The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When we consider the mode of action of karma, we must consider how the human ego, which is the actual essence, the innermost being of man, has three tools, so to speak, through which it lives in the world: the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body. The human being actually carries the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body. He is not one of these bodies, for he is the ego in the true sense of the word. And it is also the ego that suffers karma and forms karma.

Now, however, it is a matter of considering the relationship of the human being as the I-being to these three, I would like to say, tool-like formations, to the physical, the etheric and the astral body, in order to obtain the foundations for the nature of karma from them. And with reference to karma, one will gain a point of view for the consideration of the physical, the etheric and the astral in man if one takes the following into account.

The physical, as we see it in the mineral kingdom, the etheric, as we find it effective in the vegetable kingdom, the astral, as we also find it effective in the animal kingdom, we find all of this in the human being's environment on earth. We have in the cosmos around the earth, I would like to say, that universe towards which the earth continues in all directions. We already sense a certain relationship between what happens on earth and what happens in the cosmos. But the question arises for spiritual science: Is this relationship, I would like to say, as trivial as it is presented by today's scientific world view?

Today's scientific worldview examines what lives and does not live on earth according to its physical properties. It then examines the stars, the sun, the moon and so on, and it finds - and is particularly proud of having found this - that these worldly bodies are actually basically the same as the earth.

However, one only arrives at this view through a realization that nowhere grasps man himself, that actually only grasps the extra-human. At the moment when one really grasps man as standing within the universe, at that moment one can find the relationships between the individual human tool-like members, the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the corresponding entities, the corresponding beings in the cosmos.

Now we find the world ether everywhere for the etheric body of man outside in the cosmos. Certainly, the etheric body of the human being has a certain human form, it has within itself certain forms of movement and so on, which are different from the world ether. But it is still the case that the world ether is similar to what is found in the human etheric body. In the same way we can speak of a similarity between that which is found in the human astral body and a certain astral that works outside in the cosmos through all things and all beings. This brings us to something extraordinarily important, something that is actually quite alien in its essence to modern man.

Let us start from a schematic idea: We imagine the human being on earth with his etheric body (see drawing, center), then in the circumference of the earth the world ether (yellow), which is of the same kind as the human ether. Now we also have the astral body in the human being (dark hatching within the yellow). There is also astrality in the cosmic sphere, but where is it to be found? Where is it? It can already be found, but you have to find out what in the cosmos reveals the astrality, what it reveals: Somewhere, one must say, there is astrality. But is the astrality in the cosmos completely invisible, completely imperceptible, or is it somehow perceptible? Of course, in itself the ether is also initially imperceptible to the physical senses. If you, if I may put it this way, look at a small piece of ether, you see nothing with the physical senses, you simply see through it; it is the ether like nothing. But if you look at the entire circumference of the ether, the reason why you see the blue sky, which is actually not there, is that you perceive the end of the ether. So you perceive the ether as the blue of the sky. The perception of the blueness of the sky is correctly the perception of the ether. So that we can already say: By perceiving the blueness of the sky (see drawing, blue), we perceive the ether around us.

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We first see through the ether. It puts up with this at first, but it makes itself perceptible in the blueness of the sky. The existence of the blueness of the sky is therefore expressed in the right way for the perception of man when one says: The ether is indeed not perceptible, but it rises to perceptibility because of the great majesty with which it presents itself in the universe by making itself known, revealed in the blueness of the sky.

In physical science one thinks materialistically about the blueness of the sky. Now it is difficult for physical science to think about the heavenly blue in a rational way, simply because physical science must be clear: There is nothing of the physical where the blueness of the sky is. But at any rate, the mind is stretched to explain how rays of light are refracted and reflected in a particular way in order to produce this blueness of the sky. But this is where the supernatural begins. And in the cosmos it is so that the supersensible already becomes perceptible, only one has to find out where it becomes perceptible.

So the ether becomes perceptible through the blueness of the sky. Now somewhere is the astral of the cosmos. The ether peers into sensuality through the blueness of the sky. Where does the astral of the cosmos peer into visibility, into perceptibility?

