The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] We have already considered a number of aspects regarding the time between death and rebirth, and recently included a discussion on the relationship between Christian Rosenkreutz and Buddha, because—as has been demonstrated—since the time indicated back then, the Buddha has been associated with a planetary sphere, the sphere of Mars, and because the human being, after having undergone the Christ event on the Sun—as described to you—between death and new birth, by continuing to live on into the sphere of Mars, undergoes the Buddha experience in the way that is proper and normal for the present time. We must understand this Buddha experience today as it applies to the present time, not as it applied to the time when the individuality in question lived on Earth as Gautama Buddha. The only true and genuine enlightenment regarding the nature of the human being and their connection to the entire evolution of the worlds comes from keeping pace, so to speak, with this evolution of the worlds through one’s understanding.

[ 2 ] We know that in the post-Atlantean era, the five most significant epochs—during which the human soul progressively underwent important developments—are: the Proto-Indian, the Proto-Persian, the Egyptian-Chaldean, the Greco-Latin, and our own cultural epoch. But we also know that in every age of this kind, the next age is, so to speak, already being prepared in embryonic form. In our time, the sixth post-Atlantean age is already being slowly prepared in the souls, and this preparation must take place as follows. This sixth post-Atlantean age is being prepared as the human soul learns to understand precisely what is spreading throughout the world in our time as occult teaching, as Spiritual Science. Through this, not only is a knowledge of the human being in general—necessary for the future—spread, but also what might be called an ever-deepening understanding of the Christ impulse. Everything that is to contribute to this dissemination of the understanding of the Christ impulse in our time is, for the West, encapsulated in what can be called the Mystery of the Holy Grail. And the Mystery of the Holy Grail is also intimately connected with such things as have been expounded: with the conferral of the mission for Mars upon Buddha by Christian Rosenkreutz. And this Mystery of the Holy Grail can offer modern humanity what introduces them to an understanding of the life between death and the new birth that is particularly appropriate for our time. This understanding makes it necessary, above all, that we now set out to answer an important question. And unless we try to delve into this question a little more deeply than we have been able to so far, we will not be able to proceed further in our reflections on life between death and new birth. The question is: Why, in the proclamation of Christianity to date—even in those places where Christianity has, so to speak, already been proclaimed in its deeper essence—why have certain teachings receded into the background, teachings that we must now introduce into what we might call the advanced teaching, the advanced proclamation of Christianity?

[ 3 ] You know that not only did everything related to reincarnation and karma recede into the background in the outer, exoteric proclamation of Christianity, but this was also the case in the more esoteric proclamations and revelations of past centuries. And many who hear what the content of the anthroposophical worldview is ask: How is it that—even though our teachings are meant to allow Rosicrucianism to flow alongside everything else that occultism has to offer—how is it that this Rosicrucianism has, until now, so to speak right up to our time, lacked the teachings of reincarnation and karma? How is it that the teachings of reincarnation and karma had to be added to Rosicrucianism in our time?

[ 4 ] To understand this, one must once again consider the whole relationship between human beings and the world from a certain perspective. The prerequisites for the consideration we now wish to undertake in these lectures are, however, already laid out in *Outlines of Esoteric Science*. But we must bear in mind what the relationship between humanity and the world is like precisely in our time, the time that has been prepared by the Saturn, Sun, and Moon eras.

[ 5 ] We know that this earthly human being consists of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I, along with everything that belongs to them. Now we know that when a human being passes through the gate of death, he first leaves his physical body behind, but that after some time the greater part of the etheric body is also dissolved into the world ether, and that only something that is a kind of extract of the etheric body goes with the human being. Then the astral body accompanies the human being for a long time, but from it, too, something like a shell is shed once the Kamaloka period is over. Then, however, the essence of the etheric body and that of the astral body undergo the further process that the human being must undergo between death and new birth. At the very core, the human ego remains unchanged. Whether the human being goes through the time here in the physical body between birth and death, whether they go through the time when they are still fully enclosed by the astral body—the Kamaloka period—or whether they go through the Devachan period, which constitutes the greatest part of the journey between death and new birth: it is the I that, in essence, passes through all these epochs. But this Self, the true, real Self, must not be confused with what a person on Earth recognizes as their Self while in the physical body. Philosophers speak at length about this human Self in the physical earthly body, which they believe they can grasp. For example, it is said that this Self is what remains unchanged even if everything else about a person changes. The true self does indeed remain; but whether the self of which the philosophers speak remains is another question. And anyone who speaks at length about the preservation of this self of which the philosophers speak is contradicted by the fact that a human being sleeps at night; for then the self of which the philosophers speak is extinguished, is not there. And if it were to exist throughout the entire time between death and rebirth just as it does during sleep at night, then one could not speak much of the enduring aspect of the human soul for the time between death and rebirth. For, in essence, it would make no difference whether the self were not there at all, or knew nothing of itself and merely lived on as something external. The question of immortality cannot concern the fact that the “I” exists, but rather that it is also aware of itself. Thus, the immortality of that “I” which initially lives in human consciousness is refuted by every night’s sleep; for there this “I” is simply extinguished. But the true self lies much deeper, much, much deeper! And how can one gain a mental image of this true self, even if one cannot yet ascend to the spheres of the occult?

