth and the cosmos, flowing downward and rising again?
It is a small step for the imagination to see this entire fluid realm in plants, animals, and humans as permeated by life forces, which are the actual builders and shapers of the entire organism. The architect of this organism then appears to us in the complex of forces that permeates the fluid. Rudolf Steiner calls this complex of forces, which is active in the earthly realm but does not actually originate from it, the life body or the etheric body, and contrasts it with the physical body, which is formed from forces that originate entirely from the earthly realm.
Both the solid and the liquid human essentially belong to the physical body. Yet in the liquid human, the life forces intervene and permeate it with a unified force-organism, the life body, whereas the solid human represents the earth-bound and thus, in the narrower sense, physical force complex. The term “life body” or “etheric body” does not denote a concept, but a supersensible reality.4i.e., perceptible to a higher-developed faculty of cognition. Compare “How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?”
Just as the mineral has an unchanging form, so the plant manifests itself in an ever-changing form. Forces intervene in the dead form that constantly transform it into a different state—forces, in other words, that bring about a continuous change of form, a continuous metamorphosis. In the metamorphosis of the plant, the very revelation of life is to be seen. Goethe’s discovery of the plant’s metamorphosis leads just as directly into the realm of life as, for example, Newton’s and Kepler’s discoveries lead into realms where physics and mechanics hold sway.
This metamorphosis in the realm of life phenomena can also be studied in detail in the human body, as will be explained later.
Upon entering this realm of ever-metamorphosing forces, one enters the realm of life itself. To immediate spatial perception, the life forces remain invisible. But whoever extends their perceptions into time gains a view of the manifestations of the life forces. The child’s organism, for example, is transformed through a series of metamorphoses into that of an adult, and then again through various metamorphoses into that of an elderly person.
Growth and physical development, metabolism, and reproduction are the direct manifestations of these life forces, which are united within the life body into a coherent whole. Rudolf Steiner calls this life body a “life-filled spiritual form” and goes on to say: “For the researcher of spiritual life, this matter presents itself in the following way. To him, the etheric body is not merely a result of the substances and forces of the physical body, but an independent, real entity that first calls the aforementioned physical substances and forces to life. In the sense of spiritual science, one speaks when one says: a mere physical body has its form—for example, a crystal—through the physical formative forces inherent in the inanimate; a living body does not have its form through these forces, for the moment life has departed from it and it is left to the physical forces alone, it disintegrates. The life body is an entity through which, at every moment during life, the physical body is preserved from decay. — To see this life body, to perceive it in another being, one needs precisely the awakened spiritual eye. Without this, one can assume its existence for logical reasons; but one can see it with the spiritual eye just as one sees color with the physical eye.”(14)
Although the life body does not manifest itself in space like the physical body, the effects emanating from it can nevertheless be found in the spatial realm. Indeed, in this way one comes to know two different “spaces.” First, the space in which we live with our ordinary consciousness, which our senses can perceive and which is oriented toward the Earth in the familiar three dimensions. Its center of consciousness lies at the center of the Earth. One can speak here of a centrally oriented space. Then a second space, which completely permeates this first one and influences it in such a way that it is continually transformed by it. This second space is not immediately accessible to our senses, but its manifestations are nevertheless perceptible over time. This space is not oriented toward the Earth, but rather in opposition to it. Instead of being at the center of the Earth, its center of consciousness lies in the circumference, in the sphere that encompasses the universe. One may call this second space a peripherally oriented space.
The physical nature of the human being cannot yet be fully described within the duality presented here. A plant, apart from its physical form, has only a life-body; but with animals and humans, we must go further. They not only have an earthly and a cosmic body, through which they unfold in space, but they also the ability to perceive and experience their surroundings. They owe this ability to the soul, which connects animals and humans to the surrounding world through perception and sensation.
However, the soul does not intervene in the body automatically. A finely organized complex of forces, in turn, makes the connection with the body possible.
The significance of the solid and the fluid for the organism has already been pointed out. The solid represents the physical body, the fluid the life body. Now a third principle is at work in the organism: the gaseous or air-like. Everyone knows how humans continuously take in air through breathing. We are familiar with the physical and chemical properties of air and know that it is primarily oxygen that is consumed, while carbon dioxide is exhaled. Rarely, however, do we consider how the inhaled and exhaled gases are connected to the entire organism. From the lungs they flow into the blood, from the blood into the organs and tissues, and from the organs and tissues back into the blood and lungs. At every moment of the day, a person has an air- or gas-like human within them, just as they carry a solid and a liquid human within them. This gaseous human is always of a dual nature. At one moment it flows in, deep into the organs and tissues; at another, it flows out. These two streams of air or gas are equally active within the human being. Breathing expresses the relationship of their activity.
In this inhalation and exhalation, something is constantly taken from the environment into the human being and something is returned from the human being to the environment. We have come to know the liquid realm within the human being as a more or less closed whole. Through breathing, however, the human being stands in a continuous interrelationship with the airy environment.
One cannot conceive of the Earth’s atmosphere without connecting it again to the extraterrestrial, the cosmic. The fluid, the water, is in constant motion between the Earth and the cosmos. But the air is the Earth’s environment and connects the Earth, as it were, with the cosmos. The light of the sun and stars acts within the air. Indeed, the moment one wishes to go beyond what chemical analysis of the air allows, one must consider the element of light, which always interweaves the air, together with the air.
The air organism within the human being is also permeated by cosmic forces, forces that in turn constitute a self-contained complex, which in spiritual science is referred to as the soul body or astral body. Here, too, it must be emphasized that although this soul body can only be perceived by an inner organ developed through spiritual scientific training, it is nevertheless a reality that can be recognized by everyone.
Here, light is shed on one of the greatest mysteries. Many will have felt the deepest reverence for the mystery that the human being is capable of carrying within themselves revelations from the entire universe in the form of perceptions, with which they can connect their inner feelings. The entire inner life of the human being, everything that elevates them above a dull, vegetative existence, is founded upon this.
The wisdom of the ancient mysteries, the wisdom of the mystics and alchemists of the Middle Ages (19), spoke of a relationship between human beings and the world as one between the macrocosm and the microcosm. All the forces that flow through the cosmos, emanating from the stars and planets or connected to them, should be found within the human being. If one becomes acquainted with the soul body or astral body through Rudolf Steiner’s precise description, one can understand what this connection between human and cosmos is actually based upon.
Thus, the human being carries within themselves a threefold physicality. A physicality they share with the mineral (the physical body), one they share with the plant (the life or etheric body), and one they share with the animal (the soul or astral body). The word “body” here does not denote a material substance or a refined material substance, but only a self-contained interplay of forces. This interplay is of a threefold nature: directed toward the earth, directed toward the extraterrestrial realm, and directed toward the astral or stellar realm. These three organizations of forces find their physical expression in the three states of solid, liquid, and gas.
Just as the solid, liquid, and gaseous states throughout the human organism are permeated by warmth, so too is the triad of physical body, life body, and soul body permeated by a fourth principle: the human ego. This threefold physicality, of which the human ego makes use, is clearly revealed as a series of ascending stages in the kingdoms of nature, from the mineral to the plant to the animal to the human being.
Human beings carry the three kingdoms of nature within themselves, but they do not belong to them. They carry them within themselves in embryonic form, but at the same time they transcend them. Plants build their bodies from physical substances. To do so, they need the salts from the earth, carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen from the air. Anyone who focuses their attention solely on physical and chemical processes may conclude that there is no fundamental difference between minerals and plants. Everything from which the plant is built is essentially of a mineral nature. (Consider, for example, Leduc’s well-known experiments.) But in doing so, one forgets that the plant is able to build itself from mineral substances by continually overcoming minerality and transferring it into the realm of life. Carbon, which occurs in nature as coal, graphite, or diamond, belongs, like the other minerals to the realm of the Earth. It is embedded in a complex of physical forces, of which gravity is the representative. The carbon in the living plant, on the other hand, is embedded in a realm of life in which growth and reproduction, metabolism, and fluid circulation are the governing principles. A complex of life forces, then, that transfers the mineral substances into the non-earthly realm. Likewise, the animal carries mineral substances within itself. The animal, too, is a living organism, yet sensation has been added as a new principle. The animal responds to sensations from within with desires. The entire animal is now organized in such a way that it can best live out these desires. The predator, the cattle, the birds, the rodent—they all have a physique that externally symbolizes their inner being.
The plant is wholly absorbed in processes of growth and life. In the unfolding of its leaves, the formation of its flowers, and the production of fruit and seeds, it lives out its essence. It exhibits a continuous process of growth and development, in an infinite number of metamorphoses; a silent occurrence on Earth, bound to the Earth’s surface. The animal frees itself from this bondage. It moves across the earth, driven by the elemental desires of hunger and reproduction.
The plant is bound to the earth element by its physical nature. The animal is likewise bound to the earth by its instincts, yet not spatially, but inwardly through the one-sidedness of its instincts. Every animal can only be what it is by nature. It would negate its own existence if it wanted to be something else. The wolf that eats lambs is perfectly normal as a wolf. As a wolf, it is better the stronger this instinct is within it and the better it satisfies it. If it feels this instinct more weakly, or loses the ability to satisfy it as before due to age or weakness, then it is finished as a wolf.
Man is entirely different. For him, what is truly human begins only where he no longer acts on his desires and instincts. He is a better human being the more he knows how to guide and overcome his life of desires and instincts through a higher power within himself, through his ego.
