The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We shall continue for a time to study the laws prevailing in the development of human karma, and I shall say something to-day about the inner aspect of the shaping of karma, of the part of karma that is connected especially with the moral, ethical and spiritual life.

You must remember that directly we look beyond the physical world—and this is always so in studying karma—the karmic connections are spiritual. Even when they take effect in the physical, for example in illness, whatever is karmic in an illness has a spiritual cause. So that under all circumstances we come to the spiritual whenever we approach the study of karma. To-day, however, we shall turn our attention more particularly to the ethical aspect of karma, to the workings of karma in the life of soul.

I have already told you that the forming of karma is connected with those Beings who in very ancient times of evolution were actually present on the earth and who departed from the earth at the time of the separation of the moon, taking up their abode in the cosmos as Moon-inhabitants, Moon Beings.

What we call Moon—of which the physical part as ordinarily described is no more than an indication—must be regarded as the bearer of certain spiritual beings, the most important of whom once lived on earth as the great primeval Teachers. It was they who established among men on earth that ancient wisdom of which I have so often spoken. These Beings were on the earth before the separation of the moon. In those times they infused the primeval wisdom into man who acquired it through a kind of inner illumination. And the way in which these Beings worked was altogether different from the way in which men can work on the earth to-day.

The activity of these ancient, primeval Teachers among men must in truth be described as a kind of magic, taking effect inasmuch as the influence of the human will upon happenings in the external world was infinitely greater than is possible to-day. Nowadays the will can work on the external world only through physical means of transmission. If we want to push some object we must put our will into operation through the arms and hands. But in the days of the primeval Teachers the human will still had a direct and immediate action upon processes in the outside world, upon the very processes of nature. It was a kind of action that we should now call magical. But in point of fact the last vestiges of this power of the human will persisted until comparatively recent times. Rousseau, for example, tells us that in certain warmer regions he was able to paralyse and even kill toads which came near him, simply by fixing them with his gaze. This power of the human will which in warmer climates persisted until the 18th century, has diminished through the course of the ages and has now vanished. But in ancient Egypt man was still able to influence and promote the growth of plants through his will. And when the primeval Teachers were on the earth, even inorganic processes of nature could be brought under the sway of the human will.

These things of course depended upon a true, instinctive insight into the connections of world-existence which remain completely hidden from the crude, material science of modern times. It is evident, however, that the influence of warmth upon the working of the human will must be taken thoroughly into account, for Rousseau, who was able, in warmer regions, to kill toads with his gaze, subsequently tried in Lyons to stare at a toad in the same way, supposing that it would at least be paralysed. But the toad was not paralysed; on the contrary it fixed its eyes upon him and he himself became partially paralysed and had to be restored to life by snake-poison administered by a doctor.

This way of activating the will is of course dependent upon an instinctive knowledge of the whole environment of man.

Out of their own spiritual foundations the primeval Teachers possessed a totally different, far deeper and more penetrating knowledge of nature than is within the reach of man to-day. They were endowed with powers which cannot be comprised in natural laws. Nor was this necessary when the primeval Teachers were working on the earth, for nothing in the least resembling modern natural science was then in existence. It would have seemed utterly pointless and nobody would have understood its purpose. For in those days all such activity was founded upon a far deeper, more inward knowledge and understanding than is possible to-day.

These primeval Teachers transferred the scene of their work from the earth to the moon and as everything in the cosmos is interconnected, a mighty task is now allotted to them within the nexus of cosmic happenings. They are Beings who have a great deal to do with karma, with the forming and shaping of human karma. For an essential part of the weaving of karma is to be observed when, after having laid aside his etheric body a few days after death, the human being lives through his sleeping life (not his waking life) backwards. When he passes through the gate of death he has, first of all, a clear retrospective vision of what he has experienced in life—a grand and majestic panorama in pictures. After a few days this panorama slowly fades away as the etheric body dissolves in the cosmic ether, and then an actual journey backward begins.

Earthly existence flows in such a way that although we grasp it in remembrance as a unity, this is an illusion. Life does not flow onwards uninterruptedly. We live through the day consciously, the night unconsciously; the day consciously, the night unconsciously, and so on.

When in remembrance man thinks back over his life, he forgets that the nights are always there between the days. During the nights a very great deal happens to the soul, to the astral body and ego, only man knows nothing about it. What happens to him while he is unconscious during the nights in earthly existence, this he lives through in a backward course after death, so that time actually seems to him to be flowing backwards; in full consciousness he lives backward through the nights.

As approximately a third of life is spent in sleep, this backward journey is also lived through in a third of the time of the earthly life. If, therefore, a man has reached the age of 60, some 20 years have been spent in sleep and the backward journey lasts for about 20 years. Then he enters the Spirit-land proper, into a different form of existence. This backward journey, this vision of what has happened during the nights, is lived through after death in such a way that the great and significant difference between its experiences and those of ordinary sleep is strikingly apparent.

With the exception of the dreams rising out of sleep which do not, after all, reproduce the experiences of earthly life very faithfully but in an illusory, fantastic shape—with the exception therefore of the dreams welling up from the night-life, the human being has little consciousness of all the manifold happenings in which he is involved. In earlier lectures here I have described what happens to the human being during sleep; but after death he experiences it with extraordinary clarity and definition. This life in the soul-world after death is much richer in impressions than earthly life. The pictures a man experiences and how he himself is involved in them—all this comes to him with extraordinary intensity; there is nothing dreamlike about it. It is experienced, if I may put it so, as a kind of photographic negative. If you caused suffering to some person during your earthly life, you experienced this infliction of suffering as it proceeded from yourself. You experienced what proceeded from yourself, was done by yourself. But journeying backward after death you do not feel what you experienced during earthly life, but you slip as it were into the other person and feel what he experienced as the result of your action.

To take a drastic example.—If you gave someone a box on the ears, you do not experience what you felt in earthly life as you planned and carried out this act, but on the backward journey you experience, instead, the feelings of the other person whose ears you boxed. You live through it as your own experience, and indeed with extraordinary concreteness, with greater intensity. No impression on earth is as powerful as the impressions along this backward course after death for a third of the time of the earthly life. During this period the whole karmic fulfilment of what was done in life is experienced—from the standpoint of the other man. You live through the whole karmic fulfilment, but not, of course, as earthly experience—that will come in the subsequent life on earth. Even though it is not as intense as regards the action as it will be in a later incarnation, you experience the impression more strongly than could be the case in any earthly life.

This is a very striking fact. It is the intense reality of the experiences that is so remarkable.

But even if the human being were able to unfold in his ego and astral body the degree of strength that is his when he passes through the gate of death, he would experience this whole backward journey at most as a very vivid dream. And he might expect it to be so if, after death, he were merely to look at the earthly life and what it has made of him. But this backward journey is not a vivid dream; it is an experience of far greater intensity than any experience in earthly existence. Only now there is no physical body, no etheric body, through which man's experiences are mediated to him on earth.

Just think what you would experience on earth with your ordinary consciousness if you had no physical body and no etheric body. You would flit over the earth with now and again a dream arising; then you would sleep again, and so it would continue.

It is easy to conceive that after his earthly life a man who had reached the age of 60 lives through a dream continuing for 20 years; but what he lives through is by no means a dream, it is an experience of the greatest intensity. What makes this possible? It is because the moment a human being has passed through the gate of death, has laid aside his etheric body and begins his backward journey, the Moon Beings draw near him and with their ancient magical powers they pass into him, into his experiences, and impregnate his pictures with cosmic substance.

If I may use an analogy, what happens is just as if I were to paint a picture. In the first place it is simply a picture and doesn't cause actual pain—provided it is not too hideous—and even then the impression is only a moral or aesthetic one. It hurts nobody. But suppose I were to paint a picture, let us say, of three of you here and the picture were permeated with some magic power causing these three to step from the picture and carry out everything they had planned against others. You would react with more force and vigour than anthroposophists are wont to reveal! So it is after death. The experiences are full of living force, living activity, because these Moon Spirits permeate the pictures with their own substantiality; they saturate these pictures with a super-reality of being.

After death, therefore we pass through the region of the Moon Beings and what we experience as the balancing-out of our own deeds is stamped with mighty force in the cosmic ether. This backward journey—when it is described not merely in principle as in the book Theosophy, but when one tries to describe it as concretely as I want to do now—this backward journey after death is extraordinarily interesting and a highly important section of life.

In our time the experiences that may come to a human being during this period after death are particularly complicated. Just think how essentially the whole constitution of soul of these Moon Beings differs from that of the inhabitants of the earth. These Moon Beings with whom we have so much to do after death once imparted to men that primeval wisdom which in our time has completely faded away. As I have often explained, men could not have attained their freedom if the mighty wisdom of these primeval Teachers had remained. It has faded away and been replaced by something else, namely, abstract thinking. The human being to-day thinks in concepts which no longer have any very real relationship with the spiritual world. Let me repeat an example I gave on another occasion.—Aristotle has bequeathed to us ten concepts which were really a survival of ancient wisdom: Being, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Position, Space, Time, Possession, Action, Suffering. He called them the ‘Categories’. They are ten simple concepts. These ten concepts are generally enumerated in our text-books of Logic. In classical schools they have to be learned by heart; professors of philosophy are familiar with them. But nothing more is known than just the ten concepts by name: Being, Possession, Position, Space, Time, and the rest. To what does such knowledge amount? These ten concepts seem tedious and dry to a modern man. But to one who perceives their significance they are no more tedious than are the 22 or 23 letters of the alphabet: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, ...

Just think of it.—If you knew nothing more about the alphabet than a, b, c, d, e, f, g, up to z, if you knew this and nothing more, what would you make of Goethe's Faust? You would open the book and find these 22 signs scattered about in manifold permutations and combinations. Faust contains nothing but these 22 signs inter-connected in different ways. And if you knew nothing more, if you had never learnt to read but merely opened the book and saw these signs, just think how different it would be from what it is now, when you can take Faust and read it. That is a different matter altogether! No book in the world contains anything except these 22 signs and yet just think what you can make of them! The whole world of the mind is open to you because by juggling with these 22 letters you can apply them.

But the logicians who have accepted the ten Categories to-day: Being, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Space, Time, Position, Possession, Action, Suffering—these men know as little to what these Categories really apply as someone who has never learnt to read and simply recognises a, b, c, d, e, f, knows of all the books of the world. It is exactly the same thing. For these ten concepts of Aristotle's Logic have to be understood in such a way that they can be applied in manifold permutations, just as the letters are manipulated in the physical world by multifarious combinations and permutations. Then, with these ten concepts we read in the spiritual world. They are the letters.

But in our time the concepts are known by name and that is all—which is equivalent to knowing nothing more of the alphabet than the letters in their sequence. Think what you would miss if you could not read but only knew a, b, c, d! Correspondingly, men miss everything that is in the spiritual world if they are unable to manipulate and apply the ten concepts of Aristotle in all manner of ways, in order to read in the spiritual world.

In this connection something very droll has been happening among philosophers for a long time. About the middle of the Middle Ages there lived a very astute and clever man, by name Raymond Lully. From tradition he still knew something about this permutation of the categories of logic, of the fundamental concepts of logic, and he gave out what he knew—clothing it in the form of pictures as was customary in those times. What he really wanted to say, or rather, what he would have said if he had expressed the reality, was this: My contemporaries are all blockheads, because they only know a, b, c, d; they do not know how to read with the fundamental concepts, the root concepts. A man must understand in his head how to combine these fundamental concepts as letters are combined into words and sentences. Then he can read in the spiritual world.—Raymond Lully did not say this in such direct words for that was not the custom in his days. He said: Write the fundamental concepts on slips of paper, then take a kind of roulette, spin it and the concepts will be thrown about among each other; and then read. Then there will be results.

This, however, was only an analogy, for he did not really mean anything like a dead, mechanical roulette; he meant the spiritual head which must manipulate and combine these concepts. But those who heard of it took the analogy literally and have laughed about it ever since, considering it to be a piece of childishness on the part of Raymond Lully. The childishness, however, is purely on the side of modern philosophy which does not understand what was meant.

Practically everything that in olden days was brought to humanity by the primeval Teachers whom we know as the Moon Beings, has been lost. But during his backward journey in the first period after death the human being becomes acquainted in a very special way with this knowledge. He knows then how these ancient Sages thought, what kind of wisdom they possessed. Hence the graphic, concrete reality of his experiences during this period.

But in our time things have become complicated and confused owing to a kind of lack of understanding. Human beings, who since the fading of the primeval wisdom have been living here on earth with their abstract concepts, have not the power to understand the inner soul-constitution of these primeval Teachers since they entered the Moon-existence.

When a modern scholar is passing through this period of his life after death, be speaks a very different language from these primeval Teachers who, as I shall describe to you in more detail, have a very great deal to do with the shaping of karma. These primeval Teachers and the men of to-day who die imbued with modern culture and the fruits of modern civilisation do not really understand one another.

It is extremely difficult to form a clear conception of these things, for observation of what is happening to human beings in this connection is by no means easy. But in characteristic cases observation is possible: for instance, one can study two men who died not so very long ago and who have gone their way backward after death, two men who were steeped in modern culture and who nevertheless were very different from each other.

We can take a man who was brilliant in his own way, a scientist of average calibre like Du Bois-Reymond, or someone of the same type, and observe his backward journey after death. Another personality, too, can be observed in the same way. A very interesting personality as regards this backward journey through the soul-land is the one who hovered before me while I was composing my Mystery Plays and who took shape in the character of Strader. Strader in the Mystery Plays is an image of an actual person who in his youth entered the monastic life but subsequently abandoned it and worked in the field of rationalistic philosophy as a professor in a University. This man—he was responsible for a number of writings—has all the abstraction of a modern thinker, but his thoughts are extraordinarily penetrating, full of warmth and vigour. It does one good to find this quality of heart in a modern thinker.

The full-blooded vigour of Hegel, for example, who could present the highest abstractions with tremendous depth of emotion but also with utmost concreteness, is of course no longer possible to the same extent in a man of to-day. Hegel was a thinker who was able to imbue concepts and ideas with such concrete reality that he could, so to speak, hack wood with them. But the man to whom I am now referring revealed something of the same heart-quality in handling abstract concepts. As I said, his life hovered before me when I was shaping the figure of Strader in the Mystery Plays.

When this man died his backward journey was particularly interesting to me. A fact to be taken thoroughly into account was that all his thinking had a certain theological bent. Like that of a modern scientist, or at least a natural philosopher, it was entirely abstract, but all the time there was this nuance of theology (coming of course from earlier incarnations) and his thinking was lit by a gleam of consciousness that it is possible to speak, at least, of the reality of a spiritual world.

Hence this man's thinking has more affinity with the soul-constitution of the Moon Beings than has the thinking of an average scientist like Du Bois-Reymond, for example. When such men are passing through the soul-world, through the Moon sphere, one can perceive a marked lack of understanding—it is like someone who lives in a foreign country and never learns the language; the others do not understand him and he does not understand them. This, broadly speaking, is the fate of a man who is a typical product of modern civilisation when he enters upon this backward journey after death.

But it was rather different in the case of this personality, the prototype of Strader.—I have to resort to earthly language although it is utterly inadequate when applied to what I am here describing.—When, after death, this personality was journeying backward through the course of his life, it could be observed that the Moon Beings took a certain interest in the way he was bringing his thoughts, his abstract thoughts, into the soul-world. And he, in his turn, experienced a very remarkable awakening, an awakening in which he seemed to be saying to himself: ‘Ah, now I see that all I fought against is, in reality, quite different.’ (He had fought against many things that were traditional).—‘I see now that it only gradually came to be what it is, because the ancient truths have become abstract words. I was often fighting against windmills; now, however, I see realities.’

Something of extraordinary interest is happening here—and a whole number of such men in modern life might be cited as examples. There is something extremely interesting in this backward journey after death where the foundations of karma are laid.

An even more striking figure in this connection is the philosopher Jacob Frohschammer, who wrote Die Phantasie als Weltprinzip (Imagination as a World-Building Principle). I have often mentioned him. There was still a great deal of inner substance in his abstract concepts, but, like the man just described, he was an abstract thinker. He could, however, so little tolerate the abstractions of modernism—I do not now mean ‘modernism’ in the terminology of Roman Catholicism—that he simply refused to acknowledge concepts as world-building forces; he would acknowledge only imagination. He said: imagination is working everywhere; the plants grow, the animals exist and so forth, through imagination. In this respect Frohschammer's book is extraordinarily interesting.

It is wonderful to observe how such a personality, who has still retained much of what was alive in cultural life before the modern, abstract way of thinking became customary, is able to blend with the substance of the Moon Beings. Investigations of this kind are profoundly interesting because a closer insight into the laws of the evolution of karma grows out of them. And when one is drawn by a certain sympathy to such a personality—as I myself was drawn to the prototype of Strader in the Mystery Plays—it is the warmth of soul by which one is united with him that makes it possible to share the experiences of this very significant journey after death.

The fact that the impressions are so strong for the man who is passing through these experiences has an after-effect, too, upon the person who is following them with knowledge. And that in itself is a very remarkable thing. For it becomes evident how much more impressive are the experiences after death than those of earthly life. I ask myself to-day in all earnestness: If I should wish to add a fifth Mystery Play to the four already written, would it be possible for me again to include the figure of Strader, now that for some considerable time I have watched these pictures of what Strader's prototype experienced after death? ... It would be quite impossible, because the moment I want to present the earthly figure, where the impressions are far less intense, the pictures of the impressions experienced by Strader's prototype after death are there before me. And they are far, far stronger; they blot out what was there during the earthly life.

I can observe this quite clearly in myself. As you may imagine, I took an extraordinary interest in the life of this man, for he was the prototype of Strader. He has since died and the impressions coming to him, after death, are incomparably more interesting to me than anything I can find out or describe about him while he was alive.

When I think about my Mystery Plays I realise that because of the vivid impressions of this prototype of Strader in the life after death, the character of Strader is the one that fades away from me most completely of all. This does not apply to the same extent to the other characters in the Plays. You see there how what is here on earth aligns itself in true observation with what is beyond the earth, and how the effect of such things enables one to realise the tremendous intensity of the life after death on this backward journey. The sheer intensity of it blots out the impressions of earthly life.

Still more can be said about these matters. I am not speaking here of anything that has been invented, but of realities. We may know a man very well in his earthly life and then experience what he has to undergo in the backward journey after death. Everything takes a different form because of the intensity of the pictures. If we have been exceedingly interested in a man's earthly life—as I was in that of a man who died a number of years ago—then our whole relation to the earthly life changes; it has an entirely different character when we subsequently share in the experiences of the personality in question during the backward journey after death. And many things in the earthly relationships are only now revealed in their whole truth.

This is all the more the case when the relationships in the earthly life were not of a spiritual nature; when they were, when they were essentially spiritual, there is, as it were, a continuous, onflowing development. If, however, there had been, for example, a human relationship without agreement in ideas and thoughts, then in certain circumstances this relationship may be transformed after death into something quite different, into an entirely different life of feeling and the like. The cause of this change is the vividness of the pictures which then appear.

I am describing these things in order to call up before you a concrete image of types of realities differing from those of earthly existence. There are many different types of realities. And when, so to speak, the deeds of the Moon Beings flow into the pictures which a man himself shapes, this reality is such that it appears even more wonderful than the subsequent reality when the man is passing through the spiritual world proper and in union with the Hierarchies is concerned with the elaboration of the results of his earthly life; this state of existence runs a much simpler course because it is a kind of continuation. But the radical transformation of the human being after death, due as it is to the fact that he enters into relation with Beings who left the earth long ago and founded a kind of Moon colony in the cosmos—this is something that with tremendous forcefulness discloses to us a reality which, because it follows immediately after the life on earth, is closely related to and yet essentially different from earthly reality.

When human beings cling too strongly to earthly things it may be difficult for them to find their bearings in the sphere of the Moon Beings. Something happens then which I will describe in the following way. Picture to yourselves the earth here, the moon there.—Now the active moon-influences which are, in reality, reflected sun-influences, penetrate just so far into the earth ... At this point they cease. The moon-influences do not penetrate very deeply into the earth, actually only as far as the roots of the plants spread in the soil. The moon-influences are not really active below the stratum of the roots of plants. There is only a shallow layer up here where the moon-influences are held fast. Sun-influences, of course, penetrate deeply into the earth. The warmth of the sun in the summer is preserved; when you lay potatoes in the soil the sun's warmth is still there during the winter. The sun-influences penetrate deeply into the earth, the moon-influences only as far as the level of the roots of plants ... a shallow layer.

The moon-influences, rising up like mist from this shallow layer, may cause human beings who have to pass after death into the Moon sphere—the soul-world—but are unable to understand the Moon Beings, to be trapped by this shallow stratum of moon-influences and they can actually be seen by sensible-super-sensible perception wandering about as ghosts, as spectral shades.

The legends and poems which tell of these things are based upon reality, but in order to form a sound judgment in this domain we must be entirely free from superstition, we must proceed with critical deliberation and accept only what can be put to the test.

In this backward journey after death which lasts for a third of the time of the earthly life, karma is prepared. For the Moon Beings mingle in these ‘negatives’ of a man's deeds, also of his deeds in the life of thought. The Moon Beings have a good memory and they inscribe into the cosmic ether every experience they share with the human being.

We pass through the life between death and a new birth and then, on the return journey when we come back once more into the Moon sphere we find everything inscribed there. And we bear it all with us into our life in order to bring it to fulfilment by means of our earthly will.

This, my dear friends, is what I wanted to place before you to-day as a theme of study.

In the last lecture we spoke of how the seed of karma is formed in the period immediately following a man's death. And I tried to describe to you with what living force and intensity the experiences undergone during this period work upon him and also upon one who is able to follow the life of a human being through this period—which, as you know, lasts for about a third of the time of the earthly life. We must, of course, bear in mind how the terrestrial world in which the fulfilment and development of karma take place, works upon man, and in what a different way he is influenced by the extra-terrestrial world.

When we survey the scene of our karma—the earth—it is obvious that everything belonging to the earth, all the beings of the kingdoms of nature, exercise a very real influence upon man. This influence makes itself felt in his life even when his cognition is not directed to his earthly surroundings. He must be nourished, he must grow; to this end he must take into himself the substances of the earth. These substances work upon him through their qualities and inner forces quite independently of anything he may know about them. And expressing it rather radically, we may say that no matter what attitude a man adopts in his life of soul towards the kingdoms of nature surrounding him in earthly existence, he is related in a very definite way to the facts and realities of his physical environment.

This can be observed in many domains of life. How would it be, for instance, if the quantity of foodstuffs we consume were determined by what we know about the effects of the various foodstuffs upon the organism? Obviously we cannot wait until we possess such knowledge; we are obliged to eat. Our relationship to our earthly environment is entirely independent of our knowledge, independent too, in a certain sense, of our life of soul.

But now think of the utterly different character of our relationship to the world of stars. Influences of the world of stars cannot be said to have the same instinctive basis as the influences of the kingdoms of nature. The starry worlds fill man with wonder, he can be moved and inspired by them. But just think to what an extent his life of soul is involved in everything that concerns the world of stars, how his life of soul is affected. Take the nearest heavenly body that is related to man—the moon. That the moon has an influence upon man's life of phantasy and imagination is common knowledge. And even those people who repudiate everything else in respect of influence of the celestial bodies upon the human being will not deny that the ‘magic of moonlight’—to use a romantic phrase—has an effect upon phantasy.

But it is impossible to imagine that even this crudest and most obvious influence of the world of stars could take effect if man had no life of soul. Without the life of soul there could be no such relationship as exists between man and his earthly environment, where in truth nothing essential depends upon whether he admires or does not admire, shall we say, a cabbage—it is simply there to be eaten—or upon what he knows of its effect upon his organs; what he has to do is to eat it! In this case, knowledge is merely an accessory. Knowledge does indeed, raise man's life of soul above the life of nature; but man lives his life within the realm of nature, and the spiritual life itself is an accessory. But if the spiritual life is excluded we cannot conceive that any influence could be exercised upon man by the world of the stars—let alone by the world lying still further beyond: the world of the Hierarchies, of the higher Spiritual Beings.

On the lowest level, so to speak, of the Hierarchies are those Beings of whom I said in the last lecture that inasmuch as they themselves live within the experiences of man after death, they impart tremendous power and intensity to these experiences. If these Moon Beings who were once the great primeval Teachers of humanity on earth did not live, as it were, within man's very being after death, his experiences would be like dreams. But they are anything but dreamlike; they are stronger, more full of reality than the so-called normal experiences of earthly life. Karma is actually prepared by means of these experiences, because we live with such intensity in others, not in ourselves, and have to establish the balance for our deeds. We experience things as the others experienced them, and with tremendous intensity. In this way our karma is prepared. And then comes a transition. Having shared these experiences with the Moon Beings, man passes on to experiences shared with Beings who have never been on the earth. The Moon Beings of whom I spoke in the last lecture were at one time on the earth. But now, in a later period between death and a new birth, man ascends to Beings who were never on earth. The Beings belonging to the first group of the higher Hierarchies are those we know by the name of the Angels. These Beings guide and accompany us from one earthly life to another. Among the ranks of the higher Beings they are the nearest to us and they are also very near to us throughout our earthly life.

