The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] If we reflect on the contradiction we posed at the end of our last discussion, we must, in order to resolve it today, look back once more at the two forces, the two principles, which, over the course of time, have appeared to us both as the challengers and, at the same time, as the regulators of our karma.

[ 2 ] We have seen that our karma is set in motion only when we are subjected to the influences of the Luciferic forces on our astral body, and when, through the temptation of these forces, we give rise to expressions of emotion, instinct, and passion that, in a certain sense, make us more imperfect than we would otherwise be. Now, when the Luciferic influences act upon us, they in turn provoke the Ahrimanic influences—those forces that act upon us not from within but from without, forces that work through our interaction with the world via precisely what confronts us from the outside. So, in essence, it is Ahriman who is challenged by Lucifer, and we human beings are actually so vividly caught up in the conflict between these two principles. And we must strive in life to make progress precisely by seeking, once we have fallen into the clutches of Lucifer or Ahriman, ways and means to rise higher again by overcoming what has been wrought within us. But we can see quite clearly how this interplay between Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces actually takes place around us when we recall once more, in a slightly different form, the case we already mentioned last time: the case in which someone succumbs to Ahrimanic influences, so that he experiences all manner of illusions, deceptions—believing that this or that is being communicated to them in a special way or is making an impression on them in one direction or another; yet to another person who has retained their sound judgment, it is easy to see that the individual in question has fallen prey to errors and deceptions. Last time we spoke of cases in which someone is subjected to clairvoyant—but in the worst sense of the word—deceptions of the spiritual world. There we explicitly stated that these are deceptions brought about by Ahrimanic forces. And we have seen that against such deceptions, which are caused by erroneous clairvoyance, there is no other—or at least no more effective—remedy than sound judgment, which is acquired in physical life between birth and death.

[ 3 ] What we said in the last lecture is significant and essential when we are dealing with clairvoyant aberrations. For clairvoyance that has not been achieved through proper training or systematic exercises conducted strictly and correctly, but rather arises from old, inherited traits, in the form of images or sounds and the like—in such incorrect clairvoyance, we can always observe that it diminishes, and even ceases, when the person in question finds the opportunity and has the inclination to seriously engage in theosophical studies, to truly absorb theosophical knowledge, or even to undertake genuine, sensible, and appropriate training. Thus, in such a case, where we are dealing with aberrations of supersensory knowledge, we can say that the genuine sources of knowledge—if the person in question is receptive to them—will always be a help to him, capable of setting him on the right path.

[ 4 ] On the other hand, you must not cite what must be presented as a counterargument and what is such a trivial truth that everyone knows it. Everyone knows that if, through karmic entanglements, a person has come to develop conditions that lead to symptoms of paranoia or delusions of grandeur, he can then form an entire system of delusional ideas in his soul—ideas that he justifies as logically as possible, but which are nonetheless delusions. It may happen, for example, that someone thinks quite correctly and logically in other areas of life, yet harbors the delusion that he is being persecuted everywhere for one reason or another. He will then be able, wherever he goes, to draw the most ingenious conclusions from the slightest occurrences: “There’s another clique that wants nothing more than to do this or that to me!” — And they will prove to you in the most ingenious way just how well-founded their suspicion is. Thus, someone can be a completely logical thinker and yet exhibit certain symptoms of madness. In such cases, it will be entirely impossible to refute such a person with logical arguments. On the contrary, if one presents logical arguments in such a case, it may happen that the delusions lodged within the person in question are all the more provoked, leading them to seek even more compelling evidence for what they assert to be the content of their persecution complex. — When speaking in the context of Spiritual Science, things must be taken very precisely. When it was emphasized earlier—and also the last time—that the insights of Spiritual Science to which someone devotes themselves with great effort or even through a systematic, principled training provide a counterforce against a distortion of clairvoyant powers, this refers to a completely different case than the one just described. Now the point is not to address the person in question with insights from Spiritual Science. As a rule, one seeks to address them with arguments drawn from the realm of ordinary reason. But such a person is completely impervious to these. Why is that the case?

[ 5 ] When a clinical picture such as this emerges, as manifested in the symptoms described, we are dealing with a situation in which the individual is bringing to light a karmic cause stemming from previous incarnations—from past errors. What is to be regarded as an inner aberration does not and cannot, in this case, lie in the present incarnation, but rather in a previous one. Let us now consider how something like this carries over from a previous incarnation into the present one.