Max Scheler describes this contrast between humans and animals very vividly and convincingly. (20) The animal, he says, cannot help but be completely absorbed in its environment. It is bound entirely to this environment by its very nature, by its instincts and desires. Humans do not have this absolute bondage. They have the ability to withdraw, to a greater or lesser extent, from this environment in which they stand with their instincts and desires. In this way, he remains “open to the world”; he possesses “openness to the world.” This openness is the foundation of his entire culture. He owes this ability to exercise restraint to another capacity: as a spiritual being, as an “I”-being, to be able to say “no.” “Man is thus the living being who, in principle, can maintain an ascetic attitude toward his life—which pierces him intensely—by suppressing and repressing his own instinctual impulses, denying them nourishment through perceptual images and ideas —! Compared to the animal, which always says ‘yes’ to reality, even where it abhors and flees it, man is the ‘one who can say no,’ the ‘ascetic of life,’ the eternal Protestant against all mere reality. He is at the same time, in relation to the animal, whose existence is the embodied philistine, the eternal “Faust,” the bestia cupidissima rerum novarum, never content with the reality surrounding him, always eager to break through the barriers of his present being and his ‘environment,’ including his own respective self-reality.”
Man bears within himself mineral, plant, and animal, but in such a way that he incorporates them all into a higher context and thereby overcomes their actual essence. The plant grows out of forces that are anti-mineral, that is, out of forces that overcome the mineral. The animal, as a sentient and desiring being, overcomes the plant. Man, as a spiritual being, in turn overcomes the animal.
The soul is connected to this threefold physicality. It is linked to all three parts, albeit to varying degrees.
In the soul, the human being experiences an inner world. In it, their own being becomes known and conscious to them. This inner world awakens partly through the external world and partly through the forces active within the soul itself. A continuous encounter between inner and outer, between soul and world, takes place.
In the rhythm of breathing, as already indicated, , the rhythmic expression of this encounter. The air is permeated by the forces that build up the soul body. This is the true bearer of the soul. Yet the physical body is also connected to the soul, as is the life body. Once again, we find a triad that confronts us in the phenomena themselves.
The activity of the soul begins where we, as human beings, have sensations. These are made possible by the fact that we are equipped with sense organs. The blue of the sky, the red of the rose, the tones and sounds that echo to us from nature, the smell and taste of things—all of this speaks directly to the feeling soul. All these sensations are to be regarded as inner responses that form in the soul through contact with the environment. This soul activity, which thus has its true nature in bringing about soul reactions, is called the “feeling soul.” Rudolf Steiner says on this: “This sentient soul is just as real as the physical body. When a person stands before me, and I disregard their sentient soul by imagining them merely as a physical body, it is just as if I were to imagine only the canvas of a painting.”(14)
The feeling soul is closely connected to the soul body, for it is the part of the soul that is received into the soul body like a sword in its sheath—to put it figuratively. Regarding this subtle relationship, Rudolf Steiner says: “One could also say: a part of the etheric body is finer than the rest, and this finer part of the etheric body forms a unity with the sentient soul, while the coarser part forms a kind of unity with the physical body.” (14)
Just as the feeling soul connects on the one hand with the body—and particularly with the soul body—so it does the same on the other hand with the spirit. Where thinking arises in the soul, the activity of the spirit becomes evident.
Sensations provide the stimulus for the formation of thoughts. Through these thoughts, the human being becomes aware of his or her actual relationship to the external world. Sensations themselves can give him a feeling of connectedness with the world; they may seem pleasant or unpleasant to him, but they do not provide knowledge of the nature of this connectedness or an understanding of the reasons for a pleasant or repulsive impression.
Through thinking, the human spirit penetrates the sentient soul and forms there a higher order, a spiritual structure. Animals, too, have sensations. But they live in the interplay of their own instincts and desires with these sensations. They do not go beyond the sensory soul. Human beings, however, develop a realm of the soul that permeates the sentient soul and at the same time shapes and governs it. What is thus formed in the soul is called the intellectual or emotional soul. In it, the human being experiences his own “I.” As long as he lives only in his sensations, he is dependent on them. The impressions from his surroundings continue to work within him, they dominate his being. A person is completely absorbed in the scent of flowers when he carries nothing else within himself but the sensation of that scent. But as soon as he thinks and orders his sensations or attempts to understand their meaning, he places his “I” in a specific relationship to them. In this relationship, the conscious contrast between the “I” and the world now arises. A person becomes consciously aware of his own “I” through thinking.
With the word “I,” a person points to something within themselves that is of the deepest significance. For every child, there comes a moment when they address themselves with this word for the first time. Before that, the child called themselves by their name. It is only around the age of three that the word “I” is born from the soul. One rarely reflects on the mystery connected with this so frequently used word. Whoever says “I” thereby points to something that only he alone can designate as such of his own accord. Anyone can call a tree a ‘tree.’ Every object, every phenomenon outside the human “I” can be designated by everyone with the same name. A person can only say “I” to themselves. The word “I” can only arise from one’s own soul.
In his “Theosophy”, Rudolf Steiner quotes Jean Paul’s description of his first experience of the “I”: the realization of being an “I,” which struck him like a bolt of lightning from the sky and remained within him like a light from that moment on. Jean Paul called this experience of the “I” an “event that occurred solely within the veiled Holy of Holies of the human being.” And indeed, with his “I,” the human being stands alone in the world as a distinct being existing for itself. Rudolf Steiner describes the relationship of the “I” to the realms of body and soul as follows: “Through self-consciousness, the human being designates himself as an independent being, closed off from all else, as an “I” In the “I”, the human being brings together everything he experiences as a physical and soul being. Body and soul are the bearers of the “I”; it works within them. Just as the physical body has its center in the brain, so the soul has its “I” as its center. Human beings are stimulated to sensations from the outside; feelings assert themselves as effects of the external world; the will relates to the external world, for it realizes itself in external actions. The “I”, as the actual essence of the human being, remains entirely invisible.” (14)
Just as the world awakens for the human being in the sensory soul, so does the relationship of his “I” to this world awaken in the intellectual soul. This “I” now acts within the soul in such a way that it leads to self-consciousness, in which the human being can experience his eternal relationship to things. The sensory soul will always be set in motion by the changes in things outside the human being. The intellectual soul will always penetrate this inner movement through thinking and thus create an inner order. In the third realm of the soul, called the consciousness soul, there arises the peace that is found when the immortality of the spiritual laws encompassing the world and humanity is experienced. The soul finds itself in the consciousness soul in its connection with the spirit. It is the “core of human consciousness, that is, the soul within the soul.”
Rudolf Steiner summarizes the triad of the feeling soul, the intellectual soul, and the consciousness soul in their relationship to body and spirit as follows: “Just as in the body, so too in the soul there are three members to be distinguished: the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the consciousness soul. And just as physicality acts from below to limit the soul, so does spirituality act from above to expand it. For the more the soul is filled with the true and the good, the wider and more comprehensive the eternal becomes within it.” (14)
The spirit, too, is ultimately threefold. However, it has scarcely been born yet. The essential members of the spirit are active in human beings only in embryonic form. The activity of the spirit reveals itself to intuition, just as the activity of the soul reveals itself in sensation. On the basis of intuition, a form of thinking can develop that is free from the ordinary impulses that influence thinking in daily life.
The threefold nature of the human spirit is described by the three categories of the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, and the Spirit-Man. One should read Steiner’s major works mentioned above on this subject; a detailed exposition would go beyond the scope of this book. Here it should only be noted that the development of these higher, spiritual aspects of being is a task of the human ego. The Spirit-Self arises from the soul body, the Life-Spirit from the life body transformed by the ego, and the Spirit-Man from the physical body transformed by the ego. In summary, Rudolf Steiner describes the relationship of the ego to these three realms: “In the soul, the ‘ego’ flashes forth, receives the impulse from the spirit, and thereby becomes the bearer of the Spirit-Man. Through this, the human being participates in the three worlds (the physical, soul, and spiritual). Through the physical body, etheric body, and soul body, they are rooted in the physical world, and through the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, and the Spirit-Man, they blossom upward into the spiritual world. But the trunk that is rooted on one side and blossoms toward the other, is the soul itself.” (14)
One often hears objections to the “complicated classifications” provided by spiritual science. Such objections ultimately stem from a certain complacency. For the question can never be whether something provides a convenient classification for ordinary thinking, but only whether things are described as they are, whether they are described as realities. A study of the literature cited will convince everyone of the reality of this ninefold structure. One can summarize this into a sevenfold structure, and merge this in turn into a threefold structure; reality does not change as a result. (The soul-body and the feeling soul can be described as a unity because of their close relationship, as can the consciousness soul and the Spirit-Self.) What matters is not the classification, but the perception. This is highly capable of development, just as the thinking that follows it can unfold further.
The richness of the manifestations of life and consciousness is so overwhelming that only the consideration of all phenomena in the realm of the body, the soul, and the spirit can shed some light on this. Another path may be simpler. The path that Rudolf Steiner pointed out leads to the recognition of the threefold reality in which the human being is situated. This is also the path that German idealism sought to follow: listening with inner faculties, observing the phenomena that manifest in nature, in human life, in the Earth’s development, and in the cosmos, and then to penetrate these phenomena with the utmost activity and, becoming creative through one’s own enthusiasm, to enter the world—through faithful devotion to the spirit in nature and within oneself—where divine wisdom is revealed. A century later, Rudolf Steiner continued along this path. Through his superhuman greatness, the flame of enthusiasm became a mighty light that shone into the mysteries of life and death. His devotion to the spirit led to such an intimate connection that divine wisdom could speak purely through him.
