The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] Today we want to engage in one of those spiritual-scientific reflections that show us how the knowledge we gain through the anthroposophical worldview is capable of providing us with insights into life in the broadest sense. Not only does such knowledge make the life of everyday reality comprehensible to us, but it also provides insights into life in that vast, broad scope that we come to grasp when we trace it beyond death into the periods that elapse for a human being between death and a new birth. But it is precisely in daily life that spiritual science can be of great benefit to us; it can solve many a mystery for us, and it can show us how, so to speak, to cope with life. For the person who is unable to look into the depths of existence finds much of what they encounter in life—daily, even hourly—to be incomprehensible. Many questions pile up for such a person—questions that cannot be answered by sensory experience alone and which, if left unanswered, remain mysteries and intrude disruptively into life by causing dissatisfaction. But dissatisfaction in life can never serve the development and true well-being of humanity. We could present hundreds of such life puzzles that shed light on life far more deeply than one usually suspects.

[ 2 ] One such word, which holds many mysteries, is the word “forgetting.” You all know it as the word that denotes the opposite of what we call retaining a certain idea, a certain thought, or an impression. You have all certainly had all sorts of disheartening experiences with what lies behind the word “forgetting.” You have all likely gone through the torment that often arises when this or that idea, this or that impression, as we say, has vanished from memory. Perhaps you have then also wondered: Why must something like forgetting be a part of life?

[ 3 ] Now, one can only gain insight—and indeed, fruitful insight—into such a matter from the facts of occult life. As you know, memory has something to do with what we call the human etheric body. So we may also assume that, so to speak, the opposite of memory—forgetting—must also have something to do with the etheric body. The question may be justified: Does it make sense in life that a person can forget things that were once part of their imaginative life? Or must we be content—as so often happens with regard to this idea—with characterizing forgetting as merely negative, saying: It is simply a shortcoming of the human soul that it cannot have everything present at every moment. - We will gain insight into forgetting only if we bring to mind the significance of its opposite—the significance and essence of memory.

[ 4 ] When we say that memory has something to do with the etheric body, we must surely ask ourselves: How is it that in human beings the etheric body is assigned the task of retaining impressions and ideas, since the etheric body is already present in plants and actually has a fundamentally different function there? We have often spoken of how a plant being, as we see it before us, in contrast to a mere stone, has its entire materiality permeated by the etheric body. And in the plant, the etheric body is the principle of life in the narrower sense, and thus the principle of repetition. If the plant were subject only to the activity of the etheric body, then, starting from the root of the plant, the principle of the leaf would repeat itself endlessly. The fact that parts of a living being repeat themselves over and over again is due to the etheric body, for it always seeks to produce the same thing again and again. That is why there is such a thing in life as we call reproduction—the production of one’s own kind. It is essentially based on an activity of the etheric body. Everything in humans and animals that is based on repetition can be traced back to the etheric principle. The fact that the vertebrae of the spine repeat in a sequence of ring-shaped bones stems from this activity of the etheric body. The fact that a plant’s growth culminates at the top, and that the flower appears to us as a synthesis of the entire growth process, stems from the fact that the astral nature of the Earth sinks into the plant’s growth from the outside. The fact that in humans the vertebrae of the spine expand upward toward the cranial cavity and become hollow bones has its origin in the activity of the human astral body. Thus, we can say that everything that produces a culmination is subject to the astral, and all repetition stems from the etheric principle. The plant has this etheric body, and so does the human being. Of course, one cannot speak of a memory in the case of the plant. For to claim, for example, that the plant, through a certain unconscious memory, recalls what the leaf it produced was like, and now grows a little further and then produces the next leaf according to the pattern of the first—this leads to the fanciful notions toward which a certain contemporary natural science tends. For example, it is also claimed that heredity stems from a kind of unconscious memory. This now constitutes a certain—one might almost say—nonsense in scientific literature, for to speak of memory in plants is actually nothing more than amateurism in the highest sense.