You see, in reality every star that we see shining in the sky is a gateway for the astral, so that wherever stars shine in, the astral shines in. So if you see the starry sky in its diversity - with the stars clustered in groups, there more scattered, placed apart - then you must say to yourself: In this marvelous luminous configuration the invisible, the supersensible astral body of the cosmos makes itself visible. That is why you must not look at the starry world in an unspiritual way. Looking up into the starry world and talking about burning gas worlds is - forgive the paradoxical comparison, but it is absolutely spot on - just like when someone strokes you out of love and holds your fingers a little apart while stroking you, and you say: What you feel when you are stroked are little ribbons that are placed over your cheek. Just as little ribbons are not placed over your cheek when you stroke it, neither are those entities up there of which physics speaks; but the astral body of the universe, which continually exerts its influences, like the stroking on your cheek, on the ether organization.

Only it is organized for a very strong duration. Therefore, holding a star, which is always an influencing of the world ether on the part of the astral world, lasts longer than stroking. A human being would not endure stroking for so long, but it is just so that it lasts longer in the universe, because in the universe the same gigantic dimensions occur. So that in the starry sky one can see an expression of the soul of the world-astral.

A tremendous, and indeed even spiritual life, really spiritual life, is brought into the cosmos at the same time. Just think how dead the cosmos is when you look into it and see only burning gaseous bodies that glow! Think how alive it all becomes when you know that these stars are the expression of the love with which the astral cosmos affects the etheric cosmos! That is quite a correct expression.

But now think of the mysterious processes of the lighting up of certain stars at certain times, which can only be explained by physical things and where nothing can actually be understood. Stars that were not yet there, they light up, they disappear again. So even short strokes are present in the universe. In epochs in which, I would like to say, the gods want to work in from the astral world into the etheric world, one sees such stars lighting up and immediately dimming again.

So we have in ourselves through our astral body well-being in the most varied manner; so we have in the cosmos through the astral body the configuration of the starry heavens. No wonder, therefore, that an old instinctively clairvoyant science called this third human member the astral body, for it is of the same nature as that which manifests itself in the stars. It is only the ego that we do not find revealing itself in this sphere. Why? Well, we find out why this is so when we look at the fact that the ego of man, as it manifests itself on earth - that is, in the cosmos, which is actually a tripartite world, a physical, an etheric and an astral world - is always a repetition of earlier earthly lives. And it is always present in life between death and a new birth.

But if one observes it, the etheric world, which we have in the orbit of the earthly, has no meaning for this ego; the etheric body is discarded soon after death. Only the astral world, which looks in through the stars, has meaning for the ego in the life between death and new birth. And in this world that shines in through the stars, in this world then live the beings of the higher hierarchies with whom the human being forms his karma between death and a new birth.

But if we look at this ego in its successive development through life between birth and death and between death and a new birth, we cannot remain in space. Two successive lives on earth cannot be in the same space, and therefore also not in the universe, which is dependent on simultaneity, on spatiality. We come out of space and into time. And indeed, one comes out of space, one comes into the pure flow of time, if one considers the ego in the successive earth lives.

But now think: Time is of course also present in space; but one has no means at all to experience time as such within space. You have no means. You must always experience time through space and its processes. If you want to experience time, you look at the clock, for example, or, for my sake, look at the course of the sun, for the clock is only an earthly image of the course of the sun. But what do you see there? You see positions of the hands or places of the sun: spatial things. You have an idea of time because the positions of the hands or the sun change, i.e. because the three-dimensional is changing in front of you. But there is actually nothing of time in space. There are only different spatial arrangements, different positions of the hands, different locations of the sun. You only experience time in your spiritual experience. But there you really experience time, and that is where you emerge from space. Time is a reality there. Time is not a reality within the earth.

So what do you have to experience if you want to step out of the space in which you live between birth and death into the spacelessness in which you live between 'death and a new birth, what do you have to experience? Yes, my dear friends, you have to die! And if you only take in all sharpness, if you take in all depth this, that one experiences time on earth only through space, through spatial places, through positions of spatial things, that one does not experience time on earth at all in its reality, then you will basically find another word for something that is there, if you say: In order to enter time as reality, one must get out of space, get rid of everything spatial - and that means: die!

Now we have to turn our gaze towards this cosmic world that surrounds us in the orbit of the earthly, with which we are similar through our etheric body, with which we are similar through our astral body, and we look at the spiritual of this cosmic world. There have been peoples, groups of people, who have only looked at the spiritual of this spatial-cosmic world. Then they lost the possibility of having thoughts about the repeated lives on earth. For only those people and groups of people who could imagine time in its purity, in its spacelessness, had thoughts about repeated earthly lives. And if we separate out that which we have as the earthly world and its surroundings, in short, as our cosmos, as our universe, and see the spiritual side of it, then we have approximately that of which we can say: It must be there so that we can enter into our existence as earthly human beings. It must be there.

