The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Every profound soul must repeatedly ask itself the question about the meaning of life and must always ask itself anew about the mystery of death. Not only when we look up at the starry heavens, at the far reaches of the world, but at every step of everyday life, questions arise about the essential riddles of life. When one person is born under such circumstances that we can already see at his cradle that hopelessness and hardship will accompany him through life, while another is born under the most favorable circumstances and with the most favorable disposition, so that it is known that he is destined for a happy life and will be able to bring many blessings to his fellow human beings, we ask: Why is that so? We ask: How is it that one person seems to be born and grows up in need and misery through no fault of their own, while the other seems to be able to lead a happy existence through no merit of their own?

Man is never able to answer the riddles of life by merely considering them physically. Theosophy seeks the answers in the spiritual realization of the background of existence, which leads beyond the sensual world. Not because idle curiosity plagues people, does Theosophy want to answer their questions about the riddles of life, but because humanity needs that confidence for its healthy existence, which comes from the sources that give us answers to the questions about the riddles of life.

If we want to explore the sources of life in the sense of the theosophical worldview, we must remember the structure of the human being. What the senses see in a person is only a part of the human being, which it shares with so-called mineral beings. Spiritual science shows us how the physical organism is kept alive by a second principle of human existence, the etheric or life body, which is a continuous fighter against the disintegration of the physical body. Furthermore, we have seen from the study of Theosophy how everything that lives in the soul in the way of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, instincts, desires and passions, has a third link in the human being as a carrier – the astral body. While the physical body is shared with all mineral beings, the etheric body is shared with all living beings, but the astral body is shared only with animals. The sum of powers, that which the human being has at the center of his being, he is able to summarize with the words “I am”. The “I am” is proper only to man among all the living beings around him.

From this I, he becomes the master and transformer of his other three limbs. As the I works, it first transforms part of the astral body into the spirit self or manas. By working on itself through powerful impulses, the life body is transformed into the life spirit or budhi. When the ego works down into the physical principle, Atman or the spiritual man develops from it.

The ordinary human being has the four limbs up to the I. Large parts of Manas are also usually already developed. In the course of his development, the human being will achieve the ability to independently develop the seven limbs of his being. Actually, the seven parts are only four limbs, because Manas is the transformed astral body, Budhi is the transformed etheric body, and Atman is the transformed principle of the physical body.

When a person wakes up in the morning until the moment he falls asleep at night, we have the four limbs in front of us: physical body, etheric body, astral body and I.

In the state of sleep and in the state of death, these four members are present in different proportions. The state of sleep is also called the brother of death. When a person falls asleep in the evening, all the things that the astral body carries, such as desire and suffering, joy and pain, sink into an indeterminate darkness. The I also sinks into an indeterminate darkness when a person falls asleep in the evening. For those who view the human being from the standpoint of spiritual science, the state of the sleeping person is as follows: the physical body and the etheric body are lying in bed; the astral body and the ego are lifted out. In today's human beings, the astral being and the ego do not yet have spiritual organs of perception. In order to perceive the world, they still need the organs of the physical and etheric bodies. Otherwise, he cannot perceive consciously. Naively, man does not say, quite correctly, “My eye sees, my ear hears,” but “I see” and “I hear.” The sense organs of the physical body are the instruments of the astral body and the I.

Sleep thus presents itself as that state of man in which the astral body and the inner man, the I, are in a purely spiritual world. Is the astral body inactive during the night? It is not. During the night it is outside the physical and etheric bodies. For those who can explore these things, it can be observed that the astral body works on the physical and etheric bodies of the person throughout the night. Its actual home is where it is at night. There are the forces into which it immerses itself during the night. During the day, it absorbs all kinds of impressions through the external senses: form, color, light and so on. All of this surges back and forth in the astral body.

The astral body is not yet in complete harmony with the physical body; this is what causes fatigue. This has to be removed at night by the astral body immersing itself in the forces of its spiritual home and refreshing itself. Once complete harmony has been established between the astral body and the physical body, a very different state will have been reached. The surging and swaying of the impressions absorbed during the day from the physical environment manifests itself in the evening as fatigue. During the night, the astral body works off the fatigue. We feel the consequences of this work on the physical and etheric bodies early in the morning. We can see the manifestations of what the astral body does during the night in the refreshment we experience in the morning. Even when the physical and etheric bodies are ill, the astral body has a harmonizing effect on the disturbed etheric and physical bodies during sleep.

Physical science may object to some of these things, but spiritual processes at work behind the facts do not contradict the results of scientific research. If, time and again, physical research wants to object to the teachings of spiritual science about spiritual and psychological processes, the following example of a similar assessment can be pointed out. Let us assume: A person gives another a slap in the face. A has observed that the first person had a fit of anger and was therefore tempted to give the other a slap in the face. But B says: “I saw his hand rise and move towards the other person's face, and that's why he slapped him.” The part about the fit of anger is nonsense! This is the verdict of physical research when it insists on the truth of external facts in the face of the results of spiritual research. We only recognize a small part of the world when we only judge and observe external facts. Everything that happens in the world, that physics researches, that external observation shows us, these are only the gestures of the soul life of the world. The situation is quite different for a person in death than in sleep. Then not only the ego dissolves with the astral body, but the etheric body also goes with it and only the physical body remains behind. During life, the etheric body is a constant fighter against the decay of the physical body. But the physical body disintegrates the moment the etheric body leaves it. Immediately after death, the ego, the astral body and the etheric body are together – for a short while. Not all people experience this togetherness right after death; for each person, it lasts as long as that person has been able to exist without sleep.

The experiences that a person has during this time are very strange. They literally feel how they grow out of themselves, become greater. During this time, they see all the events of their past life around them as in a large memory tableau. This moment is extraordinary. Only in exceptional cases does a person experience something similar during their lifetime. It may be that in the event of a strong fright, when he is close to drowning or falling, he experiences a loosening of the etheric body from the physical body to such an extent that the memory of his entire past life then comes to him. However, this is only the case if the ego and the astral body do not lose consciousness. The astral body must remain within the etheric body.