2. Reincarnation and Karma
The idea of reincarnation was born at the same time as the true image of the human being. This was bound to be so. As soon as the human being was once again recognized in its threefold nature of body, soul, and spirit, the relationship of these three aspects of being to imperishable eternity and transitory temporality could also be seen in the right light.
With body, soul, and spirit, three worlds open up to us. First, the world in which the body is placed, as transitory as it is. Then the world of the spirit, in which there is only immortality and eternity. And thirdly, the world of the soul, in which we find transience and immortality, temporality and eternity. In everyday life, the soul is almost entirely caught up in temporality. But as soon as it comes to self-reflection, it rises above it and enters the realm of eternity. It is the mystery of the human being that, although he belongs to the mortal realm, he always carries immortality within himself and is thereby able to always rise into the world of eternal values. “He can lend permanence to the moment”—as Goethe puts it.
Temporality and eternity are not irreconcilable opposites. In the human soul, they are experienced in constant interaction. In this interaction lies their true significance for the soul. The opposition thereby continually becomes an inner process. This view, too, can find its foundation both in Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis and in Schiller’s aesthetic letters. Goethe’s laws of life regarding “polarity and intensification” enable a perspective that seeks the actual process between the two poles. Between the root growing toward the center of the earth and the blossom unfolding in the light, the actual plant develops in the metamorphoses of the leaf. The root penetrates the earth and strives toward the mineral. The flower strives away from the earth toward the light. Both form the poles between which the plant as such can develop. This perspective directs our gaze to the realm that is, in reality, the plant-like. - The same is true of Schiller when, in his aesthetic letters, he allows the human being to develop between the two poles of body and spirit, of matter and form. There, too, a pure, idealistic contemplation of what is human in the deepest sense opens up the possibility of discovering the realm in which the human being can develop toward the high ideal of freedom.
Rudolf Steiner’s doctrine of body, soul, and spirit shows us how the soul lives and develops between these two opposing worlds. Indeed, this development is possible only because the soul participates in both worlds and can therefore ascend the “spiritual ladder” that leads from the physical world to the spiritual. Here, too, “intensification” is possible as a consequence of polarity. Here, too, “intensification” will manifest itself in the form of a continuous metamorphosis.
The soul not only bears the temporal and the eternal within itself; it also enters into an active interplay with both. From the surging sea of perceptions that flows into the soul through the senses, the soul forms lasting images of memory. 5The question of to what extent the permanence of these images of memory is merely conditional cannot be addressed here. As recent studies of the soul have shown, memories that have become unconscious can often still be detected. With the help of these images of memory, it preserves its continuity, which would otherwise be lost in the mass and flux of sensory impressions. Every memory forms a fixed point in the flowing stream of perceptions. Thus the soul overcomes temporality by constantly withdrawing something from it and transferring it into the realm of the enduring.
The soul is thus connected to the world of the physical, of the transitory, through the senses. The entire external world flows through the gates formed by the senses, into it. Yet this external stream of impressions is not simply passed through the soul. The soul actively participates in it by holding fast to what flows past, shaping what flows away, and imparting permanence to the temporal.
Thus, the principle that shapes eternity acts upon the world of temporality within the soul. Yet the soul also actively influences the world of eternity through the deeds it performs. When a person, from within their soul, as a result of a thought, a feeling, or an impulse of will, is moved to perform one action or another—however modest it may be— something thereby changes in the world of the eternal. Every deed has its consequences; every event leaves its mark on this world. The overall view of the world has become different after every action. The image that reveals itself as an aspect of eternity has undergone a change, however slight it may be. The deeds accomplished from the soul remain in the world of the spirit.
The soul is thus placed as an active force in the stream that leads from temporality into eternity. Through its own eternity, it can extract values from temporality, and at the same time, through its own temporality, it can add new values to eternity. In a living process, a continuous unfolding, it connects the temporal with the eternal. “The soul is situated between the present and duration, holding the middle ground between body and spirit. But it also mediates between the present and duration. It preserves the present for memory. In doing so, it snatches it from transience and incorporates it into the duration of its spiritual realm. It also imprints the enduring upon the temporal and transitory by not merely yielding to fleeting attractions in its life, but by determines things, incorporating their essence into the actions it performs. Through memory, the soul preserves yesterday; through action, it prepares tomorrow.” (14)
Let us consider once more the growing plant. It emerges from the darkness and reaches upward toward the light, unfolding its bloom. In this way, through the metamorphoses of the leaf, it develops its true plant nature. Once it has reached the highest point of this metamorphosis, it prepares for the continuation of the plant’s developmental process. Where the flower marks an endpoint on the path of leaf formation, the plant, in the fruit and especially in seed formation, strives beyond its true plant nature. The leaf-like character is lost; in the seed, a hardening follows, as if all the plant’s forces were drawing together. This seed, having risen above its true plant nature, falls back to the earth and thereby offers the possibility of a new beginning. To a certain extent, this is comparable to what happens when a human being has reached the end of their life. Then, too, after having experienced the metamorphoses possible in life, the soul rises beyond earthly existence and forms a new beginning once more. The following considerations will show to what extent this cycle has a different character in humans than in plants. It is clear, however, that through the doctrine of metamorphosis—which could only arise after a proper distinction between the polar opposites of body and spirit—the activity of the soul in relation to temporality and eternity becomes understandable.
A further consideration leads to the doctrine of reincarnation. One should not really speak of reincarnation without first having clarified the concept of incarnation and likewise the opposite concept of disincarnation.
Let us imagine a specific human body. Everyone knows that this body has its own form and shape, which differs from every other human body. This body is transitory. After death, it will quickly decay and be absorbed by the elements of the earth. Yet the form and shape that gave it its personal character cannot be understood in terms of this temporal realm. All bodies are placed there in the same way; after death, they all behave the same, that is, they all dissolve into the elements of the earth. What gives the body its personal character, therefore, does not depend on the temporal aspect of the human being, but on the forces connected with the personality. The “I,” which acts as a spiritual seed within the soul, gives the body its particular form and shape.
These formative forces are most active in the head. It is by the head that one first recognizes a person. His face, the shape of his head, is the most immediate revelation of his personality. A person is born with this face, with this head shape. Even in a newborn child, one finds personal facial features that, though still indefinite and change frequently, but which the attentive observer can nevertheless discern.
The child thus brings this face with it. From where? Rudolf Steiner repeatedly pointed out that the concept of immortality must be linked to the corresponding concept of unbornness. If, based on the eternity of the human spirit, one accepts its immortality, one must consequently also think that this eternal human spirit already existed in an unborn state. From this unborn state, the I—the spiritual core of the soul—comes to Earth and incarnates. This incarnation begins with the head and spreads from there through the chest and limbs. This process appears as a progressive earthly awakening. Over the years, the I, which comes from the world of eternity, builds up a body that can have no other form than that which is an outward image of the I. Death is a reverse process, that of disembodiment. The I frees itself from physicality and ascends once more into the world of the spirit.
Many think that the particular, personal form that every body possesses stems from the forces of heredity. This is true to a certain extent, insofar as the body cannot be born otherwise than through the forces at work in the union of the parents’ two bodies. The body thus emerges from the stream of heredity. Yet at the same time, the human ego takes up the struggle against this stream of heredity. The human body, its face above all, but also its limbs, its hands and feet, and everything else, will acquire its own character over the years, one determined by the ego. Only those who observe both forces in their interaction, who follows the struggle between heredity and personality, will be able to understand the true relationships here. Goethe said: “From my father I have my stature, the serious conduct of life; from my mother the cheerful nature and delight in storytelling.” But the ability to develop his theory of metamorphosis, to write his Faust, he derived solely from himself.
Where does such a capacity to act from the “I” originate? Only the concept of reincarnation provides the correct answer to this question.
“Why should I not return as often as I am sent to acquire new knowledge and new skills?” asks Lessing in his “Education of the Human Race”, where he calls the doctrine of reincarnation “the oldest hypothesis” that human reason had already grasped before sophistry weakened that reason.
In fact, the idea of reincarnation is very old. In all pre-Christian cultures we find it in one form or another, here more veiled, there widely known. Ancient India knew it, as did Egypt, ancient Judaism, and early Greece.6In the Bhagavad-Gita we read, among other things, the words spoken by Krishna to Arjuna: “Just as a man, having cast off his worn-out clothes, puts on others that are new, so the embodied being, having cast off his worn-out clothes, passes into others that are new.” (38) The extent to which Christianity in the first centuries after Christ adhered to the doctrine of reincarnation can be seen in the writings of the Gnostics and the early Church Fathers. Origen was its staunch advocate and defender. He also interprets the well-known passages in the Gospel of Matthew (XI, 14 –15 and XVII, 12–13) are also interpreted by him in the spirit of the idea of reincarnation. There, Christ emphatically points to John the Baptist as Elijah returned, using the remarkable words: “And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, who is to come. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear!” Later, this statement is repeated once more: “But I tell you: Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man will have to suffer at their hands. Then the disciples understood that he had spoken to them about John the Baptist.”
With the eradication of Gnostic wisdom, the doctrine of reincarnation was also lost. The Middle Ages hardly knew it anymore. Even the mysterious wisdom of the alchemists passed it by. The emerging natural sciences directed thought entirely toward earthly man. The doctrine of what happens after death was regarded as a matter for the Church. Human mind no longer concerned itself with it.
