The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Nature of Man

[ 1 ] Today we want to talk about the fundamental questions of the whole human condition, about this question of all questions, which seeks its answer in the exploration of our own being, of the very essence of humanity. It is intimately connected with everything that touches human beings—not merely in theory, but with everything that encompasses and stirs their souls, with everything related to the joy and suffering of our existence, and with everything in the world that imparts strength and power of will.

[ 2 ] If we want to find the answers to these questions—if we are to speak of the nature of the human being—then we must know more than just what is physically present in a human being.

[ 3 ] In a certain sense, animals are happier than humans in this regard; they simply go about their lives within the limits of the abilities instilled in them and do not need to ask themselves about the goal and purpose of their existence, whereas humans must ask these questions—they are posed to them by life itself. All certainty and all hope in life must spring from how the human soul confronts this question of all questions. It encompasses within itself the mystery of life and death. The transitory and the imperishable, the temporal and the eternal—it encompasses all of these in human life.

[ 4 ] When you look at the physical body—it fades away in death; it shatters into thousands upon thousands of particles that you see vanish into the material realm. Then the question arises quite naturally: Is everything that a human being represents in the world exhausted with this fading away? And when we look at our cultural life, when we see how human beings create and act in the world, when we see how great masters of art, such as Michelangelo and Raphael, create their masterpieces—how they transform a [plenty] of spiritual forces into the physical, the corporeal, earthly into a [fullness] of spiritual forces and conjure them onto the wall—when we see all this and know that these works of the great geniuses, in which people delight and find inspiration, will one day also perish, will crumble away, so that no human eye will see them anymore, no human soul will [any longer] delight in them—then this question arises anew in our souls.

[ 5 ] Everything that humans incorporate into the temporal realm, we see disappear; what, then, remains of humans and their creations? Is there anything that endures beyond the person himself? Is there anything eternal in human life? That which, as a deep feeling, has preoccupied people throughout the ages in these questions has always been satisfied in manifold ways. Those who were called have, in the various religions of the various peoples, answered these questions whenever the issue of life and death arose. Yet in our present age, we see a peculiar fate befall many people. A deep rift runs through their souls, running through their entire lives.

[ 6 ] Let us take a look back at times past. Back then, when the art of printing was not yet widespread, souls found it easier to receive a satisfying answer from those who were called to provide it; yet today, in our own time, we see that it is precisely the most thoughtful, most ambitious souls who stand perplexed before this question. In their youth, they learned a great deal, exercised their minds, and honed their intellect—and then the questions of religion confront them. Through so-called modern science and a thousand other channels, a wealth of knowledge has flowed to them, and it becomes difficult for the soul to hold fast to what religion offers as nourishment for the soul. It is those who thirst most earnestly for the truth who then go astray. The information that religion provides is no longer enough to satisfy the human being. Nor does science offer a worldview that empowers a seriously striving heart in its endeavors.

[ 7 ] And so we often see the soul disintegrating within itself as early as adolescence; we see a deep inner conflict in those who strive most earnestly; and this conflict takes root in their lives. For many, a certain indifference to these questions then sets in later on; they try to keep these questions at a distance so as not to be troubled by them. This results in a superficiality of life, and that is perhaps even worse than in the case of other people, in whom the longing to find answers to these questions constantly gives rise to new doubts that can hardly be satisfied by anything. This is a profound tragedy in the inner life of human beings!

[ 8 ] That is the spirit of our times. Human beings need something that nourishes their souls, that gives them certainty regarding these questions. This must come to humanity. Those who know how to interpret the signs of the times also know that all of this will become even more acute; they also know how necessary spiritual science or the theosophical worldview is for humanity.

[ 9 ] Some people associate a strange notion with “Theosophy.” It is by no means something new; on the contrary, humanity has always possessed, in one form or another, what Theosophy is. In the same way that humans theoretically explore the facts of nature, theosophy seeks to explore the facts of eternal life.