[ 6 ] To do this, we must consider how our soul’s development actually proceeds. As outer human beings, we consist of a physical body, an etheric body, and an astral body; over time, through the work of the “I,” we have built into these sheaths the feeling soul into the feeling body, the intellectual or emotional soul into the etheric body, and the conscious soul into the physical body. What we develop within ourselves as the three soul members, we have built into the three bodies; this now lives within these three bodies. Now let us suppose that in some incarnation, through the influence of Lucifer—that is, by developing within ourselves egoistic or other drives, desires, and instincts attributable to the Luciferic influence—we are led astray to the point that we burden our soul with transgressions. These transgressions may occur in the feeling soul, in the intellectual or emotional soul, or even in the conscious soul. This then becomes the cause that is present in one of the three soul members in some subsequent incarnation. Let us assume there is a fault that stems particularly from the forces of the intellectual soul. This fault is then transformed in the state between death and rebirth in such a way that what the intellectual soul, for example, has committed manifests its effect in the etheric body. This has been woven into the etheric body during the passage from death to rebirth. Thus, in the new incarnation, we encounter an effect in the etheric body that can be traced back to a cause in the intellectual soul of a previous incarnation. Now, however, the intellectual soul of the next incarnation works independently again in this incarnation, and there is a difference depending on whether the person committed that transgression earlier or not. If they committed it in an earlier incarnation, they now have a flaw in their etheric body. This is now more deeply rooted; it does not reside in the intellectual soul, but in the etheric body. But whatever a person can develop on the physical plane in terms of rationality and intelligence affects only their intellectual soul; it does not affect how their intellectual soul acted in a previous incarnation or what has already been incorporated into the etheric body. Therefore, it can happen that the powers of the intellectual soul, as they now appear to us in a human being, function logically intact—so that the actual human inner being is entirely intact—but that, through the interaction between the intellectual soul and the pathological part of the etheric body, an error is projected from this etheric body in a certain direction. In such cases, one can indeed influence the intellectual soul through the arguments that can be brought to bear on the physical plane, but not directly influence the etheric body. Therefore, you cannot achieve anything through logic or persuasion, just as you cannot accomplish anything with logic if you place a person in front of a convex mirror so that the person sees their distorted image in it, and you then try to prove to them that they are wrong to see the image that way. After all, they see a distorted image. Likewise, it is not up to the person to understand something incorrectly in a pathological way, for his otherwise sound logic is not reflected in a healthy way from his etheric body.

[ 7 ] In this way, we carry within us the karmic effects of earlier incarnations in our deeper constitution. And we can even pinpoint exactly where, in a particular part of it—such as here in our etheric body—the defect is present. From this we see what we were challenged to confront—and then transformed—through the Luciferic influence in a previous incarnation. And in the interval between death and new birth, the transformation takes place from the inner to the outer, and then Ahriman works against us from within our own etheric body. This shows us how Ahriman is drawn to our own etheric body by Lucifer. The earlier transgression was a Luciferic one, but what has been transformed is such that, as it were, Ahriman gives us the “repayment” for it in the next incarnation. And then the task is for the human being to expel this damage to his etheric body from within himself. This can only happen by intervening more deeply into his constitution than is possible with the ordinary means of external reason in a single incarnation.

[ 8 ] Anyone who goes through something like this—for example, succumbing to the symptoms of paranoia in a particular incarnation—will, when he once again passes through the gate of death, find before him all the deeds he has committed as a result of his Ahrimanic impairment, and he will see them in all their absurdity. This will once again be the force that thoroughly heals them for their next incarnation. For they can only be healed when what they have done under the influence of the corresponding symptoms subsequently appears absurd to them in the outer world. In this way, you have provided something that we can do to bring about such a healing. If someone suffers from such delusions, you will be least likely to dissuade them from their delusions through logical arguments. You will only provoke their resistance all the more. But you will achieve something—especially if such symptoms appear in early youth—if you place the person in situations where the consequences of his symptoms are starkly revealed as nonsensical, if you confront him with facts that he himself brings about and that rebound on him as blatantly nonsensical. In this way, you can, in a certain sense, bring about a cure.

