The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Lecture XVI

[ 1 ] If one wants to understand the full workings of karma—which is what we are now attempting to do—one must be able to grasp the concept of what is called “Nirvana.” Much is required to fully understand the meaning of Nirvana, but let us try to gain a preliminary understanding of it.

[ 2 ] In human beings, there is actually very little in any given action that could be called freedom, for human beings are essentially the result of their past actions. In the broadest sense, this is the case. In order to become what he is, the entire natural kingdoms first had to be created. The mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, which he once contained within himself, he has gradually brought forth from within. Added to this is what he has contributed since the first third of the Lemurian race. Everything he has done, every thought and feeling that has passed through his soul, also belongs to his past and becomes his karma. We look into a past whose effects are simultaneously unfolding around us. The entire world around us is nothing other than the effect of past deeds. Likewise, human beings are now preparing what is to happen in the future.

[ 3 ] Yet we are constantly confronted with things that are not, strictly speaking, merely the effects of past deeds, but rather bring something new into the world. A particular person—let us take Mr. Kiem, for example—is the effect of past deeds. The Theosophical Society, too, is the effect of past deeds, and the fact that he is brought together with it is also such an effect. But something new comes about through Mr. Kiem’s relationship with the Theosophical Society; this, in turn, is the cause of future actions. When light shines on a stick, a shadow is cast behind it. That is actually something new. When one observes this effect, one says to oneself, “Something new has happened.” The relationship of things to one another is something new: the formation of the shadow.

[ 4 ] Everything that a person usually thinks about concerns things, concerns what has already come to be. But a person can also think about certain circumstances—about something that has not been brought about by past causes, but is only now coming into being. This happens very rarely, however, because people cling to the old, to what has accumulated around them. Circumstances that appear as something entirely new very rarely form the content of human thought. But anyone who wants to help shape the future must have thoughts that give rise to new relationships between things. Only thoughts about relationships between things can be something new. This is most clearly seen in art. What the artist creates does not actually exist at all. The mere form that the sculptor shapes does not really exist; it is not a product of nature. In nature, there is only the form pulsed through by life. Mere form would contradict the laws of nature. The artist constructs something new out of relationships. The painter paints what arises through these relationships: light and shadow; he does not paint what is actually there. He does not paint the tree, but rather an impression evoked by depicting all the relationships to the tree.

[ 5 ] Even in practical action, one notices that people generally do not create anything new. The majority of people merely do what has already been done. Only a few people create out of moral intuition, by introducing new duties and new deeds into the world. What is new enters the world through relationships. That is why it has often been said that elementary moral action lies entirely in relationships. Such moral action consists, for example, of deeds brought about by the relationship of goodwill. In most actions, one finds that they are based on the old; even in actions and events where something new occurs, one usually still relies on the old. Upon closer examination, this is usually the case. Only those actions are free in which a person does not act at all on the basis of the past, but rather faces only what can come into the world through the combining and productive activity of their reason. In occultism, such actions are called “creating out of nothing.” - All other actions are created out of karma. These are two opposites: karma and the opposite of karma, nothingness—an activity that is not based on karma.

[ 6 ] And now imagine a person who is initially determined by karma—by past actions, thoughts, and feelings. Imagine this person having advanced to the point where they have eradicated all karma and thus face nothingness. When they still act, occultism says: They act from within Nirvana. - The actions of a Buddha or a Christ, for example, arose from Nirvana, at least in part. The ordinary person approaches this state only when inspired artistically, religiously, or by world history. Intuitive creation arises from “nothingness.” Anyone who wishes to attain this must become completely free of karma. He can then no longer draw his impulses from the sources from which human beings usually draw them. The mood that then overtakes him is one of godliness, a state also called Nirvana.

[ 7 ] How does a human being ascend to Nirvana? Let us look back to the time of the Lemurians. There we find human beings, just as they are on Earth today, initially walking on all fours. These beings, in whom the human being of that time incarnated as a “pure human being” (as a monad), walked on all fours. Because the monads incarnated within them, these beings gradually straightened up and raised their front limbs. Only then did karma begin. Karma, in the sense of human karma, became possible only when humans began to use their hands for work. Before that, one does not create individual karma. This was a very important stage in human development, when human beings transformed from horizontal beings into vertical beings and thereby had their hands free. In this way, they developed into the Atlantean era.

[ 8 ] At the next higher stage, humans learned to use language. First, they learned to use their hands; then, they learned to use language. Through his hands, man fills the world with deeds; through language, he fills it with words. When a person dies, the deeds and words he has left in the world remain. Everything a person has done remains as his karma. But the words a person has spoken remain not only as his own karma, but also as something else entirely.

