The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture XI

[ 1 ] Today, let us illustrate how karma works and clarify how it operates in the so-called three worlds. All other worlds besides these three are of little relevance to human development; however, the physical, astral, and mental worlds certainly are. During the waking state, we are in the physical world; in a certain sense, the physical world lies purely before us. We need only direct our senses outward to have the physical world purely before us. But the moment we look at the physical world with interest, engaging with it through our perceptions, we are already partly in the astral world and only partly truly in the physical world. Only the beginnings of living purely in the physical world are present in human life; for example, when one contemplates a work of art purely, without the desire to possess it. Such contemplation of a work of art is an important spiritual act when, forgetting oneself, one works on it purely as a mental task. This pure, self-forgetful way of living in the physical world is very rare. People rarely observe nature in pure contemplation; instead, they experience many other things while doing so. Nevertheless, selfless living in the physical world is the most important thing of all, for only through it can a person attain self-awareness; in all other worlds, the ordinary person is still immersed in a world of the unconscious.

[ 2 ] In the physical world, human beings are not only self-aware; they can also become selfless within it. However, their everyday consciousness is not yet selfless unless they forget themselves. It is not the physical world that prevents them from doing so, but rather the influence of the astral and mental worlds. But when a person forgets himself, then the sense of separateness disappears, and he finds his self spread out beyond himself. At present, however, a person can develop this self-consciousness—free from a sense of separateness—only in physical life. We call this self-consciousness the “I.” A person can become self-conscious only in relation to his surroundings. Only when he develops senses for a particular world does he become self-aware within that world. At present, he has senses only for the physical world, but the other worlds continually influence his self-awareness and cloud it. When sensations influence it, that is the astral world; when a person thinks, the mental world influences his consciousness.

[ 3 ] Most people’s thoughts are nothing more than reflections of their surroundings. Only in very rare cases does a person have thoughts that are not connected to their surroundings. They have such higher thoughts only when their senses awaken to the mental world, so that they do not merely think these thoughts but see them as beings around them. Then they possess the self-awareness of the mental world, just as the chela, the initiate, does. If a person tries to make the physical world around them disappear first, and then all their instincts, passions, emotions, and so on, then for most people, not a single thought remains. Let us just try to imagine everything that influences human beings insofar as they live in space and time. Let us try to bring to mind everything connected with the place where we live and the time in which we live. Everything the soul constantly thinks about depends on space and time. All of this has a transient value. Therefore, human beings must move beyond merely reflecting the sensory world to allowing an eternal content of thought to live within them, in order to gradually develop devachanic senses. A statement such as the one from *Light on the Path*: “Before the eye can see, it must wean itself from tears,” applies to all times and all places. When we allow such a sentence to live within us, something that lies beyond space and time lives within us. This is a means, a power, to gradually awaken the devachanic senses in the soul and to awaken the senses to the eternal in the world.

[ 4 ] This is how humanity’s relationship to the three worlds is structured. However, humanity has only gradually come to be in this position. It was not always in the physical world; it only gradually became physical and only gradually developed senses. Previously, he was on the higher planes. He descended into the physical world from the astral plane, and before that from the mental plane. We divide the mental plane into two sections: the lower mental plane, or rupa plane, where everything is already differentiated, and the upper mental plane, or arupa plane, where everything is still undifferentiated and in a seed-like state. Humanity descended from the Arupa Plane through the Rupa Plane and the Astral Plane to the physical plane. It was only on the physical plane that humanity became self-aware. On the Astral Plane, humanity is not yet self-aware, and on the Rupa and Arupa Planes, it is even less so. On the physical plane, human beings encountered external objects for the first time, directly in their immediate surroundings. Whenever a being encounters external objects at all, the first step toward self-awareness is taken. On the higher planes, life was still entirely confined to the inner realm. When human beings lived on the astral plane, they had only one reality, which arose from their own inner life. He possessed a true visual consciousness there. Although this was vivid, in reality they were merely images that arose within him. Today’s dreams are a faint remnant of this. If, for example, an astral human being had approached salt, the salt would have unconsciously affected him, and an image of it would have arisen within him. The image of the salty taste would have arisen within him. If he had approached another person whom he found likable, he would not have seen that person from the outside, but rather a feeling of sympathy would have arisen within him. This life in the astral realm was a life of complete selfhood and separateness. Only on the physical plane can a person relinquish their separateness by perceiving objects through the sense organs, merging with the environment, with the non-self. Therein lies the importance of the physical plane. Had a person not entered the physical plane, they would never have come to relinquish their separateness and turn their senses outward. In fact, this is where the work on selflessness begins. Anything other than the pure contemplation of external physical things belongs even more to the ego. One must accustom oneself to living just as selflessly on higher planes as one has begun to do on the physical plane—albeit only sparingly so far. The objects of the physical plane compel a person to become selfless and to give something to that which is not “I.” With regard to desires—to what lies within the soul—a person still acts according to his or her cravings. On the physical plane, he must learn to renounce, to detach himself from his desires. This is the first stage.