[ 10 ] The facts of eternal life did not arise from a childish imagination, nor from an outdated stage of human development; rather, Theosophy contains the deepest spiritual wisdom, which, in the form of knowledge, conveys to humanity what religion [in the form of feeling] answers these questions. Therefore, we must not imagine that theosophy is a new religion; it is not. Nor does it stand in opposition to religions, but rather it clarifies them; it explains the truths of religion itself so that they can withstand the strictest demands of science. It is the instrument for bringing the truths of religion to the surface. It does not seek to establish a new religion, but rather to clarify the old ones. The same scientific thinking, exactly the same method as in science, prevails in theosophy.

[ 11 ] Admittedly, much of what will be said today will seem grotesque and fantastical to the materialist, yet we must not overlook the fact that when one hears such truths in their original form, one must first come to terms with them—and this cannot be done in an hour, for theosophy encompasses the most important, the deepest questions of humanity! All things have appeared at one time or another and were initially regarded as fantasies; if they were truly rooted in life and truth, they eventually became self-evident—and in the same way, the theosophical teachings, which are still fiercely opposed today, will soon be regarded as self-evident truths.

[ 12 ] Let us now answer the questions about the nature of the human being from the perspective of the humanities. It is not so easy to speak about this, for human beings are very complex creatures, and only if we take the trouble to delve deeply into the reasons for our existence can we find an answer.

[ 13 ] Human beings first appear to people’s external senses. We can touch them, see them, and hear what they say; they are perceptible to the external senses. The intellect can combine all of this; the anatomist can explore the inner workings of the human body. From all of this, we can form a conception of what a human being is. Fundamentally, there is no great difference between what is visible and tangible in a human being and what the anatomist or physiologist discovers when dissecting a human being. We understand all of this collectively as what we can know about the human being. Some say: There is nothing else in a human being besides what the senses perceive, what science can investigate. — Others say: There is certainly much more, but we cannot investigate it; we must limit ourselves to sensory facts. — Yet spiritual science does not say this; for it, all of this is only a part of the human being. For spiritual science, the physical human body is only a part of the highly complex human being.

[ 14 ] Many people consider it a form of immodesty to say that one can know even more about humanity and the world. They ask: How do you know these things? You cannot know them, for there are limits to our knowledge! — I’d like to quote a great German thinker, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who in 1811 spoke before a large audience about the very same thing that theosophy will have to address time and again: what lies at the foundation of human existence as the invisible. Fichte says: If one imagines oneself to be the only sighted person in a world of blind people, and one were to speak to them of shapes and colors, of all the wonders that the eye conveys to us, then these blind people might say that it is all just stuff conjured up from the imagination. But the moment one is able to give all these blind people the ability to see, they see a new world; everything that one person spoke to them about then stands before them. The blind person then realizes that he had no right to say that there are no forms, no colors. — Theosophy speaks of the higher worlds in the same sense. These are not new worlds; they are all around us, and we are in the midst of them—it is only that human beings lack the organs and the abilities to perceive them. — Theosophy says: The world that our physical senses perceive is not the only one; we can expand our perceptions and perceive other worlds as well. — They are not located in some incomprehensible afterlife or in a fantasy world, but all around us. Theosophy does not speak of these worlds in a magical sense, but in the same sense as Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

[ 15 ] Theosophy makes it possible to develop the senses needed to perceive other worlds. Initiates have always been able to bear witness to what they themselves have seen and experienced in these worlds. These spiritual senses lie within every human being; they can be awakened and developed through the methods of spiritual science. If a person possesses enough patience and energy to undergo training in these methods, then he can glimpse into the other worlds, just as a blind person sees colors after undergoing surgery. [This surgery does not help someone born blind, of course, but anyone can attain this spiritual “surgery” through training.]

[ 16 ] All the world’s religions have emerged from what the initiates have seen in the spiritual worlds that surround us. They have made this known to the world, and what the seers have seen is recorded in the sacred texts. We are now living in a time when humanity is once again drawing a stream of spiritual life from these spiritual worlds. That is why Theosophy conveys this wisdom from the supersensory worlds in popular lectures [to a large part of the world]. This is the reason why such teachings are now being shared publicly—teachings that were previously accessible only to a small circle of prepared individuals.

[ 17 ] But to such a person, who looks into the spiritual worlds, the higher aspects of human nature are just as real and tangible as the physical body. Today I can only offer you some hints and an overview of what theosophy has to say about these matters.

