The Rudolf Steiner Archive

64. The Laws of the Universe and Human Destiny

[ 1 ] On the second evening of lectures, Dr. R. Steiner spoke on the topic “Universal Law and Human Destiny.” Referring to the Christmas celebration that had recently taken place, he pointed out how this festival had gained great significance in all religions [as] the festival of light and the sun, and how it had become linked to the memory of the great founders of religion and leaders of humanity—the perfectly wise individuals who in ancient times were called sun heroes— insofar as their lives were lives of light, dedicated to enlightenment, and insofar as they had already been perfected to the point of rhythmic regularity and lawfulness, just like the rhythmic course of the stars. Just as these elder brothers of humanity did, so too must all human beings still attain this perfect, lawful, rhythmic life through their own development. Development throughout the entire universe strives from disharmony toward harmony, from strife toward peace. Just as in the macrocosm, so too in the microcosm—within the human being’s own inner self—the struggle between the impulses of the will and the passions, the struggle brought about by contact with the external world, initially predominates. The individual existence is initially in conflict with the world. These disharmonies must be transformed into harmony. Human beings achieve this when they seek to purify themselves of their base, resistant passions and desires through spiritual elevation, and when they seek to transform the desire—which is the cause of their material existence and their earthly struggle, and which binds them to the particular—into selfless, impersonal love and devotion to the environment, to Being. The external world is subject to the great universal law which the Indians call Kama (Karma)—that is, the law of the causal chains of all actions and all existences, and of compensatory development. Through incarnation, the originally indifferent soul becomes subject to this universal law. All actions arising from desire produce their consequences in accordance with this law. With incarnation, the struggle between good and evil begins for the innocent soul, along with the gradual balancing of these opposites according to this law of development. Yet as the soul gathers its experiences and gains abilities in this struggle, it becomes ever richer and more profound within. The outcome of its conduct in the struggle of life repeatedly determines its fate, until, in its final spiritual victory—rising above the disharmony of the passions—it attains inner harmony and, in love, harmony with the world, having once again become free from karma. Rich in content—rather than empty of content as at the starting point—it then attains the highest divine knowledge and, having become transpersonal, reaches universal divine Being. The journey through the world of the soul thus proceeds according to the universal law of gradual transformation and equilibrium, as rhythmic as the course of the sun. With a deep understanding of this law of life and development—the harmony between human destiny and the laws of the universe—Angelus Silesius says: “I myself must be the sun; with my rays I must paint the colorless image of the entire Godhead.” The lectures by the eloquent speaker, which were followed by a lengthy discussion, were very well received by the select audience.