[ 6 ] To get a mental image of this, one can imagine: The “I” must already be present in the human being even when the person cannot yet say “I,” even when he is still crawling on the ground. — It is already present there, the real “I”—not the “I” of which philosophy speaks—and there it reveals itself in a very peculiar way. Let us consider how it reveals itself there.

[ 7 ] To the external sciences, the way we observe human beings in the first months or even years of life will seem utterly insignificant. But for those who wish to understand human nature, observing this is of the utmost importance. First, a person crawls on all fours, and it requires a special effort for the person to rise from this crawling position—from this surrender to gravity—to stand upright, assume the vertical position, and maintain it. That is one thing. The second is this: We know that a person cannot yet speak in the early stages. They must first learn to speak. Try to remember what you first learned to say, how you learned to utter the very first word you were able to speak, and how you then learned to form your first sentence. Try to recall this, but without resorting to clairvoyant means—it will be in vain. Without clairvoyant means, a person is just as incapable of this as they are of remembering how they made their first effort to move from a crawling position to an upright one. And a third aspect is thinking itself. Memory does indeed go back to the time when one was already able to think, but not beyond that time.

[ 8 ] Who is the agent in this process of learning to walk, speak, and think? It is the real, true self! What does this true self do? Let’s observe what it does.

[ 9 ] From the very beginning, human beings are destined to walk upright, to speak, and to think. But they do not possess these abilities immediately. They are not immediately what they are, so to speak, destined to be as earthly human beings. They do not immediately possess what enables them to live within the development of human culture; they must first bring themselves to do so little by little. In the early stages of life, there is a struggle between the spirit that lives within him when he stands upright and the spirit that is within him when he is given over to heaviness, when the capacity for speech and thought still lies dormant within him. Thus we see how the human being, once he has attained his destiny, so to speak—that is, can stand upright and walk, can speak and think—is an expression of what is given in his human form. Walking upright, speaking, and thinking correspond in a natural way to the form of the human being. It is impossible to conceive of another being that can walk like a human—that is, with the spinal cord in a vertical line—and can speak and think without having the human form. Even the parrot, when it is to speak, can do so only because it is upright. This is intimately connected with the vertical line. Animals that are much more intelligent will not learn to speak because their spinal cord is not in a vertical but in a horizontal line. There are, of course, other factors involved. Nevertheless, we do not see humans immediately placed in the position that is their destiny. This is because, ultimately, after the efforts made by their true self—which has given them the ability to think, speak, and maintain the vertical line—humans are, so to speak, embedded in the sphere where the spirits of form dwell, the Exusiai. These spirits of form, also called the Elohim in the Bible, are the very ones from whom the human form actually descends—but specifically the form, that form in which the human self, so to speak, naturally dwells and imprints itself during the first months and years of life.

[ 10 ] But there are other spirits who oppose this, who cast people down, hurling them down to a level below that of these spirits of form. What kind of spirits are these?

[ 11 ] The spirits of form are those that enable humans to learn to speak, think, and walk upright. Those spirits that, as it were, cast him down so that he moves on all fours, so that he cannot speak and does not develop his thinking in his first lifetime—these are the spirits he must first overcome in life, the ones that initially give him an incorrect form. These are spirits that should actually already be spirits of movement, Dynamis, but which have lagged behind in their evolution and have not even reached the level of the spirits of form. These are Luciferic spirits that have remained stagnant in their development, which act upon human beings from the outside and, so to speak, consign them to the element of heaviness, from which they must gradually rise through the true spirits of form.

[ 12 ] As we observe human beings entering physical existence through birth, we see in the efforts they make to secure for themselves what they are to have later in life the truly progressive spirits of form in conflict with those spirits that should already be spirits of movement but have remained at an earlier stage. We already see the spirits of form struggling against the Luciferic spirits there, and in this realm the Luciferic spirits are so strong, so powerful, that they do not allow the consciousness of the “I” that reigns there to arise. Otherwise, if Luciferic spirits did not suppress this consciousness, the human being would show during this time: You are a fighter; you feel yourself in the horizontal position and consciously desire the vertical position; you want to learn to speak and think!” — He cannot do any of this because he is enveloped in the Luciferic spirits. Here we look with a sense of foreboding toward what we will gradually come to recognize as the true “I” in contrast to an “I” that merely appears to consciousness.