[ 9 ] They can also have a healing effect when you yourself have grasped the truths of Spiritual Science to such an extent that they have become an integral part of your soul. Once they have become so deeply your own that they stand or fall with your entire personality, then you possess them as the strongest possible faith; then your entire personality radiates these truths of Spiritual Science. With these truths—which flow into the life between birth and death and fill it, yet still transcend this life itself—these insights from the supersensible world, you can achieve deeper effects than with external rational truths. While external logical arguments are of no use to you, if you apply the truths of Spiritual Science and have enough time and opportunity to do so, you will, however, be able to exert such a profound influence on the person in question that you can, so to speak, accomplish in a single incarnation what can otherwise only happen indirectly from one incarnation to the next: namely, to work from the intellectual soul into the etheric body. For the truths of the physical plane are incapable of bridging, even in the slightest, the gulf between the feeling soul and the feeling body, between the intellectual soul and the etheric body, or even between the conscious soul and the physical body. Therefore, you will always find that no matter how much wisdom a person may acquire on the physical plane regarding the sensory world, this wisdom will have very little connection to their emotional world—to what we call the permeation of their feeling body with the corresponding impulses and passions, That is why it happens that someone can be a highly learned person, possess great theoretical knowledge about the things of the physical world, and have become an elderly professor—yet inwardly have failed to bring about a transformation of their instincts, feelings, and passions, which play out in the emotional body. He may, in essence, know a great deal about the physical world and yet be a blatant egoist, because he absorbed the impulses for this in his youth. — Of course, external physical science and the inner development of the emotional body and etheric body can very well proceed side by side. And in the same way, a person can take in intellectual truths—various things that can be absorbed as forces of the emotional soul in relation to the physical plane—but they cannot bridge that deep chasm that exists between the intellectual soul and the etheric body. In other words, you will find time and again that when someone absorbs external truths—no matter how much they learn—you will rarely find that what they have learned truly exerts an influence on the formative forces of their body.

[ 10 ] In a person upon whom these truths have such an effect that they permeate his entire being, you will be able to observe that, over the course of ten years, his facial features change; you will be able to read on his forehead how he has struggled—how, for example, he has wrestled with certain doubts in his heart. Or you may also notice it in their gestures—for example, if they have become a calm person through their own behavior. This penetrates the formative forces of the organism, and the organism is affected down to its finest details. What a person takes in spiritually thus affects even the finest parts of his constitution. If what moves the soul points not only to the physical plane, then after ten years the person is also a different person. But the change follows the normal course, just as dispositions develop and change in ordinary, everyday life. One may perhaps develop a different facial expression over the course of ten years; but if one has not inwardly leaped across the abyss, these changes have been caused by external influences. In such cases, it is not a force that grips the human being from within that transforms him. From this we can see that only the spiritual—which truly connects with our innermost being—is capable of exerting a transforming influence on the formative forces even during the time between birth and death; but this transition, this crossing of the abyss, certainly takes place within the karmic process between death and a new birth. If, for example, what the sensory soul has experienced is immersed in those worlds we pass through in the interval between death and a new birth, then it will certainly assert itself as a formative, shaping force in the next incarnation.

[ 11 ] In this way, we have come to understand the mutual interaction between Ahriman and Lucifer. And now we ask ourselves: How does this interaction manifest when things are somewhat further apart—when, for example, the Luciferic influence must not only cross the gulf from the intellectual soul to the etheric body, but must, so to speak, travel a longer path?

[ 12 ] Let us suppose that in one lifetime we are particularly strongly influenced by Lucifer. In such a case, our entire inner being has become considerably more imperfect than it was before, and during the Kamaloka period we are then so acutely aware of this that we say to ourselves: “You must do something truly powerful to compensate for this imperfection!” — We thus take this tendency into ourselves and, in the next or one of the following incarnations, use what have now become formative forces to shape our new organism in such a way that it must have the tendency to bring about a balance for what we have previously experienced. But let us assume that whatever triggered the Luciferic influence was caused by an external factor—that it was an external desire. Then Lucifer must have been present as an influence once again. The external factor could not have affected us if Lucifer had not been at work within us. We therefore have within us the tendency to restore balance to what we have become under the Luciferic influence.