Another example of the etheric body being disconnected from the physical body in places is when a limb, for example a hand, has fallen asleep. Children have a very telling expression for this; they say: “It feels like seltzer water.” The seer knows that at this moment the etheric body is protruding from the physical body at that point. The different blood circulation is only a consequence of the etheric body being partially released. Like the fingers of a glove, we can see the etheric body hanging out of the hand. When someone is hypnotized, you can see how the etheric body protrudes to the left and right, hanging down like rags.

Perhaps some will say that these explanations are nonsense and consider them foolishness. It is very good when we can cite examples from people who might otherwise laugh at theosophy to support our stories about the facts of the spiritual world. Criminal anthropologist Benedikt recounts the following experience: When he was once close to drowning while bathing, he suddenly saw his entire life before him.

We can explain this fact, that after death a person sees their entire previous life in front of them, and the similar experience of a tremendous shock, as follows: the etheric body is, among other things, also the carrier of memory. In ordinary life it is connected with the physical brain. At the moment when the vehicle of memory is freed from the physical brain, but while the astral body is still within the etheric body, the whole of life presents itself to the human soul as a great tableau of memories. Bit by bit it fades away into darkness, and a second corpse remains of the human being. From the etheric or life body, something remains for him like an essence, like an extract of the great memory picture, as if the content of a large book had been summarized in one page. So after death, the essence of earthly life remains for us from this memory tableau; this is incorporated into the astral body on its journey after death.

Now the human being still consists of his ego, the astral body and the imprinted essence of his last life. If we want to know what fate the astral body has after death, we must remember the experiences of ordinary life. Let us see who actually experiences the enjoyment of physical things. That is the astral body, which uses the physical organs only as tools. For example, in the case of a gourmet, it is also the astral body that uses the physical organs only as tools. But it is the astral body that craves the delicious food. Let us imagine ourselves in the astral body after death. It has the same desires and instincts as it had before, but now it lacks the instruments to satisfy them. The astral body is now in a special situation. It has desires but no tools to satisfy them. The human being is in a state of burning thirst. The more a person depends on everything that can only be satisfied by the physical body, the more burning the thirst. This thirst lasts until the astral body can recognize that it must get rid of these desires. The time of burning thirst is called the Kamaloka time; Kama - desire; Loka - place. It is the sum of experiences that can only be satisfied by the physical body and must be given up.

When man learns to seek the Divine-Spiritual in the world, he will lack nothing after death. It is a method of shortening the Kamaloka time if one frees oneself from the lower pleasures and learns to let one's inner being be satisfied by spiritual interests. The highest by which man can free himself from the sensual in the sensual is art, true art. The more idealistic and spiritual the art that affects a person, the shorter the Kamaloka period. Art that is directed towards the external, the sensual, is not suitable for the whole of the human being. For one person it is relatively longer, for another person it is relatively shorter, the time in which he must unlearn what connects him to the physical world.

Then there is the shedding of a third corpse. After a long time, the human being discards the astral corpse. The ego cannot take anything with it on the further pilgrimage through life that is not purified by the ego. The unpurified, unprocessed parts of the astral body remain in the astral world. These astral corpses are always around us. People who are or have been closely connected to the material world leave dense astral corpses behind.

Some influence on a person comes from the fact that he walks through spiritual entities, that his soul is permeated by such spiritual entities. These also include such astral corpses. Because if a person is not armed against it, he is open to such influences. A restlessness arises in him, perhaps also bad impulses. But a good person, full of character, will not succumb to these harmful influences.

We have now followed the human being to the point where only the ego remains, with the purified parts of the astral and etheric bodies. Now a purely spiritual state occurs, which is called devachan. The human being is stripped of his covers; he is a purely spiritual being. We now still have the I before us. It has sprung out of the bodily sheaths and has become spiritual in itself. The I in man is almost like a plant that has been enclosed in crevices and has been freed and unfolds freely. The I unfolds in all directions when the astral corpse has fallen away. It feels a bliss of the deepest kind.

If we want to get to know these feelings, we have to compare them with a feeling that is only a very weak echo of these feelings. When the hen on the egg uses her body heat to guide the developing being towards maturation, we have a small something in this feeling of bliss that the I experiences during this time.

Then comes the time when the fruit ripens, as an extract of the last life. It is not for nothing that the I has absorbed this extract of the last life. The I has absorbed the world in a thousand and one impressions. The I has faced life with the intellect and the mind. Everything it has absorbed is compressed into this small extract, and this extract has become a creator through the feeling of inner bliss.

The I is preparing to build a new human being. We have built ourselves as we are. Only the outer disposition and something of what is in the etheric body has been passed down to us by inheritance. What we have already seen developing in the child's body took this long time after death to utilize the fruits of the last life. Every time after death, the human being takes with them an extract of their last life. Each time, the human being builds a new life through what they have experienced. In addition to what we have brought with us from previous lives, after death we take with us the extract of our last life. The ego experiences this bringing in of the fruit of the last human life and its use as a blessing. So the ego works to use this fruit of the last life to build a new human being. Physical inheritance provides the building blocks. How they are put together comes from the last life. The extract of the last life contains the design of the new life.

But after death, people have more to do than just occupy themselves with themselves. If we look at the development of the earth, we have to realize that everything on earth is changing. People will not reappear on earth until they can have new experiences on earth. Imagine Europe a few centuries before Christ, when everything was covered with mighty forests, and how every corner of the earth has changed since then. The face of the earth is constantly changing, and so is the cultural face of the earth. Our children learn something completely different at school than the children of ancient Rome learned. The face of the earth has also changed in spiritual and mental terms. Where are the forces that bring about these changes?