Yes, in this idea: All that which I have now characterized must be there so that we as earthly men can enter into earthly existence - lies a tremendous amount. There is a tremendous amount in it, especially when we imagine the spiritual of all that is characterized in this way. And if we imagine this spiritual in this, I would like to say, self-containedness, in this purity within itself, then we have approximately what those peoples who have limited themselves to the perception of space have called God.

These peoples at least felt in their wisdom teachings that the cosmos is permeated and interwoven by a divine, and that what is on earth itself in our surroundings in the physical world can be distinguished from this divine. Then that which reveals itself as the etheric can be distinguished in this cosmic, divine, spiritual that looks at us in the blueness of the sky; furthermore, the astral can be distinguished in this divine that looks at us through the configuration of the starry sky.

Let us put ourselves in the situation that we, standing on earth as human beings in the universe, say to ourselves: We human beings have the physical body - where is the physical in the universe? This brings me back to what I have already indicated. Physical science wants to find everything in the universe that is also on earth. But the actual physical organization is not in the universe. Man begins with the physical organization, then has the etheric, then the astral; the universe begins immediately with the etheric organization. The physical is nowhere out there. The physical is only on earth, and it is simply fanciful to speak of the physical in the universe. In the universe is the etheric, and then the astral. What it still has as the third will still come before our souls today. But the threefold structure of the extraterrestrial cosmos is different from the threefold structure of the cosmos to which we add the earth.

But when we stand on earth with such a feeling, when we feel the physical of our immediate earthly dwelling place, feel the etheric that is on earth and in the universe, and works together from earth and from the universe as etheric, when we look at the astral, which shines down to earth through the stars, shines down most intensely from the solar star, when we look at all this and place the majesty of this world-thought before our souls, then we find it well justified that in those times when not only abstractions were thought out of a more instinctive clairvoyance, but the majesty of conceptions could be felt, was made comprehensible to men: Such a majestic thought in its fullness, one cannot think it all the time; one must once grasp it in the eye, let it work upon the soul in all its immense glory, and then let it work within the human being - without spoiling, corrupting it through consciousness. And if we reflect on how the old instinctive clairvoyance made such an attitude come true, then what remains for us in the present time of all that has flowed together to make this thought come true within humanity is the institution of Christmas.

When man imagines himself on Christmas night as he stands on earth with his physical, with his etheric, with his astral body, related to the three-part cosmos, which appears to him in his etheric in the blueness of the sky so majestically, but also so magically-magically in the night, as he stands opposite the astral of the universe in the shining stars: then he feels in this holiness of the surroundings in connection with what is in the earthly, how he is transferred into the spatiality with his actual I-being. And then he may behold the Christmas Mystery, the born child, the representative of humanity on earth, who, insofar as he begins his childhood, is born into this space. And he says, when he sees the Christmas thought in its fullness and in this majesty in the sight of the child born at Christmas: Ex deo nascimur. - I was born of the divine, the divine that weaves and interweaves through space.

But then, when man has felt this, when he has penetrated himself inwardly with it, then he can remember that which has come to him as truth about the meaning of the earth through anthroposophy. This child, to whom we look, is the outer envelope of that which is born into space. And from what is it born in order to be born into space? According to our explanations today, this can only be time. It is born out of time.

And if we then follow the life of this child, its spiritualization with the Christ-being, then we come to the conclusion that this being, this Christ-being, comes from the sun. And now we look up at the sun and say to ourselves: by looking up at the sun, we must see in the sunshine the time that is hidden for the spatial. Time is inside the sun. And out of this time weaving within the sun, the Christ has come into space on earth. And what do we now have in the Christ on earth? In the Christ on earth we have that which connects with the earth from outside space, that which comes from outside.

Now just think how the idea of the universe is transformed from the ordinary idea, if we really take all that we have now let stand before our soul! In the universe we have the sun with all that which first appears to us in association with the sun in the universe, in the cosmos, that which is enclosed within the blueness of the sky, the starry world. Somewhere there we also have the earth with humanity. But by looking up from the earth to the sun, we are at the same time looking into the flow of time.