As a tender seed, the idea of reincarnation reappears in German Idealism like a hint of something yet to come, like the shadow cast ahead of an approaching light: as a question or sometimes as a comparison, as an image or as a poetic confession, yet always vivid and apt through clarity and beauty. Lessing’s work “The Education of the Human Race.” Herder also had a peculiar relationship to this question. In his conversations on the transmigration of souls, in his treatise on “Palingenesis,” in which he discusses Lessing’s “Education of the Human Race,” his great interest in this problem became evident. One might call him an opponent of the idea of reincarnation, were it not for the fact that his opposition takes the form of a warm defense, albeit in a rather strange way. For upon careful reading, one gets the impression that while Herder acknowledges rebirth, at least in principle, he absolutely does not want it to be bound to the earth. His cosmic worldview led him to include the stars and planets as well. On the other hand, one clearly senses Herder’s concern that those who believe in reincarnation might neglect their duties on Earth. To be a good, truth-seeking, noble person here on Earth—that is the highest good for him.
Goethe is known for various statements that reveal his deep reverence for the question of life after death. Inspired by Tiedge’s “Urania,” he remarked to Eckermann (February 25, 1824): “I would by no means wish to be deprived of the happiness of believing in a future continuation; indeed, I would say with Lorenzo de’ Medici that all those who hope for nothing else are dead even in this life who hope for no other; yet such incomprehensible things lie too far beyond our reach to be the subject of daily contemplation or mind-numbing speculation. And furthermore: whoever believes in a continuation should be happy in silence, but he has no reason to take pride in it.” His standpoint is sublime and magnificent when he says (February 4, 1829): “Man should believe in immortality; he has a right to do so, it is in accordance with his nature, and he may rely on religious promises; but if the philosopher wishes to derive proof of the immortality of our soul from a legend, that is very weak and does not amount to much. My conviction of our continued existence springs from the concept of activity; for if I work tirelessly until my end, nature is obliged to assign me another form of existence, if the present one can no longer sustain my spirit.”
That not only the idea of immortality but also that of reincarnation lived in his soul is clearly shown by the poem “Song of the Spirits Above the Waters”:
The human soul
Is like water:
From heaven it comes,
To heaven it rises,
And down again
To earth it must,
Eternally changing.
The poem ends:
Soul of man,
How much you resemble water!
Man’s fate,
How much you resemble the wind!
How can one not see in this poem the image of man, who was created when “the Spirit of God hovered over the waters,” embarking on his path of development through heaven and earth, ever ascending and descending again?
Goethe also speaks clearly to Frau von Stein, for example in the poem:
Tell me, what does fate have in store for us?
Tell me, how did it bind us so precisely?
Ah, in times long past
You were my sister or my wife.
Thus, the idea of reincarnation lives on in German idealism more as an inner mood than as knowledge, more as a feeling than as a doctrine. Several attempts were made to present this idea scientifically, for example by Gustav Widenmann, whose work, titled “Thoughts on Immortality as a Repetition of Earthly Life,” was published in 1851. However, the idea of reincarnation can only take on a definite form in conjunction with the doctrine of body, soul, and spirit, to which it is inseparably linked. The doctrine that recognizes in human beings only body and soul relocates the immortal part of the human being to the divine world. On Earth, the human being then lives only to partake in the salvation that his soul receives after death. Only through the idea of the threefold constitution can the human being find his true relationship to Earth and Heaven. Bound to the Earth through the body, connected to the divine world through the spirit, the human being lives simultaneously in both worlds, which meet in the soul. In his book “Theosophy”, Rudolf Steiner describes this relationship as follows: “Just as the human being is not newly created in the morning, neither is the human spirit when it begins its earthly life. Let us try to understand what happens upon entering this life. A physical body appears, which derives its form from the laws of heredity. This body becomes the vessel of a spirit that repeats a former life in a new form. Between the two stands the soul, which leads a self-contained life of its own. Its inclinations and aversions, its wishes and desires serve it; it places thinking at its service. As the sentient soul, it receives the impressions of the outer world; and it conveys them to the so that it may draw sustenance from them for the duration. It plays, as it were, a mediating role, and its task is fulfilled when it fulfills this role. The body shapes the impressions for it; it transforms them into sensations, preserves them in memory as ideas, and passes them on to the spirit so that it may carry them through eternity. The soul is, in fact, that through which man belongs to his earthly life. Through his body, he belongs to the physical human race. Through it, he is a member of this race. With his spirit, he lives in a higher world. The soul temporarily binds both worlds together.” (14)
The earth on which he dwells is not foreign to man. He is connected to it through his deeds. Just as the soul, on the one hand, comes into connection with the earth by transforming perceptions into ideas and memories and, as it were, fixing the temporal, so, on the other hand, the soul acts upon the earth through the deeds that human beings perform, deeds that all have their consequences. The earth bears the traces of human deeds. This is not to be understood as a metaphor, but as a reality that becomes ever clearer the more one approaches it through thought. Everywhere on earth, human beings encounter the consequences of their deeds—those of humanity, those of groups of people, and those of individuals. Human beings encounter the consequences of their actions in a natural way. They meet them just as they meet them. Human beings have a certain relationship to them. They cannot escape them. They are part of his destiny. How he behaves in the face of this is a second question that will be answered later. Here, we merely point out the fact that the traces of human deeds are engraved everywhere on Earth and that people themselves encounter these traces. This law of destiny or — to use an ancient term — the law of karma is, in turn, inseparably linked to the law of reincarnation.
The image of sleeping and waking offers an apt comparison for what happens to a person at death and rebirth. In sleep, a person no longer consciously participates in the events of their surroundings, which nevertheless continue. For example, they begin a certain task in the evening. They want to write a letter, but he does not finish it. While asleep, he forgets what he has begun. Upon waking, however, the unfinished letter awaits him. He is free to destroy this letter or to finish writing it, but he cannot escape the fact that the unfinished letter is waiting for him. Thus, the night brings only a separation of consciousness between us and our deeds. Upon waking, this separation ceases. In the same way, the deeds we performed in a previous earthly life are present around us and can also be discovered upon a true awakening. Awakening in the morning means that the soul enters into connection with the earth through the senses. A higher awakening is possible, through which the soul, in thought, seeks its connection with the spiritual contexts that humanity and the earth can reveal to it. In such an awakening, a person can learn to see their unfinished or misguided deeds just as the senses can during ordinary awakening. Rudolf Steiner describes this as follows: “The immediate course of events ensures that in the morning I find the situation I myself created the previous day. That when I reincarnate, I find an environment corresponding to the result of my deeds from the previous life is ensured by the kinship of my reincarnated spirit with the things of the environment. One can thereby form an idea of how the soul is integrated into the human being. The physical body is subject to the laws of heredity. The human spirit, on the other hand, must incarnate again and again; and its law consists in carrying over the fruits of previous lives into the following ones. The soul lives in the present. But this life in the present is not independent of previous lives. The incarnating spirit, after all, brings its destiny with it from its previous incarnations. And this destiny determines life. What impressions the soul will be able to have, what desires will be satisfied, what joys and sufferings will befall it, and with whom it will come together: this depends on the deeds of the spirit’s previous incarnations. The soul will have to encounter again in a subsequent life those with whom it was connected in a previous one, because the deeds that took place between them must have their consequences. Just as one soul does, so too will those connected to it strive for reincarnation at the same time. The life of the soul is thus a result of the self-created destiny of the human spirit. Three factors determine the course of a person’s life between birth and death. And in three ways is it thereby dependent on factors that lie beyond birth and death. The body is subject to the law of heredity; the soul is subject to self-created destiny. This destiny created by man is called, using an ancient term, his karma. And the spirit is subject to the law of reincarnation, of repeated earthly lives. — One can therefore also express the relationship between spirit, soul, and body as follows: The spirit is imperishable; birth and death operate according to the laws of the physical world in the physical realm; the life of the soul, which is subject to destiny, mediates the connection between the two during the course of an earthly life.” (14)
From this perspective, the problems associated with the questions of reincarnation and karma are brought down to a purely scientific level. It is the realm of spiritual science, which employs methods just as precise as those of natural science. These methods will be discussed in greater detail later. In this context, however, it should be noted that the starting point of these methods is human thinking. Thinking is a function of the soul that connects the human spirit with the spirit active in the Earth and the cosmos. This connection manifests in consciousness in the form of mental images. Such mental images, however, can still be influenced by everything the senses teach us. They can also free themselves from this and become a single thought. Every true philosophy must strive for this. When this pure thinking is directed toward the phenomena of the Earth and the cosmos, then the first beginnings of a spiritual science arise. We find the seeds of such a spiritual science in all thinkers whose thinking has freed itself from sensory phenomena.