When we reflect about the external circumstances of our earthly life, about things we have seen or heard, about what we have gleaned from the world of nature or from history, or about what other people have said to us ... when our thinking is occupied exclusively with what comes to us from outside during earthly life, then that Being of the Hierarchy of the Angels to whom we belong has little to do with our thoughts; for the Angels never dwelt on the earth—unlike the primeval Teachers who although they were present in etheric bodies only, did nevertheless inhabit the earth. The Angels were never earth-dwellers. Our relation to them is therefore different from our relation to the Moon Beings of whom I have been speaking to you.

But for all that, as we follow the paths which lead us after death in a certain sense past the planets, and come, first of all, into the domain of the Moon Beings, we are also in the realm of the Angels. Thus while we are living together with the primeval Teachers of humanity who have now become Moon-dwellers, we are living, too, with the Angels.

Then, as our path leads further, we enter the sphere which in all spiritual science that has ever existed, is known as the sphere of Mercury. None of the Beings in this region were ever on the earth. Here live only Beings who were never earth-dwellers. When we pass into the sphere of Mercury between death and a new birth, we come into the realm of the Archangels. And when subsequently we pass into the sphere of Venus we come into the realm of the Archai.

In passing through these realms of the Third Hierarchy we approach what is in reality the spiritual sphere of the Sun. And the spiritual Sun-sphere is truly, in the most sublime sense, the dwelling-place of those Beings who in the ranks of the higher Hierarchies are named Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes. Thus it is the Second Hierarchy which, in reality, is the soul, the spirit, of the Sun-existence. We enter this sphere and spend in it the greater part of the time between death and a new birth.

Now these Beings can of a truth be understood only when we remember that their existence is entirely remote from what makes us into earth-men and holds us within the bounds of natural law. In the realm of true Sun-existence there are no natural laws as we know them on earth. In the realm of spiritual Sun-activity, spiritual laws—including, for example, the laws of will—and natural laws, are one. In that realm, natural laws do not in any way run counter to spiritual laws, for natural law and spiritual law are completely at one.

Let us be quite clear as to the consequences of this.—We live here on earth and have our various experiences. Perhaps we strive for goodness, we endeavour not to deviate from a path we consider morally right. With these intentions we perform certain deeds. We see someone else to whom such intentions cannot possibly be ascribed, to whom we can attribute only evil purposes. We wait a few years, continuing to unfold side by side with the other man's evil purposes, what we consider to be our own good intentions. But now we perceive that nothing has been achieved; our good intentions have had no effect and, in addition, ill-luck may have befallen us, whereas the other man whose purposes we deemed evil is living by our side in what appears to be good fortune.

This is something that leads so many people who have eyes only for earthly life, to rebel against it and to declare that in this earthly life there is no evidence of a power that deals justly with good and evil. And indeed no really unbiased observer will be able to say that a man who says this is entirely in the wrong. For would any reasonable person be prepared to insist that every occurrence in a man's life is connected, in respect either of merit or guilt, with what has come from his intentions in this earthly life? When we consider how earthly life takes its course we can only say that it is impossible to find any kind of balance there for the moral impulses issuing from the soul. Why is this impossible?

It is because we are not in a position, of ourselves, to translate our intentions, those innermost forces which by freely willed assent hold sway in our life of soul, into the reality wherein we live on earth. There, in the outer world, natural laws prevail and events occur for which the influences of many different human beings are responsible. We cannot but realise that in earthly life there is an abyss between the impulses of will in our souls and what we see taking effect in external life as our destiny.

Just ask yourselves how much of what is destiny in this external life and therefore significant for you is a direct realisation of the intentions you bear within your soul? The terrestrial world is not the realm in which the spiritual laws in accordance with which man allows himself to be governed, or governs himself, are at the same time natural laws. In this earthly world, spiritual laws are not identical with natural laws; spiritual laws hold sway in man's inner being only. And if we face the world fairly and squarely, we can only say: if someone misconstrues my good intentions, deeming them evil, if he does not recognise my good intentions and judges them by what my destiny may be after a few years ... if, therefore, someone says that my good intentions are, in reality, bad, and when ill-luck befalls me a few years later justifies himself by saying: ‘See what has happened now; I said all along that his intentions were bad ...’ then this would be an impossible way of living. The spiritual must work from soul to soul. But in the external, earthly world, the spiritual does not yet work as a force of destiny.

Thus we must keep vividly in mind that in earthly life there is an abyss between the moral and psychical on the one side and the natural and physical on the other. This abyss is caused by the fact that spiritual laws are not identical with natural laws.

Now if men leave entirely out of account the world which leads on from terrestrial existence—the world from B to C, from death to a new birth—whether they simply disregard it or whether they think that owing to the boundaries of cognition nothing can be known of it—what will such men say? They will say: ‘Natural laws and what the human being does and experiences because his life is involved in them—that is actually, that is real. Our knowledge, our science can encompass it. But the outcome of the intentions which are present within us as experiences of soul-and-spirit—that we cannot know.’ Nothing, indeed, can be known, if the life from B to C is ignored. That these things living within the soul will in some way find fulfilment can only be a matter of belief. In the measure in which, since ancient times, knowledge of the span from B to C has faded, in that same measure has this separation arisen between knowledge and belief.

But we cannot speak of karma as we speak of knowledge and belief. For karma is the expression, the manifestation, of law—not of something that is mere belief—just as is the case with natural law.

Returning now to man's life between death and a new birth, after the earliest period which I have already described to you, our study brings us to a world where dwell the Beings of the Second Hierarchy, the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and instead of earthly existence we have a Sun-existence. For even when we pass beyond the region of the stars, the sun still radiates, though not in the physical sense; and it continues to radiate as we live through the time between death and a new birth. Whereas here on earth the sun shines down upon us with its physical influences, in the life between death and a new birth the sun shines upwards to us; that is to say, we are borne and sustained by the Beings of the sun, by Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes. But in the world wherein we are then living, the natural laws which obtain in earthly life have no meaning at all, for everything is governed by spiritual laws, laws of soul-and-spirit. In that world there is no need for grass to grow; no cow needs grass to eat; for neither cows nor grass exist. Everything is spiritual. And within this Spirit-realm we can bring to realisation the intentions in the soul which cannot be realised in the earthly realm, so little realised that in extreme cases the good can lead to unhappiness and the evil to happiness. Everything in the realm of the sun finds fulfilment and expression according to its inner worth, its intrinsic nature, and it is therefore impossible for the good not to take effect in proportion to its power of goodness and the evil in proportion to its power of evil.—There is a very special reason why this is so.—From the Sun-existence which enshrines the Second Hierarchy, the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, a kindly, gracious welcome is extended to all the good intentions and purposes that were harboured in our life of soul on earth. This could also be expressed by saying that whatever has lived in a man's soul with any nuance of goodness is received in this Sun-existence with graciousness, but the evil is utterly rejected; it cannot enter.

In a series of lectures¹ I was able to give in the Goetheanum before its destruction by fire—the French Course as it is called—I spoke of how a man must leave behind his bad karma before a certain point of time is reached between death and a new birth. Evil cannot enter the realm of Sun-existence. There is a proverb which, to the modern mind, refers of course only to the physical effects of the sun. This proverb says that the sun shines equally upon the evil and the good. That is indeed so; but the sun does not admit evil into its realm. If you can perceive spiritually what is good in a man's soul, you will see it bright as sunlight—bright in the spiritual sense. If you perceive what is evil in him, it is dark, like a spot where no sunlight can penetrate. Whatever is evil in a man must be left behind when he enters the Sun-existence. It cannot go with him.

But think of it: in his earthly life man is one whole. His physical existence and his existence of soul-and-spirit are linked together, they form a unity. Although it cannot be proved with crude instruments, it is a fact that not only does the blood of a man who harbours only evil, flow differently, but the very composition of the blood is different from that of a man who has goodness in his soul!

Picture to yourself that in the life between death and a new birth a really evil man arrives at the threshold of the Sun-existence. He must leave behind him all that is evil. Yes, but this means that a considerable part of him remains behind, for the evil is bound up with him, is one with him. In so far at least as the evil is one with him, he must leave part of himself behind. But if at this threshold a man has to leave behind something of his own being, what is the consequence? The consequence is that he is maimed, stunted, and he passes into the Sun-existence as a kind of spiritual cripple. The Sun-existence can have an effect only upon what a man brings of himself into this realm. And in this realm those Beings who can work together with him between death and a new birth are led to him.

Let us take an extreme case—the case of someone who was so evil, so utterly inhuman that he wished ill to all men. Let us imagine him to have been evil to a degree in which evil does not really exist ... but hypothetically at any rate we will imagine him to have been an unmitigated villain. What will become of such a man who has identified his whole being with evil? What will become of him when he arrives at the point where he must leave behind everything of himself that is evil, or connected with evil? He will be obliged to leave the whole of himself behind! He will have passed through the realm of the Moon Beings, will have encountered the Being of the Hierarchy of the Angels who is specially connected with him, and also other Beings of that Hierarchy. But now, having reached the end of this realm, and pursuing his way through the spheres of Mercury and Venus, he approaches the realm of the Sun. Before entering this realm of Sun-existence he must leave all of himself behind, because he was wholly evil.—What is the consequence? The consequence is that he does not pass into the Sun-existence at all. And if he is not to disappear from the world altogether he must at once prepare to reincarnate, to enter again into an earthly life.

In the case of a hardened evil-doer, therefore, you will find that very soon after his death he comes back again to earthly life.

There are, in reality, no such unmitigated villains in existence, because in a certain sense there is some good in every human being. All of them, therefore, can enter a little way into the realm of Sun-existence. Whether a man penetrates far or only a little way into this realm depends upon the extent to which he has crippled himself in soul-and-spirit. And this also determines what measure of power he is able to draw from the Sun-existence for his next earthly life. What a human being has within him can be founded only upon forces gathered from the Sun-existence.

You know the scene in the second part of Faust, where Wagner produces Homunculus in the retort.—Now to be able actually to create a being like Homunculus, Wagner would have needed the knowledge possessed by the Sun Beings. But Goethe does not depict Wagner as such a man; if Wagner had possessed that knowledge, Goethe would not have used the words “soulless groveller” in connection with him. Wagner is undoubtedly very clever but he lacks the knowledge possessed by the Sun Beings. That is the reason why Mephistopheles—a spirit-being who has this knowledge—must come to his aid. Wagner could have achieved nothing without the help of Mephistopheles. Goethe divined quite clearly that only so could there be produced in the retort a being like Homunculus who can then himself actually accomplish something.

We must be quite clear that the human cannot proceed from the earthly but only from the Sun-nature. What is earthly in man is only an image. Man bears the Sun-nature within him; the earthly is but an image, a picture, of his true being.²

So you see, the World Order commits us into the care of the sublime Sun Beings during our life between death and a new birth. And together with us, these Sun Beings work upon as much of our being as we have been able to bring into the realm of Sun-existence. The rest remains behind and must be gathered in again when we return to earthly life.

Man passes out into cosmic existence—I shall describe the further stages in the lecture the day after tomorrow—and then he returns to the earth. On the path of return he passes once more through the Moon region. There he finds the evil he left behind and he must receive it into his being, it must again become part of himself. He receives it in the form in which he experienced it immediately after having passed through the gate of death; and now he makes it so truly a part of himself that it comes to realisation in earthly existence.

Let us think once again of the rather unpleasant example I gave a little while ago.—If during my life on earth I have given someone a box on the ears, then after my death, in the course of the backward journey, I live through the pain he felt. This experience too I find again on my return and strive for its realisation. If, therefore, something befalls me that is the consequence of what the other human being experienced, I myself have striven to this end on departing from the last life on earth. And when I return to the earth I bring with me the impulse for its realisation.—But let us leave that for the time being.—I shall speak in the next lecture about the fulfilment of karma. What I want to impress upon you now is that what I find again as I return, has not passed through the Sun-existence. I have taken through the Sun-existence only that in me which was related to the good.

Having built up in the realm of the Sun a somewhat stunted human being, I now take into myself once again what I left behind. What I now take into myself forms the basis of my earthly-bodily organisation. As I brought into the realm of Sun-existence only the part of myself that was able to enter this realm, I can only bring back, quickened and spiritualised by the Sun-existence, the part of my human being that was able to accompany me through that realm.

Let us therefore make this distinction:

1. A part of man that has passed through the realm of Sun-existence appears on earth.

2. A part of man that has not passed through the realm of Sun-existence appears on earth.

What I have been saying hitherto concerns man's life between death and a new birth and its after-effects in the earthly life. But the sun also works upon the human being while he is on the earth. And the other realms too, especially the realm of the Moon, work upon man in earthly existence. There is, firstly the influence of the Sun-existence between death and a new birth, and, secondly, the influence of the Sun-existence during life on earth. Similarly, if we take together the workings of Moon, Mercury and Venus, we have, firstly, the influence of the Moon-existence between death and a new birth, and, secondly, the influence of the Moon-existence upon the human being while he is on earth.

During earthly life we need the sun, in order that we may have a head-life. What the sun sends to us in its rays calls forth the head-life from our organisation. This is the part of man that is conditioned by the Sun-existence, that is dependent upon the workings of the head. I say “the head”, meaning the whole life of the senses and of ideation. The other part of man, the part that is dependent upon the influences of the spheres of Moon, Mercury, Venus, is connected, not with the head-life, but with the life of procreation in the widest sense.

There you have something very remarkable. The Sun-existence works upon man between death and a new birth, making him truly ‘man’, elaborating in him what is connected with the good. During earthly life, however, the sun can work only upon what is connected with the head. Of a truth this head-life has not very much to do with the good, for a man can also use his head to make himself into an out-and-out scoundrel. He can let his very cleverness make him an evil-doer.

Everything in earthly existence that promotes continuity of evolution is based upon the life of procreation. This life of procreation is under the influence of the moon and during the period between death and a new birth is connected with the part of man that does not share his existence in the cosmic spheres.

If you keep this in mind it will be easy for you to understand how what is connected with it makes its appearance in the human being during his earthly life.

We have, firstly, the part of man that has passed through the Sun-existence. In earthly life the Sun-existence works upon the head only; nevertheless what is connected with the Sun-existence remains in the being of man as a whole; it remains as his predisposition to health. That is why the predisposition to health is also connected with the head. The head becomes ill only when the illness is projected into it from below, by the metabolic process or by the workings of the rhythmic system.

On the other hand, the part of man that does not pass through the Sun-existence is connected with his predisposition to illness.

And so it will be clear to you that illness is woven into man's destiny below the realm of Sun-existence and is connected with the effects of the evil which are experienced as soon as he has passed into the life between death and a new birth. The realm of the Sun is connected with the predisposition to health. And only when influences from the Moon-sphere penetrate into the Sun-sphere in man's organism can that part of him which in earthly life is connected with the Sun-sphere—namely, the head—suffer any condition of illness. You see now that real insight into those great karmic connections is possible only when we follow the human being into the realm where spiritual laws are natural laws, and natural laws are spiritual laws.

You must forgive me for using trivial words in describing matters that are anything but trivial, and for speaking the language of ordinary life. To do so is not unnatural for one who stands within the spiritual world. When we talk with human beings here on earth, we recognise by the way in which they speak that they stand within the realm of nature. Their very language betrays it. But when one comes into the realm I described in the last lecture—the realm into which man passes directly after death—and has converse there with the Beings who were once the primeval Teachers of mankind, or with the Beings of the Hierarchy of the Angels, then there is something strange in this converse. For in that realm—how shall I put it?—folk talk as though they were speaking of natural laws, but these are natural laws in which magic is operating and which are governed by the spirit. These Beings understand magic; but of natural laws they know only that men have such laws on earth. They themselves are not concerned with these natural laws. Nevertheless the processes and happenings in yonder realm appear in pictures which resemble the processes taking place on the earth. Hence the spiritual workings resemble the workings of nature, but are stronger, of greater intensity, as I have described.

When man leaves this sphere and enters the realm of Sun-existence, then no more at all is heard of the natural laws belonging to the earth. The language of the Beings in this realm has reference to spiritual workings, spiritual causes only. In that world nothing is heard of natural laws.

After all, my dear friends, these things must be made known some time or other. For when on earth it is constantly insisted that natural laws are absolute, universal—or even, foolishly enough, eternal—one would fain reply: But there are realms in the universe through which man has to pass in the life between death and rebirth where these natural laws are passed over with a smile because they have no significance there; they exist at most as tidings from the earth, not as any real factor in life. And when man passes through this realm between death and a new birth, and has lived long enough in a world where there are no natural laws but only spiritual laws, he ceases to think of natural laws as something to be taken seriously. Natural laws are not taken seriously between death and rebirth. Man lives in a realm where his spiritual intentions can be realised, where realisation is insight.

But if in the realm of Sun-existence there were only the Second Hierarchy, if we were to experience in that realm only the kind of realisation that is possible there, then, having passed through this state of existence and desiring to enter earthly life again, we should stand at this point (see diagram) burdened with our karma, knowing that no progress is possible unless what has been brought, spiritually, to realisation, can be led over into the physical. Spiritually, our karma has been brought to realisation when we descend to earth; but the moment we enter earthly existence, the spiritual laws and spiritual aspects must be transformed into the physical. Here is the region where the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones transform the spiritual into the physical.

And so in the next earthly life, what has already been brought to spiritual realisation comes also to physical realisation in karma. Such is the onward course of karma.

• 1. Philosophy, Cosmology and Religion. Ten lectures, September, 1922.
• 2. Man as Picture of the Living Spirit. Lecture given by Rudolf Steiner, 2nd September, 1923, in London.

If we are to understand the real nature of karma, it is of paramount importance to turn our attention to the extent to which the cosmos participates in the evolution of mankind.

In order, therefore, to be able to envisage those Beings of the spiritual cosmos who play a part in man's evolution, let us consider, to begin with, man's connection with the beings belonging to the earthly realm. Man on earth is surrounded by beings of the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, and must be regarded as having all these three kingdoms of nature within him—in a higher form. In a certain respect man is related to the mineral kingdom through his physical organism but he elaborates what is otherwise to be found in the external mineral kingdom into a higher form of existence.

Through his etheric body man is related to the realm of the plants, but again he elaborates this within himself. The same holds good of man's relationship through his astral body to the beings of the animal world. When, therefore, we think of the spatial environment of man we must realise that he bears the mineral, the plant and the animal kingdom within him.

Just as man bears within him these external kingdoms of nature, so does he bear within him—but in respect of time, not of space—the kingdoms of the higher Hierarchies. And we can only understand human karma in all its aspects when we know how the various realms of the Hierarchies work upon man through the course of his earthly life.

In considering how the mineral kingdom works upon man, we have to do with the processes connected with nourishment. For whatever means of nourishment man draws from kingdoms higher than the mineral, are reduced, in the first place, to the mineral condition. Passing on to the plant kingdom, we know that man has within him life-forces, vital forces. Again, in reference to the animal kingdom we know that through his astral body man raises mere life into a higher sphere, into the sphere of perceptive experience. In short, we can follow the sequences of processes in the three kingdoms of nature as well as within the human organism.

In the same way we can follow the workings of the higher Hierarchies in man's life of soul-and-spirit. The mineral nature, the plant nature, the animal nature in man can be understood in the light of the processes operating in the three kingdoms of nature in space. Equally, we must understand the higher forces operating in the life of man.

To begin with, we will consider human destiny and endeavour to understand how the kingdoms of the Hierarchies work into it. But here we must study, not what is present simultaneously in man, namely, physical body, etheric body and astral body but in connection with the working of the Hierarchies we must study what transpires in man's earthly life in the succession of time—regarded, of course, from the spiritual point of view.

In our anthroposophical studies we have always recognised distinct periods in the course of human life: from birth until the change of teeth at about the 7th year; from the change of teeth to puberty; from puberty to the 21st year where the differentiation is less perceptible; then from the 21st year to the 28th; from the 28th year to the 35th; from the 35th year to the 42nd; from the 42nd year to the 49th; from the 49th year to the 56th; and so on. Concerning what lies beyond the 56th year I shall speak in the next lecture. To-day we shall consider the course of human life up to the 56th year.

We have therefore three periods of life up to the 21st year, then three further periods, and so on.

Man says “I” of himself. But many forces play upon this “I”. Outwardly considered, the “I” is worked upon by mineral forces, plant forces and animal forces; inwardly, in the aspect of soul-and-spirit, the “I” is worked upon by the third Hierarchy, by the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, by the second Hierarchy (Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis), and by the first Hierarchy (Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones).

These Beings do not, however, all work into the course of man's life in the same way. Even externally there is a difference in the influences taking effect in the human being according to his age. When, for example, we observe a little child at the very beginning of earthly life, we find what is characteristic of the animal kingdom especially marked in him; a growing, thriving, upbuilding process.

When we consider the last portion of life, the years that lead into old age, we find evidence of a mineralising process; the organism becomes sclerotic, brittle. Because this mineralising process is more subtle and intimate in man it works more strongly in him than in the animals—with the exception of the higher animals. The difference there is due to conditions into which we cannot enter now, but which will be dealt with on some later occasion. Whereas in the animal the ebbing of the life-forces begins directly the up-building process is complete, the human being carries over important phases of his development into the period of decline which in reality begins already in the thirties. A very great deal in the evolution of humanity would simply not exist if human beings developed in the same way as the animals, carrying nothing over into old age. Human beings can carry very much into old age, and many momentous achievements of culture are due to what has thus been carried over into old age, into the period of physical decline when the mineralising process is particularly in evidence.

Outwardly, then, it is clearly perceptible that at the beginning of earthly life the animal nature predominates, at the end of earthly life the mineral nature, and in the intervening period the plant nature.

But in respect of the working of the higher Hierarchies upon man the difference is even more emphatic. In earliest childhood the Third Hierarchy—Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai—work with particular strength upon the life of soul-and-spirit. The activity of this Third Hierarchy embraces, properly speaking, the first three periods of life. The Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai work throughout this period. In the little child and the young human being the organism is all the time being built up by the soul-and-spirit. This activity embraces almost everything: and into it works forces from the world of the Third Hierarchy, the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai.

At the 14th year the Second Hierarchy (Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes) begins to work. So that here, again through three periods, between the 14th and 35th years, I must write: Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes. You will see, my dear friends, that in the period between the 14th and 21st years the Third and the Second Hierarchy together exercise their influences upon the human being. It is not until the 21st year that the Second Hierarchy begins to work by itself.

At puberty, great cosmic processes, which until this age are not present in the human being, begin in some measure to be active in him. Little reflection is needed to perceive that when he becomes capable of procreation the human being is able to receive into himself from the cosmos those forces which co-operate in the creation of a new physical man. Before the age of puberty these cosmic forces do not work in the human being. A change takes place in the physical organism at puberty whereby it is imbued with mightier forces than it previously contained. These stronger forces are not present in the child before that age. In the child are the weaker forces which, to begin with, work only upon the soul in earthly life, not upon the body.

In the 35th year a period begins when the human being becomes weaker in respect of his inner soul-forces, less able than he was before to withstand the onset of the destructive forces of his organism. Before the 35th year the organism itself provides essential support, for its inherent tendency is to upbuild. This tendency continues on into the thirties but then a destructive tendency begins to predominate. This process of destruction cannot be counteracted even by the forces emanating from the Beings of the Second Hierarchy. Henceforth the soul must receive from the cosmos enough support to prevent the normal course of life being ended by death at the age of 35. For if until the 21st year only the Beings of the Third Hierarchy were to work and then from the 14th to the 35th year only the Beings of the Second Hierarchy, we should be ripe for death at the age of 35, that is to say at the very middle of earthly life proper—unless the physical body were still to hold together from sheer inertia. Death does not occur at this time because actually from the 28th year, not only from the 35th, and again through three periods, the Beings of the First Hierarchy, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, work upon man.

Again there is a period, between the 28th and the 35th years, when the Second and the First Hierarchies are working together. Thus in point of fact the Second Hierarchy works by itself during the period from the 21st until the 28th year of life.

As I said before, we will consider the later period of life in the next lecture. You will naturally say: But is a human being who has passed his 49th year forsaken by all the Hierarchies? We shall consider that on another occasion. What has been said to-day need not therefore be taken as applying only to those who are under the age of 49 and not to the others. To begin with, however, we must learn to know how the Hierarchies pour their forces, their particular strength into human life as it runs its course.

Naturally you must not think that such matters can be adequately studied by setting them out diagrammatically. This is never possible when we have to do with any higher form of life.

For many years I have been speaking of man as a threefold being: the man of nerves-and-senses, the rhythmic man, the metabolic-limb man. A professor once inferred from this—what will professors not infer!—that I divided man into three—head, chest, abdominal system. This was because he thought of everything side by side. I have of course always emphasised that although the nerves-and-senses system is concentrated mainly in the head, it extends through the whole organism. The same is true of the rhythmic system. The three members must not be thought of in spatial juxtaposition. You must also conceive the sequence of which we have been speaking, in the same way: the working of Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai is limited, in the main, to the first three periods of life, but the aftermath of these periods continues through the whole of life, just as the nerves-and-senses system is concentrated mainly in the head but is present through the whole organism. We can feel with the big toe, because it too contains nerves-and-senses life.