[ 5 ] We are dealing with the etheric body, which is the principle of repetition. In order to grasp the difference between the plant etheric body and the human etheric body—which, in addition to the characteristics of the plant etheric body, also possesses the ability to develop memory—we must first clarify exactly how plants and humans differ. Imagine, for example, that you plant a seed in the ground; from this seed, a very specific plant will grow. A wheat seed will produce a wheat stalk and an ear of wheat; a bean seed will produce a bean plant. And you will have to admit: In a certain sense, how this plant will develop is immutably determined by the nature of the seed. It is true that the gardener may intervene and, through various horticultural techniques, refine the plant—in a certain sense, reshape it. But this is, after all, something of an exception and, moreover, is of only limited scope compared to what we described earlier when we said: A plant will develop from the seed that has a very specific form, a very specific growth pattern, and so on. Is this also the case with human beings? Certainly, to a certain degree this is the case, but only to a certain degree. We see that when a human being arises from the human germ, its development also comes to an end at a certain limit. We see that a Black person arises from Black parents, a White person from White parents, and we could cite many other examples that would show us that, just as with plants, human development is also confined within certain limits. But this applies only up to a certain limit—the limit of the physical, the etheric, and even the astral nature. Certain traits will be evident in a child’s habits and passions that persist throughout life—traits that are, so to speak, similar to the passions and instincts of their ancestors. But if human beings were just as confined within the limits of a certain growth as plants are, then there would be no such thing as education, as the development of soul and spiritual qualities. If you imagine two children from different sets of parents who are, however, very similar in terms of aptitudes and outward characteristics, and now imagine that one child is neglected, and little attention is paid to its upbringing, while the other is carefully raised, sent to a good school, and undergoes a rich development—then you cannot possibly say that this rich development was already contained in the child’s seed, as it might be in a bean. The bean grows from the seed in any case; you do not need to raise it in any special way. That is part of its nature. We cannot educate plants, but we can educate human beings. We can pass something on to a human being, instill something within them, whereas we cannot instill anything of the sort into a plant. Where does this come from? The reason lies in the fact that the etheric body of a plant always has a specific inner law that is self-contained, that develops from seed to seed, and that has a specific cycle that cannot be transcended. The situation is different with the human etheric body. Here, in addition to the part of the etheric body that is used for growth, for the same development that the human being, like the plant, is also confined to within certain limits—it is the case that, in addition to this part, there is, so to speak, another part in the etheric body that appears freely, which has no use from the outset unless we teach the human being all sorts of things through education and instill all sorts of things into the human soul, which this free part of the etheric body then processes. Thus, there really is a part of the etheric body in the human being that is not utilized by nature itself. The human being preserves this part of the etheric body; he does not use it for growth, nor for his natural organic development, but retains it within himself as something free, through which he can absorb the ideas that enter him through education.

[ 6 ] But this process of taking in ideas occurs in such a way that human beings first receive impressions. Human beings must always receive impressions, for even the entire process of education is based on impressions and on the interaction between the etheric body and the astral body. For the astral body is necessary in order to receive impressions. In order for you to retain this impression—so that it does not disappear again—the etheric body is necessary. Even the smallest, seemingly most insignificant memory requires the activity of the etheric body. For example, when you look at an object, the astral body is necessary for that. But in order to retain it when you turn your head away, you need the etheric body. The astral body is involved in looking; to form an image, however, you need the etheric body. So even though this activity of the etheric body is still very minimal for retaining such images—and even though it really only comes into play when lasting habits, lasting inclinations, changes in temperament, and so on arise—the etheric body is still necessary for this. It must be present even when one wishes to retain a simple image in memory. For all retention of images is based, in a certain sense, on memory.

[ 7 ] So, through the influences of upbringing and through a person’s spiritual development, we have incorporated all sorts of elements into their free etheric body, and we may now ask ourselves: Does this free etheric body remain completely irrelevant to a person’s growth and development? No, that is not the case. As a person grows older—not so much during the years of youth—what has been incorporated into the etheric body through the impressions of education gradually becomes involved in the entire life of the human body, including its inner life. And you can best form an idea of how this takes place if you consider a fact that is usually not taken into account in everyday life. People generally believe that the soul plays no very significant role in human life. Nevertheless, the following can happen: Imagine, for a moment, that a person falls ill simply because they were exposed to unsuitable climatic conditions. Now let us hypothetically imagine that this person can become ill under two different conditions: for example, in such a way that they have little to process in the free limb of the etheric body. Let us assume they are an indolent person on whom the outside world made little impression, who faced great difficulties in their upbringing, and for whom things went in one ear and out the other. Such a person will lack, as a means of recovery, something that another person possesses—for example, someone with a lively, active mind, who absorbed much in youth, who has processed much, and who has therefore taken very good care of the free limb of their etheric body. Of course, it remains for conventional medicine to determine why one person faces greater difficulties in the healing process than another. This free limb of the etheric body, which has been energized by manifold impressions, is precisely what comes into play here; through its inner agility, it participates in the healing process. In numerous cases, people owe their rapid or painless recovery to the fact that, with lively intellectual engagement in their youth, they diligently absorbed the impressions that presented themselves to them. There you see the influences of the spirit on the body! The healing process for a person who goes through life in a dull-witted manner involves something entirely different than for one whose free member of the etheric body has not become heavy and lethargic, but has remained active. You can indeed convince yourself of this fact even outwardly by looking at the world with open eyes, by observing how spiritually indolent and spiritually active people behave when they are ill.