The forces that transformed the Germany that existed in the first centuries after the birth of Christ lie in the spiritual world. The co-workers in this change are the people themselves. After death, they continue to work on the physiognomy of the earth. The seer sees how the earthly beings are surrounded and enveloped by the bodiless human beings who are preparing the soil into which they will be born into a new life. In the physical life, we build cities, construct instruments, machines, and so on. But after death we transform the face of the earth. We prepare the bed in which the human being will be embedded when he is ready to take on a new form. We see the human being creating in the spiritual world; he is one of the architects, one of the co-creators in the transformation of the earth.

It takes a long time for the earth to change in such a way that the soul returns to a completely different scene. Once man appeared for the first time in the earthly body. Before that he was in a purely spiritual world, in the bosom of the Godhead. What man experiences in the physical body in the physical world can only be experienced within the physical body. With each life he adds a new page to the previous one, so to speak. At the end of his incarnations, these earthly experiences are added to his soul, and he lays them down before the altar of the Deity.

As long as the human being can be enriched by special forms of earthly existence, he embodies himself. This is how the individual life is comprehensible. It is an effect of previous lives and is a preparation for a later life. This law was not created for brooding, for idle speculation and for looking back at the past without taking action. This law tells us: the experiences of this life are the consequences of previous lives and the preparations for later lives. If I am in need and misery, then this is the preparation for later experiences. This is a law of life that knows how to solve the riddles of life in a wonderful way.

If someone, invoking this law, were to object, as sometimes happens, that one could not then help someone who is in need, then that is completely nonsensical. Just as a merchant's balance is a specific one, but a new item can be entered on the debit and credit side every day, so you can take stock of all your good and bad deeds at any moment in your life, but a new item can also be added to either side at any moment. It is never out of the question for us to add completely new items. Through the law of karma, we are able to help people. It is a law that gives impetus to life and mobilizes all energy. The law of karma is often misunderstood from two sides: from theologians and from some theosophists. The theologians object that salvation was brought to all of humanity by Christ Jesus, and therefore people cannot do anything themselves for their salvation. On the other hand, many a theosophist believes that he must oppose the teaching of redemption through Christ Jesus because he believes in the law of karma. But if he understands the law of karma correctly, then he knows that you can always add a new item to your life account and that you can therefore always help another person. Thus, the more powerful a person is, the more he can help other people. A mighty being, such as Christ, can have an effect on an infinite number of people. The act of redemption is inscribed in the karma of all humanity. The law of karma is in beautiful harmony with the redemption of Christ Jesus.

The most beautiful instrument for comprehending the great religious truths is Theosophy. Through it, the modern human being receives the form that is right for his soul.

The meaning of life arises when we recognize that which is behind life and incorporate it into the impulses of our actions. Theosophy is for energetic people who want to create in this life. When we learn to recognize spiritual forces, we also learn to introduce them into life. The theosophist is indifferent to arguments for or against Theosophy based on the usual dialectical arguments. What matters for Theosophy is that it becomes an instrument for life, that it increasingly intervenes in life. In the next period of cultural development, it will become clear what people owe to Theosophy: that people become joyful in their work and hopeful through Theosophy.

Theosophy is a remedy for humanity. If it proves to be such, then it needs no other logical proof. If Theosophy has a healing effect on people, then it will be proven by the facts of life.

Among the many different currents of thought in our time is the one known as “theosophical thought”. Anyone who tries to form an opinion about Theosophy from books, articles and so on can easily come to one of the many prejudices that exist against the Theosophical worldview today. For many, Theosophy is seen as the warming up of an old superstition, a childish worldview, as it was suitable for the imagination of the peoples of the past, but as it no longer fits the enlightened man of the present. Others imagine that Theosophy wants to be something like a kind of new religion, like a kind of sect formation. It is not surprising that those who are serious about religious life see Theosophy as something dangerous. A third prejudice is that Theosophy wants to transplant an oriental religious concept into Europe. Some see a direct danger in this if it were to happen. But this is one of those types of spiritual movement that today's lecture is intended to address, that in order to understand it, one has to deal with it a little more thoroughly and deeply. Not that special learning is part of Theosophy, but patience to deal with the matter a little more deeply. Then everyone can cope with it. Theosophy or spiritual science rests on two solid pillars. Once you have recognized the significance of these two pillars, nothing stands in the way of you delving deeper into this spiritual current. The first pillar is the recognition that behind our physical world, which is perceptible to the senses, there is a superphysical, a supersensory, a spiritual world. The second pillar is that man has the ability to penetrate into this spiritual world, the supersensible world.

Already, in our time, strong and weighty objections are raised against the first, that there is a supersensible world at all. Our modern science believes it is already violating something if one even admits that there is a spiritual world. Theosophy does not speak of the spiritual world in a strange sense, not as if the spiritual worlds were somewhere else than where they are, but it speaks of them in the same way that the great German philosopher Fichte spoke of spiritual worlds in a particularly forceful way. In the fall of 1813, he said the following to his audience:

This teaching presupposes a completely new inner sense-percept, through which a new world is given, which is not at all present for the ordinary man.

Furthermore, he added:

Imagine a world of blind-born, who therefore know only those things and their relationships that exist through the sense of touch. Step among them and talk to them about colors and the other relationships that exist only through light and for the seeing. Either you talk to them about nothing, and this is the happier outcome when they say so, because in this way you will soon notice the mistake, and if you are unable to open their eyes, stop talking to them in vain.

Just as the blind person may consider it a fantasy when we talk to him about colors and light, so too those who speak of spiritual worlds are considered fantasists by those who do not know these worlds. For those who know nothing of the spiritual worlds, one who does know speaks as the seeing person speaks to the blind person about the world of color and light. It is indeed necessary to speak about the spiritual worlds in a way similar to the way J. G. Fichte spoke about the spiritual worlds; however, it is not quite the same. For the blind-born, there is sometimes the possibility of an operation. There is a moment when what was shrouded in darkness is suddenly bathed in light, color and radiance. But not everyone who was born blind can be operated on. For every person, however, there is the possibility of becoming aware of the worlds that are around us but are now veiled from him.