Nevertheless this threefold membering of the human being is a reality; so too is the other threefold membering of which I am speaking to-day.

When you study these periods in human life, you will be able to say: on the spiritual side, the human “I” is subject to any number of influences proceeding from the spiritual world, just as on the physical side it is subject to influences coming from the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. As human beings we stand with our “I” in the midst of what is coming to us in a most complicated way from the cosmos. And this activity which extends spiritually from the cosmos, from the Hierarchies, to man, is also concerned with the shaping of karma during physical life on earth.

It is the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai who bring us from the spiritual world into the physical world, and it is they who mainly accompany us through the first three periods of life. They work most strongly of all upon the nerves-and-senses system. In all the complicated and wonderful development taking place in our sense-life and in our intellectual life up to the age of 21—in all this, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai participate.

Countless happenings take place behind the scenes of the ordinary consciousness. And it is precisely in these happenings that the Beings of the higher Hierarchies participate.

Then again from puberty, from about the 14th year onwards, Beings whose forces are stronger than those of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai, begin to take hold of the rhythmic system. The real task of the Beings of the Third Hierarchy, the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai, is to influence our life of soul. From pre-earthly existence we bring with us into the first three epochs of life such strong forces that the soul is able to work powerfully upon the body. During this period, only the comparatively weaker forces of the Third Hierarchy are required to come to our help.

Now the forces which the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai need in order to guide and direct human life up to the 21st year, stream to them from the spiritual radiations of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. When physical science comes to describe the cosmos, it is extremely naïve. From Saturn, Jupiter and Mars radiate forces of which the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai have the very deepest understanding.

When man is passing through the life between death and a new birth, he enters, first of all, into the Moon-sphere, where he comes into contact with Beings who were once on earth and who are stern judges of the good and the evil he brings with him. For the time being he must leave behind in the Moon-sphere the evil that is part of him. He cannot bear it into the Sun-sphere.

Then he passes through the Sun-sphere and still farther out into the cosmos. The forces of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn begin to work upon him. He passes through the whole of life between death and a new birth, and only on the path of return, when he has come again into the Moon-sphere, do Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai approach him, saying, as it were: We have learned from Saturn, Jupiter and Mars that thou art crippled.—I have said that the evil must be left behind, but this means that man leaves something of himself behind. He enters as a cripple into the Sun-sphere as well as into the regions beyond. And there the gaze of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars falls upon him.

Truly, my dear friends, this life between death and a new birth is complicated! As soon as we pass through the gate of death, what I have described takes place in the Moon-sphere. Man must leave behind whatever of his being has identified itself with evil. It is as though the physical body were obliged to leave its limbs behind. Because he has identified himself with evil, man enters the Sun-sphere and all the rest of the cosmos in a maimed, mutilated condition, for he has been obliged to leave behind certain parts of his being. And when, having passed through the Sun-sphere, he enters the spheres of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, he feels how Mars, Jupiter and Saturn gaze upon him with the penetrating eye of justice; for as the weavers of cosmic justice they watch him in order to behold how much of his being he may bear upwards. They gaze upon him. Each one of us perceives how much good or evil has become part of us, what we have been able to bear upwards, as well as what is lacking, that is to say, what we were obliged to leave behind; each one of us realises to what extent we are identified with evil, how much is lacking in us. The gaze directed upon us by the Beings of Mars, Saturn and Jupiter makes us realise our imperfections and shortcomings.

When a man returns again, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars have in the intervening time communicated to the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai what they beheld and experienced when he passed before them with all his imperfections. The Beings of the Third Hierarchy weave this into him, so that there is inscribed in his being what he has to do in compensation. In these first three epochs of life when Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai work upon the human being with particular strength, the demands of karma are inscribed into the nerves-and-senses system, into the head-system.

When the 21st year has been passed (—how things are with human beings who die before that age will be explained in later lectures—) the karmic demands upon life have already been stamped into a man. If one is able to read what is there in some human being of 21, one can perceive what karmic demands are inscribed into him; for it is in this period up to the 21st year, that these demands are inscribed. They lie mainly in the hidden, occult foundations of the nerves-and-senses system, in that which spiritually underlies the nerves-and-senses system.

When, on the other hand, we direct our attention to the further course of life, when we observe the human being between the ages of 28 and 49, we find that it is less a matter of the inscribing of karmic demands, but rather of the fulfilment of karma, the discharging of karma. For it is particularly in this period of life that what has been inscribed into a man's being in the first three epochs of life must be brought to karmic fulfilment.

So that here (see diagram) I can write: fulfilment of karma (28th to 49th years). During the period from the 21st year to the 28th year, karmic demands and karmic fulfilment are in balance.

Now there is one remarkable phenomenon to which attention must be paid in our time. In the present epoch of evolution there are a great many human beings whose last incarnation of importance occurred in the first centuries after the founding of Christianity, up to about the 8th or 9th century. (—This does not imply that there has been no other incarnation in the intervening time, but if this was the case it was an unimportant one.—) If we were to make a survey of the human beings living in our time and sharing in its culture, we should find that by far the greater number of them had their last important incarnation in the first seven or eight centuries after the founding of Christianity.

Now this period was one that had a striking effect upon the human beings then living. This can be perceived to-day when one observes certain people in respect of their karma. Again and again, my dear friends, I have set myself the task of studying a number of people from this particular point of view, people who have acquired a certain amount of contemporary culture, intellectual culture, and also, speaking comparatively, considerable learning. Think of the large numbers of people nowadays who have become teachers in secondary schools, civil servants, and the like. They have learned a great deal, they have been to secondary schools, even to universities, and have really become exceedingly clever. (I do not mean this ironically, I only ask you to take it in connection with what I have said at other times about such things.) There are untold numbers of clever people to-day. The majority, indeed, are so clever that one can hardly tell them anything, for they know it already! Everyone has his own point of view; everyone passes judgment on what he hears.

That is how things are in our time, but only in our time. In earlier epochs it was quite different. Then there were individuals who had knowledge and the others listened to them. Clever people were by no means as numerous as they are to-day, when even in youth they are already clever. Just think of how many people under the age of 21 write—I will not say poetry, for this they have always done—but newspaper articles, even serious critiques.

In our time, then, intellectuality is very highly developed. In the case of most individuals this intellectuality is influenced, fundamentally, by their incarnation during the first seven or eight centuries after the founding of Christianity. In these centuries the feeling in the human soul for what came from pre-earthly existence into earthly life was all the time growing weaker. Men were beginning more and more to take an interest in what comes after death and were less and less concerned with what had preceded earthly life. In this connection I have frequently pointed out that we have no adequate expression for eternity but only for the half of eternity which has a beginning and never ends. For this part of the eternity of man's existence we have the word ‘immortality’, but unlike ancient languages we have not a word for the other half of eternity, which has never had a beginning. But eternity embraces both ‘immortality’ and ‘un-bornness’. We have come into this world as beings to whom birth means only a metamorphosis, just as we depart from the earthly world through death which again signifies only a metamorphosis, not an end.

The strong consciousness that was alive in man until the early Christian centuries: ‘I have descended from the spiritual world into physical existence’—this consciousness grew fainter and fainter and man began to confine himself to that other thought: I am here! What went before does not interest me. What does interest me is what follows after death.—This was the consciousness that grew stronger and stronger during the first Christian centuries. The feeling for pre-earthly existence grew dim in those who at that time were passing through their last incarnation of importance, and that is why intellectual cleverness now is entirely directed to the earthly. Great though it is, it is directed entirely to the earthly. Striking and tremendously significant discoveries can be made in this domain when one embarks on investigations into karma. I will mention two cases.

The first is that of a man who taught history in a secondary school, an extremely clever man and really impressive as a teacher. Until the time when the karmic demands were still working and then through this neutral zone here (see previous diagram)—that is to say until the beginning of the thirties—his cleverness was very evident. He was one of the many really clever men of our time. But the moment he entered this phase here (28th to 49th year) his cleverness was no longer a support and his moral impulses were in jeopardy. There was nothing left but intellectuality, which was then undermined. When the forces which are not bound up with the nerves-and-senses system but in the later part of life with the metabolic system began to work, the lower nature of the metabolic-limb system undermined what had previously come to a very fine form of expression in the nerves-and-senses system. The man in question, who in respect of intellect had begun his life really well, actually ended in degeneracy; there was a moral débâcle. That is one example.

And now another example—of a personality who was even more intelligent than the one I have just mentioned—but again merely intelligent. He was extremely short-sighted and was possessed of really remarkable intelligence. Up to the age of 30, this personality too, because of his intelligence, had a strong influence upon his fellow-men. When, however, he had passed his 30th or certainly his 35th year, when the nerves-and-senses system was no longer working so powerfully but when the metabolic-limb system became especially active in this later phase of life, this man, who had previously been so able and clever, became utterly trivial and banal, absorbed in petty squabbles. I had known him in his youth and confess that I was astonished when I found him subsequently among people who were taken up with all kinds of party factions. Observation of the path that leads from karmic demands to karmic fulfilments disclosed that the forces of intelligence in men of our time, prepared as they were in the earlier incarnation during the first Christian centuries, were not strong enough to enable the soul to reach the realm of the First Hierarchy in the period when the soul becomes weaker and the body puts up greater resistance.

And then it became evident to me that the large numbers of men to-day who are so clever, who can, above all, be made so clever through their education—these men in the first epoch of life develop the capacity to reach up with the forces of their intelligence to the Third Hierarchy, to the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. This they achieve. And in this epoch of life they are personalities of great promise.

When they come into the realm of the Second Hierarchy, they are, as it were, given over to this Hierarchy. The Second Hierarchy reaches down to men; practically all human beings become capable of procreation. This cosmic Hierarchy reaches downwards. Here there is no real abyss between man and the Hierarchy.

When, however, man reaches his 28th year and must begin to find a relation to the still higher Hierarchy, the First Hierarchy, he must find this relation with his whole nature, right down into the metabolic-limb system. Here he needs stronger forces of inner support in the spiritual realm; and the seed which was planted in him during an earlier life, in an epoch when men ceased to think about pre-earthly existence, proves unable to supply these forces.

In connection with karma, one would fain impress upon all true educators and teachers the urgent necessity of imbuing intellectuality with such spiritual strength that when the human being is passing through the later years of life, what has been permeated with moral force in his intellect may be able to hold the balance against the forces which draw him away from the First Hierarchy. (See arrow in diagram.)

It is a matter of no small interest in this age of ours to compare the second part of human life with the first, and those who have an aptitude for observing life should certainly begin to practice observation from this standpoint. For the things of which I have spoken occur in ordinary life; the examples I have given are taken from everyday life and could be multiplied a hundred—nay, a thousandfold; they are to be found everywhere. But something else of the same kind can also be found at a higher level of life. I have always been interested in the spiritual development of human beings and when I look at many who were creative in early life, who made a great impression on their contemporaries, perhaps as young poets or artists in some sphere, of whom it was said when they were 24, 25, 26, 27 years old: “What wonderful talent!” ... well, they grew older; after the poetic and artistic achievements of youth the stream dried up and they were of no account at all in the sphere where they had once been of real significance.

If you go through the names of those who made reputations as young poets or artists and then lost all right to be included in the annals of literature or art, you will find abundant proof of what I am saying. But what I have told you will, at the same time, show you how the different epochs in human life reveal in manifold ways how karma and the impulses of karma take effect.

Everything that is merely intellectualistic and materialistic can really only influence a human being inwardly in his youth. The spiritual that is infused into the intellectuality—that alone can hold its own through the whole of earthly life—in accordance with karma. Therefore when we observe the kind of destinies I have described, we must look back to previous incarnations which failed to turn men's eyes to that vista of the spiritual which can be revealed only when the gaze is directed to the life before birth, not merely to the life after death.

Life in our time is often fraught with this tragedy and there is so much that does not stand the test of the years. In youth, ideals are plentiful; in old age few remain. Older people rely more upon the State and upon their pensions than upon the sustaining power of life itself; they need support from outside because they cannot find what brings them into relation with the First Hierarchy.

You see, therefore, that if we are to study karma in the right way, we must pay attention to these different, but interpenetrating, members of man's being.—When man is passing through the first three epochs of life he lives in relation to the Third Hierarchy. Then, inwardly and unconsciously, he begins to be related to the Second Hierarchy and finally to the First Hierarchy. Only on the basis of this knowledge are we able to judge to what extent a man enables the karmic impulses within him to come to expression. For this knowledge of man's relation to the higher Hierarchies, this knowledge alone can reveal human life in concrete reality.

Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai say to us in our subconsciousness during the first three epochs of life: All this thou hast brought over from earlier epochs, from earlier earthly lives. This thou must take upon thyself.—In our subconscious experience of destiny this is said to us. And in truth, throughout these three epochs of life this message of destiny constantly resounds within us. From the Hierarchy of the Angeloi there rings forth: This is what Saturn, Jupiter and Mars have meted out to thee. Their forces have revealed it to us.

Then there follows all that comes from the Second Hierarchy, from the realm of the Sun; and finally what comes from the First Hierarchy, from the sphere of Venus, Mercury and Moon. And just as it is especially the Angeloi whose call resounds in our subconsciousness during the first three periods of life: Saturn, Jupiter and Mars have told us that this is ordained for thee ... so from the 28th year onwards it is the Seraphim who also speak in the unconscious realm of the soul, saying: All this remains with thee because thou canst not fulfil it, because thou art unable to reach up to us; this remains with thee and thou must bear it into the next earthly life; thou canst not balance it because thou hast not the strength.

Under the level of man's consciousness speak the forces of karma, the forces that shape destiny. They speak from all the three higher Hierarchies. And if we have a delicate faculty of perception for what enters our life as destiny, then we can also look behind this vista of destiny and begin to apprehend with reverence and awe how through the course of our life the Beings of all the three Hierarchies are weaving this destiny. And in truth only then do we learn to look at life in the right way.

For who would be satisfied, if, when asking us about a man of whose life on earth he wants to know something, and presumes we can tell him, we merely answer: ‘Oh, he is called Joseph Müller.’ All that we can tell him is just the name! But the questioner had expected that he would hear something more than a name: events in the man's life, something that throws light on the forces and impulses that influenced his earthly life! No one who really wants to know something about a human being can be satisfied with merely knowing his name. But in this materialistic age of ours people are, unfortunately, satisfied with the designation ‘Man’. In respect of all that lies behind the ordinary consciousness wherein work Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, Cherubim, Seraphim, Thrones—people to-day are satisfied with the general designation ‘Man’. They do not look at the concrete realities. But this they must learn to do; they must turn their eyes again to these concrete realities of human life.

In my last lecture here I spoke of how man is related to the Spiritual Hierarchies during the different periods of his life.—I should like to repeat that the aim of all these lectures is to lead us to a better and better understanding of how karma works in human life and in human evolution. Everything is really a preparation for this.

I told you that from a man's birth until about his 21st year, the Third Hierarchy is related to him in a special way; at the age of puberty the Second Hierarchy—Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes—begins to work. These Hierarchical Orders continue to work from puberty until the 21st year in the first period of their influence; in the second period they work until the 28th year, and in the third period until the 35th year. But from the 28th year onwards, an inner relationship begins with the First Hierarchy—Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. These Beings of the First Hierarchy continue working, in the first phase of their influence until the 35th year (during which period they co-operate with the Second Hierarchy), in the second phase until the 42nd year, and in the third phase until the 49th year.

Now the influences exercised directly by the Hierarchies during the various periods of man's life interweave, as it were, with the influences which play, as reflections, into these periods of life from the Spiritual Beings of the planetary spheres. As we look at the outer, physical radiance of the planets, we know that each of these heavenly bodies is but the sign that in the direction where we behold it there is a colony of spiritual Beings in the cosmos.

Our constitution as human beings is such that within the physical body we have an etheric body. The moment a man acquires the faculty of super-sensible, Imaginative Knowledge, he is able to perceive everything that can be revealed to him through the etheric body. And then, as he looks back over the tableau of his earthly life since birth, all the events he has lived through and the forces that have influenced his development and determined his organisation of body, soul and spirit, lie manifest before the eye of soul in a mighty panorama, as if time had become space.

At this stage of Imaginative Consciousness on the path of Initiation, life can be surveyed in this way.

When, however, the stage of Inspiration, Knowledge through Inspiration, is reached, a higher revelation is added to the memory-tableau of the earthly life. This higher revelation is possible because in Inspired Consciousness the Imaginations are suppressed and the pictures of the events of earthly life, even when they have been perceived through the etheric body, are no longer there.

If by means of a diagram I were to represent this backward survey as a stream (drawing it as if presented to physical sight, not to the eye of soul) you must picture that the several phases are blotted out in Inspired Consciousness and manifestation of a different character revealed.

First of all, something is made manifest as a kind of revelation within this first phase and if we can find our bearings in the sphere of Inspiration, we become aware of what it is that is actually appearing.

Please understand me.—We gaze at a tableau of the whole of earthly life. Part of this tableau is obliterated, blotted out as it were, when Inspired Consciousness has been attained on the path of Initiation—in this case the phase in the memory-tableau from birth until the 7th year. This is blotted out and in its place the deeds resulting from the connection between the Moon Beings and man after death lie manifest before the eye of soul.

I told you, for example, how the life after death undergone by the personality who was the model for Strader in the Mystery Plays, was experienced. What happens in such a case is that one looks, first of all, at the memory-tableau; then, in Inspired Consciousness, this memory-tableau is obliterated. When the part of the tableau corresponding to the period from birth until the 7th year is obliterated, the deeds of which I have told you are made manifest—the deeds wrought by the Moon Beings in connection with the human being after death. Such experiences are possible when the course of life from birth until the 7th year becomes transparent and the Moon Beings and their deeds are revealed. Vision of the revelations connected with this phase of life is possible for every Initiate and is indeed the easiest to attain.

As you will readily understand, Initiation is possible at any age in life, with the exception of early childhood. Children up to the age of seven are not, as a rule, initiated. And if what I am now describing is to be seen and understood, one must, in the present earthly life, have passed beyond this age. Everyone who is initiated has passed the age of seven. That is why vision of what is disclosed by this first phase of life is comparatively easy to attain. What is here revealed are, as we have heard, the experiences undergone by a human being after death during the backward journey which lasts for a third of the time of his earthly life.

A second revelation is possible when that part of the backward survey which corresponds to the years between 7 and 14—that is to say, to the time of puberty—becomes visible to Inspired Consciousness. The experiences lived through by the human being after death as he ascends from the sphere of the Moon to that of Mercury are then revealed.

Having traversed the sphere of the Moon, man ascends to the sphere of Mercury. But in order to establish relationship with human beings in the Mercury-sphere, the phase of life between the 7th and 14th years, between the time of the change of teeth and that of puberty, must be obliterated from the memory-tableau.

If in Inspired Consciousness, the next phase of life is obliterated, enabling what can become visible here to shine through, the experiences undergone by man in the sphere of Venus after death are revealed.

Thus in looking back with the Inspired Consciousness of Initiation over these first periods of life, one beholds what is happening in the macrocosm, the spiritual macrocosm, to the Dead, the so-called Dead.

You will realise from what I am saying that infinite wisdom is contained in the terminology used by ancient science. For the element of love is associated with the name of Venus. Vision of the Venus-sphere corresponds to the period of human life following the onset of puberty.

Then there is a period lasting from the 21st until the 42nd year of life. When this period is revealed in Inspired Consciousness, one experiences—or can at any rate experience—what a dead man undergoes in the period that is by far the longest—in his life between death and a new birth, when he is living together with the Sun Beings. The Sun-existence between death and rebirth is now revealed.

The Sun is a heavenly body of such might, embracing such a multitude of spiritual forces and spiritual Beings, that in order to perceive all the influences of the spiritual Sun-sphere upon the human being between death and rebirth, a period three times as long as the others must be obliterated from the memory-tableau, namely the whole period between the 21st and 42nd years. You will realise from this that Initiates themselves must have passed the age of 42 before they are able to look back upon man's connection with the Sun Beings between death and a new birth. This connection cannot be perceived in its fullness before then. To grow older, you see, has an important bearing upon spiritual vision itself. There are realities for the perception of which a certain maturity of years, not only a certain degree of Initiation, must have been reached.

We come now to the period between the 42nd and 49th years. This is the point to which I tried to lead in the last lecture, for when man reaches his 49th year the possibility of direct relationship with the Hierarchies ceases. You will have gathered this from what I have said. We shall consider presently how it is with men who have passed the age of 49.

If our attention is focussed upon influences which interweave with this phase of the tableau—we ourselves must of course have reached the age of 50 or more—and we look back at the span of time between the 42nd and the 49th years, we can behold the experiences a man undergoes after death in connection with the Beings of the Mars-sphere.

But in this sphere the spiritual world begins to impart a strongly individualised character to the karma of the human being when he is on earth. You have heard that a man's karma is prepared during the period which immediately follows death and lasts for a third of the time of the earthly life. Karma is then gradually elaborated, and I have already indicated how this takes place. Karma is elaborated, wrought out, in union with higher Beings.

Now there are men whose karma is elaborated mainly in the Mercury-sphere, or in the Venus-sphere, or in the Sun-sphere; and again there are others whose karma is elaborated mainly in the sphere of Mars. Human beings who by virtue of their earlier earthly lives bring into the spiritual world something that must be elaborated chiefly in the sphere of Mars, give evidence of this during their next life on earth. Let me give you an example.—

At the time when the influence of Mohammedanism upon civilisation had already spread across Asia, Northern Africa and into Spain, there lived a personality whose spiritual development proceeded, to begin with, in Northern Africa, in a School which in spite of having become decadent, was similar to the School in which, very much earlier, St. Augustine had spent the same phase of his life. The study in which this personality engaged in Northern Africa was entirely similar in character and trend.

We must picture to ourselves that in those days the pursuit of knowledge was something very different from what it is to-day. Little is to be heard at the present time about the kind of study that was pursued so many centuries ago in Northern Africa by St. Augustine, or, later on, by the personality of whom I am now speaking. But at that time, particularly in Northern Africa, studies connected with the Mysteries were still possible although the Mysteries were in the throes of decline. The personality to whom I am referring had pursued such studies, had imbibed all that could be learned from them concerning the independence of the human soul, the realms experienced by the soul when liberated from the body, and so forth. Then this personality joined in the Mohammedan campaigns and went over to Spain. There he absorbed much Mohammedan-Asiatic learning in the form into which it had already been re-cast in Spain; also much of the lore that had been spread far and wide by the Jews—it was not, however, the Cabbalism that was so universally cultivated later on, in the Middle Ages, but an older form of Cabbalism. And so in the early years after the Mohammedan campaigns we find this personality steeped in Mohammedanism but working along particular lines: reckoning, calculating, according to Cabbalistic principles.

All this was lived through again in a later incarnation as a woman, when it was inwardly deepened, received by the heart rather than by the head.

Then, later on, in the 18th century, this same individuality passed over into a man who has become a world-famous figure in French culture, namely Voltaire. This individuality appeared again in Voltaire.

When our gaze is directed to the experiences lived through by this individuality between death and a new birth, before he became Voltaire—experiences that were the outcome of his previous earthly lives—we find that the fruits of his studies in Northern Africa, with their subsequent Cabbalistic trend, were wrought out in the sphere of Mars during the second half of his life between death and rebirth. And with the results of the metamorphosis that can be wrought in the Mars-sphere, Voltaire came again in the 18th century as Voltaire. I am therefore able to bring him forward as an example of the elaboration of karma in the sphere of Mars between death and a new birth.

Now the Mars Beings imbue everything with an element of aggressiveness—be it in the domain of physical, psychical or spiritual qualities. Nay more, they make a man combative, warlike by nature. This warlike element is compatible not only with attack but also with retreat—otherwise wars could not be waged! I think this was obvious enough during the World War.

Look at the whole life of Voltaire.—It was a life in which splendid qualities of soul were developed, but it was a life of attack, of aggression, and also of withdrawal and retreat—at times engaging in attacks with almost foolhardy daring, at others evincing actual cowardice in retreat.

It is much better to study these things from examples where the whole character and tenor of the life can be discerned than to study them in theory. That is why I am taking examples of this kind.

And now when a man penetrates with the Inspired consciousness of Initiation into the phase of life between the 49th and 56th years—he must be considerably older than was necessary for the vision connected with the earlier periods—he attains knowledge of what the Beings of the Jupiter region can bring about in human beings during their life between death and a new birth.