[ 18 ] The physical body is the aspect of human nature that shares its material composition with the entire inanimate, mineral world. All substances in the environment, all metals on Earth, contain the same elements as this body. Nevertheless, it differs from so-called inanimate beings. It contains the same elements, but it would disintegrate within itself if not for a certain complexity, another principle, another element that holds it together. A rock crystal exists in and of itself. The human physical body cannot do this.

[ 19 ] The second component of this, which it shares with plants and animals but not with the mineral kingdom, is the etheric body. [This is not the hypothetical ether assumed by physics.] Its function is to prevent the physical body from disintegrating at every moment of life. Only death separates this etheric body from the physical body; then the physical body becomes a “corpse” and decays when it is left to the elements within it. At every moment of life, the life body fights against the decay of the physical body.

[ 20 ] Well into the nineteenth century, it was taken for granted—even by the natural sciences—that living beings possessed something of this nature; it was called the “life principle.” It was not until the mid-nineteenth century that people began to reject everything that could not be seen with the naked eye; and anyone who continued to believe in it was considered a fool. Materialist scholars—such as [Vogt] and Moleschott—developed a worldview that sought to explain life solely as a combination of atoms. Today, some individuals are coming to admit that there must be something beyond that after all.

[ 21 ] According to theosophy, this etheric or life body is to be found in plants, [in] animals, and in humans, and for those who can look into the spiritual worlds, it is just as real as the physical body; one can see it with what Goethe calls the spiritual eyes.

[ 22 ] This is the second link. We can bring the third to mind when we reflect on the fact that the person standing before us does not consist solely of what we see in them—not of colors and shapes—but that within the skin that encloses the physical body, there lives something that only thoughtlessness can fail to take into account. And that is something far, far more important than the physical body. Everything we cannot perceive—the instincts, joy, pleasure, suffering, pain, and desire that live within a person from birth until death—all of that is just as real as the color on his cheeks. None of this is the result of processes occurring within the body’s tissues. Theosophy states: This bearer of desires, passions, and so on within a human being is an entity that existed first, which is the origin of the physical body.

[ 23 ] Let us consider this clearly in terms of water and ice. Ice is water, only in a different form. Just as surely as ice can become water again and is originally water, so surely spiritual science shows that all matter, all substance, is nothing other than solidified spirit. Just as surely as ice is water, it is equally true that everything that lives within the human being as instinct, desire, pleasure, and pain has become condensed, crystallizing, as it were, into the physical body. The physical body is a creation of the astral body, this third component of human nature. It is something that humans no longer share with plants, but only with animals.

[ 24 ] Thus, we share the physical body with minerals, plants, and animals; the etheric body with plants and animals; and the astral body only with animals. Some researchers, however, claim that certain plants also exhibit sensation, since they respond to stimuli; yet it is an amateurish view to say that a plant has sensation. Anyone who says this does not understand what is meant by sensation. Only a being that reflects this external stimulus internally—only such a being can be said to possess sensation; only such a being has an astral body. If one were to say this of plants, one might just as well say it of blue litmus paper, which, under certain circumstances that exert a certain stimulus, turns red.

[ 25 ] We have now examined three aspects of the human being and come to the fourth. Do not be alarmed by this large number of aspects! The human being is, after all, a very complex being. We arrive at this fourth aspect through a simple line of reasoning. We can understand it most easily if we follow this line of thought: Throughout the entire German-speaking world, there is one word that differs from all the others. Everything else that surrounds us can be named, but no one can say a single word to you—you can only say it to yourself—and that word is “I”! This word must resound from within the soul of each person; every other word is a “you” to you; only to yourself are you an “I”! One does not immediately grasp the profound significance of this fact. The “I” can never reach our ears from the outside; [it must resound within the soul itself]; the soul must utter it as its innermost name. The ancient founders of religions, who built their religions upon spiritual science, knew this very well. They called that which begins to speak within a person “the spirit within man”; they called it “the unpronounceable name of God”! The “I”—the God within man—reveals itself in this word!