In anthroposophy, as advocated by Rudolf Steiner, attention is drawn to a further development of the faculty of knowledge, in which not only thinking but also feeling and willing are placed at its service through special exercises. Just as thinking can be freed from the influence of sensory perception and at the same time strengthened through careful training, so too can feeling and willing be freed from the influences that hold these soul faculties captive in the subjective realm, purified, and strengthened. Many truths of anthroposophy have been gained with the help of these higher powers of cognition. However, they can always be grasped by the thinking human being. The entire question of reincarnation and karma, for example, is accessible to the thinking of modern humanity. Indeed, one can go further and say that modern humanity should already have discovered these connections through thinking, but that entanglement in the materialistic worldview has diverted the direction this thinking had taken onto the wrong path. Rudolf Steiner attempted to demonstrate this in his essay “Reincarnation and Karma: Concepts Necessary from the Standpoint of Modern Natural Science”. (21) In it, he builds upon Francesco Redi’s discovery that living beings can only be born from living beings. Previously, people believed in generatio spontanea, in the possibility that living organisms—specifically so-called lower organisms such as worms and insects—could be formed from earth and water through a kind of decomposition process. Where the process of reproduction could not be observed, it was assumed that it did not exist. Only as modern research methods had further developed could this problem be seen in its proper light. Nevertheless, Francesco Redi had already provided proof in the mid-17th century that all living beings descend from living beings. It is only understandable that he was persecuted as a dangerous heretic for discovering a truth that would not be generally accepted until centuries later.
Based on spiritual scientific knowledge, one must answer the question of where the soul comes from in the same way: that the soul can come only from the realm of the soul. Of course, spiritual scientific truths cannot be proven in the same way as natural scientific truths. Nevertheless, one can demonstrate that a certain mode of thinking, when applied in accordance with the realm of the soul, leads to spiritual scientific truth—namely, the very one of which the natural sciences of the past centuries were justifiably proud: exact logical thinking.
With Darwin came an idea of inestimable value to modern science: the concept of evolution. What has become popular as the theory of descent—in the sense that for a time it was almost universally assumed that humans descended from higher apes—cannot be placed on the same level as this concept of evolution. The concept of evolution has found its continuation in ever-new forms through Haeckel, Hugo de Vries, and Bolk, to name but a few. It provides an answer to the question of how higher forms arise from lower ones, what laws govern this process, and what variations are observed in the process. A question, therefore, that belongs to the realm of natural science. The question of human descent, however, is not to be confined to the realm of natural science. Insofar as one wishes to compare the human form, physique, and organ structures with those of animals and to study the prevailing laws of development, one is dealing with questions of natural science. However, when one enters the realm of the spirit-bearing soul—that is, the truly human realm—one enters the domain of spiritual science. Here there is no direct sensory perception. One can study the development of plants and animals across different epochs through external observation. The development of the human soul, the spirit-bearing soul, can only be traced through thought.
When starting from the human soul, one must first and foremost seek to answer the question of what distinguishes such a soul. We have already spoken of the soul qualities found in the animal world. Every animal has certain soul qualities that are characteristic of the species to which it belongs. One can name specific qualities of the lion, the bull, and the eagle that characterize not the individual specimen but the entire species. All animals belonging to this particular species behave in the same way, at least as far as their pronounced qualities are concerned. The differences that arise are to be understood in light of the circumstances in which the animal finds itself, but they characterize only the circumstances, not the animal itself.
The situation is quite different with human beings. If one wishes to characterize a human being, one can do so only by describing each person as an individual. The true human being begins only where the species to which he or she belongs no longer plays a role. Rudolf Steiner expressed this as follows: “Every human being has their own biography.” One might object that the biography of an animal can also be described, as has been done repeatedly. But anyone who reads such a biography carefully will find that only the circumstances in which the animal lives and the way in which it behaves in these circumstances based on its species-specific characteristics are described. If one takes this a step further, one could even compile the biography of a pencil in this way.
Just as the animal is characterized by its species-specific traits, so is the human being characterized by his individual traits. His spirit-bearing soul makes him a personality who leads a life of her own. Consider, for example, the development of an animal. The chick that hatches from the egg immediately begins to peck at grains; the newborn duckling runs straight to the water. The young animals can do the same things as their parents in a very short time; they are simply not yet sexually mature. Once sexual maturity is reached, they are adults and have thus arrived at the peak of their development. Their lives now bring no further development beyond an ever-improving ability to adapt to their environment. In humans, sexual maturity and adulthood are not pinnacles, but starting points of life. From that point on, the development of the soul and spirit can truly begin in earnest—a development that continues as long as the person lives. One need only read good biographies to see how, in middle or old age, for example in Goethe’s case, tremendous leaps in development are made well into old age. To a greater or lesser extent, this is naturally the case with every human being; it is just that the results of this development are not so conspicuous in most people.
This line of thought must, however, lead us to the question of where this soul-spiritual being of the human being has its origin. The life of a particular organism has its origin in the life of the organisms from which it has grown. The soul-spiritual being of the human being can have no other origin than the soul-spiritual being from which it grows. This is nothing other than what the person themselves brought to development in a previous earthly life. It comes to Earth in a germinal state at birth and unites with the body. In the way the child performs its first actions, it already reveals something of its own being. One child will learn to walk by pulling itself up against a wall or a chair and then letting go only hesitantly. Another child, on the other hand, stands up in the middle of the room without any support, perhaps falls over again immediately, but repeats the attempt a moment later. Then the child walks. One by cautiously feeling the ground with the tips of its toes, the other by boldly planting its sole on the floor. The further possibilities for development are also endlessly varied. One child will begin to speak early, another very late; one will gaze dreamily at the world for a long time, another will look around with bright eyes already in the first weeks. All such differences point to individual characteristics.
In the development of young animals, one can also observe differences, but these are expressed in terms of “more” or “less,” “better” or “worse.” The young animal is either a “prime example” of its breed from an early age or never is. In human development, it is not merely a matter of more or less, but first and foremost a matter of individual character.
The many interesting experiments undertaken to demonstrate the spiritual characteristics of animals can also only be explained from these perspectives. One will always be dealing with characteristics related to the animals’ instinctual and desire-driven lives. The chimpanzee, which devises cunning combinations to get hold of a banana, undoubtedly develops a kind of intellectual ability in the process. However, no matter how far this may develop, it remains confined to a completely different category of abilities than that to which human intelligence belongs. This is not a matter of gradual differences, but of essential ones. In the chimpanzee, what is developed remains within the realm of characteristics shared by all members of its species. Scheler, whose excellent characterization of the difference between animals and humans should be noted here once again, says in his assessment of the well-known chimpanzee experiments: “It is the instinctual dynamics within the animal itself that begin here to objectify themselves and expand into the components of the environment.”
Human beings, however, carry within their souls a spiritual core that enables them to live and act in a direction opposed to the drives and desires through which the same soul is connected to the earth. This spiritual core gives them their personality.
The development of personality in this life can only have its origin in the degree of development achieved in previous lives. If one does not accept this idea, one cannot move beyond the view that human beings are, in fact, nothing more than higher animals. No matter how great one may perceive the gradual difference between animals and humans to be, it is infinitely more important to pay attention to the essential differences. The animal soul is bound to the physical body and is ruled by instinct and desire. The human soul is bound to the physical body only to the extent that the spirit does not reign within it. A human being is thus a spiritual being, a personality, only to the extent that he lives from spiritual impulses. Learning this is the purpose of an earthly existence, and it then goes without saying that the great differences that exist between one human being and another are attributable to the spiritual development of previous lives.
The fact that this only correct distinction between animal and human was lost during the centuries of scientific development was a severe blow to humanity. As a result, what is truly “human” in human beings disappeared from consciousness. This had immense consequences for the entire cultural life. Strindberg expressed himself bitterly on this problem in his letters about Weininger. There is the sentence: “The zoological worldview ended with veterinary psychology,” and one may indeed speak of a zoological worldview in an era when one attempts to understand the human soul through the analysis of instincts and the human body through comparative anatomy.
Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science has opened the way to returning to a spiritual view of humanity, by further developing the clear, precise mode of thinking of the natural sciences in a manner appropriate to the realms of the soul and the spirit. Through this further development, it becomes possible to study the law of reincarnation and apply it practically, just like any natural law. In his treatise “Reincarnation and Karma” he arrives at the clear conclusion: “Either one must abandon the entire scientific theory of evolution, or one must admit that it must be extended to include the evolution of the soul. There are only two possibilities: either every soul was created by a miracle, just as animal species would have to be created by a miracle if they had not evolved from one another; or the soul has evolved and existed in a different form in the past , just as the animal species existed in a different form.” Finally, we read: “Only he has an inner right to speak of evolution in the realm of external nature who also acknowledges this evolution in the spiritual. It is now clear that this recognition, this extension of the understanding of nature beyond nature itself, is more than mere knowledge. For it transforms knowledge into life; it not only enriches a person’s knowledge but also gives them the strength to transform their life’s path. It shows him where he comes from and where he is going. And it will show him this origin and destination beyond birth and death, if he steadfastly follows the direction that this knowledge points out to him. In everything he does, he knows that it is part of a stream that flows from eternity to eternity. The vantage point from which he governs his life rises ever higher and higher. Man is shrouded as if in a thick fog before he arrives at this state of mind, for he has no inkling of his true nature, nothing of its origin or its goals. He follows the impulses of his nature without any insight into these impulses. He must tell himself that he might well follow entirely different ones if he illuminated his paths with the light of knowledge. The sense of responsibility toward life grows ever stronger under the influence of such a mindset. Yet, if a person does not develop this sense of responsibility within himself, he denies his humanity in the higher sense. Knowledge without the goal of human ennoblement is merely the satisfaction of a higher curiosity. To elevate knowledge to the grasping of the spiritual, so that it may become the power of all life—this is, in the higher sense, a duty. And it is therefore a duty for every human being to seek understanding of the soul’s origin and destination.” (21) Just as the plant is rooted in the earth, so is the human being rooted in the spirit. His body touches the earth. The soul, situated between body and spirit, shares in both.