Acquaintance with the Beings of the Jupiter-sphere makes a very remarkable impression.—One must of course have passed the age of 56 before this experience is possible.—The first impression is one of astonishment that Beings like those belonging to the Jupiter-sphere can exist at all.—I mean that as a man on earth one is astonished, not as a man between death and rebirth; for then, of course, one is actually connected with these Jupiter Beings. They are Beings who need not ‘learn’ anything, because the moment they take form—I cannot say ‘the moment they are born’ as you will presently see—they are already wise, supremely wise. They are never stupid, never unwise. They are as men on earth would often like to be—men who do not appreciate the blessings of being taught and would prefer to be wise directly they are born. These Beings on Jupiter are not ‘born’; they simply arise out of the whole organism of Jupiter. Rather in the way that we see clouds forming out of the atmosphere, so do these Beings arise out of Jupiter, and once they are there they can be regarded as embodied wisdom. Neither do they die; they are merely transformed, they undergo metamorphosis. Jupiter is in essence weaving wisdom. Picture yourselves standing, let us say, on the Rigi, and looking down at the clouds. And now imagine that you are looking, not upon weaving clouds of water-vapour but upon weaving wisdom itself, weaving thought-images which are actually Beings.—Then you will have an impression of Jupiter.

Again let me give an example of the way in which karma can be elaborated in this Jupiter-sphere.

There was a personality who lived in the later period of Mexican civilisation and was connected with the utterly decadent, pseudo-magical Mystery cults of Mexico; with an intense thirst for knowledge he studied everything with close and meticulous exactitude. My attention was attracted to him through having made the acquaintance some years ago of a curious man who is still engaged in a primitive form of study of the decadent superstitions of the Mexican Mysteries. Such lore is of negligible importance, because anyone who studies these things at the present time is studying pure superstition; it has all become decadent to-day. But the other personality to whom I am referring imbibed with fervent enthusiasm all that could be learnt from the still flourishing Mexican civilisation before the discovery, the so-called ‘discovery’ of America. In those days Mexican civilisation was still influenced by the Mysteries but was already in the throes of decline. When mention is made to-day of Taotl, Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoka—the Beings of the Mexican Mysteries—little more is known than the names and a few scattered images. But this personality still knew that Taotl is a Being who as a cosmic, universal Spirit weaves in the clouds, lives in the lightning and the thunder. He knew too that under certain given conditions this Spirit could be invoked into consecrated water by enactments of sacred ritual. And he knew that Quetzalcoatl was a Divine Being who could take hold of man in his circulating blood, in the working of his breath. Living reality of Being was experienced in the Mexican Mysteries by the personality of whom I am speaking. He was reborn in a later age without any intermediate life as a woman. He had been a man in Mexico and was born again as a man. But in his life between death and rebirth this individuality passed through the super-sensible world in such a way that in the development of his karma—this in turn was the outcome of still earlier incarnations not in Mexico but elsewhere—he bore through the Jupiter region all that he had experienced in Mexico: knowledge that had degenerated into superstition but was nevertheless replete with vitality, saturated with the fruits of older civilisations. In the Jupiter-sphere all this assumed the form of wisdom, but a wisdom that is in truth automatic, unconscious, when compared with the wisdom man should make his own by individual effort.

When in the elaboration of karma between death and a new birth, the living, weaving wisdom of the Jupiter-sphere pours over what has been experienced by a man in a previous earthly life, wisdom and its light can still shine forth in the subsequent life. But the wisdom, then, is founded on the experiences of earthly life.

The individuality of whom I am speaking was born again in modern civilisation as Eliphas Levi. Eliphas Levi, therefore, had spent his previous incarnation in the Mexican civilisation, had then passed through the sphere of Jupiter with its wisdom, and in this sphere of Jupiter everything was worked through once again. But Mexican culture is a decadent culture and if you read the books of Eliphas Levi to-day you will find evidence of great wisdom spread out as it were over something extremely primitive. And one who has insight into these things will say: all this is Jupiter, but inferior Jupiter!

When it is possible to survey the period of life from the 56th to the 63rd year—and I myself am now in this position—one gazes at the influences exercised upon man between death and rebirth by Saturn, by the Beings of Saturn. This is an even more startling vista, a vista that causes bewilderment, nay indeed actual pain.

The Beings associated with Saturn are Beings who by their very nature take no heed at all of what they do in the immediate present; they act as it were unconsciously, under the sway of much loftier Beings into whose world they enter on reaching maturity. But as soon as they have done something, it stands there in powerful, living remembrance.

Try for a moment to imagine yourselves in this position ... I am not referring to any particular vocation or profession ... but just picture yourselves doing something, no matter what, and not noticing anything at all while you are actually doing it; but once you have done it, it stands there in living remembrance as an intensely vivid picture. Take a singer: he sings but is unconscious that he is doing so; he is simply being used by the Gods to sing. Imagine a large audience listening to him; as long as he is actually singing he is aware of nothing at all; he knows nothing, either about himself or about what he is experiencing. But the moment it is all over and the concert ended, the whole event is there and does not fade away; it remains and forms part of the content of his very life. On Saturn, man is the past, only the past.

Think of yourselves walking over the earth. As you walk you see nothing of yourself. But when you have gone a little further and look back, you see a little snowman—he is a figure of yourself as you were before you took the last step. Again you observe nothing, but walk on, and another little snowman stands behind you. And so it continues, with more and more little snowmen standing behind you. To all of them you say “I”.—Now transpose this imagery into the spiritual and you have the key to the nature of the Saturn Beings. Between death and a new birth man has to encounter these Beings—Beings who live wholly in the past. And there are men who in the elaboration of their karma have a particularly strong connection with these Saturn Beings.

The destiny of such men can be intelligible only when one looks back upon the period of life between the 56th and 63rd years. Again I will give an example in order to show you how karmic events in life point back to happenings in the super-sensible world between death and a new birth.

When I was speaking to you not long ago about the Hibernian Mysteries, I told you how difficult it is to approach these Mysteries, how they seem to thrust one back; and I spoke of the wonder and the sublimity of what was experienced in these Hibernian Mysteries in Ireland. I described how the pupil, having first learned to know the utmost depths of doubt and uncertainty in life, was led before two statues. The first consisted of a substance that was elastic throughout and the pupil was exhorted to touch or to press this statue again and again. The indents made in the statue gave rise to a feeling of overwhelming dread: it was as if one had constantly to cut, I cannot say into a corpse, but into living flesh—a horrifying experience for any sensitive person.

The second statue retained every indent made upon it by pressure and its form was only restored, made intact, after an interval of time, when the candidate for Initiation was led before the statue again.

I told you how those who were initiated in these Hibernian Mysteries experienced the glory and majesty of the microcosm, that is to say of man himself, and of the great world, the macrocosm. The impressions were tremendously powerful, of indescribable sublimity.

One of those who had participated with intense fervour in the Hibernian Mysteries and had reached a high degree of Initiation, was destined after death to penetrate deeply into the Saturn-sphere.—His earthly life within these Mysteries was the outcome of still earlier incarnations.—He had been profoundly moved by the grandeur and majesty of what he had experienced in the Mysteries of Hibernia.—When I was describing them to you I told you that in spiritual vision, without any kind of connection in physical space, the Initiates beheld the actual Event of Golgotha.

The individuality of whom I am speaking lived through all these experiences again with great intensity of feeling and was subsequently born again in our own period of civilisation.

Picture to yourselves what this personality acquired by virtue of the fact that the karma of his last life had been elaborated, wrought out in the Saturn-sphere. Everything presented itself to him in the light of the past. He beheld his experiences in the Hibernian Mysteries in the light cast by the Saturn Beings over the far, far distant past, and majestic pictures of pre-earthly times, of Moon periods and Sun-periods came alive in him.

When he was born again, all that before this earthly incarnation had been bathed in the past, coloured by the past, transformed itself into mighty pictures—idealistic, albeit visionary pictures which cast their light into the future and came to expression in a transcendental romanticism.

In short, this individuality who had once been initiated in the Hibernian Mysteries, was born in our epoch—our epoch in the wider sense—as Victor Hugo. In its romanticism, in its whole configuration, Victor Hugo's life bears the stamp of karma wrought out in the Saturn-sphere.

These are small contributions towards an understanding of how karma originates and takes shape. As I said, the best way of getting to understand karma is to study concrete examples. For the study of how karma is elaborated in the case of men like Voltaire, Eliphas Levi, Victor Hugo, is full of the deepest interest and leads to a knowledge of the connection of the human being on earth with the macrocosmic, spiritual being engaged in the elaboration of karma between death and a new birth.

The ability to perceive karmic connections in human life demands a clear understanding of laws and conditions of existence with which, generally speaking, the man of modern times is entirely unfamiliar. For into the karmic connections extending from one earthly life into another, spiritual laws are working, spiritual laws which will be totally misconstrued if they are associated in the very slightest degree with causation similar to what is meant when we speak in the ordinary way of ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ in the world.

In order to understand the real nature of karmic connections we must, in the first place, have a clear and exact perception of what is happening within man behind the sphere of his ordinary consciousness. And it is only by observing the being of man as revealed to super-sensible cognition, to Initiation-knowledge, that such understanding can be attained.

Let us therefore consider to-day how the attainment of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition makes it increasingly possible for man to recognise how he lives, as man, within the whole cosmos. This will enable us to continue the study of certain matters that were touched upon in recent lectures and will eventually lead to an understanding of karma.

It has often been said, even in public lectures, that at the stage of Imaginative Cognition a tableau of the present earthly life spreads out before man. A vista of his life lies before him in mighty pictures and he is able to behold things that cannot be yielded by memory in the ordinary sense.

In this vista which opens out as a result of the striving for Imaginative Knowledge, man is, to begin with, entirely within his physical and etheric bodies, but through the appropriate exercises he makes himself completely independent of everything by which impressions are transmitted to him from his physical body. In the activity of Imaginative Cognition man is therefore independent of his sense-impressions, and also of his intellectual knowledge. He lives entirely in the etheric body and the memory-tableau lies outspread before him.

We can therefore say: man is now living in the super-sensible, inwardly detached from his physical body. And in point of fact it would not be so difficult as it actually is for the majority of people to acquire this faculty of Imaginative Knowledge, if only there were a stronger inclination to break through the inner link between the life of soul and the physical body.

It is, of course, comparatively easy to break through the link with direct sense-perception. But remember that a man is also connected with his physical body through the attitude and tenor of soul he acquires in his earthly life. After all, our moods of soul are also dependent upon the physical body, are essentially influenced by the physical body. When a man ascribes one thing or another to his capacities, his talents or other qualities of soul, this is all connected with his experiences in the physical body. If he is to acquire the faculty of genuine Imaginative Knowledge he must free himself from all this; and if he succeeds, even if only for a moment, he knows what Imaginative Knowledge is and the life-tableau begins gradually to unfold.

It is necessary to bear in mind the difference between the condition of being bound up with the physical body and thus living within it, and the condition of being independent of the physical body but for all that remaining within it. There is a real difference, and it is the latter condition that obtains in the activity of Imaginative Knowledge. We remain within the physical body, we do not leave it, but we are nevertheless independent of it.

When you remain with your soul and spirit within the physical body, then you fill the physical body, even if you are not bound up with it. I will illustrate this diagrammatically.—

Let us think, first, of man's ordinary, everyday condition. Take this (a) to represent the physical body (inner curves), this the etheric body (outer curves) and this the soul and spirit (short branching lines).

The etheric body is connected everywhere with the physical body through the muscles, bones and nerves. These connections are everywhere, proceeding from the etheric body to the physical body. Now picture to yourselves that you have a porous clay vessel and you pour liquid into it. The liquid fills the pores and runs out into the porous clay. But it may also happen that your vessel is not porous and in that case none of the liquid is absorbed; the liquid will then be in the vessel but there will be no channels into the clay walls. In the activity of Imaginative Knowledge man is in this sense within his body but the etheric body does not enter into the muscles, the bones and so forth. This condition can be indicated by (b) in the diagram. Physical body; then etheric body which is now on its own; and within, the soul and spirit. All that has happened is that the etheric body is now inwardly detached. The result of this detachment will of course be perceptible when returning to the previous condition. It is therefore only natural that when a man really tries to make himself free of his physical body but remains within it, as is the case in the activity of Imaginative Cognition, he is aware not only of exhaustion but of actual heaviness. He becomes intensely aware of his physical body because he has now to make his way into it again.

This is the condition obtaining in the activity of Imaginative Cognition but not in that of Inspiration, Inspired Knowledge. In the activity of Inspired Cognition—which begins, as I have described to you, with consciousness that has been emptied of images—man is outside his physical body with the soul and spirit. Thus (c) in the diagram represents the soul and spirit outside the physical and etheric bodies.

The outer configuration must therefore be the same as in sleep. Knowledge through Inspiration is possible only when with his ego and astral body a man can be outside the etheric body.

And now, when he returns into his physical and etheric bodies, he notices the presence there of something else; the physical and etheric bodies are not at all as he is accustomed to know them; something is there within them. This is very important, because knowledge of it gives an indication of the whole process of Initiation.

At first, a certain difficulty is experienced in coming back into the physical and etheric bodies after the state of Inspiration, because there is the feeling of diving down into something quite different.

Remember what I told you yesterday about the backward survey of the memory-tableau. If this memory-tableau is blotted out in the activity of Inspired Knowledge, we perceive what it is that is present there within the physical body. And when the memory-picture of the phase between birth and the 7th year, until the time of the change of teeth, is blotted out, we perceive that within this physical body there was an Angelos, an Angel! We actually behold there a Being of the Third Hierarchy. So that what happens is this. We succeed in getting outside the physical body and then return into it as into our house and home ... and lo! we meet our Angel there when we look back upon the phase of life from birth until the 7th year.

Knowledge of such truths existed in the days of the ancient, instinctive clairvoyance, knowledge which took different forms in the various epochs of evolution; and these truths were taken into account in establishing certain customs and usages.

In olden times men were fully conscious that the giving of names should conform with spiritual realities. Generally speaking, people to-day are indifferent about the kind of names their children receive. For some the only consideration is whether the name has a pretty sound. There is often an element of coquetry in giving a name to a child; people ‘fancy’ the name. But in olden times men were mindful of the child's relation to the spiritual world and chose the name accordingly. In an epoch, for example, when a prophetic being was venerated under the name of ‘Elisha’, girls were sometimes named ‘Elisa-beth’, that is to say, the ‘house of Elisha’. In this way expression was given to the hope that by placing a child in the world with this name, the grace of the prophet would be ensured. And so the names were given with this aim in view.

What were the grounds for this? It was known that when man has been outside his body and then returns into it, he sees himself as the bearer of spiritual Beings. And the whole conception that little children, especially, are guarded by their Angel originates in the fact that when with Initiation-knowledge we look back upon the phase of life from birth to the 7th year, we experience what I described yesterday by saying that when this phase in the memory-tableau is blotted out, the Hierarchy of the Angeloi, that is to say, the deeds and activities of the Moon-sphere shine through.

Again, when we look back upon the phase from the 7th to the 14th years and then return into the body, we find an Archangelos. This Archangel is of course also present within the human being from birth until the 7th year, but we do not find the Archangel when we are looking back only at the phase between birth and the 7th year.

And so when we return into the body after having been outside it, we become aware that there, within the body, are Beings of all the higher Hierarchies. But this form of self-knowledge, the knowledge that the body is the bearer of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, cannot be acquired in any other way than by having first been outside the body and then returning into it again.

This can be understood only when it is connected with another fact. I have told you that the many stars in the heavens are but the outer signs of colonies of gods. Where the stars sparkle in the heavens there are, in reality, colonies of spiritual Beings. But you must not imagine that these gods have their consciousness only in Venus, or only in the Sun, or in Mercury, or in Sirius. They have their main habitation, the focal point of their existence in these several spheres, and this is true of all spiritual Beings of the cosmos who have anything to do with the earth. But it is impossible to say of their existence in the cosmos that they have their dwelling-place only in Mars, only in Venus, and so forth. Paradoxical as it will seem, I am nevertheless obliged to say that the Divine Beings who belong to the earth and who people Mars, Venus, Jupiter or another of the planets—also the Sun—would be blind if they inhabited only one of these spheres. They would live, they would be active—just as we can walk about and take hold of things even if we have no eyes; but they would not see—I mean, of course, in the way in which Divine Beings ‘see’—they would lack a certain faculty for perceiving what is happening in the cosmos. But this, my dear friends, will lead you to ask: Where, then, is the eye of the gods, where is their organ of perception? This organ of perception is provided by the Moon, our neighbour in the cosmos—in addition to all its other functions. All the Divine Beings belonging to the Sun, to Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, have their eye in the Moon and are at the same time in the Moon.

And now think of some of the things of which we have spoken here from time to time. Take only one fact. The Moon was once part of the earth, and separated from the earth only in the course of time. Before the separation of the Moon, therefore, the eye of the gods was bound up with the earth; the gods beheld the cosmos from the earth. Hence at that time the great primeval Teachers too were able to impart their wisdom to mankind. For in that they were living on the earth, and the Moon was still within the earth, they could gaze into the cosmos with the eye of the gods. When the Moon departed, remembrance of this vision of the gods remained with them for a time; thus they could behold, in remembrance, what was now seen with the eye of man, and could communicate this to the gods. But the primeval Teachers themselves had then to make their way to the Moon, where they are to this day, and to found a colony there in order to be able to see with the eye of the gods.

And now turn your minds to something else. From the Moon, Jahve reigned over the heart and soul of the Jewish people, and those of the primeval Teachers who were still associated with the cult and the teaching of Jahve united with him in the Moon, in order to look out into the cosmos through his eyes. In time to come the Moon will again be united with the earth and then it will be possible for man on the earth to gaze into the cosmos with the eye of the gods. Vision of the cosmos will then be a natural human faculty.

It is only by understanding these things that we can come to know the nature of the universe. For only when man views the universe in this way can he have any true conception of the function of the Moon.

And now we have the reason why freedom, free spiritual activity, can be unfolded in earthly life. As long as the Moon was connected with the earth, as long as the primeval Teachers taught men out of their store of remembrance, and as long as this teaching was preserved in the Mysteries—actually until the 14th century A.D.—all wisdom consisted in what had been seen with the eye of the gods. Only since the period I indicated to you, only since the year 1413, has it become utterly impossible for the earth to see with the eye of the gods. So that with the development of the Consciousness Soul, freedom begins to be within the reach of men.

But in point of fact man is on the earth only in the activity of sense-perception and intellectual knowledge, for the latter is also bound up with the physical body. The truth of the matter is as follows. Let us picture the human being. It is only in his sense and intellectual knowledge that he extends beyond the Hierarchies who are within him. In respect of all that lies behind his intellect, he is filled with the Third Hierarchy; in all that lies behind his feeling, he is filled with the Second Hierarchy; in all that lies behind his willing, he is filled with the First Hierarchy.

We are therefore in very truth within the Hierarchies and it is only in respect of our sensory organs and intellect that we extend beyond their realm. It is actually as though we were swimming, with the head rising a little out of the water. With our senses and our intellect we rise out of the ocean of the activities of the Hierarchies.

All this we find when, having experienced the reality of perception outside the body, we return again into the body. And then we find that in very truth man is the House of the Gods.

Something else will now be clear to you. When the gods desire cosmic vision, they gaze through the eye of the Moon. But when they desire to behold the cosmos from the earth—whereby an entirely different aspect is revealed—then they must look from out of man. The human race is the other eye of the gods!

In very ancient times it was natural for man to be able to see with the eye of the gods because the Moon was within the earth. And he will be able to do so again when in future time the Moon and the earth are re-united. Through Initiation, however, through becoming aware on returning into the body that the gods are present there, and through coming to know these gods, man learns to behold the world through the “eye of man.” Thus Initiation reveals to man what in earlier times was revealed to the gods through the eye of the Moon.

What we do with our everyday consciousness, the intentions we form, and so forth—all this depends upon ourselves; but our karma is shaped and fashioned by the Hierarchies within us. They are the architects and shapers of an entirely different World-Order, a World-Order belonging to the soul, to the moral sphere of life. This is the other aspect of man, the aspect of the Hierarchies who are within him.

As long as we remain at the stage of Imaginative Knowledge we are convinced, as we look back over our own earthly life, that we are a unity; we are also convinced that certain actions in life are free, because they proceed from this unity. With Imaginative Knowledge we perceive little of our karma. When we reach the stage of Inspired Knowledge, however, and then return into the body, we feel ourselves divided into a world of countless Hierarchies. We return into the body and at first do not know our identity. Are we the Angel, are we a Being of one of the Hierarchies, one of the Dynamis, or Exusiai? We are divided into a world of Beings, dazed by the multiplicity of our nature, for we are one with all these Beings.

At this point the appropriate exercises must make a man so inwardly strong that he can assert his unity over against this multiplicity. And then—it is of course all an after-effect of the life between death and rebirth—he perceives how karma is shaped by the interweaving activities of the many Beings within him. Countless Divine Beings take part in the shaping of human karma. It is therefore true to say that man leads an earthly life in the real sense only in respect of his intellectual and sensory activity. In the activity of his life of feeling and of will—yes, and even in a more remote and hidden activity of thought—man shares in the life of the gods. In a hidden thought-activity he shares in the life of the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai; in respect of what is hidden in his life of feeling he shares in the life of the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes; and in respect of his will he shares in the life of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

What we call human destiny is therefore an affair of the gods and as such it must be regarded.

But what does this mean for earthly life? If a man cannot accept his destiny with inner composure, if he rebels against his destiny, if—from his personal point of view of course—he is discontented with it, if he brings his destiny into confusion by subjective decisions, then it is as though he were continually disturbing the gods in the shaping of his destiny. Destiny can of a truth only be lived through in the right way when life is accepted with inner composure and tranquillity. To feel and perceive how destiny works is something that brings with it hard and heavy tests for human nature. If a man can succeed in taking his destiny earnestly, this experience will give him a strong and deep impulse to live in communion with the spiritual world. And life itself will unfold in him a feeling for connections of destiny, of karma.

Men of the modern age have to a great extent lost this sensitivity, this delicacy of perception; their perceptions have become crude. But suppose there is someone who looks back with more delicate perception upon the relationship he had with a human being who was an example to him in his youth—a teacher, perhaps. People do not always feel contemptuous about those who were their teachers; many look back with inner happiness to those who educated them. When this is so, the recollection can deepen into a very intimate experience. It may come to us that between our 7th and 14th years, for example, we always felt obliged to do whatever this revered teacher did; or we may realise that when this teacher told us something we felt as though we had already heard it, as though it were just being repeated. It is actually one of the most beautiful experiences in life when we remember something of this kind, feeling that it was repetition. And then it strikes us that something must underlie this experience. Healthy human reason will tell us that there is nothing to account for it in the present earthly life, and then the same reasoning faculty points us to previous lives. There are indeed many whose attention is directed in this way to earlier lives on earth.

Now what does it mean when we can look back to a teacher with feelings like these? It means that in our present life destiny has led this teacher to us. It is our karma to have such a teacher and it points to a previous earthly life.

As a rule—and this is shown by occult observation—as a rule it is not the case that in the previous earthly life the teacher was also our teacher; the relationship then was quite different. From a teacher we receive thoughts, ideas, even if they are clothed in the form of pictures; in true education we receive thoughts and ideas. When this is the case it points back, as a rule, to a relationship where feelings, not thoughts, were communicated by the person in question; there was less opportunity for receiving thoughts from him, but feelings were communicated—feelings which can be transmitted in so many different ways. And the same may apply to the present and a future earthly life.

Let us suppose that in this present life a man feels drawn by warm, inner sympathy to some other person with whom life does not bring him into specially close contact, whom he merely meets but to whom he is strongly drawn. In such a case it may happen that these feelings of sympathy lead to the other becoming his teacher in a later-life.

What, then, has actually happened? When feelings of sympathy and attraction towards another person unfold in a man, this is the result of what the Beings of the Second Hierarchy—the Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai—unfold in and around the human being.

Then, in the next life, when the influence does not work by way of the feelings but by way of thoughts and ideas, this means that the Beings of the Second Hierarchy have given over what they wrought in a preceding life, to the Beings of the Third Hierarchy, to the Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai; and it is they who are now working within the human being.

When, therefore, our karma unfolds from one earthly life to another, this means that actual deeds are passed on from one Hierarchy to another and that in the cosmos, in the spiritual cosmos, something of immense significance is taking place.

In looking at a man's destiny we gaze, as it were through a veil, into a wide vista of cosmic happenings. If we can become conscious of this, the impression will be one of tremendous power. You have only to picture it to yourselves, entering into it with the right feeling and understanding.

Imagine now that you are observing the manifestations of destiny in the life of a human being. This should never be done in a spirit of indifference, for in observing the destiny of a human being we are in truth beholding deeds which have poured from the highest Hierarchy into the lowest Hierarchy, and again from the lowest into the highest Hierarchy. We are gazing upon a weaving activity of life in the ranks of the Hierarchies when we study the destiny of a human being. It is something that must be contemplated with deep piety and veneration, because as we behold this destiny the world of the gods lies manifest before us.

