The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] We will now continue our discussion of specific karmic issues as they relate to human life.

[ 2 ] Another question is: What is the Esoteric Teaching’s view of the origin of conscience? — To people at our stage of cultural development, conscience manifests itself as a kind of inner voice that tells them what they should or should not do. How did such an inner voice come into being?

[ 3 ] It is interesting to investigate whether there has ever been, in the historical development of humanity, anything at all like what we today call a “conscience.” We find that in very early stages of human society, there was no word for this concept. It does not appear in Greek literature until relatively late, so that the ancient Greeks did not yet have the word in their language. Likewise, other peoples had no word for it in the early stages of their culture. From this we can conclude that, in a more or less conscious state, this conscience only gradually became known. And so it is. Conscience only came into being; it developed—and even then, quite late in the history of human evolution. We will see later what our ancestors had in place of conscience.

[ 4 ] How did conscience gradually develop? An example: Darwin once encountered a cannibal during his travels and tried, among other things, to make it clear to him that it was not right to eat another human being. But the savage replied: “To decide whether it is good or bad to eat a human being, one must first have eaten one!” The savage had not yet judged good and evil according to moral concepts, but according to the pleasure he derived from it. He was a primitive human being from a very, very ancient stage of culture, in which we were all once. How, then, did a human come to distinguish between good and evil? For example, by practicing cannibalism until he himself found himself in the position of being eaten. At that moment, he experienced that the same fate could befall him. Through this experience, he realized that something was not quite right, and the fruit of this experience remained with him in Kamaloka and Devachan. In his next incarnation, he brought with him a very vague sense that his actions were wrong; after further incarnations, this feeling became more definite; he began to pay attention to the feelings of others, and thus, little by little, a certain restraint developed. After several more incarnations, this vague feeling had crystallized, and the thought had taken shape: “One must not do that.” — Similarly, a primitive person at the dawn of civilization ate everything indiscriminately; then he developed stomachaches, and little by little he learned through experience that there were some things he could eat and others he could not. Thus, the experience gradually solidified and became the voice of conscience.

[ 5 ] So what is conscience? It is the result of experiences gained through various incarnations. Essentially, all knowledge—from the highest to the lowest—is the result of experience; it has arisen through trial and error.

[ 6 ] An interesting fact belongs here: It was not until Aristotle that the science of logic—the study of thought—came into being. From this, one must conclude that correct thinking, too, only emerged then. And that is indeed the case. Thinking first had to develop, and correct thinking—logic—only emerged over time based on the observation that incorrect thinking leads to things that are evil. Knowledge is something that people have acquired over many incarnations. After much trial and error, humanity arrived at a treasure trove of knowledge. Here we see the importance of the law of karma; we also have here something that forms as a lasting habit and inclination based on experience. Such an inclination, like the conscience, is also attached to the etheric body: as the astral body has convinced itself a certain number of times that this or that is not possible, this inclination develops in the etheric body as a lasting quality.

[ 7 ] Another interesting karmic connection becomes apparent in habitually selfish behavior or in a loving, sympathetic way of living with others. There are hardened, habitual egoists—not merely in terms of a drive for material gain—and there are altruistic, loving, and compassionate individuals. Both are connected to the etheric body and are expressed in the physical body in the next life. People who habitually act selfishly in one life age prematurely in the next life and wither away early; remaining young and fresh for a long time, on the other hand, stems from a loving, self-sacrificing previous life. Thus, one can also consciously prepare the physical body for the next life.

[ 8 ] Now, if you recall what I said yesterday, a question will surely be on your mind: What about the things the physical body achieves on its own? Its deeds will determine its future fate; but what becomes of the illnesses it has endured in this life?

[ 9 ] The answer to this question, strange as it may sound, is neither speculation nor theory; it is based on the experiences of esoteric science and reveals the purpose of illness. Fabre d’Olivet, the scholar who studied the opening chapters of Genesis, once used a very beautiful metaphor. He compares what emerges as fate to a natural process; he says: The precious pearl is formed through a disease; it is an exudate of the pearl oyster, so that in this case, life must fall ill in order to produce something of value. — Just as the pearl forms from an illness of the oyster, so do the illnesses of the physical body in one life reappear in the next life as aesthetic beauty. Either the person’s own body, through the illness it has endured, becomes beautiful in outward form in the next life, or an infectious disease that it carried among its surroundings is rewarded by the beauty of those surroundings. Beauty, then, develops karmically out of suffering, pain, deprivation, and illness. This is a striking connection, but it does indeed exist. Even the sense of beauty is developed in this way. There is nothing beautiful in the world without suffering, pain, and illness. We encounter something very similar in the general history of human development. From this you will see how wondrous the karmic connections in life actually are, and how questions about evil, illness, and pain cannot be answered at all without understanding the great inner connections of human development.