The awakened, the seeing, have spoken at all times of such worlds, which are all around us and for which man's dormant abilities need only be awakened. But there have been many different words for them. Today we use the word “theosophy” for the teaching of these worlds, following the example of the Apostle Paul, who was the first to use the word “theosophy” for it. Those who see into the spiritual worlds have always been called initiates or seers. For those who become initiates, seers, there comes a moment, a moment that can be compared in some way to the moment when physical light first enters the eye of the operated blind-born ; only for the person who does not merely want to gain a mental conviction of the spiritual worlds, the moment when he becomes seeing is much more brilliant than the moment experienced by the operated blind person. Perhaps one says, because only a few people have been able to look into the spiritual world: What does the spiritual world concern those who cannot look into it? But it is like this: When those who communicate the wisdom of the spiritual world from direct experience, from their own vision, then these truths can be understood if people only want to reflect sufficiently. To experience spiritual truths, seership is needed; to understand them, common sense is needed.

To anyone who might object that this is not yet a convincing argument for me; I must first be able to see into the spiritual worlds myself - one must say: It is not that he is prevented from having this ability, but that he does not want to apply his comprehensive human sense to what is communicated to him by others. The seers are in the spiritual worlds. The spiritual worlds are not somewhere else; they are where we are, and man can become an experiencer of these spiritual worlds through the abilities slumbering in him. To experience the spiritual worlds requires seership; to comprehend them only requires common sense. As the light is related to the eye, so are the spiritual worlds related to the soul.

Others say: It may be that spiritual worlds exist, but people do not have the abilities to penetrate them. Those who say so are of the opinion that human abilities are not capable of development, that people remain as they are. Today, the word development is a kind of magic formula for many. But as soon as one speaks of spiritual development, they want nothing to do with it. To those who believe that man cannot recognize the spiritual worlds, one can answer: Certainly, with the abilities you have today, you cannot recognize the spiritual worlds; but abilities lie dormant in man that can be developed, enabling him to perceive the spiritual worlds. These truths will only be publicly proclaimed in recent times because humanity needs them in this form now. They have always been incorporated into the world and human thinking and feeling. But in this form they are coming before the public for the first time. Above all, these truths have always been contained in all religions. They have been contained in them in other forms, as this form was sufficient for humanity. For centuries now, humanity, which clings to the old forms, has been experiencing doubts, scruples, and so on, in the face of spiritual truths.

Let us think back to the times when there was no printing, when what comes to people today in the form of printed works could not reach people in this way, but only in detail. In those days, human perception and feeling could take a completely different form in relation to great spiritual truths. But now that the enormous sum of science is penetrating into humanity through a thousand and one channels, the dissemination of spiritual truths also requires a different form. We need only say a few words to recognize the effects. Those beings through whom the impulses arose at the time when the truth was given to people in ancient forms of presentation knew that an eternal core lives in man; they no longer have this effect on people. There must be another form that can prove suitable for the modern soul.

Modern theosophy wants to be such a different form. It does not want to oppose religious truths, but wants to be the instrument to recognize these truths in such a way that even the most modern soul can be convinced. Those who know something about such secrets have not come out of their reserve out of a desire for agitation or subjective arbitrariness, but because it was necessary for humanity. This is how a theosophical lecture must be understood. Those who speak out of a theosophical attitude never speak as agitators, never out of the attitude that they must influence people with ordinary powers of persuasion.

Today there are many world views, and their representatives go among people to teach a particular truth, believing that people must accept this truth under all circumstances. The theosophist does not want to be a dogmatic teacher; he wants to be a narrator of the facts of the spiritual worlds. An important Frenchman once coined the word “I do not teach, I narrate” in relation to the facts of the sensual world. It is absolutely essential that those who are already pointed to the facts by their convictions, who are already sufficiently pointed to them by their whole way of feeling, to what the communicator has to say, should approach theosophy.

Among people, there are those who can perhaps see into the spiritual worlds. There are very few of them. Secondly, there are those who recognize the logic of the spiritual worlds for scientific reasons. There are also only a few of them, since science today still has an enormous amount of prejudice. But there are many who come to Theosophy out of a certain sense of truth, out of the intuition of their soul. Many a scientist will still approach Theosophy with a certain smile; but he does not consider that the human soul is not designed for untruth, but for truth. When the human soul is not prejudiced, it finds the straight path, because it is designed for truth. Everyone must come to Theosophy voluntarily. Everyone in whom any one of the three reasons mentioned is effective comes to Theosophy.

Today we want to talk about the essence of man and thereby create a basis for answering the primal riddle of seeking humanity, for answering the question about the secret of death, which is connected with the question about the essence of life. In the theosophical view of the world, the human being is more complex and manifold than is usually thought today. First of all, we speak of the physical human body. For spiritual science, which seeks to penetrate the secrets of existence from a supersensible point of view, the physical human body is only one part of the human being. Let us realize how we have to think about this physical human body in terms of spiritual science. We can grasp it intellectually. We look out into our environment. We see everything that surrounds us, from the smallest stone on the earth to the shining star, to the shining sun; we see beings of the most diverse kinds that present themselves to our senses. We see what we call the mineral world, the world of substances and material forces. When we get to know this world of substances, which are spread out around us, which fill the universe, which shine towards us from the stars, then the same substances and forces are in the human physical body as are out there in the seemingly lifeless natural world. These substances compose the physical body; the same forces permeate it until the human body decays. Spiritual science, like any other science, holds that the human body is composed of the same substances and forces as the physical world. But spiritual science also holds that the substances and forces in man and in every living being have an arrangement that would not be physically and chemically possible in itself. Left to themselves, they would disintegrate. A rock crystal exists in that form according to physical and chemical laws, but this is not possible in the human body.