This was the feeling I tried in some measure to convey when I was writing the Mystery Plays. Throughout the Plays you will find scenes that have their setting in earthly life and others that have their setting in the spiritual world. And I have also made it evident how not only the higher Hierarchies but elemental beings, also the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers, mingle in the living, weaving deeds that flow from above downwards and from below upwards when the destiny of man is being fulfilled.

Think of the scenes when Strader and Capesius are within the super-sensible world in quite different forms of existence but for all that the same individuals. This is only the other side of man's life which is just as truly part of him—the side that belongs to the world of the gods and not to the world of the minerals, the animals, the plants, the mountains, the clouds, the trees and so forth. To learn to contemplate the destinies of human beings with reverence and awe—that too is something that the times demand of us. It is a dreadful experience to read biographies from the pens of materialistically-minded authors to-day, for they write without an iota of reverence for the destiny of the one whose life they are narrating. Of a truth it would be well for biographers to realise that when they intrude into the life of a human being, even if only for the purpose of describing it, they are coming into invisible contact with all the Hierarchies.

Deliberations of this kind lead us to the ‘feeling’ side of Anthroposophy. We realise that everything offered to us in Anthroposophy must also move our feelings. For in Anthroposophy it is not merely a question of acquiring knowledge; feelings about the world are quickened within us, feelings which alone can enable us to find our rightful place in life. And without such feelings we cannot truly understand or perceive the laws by which the karma of man is pervaded.

Dornach, 22nd June, 1924

The study of problems connected with karma is by no means easy and discussion of anything that has to do with this subject entails—or ought at any rate to entail—a sense of deep responsibility. Such study is in truth a matter of penetrating into the most profound relationships of existence, for within the sphere of karma, and the course it takes, lie those processes which are the basis of the other phenomena of world-existence, even of the phenomena of nature. Without insight into the course which karma takes in the world and in the evolution of humanity it is quite impossible to understand why external nature is displayed before us in the form in which we behold it.

We have been studying examples of how karma may take its course. These examples were carefully chosen by me in order that now, when we shall try to make the transition to the study of individual karma, we can link on to them. To begin with I will give a general introduction, because friends are present to-day who have not attended the lectures on karma given during the last few weeks and months.

It is very essential to realise the importance and seriousness of everything connected with our Christmas Foundation Meeting. We must be deeply conscious of the fact that this Christmas Meeting constituted an entirely new foundation of the Anthroposophical Society. And there must be no returning to old customs, to old habits of thought in relation to the fundamental changes that have come about in the method of handling the truths of Anthroposophy. The contents of the lectures given here since Christmas should not really be passed on to any audience otherwise than by reading an exact transcript of what has been said here. A free exposition of this particular subject matter is not possible at the present stage. If such a course were proposed I should have to take exception to it. These difficult and weighty matters entail grave consideration of every word and every sentence spoken here, in order that the limits within which the statements are made shall be absolutely clear. If anyone proposes to communicate the subject-matter to an audience in some different way, he must first get in touch with me and enquire whether this would be possible. For in future a united spirit must prevail through the whole Anthroposophical Movement. Otherwise we shall fall into the same mistakes that were made by a number of members who thought it their duty to elaborate anthroposophical truths in terms of modern science, and we have experienced to the full how much harm was done to the Movement by what was then “achieved”—I say the word with inverted commas!

These conditions do not, of course, apply to entirely private communications; but even in such cases the person who makes them must be fully alive to his responsibility. For the moment things are spoken of in the way we are speaking of them here, there begins, in the fullest meaning of the words, a sense of responsibility in regard to communications from the spiritual world. It is difficult to speak of such matters here in view of the limitations of our present organisation which do not, however, admit of any other arrangement. It is difficult to speak about these matters because such lectures ought really to be given only to listeners who attend the series from beginning to end. Understanding will inevitably be difficult for anyone who comes in later. If, however, friends are fully conscious that such difficulties exist, a certain balance can be established. Provided this consciousness is present, then all will be well. But it is not always there ... Nor will it ever be possible to think in the right way about these matters—which are among the most delicate in our Movement—if, as is still the case even since the Christmas Foundation, the same habits persist—jealousies, mutual rancour and the like. A certain attitude of mind, a certain earnestness are absolutely essential for anthroposophical development.

Before I assumed the office of President I spoke of such matters as a teacher. But now I must speak of them in such a way that they actually represent what proceeds from the Executive at the Goetheanum and must come to life within the Anthroposophical Society. I think that the meaning of what I have said will be understood. I have spoken as I have in order that the necessary earnestness may prevail in regard to lectures of the kind now being given.

Karma is something that is in direct operation through the whole course of man's life but lies concealed in the unconscious and subconscious regions of the human soul, behind the outer experiences.

Now a biography should evoke experiences of a very definite kind in the reader if he follows the narrative with genuine, warm-hearted interest. If I were to describe what the reading of a biography can awaken in us, it is this.—Whoever reads a biography with alert attention will find description after description of events and phenomena which are not really in keeping with an uninterrupted flow of narrative. When reading a biography we have before us a picture of the life of a man. But truth to tell it is not only the facts experienced in his waking consciousness that play into his life. Time takes its course thus.—First day, then night; second day, then night; third day, then again night, and so on. But in ordinary consciousness we are aware only of what has happened during the days—unless we write an anthroposophical biography which, in the circumstances of present-day civilisation, is an utter impossibility. Biographies give an account of what has happened during the days, during the hours of waking consciousness of the one whose biography is being written.

But that which actually shapes life, gives it form and implants into it the impulses that are connected with destiny—this is not visible in the events of the days but comes into operation between the days, in the spiritual world, when man himself is in the spiritual world from the time of falling asleep to that of waking. These impulses are at work in life but are not indicated in biographical narratives. To what, then, does a biography amount? In regard to the life of a man it is as if we were to hang Raphael's Sistine Madonna on a wall and paste strips of white paper over certain places so that only portions of the surface remain visible. Anyone looking at the picture would be bound to feel that there must be something more to be seen if it is to be a complete whole.

Everybody who reads a biography dispassionately ought in truth to feel this. In view of the conditions of culture to-day it can be indicated only by means of style, but that should be done. The whole style and manner of writing should indicate that impulses are flowing all the time into the life of a man from impersonal levels of the life of soul and spirit. If that is achieved we shall gradually come to feel that in a biography, karma itself is speaking. It would of course be pure abstraction to narrate some scene in a man's life and then add: This comes from a previous earthly life; at that time it took such and such a form and now it takes this. Such a way of speaking would be sheer abstraction, although a great many people would probably find it highly sensational! Actually, however, it would contain no higher spirituality than is to be found in the conventional biographies written in our time, for everything that is produced in this domain to-day is so much philistinism.

Now it is possible to cultivate the attitude of soul that is needed here by learning, shall I say, to love the diaries or daily notes written by individuals. If such diaries are not read (or written), thoughtlessly ... some diaries, of course, are very humdrum and prosaic, but even so, as he follows the transitions from one day to another, a man who is not a philistine will be aware of feelings and perceptions which lead on to an apprehension of karma, of the connections of destiny.

I have known people—and their number is by no means small—who out of blissful ignorance thought themselves capable of writing a biography of Goethe. But the fact is that the more deeply one looks into the connections of existence, into the karmic connections of existence, the more do the difficulties increase.

Try to recall what I have been telling you here recently, and especially the lecture in which I urged you expressly to understand me with your hearts rather than with your intellects, and when I should speak again, to receive that too with your hearts. Remember the emphasis I laid upon this. For the fact of the matter is that an intellectual approach cannot lead to a real apprehension of karma. Anyone who is not inwardly shaken by many of the karmic connections disclosed here shows that any real perception of karma is beyond him and that he is incapable of pressing on to the perception of individual karmic connections.

But let us try now to find the transition from the studies hitherto pursued, to what can lead us to say of some happening in the life of a man that this is karma, in a definite form of manifestation.

When I recall all that I experienced in relation to Goethe during the seven years I was working in the Goethe and Schiller Archives in Weimar—in narrating the story of my life I am having to review it all in thought—I say to myself in reference to karma that one of the most difficult problems in any presentation of the subject is to describe the experiences through which Goethe passed between the years 1782 and 1800. To write this chapter in a biography of Goethe is one of the most difficult of all tasks.

Now we must learn to perceive, even if it has to be with higher, occult vision, how and where karma is working in the life of a man.

Between the moment of falling asleep and that of waking, man lives in his astral body and his ego, outside his physical and etheric bodies. With his ego and astral body he lives within the spiritual world. Again, it is one of the most difficult of all investigations that can be undertaken in spiritual science to make an accurate survey of what happens between falling asleep and waking. I shall describe it in outline to-day.

If you review all that has been brought before you in Anthroposophy, you will feel that it gives the impression of being comprehensible; but the discovery of it is a matter of extraordinary difficulty in anthroposophical investigation.

If I were to draw a kind of sketch of the human being, this outline or boundary-line indicates his physical body. In this physical body is the etheric body, within that the astral body, and within that again, the ego, the ‘I’.

Now think of man as he falls asleep. The physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed. What happens to the astral body and the ego? The astral body and the ego go out through the head and, in reality, through the whole senses-system, that is to say, they pass out through the whole body but mainly through the head, and are then outside. Thus, leaving aside the ego, we can say: At the moment of falling asleep the astral body leaves the human being through the head. Actually, the astral body leaves him through everything that is a sense organ, but because the sense organs are concentrated chiefly in the head, the main part of the astral body goes out through the head. But as the sense of warmth, for example, is distributed over the whole body, and the sense of pressure too, weaker radiations also take place, in every direction. The whole process, however, gives the impression that at the moment of falling asleep the astral body passes out through the head.

The ego, which—speaking in terms of space—is rather more extensive than the astral body and not entirely enclosed within it, also passes out.—Such is man as he falls asleep.

Now let us turn to man as he wakes. When we observe him at the time of waking we find that the astral body approaches through the limbs, actually through the tips of the fingers and toes first, and then gradually spreads through the limbs. Thus at the moment of waking the astral body comes in from the opposite side. So too, the ego, only now the ego does not envelop the astral body but on returning is enclosed by the astral body.

We wake from sleep and as we do so the astral body and the ego stream into us through the tips of the fingers and toes. In order to fill the human being entirely, as far as his head, they really need the whole day; and when they have reached the head the moment has come for them to go out again. You will realise from this that the ego and astral body are in constant, perpetual flow.

At this point you may raise the question: Yes, but if that is so, half an hour after waking from sleep we have in us only a small part of our astral body (and here I include the ego as well) as far as the wrists above and as far as the ankles below. And that is actually so.—If somebody wakes at 7 o'clock—I will assume him to be a person of decorum and stays awake, then at 7.30 his astral body will have reached about as far as his ankles and possibly his wrists. And so it goes on, slowly, until the evening.

You may say: But how is it, then, that we wake up as a whole man? We certainly feel that we wake as a whole man, all at once ... yet properly speaking, only our fingers and toes were awake at 7.15, and at mid-day most people are within the astral body only as if they are sitting in a hip bath. This is really so.

The question that arises here must be answered by pointing to the fact that in the spiritual realm other laws prevail than in the physical world. In the physical world a body is exactly where it is—nowhere else. In the spiritual world it is not so. In the spiritual world our astral body works through the whole space taken up by the body, even when it has actually occupied only the fingers and toes. That is the strange fact. Even when the astral body is only approaching it can already be felt throughout the body. But its reality, its substantiality spreads out only slowly.

Understanding of this phenomenon is of the greatest importance, above all in enabling a true judgment to be formed of the human organisation in health and disease. For think of it: throughout the hours of sleep, in what lies in the bed and is not man in the full sense but only the physical and etheric bodies, a kind of plant-mineral activity is going on, albeit within a human organisation. And this activity can be either normal or abnormal, healthy or unhealthy.

It is precisely in the morning hours, when the astral body begins to rise upwards from the limbs, that the unhealthy phenomena become manifest to a special faculty of perception. Therefore in forming a judgment of illnesses it is of the utmost importance to know what feelings the patient has when he wakes from sleep, when his astral body is forcing upwards what is unhealthy within him.

And now let us proceed.—On falling asleep, our ego and astral body pass out of our physical and etheric bodies into the spiritual world. The after-effects of what we have experienced during the day still remain. But thoughts do not remain in the form in which we harboured them, neither do they remain in the form of words. Nothing of this remains. Remnants, vestiges, still adhere to the astral body when it passes out, but no more than that.

Immediately the astral body has passed out of the human being, karma begins to take shape, although at first in the form of pictures only. Karma begins to take shape. What we have done through the day, whether good or bad, viewing it to begin with in accordance with customary ideas—directly we fall asleep, all this begins immediately to be translated, integrated, into the stream of karmic development.

This process continues for a time after we fall asleep and overshadows everything else that happens to us during sleep. As sleep continues, however, a man begins to dive down into the experiences undergone in his preceding earthly life (see arrows in diagram), then into those of the life before that, and so on, backwards. And when the time of awakening comes he has reached and passed his first, most distant earthly life as an individual. Then he reaches the state of being when he was not yet separate from the cosmos, a state of existence in reference to which one cannot speak of an earthly life as an individual. Only when he has reached thus far can he return again into his physical and etheric organisation.

Still another question arises here, moreover a very important one.—What happens when we have a very short sleep—for example an afternoon nap? Or indeed when we have a brief forty winks during a lecture, but really do go to sleep; the whole thing may last only two or three minutes, perhaps only a minute or half a minute. What happens then? If the sleep were real, we were in the spiritual world during that half minute.

The truth is, my dear friends, that for this short nap even during a lecture, the same holds good as for the all-night sleep of a lie-a-bed—I mean, of course, a human lie-a-bed! As a matter of fact, whenever a man falls asleep, even for a brief moment, the whole sleep is a unity and the astral body is an unconscious prophet; it surveys the whole sleep up to the point of waking ... in perspective, of course. What is remote may lack clarity, as when a short-sighted person looks down an avenue and does not see the trees at the farther end of it. In the same way the astral body may be short-sighted, figuratively speaking, in the subconscious. Its perception does not reach the point where the individual earth-lives begin. But broadly speaking, the fact is that even during the briefest sleep we rush with tremendous, lightning-like rapidity through all our earthly lives. This is a matter of extraordinary significance. Naturally it is all very hazy; but if somebody falls asleep during a lecture, then the lecturer or those who share his power of observation have it in front of them. Think of it: the whole of earth-evolution, together with what the sleeper has experienced in previous earthly lives! When somebody falls asleep during a lecture everything lacks clarity because it happens with such terrific rapidity; one thing merges quickly into another, but it is there, nevertheless. From this you will understand that karma is perpetually present, inscribed as it were in the World-Chronicle. And every time a man falls asleep he has opportunity to approach his karma. This is one of the great secrets of existence.

One who can survey these things from the vantage-point of Initiation Science, with unimpeded vision, looks with deep reverence, a reverence of knowledge, upon what can live in a human memory, upon the memory-thoughts that can arise in the human soul. These memories tell only of the earth-life now being undergone, yet within them lives a human ego. And did these memories not exist—I have spoken of this previously—then the human ego would not be fully present. Deep down within us there is something that can ever and again evoke these memories.

But inasmuch as we are in communication with the external world through our senses and our mind, we form ideas of this external world, ideas that give us pictures of what is outside.

Drawing this diagrammatically, we say: here (a) man looks out into the world. Pictures arise in his thoughts, representing to him what he perceives in the external world. Here (b) man lives within his body. Thoughts well up, containing their own store of memories. Of our store of memories we say that it presents, as faithfully as our organisation of spirit-soul-body allows, what we have experienced in this present life on earth.

But now let us think about what lies on the other side, outside man. We do not as a rule reflect upon the fact that what we see there is but a section of earth-existence, in the first place, the surrounding earth and sky. If a man is born in Danzig, his eyes and other senses perceive different processes and phenomena from those of one born in Hamburg or in Constantinople. We can say: The world presents ‘sections’ of itself in infinite variety; for no two human beings are these sections identical, even though the two may have been born at the same place and die at the same place, living their lives in close proximity. The section of the world presented to the one is completely different from that presented to the other.

Let us be quite clear what this means. The world presents to us a certain part of itself and this we see. The rest we never see. It is extremely important to reflect upon how the world presents to a human being a sum-total of impressions upon which the experiences of his life depend. This will mean very little to a shadowy thinker, but one who thinks deeply will not put it lightly aside. As he ponders it all he will say: ‘This fact is so puzzling that I am at a loss how to put it into words.—The cosmos, the world, presents to each human being only a portion of itself, a more or less coherent portion; therefore in this sense the cosmos particularises human beings. How am I to put this into words? In speaking of it as abstractly as this I am merely stating a bare fact which does not really amount to anything. I must be able to express the facts clearly, to formulate them. How am I to do so?’

Now we shall arrive at a way of formulating these facts if we again consider memory. What is it that wells up from the depths when we recall something in memory? What is it that rises up? It is what our own human being has experienced. Our real human being is somewhere deep down where we cannot take hold of it. It streams up in our memory-thoughts, streams up into our consciousness from our inmost being. What is it that streams into us from outside? Man himself is still so minute when all this is welling up from within him and everything in the cosmos out yonder is so vast, of such immensity! But these ‘sections’ of the cosmos are always entering into man. And the fact of the matter is that here too, thoughts arise.

We know that our memory-thoughts derive from what we have actually experienced. But thoughts also come into us from outside, just as memory-thoughts come from below. Here below (see diagram) is our own human being; and here, outside, is the whole world of the Hierarchies.

An impression of greatness and majesty comes to us when with Initiation-Science we begin to realise that these ‘sections’ of cosmic intelligence are outspread around us and that behind all this that makes an impression upon us from outside live the Hierarchies, as truly as our own individual being lives behind the memories that well up from within.

It all depends upon the vividness of some experience whether or no we can call it forth again in memory, whether or no there is any reason why one thought rises up from our store of memories, and another, or all the others, lie dormant. And it is the same here. Those who learn to know the true facts realise that at one time a Being from the Hierarchy of the Angeloi is appearing, at another, a Being from the Hierarchy of the Exusiai, and so forth.

Thus we arrive at the following formula.—During our earthly existence we behold that which it pleases the Spirit-Beings to reveal to us.

Inasmuch as a particular portion of the world is revealed to us during our life on earth, we learn to recognise that it is just this portion of the infinite range of possibilities contained in the cosmos that certain Beings of the Hierarchies have selected in order to disclose it to us from our birth until our death. One human being has this portion revealed to him, another that. Exactly what is revealed to individual men lies in the sphere of the deliberations of the Hierarchies.

The Hierarchies remember, just as man remembers. What is it that provides the basis for the memory of the Hierarchies? They look back upon our past earthly lives—that is what gives them the basis for their memory. And according to what they behold in these past lives they bring the appropriate section of the cosmos before our soul. In what we see of the world—even in that lies karma, karma as apportioned by the world of the Hierarchies.

Within: remembrance of the present brief life in our human memory. Out yonder: memory of the Hierarchies of all that men have ever done. Memory-thoughts rise up from within; memory-thoughts from the world of the Hierarchies enter in the form of what a man beholds of the cosmos ... and human karma takes shape. This thought is startling in its clarity, for it teaches us that the whole cosmos, working in the service of the Hierarchies, is related to man. Viewed in this aspect, to what end is the cosmos there? In order that the gods may have the means whereby to bring to man the primary form of his karma. Why are there stars, why clouds, why sun and moon? Why are there animals on the earth, why plants, stones, rivers, streams, why rocks and mountains, and all that is in the cosmos around us? It is there as a reservoir upon which the gods may draw in order to bring to our vision the primary form of our karma, according to the deeds we have wrought.

Thus are we placed into the world and thus can we relate ourselves to the secrets of our existence.

And so we shall be able to consider the various forms of karma. In the first place it is karma in its cosmic aspect that is being brought before us, but it will come to be more and more individual. We shall discover how karma works in its inmost depths.

Dornach, 27th June, 1924

Our study of karma can lead us only slowly and by degrees to an understanding of this fundamental and complicated law. To-day I should like, first of all, to repeat that in the elaboration of karma during the life stretching between death and a new birth there is co-operation primarily between those human beings who are living this life between death and a new birth. We work together with those with whom we are specially connected by karma. In the elaboration of karma during this life between death and a new birth, groups of human beings united by their karma work together and it can truly be said that in this purely spiritual life there are clear differentiations between the groups. This does not preclude the fact that we also form part of the whole of humanity in the life between death and a new birth, and still more do we form part of the life of those who are incarnate on the earth. The fact that we belong to a particular group of souls does not exclude us from forming part of humanity as one whole. And into all these groups and down into the destiny of each individual there flows the work of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies.

Those Beings of the higher Hierarchies who elaborate karma by the side of man during the life between death and a new birth, work also into the life we spend between birth and death, where karma works itself out in the moral sense, as destiny. And to-day we must find an answer to the question: In what way does the work of the Hierarchies influence human life?

Speaking now with the help of Initiation-Science, we shall admit that this is a deep and searching question. For you can understand from what I have told you in the course of recent lectures, that the phenomena of nature too are connected with the karma of mankind.

The man who directs his gaze to the whole flow of cosmic and human events and not alone to the immediate facts presented by the world of nature, perceives the connection between the events which take place among larger or smaller groups of men at one epoch and the facts of nature at another. There are occasions when we can observe events in nature breaking into the orbit of human life on earth. We witness devastating volcanic eruptions and we know what is brought about by natural influences during floods or suchlike phenomena.

If we regard such events as belonging merely to the natural order, we are confronted with something that is incomprehensible in its relation to the general impression we have of the world. For here we behold events that simply break into the cosmic order, events which are so envisaged by man that he gives up all hope of understanding them and accepts the distress they bring as a stroke of destiny. The investigations of spiritual science are able, however, to take us a little further, for they open up remarkable information precisely in connection with these elemental events in nature.

When we let our mind's eye scan the face of the earth, we find certain areas of the earth literally covered with volcanoes. We find that other parts of the earth are liable to earthquakes or other catastrophes. And if we examine the karmic connections of such events as these in the same way as we have examined them in recent lectures from the point of view of the history of certain personalities, then we arrive at very remarkable results. We find the following: Up above in the spiritual worlds, human souls are gathered together in groups according to their karma; they are elaborating their karma in conformity with their past and future existence. And we see one of these groups of human souls in their descent from pre-earthly into earthly existence wander to regions situated, for example, in the vicinity of volcanoes, or to districts where earthquakes are liable to occur, in order there to receive their destiny from the elemental phenomena of nature.¹ We even find that during this life between death and a new birth when man's conceptions and feelings are of quite a different nature, that such places are deliberately chosen by the souls thus karmically connected, in order that they may experience this very destiny. For a thought which finds little enough understanding in our souls on earth, such as the thought: “I choose a great disaster on earth in order to become more perfect, I choose it because I am still so far from fulfilling what lies in my past karma”—such a thought for which, as I have said, there is so little understanding in earthly life, can be present in the life between death, and a new birth, and has there an inherent value.

It can happen that we deliberately seek out a volcanic eruption, or an earthquake, in order to find in the path of disaster the path to perfection. Clear distinction must be made between these two completely different outlooks upon life,—one outlook being that of the spiritual world and the other of the physical world.

But in this connection there are other things to be considered. In the outer world, the everyday happenings of nature proceed with an ordered regularity inasmuch as the world of the stars is playing a part in them. For the world of stars with its mysteries works with a certain regularity. This above all is the case in connection with the sun and moon, indeed with all the stars with the outstanding exception of the enigmatic phenomena of meteorites and comets which burst in upon the regular, rhythmical order of the cosmos in a most mysterious way. But that which cuts across the regular course of natural existence in the way of thunderstorms, hailstorms and other climatological and meteorological events—all this interrupts the regular rhythm of natural happenings. We realise these things and, to begin with, resign ourselves to the outer course taken by natural phenomena. But later on, when a longing to understand spiritual things awakens within us, we listen to what is told us by Initiation-Science, namely that besides this outwardly visible world there is also the super-sensible world where dwell the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. And in our life between death and a new birth we enter the domain of these higher Hierarchies, just as in our life between birth and death we live among the three kingdoms of nature—the mineral, the plant and the animal kingdoms.

We listen to what is taught by Initiation-Science and try to envisage the existence of this second world, but we often stop short at the idea of the two worlds being there side by side, without connecting them together in our thought. We can form a true idea of the two worlds only when we are able to realise their existence simultaneously, and when with inner vision we can realise the way in which they work together and are interwoven. For this interworking must be known if we are to understand the shaping and forming of karma. In the life between death and a new birth, karma is prepared. But karma is worked out and elaborated on earth, too, with the help of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies who are also active during the life we lead between birth and death.

The question therefore arises: In what way do the higher Hierarchies work into earthly life?