[ 5 ] The next stage is to be guided not by one’s own desires, but by those that come from outside. Furthermore, when a person consciously and of his own volition chooses not to be guided by the thoughts that arise within him, but instead consciously surrenders to foreign thoughts, he ascends to the Devachan plane.

[ 6 ] Therefore, in the higher worlds, we must seek something outside ourselves in order to devote ourselves to it, just as we do to objects in the physical world. This is how one must view the desires of the Initiates. The secret disciple learns to recognize the desires that are right for humanity, and he aligns himself with them, just as one is compelled by external forces to align oneself with sensory objects. The cultivation and education of desires lead us to the astral plane.

[ 7 ] If we then become selfless even in our thoughts and allow the eternal thoughts of the Masters of Wisdom to flow through our soul—through concentration and meditation on the Masters’ thoughts—then we also perceive the thoughts of our surroundings. The initiate can already be a Master on the astral plane, but on the mental plane, only the higher Masters can be so.

[ 8 ] Human beings first appear before us as physical beings. They live simultaneously in the astral and mental worlds, but possess self-awareness only in the physical world. They must traverse the entire physical world until their self-awareness is imbued with everything the physical world can teach them. Here, human beings say to themselves: “I.”—They connect their “I” with the things around them; they learn to expand it through contemplation; it flows outward and becomes one with the objects it has fully comprehended. If we had already comprehended the entire physical world, we would no longer need it at all; then we would have it within us. But human beings already have only a part of the physical world within them. The human being who is born as a Lemurian in his first incarnation, who merely extends his “I” outward toward the physical world, does not yet know much about it. But when the human being’s final incarnation comes, he must have united the entire physical world with his “I.”

[ 9 ] In the physical world, human beings are left to their own devices; no one guides them there; in truth, they are forsaken by the gods. When they emerged from the astral world, the gods abandoned them. They were meant to learn to become their own masters in the physical world. Therefore, he can only live here as he actually does: oscillating between error and truth. He must grope his way and seek his own path. Now he gropes largely in the dark. His gaze is turned outward; he is free among things, but he is also exposed to error. On the astral plane, human beings did not have such freedom; there they were urged and driven by the powers standing behind them. Like a kind of marionette, they still hung there on the gods’ strings; the gods still had to guide them there. Insofar as human beings are still spiritual beings today, the gods still live within them. There, freedom and bondage are still strongly intertwined. Desires are constantly changing. This ebb and flow of desires comes from within. These are the gods at work within the human being.

[ 10 ] Human beings are even less free on the Rupaplan of the mental world, and even less free on the Arupaplan of the higher mental world. Human beings gradually become free on the physical plane as they become incapable of error through knowledge.

[ 11 ] To the same extent that one works through and comes to understand the physical plane, one gains the ability to carry the things one has learned in the physical world up to the Arupa plane. The Arupa plane is formless in and of itself, but takes on forms through human life. Human beings gather lessons on the physical plane and carry them—as forms solidified in the soul—up to the Arupa plane. In the Greek Mysteries, therefore, the soul was called a bee, the Arupa plane a beehive, and the physical Earth a flower field. This was taught in the Greek Mysteries.

