The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Reincarnation

[ 1 ] Today I would like to speak to you about something that is loosely related to what I have told you before. Although the Theosophical Movement has existed for 29 years, it is still the case that its fundamental teachings are often misunderstood. For example, the doctrine of reincarnation is often misunderstood by those who may never have heard anything other than the name or a few terms, as if we taught that souls migrate through a wide variety of bodies, including those of animals. We are, in a sense, reproached for this.

[ 2 ] Reincarnation in animal bodies was taught in Egypt and Greece, and we cannot help but see that it is also repeatedly found in India as an external doctrine. It is true, and it cannot be disputed: In esoteric teachings, it is universally stated that what we today call the human soul has passed through stages of development that are said to have taken place in animal bodies. This seems to be particularly corroborated by a circumstance that is, on the other hand, highly interesting, namely that by far the greatest number of all fairy tales, legends, and fables can actually be traced back to India. If you examine the animal fables and other fairy tales from various European countries, you will indeed find minor or major variations, but you will see that the foundation of many European fairy tales can be found in the ancient Indian texts. This should come as no surprise to us, since these cultures all belong to the fifth root race, which spread from the Gobi Desert through Egypt and Greece to Europe. It is not surprising to us that the initiates of the various peoples presented the teachings in the form of fables. However, we must realize the significance of those fables that take place in the animal kingdom. From this perspective, the problem of reincarnation will appear to you in a new light, one that is likely not yet widely known.

[ 3 ] Indian culture has spread throughout the world, even though it is perceived as something foreign today. You may recognize this from the fact that Buddha was included among the Catholic saints early on, under the name Josaphat. This happened many centuries ago. Through John of Damascus, who described the entire course of Buddha’s development in hagiography, Buddha’s inner teachings were incorporated into Catholic Christianity. Only the external forms of Buddhism were rejected. This should shed some light on the immense significance of Indian culture for the entire fifth root race.

[ 4 ] There is a large collection of many hundreds of fables, the Jataka collection. As these fables have been passed down in India over the centuries, the Buddha has always played a role in them. We are told that the Buddha was incarnated as this or that animal, how he lived here and there as this or that animal, how he behaved within the animal world, and how he remembers it. And then there is usually a moral lesson on how one should behave in similar situations. The fable was regarded as an excellent educational tool for princes. This pedagogical method was likely used in Europe as well.

[ 5 ] You’re all familiar with the story that when you look at the moon, you can see the shape of an animal. At any rate, some people see an animal shape there; the most common is a rabbit. There are various accounts of how the hare came to be on the moon. This, too, traces back to the Indian collection of fables, the Jātakas. Once, in one of his many lives, the Buddha was a hare; he lived in the forest and had three friends. His first friend was a jackal, his second a monkey, and his third an otter. So he lived together with these three animals, and even as a hare he was already a highly advanced being, so that he could instruct the animals in many different ways. He imparted teachings to them and, above all, taught them that they should honor the festival days and make offerings on those days. He told them: “Above all, you must strive to set aside a portion of your food, and you must give it to those who come to you as supplicants, so that they, too, may make offerings in a dignified manner on the festival day.” Now a festival day was approaching. One of the animals went to a neighboring area and found that the people were busy gathering fish for food. After the people had left, the animal thought: “I can take some of this for myself.” “But I’d better protect myself,” it then thought, and said, “Does anyone own this food?” Since no one came forward, it took some of the food. The second animal did the same, and then the third animal as well. Now the foretold days of the festivals arrived. Then the god Indra disguised himself as a Brahmin and went to visit the various animals. Indra came to the first animal and asked, “Can’t you give me some food for the sacrifice?” The animal told him how it had found the food. Then Indra said, “I will come back and take some of it then.” — He then went in the same way to the second and third animals. The hare, however, had eaten some grass and thought to himself: “If someone comes to me now to ask for something, I certainly cannot give him grass; I will offer myself to him as food.” - When Indra came to him and asked for an offering, the hare said: “I have nothing to give you, but I offer myself to you as food. Build a fire; you can roast me and then eat me. I only ask that none of the insects that may be on me perish in the process.” - Indra saw how advanced the hare was in moral terms and ensured that the fire could not harm him, so that the hare remained completely unharmed. When the hare had the god Indra standing before him like this, he said: “O wise god Indra, stay here; let us proclaim the teaching together.” - And the god Indra replied: “Yes, let us proclaim it in such a way that it can never be erased again throughout this entire world-age.” - And he took a pen and drew a hare on the moon, which is now visible throughout the entire world-age.

[ 6 ] So this is the fable of the Buddha, who is reincarnated as a hare in the animal realm and who sacrifices himself completely. This fable is perfectly suited to take deep root in the minds of those to whom it was told, thereby preparing them for a later incarnation, so that their souls might mature and then seek the truth on their own. That has always been the purpose of fables. Originally, fables were not told as they are today, where one has no idea why an animal acts one way or another. Rather, the expectation was that, as the story was told, people would experience certain images in their imagination that would affect the causal body and blossom into a sense of truth in the next life. Fables were not told to provide people with aesthetic pleasure, but to prepare the souls so that, when they are reborn many years later, they are primed to receive the truth more easily. If such a fable is to have this significance—if it is to create, as it were, the spiritual form necessary to later receive the pure truth—then it must contain pure truth within itself; otherwise, the vibrations aroused in people’s astral and causal bodies will not be of a nature that enables them to later receive the true truth. Yet it is precisely in this fable that such an immensely profound meaning lies, and it is so delicately poetic in its expression that we would be greatly astonished by the ancient Rishis—if we did not know that they were men instructed by Devas. And we would also be amazed if we did not know that this fable is connected to a fundamental fact, namely, the relationship of the human soul to all other beings in nature. Now consider how the entire course of our earthly life has unfolded. We are now in the fourth round, preceded by the third, second, and first rounds. In the first cycle, we humans were all already in existence, but not in the form in which we exist now. We had a fundamentally different form. We came over from an earlier planet as Pitris and began our earthly journey in the first cycle. At that time, we passed through the mineral kingdom. As Pitris, we were able to participate in the formation of the mineral kingdom as it was being created at that time. The mineral kingdom looked quite different then than it does today; there were no crystalline forms; all physical substances were in a mineral-elemental state, including that from which human, animal, and plant bodies later arose. In this first round, there were not yet plants, animals, or human beings—if we consider the outer form—everything existed there in a soul-like state, but not yet in form. The forms that were created back then in the first round and which later became the skeletal system were prepared by the Pitris as a mineral foundation.