[ 26 ] No one may say that theosophy asserts that God is within man, as is often superficially claimed; but just as one cannot, when taking a drop from the sea, say: ‘This drop is the ocean,’ even though one knows that this drop is, in its essence, the same as the ocean; just as little can anyone, when saying “I” to his soul, mean the all-encompassing Spirit. He is no more that than the drop is the ocean, and yet he is the same essence as the divine Universal Spirit. You must understand it in this sense. In this sense, the ancient Hebrews called Yahweh, Jehovah—the unpronounceable name of God—which signifies the essence, the “I.” That is why a deep, reverent shudder ran through the ranks of the people when the one who was called upon to do so uttered this holy name once a year: Yahweh, which means: “I am who is, who was, and who will be!”

[ 27 ] That is why people of greater depth experience it as a life-changing event when, in the course of their lives, they come into inner contact with this eternal spirit of life, when the realization awakens within them: “I am an ‘I.’” Jean Paul, for example, when this became clear to him—he was only a seven-year-old child—experienced it as a momentous event, as if he were gazing into the veiled sanctuary of his inner self, and even in his later years he fondly recalled the external circumstances under which this realization dawned upon him.

[ 28 ] And we, too, glimpse into this veiled sanctuary when we consciously utter the little word “I” for the first time. This is what makes human beings the crown of earthly creation—this “I” that glows through and flows through the body, making them the holiest beings on earth! With this, we designate the fourth element of the human being’s essence. This is what is understood in the Pythagorean school as the sacred fourfold nature. When this arises within a person, they have ascended to a higher level of knowledge that mysteriously expresses the deepest aspect of human nature. Yet that is not all.

[ 29 ] People do not differ from one another in terms of this fourfold nature; every human being possesses it. There must be some other difference between them. Let us clearly distinguish between a monster, an ordinary, average person, and a lofty idealist, such as Schiller or Francis of Assisi. We see a great difference between such people!

[ 30 ] Darwin recounts that, on one of his journeys, he came upon a region inhabited by a tribe of cannibals. Through his interpreter, he made it clear to the chief just how wrong it was to eat a human being. The “savage,” however, looked at the European in astonishment and replied naively that he could not possibly know whether it was good or bad until he himself had eaten a human being! — He was simply thinking in terms of whether something was good or bad for him—that is, whether it tasted good.

[ 31 ] But such a person also possesses the four elements I spoke to you about. How, then, does the average European differ from such a “savage”? The former tells himself regarding some instincts: “You may follow these,” while forbidding himself to do so with others. He has moral concepts that forbid one thing and permit another; he has refined and purified his instincts and passions; and, if he stands on a slightly higher plane, he has certain ideals toward which he strives. How does he differ from the “savage”? He has worked on his astral body, the body that is the vehicle of desires and passions. The “savage” has not yet done this; he has not yet devoted any effort to it; he still lives in his instincts and lusts, and that part of his bodies—the “I”—lives within him as it was handed down to him by the gods. The higher a person stands, the more this divine inheritance works within him and transforms the other bodies. The idealist has transformed even more within himself; he has brought even more under the dominion of the “I”; and the person who has such control over his instincts and passions that nothing happens which he himself does not recognize as right and good—who never again allows himself to be carried away by his instincts and desires—has completely purified and ennobled his astral body.

[ 32 ] Thus we have five components of human nature: the fourfold body—the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body, within which lies the “I”—and then the part that the “I” has developed for itself; we refer to this component as the “spiritual self” or “Manas,” which is a product of the transformation of the astral body. And to the extent that a person has transformed their astral body, to that extent they possess the spiritual self, or Manas, within themselves.

[ 33 ] Human beings can also work on their etheric body, or life body. This body is not only the vehicle for nutrition, growth, and reproductive powers, but also the vehicle for enduring habits, character, conscience, and temperament. Whether a person is good or bad—in the usual sense—depends on the astral body, but whether they are melancholic or choleric depends on the etheric body. Just think about how little you knew as an eight-year-old child. You have learned a great deal since then, but if you were a quick-tempered child, that quick temper will still sometimes flare up in you; if you were a melancholic child, you will still sometimes have to struggle with gloom. Everything in the astral body changes quickly; everything anchored in the etheric body changes slowly, so that one could compare the transformation of the astral body to the minute hand of a clock and that of the etheric body to the hour hand.