In their work upon earthly life, these Beings of the higher Hierarchies make use of earthly processes. We shall best understand what this means if we look, to begin with, at all that is spread out before our senses, in the world of stars as well as in the physical world. Throughout our waking-day life, we see the sun up there in the heavens. Through the hours of the night we behold the radiance of the moon and of the stars. Think, my dear friends, of how we look out into the world, and how we allow what is above us, and what is around us in the kingdoms of nature, to work upon us. And let us remind ourselves that this world of the senses has in itself just as little meaning as a human corpse. The forces that are at work in the earth outside man are the forces that are in a corpse. But in a corpse we do not find the forces of the living man. In itself, the corpse is meaningless. It has significance only inasmuch as it is the remains of a living human being. It is not reasonable to imagine for a moment that a corpse could exist in itself as a collection of phenomena having an independent being of their own. A corpse can only reveal the form of something that is no longer visible. Just as one is led back from a corpse to a living human being, so too are we led by everything in the visible world of physical existence to the spiritual world. For this physical sense-existence has just as little meaning of its own as has a corpse.

Just as we are led in thought from the corpse to a living man, and say: This is the corpse of a living human being; so, in relation to nature, we say: This is the revelation of divine-spiritual powers.

No other way of thinking can be reasonable, indeed no other way is sound or healthy. To hold a different view would imply a morbid way of thinking.

But what is the nature of the spiritual world for which we are to look behind the physical world of sense? The spiritual world behind the physical world is the world of the Beings of the Second Hierarchy: Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes. The Second Hierarchy is behind everything on which the sun sheds its light. And what is there in the whole compass of our sense-experience that is not lit up and kept alive by the sun? The sun is the source of the light and the life of everything.

These Beings of the Second Hierarchy have their chief dwelling place in the sun. From the sun they rule over the visible world which is their revelation. Thus we can say: There we have the earth, with the sun shining down upon it, and behind and through the workings of the sun weave the Beings of the Second Hierarchy: Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis.

Upon the rays of the sun which are the deeds of the Second Hierarchy are borne all the sense-impressions that come to our senses through the hours of waking-day consciousness.

And so we speak truly if we say: Within and through and behind the workings of the sun throughout our physical sense-existence is the super-sensible world of the Second Hierarchy.

Now there is another and different condition of our earthly existence. We spoke of this different condition in the last lecture from a certain point of view. We have the condition of sleep. How does this condition of sleep present itself in its cosmic counterpart? Let us consider it for a moment. When our physical and etheric bodies are there in the bed, and our astral body and ego outside, then out in the cosmos we have to think of the sun at a position where the earth must first let the rays of the sun pass through it before they reach us. Now in all the ancient Mysteries a certain teaching was given which, if fully understood, produced a profoundly moving impression in those who become pupils in the Mysteries and gradually mastered the Science of Initiation. They reached a certain stage of inner development which they might have described in the following way.—I am now telling you what might have been said by one of these ancient Initiates when he had attained to a certain degree of Initiation.—He would have spoken somewhat as follows: “When I stand in the open fields in the daytime, when I direct my gaze upwards and give myself up to the impressions of the senses, then I behold the sun; I see it in its dazzling strength at noontide and behind the dazzling strength of the noontide sun I behold the working of the spiritual Beings of the Second Hierarchy in the substance of the sun. Before my Initiation the substance of the sun vanished from me at the moment of its setting. The shining radiance of the sun vanished in the purples of sunset. Before my Initiation I went through the dark path of night, and in the morning, when the dawn came, I remembered this darkness. Out of the dawn the sun shone forth again and took its course onward towards the dazzling brightness of noon. But now, having attained to Initiation, when I experience the dawn and behold the sun as it passes from dawn on through its daily course, a memory of my life during the night-time awakens within me. I know what I have experienced in this night life, I remember clearly how I beheld a blue, glimmering light arise from the evening twilight and gradually spread, travelling from west to east. And I remember how I beheld the sun at the midnight hour, at the opposite point in the firmament to where it had stood in its noontide, dazzling strength; I saw it gleaming there behind the earth, full of deep and solemn meaning. I beheld the Midnight Sun!”

Such has actually been the monologue of Initiates in their meditation, and it faithfully expresses their experience. The Initiate is conscious of these things. And when we read Jacob Boehme's book entitled Aurora then we cannot help being deeply moved by the realisation that the words which are written in this book are echoes of a wonderful teaching of the ancient Mysteries.

What is the “Dawn” to Initiates? It is an instigation to cosmic remembrance, to remembrance of the vision of the Midnight Sun behind the earth. With our ordinary sight we see the radiant yellow-white disc of the sun at noon, but with the vision of Initiation we see the bluish-violet sun at the opposite point of the heavens. The earth appears as a transparent body, with the sun gleaming on the other side of it with a bluish-red light. But this bluish-red sheen is not what it seems. I must utter the paradox:—it is not what it seems. When we are gazing at the Midnight Sun it seems at first that we are looking at something hazy in the distance. And when we learn with the help of Initiation more and more clearly to see what at first appears as a blur in the distance, then the bluish-red light will begin to take shape and form; it will spread itself over the whole of the sky but still on the other side of the earth and covered by the earth. It becomes peopled. And just as when we go out of our house on a starlit night and look up at the majestic spectacle of the starry heavens with its sparkling points of light, perhaps with the moon in the centre, so to the gaze of Initiation a whole world becomes visible on the farther side of the earth which is now transparent. It is a world that emerges, as it were, out of the clouds, becoming a world of living forms. It is the world of the Second Hierarchy, of the Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis. There they appear, these Beings of the Second Hierarchy. And as we watch more and more closely, if we can attain the stillness of soul that is required, then something else happens. All this reveals itself after preparation and meditation and only becomes a conscious experience at dawn, as an after-memory, when it is immediately present with us, when we know we have actually beheld it during the night. What appears on yonder side of the earth is in reality the weaving world of the Beings of the Second Hierarchy. And from out of this weaving, living world of the Second Hierarchy there now radiates a world of other Beings—raying to us through the earth. It is a truly wonderful world of Beings that works thus through the earth at night, hovering there in the firmament, now approaching man, now drawing away, now approaching him again. We see how the line of the weaving Beings of the Second Hierarchy ever and again fades out, while another Hierarchy approaches man, now hovering towards him and now drawing away from him again. And by-and-by we learn to know what all this really means.

We have been conscious the whole day long and now we lie down in sleep. This means that the physical and etheric bodies are left to themselves, working in sleep as a plant and mineral world. But by day we have thoughts; all day long, ideas have been passing through our being. They have left their traces in our physical and etheric bodies. We should not be able to remember the experiences of our earthly existence at all if these traces which we subsequently use in our memories did not remain. There they remain, these traces, in what is left of man as he lies asleep at night—in that part of his being which he has left behind. A mysterious process takes place there, above all in the etheric body. All that man has thought during his waking life from morning till evening begins to move and ring on waves of sound. If you think of a certain region of the earth where men are sleeping, and think of all that weaves and works in the etheric bodies as an echo of all that these sleeping men have been thinking during the hours of their waking life, this will give you a picture of what has happened through the hours of the day.

And those Beings who hover over us, rising and descending, busy themselves through our hours of sleep with the traces that have remained in our etheric bodies. This becomes their field of action. It is an immediate experience in them and absorbs their attention. When this is revealed to us, we say with a sense of deep reverence: “Thou, 0 Man, hast left thy body. And as it lies there it bears within it the traces of the day's experiences. It is the field where live the fruits of thy thoughts and ideas during the day. The Beings of the Third Hierarchy, the Angels, Archangels and Archai, now enter this field. While thou hast left thy physical and etheric bodies, these Beings experience what thou hast thyself experienced from the thoughts and ideas of thy waking hours.”—Deep reverence fills us at the sight of some region of the earth where human bodies are left in sleep and whither the Angels, Archangels and Archai wend their way to all that unfolds as an echo of the life of day. And we here behold a wonderful life, born of all that is unfolded between the Beings of the Third Hierarchy and the traces of the thoughts we have left behind.

As we gaze at this field, we become aware how, as human beings, we have our place within the spiritual cosmos, and how, when we wake, we create work for the Angels during our hours of sleep. It is so indeed: during our waking hours we create work for the Angels during the time of sleep. And now we learn to understand something about our world of thought. We realise that the thoughts which pass through our heads contain the fruits of what we lay into our own physical and etheric bodies—fruits which Angels gather at night. For Angels gather these fruits and bear them out into the cosmos in order that they may find there their place in the cosmic Order.

One thing more we see as we behold these Beings of the Third Hierarchy—Angels, Archangels and Archai—coming forth from the Beings of the Second Hierarchy and their activity. We behold how behind this weaving, again Beings of sublime majesty and grandeur take part in the activity of the Second Hierarchy. We gaze at the Second Hierarchy, and we see how into this weaving life of the Second Hierarchy something else works from behind; and we soon become aware how this not only strikes, lightning-like, into the weaving and working of the Second Hierarchy, but striking right to the other side of the earth, it has to do, not with the part of man that is left on the earth, but with that other part of his being that has gone out, namely, the ego-organisation and astral body. And as we gaze at what has been left behind and behold it as a field where the fruits of thoughts throughout the day are being gathered by the Angels, Archangels and Archai for the purposes of cosmic activity, so too we see how the Beings of the Second Hierarchy, the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, uniting their activity with that of the First Hierarchy—the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones—concern themselves with the astral body and ego. And in his morning memory the Initiate says to himself: “I have lived from the time of falling asleep till the time of waking in my ego and astral body. I have felt myself enwrapped in all that the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones are unfolding, together with the Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai. Living in this world I gazed down at my physical body and my etheric body and hovering above them I perceived the Angels, Archangels and Archai, gathering the fruits of my thoughts. I felt myself one with the Beings of the First and Second Hierarchies, and I beheld the weaving and working of the Third Hierarchy in mighty spirit-clouds over my body.”

And so, my dear friends, in this way you can get a clear picture of how the Beings of the three Hierarchies appear to the imaginative vision of Initiation, how they appear there on the opposite side of the earth in the picture of the physical world, but only when this physical world is plunged in darkness.

Knowledge and vision of these sublime truths penetrated more and more deeply into the hearts and souls of those who in days long since gone by, partook in the ancient mysteries of Initiation.

And once again this knowledge can find its way into the hearts and souls of those who are led to the modern science of Initiation.

Let us picture this majestic imagination which arises before the soul. We can picture the human soul liberated from the body, free from its physical and etheric bodies, weaving in the streaming forces of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, the Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai.

In the ancient Mystery rite this was wont to be presented to the uninitiated in plastic form and in colour. The purpose was to present in plastic form what the Initiate was able to see in such sublime grandeur on the other side of the earth. And, in order to show that this world is also the world where karma is elaborated in communion with the highest Beings, in front of the plastic form stood the highest Initiates, those who during earthly existence itself could already behold with that vision which otherwise comes to man only between death and a new birth. The highest Initiates stood in front of the plastic form and still another form was set up, with human figures all around it. There stood the lesser Initiates whose work upon their physical and etheric bodies was not yet complete. The spectacle thus placed before the eyes of men was a copy of what the Initiates beheld in the Mysteries. Such was the origin of the altar, where the ritual was enacted by the higher and lower grades of the priesthood as a copy of what is revealed in Initiation-Science.

In Roman Catholic Churches to-day, as you look from the nave towards the altar, you have a faint copy of what was once inaugurated by Initiation-Science. And you begin to understand the origin of the cult. A ritual is not invented, for if it is invented it is not a true ritual. True ritual is brought into existence as a copy of happenings in the spiritual world.

If I may give an example, let me speak of one part of that great and all-embracing cult which has found its place in the Christian Community, and with which the majority of you are already familiar. Let me remind you of the ritual for the burial of the dead, as it is given in our Christian Community.

Watch the order of this ritual. There rests the coffin, containing the mortal remains of the dead. And before the coffin a ritual is enacted. Prayer is uttered by the priest. Other things could be introduced to make the ceremony more complicated, but the help it can be to humanity can also be clothed in simplicity. What is this ceremony? Let us suppose, my dear friends, that here we have a mirror and here again some object. You see the reflection of the object in the mirror. You have the two things—the original and the reflection. Similarly, when a ritual for the dead is enacted, there are the two things. The ritual enacted by the priest before the coffin is a reflection. It is a reflection, and it would be no reality if it were not a reflection. What does it reflect? The acts of the priest as he stands before the dead body have their prototype in the super-sensible world. For while we celebrate the earthly rite before the physical body, and the etheric body is still present, on the other side the heavenly ritual is enacted by the Beings beyond the threshold of earthly existence. Over yonder, the soul and spirit are received by what we may call a ritual of welcome, just as here on earth we assemble before the dead for a ritual of farewell. A cult or ceremony is only true when it has its origin in reality.

Thus you see how the super-sensible life works into earthly life and permeates it. If we celebrate a true ritual for the dead, a super-sensible ritual is enacted simultaneously. The two work together. And if there is sanctity, truth and dignity in the prayers for the dead, then the prayers of the Beings of the Hierarchies in the super-sensible world echo in the prayers for the dead and weave in them. The spiritual world and the physical unite.

Thus in all things there is accordance between the spiritual world and the physical world. The spiritual and the physical world interplay in the very truest way when there comes into being on earth a copy of what is woven as karma in the super-sensible world between death and a new birth together with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies.

• 1. The Deed of Christ and the Opposing Spiritual Powers. Two Lectures by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, 1st Jan. and 22nd March, 1909.

Dornach, 29th June, 1924

The day before yesterday I tried to picture for you the cosmic drama, as it were, wherein human beings are shown in their relation to Beings of the spiritual world, so that one can see how there stems from this relationship not only the working out of karma, but also the living out of karma during physical life on earth. To-day I should like to turn to a thought touched upon in that lecture. I said that the present period in human evolution confronts anyone who has the knowledge of Initiation-Science with problems of world-karma in the deepest sense of the words. And before proceeding to consider how knowledge of karma is acquired, we will study its world-historic aspects, which in the nature of things must closely concern the whole of civilised humanity at the present time.

Things are happening in the world to-day which stir even the everyday consciousness of man and the heart that is bound up with this everyday consciousness. A heavy cloud looms over the civilisation of Europe and from one point of view it is amazing to find what little willingness there is on the part of mankind in general to feel and realise what this cloud portends.

Think only of what is emerging as the result of views of life and of the world widely prevalent in humanity to-day. Look at what is being made of Christianity in the East of Europe! Information—not entirely to be discredited—has reached us that the works of Tolstoy are to be banned by the present Government of Soviet Russia with the object of keeping them out of the reach of future generations. Although such things do not always work out exactly as they are announced, we must not blind ourselves to the gravity of the present moment in world-history; we do well to listen to the warning which Initiation-Science would like to repeat day in and day out—that now is the time when the many petty concerns occupying men's minds ought to be silenced and the attention of numbers of souls directed to the great concerns of life. But in point of fact, interest in these great concerns is dwindling rather than increasing.

We see views of life and of the world arising to-day with a certain ‘creative’ force, although this actually takes effect in destruction; these views are the offspring of human passions and emotions, of an element in human nature working entirely in a Luciferic direction. It may truly be said that reality is denied and rejected by a large portion of humanity to-day. The essential nature of matter is not understood by materialistic thinkers. Matter can be understood only when the creative spirit within it is apprehended. Therefore anyone who denies the reality of the creative spirit within matter knows only a false image of matter and the consequent idolatry is a far greater menace than that of the primitive peoples who are said to represent civilisation in the stage of infancy. Fantastic ideas and conceptions of what is, after all, unreality, hold sway in mankind.—This is one side of the picture.

Such things have of course occurred in various forms throughout human history. But spiritual science teaches us to recognise their connections in the whole World-Order, and to realise with what earnestness they must be studied.

And so we must be mindful of what is brought into existence when certain social orders are created under the influence of materialistic, fantastic ideas—ideas which have sprung entirely from human aberrations, have nothing to do with reality and could never have originated elsewhere than in man himself.

Having turned our minds to a phenomenon of history which has, however, immediate bearing upon our present age, let us consider occurrences in elemental nature like those mentioned in the last lecture, when groups of human beings are suddenly snatched away from earthly existence as the result of an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, or the like. The news reaches us of a catastrophe of this kind and we hear that a large number of people have met their death or suffered grave disablement.—Again, there are events for which the devices of civilisation are responsible. We hear, for example, of a railway accident, where again the karmic threads of life are abruptly severed, but in this case as the result of man-made institutions.

If we are earnest in our study of karma, we must ask, on the one hand: What form does karma take in the case of adherents of a social order originating from sheer emotionalism, sheer fantasy in man himself and devoid of objective reality? And on the other, we must ask: What form does karma take when the thread of life is suddenly severed by a catastrophe of nature or one that is the outcome of civilisation?

Here is one of the points where Initiation-Science enters deeply into man's life of feeling and perception. Ordinary, everyday consciousness does not ask about the consequences of such happenings in the successive earthly lives of men. In the case of catastrophes of civilisation particularly, the question of human destiny in the wider sense is never asked. The destiny of a man who has been the victim of such a catastrophe is regarded by ordinary consciousness as finished and done with.

Initiation-Science observes on the one side what takes place in the foreground of earth life and, in the background, the deeds of gods in connection with the souls of men. And it is what proceeds in the background that provides Initiation-Science with a criterion for assessing earthly life. For as we shall see in our further studies of karma, a great deal has to be moulded, recast in one way or another in earthly existence in order that the divine things behind it may take effect in the lives of men—in accordance with the will of the gods.

For on looking into the background we perceive the karma that is woven between one human soul and another during the life between death and rebirth; we perceive how human souls work together with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. We see, too, the activities of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers. Within the living organism of gods behind the organism of the earth we perceive the justification for this intervention by the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers; we realise that Lucifer and Ahriman play an essential part in the deeper, spiritual ordering of the world. But although this necessity becomes evident to us, we must nevertheless often stand aghast at the way in which Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences penetrate into the earthly world.

When our vision extends beyond the earthly into the spiritual world, many things must be viewed in the light of their inter-connections, which need not necessarily be the case in ordinary consciousness. If in times when Initiation Science was regarded with the reverence that must prevail once again—if in those ancient times the question arose whether a person was in truth an Initiate, men knew the right attitude with which such a question must be approached. And when a man who took life earnestly met another like him and their opinions differed as to whether a third person was an Initiate, the question was wont to be put to the one who felt uncertain: “Have you looked into his eyes?” For in those olden times, when clairvoyance was a natural gift in civilisation all over the earth, Initiates were recognised by the deep, earnest look in their eyes.—And something similar will come again. Without losing sight of the humour of life, men must again be mindful of its gravity.

Many of these lessons can be learned from what is happening in our present time and has indeed happened in some form through all ages, but they stand before humanity now as a great and mighty riddle ... And now let us think of the facts connected with a certain kind of event.

Numbers of human beings have perished in some region where a terrible earthquake has taken place. Contemplating the event in the light of spiritual science, it cannot be said that the thread of karma belonging to the present earthly lives of these men has in every case come to an end. Think of the thread of karma in those who have met their death: in the case of the aged, whose earthly karma in this incarnation would soon have been completed, the thread of life will be shortened possibly only by months or at most by a few years. Younger people in the prime of life who have thought a great deal about what they wanted to achieve in the time ahead of them for themselves, for their family, or for a wider circle of humanity, are robbed of many years of activity. Children in process of education as a prelude to manhood are torn away from earthly existence together with the elderly and aged. Babies just weaned or still unweaned are snatched away, together with the old and the young.

The great riddle is this: How does karma work in an event of this kind?

And now think of the difference between such an event in elemental nature and an event that is due, fundamentally, to civilisation, for example, a terrible railway accident. There is obviously a difference, a difference that becomes significant and fundamental when studied from the point of view of karma.

As a rule it will be found that when human beings perish together, let us say in an earthquake, there is some kind of karmic connection between them all—just as men who live in a particular district are, broadly speaking, karmically connected or at any rate have some link with one another. These people have a certain common destiny into which they have been impelled through having descended from prenatal existence to a particular locality on the earth, and with this common destiny they are led along their path to the point where the threads of their lives are severed.

On the other hand, in the case of a railway accident it will generally be found that only a few of the victims are karmically connected with one another. What, then, is their situation? As a rule they are human beings between whom there is no definite link, who are brought together without any such connection as invariably exists between victims of a particular earthquake. The victims of a railway accident may be said to have been brought together at a certain spot by destiny. Do we not see karma working quite differently in these two cases?

With the help of Initiation-Science, let us think of a catastrophe like that of a devastating earthquake. We are concerned there with human beings whose karma at birth did not entail the severance of the thread of earthly life by the time the catastrophe occurred. As the result of this event they were torn as it were out of their karma.

How could this be? It is the decree of the gods that karma shall come to fulfilment, shall be lived out to the full. Now upheavals in nature—earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, great floods and the like—are not an integral part of the onflowing evolution of the earth; something extraneous—although still under the sway of natural laws—intervenes here in the evolutionary process, something that in times when man was not subject to birth and death as we know them to-day was both necessary and propitious for evolution. To form a clear conception of what this means, we must turn our minds to the epoch of the Old Moon.

In the epoch of the Old Moon which preceded that of the Earth, man was not led into physical existence by a transition as abrupt as birth or conception, nor led out of physical existence by a transition as abrupt as death. The transition in each case was much gentler; it was a transformation, a metamorphosis, rather than a sudden change. The Moon-man was not as densely material as the man of to-day; nor in the spiritual world was he as bereft of spirit as he is to-day.

The beings inhabitating the Old Moon were subject to quite different natural laws, laws under which this Moon-life was involved in constant movement; it was inwardly mobile, in ceaseless, surging flow. This surging, flowing life has become rigid—but only partially so—in the present Moon, our companion in the universe. The rigidification in the Moon—it has really a kind of hornlike quality—points to the past inner mobility of the Moon which takes effect in the earth when elemental catastrophes of nature occur of the kind of which I have been speaking. The ordinary natural laws of the earth are not operating, but the Old Moon is beginning to stir, to rumble in the earth. The Moon revolving out yonder in the universe has the constitution that is proper for it to-day, but after its separation from the earth, forces were left behind; and it is these Moon-forces that rumble and stir in the earth when nature-catastrophes occur.

As you will remember, I told you that the Beings who were once the great primeval Teachers of humanity are connected with man's karma; it was they who brought the ancient wisdom to mankind. They did not live on the earth in physical bodies but in etheric bodies, and at a certain point of time they departed from the earth to establish their abode in the Moon; and there we encounter them during the first phase of our life between death and a new birth. These are the Beings who engrave a record of men's karma into the cosmic ether, in an unerring script of soul-and-spirit.

But in the cosmos a pledge has been taken—if I may put it so—a pledge that use shall be made not only of the relations between the present Moon and the earth but also of the Moon-forces that were left behind and are still astir within the earth. And it is here that the Ahrimanic powers can step in and take hold of the threads of human life. It can actually be seen how from the depths of the earth the Ahrimanic powers present a countenance of gloating satisfaction when such catastrophes of nature befall.

With the help of Initiation-Science we can perceive how up to the moment when the thread of life is abruptly severed, part of the karma of one who perishes in a catastrophe of this kind has been absolved. According to whether death occurred in old age, adult life or babyhood, a longer or shorter portion of life would have remained to him; life might have continued until the completion of its course, but as things are, the events that would otherwise have been spread across this whole span lay their grip in a single, sudden moment upon the physical organisation.

Think of this situation, my dear friends.—Suppose such a catastrophe befalls a man at the age of thirty. If he had not been a victim of the catastrophe he might, in accordance with his karma, have reached the age of sixty-five, living through countless experiences which now are no more than possibilities. But everything is contained in his karma, in the make-up of his etheric and astral bodies and of his ego-organisation. And what would have been happening up to the sixty-fifth year of life? After the culmination of the upbuilding process, the organism would have been involved in a process of slow and steady decline; a subtle, gradual decline would have been taking place until the sixty-fifth year of life. This steady decline which, in the slow tempo corresponding to such a lengthy period, would have lasted for at least thirty-five years, is fulfilled in a single moment, concentrated as it were into a single moment. Such a thing can happen to the physical body but not to the etheric body, the astral body or the ego-organisation.

When the circumstances are as described here, a man enters the spiritual world in quite another way than would have been the case had his karma been lived out to the full. Something is brought into the spiritual world that would otherwise not have been there: an etheric body, an astral body and an ego-organisation which might still have been living on earth. Instead of remaining in earthly existence they are taken into the spiritual world. What was destined for earthly existence is carried into the spiritual world.

And so we see an earthly element streaming into the spiritual world from all such nature-catastrophes.

Such is the situation of human beings who have been turned aside in this way from the karmic course of their life by the working of the Ahrimanic powers; such is their situation when they arrive in the spiritual world.

And now we must ask ourselves a question—for if we take spiritual science earnestly we must learn to put questions from the standpoint of the spiritual world and of the spiritual Beings in that world, just as with our ordinary consciousness we put questions relating to the physical world and its beings. We must ask the question: How do the Beings of the three Hierarchies respond when human beings ascend to their realm bearing with them an earthly element, bearing this earthly element into the spiritual world?

It then becomes the task of these spiritual Beings to re-integrate into the World-Order what seems to have been turned to evil, to run counter to the World-Order. The gods have now to reckon with what confronts them in these circumstances, in order that they may transmute the Ahrimanic evil into a higher good.