[ 10 ] The line of evolution goes back to very, very ancient times. Conditions were very different then; the Earth was a very different place. Higher animals did not yet exist. There was a time when there were no fish, amphibians, birds, or mammals at all—only animals lower in the scale than fish. Human beings were present, but in a completely different form. Their physical body was still very imperfect; their spiritual body was more highly developed. They were still in a soft, ethereal body, and the soul itself worked on this physical body from the outside. Human beings still contained all other beings within themselves. Later, humankind evolved further and left behind the fish-like form it had within itself. These were mighty, fantastically appearing creatures, unlike our fish today. Once again, humankind evolved further and separated the birds from itself. Then the reptiles and amphibians emerged from humankind—grotesque beings such as the dinosaurs and fish-lizard hybrids, which were actually merely stragglers among the beings that had previously lagged behind and were even less human-like. Still later, humankind gave rise to the mammals. Finally, humankind cast off the apes and ascended to a higher level.

[ 11 ] Man was, therefore, human from the very beginning—not an ape—and separated the entire animal kingdom from himself in order to become more perfect; much like gradually separating the pigments from a liquid mixed with dye and retaining the clear water. Early naturalists, such as Paracelsus and Oken, expressed this beautifully: When a human looks out at the animal world, he must say to himself: “I carried this within myself and separated it from my being.”

[ 12 ] Thus, human beings had within themselves what they later came to possess outside themselves. And so, even today, human beings still have something within themselves that they will later possess outside themselves, namely their karma—the two aspects of good and evil. Just as it is true that humankind has brought the animal kingdom forth from within itself, so too is it true that it will bring evil and good out into the world. Good will give rise to a human race that is good by nature; evil will give rise to a separate, evil human race. This is also stated in the Apocalypse; it must simply not be misunderstood. Now, however, one must also distinguish between the evolution of the soul and the evolution of the race. A soul may be incarnated in a race that is descending; but if that soul does not make itself evil, it need not incarnate again in a race that is declining; it will incarnate again in a race that is ascending. For the descending races, enough souls flow in from other directions to incarnate.

[ 13 ] But what is within must come out, and human beings will rise ever higher once their karma has run its course. There is something extraordinarily interesting connected with this. In view of this development of humanity, secret orders were founded centuries ago that set themselves the highest conceivable tasks. One such order is the Manichaean Order. Science knows very little about it. It is believed that the Manichaeans taught that there is, by nature, a Good and an Evil that are in conflict with one another; that this had been determined from the time of creation. This is a glimmer of the order’s true mission, distorted into nonsense. The individual members of this order are trained in a very special way for their great task. This order knows that there will be people who will no longer have any evil in their karma, and that there will also be a race that is evil by nature, in which all evil will be present to a greater degree than even in the wildest animals, for they will commit evil consciously, cunningly, and with a highly developed intellect. The Manichaean Order is already instructing its members in such a way that they not only combat evil but also become capable of transforming it into good in later incarnations. The immense difficulty of this task lies in the fact that, in those evil human races—unlike in the case of an evil child—there is no good alongside the evil that can be developed to a higher level through example and teaching. Members of the Manichaean Order are already learning today how to radically transform those who are entirely evil by nature. And this evil, once transformed, becomes a very special form of goodness upon the successful completion of this work. A state of holiness will be the general moral condition on earth, and the power of transformation will bring about this state of holiness. But this cannot be achieved unless this evil first comes into being; and it is in the very power that must be applied to overcome this evil that the power for the highest holiness develops. The field must be fertilized with the repulsive manure; the manure must first, as it were, grow into the field as a ferment. Thus, humanity needs the fertilizer of evil to attain the state of highest holiness. That is the mission of evil. A person becomes strong when he must exert his muscles; likewise, if goodness is to rise to holiness, it must first overcome the evil that opposes it. Evil has the task of elevating humanity.

[ 14 ] Such things allow us to glimpse the mystery of life. Later, when humanity has overcome evil, it can set about redeeming the creatures it has oppressed—at whose expense it has developed. That is the purpose of evolution.

[ 15 ] What follows is even more difficult. A snail shell or a seashell is separated from the living substance of the animal itself. What surrounds the snail as a shell was originally within it; it is the snail’s own body in condensed form. Theosophy says: We are one with everything that surrounds us. — This is to be understood to mean that human beings once contained everything within themselves. In fact, the Earth’s crust came into being because human beings once crystallized it; and just as the snail has its shell, so too did human beings once contain all other beings and kingdoms—the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms—within themselves, and can say to all of them: “The substances were within me; I crystallized the components.” — Thus, he now looks upon something outside himself, and it now takes on a tangible meaning when, as he gazes upon them, he says: “All of this is myself.”

[ 16 ] A second idea is even more subtle. Imagine that ancient state of humanity in which nothing had yet been separated from the human being. The human being was there and had ideas as well; but he did not have them objectively—through external things making an impression—but purely subjectively. Everything came from within himself. The dream is another relic from that time when human beings, as it were, spun the entire world out of themselves. Then they set the world in opposition to themselves. We have made things ourselves and see our own products, our own solidified essence, in other creatures.

[ 17 ] Kant speaks of something that humans cannot know—a “thing-in-itself.” But no such thing exists. There are no limits to knowledge, for in everything a person sees around them, they find the traces left behind by their own being.