[ 13 ] But now we have seen that the Luciferic influence in one incarnation challenges the Ahrimanic influence in the next incarnation, that it draws it in, so that the two are in a state of constant interaction with one another. The Luciferic influence, however, is such that we could say: It manifests itself to us in consciousness; that is, we can still reach down, albeit only feebly, into our astral body with our consciousness. We have said that when pain brings itself to our consciousness, this is the Luciferic influence. But we cannot reach down into those realms that we might describe as the consciousness of our etheric body and our physical body. We do indeed have a consciousness even during dreamless sleep, but it is of such a low degree that in ordinary life a person is not in a position to know anything about this consciousness at all. But that is by no means a reason for us to do nothing within this consciousness. This consciousness is normally possessed, for example, by the plant, which consists only of a physical body and an etheric body. The plant lives continuously in a dreamless sleep consciousness. Our consciousness of the etheric body and the physical body is also present during waking hours; but we cannot descend to that level. That this consciousness is capable of acting, however, is demonstrated to us, for example, when we perform somnambulistic actions—such as sleepwalking—during sleep, of which we are unaware. It is this dreamless sleep consciousness that performs these actions. Ordinary ego-consciousness and astral consciousness do not extend down to the level where, for example, the actions of the sleepwalker are carried out.

[ 14 ] But we must not assume—simply because we live in ego-consciousness and astral consciousness during the day—that the other forms of consciousness do not coexist with us. We are simply unaware of them. Let us now suppose that, through a Luciferic influence in a previous incarnation, we have provoked a strong Ahrimanic influence; then this Ahrimanic influence will not be able to act upon our ordinary consciousness. However, it will take hold of the consciousness residing in our etheric body, and this consciousness will then be able to lead us not only to a certain organization of our etheric body, but even to actions that manifest in such a way that the consciousness of our etheric body tells us: “You can now only remove from within yourself what the Luciferic influence—to which you so powerfully succumbed in your previous incarnation—has wrought within you; and you can do this by now performing an act that lies exactly on the opposite path to the earlier Luciferic transgression!”

[ 15 ] Let us suppose that we have been led, through a Luciferic influence, to move from a previous religious or spiritually oriented standpoint to one where a person says: “I want to enjoy life here!”—where, in other words, they have taken the leap into the sensory realm with all their might. Then such a thing provokes the Ahrimanic influence in such a way that exactly the opposite is brought about. It then happens that, as the person goes through life, they seek out a point where they can leap back from the sensory life into the spiritual. There they had fallen into the sensory realm in a single leap—here they want to leap back into the spiritual life. The higher consciousness does not notice this; but the mysterious subconscious, which is chained to the physical body and the etheric body, now drives the person to seek out the place where one can wait out a thunderstorm—where there is an oak tree, a bench beneath it—and—the lightning strikes! Here his subconscious has caused the person to repeat what he did in a previous incarnation. Here we have the reverse. Thus we understand an effect under a Luciferic influence in a previous life, and as a consequence, an influence of Ahriman in the present life. Ahriman must be at work here for the purpose of causing us to shut down our higher consciousness to such an extent that, in this case, our entire being follows only the consciousness of the etheric body or the physical body.

[ 16 ] In this way, we come to understand various things that also happen in life. But when, for example, someone dies or suffers a serious injury, we must not attribute every such case to something similar. That would be to understand karma in a very narrow way. But there are indeed currents even within our Theosophical Movement that interpret karma in a rather narrow way; they believe that karma truly contains something that leads to a higher perspective, but they do not really understand it. They interpret karma in such a way that, if it were truly as they conceive it, the entire world order would have to be specially arranged for every single human being so that it might serve the harmonious course and balance of each individual’s human life—that is, that in a given life, circumstances would always be brought together in such a way as to create an exact balance for what arose in a previous life. But this viewpoint is untenable. What if someone were to stand before a person who has suffered a misfortune and say to them: “This is your karma; this is the karmic effect from a past life; you brought this upon yourself back then!”—But if the person in question then experiences this or that stroke of good fortune, the other person says: “That goes back to a good deed you did in the past!” — But for this to have any real meaning, the person speaking this way would first have to see what happened in the past life that is said to have produced this effect. If he were to place himself in that past life, he would see there the causes stemming from that life, and would then have to look to the later incarnation if he wished to observe the effects. From this, however, the following logically follows for us: In every incarnation, events occur that constitute the initial occurrences in every person’s life as it unfolds from one incarnation to the next, and these will find their karmic balance in the next life. When one then observes the effects in the next life, one can look back to the causes. But if a misfortune occurs now and one cannot find any causes for it in a previous life by any means, then one must tell oneself that the cause is simply taking effect in a later life. Karma is not fate! Something from every life is carried over into the subsequent ones.