[ 7 ] In the second round, the Pitris prepared their plant-based foundation. Everything that would later be shaped into the digestive and respiratory systems was not yet formed as it is today, but it had been prepared as a foundation. At the same time, the mineral kingdom continued to develop as a kind of independent entity. An independent mineral kingdom arose because not everything that was formed during a round was suitable for incorporation into the higher plant level. That which was unsuitable was set aside. Now I ask you to recognize the significance of this process in its entirety. At that time, human beings formed their own plant-based foundation. If, during the second round, we had possessed only the substances formed during the first round, we would never have attained a higher plant structure. During the second round, we—as human Pitris—carried out an eminently self-serving act. We told ourselves, as it were, that we would take from the mass whatever we needed and leave out whatever was of no use for our further development. In the Pitri culture, we cast the mineral kingdom out of ourselves. We developed ourselves to a higher level at the expense of the mineral kingdom.

[ 8 ] In the third round, we then separated the plant kingdom as a distinct entity. That is when plants first came into being. We absorbed everything we needed to form our systems in such a way that we could build up kama and establish blood circulation. Through this, we elevated ourselves into the animal kingdom and pushed other beings down into the plant kingdom. We fought our way into the animal kingdom in the third cycle. However, the animal kingdom of that time cannot be compared to any form that exists today.

[ 9 ] During the fourth round, we evolved into human beings by once again taking whatever we needed—in a completely selfish manner—from the animal kingdom. We discarded the rest, and what was discarded became today’s animal kingdom.

[ 10 ] So, during the first round, we initially developed as mineral beings. During the second round, we separated the mineral kingdom; during the third round, the plant kingdom; and during the fourth round, the animal kingdom. What are minerals, plants, and animals? Minerals, plants, and animals are the developmental elements of our nature that we have set apart from ourselves—elements that were once connected to us. Everything we did not need, we handed over to the Earth so that it could develop independently. If we look at the animal kingdom, it is the very same thing that was set apart from us—something that was still one with us in the third round. Now the occultist says: What you see today in the animal kingdom is not something separate from you; it is something that was still within you and active in you during the third round. In the course of the fourth round, you cast it out of yourself. The rage of the jackal and the cunning of the fox are your kamic elements. The fox was created from the cunning that was within you; the rage you possessed gave rise to the jackal. Thus, the entire animal kingdom is your own kamic world. You yourself have shaped and created the animal world. What has become physical in the animal kingdom today were the processes taking place within your own kamic body during the third round. Look at the animals, and you are looking at your own past. - We have reached these levels by leaving others behind us. In the same way, we now attain a higher level of perfection by pushing others away. Every ascetic achieves his own perfection by plunging another human being into an ever more blind frenzy of the senses. This is an eternal necessity.

[ 11 ] The entire process of evolution marches ever forward and forward. The mineral kingdom, which took shape during the first round, developed independently during the second and third rounds and, in the fourth round, assumed the forms we know today. It will no longer exist in the fifth round; it will disintegrate at the end of the fourth round, falling away just as withered bark falls from a tree. In the next round, the fifth, the plant kingdom will be the lowest; in the one following that, the animal kingdom; and in the seventh round, only humankind will remain.

[ 12 ] Minerals have reached the highest stage of development as forms. Their material composition is entirely irrelevant. Through the transformation of these disintegrated forms, the material will take on a different structure and the primordial form will give rise to a new world system. At the end of the seventh round, the human kingdom will be dissolved. This occurs when matter has completed its normal development. We have acquired each kingdom by separating it from the previous one. In order for humans to become what they are, they had to expel the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms from within themselves. We are now slightly past the midpoint of a kalpa—a world age. Development in the second half consists of taking back into ourselves what we previously cast out and processing it at higher levels. This must happen with the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom. In the animal kingdom, our passions are spread out before us like a great tableau.

[ 13 ] We can transpose an astral process taking place within us into the animal kingdom when we tell fables. We can thus recount events in the animal kingdom, and in doing so, we recount our own passions. And when we recount the overcoming of a passion in an animal, we are recounting the overcoming of a passion within ourselves. The occultist is fully aware that, in speaking of his own body, he is speaking of what he himself has formed, for it was not until the fourth round that we formed our bodies. We now live in Kama, and the struggle between Kama and Manas now presents itself to us. If we look upward toward higher stages, we are preparing for a higher ethical evolution. If our ideas are linked to lower Kama stages, then they are intimately related to the animal stages of the third round.

[ 14 ] The occultist says: The human world is Maya. I tell the story much more truthfully if I leave out the deceptive human bodies and narrate the plot through figures from the animal kingdom. Human beings owe their physical bodies to the overall macrocosmic evolution. The kamic human, however, has lagged behind in this overall evolution. If you do something that cannot be undone, then your body no longer corresponds to who you are. The macrocosm would demand that you stand on a higher level. That which transcends the body to the point where it fully corresponds to the macrocosmic image is represented by the hare, which sacrifices its physical body in the outer fire and evolves toward the other side.