Spiritual science points to a second link in the human being, the etheric body or life body. What is this etheric or life body? It is a constant fighter against the disintegration of the physical body. This etheric or life body is in all of us. We can imagine it as a sponge permeated by water. In the same way, the physical body of every living being is permeated by the etheric or life body. This prevents the physical substances and forces from following their own laws. The moment of death occurs precisely because the etheric or life body leaves the physical body. But then the physical body is also a corpse. Thus, in every moment of life, the etheric body is a fighter that prevents the physical body from becoming a corpse.

Sometimes today's science says: There is an ideal for the researcher; this ideal is to create living things, in the laboratory, from the parts of inanimate substance. Today's science must cling to this ideal. And now many a person, who believes he has a firm footing in science, adds: As long as we do not succeed, you theosophers can talk about an etheric body, as long as we cannot produce living substance from inanimate protein substance. But when we do succeed, the theosophist will also recognize his error. It is quite understandable that today's science has to talk this way. Much could be said against this objection. But just one point will be raised here. One should not believe that spiritual science has ever taken a different view regarding the question of creating a living being from non-living substances. The theosophist merely says: Yes, the time will come when it will be possible for man to create living things from non-living substances. Nevertheless, the theosophist speaks of the etheric or life body. For him, the etheric or life body is a fact. Even though it is possible to create something alive out of something lifeless, the fact remains that the etheric or life body is there. It is the first spiritual link in the human being.

It is not an objection to the part of a spiritual being in a thing when we say that we understand the physical according to mechanical laws. We understand a clock according to purely mechanical laws. Is the watchmaker indispensable because of that? This objection is trivial. Many people believe that because people used to be at a more childlike stage, they believed that spiritual beings were behind the physical, directing the world. Today, however, it is no longer necessary because science tells us how things are connected. Scientific elucidation of a fact has nothing to do with understanding the spiritual background.

Secondly, if a person believes that the life body must be verifiable in a person as a piece of iron here or there, then that is a crude, materialistic idea. Imagine dry air in a room is interspersed with something watery. Even if we can extract the water, we cannot say that the water was not in the room. Whatever is active in our life body can be found everywhere. As a general world principle, it fills the universe. If we combine substances in a way that the thought of the combination proves to be a magnet for life, then we will also experience that the inanimate substance comes to life. Spiritual science knows this. But it tells us: the art of being able to do what today must still be left to the great secrets of nature, this art will not be handed down to mankind by good hands until the laboratory table has been transformed into an altar; until the action at the laboratory table has been transformed into a sacramental action. Man will, when he is once able to produce the combination, that through the combination of thoughts, life will also be attracted, interweave what lives in his soul; he will interweave his good or evil there. As long as humanity has not yet been purified, this secret must therefore remain hidden from humanity.

Thus we have already composed the human being out of two parts, the physical body and the etheric or life body, which it has in common with all plants and animals, with all living beings. But if we were to say that this is all that is enclosed in the human skin, then that would not be correct. There is much that is much closer to the human being than what is physically enclosed, such as bones, muscles, nerves and so on. There is something that is closer to every human being; it is the sum of joy and pain, of drives, desires and passions, everything that lives in the soul up to the highest ideal. Perhaps a materialistic way of thinking would say: All this is there, but it is a product of the physical body. If it were, then one would not need to speak of it as something independent, but spiritual science shows us that all this is not a product of the physical or etheric body, but rather indicates that what takes place in man in terms of drives and desires, feelings, passions and ideals is the result of a third link of the human being. Everything that appears incomprehensible in its complexity when we look at it in its simple elements becomes comprehensible.

If we ask ourselves whether anything is shown in man today where physical effects arise from spiritual causes, we find the following: when a person is frightened, he pales; the blood flows from the periphery to the heart. When he blushes with shame, the blood flows from the heart to the periphery, to the outer parts of the body. These are small physical effects of mental and spiritual processes.

Spiritual science shows us that not only this, but everything physical, arises from the soul and spiritual: they are soul experiences of the most comprehensive kind, which not only set the blood in circulation in a small way, but drive it around in the first place. Soul and spiritual processes underlie the whole world.

Thus we speak of a third link of the human being. This third link of the human being, which man has in common with animals, we call man's astral body. So we have the human being composed of three links: the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body.

Now there is something else in man that we must designate as the fourth link of the human being, according to which we must see man as the crown of earthly creation. This fourth link of the human being is unique to man; it is what makes him the crown of all beings around him. Anyone can call the table a “table” and the chair a “chair”; but there is only one thing that only each person can say about themselves. This cannot be handled in the same way as the names of other things; it is what is designated by the simple little word “I”. What the “I” is in a person cannot be designated by anyone else, but only by the person themselves. If the little word “I” is to be the designation of the innermost human being, then it must come from within the human being himself.

These powers, which find their expression in the little word “I”, we call the fourth aspect of the human being. All religions and world views that have known of so-called spiritual science have thus felt the importance of the I in man. That is why they called this name the “ineffable name of God”. This is where it is revealed in man that man is a spark, a drop of the divine substance.

If one were to reply: Then Theosophy makes man a god, one can only say: Just as a drop from the sea is not the whole sea, so what is divine in man is not the whole of the divine. Just as a drop is related to the sea, so is the ego in man related to the whole of the divine. Only the divine that lives in the innermost part of man can make itself known within man. Everything else, such as colors, sounds, warmth and cold, must come to man from outside. One must recognize the full significance of this resounding within man, of the human ego. Fichte once said: “People would much rather think of themselves as a piece of lava from the moon than as an ego. They see this essence of the ego who knows where, just not in themselves.”

These four elements, the physical, etheric and astral bodies and the ego, are present in the most uneducated “savage” who still eats his fellow human beings, as well as in the most developed cultural human being. On his travels, Darwin once met a “savage” who was about to eat his wife. Darwin had the interpreter make it clear to him that this was not good. To which he replied that he could not know that until he had tasted her. When he had eaten a piece of her, he gestured to make him understand that she was very good.

Then there is still another self that follows all the desires living in the astral body. The self is hanging there as if chained and is dragged along by the desires of the astral body. The average European says to himself with regard to certain instincts and drives: “You must not follow them.