[ 18 ] All of this has been said to show you that if you look at only one side of things, you can never arrive at a true understanding. One must be clear about the fact that everything that appears to us in a certain state was quite different in earlier times, and only by comparing the present with the past can one arrive at an understanding. And the same is true when one considers only the sensory world: one will never understand why illness exists at all, or what the mission of evil is, if one limits oneself to sensory observation. All such connections have a profound meaning. This entire process of development through separation, which I have described to you, took place because human beings were meant to become inner beings; they had to set all of this aside in order to be able to look within themselves. This is how we understand the purpose of illness, the purpose of evil, and the purpose of the external world. These are profound connections that emerge from a consideration of the law of karma.

[ 19 ] We will now address a few specific questions about karma that are frequently asked. What is the karmic connection behind the fact that many people die so young—for example, as children? Cases known to esoteric science teach us the following. For example, a child who died young was examined in relation to his previous life, and it became apparent that in his earlier life he had been quite well-endowed and had made good use of these gifts. He had become a quite capable member of human society, but he was somewhat nearsighted. Because of his weak eyesight and his less precise ability to see, all his experiences took on a special character. As a result, there was always a slight shortcoming in everything that could have been better; the person always lagged slightly behind because of the weak eyes. He could have achieved something truly extraordinary if he had had good eyesight. He died and was then reincarnated a very short time later with healthy eyes, but lived only a few weeks. Through this, however, the constituent elements of his being had learned how to obtain healthy eyes, and the man had been granted a brief period of life to acquire what he had still lacked—as it were, a correction of his previous life. The parents’ grief is, of course, karmically balanced, but they had to serve as the instrument for this correction.

[ 20 ] What is the karmic connection in the case of stillborn children? This is difficult to discuss. In individual cases that have been investigated occultly, the astral body had already united with the physical body but then withdrew again, so that the physical body was born dead. But why does the astral body withdraw? The connection is as follows: Certain aspects of the higher human nature are linked to certain physical organs. No being, for example, can have an etheric body without cells. A stone has no etheric body because it lacks vessels or cells, unlike a plant. Similarly, the astral body is bound to a nervous system. The plant has no astral body precisely because it has no nervous system. As soon as a plant were permeated by an astral body, it could no longer look physically like a plant; it would have to be endowed with a nervous system, just as a stone would be endowed with cells if it were permeated by an etheric body.

[ 21 ] If the “I”-body is to gradually take hold, then warm red blood must be present within the physical body. All animals that have red blood were separated from human beings at a time when the “I” state was being prepared for humanity. From this we can see that the physical organs must be in good order if the higher bodies are to take up residence in them. It is important to bear in mind that the physical body is shaped in its form by purely physical heredity. Now, the composition of the bodily fluids may be incorrect, even though the parents are otherwise well-suited to one another spiritually and psychologically. In such cases, a properly formed physical body does not develop; the human embryo receives a physical body in which the higher bodies cannot take up residence. For example, the etheric body unites with the physical body, and now the astral body is supposed to take possession of the physical body. But it finds no suitable instrument—no properly functioning organism is available to it—and the astral body must withdraw again. Thus, the physical body is left behind and is then stillborn. Consequently, a stillbirth is caused by a physically poor mixture of bodily fluids, which has failed to provide a suitable vessel for the spiritual-soul human embryo. The physical body thrives only to the extent that higher aspects of the being can dwell within it. You see how one must go into detail when studying karmic relationships.

[ 22 ] How, then, does karmic balance come about? If someone has caused harm to another person, this must be karmically balanced between them. For this to happen, however, the individuals involved must be incarnated at the same time. How does this happen? What brings people together; what forces bring this about? The mechanism of karma is as follows: The evil I have done to another person has occurred, and as a result, that person has suffered. Now I die and go to Kamaloka. Immediately after death, I must first see it in the tableau of memories; that does not cause pain. Then I relive my life. When, during my time in Kamaloka, I return to that point, I must now suffer for myself the pain that the other person endured. This is where the emotional content comes into play; it is imprinted on the astral body like a stamp. I take some of this pain with me to Devachan as a result; a force remains within me as the outcome of what I experienced through the other person. I must slip into the pain or joy that the other person had to go through; this draws certain forces into the astral body, so that I take a great abundance of forces with me into Devachan.

[ 23 ] When I return in a new incarnation, these forces draw me back to the person in question to balance out the karma. In this way, all people who have once shared an experience with one another are brought together; they have incorporated these forces during the Kamaloka period.

[ 24 ] Of course, a physically embodied human being may also have Kamaloka experiences involving several people in order to balance their karma. An example will help clarify this. A case known in esoteric science describes the following: A man was sentenced to death by five judges. What had happened? In his previous life, this man had killed these very five people, and the karmic forces had brought these six people together for karmic balance. However, this does not result in a never-ending karmic chain; rather, other karmic relationships alter the further course of events.

[ 25 ] As you can see, spiritual forces work in mysterious ways to bring about the complex human being. Some important, far-reaching perspectives will become clear to us as we examine the entire evolution of the Earth and humankind over the next few days.