The forces of fate that rule over human beings struggle within the soul against the spiritual forces leading to freedom. A struggle develops between the forces that shape karma and the ego-being destined for freedom.
This struggle will unfold almost entirely unconsciously during the first years of life, only to come more and more into consciousness later on. For the most part, this consciousness extends no further than the experience of a struggle against the circumstances that arise in human life and are perceived as “good” or “bad.” The outcome of the struggle is marked by the acceptance or rejection of these circumstances, and for some, perhaps by their overcoming them.
A person’s outlook on life will be entirely different if they come to know and understand the law of reincarnation and karma and are ultimately able to live in accordance with it. This does not mean that one must concern oneself with the question of who one might have been in past incarnations, or who one’s acquaintances and friends might have been. Such speculation would divert the attention this question deserves in a completely wrong direction. What matters is not to learn something “from the past” and then carry this knowledge with one as a kind of possession, but to grasp something present and find a guideline for the future from it. Knowledge of past connections can arise in the soul under certain circumstances and through certain spiritual exercises. It can then be valuable for shedding light on something in the present. But this is what is essential.
In his final lifetime, shortly before his illness, Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures in Dornach in which he depicted various personalities, all of whom were already part of history, through various incarnations. The lectures were conducted in such a way that anything that might have arisen in the listeners as mere curiosity or a thirst for sensation was completely eliminated. Their underlying tone was one of the utmost seriousness, the deepest reverence, and above all, the highest scientific rigor in the spiritual sense. One sensed from them that a time will come when people will be able to speak about the questions of reincarnation and karma with the same precision and objectivity as they do now about physical and chemical questions.
Even now, this teaching can lead to a certain practical application. In the circumstances that accompany a human life, one can study what is connected with that life. There are few people who, in the depths of their soul, believe in chance, but there are also few who seriously investigate the connection between “chance circumstances” and their own lives. Usually, one limits oneself to the observation that these are things that a person simply cannot know. But imagine that someone, in certain circumstances, would make an effort to carefully recall how they came to be in those circumstances. Such a recollection would have to be purely factual in nature. This person would then have to strive to form a clear picture of the present situation, and then try to find the point in their life from which it can be explained how they came to be in this situation. At that point in time, however, they were also in a specific situation, which in turn can be explained from an even earlier point. Anyone who engages in such recollection with great seriousness and perseverance will soon notice that many seemingly unrelated events lead to circumstances that cannot be understood from these events alone. Nevertheless, they were obviously necessary to bring about the later circumstances.
For the most part, circumstances seem to depend on events that take place outside our conscious will. A serious engagement with such connections brings a person into contact with the deeper laws at work in all of this. Through this, a person gains insight into the hidden structure of their life. They come to know the fundamental structure of their life. In doing so, they discover that their life is subject to a certain guidance that they follow unconsciously. It is then no longer so difficult to answer the second question as well. For when a person begins to see “how” things in their life came about, they can also find the answer to the question of “why” it had to happen this way and not another.
Self-knowledge is necessary for the answer to this question; self-knowledge in a very precise sense. The commonly held feeling that, as human beings, we simply have our faults—which is usually immediately followed by the notion that no one is perfect—is completely inadequate for such self-knowledge; rather, an objective understanding of the motives that have led us to certain actions and decisions is necessary. Those who have made the pursuit of such self-knowledge a regular part of their daily practice over many years can expect to gradually gain an understanding of the connection between their inner being and the circumstances in which they find themselves. For them, the doctrine of karma has then become a means by which they can continue on their path with greater purpose and a deep sense of inner certainty.
An important question is that of the relationship between karma and freedom. (22) Let a practical example demonstrate that the idea of freedom is not in contradiction to the law of karma. Imagine that someone encounters a person toward whom they instinctively feel a strong aversion, an antipathy that cannot be explained by external causes. One can imagine that the real cause is karmic, lying in an event from a previous life. The fact of the encounter and the feeling of antipathy can then be explained by the law of karma. However, it is entirely up to this person’s freedom to decide how they will act. Will they, as usually happens, say: “My feeling tells me here that I find this person unsympathetic, so I will continue to avoid them,” or will they perhaps say: “Since my feeling points me here toward a certain relationship with this person, I want to try to fathom the nature of this relationship.” This requires self-mastery, but in many cases it also leads to a result. Such a result might be, for example, that these two people form a very valuable friendship.
Anyone who allows themselves to be guided in such situations solely by their feelings of sympathy and antipathy will not transcend the influence of karma. Those who try to act out of insight develop inner freedom and create a harmonious relationship between the forces of karma and freedom.
Even in a relationship where feelings of natural sympathy predominate, one should behave in this manner. Here, too, there is a danger that the person will remain unfree, bound. Indeed, one might even say that the dangers here are even greater, since the incentive to seek deeper insight is less strong.
Thus, on the basis of a practical application of karma, ever greater freedom can develop in human relationships. The feelings of sympathy and antipathy, of pleasure and displeasure, thereby become soul organs that make important spiritual insights possible. Rudolf Steiner says of this: “Pleasure and pain are transformed within him from mere feelings into sensory organs through which the external world is perceived. Just as the eye does not act on its own when it sees something, but allows the hand to act, so pleasure and pain, in the spiritual seeker—insofar as he uses them as means of knowledge—do not effect anything themselves, but receive impressions, and what is experienced through pleasure and displeasure is what brings about the action. When a person exercises pleasure and displeasure in such a way that they become conduits, they build up within his soul the actual organs through which the soul world opens up to him. The eye can serve the body only by being a conduit for sensory impressions; pleasure and pain will develop into eyes of the soul when they cease to have significance merely for themselves and begin to reveal the foreign soul to one’s own soul.” (14)
This brief presentation may have made it clear that the doctrine of reincarnation and karma, as developed by Rudolf Steiner, has nothing to do with Eastern fatalism or any other religious belief. It arose entirely from the realization that laws can be found in human life which can be studied by spiritual science just as precisely and exactly as natural laws are studied by natural science. Thus, this doctrine fits into modern cultural life in a way that can be recognized by it—and indeed must be recognized if the path that spiritual life has sought to follow for centuries is consistently pursued.
This view also answers the question of why Christianity, why the Gospels, do not contain the doctrines of karma and reincarnation. As already indicated, there are indeed references to this in the Gospels. We also find something stated about the effect of karma in the Gospel of John, where the episode with the adulteress is described, whom the scribes and Pharisees wanted to stone. They say: “But Moses commanded us in the Law to stone such women; what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they might have something against him. But Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.” This writing on the ground, as Rudolf Steiner explains, is a profound reference to the law of karma. It is not the scribes and Pharisees who are to judge this offense, but karma, through which every deed is inscribed upon the earth, ensures its further development. Yet these brief allusions also reveal that the doctrine of karma and reincarnation was not intended for the Christianity of that time, even though it was known in esoteric circles. A general dissemination of it at that time would have diverted attention from the value of earthly life. For the development of the free, self-conscious human being, it was necessary that the person direct all their attention. Only now, after the development of earth-bound self-consciousness has been completed, can the doctrine of reincarnation and karma be properly received by humanity. The centuries of scientific research make it possible to accept this teaching purely on the basis of an understanding of the relationships between body, soul, and spirit, without directing false expectations toward the afterlife. Therefore, by pointing to this law of reincarnation and destiny, Rudolf Steiner accomplished a deed of inestimable significance for the entire future cultural life.
3. The Mystery of Christ
German idealism appeared in a spiritual dawn, heralding the birth of a new image of humanity. Under the full rays of the sun risen to its zenith, this birth took place. A spiritual image of humanity came to Earth, one that encompasses both the mortal and the immortal human being, one that portrays the human being as he remains in constant development through many soul metamorphoses.
What is this spiritual sun, in whose light all this took place? In whose light this new image of humanity alone could be born? Rudolf Steiner also provided an answer to this question, perhaps the deepest of all.
Humanity has passed through many phases of development. This development can be studied in the periods accessible to conventional historical research through the documents that have been handed down. Especially in the three fields of science, art, and religion, the various periods of development reveal their flowering or their decline. Soon, however, as one goes back in history, one arrives at times when a separation of these fields is no longer possible. Cultural life there was dominated by an ancient wisdom of the mysteries, which was neither science, nor art, nor religion, but united all of them at once in a powerful unity. The sculptural creations of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, Persians, or Indians are not works of art in the strict sense. They arose from a more or less direct perception of the divine powers that rule earth and heaven. These divine powers reveal themselves to the beholder in the forms of the gods. What appeared as beauty in the depiction of these divine forms was not the goal, nor even a means. It was the natural consequence of the way in which one felt connected to these divine powers. Even when kings and pharaohs were depicted, it was done in this way. Their divinity manifested itself in the image.
Nor can the wisdom of those times be regarded as a kind of science in and of itself. It was not separated and practiced in isolation. It, too, flowed from the spiritual connection of the priests and magicians with the creative gods.
A tremendous cosmic experience lay at the foundation of this mystery. The Earth and everything that lives and grows upon it was seen in connection with the celestial bodies, the planets and stars; all ruled by divine beings, guided by divine forces. In the flowing water, in the blowing wind, in the rumbling thunder, and in the fiery lightning, the whispering, the speech, and the wrath of the gods. Planets and stars were not points of light in the sky or glowing balls of gas, but dwelling places of the gods. Just as the Earth is for us not merely a sphere whose crust is formed of silica and limestone, but a dwelling place of humanity, so in the times of mystery wisdom the stars were regarded as dwelling places of divine beings.