[ 8 ] So you can see that in human beings, the etheric body is, after all, something quite different from that of a mere plant. The plant lacks this free component of the etheric body that enables human beings to develop further, and the fact that human beings possess such a free component of the etheric body is, in essence, the foundation of their entire development. If you compare beans from a thousand years ago with today’s beans, you will certainly notice a certain difference, but it is essentially very small; the beans have essentially remained the same in form. But compare the people of Europe in the age of Charlemagne with the people of today: Why do people today have entirely different ideas and entirely different feelings? Because they have always had a free member of the etheric body, through which they could take in impressions and transform their nature. All of this applies in general. But now we must consider how this entire mode of action, which we have just characterized, manifests itself in specific cases.

[ 9 ] Let us suppose that a person, once they have received an impression, could not erase that impression from their memory, but that it would remain there. It would be a curious thing at first if you had to think that everything that has made an impression on you since your youth were always present every day of your life, from morning to night. You know, of course, that this is only present for a certain time after death. There, it serves a good purpose. But in life, people forget. You have all not only forgotten countless things you experienced in your childhood, but also much of what happened last year—and certainly some of what came to you yesterday. An image that has vanished from your memory, that you have “forgotten,” has by no means disappeared from your entire being, from your entire spiritual organism. That is by no means the case. If you saw a rose yesterday and have now forgotten it, the image of the rose still exists within you, as do the other impressions you have absorbed, even if they are forgotten by your immediate consciousness.

[ 10 ] Now, there is a huge, enormous difference between an idea while it is still in our memory and the same idea once it has vanished from our memory. So let us consider an image that we have formed through an external impression and that now lives in our consciousness. Then let us observe, in our inner life, how it gradually disappears, how it is gradually forgotten. But it is still there; it remains within the entire spiritual organism. What is it doing there? What is this, so to speak, forgotten image occupied with? It has its own very significant function. For it is only when it is forgotten that it begins to work in the proper way on this free limb of the etheric body that I have described to you, and to make this free limb of the etheric body useful to the human being. It is as if it were only then fully assimilated. As long as a person uses it to gain knowledge, it does not work inwardly on the free mobility or on the organization of the free limb of the etheric body. The moment it sinks into oblivion, it begins to work. So we can say: Work is constantly taking place in the free limb of the human etheric body; it is constantly being shaped. And what is it that is at work there? It is the forgotten ideas. That is the great blessing of forgetting! As long as an idea clings to your memory, you relate that idea to an object. When you look at a rose and have the image of it in your memory, you relate the image of the rose to the external object. As a result, the image is bound to the external object and must send its inner power to it. But the moment you forget the image, it is inwardly unleashed. Then it begins to develop germinative forces that work internally on the human etheric body. Thus, our forgotten ideas have a very essential significance for us. A plant cannot forget. Nor, of course, can it receive impressions. But it could not forget simply because its entire etheric body is used up for its growth; there is no unused residue left. It would have nothing into which ideas could enter to be developed.