Something very significant follows from this. It follows that man only looks to the sun correctly when he, by looking up to the sun only in the spiritual, for my sake, forgets space and only takes time into consideration. The sun thus radiates not only light, but space itself. And when we look into the sun, we look out of space. That is why the sun is this excellent star, because through it we look out of space. But it is from this outside of space that Christ came to mankind. When Christianity was founded on earth through Christ, man had already been in the mere ex deo nascimur for far too long. He had become akin to him. He had completely lost time. He had become a complete spatial being.

We find it so difficult to understand the old traditions with today's civilized consciousness because they actually reckon everywhere with space and not with time, with time only as an appendage to space.

Then the Christ came and brought the temporal to man again. And by uniting the human heart, the human soul, the human spirit with the Christ, they in turn gain the flow of time from eternity to eternity. What else can we humans do but, when we die, i.e. when we leave the world of space, cling to that which then gives us time again, since at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha humanity had become so strongly a being of space that it had lost time! The Christ has again brought time to mankind.

And if people do not also want to die with their soul when they leave space, then they must die in the Christ. After all, we can be people of space, then we can say: Ex deo nascimur. - Then we can look to the child who penetrates out of time into space in order to unite the Christ with human beings.

But we cannot think of the limits of earthly life, of dying since the Mystery of Golgotha, if we do not want to atone for the loss of time with the loss of Christ, if we do not want to be banished into space and remain as ghosts in space. We must die in Christ. We must penetrate ourselves with the mystery of Golgotha. We must add the In Christo morimur to the Ex deo nascimur. We must add the Easter thought to the Christmas thought.

And so the Ex deo nascimur lets the Christmas thought come before our soul, so the In Christo morimur lets the Easter thought come before our soul.

We can say: On earth man has his physical, his etheric, his astral. The etheric is also outside in the cosmos; the astral is also outside in the cosmos (see drawing page 248, red); the physical is only on earth, there is no physical outside in the cosmos. So we have to say: Earth: physical, etheric, astral; cosmos: the physical is not there, but the etheric and the astral are.

But the cosmos is also divided into three parts. What it does not have at the bottom, it places at the top. In it, the etheric is the lowest; on earth, the physical is the lowest. On earth the astral is the highest; in the cosmos the highest is that which man today has only in rudiments within himself, that from which his spirit self will one day be woven. We can say: In the cosmos the spirit self is the third.

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And now the stars appear to us as the expressions of something. I compare them to caressing; the spirit self that is behind them is the caressing being. The only difference is that the caressing being is not a single entity, but the whole world of hierarchies. If I look at a person's form, if I see his eyes shining towards me, if I hear his voice, that is the person's appearance. If I look up into the vastness of the world, if I look at the stars, then these are the expressions of the hierarchies, the life expressions of the hierarchies that arouse feelings. If I look into the infinity of the blue firmament of the world, I see its etheric body revealing itself to the outside, which is, however, the lowest for this whole hierarchical world.

But then, when we look out into the cosmos and its vastness, we sense something that now goes beyond the earthly, just as the earth with its physical substances and forces goes down below the cosmic. And the earth has a sub-cosmic in the physical, the cosmos has a supernatural in the spirituality.

Physical science speaks of a movement of the sun. It can. For one can see from certain phenomena within the spatial image that surrounds us as the cosmos that the sun is in motion. But it is only the image of the sun's movement projecting into space. And if one speaks of the real sun, then it is simply nonsense to say that the sun moves in space. Because space is radiated by the sun! The sun not only radiates light, the sun also creates space. And the movement of the sun itself is only spatial within space; outside of space it is temporal. That which appears of the sun, that it hastens towards the constellation of Hercules, is only an image of a temporal development of the sun's being.

Yes, Christ told his intimate disciples: Look at the life of the earth. It is related to the life of the cosmos. Insofar as you look at the earth and the surrounding cosmos, it is the Father who lives through this universe. The Father God is the God of space. But I have to announce to you that I have come from the sun, from time, from the time that only receives man when he dies. I have brought you myself out of time. If you receive me, said the Christ, you will receive time and not fall into space. But then you must also find the transition from the one trinity - the physical, etheric, astral - to the other trinity: the etheric, astral up to the spirit self. Spirituality is no more to be found in the earthly than the physical-earthly is to be found in the cosmos. But I bring you the message from him, for I am from the sun.