[ 34 ] For this reason, the “I” also faces much greater difficulties when it comes to acting upon the etheric body. High, pure art, which allows us to sense and behold the eternal, provides powerful impulses for its transformation; the grandeur and glory of nature and God’s creations also provide powerful impulses; but religious impulses have the strongest effect on the transformation of the life body; not moral instructions based on abstract concepts, but rather a deep immersion in the eternal essence of being, a sinking into what is given to us as wisdom in the great religions—this triggers impulses that have a profoundly ennobling effect on the human etheric body, and hence the great significance [of these impulses] for humanity.

[ 35 ] This is where the training and education of the initiate begins. He has other things to learn and go through than what is commonly referred to as “learning” in the school sense. Of course, he must also learn what lives in the astral body and can be grasped—that which is called “learning” in the ordinary sense—but that is not the main thing. The student has made greater progress toward initiation when he has fought against an inclination or consciously cast off a habit. In the schools of initiation, therefore, special emphasis is placed on this; the student must undergo exercises that enable him to change his temperament and overcome his character; and this work leads upward into higher worlds. Everything that is successfully transformed in the etheric body so that the “I” controls it is called the life spirit or buddhi. Thus, the sixth part of the human being is the transformed etheric body or life body.

[ 36 ] If we go even further, we arrive at the highest stage, where the initiate begins to work on his physical body; this is the seventh link of the future. It may seem strange that the lowest aspect of the human being—the physical body—is worked upon through the highest, but we must bear in mind that this also enables the human being to exert an influence outward into the physical world, from which the human body itself has drawn its material. The initiate at this stage can exert an influence out into the cosmos! This stage is attained through a transformation of the breathing process; it is called Atma—Atma, meaning “breath,” because it is connected with breathing—or also the “Spirit-Man.”

[ 37 ] Thus we have the fourfold nature of the human being and the so-called higher trinity, which arises from the fourfold nature and is a process of transformation of the fourfold nature. Let us now take a look at how these aspects function within the human being; let us consider the human being both in life and in death.

[ 38 ] What is sleep? It brings about a change in the interrelationship of the elements of human nature just described. As long as a person is awake, from morning until evening, these elements are intertwined and form a living system of forces acting upon one another. It is different during sleep. Pleasure and suffering, joy and pain have subsided when a person lies in deep, dreamless sleep. The reason all of this is absent for the person is that their astral body—which is the bearer of pleasure and suffering—has left them during sleep. Only the human physical body, connected to the etheric body, lies in bed. The astral body is outside the human being as soon as he or she falls asleep. What, then, does this astral body do during the night? Does it rest somewhere in the formless? No! It is precisely when we know what the astral body does at night that we gain a deep insight into the essence of the human being.

[ 39 ] As long as the astral body is inside the physical body during the day, it perceives through the physical organs. Through the eye it receives light and colors; through the ear, sounds; and so on. The astral body perceives these things, for the faculty of perception resides within it. However, because it is contained within the physical body, it also perceives the disharmonies of the environment; there is no harmony around it, and [this] constantly wears it down. This wear and tear on the astral body manifests itself in the form of fatigue. As long as the astral body is inside, it is occupied with the outside world; but as soon as it is outside, it works to repair the physical body; at night it is busy eliminating the substances that cause fatigue. That is its task at night. A person would die much sooner if the astral body did not do this every night and did not send its forces down into the physical body to bring it into the state it must be in to continue life.

[ 40 ] We must imagine it this way: Let us imagine that we are enclosed in a sea of astrality, as if in a large vessel filled with water. From this sea, every human being, much like a little sponge, absorbs a drop during the day and releases it again at night. And so, at night, the astral body submerges into its source; at night, it returns to its home. Only a clairvoyant can tell you what that world looks like. The ordinary person has no insight into it whatsoever, but for the clairvoyant it is different; for him, a world of light and colors opens up at night during his conscious sleep; he lives consciously in the world of spherical harmony, in which the astral body of every human being also lives unconsciously. And this world is no fantasy; this harmony of the spheres is a reality! It is the source of all things; it is the same thing that the Christian religion calls the realms of heaven. The initiates have always known this. — It may well sound outrageous to many when I say: Goethe knew this, too! When a person is raptured up into heaven, they hear those harmonies of the spheres from which the entire world arose, and Goethe expresses this when he says:

The sun resounds in the ancient way
A song of competition in the spheres of brotherhood,