[ 12 ] What, then, drove the soul down to the physical plane? It is desire, craving; one never descends to a lower plane except through desire. Before that, the soul was in the astral world; the astral world is the world of desire. All that the gods implanted in human beings in the astral world was the pure world of desire. The most outstanding feature of these pre-Lemurian beings was their desire for the physical. At that time, human beings were completely greedy for the physical; they had within them an unconscious, blind greed for the physical. This greed can only be satisfied through gratification. Through the ideas and insights that humans gain, and through what they have come to understand about the physical world, this craving for the physical gradually fades.

[ 13 ] After death, the soul ascends to the astral plane and from there to the rupa and arupa planes. There it deposits what it has acquired. What it has not yet brought with it from the physical world—what remains unrecognized—draws it back down again; this generates the craving for new incarnations. How long it remains on the Arupa plane depends on the extent of what the person has gained on the physical plane. For the primitive person, this is very little; therefore, only a faint flash occurs for them on the Arupa plane. Then they descend again to the physical world. Whoever has learned everything here in the physical world no longer needs to leave the Arupa plane, no longer needs to return to the physical plane, for he has fulfilled his duty in the physical world.

[ 14 ] In terms of his astral nature, human beings today still belong halfway to the astral world. The veil of the astral has been partially lifted, and they perceive the physical world through their senses. When a person comes to live on the astral plane as he now lives on the physical plane—and learns to make observations there in a similar way—he then carries the perceptions of the astral plane up to the arupa plane. What he carries up from the astral plane, however, flows from the arupa plane even higher, on to the next higher plane, the buddhi plane. Likewise, what he achieves today on the Rupa plane through meditation and concentration, he takes with him to the Arupa plane and transmits it from there to even higher planes.

[ 15 ] The astral aspect of a human being is open half to the physical world and half to higher worlds. Where it is open to the physical world, the person is influenced by the perceptions of the sensory world. On the other hand, they are influenced from above. The same is true of their mental body. This, too, is influenced partly from the outside and partly from the inner world by the gods, the devas. Because this is so, human beings must dream and sleep.

[ 16 ] Now we can also understand the nature of sleep and dreaming. To dream is to turn toward the inner devic forces. People dream almost the entire night; they just do not remember it. During sleep, the mental body is constantly governed by the devas. Human beings do not yet possess self-awareness on the higher planes; therefore, they are not self-aware in their dreams. On the astral plane, they begin to develop self-awareness. In deep sleep, they are on the mental plane. There, they are not yet self-aware at all. It is only on the physical plane that a person is awake. There, the “I” is present; it expresses itself fully on the physical plane. The astral “I” cannot yet fully express itself on the physical plane; therefore, the astral “I” must temporarily leave the person’s body. They must sleep so that it can leave. The states of dreaming and sleeping are merely a repetition of earlier stages of development. On the astral plane, a person dreamed; on the mental plane, he slept. He repeats these states every night today. Only when he has also developed senses for the other planes does he no longer dream or sleep, but instead perceives realities there. The initiate learns to perceive such realities on the astral plane. He is then surrounded by a reality there. Those who develop even further are surrounded by a reality even in deep sleep. This is when the continuity of consciousness sets in.

[ 17 ] One must understand this series of subtle concepts; only then can one grasp why a person, having been on the higher planes, comes back down. That which he does not yet know, that which he has not yet recognized—what Buddhists call avidya, or ignorance—drives him back into physical existence. Avidya is the first of the karmic forces. According to Buddhist teaching, there are twelve karmic forces that drive a person downward. Together, these are called the nidanas. As a person gradually descends, it becomes evident how the karmic effects come into play. Avidya is the first effect. It is the opposite pole of a person’s entry onto the physical plane. Since they enter the physical plane and connect with something there, this elicits a reaction. Action always elicits a reaction. Everything a person does in the physical world also elicits a reaction and reverberates back as karma. Action and reaction is the mechanism of karma.