[ 11 ] But everything that happens occurs out of a lawful necessity. Wherever there is something that is meant to develop but is not supported in its development, an obstacle to that development is created. Everything within an organism that is not integrated into its development becomes an obstacle to that development. Suppose all sorts of inclusions were to separate off inside the eye—substances that could not be absorbed into the eye’s general aqueous humor; this would impair the eye’s vision. Nothing may remain that is not woven into the whole, that cannot be absorbed. The same is true of spiritual impressions. A person who, for example, could receive impressions and constantly hold these impressions in their consciousness might very easily reach a point where the limb that is supposed to be nourished by forgotten ideas would receive too little of these forgotten ideas and, like a lame limb, would hinder development instead of promoting it. Herein lies the reason why it is harmful when a person lies awake at night and, because they are troubled by certain worries, cannot at all remove those impressions from their consciousness. If they could forget them, they would become beneficial agents working upon their etheric body. Here you have a tangible example of the blessing of forgetting, and here you also have an indication of the necessity that you should not compulsively hold on to this or that thought, but rather learn to forget this or that. It is extremely harmful to a person’s inner health if they are absolutely unable to forget certain things.

[ 12 ] What we can say here about the most everyday matters of the moment also applies to ethical and moral situations. What we might call the beneficial effect of a character that holds no grudges is, in fact, based on this very principle. Holding a grudge takes a toll on a person’s health. If someone has harmed us and we have internalized the impression of what they did to us—and keep returning to it whenever we see them—then we project this notion of harm onto the person; we allow it to flow outward. But suppose we have managed to shake hands with the person who harmed us when we meet them again, as if nothing had happened: then that is truly healing. And it is not a metaphor, but a fact, that it has a healing effect. Such a notion—which proves to be dull and ineffective outwardly when someone has wronged us—pours inward at that very moment like soothing balm for many things within a person. These are facts, and from them we can see, in an even broader sense, the blessing of forgetting. Forgetting is not merely a deficiency in human beings, but rather one of the most beneficial things in human life. If human beings were to develop only their memory, and if everything that made an impression on them were to remain in that memory, then their etheric body would have more and more to bear; it would acquire ever richer content, but at the same time it would wither away more and more inwardly. It is thanks to forgetting that the human being becomes capable of development. In any case, it is true that no impression has ever completely vanished from the human being. This is best demonstrated by that great flashback of memories we experience immediately after death. There it becomes clear that no impression has been completely lost.

[ 13 ] Now that we have briefly touched upon the blessing of forgetfulness in everyday life—both in neutral and moral spheres—we can consider the full scope of this forgetfulness and its impact on life during the period between death and a new birth. What, after all, is Kamaloka—that transitional period for human beings that lies before their entry into Devachan, the actual spiritual world? Kamaloka exists because, immediately after death, a person cannot forget the inclinations, desires, and pleasures they experienced in life. At death, a person first leaves his physical body. Then that great tableau of memories, which has often been described to you, appears before the soul. This ceases completely after two, three, or at the latest four days. Then a sort of essence of the etheric body remains. While the actual, expansive part of the etheric body withdraws and dissolves into the general world ether, a kind of essence, skeleton, or framework of the etheric body remains—but in a contracted state. The astral body is the bearer of all instincts, drives, desires, passions, feelings, sensations, and pleasures. Now, the astral body in Kamaloka would not be able to become aware of the tormenting deprivation if it did not, by virtue of still being connected to the remnants of the etheric body, continually have the possibility of remembering what it had enjoyed and desired in life. And breaking these habits is, after all, nothing other than a gradual forgetting of what chains a person to the physical world. Thus, if a person wishes to enter Devachan, they must first learn to forget what chains them to the physical world. So here, too, we see that a person is tormented by the fact that they still have memories of the physical world. Just as worries can become tormenting for a person when they refuse to fade from memory, so too do the inclinations and instincts that remain after death become tormenting; and this tormenting memory of the connection to life is expressed in everything a person must endure during their time in Kamaloka. And only at the moment when a person has succeeded in forgetting all the desires and longings for the physical world do the achievements and fruits of the previous life emerge as they must take effect in Devachan. There they become the shapers and master craftsmen in the formation of the new life. For, in essence, it is true that in Devachan a person works on the new form he is to take when he re-enters life. This work—this preparation of his future being—is what gives him the bliss he experiences throughout his time in Devachan. Once a person has passed through Kamaloka, he already begins the preliminary work for his future form. Life in Devachan is always filled with the task of using the essence they have received to develop the archetype of their next form. They shape this archetype by incorporating into it the fruits of their past life. But they can do this only by forgetting what made their time in Kamaloka so difficult.