[ 41 ] and so on. If we look at this passage superficially, we cannot make sense of it. The physical sun does not make a sound! But the sun has its spirit, and it is this spiritual being that resounds in the song of the spheres! And it is this spirit that Goethe refers to—one that can be perceived by those who are able to perceive in the spiritual worlds. And furthermore, the conclusion of the Faust drama, [the Ariel scene—what does it say]:

With sound for the ears of the spirit
Now the new day is born;
There is drumming, there is trumpeting,

[ 42 ] and so on. Because the soul lives in this resounding astral sea, in this harmony of the spheres at night, Paracelsus rightly calls it the astral body, for every night it is transported to its original home, the world of the stars.

[ 43 ] As long as this astral body has not yet completely separated from the etheric and physical bodies, this is the time when dreams emerge from the unconscious darkness of the night. As long as the astral body has not yet completely severed its connection with the human being, the person dreams. When the astral body is fully within the human being, the person lives in waking daytime consciousness.

[ 44 ] When a person dies, other changes take place. After death, only the physical body remains; the astral body has departed along with the etheric body. [It is only in the rarest of cases that the astral body takes the etheric body with it.] Usually, something special happens to a person after death.

[ 45 ] The entire course of one’s past life then unfolds before the human soul like a vast tableau, like a moving panorama—but in a very peculiar way, for everything that brought joy or caused suffering in one’s life is absent from this picture; the person views his or her life entirely objectively. This is the case as long as the etheric body remains connected to the astral body and the “I.” Then the astral body separates, and the person’s second corpse remains behind: the etheric corpse. It dissolves into the general cosmic ether, just as the physical corpse dissolves—only much more quickly. Yet an essence, a center of power, remains from this tableau of life—a sum, as it were, of one’s experiences. Just as when you add a new page to a book, so too do you add the content of your last life each time in this clairvoyant review following your death. This can last for hours, or even days, depending on the individual’s nature.

[ 46 ] There are moments in human life that are similar to this. When a person experiences a severe shock—for example, if they fall during a hike or are in danger of drowning—their entire life seems to flash before their eyes, and even materialists have experienced and reported this, such as the criminal anthropologist Benedikt in Vienna. What is the cause of this experience? You all know the sensation we feel when a limb has gone numb—that tingling sensation; children might say, “It’s like sparkling water in my fingers.” As a clairvoyant, one can see that in such a numb limb the etheric body has loosened, so that the etheric hand, for example, hangs out to the side when a physical hand is numb, and the same is true of the head when a person is under hypnosis. If a person then experiences such a fright, the entire etheric body loosens for a brief moment. Since the etheric body is the bearer of memory and is otherwise constantly contained within the physical body, in ordinary life it can remember only as much as the physical body allows. But in such moments, when the etheric body is set free—that is, when the physical body is no longer an obstacle—memory then emerges in its entirety.

[ 47 ] Recently, someone told me that he had been close to drowning but had not experienced the memory tableau because he had been unconscious. This is precisely the proof, because when a person is unconscious—that is, when the astral body, which is the bearer of consciousness, has also left the physical body—this memory naturally cannot occur.

[ 48 ] Now, after death, when the astral body is freed from the physical body and the etheric body—which remain behind as two corpses and return their matter to the environment—a certain phase begins for the astral body: the so-called Kamaloka period. Kamaloka is not a place far away from us. People who have died are always around us. The clairvoyant eye can always see them.

[ 49 ] We can understand this through simple logic. What is the human condition after death? Let us consider, for example, a gourmet who, during his lifetime, had a passion—let’s say—for beefsteaks. - It was not the physical body that derived pleasure from this, but rather the astral body—which is the bearer of desires, passions, sensations, and so on—yet it needs the physical body to obtain this pleasure; the physical body is, so to speak, its instrument. Now, after death, he has shed the physical body and thus no longer has an instrument, yet he still has exactly the same longing for the satisfaction of his desires.

[ 50 ] It is the same situation as that of a person who, in a beautiful region, cannot find water anywhere for miles around and must endure a burning thirst. In the same way, the unfulfilled longing for physical pleasures burns within the astral body. As long as a person has not yet broken this habit, as long as their craving for this satisfaction persists, so long will their time in Kamaloka last. Only when nothing draws them to this world anymore can they ascend into the true spiritual world, the heavenly world.