This ancient mystery being, as Rudolf Steiner described (17), first manifested itself in clear form during the Atlantean epoch. Here it can only be noted that recent scientific research increasingly points to a vanished continent that must once have been situated between Europe and America in prehistoric times, that is, in the place of today’s Atlantic Ocean. (23, 24) In antiquity, not only does Plato speak very clearly about this vanished continent on several occasions, but it is also described in the cultural documents of other ancient peoples, such as in the ancient Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. In the Book of Genesis, the downfall of this part of the world is described in the story of the Flood.
According to Rudolf Steiner, the mystery system of ancient Atlantis was sevenfold. There were seven mystery oracle sites dedicated to the powers that, using later terminology, can be designated as the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. These names did not refer to the planets as we know them, but rather pointed to the spheres of activity of spiritual beings who were under the rule of the gods. At the center of these Atlantean mysteries stood the Mystery of the Sun. In it, one experienced the connection with the divine power, which was regarded as the central and guiding force within the entire development of humanity. What was experienced from the outer Sun as the radiant light of the heavens, as warmth, all of that was the outward manifestation, the effect radiating from the deity, which the Earth and humanity gratefully received. The true essence of the Sun was far more comprehensive; it was the essence of the deity itself.
After the downfall of Atlantis, this ancient culture spread across the Earth in various currents. Where one of the main currents remained, a new culture flourished. Thus arose the cultural epochs that lie at the dawn of our history: ancient India, ancient Persia, and so on.
The teaching of the Sun as the center of divine activity was expressed most clearly in Persian culture; this culture had its original leader in Zarathustra, a predecessor of the Zarathustra or Zoroaster known to history. He proclaimed to his people the greatness and power of the divine solar being, Ormuzd or Ahura-Mazdao, the being of light who was at the same time the representative of the good, the beautiful, and the noble. Zarathustra also proclaimed the future descent of this solar being to Earth, thereby prophesying the coming of Christ. Opposed to this power of light was recognized the power of darkness in Ahriman or Angra Mainyu, the power that represents all the evil that seeks to lead the human soul into ruin.
But this central power of the Sun God was also spoken of in other cultural epochs. And the teaching that this Sun God would one day descend from heaven to permeate the Earth with the divine creative power of the Sun was part of the wisdom of the mysteries. The Greeks were the last to still know the Sun, in the form of Helios, as a deity. Then this profound spiritual vision was lost, and the view began to prevail more and more that the sun, and likewise the other celestial bodies, are glowing, luminous masses of gas in infinite space. Schiller’s words from “The Gods of Greece” reflect this transition in the most beautiful way:
Where now, as our sages say,
A soulless fireball spins,
Helios once guided his golden chariot
In silent majesty.
The gods vanished from the consciousness of humanity, which had become earthly. “All that remained for us was the disembodied word,” laments Schiller. Yet this points to a mystery. What remained is truly the disembodied Word, the Word that was once experienced in such a way that it could be recognized as the very bearer of the Godhead. The Gospel of John still speaks of this, beginning with the words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” 7Translation by Rudolf Steiner in the lecture series: “The Gospel of John,” Hamburg 1908. (Last edition Dornach 1955.) This Word became flesh, John continues. The divinity, which could only be designated by the Word, the creative Word, has come to earth.
The deepest mystery of human development is thus expressed. Christ, the Sun God, whom the initiates of the ancient mysteries looked up to as the true ruler of the creative forces in the cosmos, has come to Earth. The Logos, the Word, the innermost essence of the Godhead, has become flesh.
That John, when he describes Christ in this way, does not intend to use a philosophical abstraction, but rather points to the real creative powers of the Word, becomes understandable when we read how Luke also speaks of those “who have seen it from the beginning and have been servants of the Word.” By Logos or Word, John and Luke mean the divine principle from which everything arose and which was incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth. This Logos power became event that Rudolf Steiner repeatedly describes as the “Mystery of Golgotha.”
In 1902, Rudolf Steiner gave a series of lectures that were revised and published as a book titled “Christianity as a Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity.” In it, he explains that the foreshadowing of Christ’s coming was the deepest essence of the ancient mysteries—Christ, who was to come to Earth to overcome death and reconnect the Earth with the living solar forces that had been lost in the course of evolution. But also Christ, who will redeem human souls by freeing them from the realm of the dead Earth forces.
The significance of the mystery of life and death was deeply imprinted upon the souls of those seeking wisdom in the ancient mysteries. The human being descends again and again to Earth from spiritual worlds. With the forces he brings from his prenatal life, he builds up his body with the help of the gods. The human being needs this body for his existence on Earth. It is built up the first phase of life and develops successively through various stages: from infancy to the change of teeth, from the change of teeth to puberty, and from puberty to adulthood. Then follows the phase of life in which physical development nearly comes to a standstill, but in which the human soul can unfold fully; while in the third phase of life, which now follows, the human being begins to lose their physical strength and grows old. At the same time, the spiritual human being has received the opportunity to free themselves more and more. Thus, normal human life exhibits three phases of development in which the body, soul, and spirit can unfold successively. During the period of physical development, the spirit is still predominantly at the service of the body; during the period of spiritual development, the body is at the service of the spirit. Physical evolution predominates in the first phase of development. This simultaneously signifies a spiritual involution. The spiritual being emerges from the realm of prenatal forces and unites with the earthbound body. It comes from the world of the living spirit into the world of death. Spiritual evolution manifests itself predominantly in the final phase of human development. This is then simultaneously a physical involution. The spiritual being frees itself once again from the body’s earthly bondage. It prepares itself for union with the forces that will act again after death. Between the first and the last phase lies the middle phase of life, in which the forces of life and death, of evolution and involution, strive for equilibrium. It is the phase in which the human soul can unfold fully and determine its free relationship to these two interpenetrating currents of life and death. The soul is constantly engaged with both. It draws strength from the physical current of evolution that dominates the first phase of life. The pain it unconsciously experiences through the associated spiritual involution becomes a longing to unravel the mysteries of the world. Then it becomes acquainted with the current of spiritual evolution. In connection with this, insight and understanding arise. Knowledge is gathered that can lead to wisdom. The painful experience of physical involution, associated with it, lends this knowledge and wisdom a character transcending the temporal. A radiance of eternity may surround them. Thus the soul stands between the forces that govern body and spirit. It participates in life and death in twofold ways. It learns to recognize that physical birth can only occur through spiritual death, but that this spiritual death can be overcome. A spiritual rebirth can then take place, through which the approaching earthly death, which marks the later phases of life, loses its significance. Spiritual death and physical birth, physical death and spiritual birth: this is the great rhythm that the soul learns to experience on earth when it discovers the laws of the world’s development. These laws were revealed to the disciples in the ancient mysteries.
Why is such an alternation of phases of life and death, of death and life, necessary for the incarnating soul? The answer is found when one considers the phenomena of consciousness. The young child, who is completely absorbed in the life forces that bring about his physical growth, does not have a fully developed consciousness. It dreams a cosmic dream. The outer phenomena that the Earth presents are all bathed in the radiance of a super-earthly spiritual light for the child. A close observation of the way the child relates to everything it encounters on Earth reveals this. The way in which the child reacts to everything and deals with everything stems entirely from its own, still prenatal spiritual being. Only gradually is it truly born on earth. It awakens to the earth; it gets to know the earth. It comes to consciousness. This consciousness, however, is born of contact with the forces of death.
Every process of consciousness carries within it the seed of a process of death; every process of life, on the other hand, takes place in the unconscious. This process of consciousness would be unbearable for the human being were it not for the possibility within them to permeate themselves with new life forces now born of the liberated spirit. Thus, the human being can already overcome the forces of death in their life through the spirit.
This spiritual resurrection had to be undergone in all the mysteries. Human beings die continually. Death begins even at the moment of birth. Every subsequent period of life develops on the basis of the death of the preceding one. The infant dies into the child, the child into the youth, the youth into the man, the man into the old man. Yesterday has today, and today will die for what is to come. In this constant metamorphosis of the forces of life and death, man can learn to find the eternal Spirit that rises again and again. Under the influence of the priests, through magical rites, the initiate was, after careful preparation, placed in a state comparable to a state of apparent death. In this state, images of the spirit’s immortality were presented to his soul. He beheld the power that overcomes birth and death. His spiritual being—which existed in a spiritual world before birth and which will enter a spiritual world again after death—became visible to him. After spending three days in this state of apparent death, the resurrection took place. The initiate felt as if he had been reborn. Everything around him had changed. Life and death had lost their power; the boundaries of transience had been crossed.
Such a spiritual rebirth was significant not only for the one who underwent it. It also had a profound significance for the entire course of world events. For the rebirth of the human spirit simultaneously signified the rebirth of the divine spirit, which is hidden in the world and can be brought to resurrection through humanity.