[ 14 ] So when we speak of suffering and deprivation in the Kamaloka, we see that this stems from the fact that the human being is unable to forget certain connections with the physical world; the physical world hovers before his soul like a memory. But then, once they have passed through “the flood of Lethe,” once they have crossed the river of oblivion, once they have learned this forgetting, the achievements and experiences of the previous incarnation are used to shape, piece by piece, the archetype—the prototype—of the life to come. And then the blissful joy of Devachan begins to take the place of suffering. Just as in ordinary life, when worries torment us, when certain thoughts refuse to leave our memory, we insert into our etheric body a piece of wood that has turned to wood, a withering piece that contributes to our ill health—in exactly the same way, we have within our being a fragment after death that contributes to our suffering and deprivation as long as we have not, through forgetting, rid ourselves of all connections with the physical world. Just as these forgotten images can become a seed of healing for the human being, so do all the experiences of the previous life become a source of joy in Devachan once the stream of forgetfulness has been crossed, once the human being has forgotten everything that binds him to life in the sensory world.

[ 15 ] Thus we see that these laws of forgetting and remembering certainly apply even to the vast scope of life.

[ 16 ] Now you might ask: How can a person, after death, have any concept of what happened in their past life if they must forget that life? Someone might say: Can you even speak of forgetting, since a person has shed the etheric body, and memory and forgetting are, after all, connected to the etheric body? Of course, memory and forgetting take on a somewhat different form after death. They transform in such a way that reading the Akashic Records replaces ordinary memory. What has happened in the world has not disappeared; it is objectively present. As the memory of the connection to physical life fades away in Kamaloka, these events emerge in a completely different way, presenting themselves to the person in the Akashic Records. Thus, the person no longer needs the connection to life that arises from ordinary memory. All such questions that may arise will be resolved for us. This, however, requires that we take our time and address these matters step by step, for it is not possible to have everything at hand at once that is needed to make a matter comprehensible.

[ 17 ] Much in our daily lives also becomes clear to us when we understand these things as they have now been discussed. Much of what pertains to the human etheric body becomes apparent to us in the peculiar way the temperaments affect a person. We have already said that this enduring characteristic of the personality, which we call temperament, also has its origin in the etheric body. Take, for example, a person with a melancholic temperament who cannot move beyond certain ideas, which he must constantly ponder. This is quite different from a sanguine or phlegmatic temperament, where such ideas simply fade away. A melancholic temperament will, precisely in the sense we have just seen, be detrimental to a person’s health, whereas a sanguine temperament can, in a certain sense, be extraordinarily beneficial to a person’s health. Of course, these things should not be taken to mean that one should say: A person must strive to forget everything. But you can see that it is precisely from these aspects, as we have come to understand them, that the healthy and beneficial nature of a sanguine or phlegmatic temperament is explained, as well as the unhealthy nature of a melancholic temperament. Of course, the question is whether such a phlegmatic temperament also functions in the right way. A phlegmatic person who takes in only trivial ideas will easily forget them. That can only make him healthy. But if he takes in only such ideas, it may, in turn, not be good for him at all. Various factors are at play here.

[ 18 ] The question: Is forgetting merely a flaw in human nature, or might it actually be something useful? — This question is answered for us by insights from the spiritual sciences. And on the other hand, we see how strong moral impulses can also arise from the recognition of such things. If a person believes that it is beneficial for his salvation—which must be viewed entirely objectively—to be able to forget insults and injuries inflicted upon him, then a very different impulse will be at work. But as long as he believes that this has no significance, no moral preaching will be of any use. But if they know that they should forget and that their well-being depends on it, then they will likely allow this impulse to take effect in a very different way. We need not call this selfish right away; rather, we may say: If I am sick and ailing, if I am ruining my spiritual, soul, and physical inner being, then I am of no use to the world either. One can also view the question of well-being from a completely different perspective. Such considerations will not be of much use to someone who is a pronounced egoist. But for those who have the welfare of humanity in mind and are therefore also concerned with contributing to it—and thus, in an indirect way, also have their own well-being in mind—if a person is capable of reflecting on this, then they will be able to derive moral benefits from such considerations. And it will become clear that when spiritual science intervenes in human life by revealing the truth about certain spiritual conditions, it will provide the greatest ethical and moral impulses—impulses that no other form of knowledge and no mere external moral precepts can offer. Knowledge of the facts of the spiritual world, as conveyed by spiritual science, is therefore a powerful impulse that can bring about the greatest progress in human life, even in relation to morality.