Let us compare the average person with Schiller. He differs from the average person in that he has transformed some instincts and desires into higher qualities. The saint has nothing left of desires over which he has not gained mastery. In the astral body of an advanced person, we can distinguish two parts: one part that the ego has ennobled and one part that has not yet been transformed. The transformed part of the astral body we call the manas or the spiritual self, the fifth limb of the human being. Thus, on the basis of the four limbs of the human being, man is able to create a fifth in the course of his perfection. Yes, he is able to create a sixth. He can transform not only the astral body, but also the etheric or life body. Let us remember what it was like to be seven or eight years old, and what we have learned since then. Of course, everyone has learned an enormous amount. All of this has a transforming effect on the astral body, changing the astral body. But if we were a hot-tempered or melancholy child at seven or eight years old, let us examine whether this hot temper or melancholy has changed. Some of it will usually still emerge at a later age. Schopenhauer therefore says that the qualities do not change at all. But that is not the case. They just change slowly. When the astral body changes, as the minute hand on the clock advances, so do the temperament and character change, the habits, as the hour hand of the clock advances, because the ether body is the carrier of it.

There is something in ordinary life by which the human being can transform his etheric body. Such impulses are those of true art, which allows us to sense the divine in form, color and sound. This art has a transforming effect on that which is effective in the etheric body. Everything that is given in the religious impulses of humanity also has a transforming effect on this. For example, when religious impulses pass through the soul in daily prayer, they have an effect on the etheric or life body through repetition. We can observe that the etheric body represents the principle of repetition where it is still unclouded, out in the plant. Again and again it gathers its strength and unfolds leaf by leaf. When a person does this with something that captures their soul, allowing themselves to be drawn to it again and again, the impulses have the same effect on their etheric or life body as the etheric body of the plant that drives out leaf after leaf. We call the forces of the transformed life body Lebensgeist or Budhi.

When a person is accepted into the so-called secret school, through which he can work even more intensively on his inner being through significant impulses, he has an even stronger effect on the etheric or life body, so that he can experience awakening. For the etheric or life body, changing habits is more important than any learning. For the actual secret-scientific training, one has done infinitely much when one consciously gives up the slightest habit. Man can also learn to develop the strongest power of the spirit, through which he overcomes the lower power of the physical body. This process begins with a regulation of the breathing process. When he can regulate this process, he begins to transform the principle of the physical body. This transformed part of the principle of the physical body is called a spiritual man or Atman, because Atma means breathing. He thus forms the three limbs of the higher being; the fifth limb, Manas, is the transformed astral body, the sixth limb, Budhi, is the transformed etheric body; the seventh limb, Atman, is the transformed physical body. In the ordinary human being, the four limbs are fully present, the three higher limbs developed according to the degree of development. These seven members of the human being enclose the transitory in him, but they also enclose the eternal. The arrangement that has been mentioned is the one we have between birth and death. When the human being passes through the gate of death, this arrangement changes. When we look into the mystery of death, the riddle of life is also solved.

What must always be borne in mind here is the task that Theosophy has. It should not merely satisfy curiosity or a thirst for knowledge, but should lead people to the realization that what they gain through it becomes inner impulses for life itself. It should solve the great riddles of life for us. If we have an outlook on spiritual life, then strength and security for our whole life arise from this insight. Knowledge and insight are what should lead us on the way, but we should gain strength from knowledge and insight. A person who lacks knowledge of the supernatural worlds becomes unfit for work and uncertain about the future. But what should result from theosophy should be the source of strength for a healthy, hard-working, hopeful and purposeful life.

In the course of our spiritual reflections, which often lead us to very special heights of existence, it is perhaps sometimes good to take a look at everyday life from our spiritual-scientific point of view, at the life that constantly surrounds us. For if one brings some good will and the right perspective, then it is precisely by applying spiritual science to everyday life that one can gain the most important insights into the truth and the conclusiveness of what is sought in this very field.

Among the most significant teachings that we encounter in the field of spiritual science is undoubtedly that of the cause of a later life on earth being determined by the one that preceded it, what we call karma. Now, in most cases when karma is mentioned, the 'theosophist' certainly thinks of the causes that lie in the lives of previous lives. Then people who are still far removed from spiritual scientific endeavors can easily raise the objection: How can such things be proven? Of course we know how impossible, how childish such an objection is. If a person takes the trouble to penetrate more deeply into what is given through spiritual science, he will notice how well-founded everything is that can be said about karma. But it is also good to point out the experiences and observations that are already accessible to people who are still far from clairvoyance or other theosophical methods of observation. Karma, if we understand it correctly, does not only work from one life to another, but already in one life that we go through between birth and death. Of course, what people usually observe in life is actually such a short period of a person's life that not much can come from the working over of earlier causes into later effects. If we look at five or six years, not much comes of it. But if we also consider longer periods between birth and death, as far as this is always possible, then we can see a great deal of the manifestation of karma. This can also be seen in very external things.

I do not want to present this as something particularly theosophical, but only to show that even for the most ordinary things, larger periods of time are necessary to arrive at a connection between cause and effect. For those who take an interest in observing life, I may point out that I have had many opportunities to observe children. It has been a long time since I taught children. But when you have taught four boys in a family over many years, you not only have the opportunity to observe these four children, but also the children of acquaintances and so on. There are always many opportunities to observe what these or those children do, or what can be done with them. Now, in those days, there was a very particular medical practice, which, thank God, is now rapidly declining: it was considered necessary to give little tots a glass of red wine if they were to grow strong, not just with one meal but with several. This was considered to be something quite excellent. I was able to observe many children who were raised with red wine and other children whose parents had refused to follow suit. Today, these children, who were two and a half to four years old at the time, are people who are over thirty or approaching forty years old. The little ones who were forced to drink red wine to keep them going back then can be seen to have become very fidgety and nervous people. They differ very clearly from those who did not drink red wine as children, if one is willing to observe. Almost a quarter of a century can be considered in order to be able to observe this.