Yes, the sun has a threefold aspect. If you live within the sun and look from the sun to the earth (see drawing, red), you see the physical, the etheric and the astral. Or if you look at that which is in the sun itself, then you constantly see spirituality. One sees the physical when one remembers the earth or looks towards it. If you look away, you look to the other side at the spirit self. We oscillate back and forth between the physical and the spiritual. Only the etheric and the astral remain stable in between. But if you look out into the universe, the earthly disappears completely. The ethereal, the astral and the spiritual are there. This will be your sight when you come into the solar time between death and a new birth.

Imagine, therefore, that man encapsulates himself completely with his soul constitution in the earth being: he can feel the divine, for he is born out of the divine. Ex deo nascimur.

Imagine that he does not merely encapsulate himself within the world of space, but that he assumes the Christ, who has come from the world of time into the world of space and has brought time itself into the space of the earth. Thus he overcomes death in death. Ex deo nascimur. In Christo morimur.

But the Christ brings the message: Then, when space is overcome and one gets to know the sun as the creator of space, feels oneself in the sun through the Christ, feels oneself placed in the living sun, then the physical-earthly disappears; the ethereal, the astral is there. The etheric comes to life, now not as the blueness of the sky, but as the bright reddish radiance of the cosmos. And it is not the stars that shine down from this bright reddish light, but the stars touch us with their effects of love. And man can feel himself - if he really puts himself into all this - standing on the earth, the physical stripped away, the etheric there, radiating through him and radiating as the light reddish; the stars not shining points, but love radiations like the human caress of love.

But by feeling this, the divine within oneself, the divine world fire as the essence of man flaming out of him, feeling himself in the etheric universe, experiencing the spiritual expressions in the astral world-radiance: then this brings forth in man the inner experience of the spirit-radiance to which man is called in the universe.

When those to whom Christ had proclaimed this had been imbued with this thought for a sufficiently long time, they felt the effect of this thought in the fiery tongues of Pentecost. Then they felt the dying through the falling away and dripping off of the physical of the earth. But then they felt: this is not death, but for the physical of the earth the spirituality of the universe rises: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

So we can look at this threefold division of one half of the year: Christmas thought - Ex deo nascimur; Easter thought - In Christo morimur; Pentecost thought - Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

And that leaves the other half of the year. If we understand them in the same way, the other side of our lives will also open up for us. If one understands the relationship between the physical and the spiritual of man and the supra-physical, which includes the freedom of which the earthly man becomes a part on earth, then one understands the free man on earth in the connections between Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. And if one understands him out of these three thoughts, the Christmas thought, the Easter thought and the Pentecost thought, and allows oneself to be challenged by this to understand the rest of the year, then the other half of human life appears, which I indicated to you by saying: If one looks at human destiny - the hierarchies appear behind it, the work, the weaving of the hierarchies. That is why it is so great to really look into a human destiny, because you can see how all the hierarchies are behind it.

But it is basically the language of the stars that resounds to us from the Christmas, Easter and Pentecost thoughts: from the Christmas thought, insofar as the earth is a star in the universe, from the Easter thought, insofar as the most brilliant star, the sun, gives us its gifts of grace, from the Pentecost thought, in that what is hidden beyond the stars shines into the soul and in turn shines out of the soul in the fiery tongues.

If you meditate on this, if you think about it properly, then you will get a basis of feeling for all the foundations I have described for understanding karma, which I have given you for understanding karma.

Try to let the thoughts of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, applied in the way we have applied them today, have a real effect on human feeling, on human perception. Try it, deepen this feeling of yours. And when we meet again after my journey, which I am now compelled to undertake precisely at Pentecost because of the agricultural course, then bring this feeling, which should live on as the warm, fiery idea of Pentecost, with you, and then we will be able to talk further about karma.

But in this way your understanding will be properly fertilized by what the Pentecostal idea is. Just as something once shone forth from each of the disciples at the first celebration of the Feast of Pentecost, so the idea of Pentecost should actually come alive again for anthroposophical understanding as well.

Something should shine out of your souls. That is why I have given you what I have to say today about the connection between Christmas, Easter and Pentecost as a Pentecostal feeling for the continuation of the karma thoughts that are for the other half of the year.

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