This leads to the question: What is the situation within the World-Order of those human beings who are destined after their death to pass into the spiritual world in this way? The Beings of the higher Hierarchies are confronted with a particular state of affairs and have to say to themselves: In the previous incarnation of this human being and through the whole sequence of preceding lives, a world of facts was prepared, a world of experiences belonging, properly speaking, to the incarnation that has just ended. But only the first part of what was thus prepared has been able to come to expression; the second part has remained without fulfilment. Hence there is part of a life which ought, in reality, to correspond in respect of karma, to all that went before. There ought to be complete correspondence, but there is not ... there is only a part which corresponds to some extent with the previous incarnation, but not with the whole of it.

As they survey this previous earthly life the gods must say: There is something that has not taken effect as it should have done. Causes are there which have not been utilised or turned to account.—And now the gods can take hold of these unutilised causes, guide them to the human being and so strengthen him inwardly for his next earthly life. The power of what existed as a cause in a previous incarnation can manifest all the more forcefully in the incarnation following the present one. If such a catastrophe had not befallen the man in question he might have appeared again in the world in his next incarnation with inferior faculties or very possibly with faculties of quite a different kind. A change has been wrought in him to the end that karma may be adjusted. But he also comes into the world endowed with special qualities; his astral body is reinforced, as it were, because unutilised causative forces are membered into it.

Will you then still be astonished by the legend of a philosopher who threw himself deliberately into the crater of a volcano? What can have been the motive of such a resolve on the part of one who was initiated into the secrets of world-existence? The motive could only have been a conscious intention to achieve through the agency of human will something that could otherwise have been achieved only through the agency of elemental nature: the sudden sweeping away of a process that would otherwise have worked itself to an end by slow degrees.

What is thus told of a philosopher may be due to a resolve to appear in the world in the next incarnation endowed with special powers. The world takes on a very different aspect when we enter into the deep problems of karma!

In principle, therefore, this is how things are in the case of nature-catastrophes. Let us think now of a catastrophe due to the institutions of civilisation, where human beings between whom there are no strong karmic links are as it were massed together by the Ahrimanic powers to suffer common destruction.

The situation here is altogether different. Again the Ahrimanic powers are in action; now, however, the human beings concerned are not, to begin with, grouped together by karmic ties, but for all that are led together. The consequences here are essentially different from those of nature-catastrophes.

A nature-catastrophe evokes in a man whom it befalls a vivid, intensified remembrance of what lies in his karma as causation. For when the human being passes through the gate of death he is made mindful of everything that is contained in his karma. And remembrance of karma is intensified, made more vivid in the soul as the result of a fatal nature-catastrophe.

On the other hand a railway accident, any catastrophe due to the institution of civilisation, brings about oblivion of karma. But because of this oblivion a man becomes highly sensitive to the new impressions coming to him in the spiritual world after death. And the result is that such a man is impelled to ask himself: What is to become of the unexhausted karma I bear within me?

Whereas in the case of a nature-catastrophe the intellectual qualities especially are intensified in the astral body of the victim, a catastrophe of civilisation leads to a strengthening, an enhancement of the will.

But now we will turn from these catastrophes and think of a state of affairs arising from fanatical emotionalism in a group of human beings, where the sole source of the impulses is man himself, where he lives in sheer unreality and works, moreover, as a destructive force. Let us think of a structure of civilisation as fantastically distorted as that presented to us to-day in the East of Europe, and ask ourselves what happens when the men who help to produce such conditions pass through the gate of death.

Here too—as in the case of the other catastrophes something is carried into the spiritual world, namely a Luciferic element which begets darkness and devastation.

From catastrophes of nature and of civilisation it is, in the last resort, light that is carried from the physical into the spiritual world. But from aberrations and misguided impulses in cultural life, darkness is brought into the spiritual world. When men pass into that world through the gate of death they must make their way as it were through a dark, dense cloud. For the light which Lucifer kindled in human emotions on earth becomes dense darkness in the spiritual world when man enters it after death. And in this case, forces and passions engendered entirely by man himself and are concerns of his subjective life, are carried into the spiritual world.

These are forces which through Ahriman's power can be changed in the spiritual world in a way that enables use to be made of the Moon-elements still present in the earth. Lucifer is here stretching out a helping hand to Ahriman.

What is carried up into the spiritual world through impulses in civilisation arising from sheer emotionalism, from blind, misguided earthly consciousness—this, in different guise, is what bursts from the earth's interior in the form of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and the like.

With this knowledge as a background we are led to the question of the karma of the earth and its peoples, the karma of individuals too, inasmuch as the karma of individuals is bound up with that of the peoples and of the earth itself. In putting the question we shall seek for the seeds in Luciferic activities at work in some region where ancient culture is cast on the rubbish-heap by the working of human emotions, where wild, misguided instincts set out to create something new but succeed in spreading only destruction. And we must ask ourselves: Where shall we see the forces seething in the wild passions of men burst forth one day on the earth, in flames or convulsive upheavals of the ground beneath us?

In respect of many an event of elemental nature, Initiation-Science may, nay must, put the question: When and where was this event set in train? And the answer is that it derives from the horrors and atrocities of enmity and warfare through the course of the development of civilisation. There you have the connection.—These happenings lie in the background of existence. In the light of such knowledge, events do not appear in isolation but are seen in their great cosmic setting. How do they find their place in the destinies of men? As I said already, of a truth the gods are there, gods who are linked with the evolution of mankind, and it is their unceasing task to transform these happenings into what is propitious and beneficial for human destiny.

In the interworking between the earthly and spiritual worlds the destinies of men are continually being wrenched from the pinions of Lucifer and the claws of Ahriman, for verily the gods are good! The unrighteousness originating from the activities of Lucifer and Ahriman behind the scenes of existence is led by the good gods into the path of righteousness again and the karmic connection is finally lawful and good.

Our gaze, which must of course be full of understanding for human karma, is now deflected from the destiny of men to the destiny of gods. For when we contemplate the horrors of war, the guilt and ugliness of war in their connection with death-dealing elemental catastrophes, we are watching the battle waged by the good gods against the evil gods—in two directions evil. We gaze beyond the life of men into the life of gods, beholding the life of gods as the background of human life. We watch this life of gods—not with dry, theoretical thoughts, but with our hearts, with deep, inner participation; we watch it in its connection with the individual karma of men on earth because we see human destiny inwoven with the destiny of gods.

When we contemplate these things, the world lying behind human life has for the first time drawn really near to us. For something is then revealed which cannot but stir the very fibres of our hearts. It becomes clear to us that the destiny of men lies embedded in the destiny of the gods, and that in a certain sense the gods yearn for what they have to take in hand for men while their own battle is being waged. And in making such conceptions our own we are led again to what is brought into the world through the Mysteries—as it was brought, too, in the days of the old clairvoyance.

One who had attained Initiation in the ancient Mysteries told how he was led, to begin with, into the world of the Elements; there he beheld his inmost being, with its moral attributes, turn outwards. But then—and he spoke of this experience in words of power and solemnity—he came to know the nether gods and the upper gods, the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic gods. The good gods, the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic gods. The good gods move in the field of equilibrium. And as the pupil of the ancient Mysteries came to know what must be known again by the pupil in our modern age, he was initiated, stage by stage, into the very depths of existence. When this is understood and its implications realised, the strange, yet all-illuminating conception is reached: To what end does calamity exist in the world? To the end that the gods may transmute it into well-being. Ordinary well-being does not lead into the life of worlds. Well-being that springs from calamities befalling man along his path through the physical world of sense—this alone can lead into the depths of existence.

In the study of karma we must never call theoretical concepts alone to our aid; we must call upon the whole man. For knowledge of karma can be acquired only when the heart, the feelings and the will participate. If, however, knowledge of karma is acquired in this, the right way, human life will be deepened and due importance attached to the relationships and circumstances by which human beings are led together.

There will, of course, be moments when karma weighs heavily upon a man who does not lead a superficial life. But all such moments are balanced out by others when karma lends him wings on which his soul can soar out of the earthly realm into the realm of the gods. In our inmost being we must feel the reality of the connection between the divine world and the human world if we are to speak of karma in the right and true way.

What we are of ourselves, what is in us in a single earthly life passes away along the path from death to a new birth. What remains is that wherein the gods, that is to say the Beings of the Hierarchies, hold us by the hand. And no one will be able to cultivate the right attitude to the knowledge of karma who does not perceive in karma the helping hand of the gods.

Thus you must try, my dear friends, to grasp the knowledge of karma in such a way that it calls up the feeling: If I am to approach the holy ground of the spirit where something concerning karma can reveal itself to me, I must take the hand of the gods.

Thus real, thus immediate our experiences must become, if we are to win our way to true knowledge of the spiritual world—which is at the same time knowledge of karma.

For those of you who are able to be here today I wish to give a kind of interlude in the studies we have been pursuing for some time. What I shall say today will serve to illustrate and explain many a question that may emerge out of the subjects we have treated hitherto. At the same time it will help to throw light on the mood-of-soul of the civilisation of the present time.

For years past, we have had to draw attention to a certain point of time in that evolution of civilisation which is concentrated mainly in Europe. The time I mean lies in the 14th or 15th century or about the middle of the Middle Ages. It is the moment in the evolution of mankind when intellectualism begins—when men begin mainly to pay attention to the intellect, the life of thought, making the intellect the judge of what shall be thought and done among them.

Since the age of the intellect is with us today, we can certainly gain a good idea of what intellectualism is. We need but experience the present time, to gain a notion of what came to the surface of civilisation in the 14th and 15th century. But as to the mood of soul which preceded this, we are no longer able to feel it in a living way. People who study history nowadays generally project what they are accustomed to see in the-present time, back into the historic past, and they have little idea how altogether different men were in mind and spirit before the present epoch. Even when they let the old documents speak for themselves, they largely read into them the way of thought and outlook of the present.

To spiritual-scientific study many a thing will appear altogether differently. Let us turn our gaze for example to those historic personalities who were influenced on the one hand from the side of Arabism, from the civilisation of Asia—influenced by what lived and found expression in the Mahommedan religion, while on the other hand they were influenced by Aristotelianism. Let us consider these personalities, who found their way in course of time through Africa to Spain, and deeply influenced the thinkers of Europe down to Spinoza and even beyond him. We gain no real conception of them if we imagine their mood of soul as though they had been like men of the present time with the only difference that they were ignorant of so and so many things subsequently discovered. (For roughly speaking, this is how they are generally thought of today). The whole way of thought and outlook, even of the men who lived in the above described stream of civilisation as late as the 12th century A.D., was altogether different from that of today.

Today, when man reflects upon himself, he feels himself as the possessor of Thoughts, Feelings, and impulses of Will which lead to action. Above all, man ascribes to himself the ‘I think,’ the ‘I feel’ and the ‘I will.’

But in the personalities of whom I am now speaking, the ‘I think’ was by no means yet accompanied by the same feeling with which we today would say ‘I think.’ This could only be said of the ‘I feel’ and the ‘I will.’ In effect, these human beings ascribed to their own person only their Feeling and their Willing. Out of an ancient background of culture, they rather lived in the sensation ‘It thinks in me’ than that they thought ‘I think.’ Doubtless they thought ‘I feel,’ ‘I will,’ but they did not think ‘I think’ in the same measure. On the other hand they said to themselves—and what I shall now describe was an absolutely real conception to them:—In the Sublunary Sphere, there live the thoughts. The thoughts are everywhere within this sphere, which is determined when we imagine the Earth at a certain point, and the Moon at another, followed by Mercury, Venus, etc. They not only conceived the Earth as a dense and rigid cosmic mass, but as a second thing belonging to it they conceived the Lunar Sphere, reaching up to the Moon. And as we say, ‘In the air in which we breathe is oxygen,’ so did these people say (it is only forgotten now that it ever was so):—‘In the Ether which reaches up to the Moon, there are the thoughts.’ And as we say ‘We breathe-in the oxygen of the air,’ so did these people say—not ‘We breathe-in the thoughts’—but ‘We perceive the thoughts, receive them into ourselves.’ They were conscious of the fact that they received the thoughts.

Today, no doubt, a man can also familiarise himself with such an idea as a theoretic concept. He may even understand it with the help of Anthroposophy, but as soon as it becomes a question of practical life he forgets it. For then at once he has this rather strange idea, that the thoughts spring forth within himself—which is just as though he were to think that the oxygen he receives in breathing were not received by him but sprang forth from within him.

For the personalities of whom I am now speaking, it was a profound feeling and an immediate experience: ‘I have not my own thoughts as my own possession. I can not really say, I think. Thoughts exist, and I receive them unto myself.’

Now we know that the oxygen of the air circulates through our organism in a comparatively short time. We count these cycles by the pulse-beat. This happens quickly. The men of whom I am now speaking did indeed imagine the receiving of thoughts as a kind of breathing, but it was a very slow breathing. It consisted in this: At the beginning of his earthly life, man becomes capable of receiving the thoughts. As we hold the breath within us for a certain time—between our in-breathing and out-breathing—so did these men conceive a certain fact, as follows: They imagined that they held the thoughts within them, yet only in the sense in which we hold the oxygen which belongs to the outer air. They imagined that they held the thoughts during the time of their earthly life, and breathed them out again—out into the cosmic spaces—when they passed through the gate of death.

Thus it was a question of in-breathing—the beginning of life; holding the breath—the duration of earthly life; outbreathing—the sending-forth of the thoughts into the universe.

Men who had this kind of inner experience felt themselves in a common atmosphere of thought with all others who had the same experience. It was a common atmosphere of thought reaching beyond the earth, not only a few miles, but as I said, up to the orbit of the moon.

This idea was wrestling for the civilisation of Europe at that time. It was trying to spread itself ever more and more, impelled especially by those Aristotelians who came from Asia into Europe along the path I have just indicated. Let us suppose for a moment that it had really succeeded. What would then have come about?

In that case, my dear friends, that which was destined after all to find expression in the course of earthly evolution, could never have come to expression in the fullest sense: I mean, the Spiritual Soul. The human beings of whom I am now speaking, stood in the last stage of evolution of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. In the 14th and 15th century, the Spiritual Soul was to arise—the Spiritual Soul, which, if it found extreme expression, would lead all civilisation into intellectualism.

The population of Europe in its totality, in the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries, was by no means in a position merely to submit to the outpouring of a conception such as was held by the men whom I have now described. For if they had done so, the evolution of the Spiritual Soul would not have come about. Though it was determined in the councils of the Gods that the Spiritual Soul should evolve, nevertheless it could not evolve out of the mere independent activity of European humanity even in its totality. A special impulse had to be given towards the development of the Spiritual Soul itself.

And so, beginning in the time which I have now described, we witness the rise of two spiritual streams. The one was represented by the quasi-Arabian philosophers who, working from the West of Europe, influenced European civilisation very strongly—far more so than is commonly supposed. The other was the stream which fought against the former one with the utmost intensity and severity, representing it to Europe as the most heretical of all.

For a long time after, this conflict was felt with great intensity. You may still feel this if you consider the pictures in which Dominican Monks, or St. Thomas Aquinas alone, are represented in triumph—that is to say, in the triumph of an altogether different conception which emphasised above all things the individual and personal being of man, and worked to the end that man might acquire his thoughts as his own property. In these pictures we see the Dominicans portrayed, treading the representatives of Arabism under foot. The Arabians are there under their feet—they are being trodden underfoot.

The two streams were felt in this keen contrast for a long time after. An energy of feeling such as is contained in these pictures no longer exists in the humanity of today, which is rather apathetic. We need such energy of feeling very badly, not indeed for the things for which they battled, but for other things we need it.

Let us consider for a moment what they imagined. The in-breathing of thoughts as the cosmic ether from the Sublunary Sphere—that is the beginning of life. The holding of the breath—that is the earthly life itself. The out-breathing—that is the going-forth of the thoughts once more, but with an individually human colouring, into the cosmic ether, into the impulses of the sphere beneath the Moon, of the Sublunary Sphere.

What then is this out-breathing? It is the very same, my dear friends, of which we speak when we say: In the three days after death the etheric body of man expands. Man looks back upon his etheric body, slowly increasing in magnitude. He sees how his thoughts spread out into the cosmos. It is the very same, only it was then conceived—if I may say so—from a more subjective standpoint. It was indeed quite true, how these people felt and experienced it. They felt the cycle of life more deeply than it is felt today.

Nevertheless, if their idea had become dominant in Europe, only a feeble feeling of the Ego would have evolved in the men of European civilisation. The Spiritual Soul would not have been able to emerge; the Ego would not have grasped itself in the ‘I think.’ The idea of immortality would have become vaguer and vaguer. Men would increasingly have fixed their attention on that which lives and weaves in the far reaches of the Sublunary Sphere as a remnant of the human being who has lived here on this earth.

They would have felt the spirituality of the earth as its extended atmosphere. They would have felt themselves belonging to the earth, but not as individual men distinct from the earth. Through their feeling of “It thinks in me,” the men whom I described above felt themselves intimately connected with the earth. They did not feel themselves as individualities in the same degree as the men of the rest of Europe were beginning to feel themselves, however indistinctly.

We must, however, also bear in mind the following. Only the spiritual stream of which I have just spoken, was aware of the fact that when man dies the thoughts he received during his earthly life are living and weaving in the cosmic ether that surrounds the earth. This idea was violently attacked by those other personalities who arose chiefly within the Dominican Order. They on their side declared that man is an individuality, and that we must concentrate above all on his individuality which passes through the gate of death, not on what is dissolved in the universal cosmic ether. This was emphasised paramountly, albeit not exclusively,—emphasised representatively, I would say,—by the Dominicans. They stood up sharply and vigorously for the idea of the individuality of man, as against the other stream which I characterised before. But precisely as a result of this a certain condition came about. For let us now consider these representatives—shall we say—of individualism.

After all, it was the individually coloured thoughts which passed into the universal ether. And those who fought against the former stream—just because they were still vividly aware that this was being said, that this idea existed,—were troubled and disquieted by what was really there.

This anxiety, notably among the greatest thinkers,—this anxiety as a result of the forces expanding and dissolving and passing on the human thoughts to the cosmic ether,—did not really come to an end until the 16th or 17th century.

We must somehow be able to transplant ourselves into the inner life of soul of these people,—those especially who belonged to the Dominican Order. Only then do we gain an idea, how much they were disquieted by what was really left as an heritage from the dead,—which they, with their conception, no longer could nor dared believe in.

We must transplant ourselves into the hearts and minds of these people. No great man of the 13th or 14th century could have thought so dryly, so abstractly or in such cold and icy concepts as the men of today. When the men of today are standing up for any ideas or theories, it seems as though it were a recognised condition for so doing that one's heart should first be torn out of one's body. At that time it was not so. At that time there was deep feeling, there was heartiness in all that men upheld as their ideas. But in a case such as I am now citing, this heartiness also involved the presence of an intense inner conflict.

That philosophy, for instance, which proceeded from the Dominican Order was evolved under the most appalling inner conflicts. I mean that philosophy which afterwards had such a strong influence on life—for life at that time was still far more dependent on the authority of individual men. There was no such popular education at that time. All culture and education—all that the people knew—eventually merged into the possession of a few. And as a consequence, these few reached up far more to a real philosophic life and striving. And in all that then flowed out into civilisation, these inner conflicts which they lived through, were contained.

Today one reads the works of the Schoolmen and is conscious only of the driest thoughts. But it is the readers of today who are dry. Those who wrote these works were by no means dry in heart or mind. They were filled with inner fire in relation to their thoughts. Moreover, this inner fire was due to the striving to hold at bay the objective influence of thoughts.

When a man of today thinks on philosophic questions or questions of world-outlook, nothing is there, so to speak, to worry him. A man of today can think the greatest nonsense—he thinks it in perfect calm and peace of mind. Humanity has already evolved for so long within the Spiritual Soul, that no such disquieting occurs, as would occur, for instance, if individuals among us felt how the thoughts of men appear when they flow out after death into the ethereal environment of the earth. Today, such things as could still be experienced in the 13th or 14th century, are quite unknown. Then it would happen that a younger priest would come to an older priest, telling of the inner tortures which he was undergoing in remaining true to his religious faith, and expressing it in this wise: ‘I am pursued by the spectres of the dead.’

Speaking of the spectres of the dead, they meant precisely what I have just described. That was a time when men could still grow deeply into what they learned. In such a community—a Dominican community for instance,—they learned that man is individual and has his own individual immortality. They learned that it is a false and heretical idea to conceive, with respect to Thought, a kind of universal soul comprising all the earth. They learned to attack this heresy with all their might. And yet, in certain moments when they took deep counsel with themselves, they would feel the objective and influential presence of the thoughts which were left behind as relics by the dead. Then they would say to themselves, ‘Is it quite right for me to be doing what I am doing? Here is something intangible, working into my soul. I cannot rise against it—I am held fast by it.’

The intellects of the men of that time,—of many of them at any rate,—were still so constituted that they were quite generally aware of the speaking of the dead, at least for some days after death. And when the one had ceased to speak, another would begin. With respect to such things too, they felt themselves immersed in the all-pervading spiritual—or at the very least, ethereal—essence of the universe.

Coming down into our own time, this living feeling with the Universal All has ceased. In return for it we have achieved the conscious life in the Spiritual Soul, while all the spiritual reality that surrounds us (surrounds us as a reality, no less so than tables or chairs, trees or rivers) works only upon the depths of our subconsciousness. The inwardness of life, the spiritual inwardness, has passed away. It must first be acquired again by spiritual-scientific knowledge livingly received.

We must think livingly upon the knowledge of spiritual science, and we shall do so if we dwell upon such facts of life as lie by no means very far behind us. Imagine a Scholastic thinker or writer of the 13th century. He writes down his thoughts. Nowadays it is easy work to think, for men have grown accustomed to think intellectualistically. At that time it was only at the beginning, and was still difficult. Man was still conscious of a tremendous inner effort. He was conscious of fatigue in thinking even as in hewing wood, if I may use the trivial comparison. Today the thinking of many men has become quite automatic. We of today are scarcely overcome by the longing to follow up every one of our thoughts with our own human personality! We hear a man of today letting one thought arise out of another like an automaton. We cannot follow, we do not know why, for there is no inner necessity in it. And yet so long as a man is living in the body he should follow up his thoughts with his own personality. Afterwards they will soon take a different course; they will spread out and expand, when he is dead.

So could a man be sitting there at that time, defending with every weapon of sharp incisive thought the doctrine of individual man, so as to save the doctrine of individual immortality. So could he be rising in polemics against Averroes, or others of that stream of thought which I described at the beginning of this lecture. But there was another possibility. For especially in the case of an outstanding man like Averroes, that which proceeded from him, dissolving after his death like a kind of spectre in the Sublunary Sphere, might well be gathered up again by the Moon itself at the end of that Sphere, and remain behind. Having enlarged and expanded, it might even be reduced again, and shape and form be given to it, till it was consolidated once again into a being built, if I may say so, in the ether. That could well happen. Then would a man be sitting there, trying to lay the foundations of individualism, carrying on his polemic against Averroes; and Averroes would appear before him as a threatening figure, disturbing, putting off his mind.

The most important of the Scholastic writings which arose in the 13th century were directed against Averroes who was long dead. They made polemics against the man long dead, against the doctrine which he had left behind. Then he arose to prove to them that his thoughts had become condensed, consolidated once again and thus were living on.

There were indeed these inner conflicts, before the beginning of the new age of consciousness. And they were such that we today should see once more their full intensity and depth and inwardness. Words after all are words. The men of later times can but receive what lies behind the words, with such ideas as they possess. But within the words there were often rich contents of inner life. They pointed to a life of soul such as I have now described.

These, then, are the two streams, and they have remained active, fundamentally speaking, to this day. The one—albeit now only working from the spiritual world, yet all the stronger there,—-would fain impress it upon man that a universal life of thoughts surrounds the earth, and that in thoughts man breathes-in soul and spirit. The other stream desires above all to point out that man should make himself independent of such universality. The former stream is more like a vague intangible presence in the spiritual environment of the earth, perceptible today to many men (for there are still such men) when in peculiar nights they lie there on their beds and listen to the void, and out of the void all manner of doubts are born in them as to what they are asserting today so definitely and so surely in their own individuality.

Meanwhile in other folk, who always sleep soundly because they are so well satisfied with themselves, we have the unswerving emphasis on the individual principle.

This battle, after all, is smouldering still at the very foundations of European culture. It is there to this day; and in the things that are taking place outwardly at the surface of our life, we have after all scarcely anything else than the beating of the surface-waves from that which is still present in the depths of souls,—a relic of the deeper and intenser inner life of yonder time.

Many souls of that time are here again in present earthly life. In a certain way they have conquered what then disquieted them so much in their surface consciousness—disquieted them at least in certain moments of their surface consciousness.

But in the depths it smoulders all the more, in many minds and hearts today. Spiritual science, once again, is here to draw attention also to such historic facts as these.