Where does humanity find God? Not directly in nature, where the intellect finds only the beings created by God—the minerals, the plants, the animals. Not in the cosmos, where the heavenly bodies appear as glittering points, where the sun stands as a sphere radiating light and warmth in infinite space. The intellect cannot find God there either. Nor can imagination or religious feeling reach God himself. The images that human beings form of him do not stand up to the intellect. “For God is not for your senses and for your intellect, which explains sensory perceptions,” is how Rudolf Steiner describes this experience of the Mystery Sage. “God is simply enchanted in the world. And you need His own power to find Him. You must awaken this power within yourself. These are the teachings that an ancient initiate received. And now the great drama of the world began for him, into which he was vividly drawn. This drama consisted of nothing less than the redemption of the enchanted God. Where is God? That was the question that arose in the mystic’s soul. God is not, but nature is. He must be found in nature. In it he has found his enchanted grave. In a higher sense, the mystic grasps the words: God is love. For God has taken this love to its utmost limit. He has given himself in infinite love; he has poured himself out; he has fragmented himself into the manifold things of nature; they live, and he does not live in them. He rests in them. He lives in the human being. And the human being can experience the life of God within himself. If he is to bring him to knowledge, he must redeem this knowledge by creating it.” (25)
Whoever has undergone a spiritual rebirth in the Mysteries could experience this rebirth in his soul as the actual birth of God in the human being. All all around the human being, nature spreads out with its many mysteries. The world of the stars, which arches over everything, also harbors an infinite number of mysteries. They all become questions for the human being, questions that find their center in the one question concerning the nature of God. These questions are answered through the inner experience of the soul. God is hidden in the world, in all phenomena, in all creatures, yet in the human soul He can come to resurrection, there where this human soul learns to recognize its eternal, divine core, transcending the limits of temporality, the boundaries of life and death.
“The Father,” writes Rudolf Steiner, “remains quietly hidden; the Son is born to the human being from within their own soul. Mystical knowledge is thus a real process within the world’s process. It is the birth of a divine offspring. It is a process as real as any other natural process, only on a higher level.” (25)
The Earth had continued to develop and had thereby stepped out of the union of the divine creative forces. Rudolf Steiner’s “Esoteric Science” describes this developmental process in detail and shows how it is in accordance with the entire plan of creation that the Earth, passing through various phases, should arrive at a state such as we now know it. The “Esoteric Science” also deals in depth with the events known in the biblical tradition as the “Fall of Man”; events that took place not only in the souls of the people of that time, but in the entire Earth.
Humanity and the Earth had lost their intimate connection with the spiritual forces of the Sun. “Nature has become God’s grave,” says Plato; and: “The world soul is crucified upon the body of the Earth.” Will humanity—and with it the Earth—be able to free itself again? That was the question that moved not only the sages of the mysteries but also the gods.
Liberation came through Christ. He, who, as John says, was “in the beginning” the “Word,” in whom was “life” and the “light of men,” descended into earthly darkness. The “Word” became flesh and dwelt among men “full of grace and truth.” A sacrifice so great and mighty that human understanding cannot grasp its significance was offered by Christ. What was foreseen in the ancient mysteries as a distant future became a reality. The Deity, whose sphere of activity is the spiritual Sun, comes to Earth and unites with the body of Jesus of Nazareth. A turning point in the history of humanity is thus reached. From this point on, history can be divided into two great parts: the period before and the period after the Mystery of Golgotha.
A divine drama unfolds on Golgotha. A drama whose stage is not only the Earth, but at the same time the entire cosmos. In the development of the planetary system to which our Earth belongs, will this Earth continue to isolate itself further and further from the cosmic forces that flow through the universe and find their center in the Sun? Or will a reconnection between Earth and Sun once again be possible? That is the cosmic aspect of the drama. In the human being, who was once born of these solar forces, who was once wholly filled with the spiritual light of solar wisdom, this cosmic drama must come to consciousness. Where else but in the souls of human beings can the power be placed that, through its continuing influence, can accomplish the task of redeeming the Earth?
This took place in the souls of all human beings! For with the coming of Christ to Earth, the time has dawned in which the wisdom of the Mysteries can no longer remain hidden, to be passed on only from one chosen individual to another. The time has passed in which the souls of these individuals can still find an intimate connection with the gods within the Mysteries. The Mysteries have fallen into decay. Soon the time will come when the Roman Caesars will force their way into the Mysteries and have themselves initiated.
A tremendous reversal will occur in the spiritual events that determine the Earth’s development. Whereas previously the forces of the divine world acted upon the Earth and humanity from above through the working of the hierarchies, and were also conveyed from above to the disciples within the secrecy of the Mysteries, with the coming of Christ to Earth begins the age in which the divine power will increasingly unfold from within. From within the Earth, which has been transformed in its very essence through the Mystery of the Crucifixion, the Burial, and the Resurrection, but also from within the souls of human beings, who from this time onward can walk the path of further perfection through nothing but an inner transformation of their souls.
In the future, the forces that guide the Earth and humanity will now work from within. The seed of the spiritual substance of the Sun, of which Christ is the bearer, has been planted in the Earth and in human beings. The Earth received the possibility of becoming once again a celestial body radiant with the Sun. Humanity received the possibility of once again being permeated by the divine solar power that once shone through it completely.
However, it is entirely up to his inner freedom whether he wishes to receive this power or not. The great world mystery has taken place for all people: for the very few who were its witnesses, but also for all others who heard of it, as well as for those who heard nothing of it. Supporters and opponents alike were part of it, just as today the reality of the Mystery of Golgotha exists for all people and holds universal significance for all of humanity. Here, too, it is once again the Gospel of John that most beautifully expresses this mystery of the universal transformation brought about by the coming of Christ. (16) Following the powerful opening comes the description of the ministry of John the Baptist. He points to Christ as the Son of God, who had descended at the baptism in the Jordan and united Himself with the body of Jesus of Nazareth. God sent His innermost being to earth. The Logos comes to earth in the form of the Son. The Logos has passed from the Father to the Son. Right at the beginning of Christ’s ministry , as John describes it, the mystery of rebirth is brought to humanity. Preceding him, the words of John the Baptist resounded: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” What the deeper meaning of this conversion was, Christ Himself was to teach. For example, in the conversation with Nicodemus, who came to Christ “by night.”8An indication that Nicodemus was an initiate, who could commune spiritually with Christ in the silence of the night. To him, Christ speaks of the mystery of rebirth, which is necessary for anyone who wishes to see the Kingdom of God. This is not a rebirth of the flesh, but one of “water and Spirit (Pneuma),” that is, a rebirth of the human being who reflects on his spiritual origin and henceforth wishes to continue his path in the spirit of this future.
The proclamation of the doctrine of rebirth finds its climax in the miracle of Lazarus. Rudolf Steiner pointed out that the raising of Lazarus actually refers to an initiation performed in public. Lazarus is the one who still receives an initiation in the old manner, plunged into a very deep state of apparent death, almost a state of complete death, and is then awakened by the initiator with the words that were customary in the ancient mysteries. His initiator is Christ himself. (25) This initiation, still in the old style in form, is at the same time a new beginning, because it takes place in full public view. The seclusion of the ancient mysteries has been broken. The new teaching will be universal and accessible to all, intended for everyone who, driven by inner impulses, wishes to realize this teaching. From this moment on, the persecution of Christ intensified. It is understandable to see in the fact that the miracle of Lazarus is seen as a kind of betrayal of the mysteries is understandable.
This rebirth was to acquire cosmic significance only through the Mystery of Golgotha itself. Christ suffers death on the cross. The blood from his wounds flows to the earth. With the burial, the entire body is entrusted to the earth. When the women later come to the tomb, they find it empty, and only the cloths lie there. Christ has risen from the dead. He reveals himself to his disciples, and later to others as well, among them Paul.
For Paul, this event of the Resurrection is decisive. From a persecutor of the first Christians, he becomes a fervent proclaimer of the new message. The Resurrection was not only of decisive importance for his own development; he also regarded it as the central tenet of the entire Christian doctrine. “But if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.”
Like a heavenly seed, the human body that has become divine falls into the earth and transforms it to its very core. The blood that flowed from the wounds and moistened the earth , was likewise imbued with divine power. All the fruits that the earth will bear after this time will be permeated by this power of Christ. The words spoken at the Last Supper have become a profound truth. “And he took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you; do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, after the Supper, he took the cup and said, ‘This is the cup, the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.’”
The human body, which thus nourishes itself with the fruits of the earth, will be able to reveal within itself such a divine substance through the working of the spiritual forces of the sun that its spiritual being will be able to complete its further development with their help.
When the deepest and most sublime mysteries are revealed, an image from ancient legends can often say more than a long essay. Therefore, let the legends be recorded here that express how Christ, as a new Adam, liberated the human race.
Once, while King Solomon was out hunting, one of his squires discovered a grotto in which Adam’s skull was hidden. Solomon greeted Adam as the first human. Then he cursed him as the one who had brought humanity to ruin. He threw a stone at the skull and commanded all who were with him to do the same. Thus arose a mountain of stones called Golgotha, which means “the place of the skull.” When, millennia later, Christ was crucified on this hill, the blood flowed from his body onto the stones that surrounded Adam’s skull.
Another legend tells how Seth, Adam’s son, came to the gates of Paradise and sought entry. The angel with the flaming sword gave him three seeds from the tree that stands in the center. This tree was formed by the union of the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Seth planted one seed in Adam’s grave, in Adam’s mouth. The wood of the tree that grew from it remained eternal. Solomon fashioned the gate of his temple from it. Moses heard the proclamation of “I Am” from the branches of this tree. The cross of Golgotha was also made from this wood.
Thus do the legends speak of how Christ appeared to humanity as the new Adam. Just as all people descend from Adam in body, so do they descend from Christ in spirit. He is the progenitor of the reborn spiritual man.