[ 9 ] Let us look back to the time when humans did not yet speak, but only acted. Back then, actions were something that came solely from the individual personality. This individuality immediately ceases to be purely personal when language begins. For now, people communicate with one another. This is an immensely important moment in Atlantean development. From the moment the first sound was uttered, human karma remained in the world. As soon as people speak to one another, something communal flows from all of humanity. Then purely personal, individual karma merges into the general karma of humanity. With the words we speak and spread around us, we are in fact spreading more than just ourselves. The whole of humanity lives in what we speak. Only when the deeds of the hands become selfless will they also be selfless for the whole of humanity. But through speech, a person cannot perform entirely selfish deeds; otherwise, it would have to belong entirely to him alone. Speech can never be entirely self-serving, whereas the deeds of the hands usually are. The occultist says: What I do with my hands can only be my own deed; what I speak, I speak as a member of a people or tribe.

[ 10 ] Thus, all around us, our lives create remnants—personal rudiments through the deeds of our hands, and rudiments of humanity through what lives on from our words. One must distinguish between these very carefully. Everything in nature around us—the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms—exists as a result of past actions. What is built up around us through our actions is, in fact, something new entering the world. With every human being, something enters the world—a new influence—and new influences also arise through humanity as a whole.

[ 11 ] So if we must say: Human beings appeared on Earth in the middle of the Lemurian epoch and created their own karma for the first time—previously they had not created any individual karma—then we must now ask: Where could this karma possibly come from, since it came into effect as something new?—It can only come from Nirvana. At that time, something had to enter the world that came from Nirvana—from the place where creation arises out of “nothingness.” The beings who fertilized the Earth at that time had to reach all the way up to Nirvana. What fertilized the four-legged beings, causing them to become human, were beings who descended from the plane of Nirvana. They are called monads. That is why beings of this kind had to descend from the plane of Nirvana at that time. On the plane of Nirvana, the being that is within us—within the human being—is the monad. Here, something entirely new enters the world and incarnates itself in what is already there, which in turn is entirely the result of past deeds.

[ 12 ] We thus distinguish three levels. The first is that of external actions performed by the hands; the second is that brought about by spoken words; and the third is that brought about by thought. And thought is something even more comprehensive than what is brought about by spoken words. Thought is no longer, as language is, different among various peoples, but belongs to all of humanity.

[ 13 ] Thus, human beings ascend from actions through words to thoughts, and in this way they become increasingly universal beings. There is no general standard of action, no logic of actions. Everyone must act for themselves. But there is no purely personal language. Language belongs to a group. Thought, however, belongs to all of humanity. Thus, progressing from the particular to the general, we have the three stages in human existence: deeds, words, and thoughts.

[ 14 ] Insofar as human beings express themselves in the environment, they leave behind the traces of the spirit of all humanity as thoughts; the traces of the soul of a human group as words; and the traces of their unique human individuality as actions. This is perhaps most clearly expressed by pointing to the effects of what is brought about through these individual stages. An individuality is like a thread that runs through all personal manifestations in the various incarnations. An individuality creates for future incarnations. A people, as a linguistic community, creates for new peoples. Humanity creates for a new humanity, for a new planet. What a person does for himself personally has significance for the next incarnation; what a people speaks has significance for the next subrace, for the next incarnation of that people. And when a world comes into being in which our entire thinking no longer exists merely as thought but manifests in the effects of that thinking, then that is a new humanity—that is, a new planet. Without these broad perspectives, we cannot understand karma.

[ 15 ] What we think has significance for the coming planetary cycles. Let us now consider this thought: Will the human race that survives us and inhabits a future planet still be capable of thought? - Just as a new race will not speak the same language as the one before it, so too will future humanity no longer think. It is ridiculous to ask ourselves in our thoughts what the Deity is. On the next planet, humans will not think, but will perceive their environment through other activities, in a form entirely different from that on this planet. Thinking is something that belongs to us. When we explain the world through thought, this explanation of the world is meant solely for us. This has immense significance, because humanity sees how it, too, is woven into the thread of karma and lives and weaves within the entire fabric.

[ 16 ] When the Eastern occultist contemplates such matters, he says: Our entire life is as if we were surrounded on all sides by boundaries created by our actions, speech, and thoughts. If we were to set all of that aside, there would be hardly anything left for the ordinary person. That he still has something left is the result of esotericism, once he has transcended all of that. What remains then is the experience of Nirvana.

[ 17 ] The planetary spirit, which represents the essence of the world, is now incarnated in thought, but will be incarnated as something else in the future.