But we must not forget the following. In the same measure in which men become unconscious, during earthly life, of what is there none the less, namely the thoughts in the ether in the immediate environment of the earth—in the same measure, therefore, in which they acquire the ‘I think’ as their own possession—their human soul is narrowed down. Man passes through the gate of death with a contracted soul.

The narrowed soul has carried untrue, imperfect, inconsistent earthly thoughts into the cosmic ether, and these work back again upon the minds of men. Thence there arise such social movements as we see arise today. We must understand these too as to their inner origin. Then we shall recognise that there is no other cure, no other healing for these social ideas, destructive as they often are, than the spreading of the truth about the spiritual life and being.

Call to mind the lectures we have given here, especially the historic ones taking into account the idea of reincarnation and leading to so many definite examples. These lectures will have shown you how things work beneath the surface of external history. You will have seen how that which lives in one historic age is carried over into a later one by men returning into earthly life. But everything spiritual plays its part, between death and a new birth, in moulding what is carried by man from one earth-life into another.

Today it would be good if many souls would attain for themselves that objectivity to which we can address ourselves, awakening an inner understanding, when we describe the men who lived in the twilight of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul age.

Some of the men who lived at that time are here again today. Deep in their souls they underwent the evening twilight of an age, and through the constant attacks they suffered from the spectres of which I have now spoken, they have, after all, absorbed deep doubts as to the unique validity of what is intellectualistic.

This doubt can well be understood. For about the 13th century there were many men—men of knowledge, who stood in the midst of the life of learning, almost entirely theological as it then was—men for whom it was a deep conscience question: What will now become?

Such souls had often carried with them into that time mighty contents from their former incarnations. They gave it an intellectualistic colouring; but they felt this all as a declining stream. While at the rising stream—pressing forward as it was to individuality—they felt the pangs of conscience. Until at length those philosophers arose who stood under an influence which has really killed all meaning. To speak radically, we will say: those who stood under the influence of Descartes! For many, even among those who had their place in the Scholasticism of an earlier time, had already fallen into the Cartesian way of thought. I do not say that they became philosophers. These things underwent many a change. When men begin to think along these lines the strangest nonsense becomes self-understood. To Descartes, as you know, is due the saying ‘I think, therefore I am.’

Countless clever thinkers have accepted this as true: ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Yet the result is this: From morning until evening I think, therefore I am. Then I fall asleep. I do not think, therefore I am not. I wake up again, I think, therefore I am. I fall asleep, and as I now do not think, I am not. This then is the consequence: A man not only falls asleep, but ceases to be when he falls asleep. There is no less fitting proof of the existence of the spirit of man than the theorem: ‘I think.’ Yet this began to be the most widely accepted statement in the age of evolution of Consciousness (the age of the Spiritual Soul). When we point to such things today, it is like a sacrilege—we cannot help ourselves!

But over against all this, I would now tell you of a kind of conversation. Though it is not historically recorded, by spiritual research it can be discovered among the real facts that happened. It was a conversation that took place between an older and a younger Dominican, somewhat as follows:—

The younger man said, ‘Thinking takes hold of men. Thought, the shadow of reality, takes hold of them. In ancient times, thought was always the last revelation of the living Spirit from above. But now, thought is the very thing that has forgotten that living Spirit. Now it is experienced as a mere shadow. Verily, when a man sees a shadow, he knows the shadow points to some reality. The realities are there indeed. Thinking itself is not to be attacked, but only the fact that we have lost the living Spirit from our thinking.’

The older man replied, ‘In Thinking, through the very fact that man is turning his attention with loving interest to outer Nature, (while he accepts Revelation as Revelation and does not seek to approach it with his thinking),—in Thinking, to compensate for the former heavenly reality, an earthly reality must be found once more.’

‘What will happen?’ said the younger man. ‘Will European humanity be strong enough to find this earthly reality of thought, or will it only be weak enough to lose the heavenly reality?’

This dialogue truly contains all that can still hold good with regard to European civilisation. For after the intermediate time, with the darkening of the living quality of thought, mankind must now attain the living thought once more. Otherwise humanity will remain weak, and with the reality of thought will lose its own reality. Therefore it is most necessary, since the entry of our Christmas impulse, that we in the Anthroposophical Movement speak without reserve in forms of living thought. For otherwise it will come about, more and more, that even the things we know from this source or from that—as for instance, that man has a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body,—will only be taken hold of with the forms of dead thinking.

These things must not be taken hold of with the forms of dead thinking. For then they become distorted, misrepresented truth, and not the truth itself.

So much I wanted to describe today. We must attain a living, sympathetic interest, a longing to go beyond the ordinary history and to attain that history which must and can be read in the living Spirit, which history shall more and more be cultivated in the Anthroposophical Movement. Today, my dear friends, I wished to place before your souls, as it were, the concrete outline of our programme in this direction.

Much has been said today in aphorism. The inner connection will dawn upon you if you attempt, not so much to follow up with intellect, but to feel with your whole being, what was desired to be said today. You must attempt to feel it knowingly, to know it feelingly, in order that not only what is said but what is heard within our circles may be sustained more and more by real spirituality.

We need education to spiritual hearing, spiritual listening. Only then shall we develop the true spirituality among us. I wanted to awaken this feeling in you today; not so much to hold a systematic lecture, but to speak to your hearts, albeit calling to witness, as I did so, many a concrete spiritual fact.

Today I shall have to say some more of how the karmic forces of preparation undergo their further course of evolution when man has passed through the gate of death. So far as the ordinary consciousness is concerned, the forming of karma, and indeed that whole intercourse with the world which we call ‘karmic,’ takes place in the human being in a more instinctive way. We see the animals act ‘instinctively.’ Words like ‘instinct,’ which are used so frequently in science and every-day life, are generally applied in a vague and undefined way. People make no real effort to associate them with clear conceptions. What is it that we call instinct in the animals? We know that the animals have a Group-soul. The animal, such as it is, is not a self-contained being. The Group-soul is standing there behind it. Now to what world does the Group-soul belong? We must first answer this question: Where do we find the Group-souls of the animals? They are certainly not to be found here in the physical world of sense. Here we have only the single individual animals. We do not find the Group-souls of the animals until, by Initiation or in the ordinary course of human evolution between death and a new birth, we come into that altogether different world which man passes through between his successive earthly lives. There indeed we find, among the beings with whom we are then together, including above all those of whom I have been speaking to you, those with whom we elaborate our karma,—there we find the Group-souls of the animals. And the animals that are here on the earth, when they act instinctively, they act out of the full consciousness of the Group-souls.

You may conceive it thus, my dear friends. (Dr. Steiner here made a drawing on the blackboard). Here we have the realm in which we live between death and a new birth; and out of it there work the forces which proceed from the Group-souls of the animals. And here upon this earth we have the single animals which act and move about, guided as it were by threads which pass to the Group-souls—the beings whom we ourselves discover in the realm between death and a new birth. Such in truth is instinct.

It is obvious that a materialistic world-conception cannot explain instinct, for instinct is:—to act out of that sphere of being which you will find described as Spirit-land in my Theosophy for example, and in my Occult Science.

For man however it is different. Man too has instinct, but when he acts through his instinct, he is not acting out of yonder Spirit-realm, but out of his own former lives on earth. He is acting across time, out of his former earthly lives, out of a whole number of former lives on earth.

As the spiritual realm works upon the animals, causing them to act instinctively, so do the former incarnations of man work on his later incarnations in such a way that he instinctively lives out his karma. But this is a spiritual instinct—an instinct that works within the Ego.

It is just by understanding this, that we shall come to understand the absolute consistency of this instinctive working with human freedom. For the freedom of man proceeds from the very realm out of which the animals act instinctively, namely the realm of the spirit.

Today we will concern ourselves especially with the way in which this instinct is gradually prepared when man passes through the gate of death. Here in earthly life, as we have seen, the inner experience of karma is instinctive. It takes its course beneath the surface of consciousness; but the moment we pass through the gate of death we become objectively conscious, during the first few days, of all the experiences which we first underwent on earth. We have them before us in ever expanding pictures; and what we thus behold as a great tableau of our life contains, in addition, all that took place instinctively in the working of our karma.

When man passes through the gate of death, and his life, expanding ever more and more, is unfolded before his eyes, there goes with it all that was instinctive, of which he was not conscious in his life—the web of karma. He does not actually see it in the first days after death. But what he would otherwise perceive only in pale images of memory, this he now beholds vividly as a living configuration, nor does he fail to perceive that something more is contained in it than ordinary memory. And if we look with the vision of Initiation on all that the human being has before him at this stage, we can describe it as follows:

The man himself, who has passed through the gate of death having possessed the ordinary consciousness during his earthly life, sees his life spread out before him as a mighty panorama. But he sees it only ‘from in front.’ The vision of Initiation sees it also from the other side—‘from behind,’ as it were. The human being himself sees it only from the one side. With the vision of the Initiate we can see it ‘from behind,’ and then the whole web of karmic relationships springs forth from it. We behold this web of karmic relationships arising to begin with from the Thoughts, that lived within the Will during the man's earthly life. But immediately something else enters into it, my dear friends.

I have often emphasised the fact:—The thoughts we experience consciously during our earthly life are dead thoughts. But the thoughts that are woven into our karma, the thoughts that now emerge, are living. Thus—on the ‘other side,’ as it were, of the panorama of our life—the living thoughts spring forth. And now, (this is a fact of untold significance)—now the Beings of the Third Hierarchy draw near, and receive what is springing forth from the ‘other side’ of the panorama. Angels, Archangels and Archai draw it into themselves, they breathe it in!

This takes place during the time when man ascends on his way upward, after death, to the end of the Moon Sphere. Thereafter he enters the Moon Sphere, and his backward journey through his life begins, lasting—as we know—a third of the time he spent on earth, or—to speak more accurately—lasting for the same length of time as the periods of sleep which he spent while he was on the earth.

I have often described how this backward journey through life takes place. We may now ask ourselves: What is man's condition in ordinary sleep, in relation to the condition in which he finds himself directly after death? Normally when he goes to sleep, man as a being of soul and spirit is only in his astral body and his Ego. He has not his etheric body with him, for this has remained behind in the bed. Hence his thoughts remain unliving; they have no active power, they are mere pictures. But when he passes through the gate of death, to begin with he takes his etheric body with him, and the etheric body begins to expand. Now the etheric body has a life-giving quality, not only for the physical existence, but for the thoughts themselves. By this means the thoughts can become alive, inasmuch as man has taken his etheric body with him. The etheric body, as it frees itself, carries forth the living thoughts from man to the Angels, Archangels and Archai, who in their Divine Grace receive the thoughts.

This, if I may so describe it, is the first Act that is unfolded in the life between death and a new birth. Beyond the threshold of death, the Beings of the Third Hierarchy approach that which loosens itself from the human being—which is entrusted to his etheric body as it dissolves away. The Beings of the Third Hierarchy receive it into Their care. And we as human beings on the earth utter a simple and good, a wonderful and beautiful prayer, when we think of the connection of life and death, or of one who has passed through the gate of death, in this way, saying:—

Angels, Archangels and Archai in the Ether-weaving
receive the human being's Web of Destiny.

For as we say these words we turn our eyes to a real spiritual fact. Much depends upon it, whether human beings on the earth think the spiritual facts or not: whether they merely accompany the Dead with thoughts that remain behind on the earth, or accompany them on their further path with thoughts which are a true image of what takes place in yonder realm which they have entered.

This, my dear friends, appears so infinitely desirable to Initiate Science:—That thoughts shall be within the earthly life, which are a true image of real spiritual happenings. By merely thinking in theories—enumerating so many higher members of the human being, and the like,—we achieve no union with the spiritual world. We can only do so by thinking the realities that are enacted there.

Therefore, human hearts should be ready to hear once more, what human hearts did hear in the old ages of Initiation, in the ancient Mysteries, when they called out impressively, again and again, to those who were about to be initiated:—‘Accompany the Dead in their further Destinies!’ ‘Memento mori’ is all that is left of it now, a more or less abstract exhortation which no longer affects the human being deeply. For it no longer expands his consciousness into a life more living than this life in the world of the senses.

Now the reception of the human web of destiny by Angels, Archangels and Archai, unfolds before us in this wise:—we have the impression: it lives and moves and has its being in the bluish-violet ethereal atmosphere. It is a living and weaving in the bluish-violet atmosphere of the ether.

When the etheric body is dissolved, that is, when the thoughts have been breathed-in by the Angels, Archangels and Archai, then, after a few days, man enters into that backward course of life which I have described to you. There he experiences his deeds, his impulses of will, his tendencies of thought, in the way in which they worked on other men, to whom he did either good or evil. He enters right into the minds and feelings of other men. He does not live in his own mind. With the clear consciousness that it is his concern, he undergoes all that took place in the depths of other human beings' souls, with whom he entered into any kind of karmic relationship,—to whom he did anything whatever good or ill. And once again it shows itself, how that which the human being thus experiences is received. He experiences it in fullness of reality—a reality, which I had to describe not long ago as a reality more real than that of the senses between birth and death. He experiences a reality in the midst of which he stands more fully, more glowingly than in any reality of this earthly life down here.

But if we look at it once more with the vision and insight of Initiation from the ‘other side,’ we see all this, which the human being experiences, received into the essence, into the reality and being of the Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai. They draw into themselves, as it were, the ‘Negative’ of the human deeds. This wondrous process unfolds before the vision of the Initiate. The consequences of man's actions, transformed in righteousness and justice, are taken up into the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes.

Now the vision of all this transplants him who has it into such a consciousness that he knows himself to be in the centre of the Sun and with it of the whole Planetary system. From the aspect of the Sun he beholds what is now taking place. He sees a lilac-coloured living and weaving; he sees the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes absorbing the human deeds, transformed into righteousness, in the living and weaving of a pale violet, lilac-coloured astral atmosphere.

Here, you see, we have the truth:—the aspect of the Sun as it appears to earthly man is only the one side, it is seen here from the periphery. From the centre the Sun is seen as the field of action for the living spiritual deeds of Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes. There it is all spiritual action, spiritual happening. There we find as it were the ‘other side’ of the pictures of that earthly life which we experienced consciously here between birth and death.

Once again we can think truly of what is happening there. We must think of the word ‘verwesen’ which is ordinarily used for the fading, dying, destroying process, the passing out of existence,—in its true and original meaning, which is: ‘to carry the real Being away.’ (As when we say ‘to forgive’ or ‘to forego,’ which means in reality a ‘giving away’ in devotion).

Thinking thus we may say:

In Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes, in the astral
feeling of the Cosmos the righteous consequences of
the earthly life of man die into the realm of Being.

At length, this too has been accomplished. Man after death has lived through a third of the time of his earthly life. Journeying backward, he feels himself once more at the starting point of his earthly life—in the spaces of the Spirit—at the moment before his entry into his past earthly life. And now, we may say, he enters through the centre of the Sun into the essential Spirit-land, and in the Spirit-land his earthly deeds—transformed into the Divine Righteousness—are received into the activity of the first Hierarchy. They come into the domain of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Man feels, as he steps out into this new kingdom:—‘All that took place through me on earth is now being received by Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, into their own active Being.’

Consider well what this means, my dear friends. We are thinking truly of what happens to the Dead in his further life after death, if we cherish the thought: The web of destiny which he wove here on earth, is caught up, to begin with, by the Angels, Archangels and Archai. In the next part of the life between death and new birth, They bear it into the kingdom of Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes. These in turn are gathered in and woven around by the Beings of the first Hierarchy. And in the process, ever and again, man's action upon earth is received into the Being—into the Deeds of Being, into the living Action—of Thrones and Cherubim and Seraphim.

Once again we are thinking rightly if to the first and the second saying we now add the third, which is as follows:—

In Thrones and Cherubim and Seraphim, as their
Deeds of Being, the justly transmuted ‘fruits of the
earthly life’ of man are resurrected.

Thus we can turn the gaze of Initiation upon what is going on perpetually in the spiritual world. Here on earth we have the unfolding life and action of men with their instinct of karma, their ceaseless weaving of destiny—a weaving more or less similar to the weaving of thought. Looking up into the spiritual worlds, we see there what were once the earthly deeds of man—having passed through Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes—received by the Thrones and Cherubim and Seraphim, expanding as their heavenly Deeds above.

1. Es empfangen Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai im Aetherweben das Schicksalsnetz des betreffenden Menschen.

   Angels, Archangels and Archai in the Ether-weaving receive his Web of Destiny.

2. Es verwesen in Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes—im Astralempfinden des Kosmos—die gerechten Folgen des Erdenlebens des Menschen.

   In Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, in the astral feeling of the Cosmos, the righteous consequences of his earthly life die into the realm of Being.

3. Es auferstehen in Thronen, Cherubim, Seraphim—als deren Tatenwesen—die gerechten Ausgestaltungen des Erdenlebens des Menschen.

   In Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim, as their Deeds of Being, the justly transmuted fruits of his earthly life are resurrected.

This is a succession of spiritual facts infinitely sublime and significant especially for our present age. For the dominion of Michael has now begun, and in this world-historic moment it is as though we could behold the deeds of those who lived upon earth before the end of Kali-Yuga, in the 1880's and 90's. That which was then enacted among men on earth, has now been received by Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. Yet never was the spiritual contrast-of-light so great as it is to-day, in the realm of these spiritual facts.

In the 1880's one could look upward and see how the people of the Revolution period of the middle of the 19th century, were received as to their deeds by Thrones and Cherubim and Seraphim. But as one looked, a kind of darkling cloud settled over the middle of the 19th century. What one then saw passing into the realm of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, lighted up only a very little.

But today, when we look back to all that took place at the end of the 19th century—the deeds of men, their relations to one another,—having seen it clearly still, only a short time ago, it vanishes away ... We saw it clearly still, a moment since,—all that took place in that declining age of Kali-Yuga,—like thought-masses wafted away before our eyes ... We saw what was worked out in destiny among the human beings of the end of Kali-Yuga. And then it vanishes, and we behold in clear, radiant light what became of it as it passed heavenward.

This fact bears witness to the immense importance of what is taking place at the present time in the transmutation of the earthly deeds of men into the heavenly deeds of souls.

What man experiences as his destiny or karma takes place for him, within him and about him, from earthly life to earthly life. But in the heavenly worlds the consequences of what he did and experienced on earth go working on—and they work on even into the historic shaping of this earthly life. For there are many things which are not grasped or controlled by the individual human being here upon earth.

My dear friends, you must take this statement in its full weight and importance. The individual man experiences his destiny. But as soon as two human beings are working together, something more arises,—more than the working out of the individual destinies of the one and of the other. Something takes place as between the two, transcending the individual experiences of either. Ordinary consciousness perceives no connection of what happens between man and man, with what goes on in the spiritual worlds above. For ordinary consciousness the connection is at most established when sacred spiritual actions are brought into this physical world of sense,—as when in sacred cult or ritual men consciously transform their physical actions so as to make them actions of the spiritual world at the same time.

But in a far wider sphere, all that happens between man and man is more than what the individual man experiences as his destiny. All that is not merely the destiny of individual men, but that is brought about by the feeling-together and working-together of men on earth, is for ever in connection with the deeds of Seraphim and Cherubim and Thrones above. Into the latter there flow the deeds of men in their mutual connection with one another, as well as the individual earthly lives of men.

Most important at this point is the wider range of vision that opens out for the Initiate. For today as we look upward we behold the heavenly deeds and consequences of what took place on earth in the late 70's, the 80's and 90's of last century. And it is as though a fine spiritual rain were falling, falling to the earth, moistening the souls of men, impelling them to many things that arise historically in our time, in the relations between man and man.

Once more we can see, how there lives again today in living mirror-images of thought—through Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones—what was enacted here on earth by men of the 1870's, 80's and 90's.

When one sees through these things, again and again one must say to oneself:—Here you are speaking to a human being of today. What he says to you out of the commonly accepted opinion—not from his own emotions or inner impulses but simply as a person of this age—seems often as though it stood in connection with human beings who lived in the 70's, 80's and 90's of last century. It is so really. We see many a human being of today as though he were in a meeting of departed spirits, surrounded by human beings who are busily at work upon him. But in reality they are only the after-images, rained down from heaven, of what lived through human beings upon earth in the last third of the 19th century.

Thus in a spiritual sense the shades—the real ghosts, I would say,—of a former age are roaming about in a later age. This is one of the more intimate workings of karma which are indeed widely present in the world, though they frequently remain unnoticed even by the most occult of occultists. To many a man of today, when he utters some opinion not individual but stereotyped, one would fain whisper in his ear: ‘That was said to you by this man or that, of the last third of the 19th century.’

Only so does life become a real totality. And in this respect once more we must say of the present age—the age that began with the end of the Kali-Yuga—that it is different from all historic ages preceding it. It is different in this sense, that in very truth the human deeds on earth in the last third of the 19th century have the greatest imaginable influence on the first third of the 20th.

My dear friends, I am saying something far removed from any superstitious use of words. I say it with the full consciousness of voicing an exact and scientific fact:—Never before did the ghosts of the preceding age move about among men so palpably as they do in this present time. And if men fail to perceive them, it is not because we are living in an age of darkness. Rather is it that they are still dazzled by the light of the new Age of Light. But as a consequence, what is done among us by the shades of the past century is an all the more fruitful field for the people of Ahriman. Though man is unaware of it, the people of Ahriman are working today in a more than usually evil way. They are at pains—if I may so describe it—to galvanize into Ahrimanic life as many as possible of these ghosts of the past century and bring them to bear upon the human beings of today. This Ahrimanic quality of our age is fostered most of all when societies are formed to popularise erroneous ideas of the 19th century—Ideas which, for all men of insight, are out of date and discarded. There never was a time when amateurish persons popularised the outlived errors of the past to the extent they do today. Indeed we have opportunities on all hands today, to acquaint ourselves with the essential nature of the deeds of Ahriman. We need only visit many a meeting where people are working out of the ordinary consciousness. We have many an opportunity to learn to know the Ahrimanism in the world today, for it is at work most strongly. By the very path which I have now described, it hinders people from receiving into their hearts and souls what must come forth anew, what was not there before,—what is coming to the light of day in Anthroposophy.

How happy men are when they can somehow contrive to cover up the New, that is coming forth in Anthroposophy today, with some old saying. How contented they are, if in some lecture that I give something occurs of which they can subsequently prove: ‘Look, here it is in an old book!’ In reality, of course, it is there in quite a different form, coming out of altogether different foundations of consciousness. The people of today have so little courage to receive what grows on the soil of the living present. Their minds are set at rest as soon as they can bring something forward out of the past.

It shows, my dear friends, how powerfully the impulses of the past work upon the men of the present time,—how contented they feel under these influences. It is due to the fact that the 19th century is working still so strongly into the 20th. Future historians—who will write their descriptions spiritually, as we write ours today by reference to outer documents,—future historians will have to describe this feature above all, and they may well express it in some such words as these:—‘Look at the first three decades of the 20th century. Nearly everything appears as though it were being done by the shades, the images of deeds of men of the end of the 19th century.’

At this point I may perhaps say a word that is truly not intended in any political sense. Politics must be eliminated altogether from our Society. May I say this word, my dear friends, simply as a characterisation of the facts:—We can look back on the stupendous, revolutionising actions—or rather, happenings, I should have said, for they were not really active deeds,—which took place notably in the second decade of the 20th century. It has been said so often that it has become a truism. Since time has been, since men have written history, such world-shaking events have not happened. But are not men standing in the midst of them as though they were not there at all? We see it everywhere,—it is as though the revolutionising events were taking place outside the human beings, and the latter had no part in them at all. Almost every man we meet today, we would fain ask of him: ‘Did you really live through the second decade of this century?’ And how much more do we feel it when we look at it from a somewhat different point of view! How helpless, how infinitely helpless do the human beings seem today—helpless in judgment, helpless in action. Never were there such difficulties as there are today in filling the ministerial benches—the Cabinets! Consider only how curious this is,—how helpless men are in the midst of the events. At long last we are impelled to raise the question, who then is doing anything? Who is playing an active part? My dear friends, more than any of the men of the present time, it is the men of the last third of the 19th century! Their shadow-forces are to be seen at work in everything.

This is the very secret of our time. Never were the Dead so powerful as are the Dead of the last third of the 19th century. This too is a world-aspect of realities.

When we enter into the spiritual content of these things in a single instance, we often come to strange conclusions. I recently had to consider whether I would alter this or that in the new edition of my books, written in the 70's, 80's and 90's of last century. The pedants of today declare: Everything has altered, the scientific theories and hypotheses of that time are out-of-date and long ago discarded. But when we look at it from a standpoint of reality, we can alter nothing at all! For in reality, behind everyone who writes a book today, or lectures from a professional chair, there stands the shade, the shadow-picture of another. There they still are,—the Du Bois Reymonds, the Helmholtzes, the Haeckels,—all those who were the spokesmen of that time, (in medicine the Obholzers, the Billroths and the rest)—they are still speaking.

Here we are lifting a corner of the veil, a secret of the present time. Initiate Science says in all truth: ‘Never were the Dead so mighty as in our age!’

This is what I wish to insert today in the course of our studies on karma.