[ 51 ] One might well ask: Is a person conscious in this kamaloka state? Certainly, for the very same forces that a person possesses in his astral body—and which go out into cosmic space every night, live there in the harmony of the infinite, and thereby continually renew the exhausted forces of the physical body—are precisely the ones he now utilizes within himself in this state. Thus, a person must be conscious after death.

[ 52 ] Now the human being ascends into the spiritual worlds, taking with him this essence—of which I have spoken to you—from his etheric body, as well as a similar essence from his astral body.

[ 53 ] The essence he has developed in his etheric body over the course of his life influences his emotional life in a moral sense, and what he has developed in his astral body influences his life of desires and instincts. He now lives for a certain number of years in the spiritual worlds; then he descends once more into the world, equipped with what he has developed for himself in this way—with a more or less purified etheric and astral body—and every new life he leads is, as it were, a new page in the book of his life. The more incarnations he has experienced and the better he has used them to refine himself and strive higher, the richer the new life is, [and so the human being ascends from life to life] and becomes more and more perfected. He is not isolated in a single life; nothing is a mere game of chance, but his lives are interconnected. Just as in daily life the work of one day prepares for and influences that of the next, so our past is connected to the future, and thus we create our own future through our behavior in the present. This is a law that runs through all of nature, through both the inanimate and the living.

[ 54 ] And this connection between events that occur later and those that occurred earlier is called [“Krma”—not “Karma”]. A certain [Krma] emerges from every life course for every person. There is something deeply reconciling about this when viewed in the right way; for when we often see a capable, good person condemned to poverty and misery in life, and another, seemingly without any merit, living in happiness and joy, we ask—perhaps in vain—how something that seems so unjust can be! But if we understand the law of [krma], if we know that each person forges their own destiny, that [krma] is a law of life, if we know: Everything I do bears fruit—if I do something foolish or evil, the fruit will be likewise; if I do good, happiness and joy will follow—then this law will be a source of deep reconciliation for everyone, and once it illuminates a person’s life—not merely in theory, but in truth—it will unleash new strengths within them, it will give them confidence, a sense of direction, and security in life.

[ 55 ] The law can also be perfectly reconciled with Christ’s redemption, once it is properly understood. The theologians say: “We speak of redemption through Christ Jesus, but you speak of the need to redeem oneself. You do not believe in the idea of redemption!” — That is not the case. Just as a merchant can balance his books at any moment and yet still enter new entries at any moment, so too can one enter new entries into the book of one’s life at any moment. [Krma] is perfectly compatible with free will; we can enter bad entries, and we can enter good ones. Now, if we are strong enough, we can help a fellow human being. [If we are even more powerful, we can help two people] and so on; but an all-powerful being, such as Jesus Christ, who appeared among humanity, can help countless people through a single act that shines through the ages. Properly understood, the law of [karma] is fully consistent with the Christian idea of salvation; it is also compatible with the entire Christian doctrine.

[ 56 ] When the teaching about the nature and essence of human beings gradually takes root in humanity, when humanity is permeated and spiritualized by it, then new life and new growth will also flow through it. For humanity needs these teachings now. People’s souls would wither away under the conditions hinted at in the introduction. Theosophy had to come; it was a matter of survival for humanity. Even if it is still met with hostility today, what harm does that do? Everything that seems new and incomprehensible has first been met with hostility and has later become taken for granted. Consider the postage stamp—no postal official came up with this simple idea, and when it first appeared, it was called “crazy.” That was only 70 years ago! And it was the same with the first railroads. It was said that anyone who rode on them would inevitably suffer severe nervous shocks.

[ 57 ] Theosophy points to certain things, and what matters is that they prove themselves in life when applied; and once Theosophy has demonstrated its truth, it will naturally find its way into the souls of human beings. [For it is the spiritual remedy for humanity!] Not through words, not through discussions—only through action can the healing of spiritual life be achieved. And those who know what Theosophy is meant to be for humanity in the times to come are awaiting this proof. We need knowledge that takes root in life—insights that cannot be found through the limited powers of our intellect alone, but which must flow in from higher worlds to revitalize our culture, giving us strength and security in life and making us strong, creative human beings.