[ 17 ] Once we understand this, we will also find it reasonable that a person can discover new events in their life that are meaningful and significant. Let us remember that the great events in the course of human development can only come about because they are carried forward by specific individuals. At a specific point in time, individuals must take on the intentions of the course of development. Consider how medieval development would have unfolded had Charlemagne not intervened at a specific time, or how the spiritual life of ancient times would have unfolded had Aristotle not been active at a specific time. Bear in mind that if you wish to understand the course of human development, you must place Aristotle within the context of the time in which he lived; for without him, many things would have turned out differently later on. — From this we see that such personalities as Charlemagne, Aristotle, Luther, and so on had to live in their respective times not for their own sake, but for the sake of the world. Their personal destinies are therefore intimately intertwined with what happens in the world. But can we therefore say that what they do corresponds to what they have previously earned or what they have previously done wrong?

[ 18 ] Take the case of Luther: You cannot attribute everything he experienced and endured solely to his karmic account; you must realize that what is meant to happen at a specific point in human evolution occurs through the involvement of certain individuals. These individuals must be brought down from the spiritual world regardless of whether they are sufficiently advanced in their own right to be brought down, for they are brought down for the purposes of human development. And it may be necessary to interrupt or extend a karmic path prematurely so that the individuals in question can be placed into life at a specific point in time; in such cases, fates are imposed upon people that need not have anything to do with their previous karma. But once a person has been placed in life in this way and has done what one can do between birth and death, this creates karmic causes. So just as it is true that a Luther is placed into life for the sake of humanity and may endure fates that have nothing to do with his earlier karma, so it is true that what he accomplishes there will again have something to do with his later karma. Karma is a universal law, and everyone must live through it. But we must not interpret this to mean that we look back only to past incarnations; rather, we must understand that we must also look forward. Therefore, we can certainly say: From this perspective, it may become clear to us that indeed only a later life can justify previous incarnations, since things have already befallen us that do not lie within our karmic line at all.

[ 19 ] Let us consider the following case, which actually occurred: During a natural disaster, a number of souls met their end. We need not believe that it was their karma that they all perished together; for that would be a very simplistic assumption. It is not necessarily the case that such events always stem from past transgressions. There is a documented case in which a number of people perished in a natural disaster. This, however, led to these people feeling a bond with one another in a later life, and through their shared fate, they proved strong enough to undertake a common endeavor in the world. That catastrophe was the reason they had thoroughly broken the habit of clinging solely to material things in their later lives, so that they carried with them into their later lives a mindset that led them toward the spiritual.

[ 20 ] What happened in this case? If we go back to their previous life, we find that a particular event—perishing together in an earthquake—took place: at that moment, the worthlessness of material things was thrust before their souls, and a spiritual outlook developed within them. From this we see how people who were meant to bring something spiritual into the world were prepared for it through such an event, which reveals to us the wisdom of evolution—an event that has been investigated by Spiritual Science and actually took place. — Thus we can show that we are witnessing the first instances of spiritual events entering human life, and that even in the case of the death of one or more people in a catastrophe or accident, we must not always attribute a person’s premature death to a previous transgression, but that such an event can occur as the primary cause, and that compensation will take place in the next life.

[ 21 ] However, other cases are also possible. It may happen that someone has to end a life prematurely in two or three consecutive incarnations. This can occur because this individual is called upon to bring something to humanity through three incarnations—something that can only be brought about by living in the physical world with the kinds of forces that arise in a body that is still developing. It makes a world of difference whether one lives in a body that develops up to the age of thirty-five or in a body of a later age. For up to the age of thirty-five, a person directs their energy into the physical body, so that they develop their strength from within. But then, beginning at the age of thirty-five, a phase of life begins in which a person progresses only inwardly and must continually strive with their life forces against external forces. These two halves of life are entirely different from one another when we consider their inner organization. Let us now suppose that, in accordance with the wisdom of human evolution, we need people who can flourish only if they do not have to struggle against what presses against us in the second half of life; then it may be that their incarnations are cut short prematurely. Such cases do exist. And we ourselves have already pointed out in our gatherings the case of an individual who appeared successively as a great prophet, a significant painter, and a great poet, and whose life always ended in premature death—because what this individual had to accomplish in three incarnations was possible only by having the incarnations cut short before the individual could fully immerse themselves in the second half of life. Herein lies the peculiar nature of the entanglement between individual human karma and the general karma of humanity.