Thus, it is particularly important to consider longer periods of time for the moral, ethical qualities of a person in relation to karmic effects. Today I would like to point out several qualities that can be observed, how they affect the soul, the mind, and how the effects of karma are already actively manifesting themselves in one lifetime. I would like to list some good and some bad qualities: envy, enviousness, untruthfulness, then goodwill and what we find so often in younger people, amazement, wonder, and similar things. First, let us take the bad qualities, envy and untruthfulness. Let us assume that we can observe envy and enviousness in childhood. We know from spiritual scientific observations that in the limbs of a person's being, which he is usually not aware of, special powers are at work in the astral body and etheric body: in the astral body the luciferic powers, in the etheric body the ahrimanic powers, which are opponents of human development. Everything that has to do with the astral body, such as envy, comes from the temptations of Lucifer. Everything that has to do with the etheric body, such as untruthfulness, comes from the temptations of Ahriman. In an envious child, the astral body has been seized by Lucifer to a certain extent; this is where the Luciferic beings have their points of attack. Something very significant applies to envy and lies: from the most primitive people to the most developed leaders of humanity, envy and mendacity are considered to be very reprehensible qualities. As soon as a person realizes that he is envious or mendacious, a sense of the reprehensibility of these qualities arises in his soul. One wants to get rid of them with all one's might. Envy and lying, in particular, are instinctively recognized as reprehensible. Goethe says that he must admit to many faults, but that he does not find envy in the depths of his soul. Benvenuto Cellini says the same about lying. If someone realizes, “I am an envious person,” then he instinctively works to get rid of this trait. But it can be very deeply rooted, so deeply that he can indeed strive to overcome envy, but he is not strong enough, morally not strong enough. Then something very peculiar happens. Envy is a Luciferic quality. When a person realizes that he has a tendency to envy and works to overcome it, Lucifer says to himself: There is a danger that this person will escape me. Lucifer and Ahriman are equally hostile to man, but they are good friends among themselves. Then Lucifer calls on Ahriman for help, and he transforms envy into another quality. Envy undergoes a metamorphosis that manifests itself in the human soul in such a way that a person who previously did not want this in another person now becomes a busybody, looking for everything possible in his fellow human beings in order to find fault. This craving to find fault is nothing more than envy in disguise. If this is the case, then Ahriman has you in his claws. This envy in disguise is very widespread. If it did not exist in the form of carping and the craving to say all kinds of nasty things about people, many a morning and evening gathering and many a coffee party would have no subject matter at all.

Strangely enough, the same thing happens in terms of karma whether you let envy arise originally or in a transformed form as carping. If you follow a person who was envious in his youth or a carper into later life, you will see that people who were consumed by envy in their youth develop insecurity in old age. They cannot gain a firm hold on life, cannot come into a right relationship with other people, cannot advise themselves, and are glad if they can say, “Such and such advised me.” This is a karmic result of envy or of transformed envy in this very life.

Dishonesty is an attribute of the etheric body and has its source in Ahriman. If, at a certain age, a person habitually displays dishonesty, or if he lies a great deal as a result of bad education, then in later life he will always show a certain shyness, an inability to look people in the eye. Certain proverbial rules in the moral sphere are very apt here. When one says, “This person cannot look me in the eye,” then there is an effect of dishonesty. Shyness and a lack of independence arise as soul qualities in the same life. If one wants to observe life in the same way that the physicist observes the external course of the world, then one can observe such things. This makes life clear.

What follows from such a quality remains in the one life as a soul; it remains as a soul. Let us assume that we follow one life spiritually into the next. What appeared as a karmic effect in one life will gain greater power in the next life. Thus we can prove that the lack of independence, which initially appears as a mental effect of envy in one life, and the shyness as an effect of untruthfulness, that these become organizing in the building of the body in the next life. There they reach into the physical.

Someone who has developed a lot of envy in a previous life will be reborn as a person who already has what makes him or her helpless in the external organization of the body. Those who have been untruthful will reappear in such a way that they have no right relationship to their environment. They cannot be loved by the people around them, they feel repelled by them, love is difficult to come by. Spiritual science is to be understood as a way of life. What has now been said becomes an immediate way of life.

Let us suppose that a child like this is born in our neighborhood. If we notice that this child cannot enter into a relationship with us, that it shyly withdraws, or that this child is weak and pale, a theosophist will say to himself: the pallor, the disposition to all kinds of illnesses must be traced back to an envious disposition in the previous incarnation, the shyness to a tendency to tell lies. It is no coincidence that this child was born into our circle, for an individuality can only be placed where it belongs. It will not be long before people will accept the law of karma as a matter of course. People are born into the circumstances in which they belong. Weakness and helplessness are the result of former envy, and we meet this child because it envied us. And with its shy nature it comes to us because it is we who were so often lied to by this being in a previous incarnation. How should we behave in such a case? There is no need to think about this for long. We should behave in the most moral and ethical way, as we would in our ordinary lives.

A person who envies us or criticizes us in everything is best treated when we show them goodwill and love. This is the best behavior. Of course, this cannot be done everywhere in our unnatural, materialistic time. But it is the best behavior towards a child who is born into life with these particular dispositions. We do not just tell ourselves: the child envied us and lied to us in a past incarnation, but we make the firm decision to show this child a great deal of goodwill. Let us immerse ourselves in a warm feeling. Try to observe this and you will find that a child like that can redden in the cheek and become strong and robust. It is only necessary to repeat such behavior over and over again. It is the same with mendacity. The best way to convert a person who lies to us every moment is to do everything we can to give him as much of a sense of what love of truth is. If we behave in this way towards a shy child, we will find that we do everything to counteract the escalation of the conflict.

Thus we see that we can serve life to an enormous extent. This is an example of how spiritual science can become a life practice. We should never forget that we can have the evidence for karma in our hands all the time. But we should also not forget, especially when we have to educate such people, that it is up to us to prove that spiritual science has become part of our flesh and blood.