[ 13 ] At the beginning of this series of lectures, it was stated that we will gradually attempt to justify, in the light of common sense, what occultism and clairvoyance have to say about the nature of the human being. But this common sense must truly be willing to observe how the human being enters the physical world in the first lifetimes, how he gradually enters it. What, then, is most complete in the human being when he enters life? The outer form is actually not yet very prominent, for the human being contradicts his outer form. He must first move himself into the form destined for him. What, then, is most fully formed in the human being—not only after birth, but also before birth? It is the head. This is what, in essence, is actually formed with some distinctness among the physical organs, even in the embryo. Why is that? It is because by no means are all the organs in the human being interwoven in the same way by the beings of the higher hierarchies, by the spirits of form, so to speak, but rather the various limbs in different ways: the head differently, and the part of the human being where the arms and legs are attached differently. The head differs significantly from the rest of the human being, including the physical body. When we observe the human head clairvoyantly, it becomes apparent that it differs from the hand, for example, in a very remarkable way. When one moves the hand, the physical hand and what underlies it as the etheric body of the hand move in the same way. But once a certain level of training in clairvoyance has been attained, it becomes possible for the clairvoyant to hold the physical hand still and move only the etheric hand. This is a particularly important exercise: holding still the moving parts and moving only the etheric parts. By mastering this, the progressive clairvoyance of the future is increasingly developed, whereas any yielding to movements that occur, so to speak, unconsciously and of their own accord, is a resurgence of dervish-like practices that have already been overcome today. The stillness of the physical body is the hallmark of modern clairvoyance; all manner of fidgeting and similar movements were the hallmark of the old era. It would therefore be something quite extraordinary if the clairvoyant, for example, were to maintain a very specific position of his hands—such as hands crossed over the chest—while retaining the greatest mobility of his etheric hands; so that he could perform all manner of things in the supersensible realm with the latter, while keeping his physical hands still. That would be a very special form of training, in which the human being’s self-control would be expressed in relation to the hands.

[ 14 ] Now, however, there is an organ in the human body where this already occurs, even without the person being a clairvoyant: the etheric part moves freely while the corresponding physical part is held in place. This is the brain, the organ around which the world order has formed a solid shell enclosing the cerebral lobes. They do want to move, but they cannot. Therefore, in the ordinary person, with regard to the brain, there is always present what is present in the clairvoyant when, for example, he holds his physical hands still and moves only his etheric hands. For the clairvoyant, however, a head is something quite different from what we encounter in the ordinary person. For the clairvoyant, the brain is something that rises out of the head, flickering like a snake’s tongue. Every head is, in fact, a Medusa’s head. This is something very real. And this is the difference between the human head and the rest of the body: that in relation to the rest of the body, humanity will only achieve through further evolution what, in the case of the head, is ordinary external thinking. In this lies, in a certain sense, the strength of thinking: that the human being is able to calm the brain—as far as possible down to the finer, invisible movements, the nerve movements—while thinking. Because they can keep the brain calm while thinking, calm even down to the finer movements—which are, so to speak, the nerve movements—thoughts become finer, calmer, and more logical.

[ 15 ] Thus we can say: When a human being enters into existence through birth, his head is the most fully developed because what, in relation to that part of the human being that expresses itself through gestures—the hands—can only be achieved in the future, has already taken place for him. In the ancient Lunar epoch, what is today the brain was still at the stage of what today’s hands represent. At that time, the head was still open on many sides and was not yet enclosed by the skull. Whereas it now sits as if in a prison, back then it could move out in all directions. This was, of course, on the ancient Moon, where we still find human beings entirely in the liquid, not in the solid, element. Even in a certain epoch of the ancient Lemurian era, when humanity had just reached that stage of development which repeats the ancient Moon era, even then it was still the case that, for example, where there was a brain fissure at the top, there was not only the organ frequently mentioned, but something like a bubbling up of thoughts within the liquid element. And a kind of fiery mist that developed within the human element was even still present in the ancient Atlantean. Without possessing any supernormal clairvoyance, but rather with a clairvoyance that every human simply possessed, one could see in the Atlantean whether a person was a thinker in the sense of the ancient Atlantean era, or whether they were not. Those who were thinkers had a glowing fiery radiance, a kind of luminous mist above their heads; and those who did not think went about without such a radiance.

[ 16 ] These are things one must first understand if one wishes to consider the transformation of human nature from the time when a person lives here in the physical body, passes through death, and enters the other realm between death and rebirth. For everything that works within a human being, enabling the human being to come into being at all, disappears, so to speak, once the human being is already in the physical world; yet this has a very special importance, is particularly significant once the human being has shed their physical body. The forces that formed the human physical brain are, after all, not perceived by the human being in the time between birth and death. But everything that he perceives in the time between birth and death has receded into insignificance once he has passed through death. In contrast, he then lives in the forces that remain unconscious to him during his physical earthly life. And while in physical earthly life they experience their “mental image” in the waking state, between death and new birth they experience precisely that self which, as we learn to walk, speak, and think, appears before our soul as a premonition. It remains unconscious to the earthly human being; it does not reach into his consciousness. What remains unconscious there and is then completely veiled, we can now trace back to the time before birth and even before birth, and we can trace it even further back when we consider the time after death. What is most hidden, because it has built up the human being, and what disappears when the human being is an earthly human being, is most present when he is no longer an earthly human being, namely in the time after death. The forces that one can only intuit—those that make the human being a walking being from within, that drive forth the sounds of speech, that make him a thinker, that form the brain into a thinking organ—these are the most important forces when the human being is in the life between death and new birth. It is there that his true self first comes to life. How it comes to life is what we will speak of next time.