[ 22 ] We can go even deeper and identify certain karmic causes within the collective karma of humanity that will manifest their effects in later times; there, the individual must once again find himself placed within the collective karma of humanity. If we consider post-Atlantean development, we find the Greco-Latin period lying in the middle; it was preceded by the Egyptian-Chaldean period and followed by our own as the fifth cultural epoch. Our era will be followed by a sixth and then a seventh cultural epoch. But I have also pointed out on other occasions that, in a certain sense, a cycle takes place in the succession of the various cultures, such that the Greco-Latin culture stands apart as a distinct entity, while the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch is repeated in our own. Now, I have also already emphasized in this cycle how Kepler lived in our cultural epoch and how, in an earlier time, the same individuality lived in an Egyptian body and was then permitted, under the influence of the Egyptian priest-sages, to direct its gaze upward toward the vault of heaven, so that the mysteries of the stars were revealed to it as if from above. She then brought this knowledge forth again in her Kepler incarnation, which was placed there where the fifth epoch repeats the third in a certain way.

[ 23 ] But it goes even further. From the perspective of Spiritual Science, one can truly say that most people today still view world development and human life with utter blindness. You could trace these correspondences, these repetitions, this life in cycles down to the finest details. If one takes a certain point in human development—which falls around the year 747 B.C.—one finds in it a kind of hypomochlion, a kind of zero point, and what lies before and after this point corresponds to one another in a very specific way. We can go back to a time in Egyptian development and find there certain ceremonial laws and commandments that appeared as “commandments of the gods.” And that is exactly what they were. They were commandments that required the Egyptians, for example, to perform very specific ablutions during the day—ablutions regulated by ceremonial customs and ritual prescriptions. And the Egyptians were told that they could only live as the gods intended if they performed a certain number of ablutions on this or that day. This was a divine commandment that found expression in certain purity cults. And when we then enter a somewhat less hygienic period in the interim, and now again, in our own time, encounter hygienic measures such as those currently prescribed to humanity for materialistic reasons, we see within ourselves a true repetition of what was lost in a corresponding era in Egypt. The fulfillment of what came before in the overall karma presents itself in a most remarkable way. Only the overall character is always different. In his Egyptian incarnation, Kepler had turned his gaze upward toward the starry sky; and what this individuality saw there, it shaped into the great spiritual truths of Egyptian astrology. In its reincarnation during the age dominated by materialism, the same individuality expressed these truths in a manner appropriate to our age—in the three materialistically colored Keplerian laws. —In ancient Egypt, the laws of purification were “divinely revealed” laws. The Egyptians believed they fulfilled their duty to humanity only by taking care of their purification in the most incredible ways at every opportunity. This is emerging again today, though under entirely materialistic influences. People today do not think that they are serving the gods when they observe such rules, but rather that they are serving themselves. Yet the ancient tradition is reemerging.

[ 24 ] Thus, everything in the world comes full circle—and, in a certain sense, in a completely cyclical manner. And now you may suspect that the matters we summarized together last time as a contradiction are not, after all, as simple as one might be inclined to assume. If, at a certain time, people were unable to take certain measures against epidemics, those were times when they could not do so because the epidemics were meant to act according to the general, wise plan of the world, so that human souls might find an opportunity to make amends for what had been brought about by the Ahrimanic influence and by certain earlier Luciferic influences. If different conditions are now brought about, this, too, is subject to certain great karmic laws. We can conclude from this that we truly must not view these questions superficially.

[ 25 ] How does this all fit together: We said that when a person seeks out an opportunity to contract an epidemic or an infection, this is the necessary counteraction to a previous karmic cause. Are we then allowed to take hygienic and other measures to prevent this?