We can also look at other qualities in the light of spiritual science, for example, wonder and amazement. The ancient Greek philosophers, guided by a fine instinct, said: Philosophy takes its starting point from wonder and amazement. What is this sense of wonder, this amazement? There is a certain relationship to the phenomena that confront us that leads us to be amazed, to be in awe. Then sometimes, instead of amazement, there comes something else into it, into which amazement and awe no longer mix. This is namely the case when we begin to understand the facts in question. We would now like to raise the question: what about this sense of wonder, this amazement? We encounter a phenomenon, it compels us to marvel. It cannot be a relationship to the intellect, to intelligence, because these seek understanding, do not express themselves in amazement. It is a much more direct relationship. Understanding has to deal with the individual parts; amazement arises directly in the face of the whole thing. This is because in understanding the I relates to the thing, but in marveling the astral body faces the thing. It does not have full consciousness, but a kind of subconscious. When the astral body has a relationship to the thing and this relationship is not yet elevated to the I, then wonder arises. The fact that a person can be amazed at something makes it possible to enter into a connection with the object that lies below the threshold of consciousness. This is very important in many cases, this subconscious connection, just as it is important for philosophy according to the view of the ancient Greeks that there is amazement first.

It is good for people to spread their astral body over a subject before they apply their intelligence to it. This creates an emotional and mental basis into which understanding is then immersed. This is quite different from approaching the subject abstractly with the mind. It has the effect of broadening the basis of our understanding. A richer understanding is the result. That is why it is so important for the educator to first develop a sense of holy awe in the face of the child, in the face of the individual emerging from the darkness; when we keep an open mind about what we cannot grasp with our intellect: the infinity of an individuality. We artificially place ourselves in a state of wonder in the face of this individuality. It will come, for there are abundant opportunities for wonder and amazement in the presence of each individuality. These feelings are not tainted by our narrow intellect; they are sometimes much more certain, richer, and more correct than what is recognized by the narrow intellect. The foundations for knowledge applicable to practical life are to be gained through amazement, through the life of the soul. Something very important depends on this: the trust that one person has in another. How often does it happen in life that a person has trust or even mistrust in another — because the negative applies just as much as the positive — before they have encountered the person in terms of concepts and everyday understanding? Sometimes trust and mistrust arise quite suddenly. How many people there are who often break out in a kind of lament: If only I had trusted my first impression! I spoiled the true impression that I had sensed before. — Such people are sometimes very right. Our social relationship, our relationship to life, should grow out of our emotional life. There are people who do not have much of an inclination to feel this vagueness, this sense of foreboding, in people. There are people who can gaze in wonder at the starry sky for hours without understanding much astronomy, and there are others who remain fixed on the starry sky until they get hold of books in which they can dissect it all. These are the people who cannot have this basic disposition. Such people, like sticks, often pass people by until they have had enough time to dissect people.

This is also evident in the behavior of spiritual science. One can actually speak to the intellect only in the very earliest youth. Later it is impossible for the reason that Goethe indicates: one could not convince people of the untruthfulness of their claim, because their view was based on the fact that they thought the untruthful was true. If someone feels that there is something in spiritual science that fulfills all their longings, they will always find logical evidence that can be found everywhere. Basically, things are extremely clear; they just have to be seen in the light of a spiritual worldview. Suppose a person in youth experiences a kind of sacred awe in the presence of an older person, one that they may not even be able to say why it arises. When we notice such a broad-minded disposition in a person, we find that such people remain young for a long time, indeed, remain young at all, that a young heart beats in them even when their hair has long since turned grey. They retain a certain agility in life. In particular, they retain the ability throughout their lives to quickly find their way into situations, to be adept in all circumstances. Those who open themselves up to life in this way in their youth will find that life opens up more and more for them in later epochs. They are increasingly able to see into things, more easily achieve the ability to feel the spiritual behind things, and become more and more spiritual. It is different for a person who has particularly developed the intellectual side in their youth. Such people tend towards premature old age. This is not the fault of the individual, but the karma of the community. The person who is a rational being separates himself more and more from the world, it becomes more and more incomprehensible to him. Hence the criticism of many people about everything that is in their environment. In my youth, they say, everything was beautiful, now everything is spoiled. This grumpiness, this dissatisfaction with everything, this withdrawal, this living only in childhood memories, is something that is connected to the intellectuality of the soul in youth. Therefore, we cannot do enough to build education on the broad basis of the mind, especially on imagery.

In our time, humanity in general is sailing in the opposite direction. Children are not told the stork tale, for example. Only one image is used, and it is truer than what people today want to teach children, namely that a child comes only from its father and mother. The stork image — or any other — indicates that there is something in the child that comes down from the heights of the clouds. The child sees into regions that are beyond triviality and builds up what is to grow into the truth of later life. To consider the stork picture to be untrue is just a lack of imagination, an inability to find a suitable image for the process that cannot be described to children as reincarnation, to clothe this process in an appropriate image. But, it is objected, children do not believe in it today. That is because the people who tell children such things do not believe in them themselves. As soon as we ourselves do not believe in what the image expresses, children cannot believe in it either. But if we ourselves have a picture of the real and true that is behind it, if we have enough imagination to translate the truth into a picture, then children will believe it too. And it is really beautiful to tell the child: A part comes from the father and a part from the mother, but a third is carried down from the heights of heaven by other beings, who carry it in their wings, bringing it to the father and mother. When we say this, the image is very appropriate and we are speaking the truth. A child to whom we teach rich, pictorial ideas is helped in relation to the conditions of the astral life, and we give him the blessing of a youthfulness that extends well into old age. This pictorial element in the educational activity, which above all also underlies play, is so infinitely important. Here too it can be seen in one life how karma works.

Thus spiritual science, when it intervenes in culture, will show its truth in the way in which life thrives and blossoms, while materialism shows its untruth by making life desolate and prematurely old.