[ 26 ] The question is profound, and we must first gather the proper material to resolve it. We must be clear that wherever—whether simultaneously or over longer periods of time—the Luciferic and Ahrimanic principles interact or oppose one another, certain complications arise in human life. And these complications manifest in such a way that they confront us in the most diverse cases and in the most varied forms, so that no two cases will appear alike. But when we study human life, we will find our way through it in the following manner: When we examine the interplay of Lucifer and Ahriman in a particular case, we will find a thread everywhere that allows us to navigate through this interconnection. However, we must make a sharp distinction between the inner and the outer human being. We have already had to make a sharp distinction today between what plays out in the intellectual soul and what manifests in the etheric body as an effect of the intellectual soul. We must observe the course in which karma unfolds, and at the same time we must be clear that we nevertheless have the possibility, through corresponding karmic influences, to act upon the inner being in such a way that, through the inner being, a different karmic balance is prepared for the future. Through this, it becomes possible for the following to occur:

[ 27 ] A person may, especially in a previous life, have gone through experiences—such as sensations, feelings, and so on—that drove them to act unkindly toward their neighbors. Let us imagine, for example, that they went through a situation in which, through karmic effect, they absorbed this lack of love within themselves. It may well be that, as we continue along a descending path, we generate evil—that is, we first follow a downward trajectory so that the opposing force can develop, enabling us to rise again. So let us assume that a person, through devotion to certain influences, has inclined toward a certain kind of lack of love; then this lack of love manifests in a later life as a karmic effect and shapes inner forces within his constitution. Now we can do two things, either consciously or unconsciously; for our culture has not yet advanced far enough to do this consciously. We will be able to take precautions with such a person to ensure that those qualities in their constitution which stem from unkindness are driven out. We can do something there that serves as an antidote to the effect in the outer constitution that manifests as unkindness; but this will not always eliminate all unkindness in the soul—it will only remove the outer manifestation of unkindness. For if we do nothing further, we have done only half the work—perhaps none at all. We may have helped the person physically, outwardly; but we have not helped them spiritually. By removing the organ for unkindness from their outer physical body, they can no longer act out that unkindness; they must retain it within their inner constitution for a future incarnation.

[ 28 ] Let us assume that, out of a lack of love for others, a large number of people felt compelled to ingest certain infectious agents in order to fall victim to an epidemic. Let us further assume that we could do something to combat the epidemic. In such a case, we would prevent the outer physical body from expressing that lack of love, but we would not thereby have eliminated the inner inclination toward lack of love. But let us consider the case where, by eliminating the external organ of lovelessness, we take on the responsibility to influence the soul in such a way that we also remove the soul’s inclination toward lovelessness. The organ of lovelessness is, in the highest sense—in the external, physical sense—eliminated through smallpox vaccination. Here, for example, is what Spiritual Science has revealed: During a certain cultural period, smallpox broke out when there was a general tendency to develop a higher degree of selfishness and lack of love. That is when smallpox appeared, even in the external physical organization; this is a fact. In theosophy, one is absolutely bound to speak the truth.

[ 29 ] Now we can understand why vaccination has emerged in our time. But we can also understand something else: namely, that even among the finest minds of our time there exists a kind of aversion to vaccination. This corresponds to an inner state; it is the outward expression of an inner reality. And we can now say: If, on the one hand, we destroy the organ, we would also have the obligation, as a counterpart to this, to reshape that person’s materialistic character through appropriate spiritual education. That would have to be the necessary counterpart. Otherwise, we are only doing half the work. Indeed, we are only doing work for which the person himself will have to create the counterpart in some way in a later incarnation, if he carries the smallpox virus within him and has developed the predisposition that makes him particularly susceptible to smallpox. If one has eliminated susceptibility to smallpox, one has addressed only the outer aspect of karmic effect. If, on the one hand, one practices hygiene, one must, on the other hand, feel the obligation to give something for the soul to the people whose constitution one has transformed. Vaccination will not harm anyone who, after vaccination, receives a spiritual education later in life. We have tipped the scales too far if we focus solely on one side and attach no value to the other. This sentiment is essentially felt in circles where it is said: Where hygienic measures go too far, only weak constitutions would be passed on. While this is certainly unjustified, you see, the essential point is that one must not undertake one task without the other.

[ 30 ] This brings us to an important law in human evolution, which operates in such a way that the outer and the inner must always be in balance, and that one must not focus solely on one aspect while neglecting the other. Here we are looking into a broader context, and we have not even yet gotten to addressing the question: How do hygiene and karma relate to one another? You will see that the answer to this question leads us even deeper into the realm of karma. And we will also see how karmic connections exist between a person’s birth and death, and furthermore, how other personalities play a role in a human life and how a person’s free will and karma are in harmony.