The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] If we wish to understand human beings in their relationship to the world, we must always bear in mind that the whole reality of the human being encompasses, on the one hand, everything that, so to speak, shines in from prenatal life—that is, the life the human being led between their last death and this birth in supersensible worlds. This life is, of course, of a completely different nature than the life lived here through the senses and through that will which is bound to the human being’s physical organs. But this pre-birth life does indeed play a role in our earthly life. One must ask oneself the question regarding this pre-birth life: To what extent does it play a role in this earthly life? One must surely consider some kind of conclusion to this prenatal life. One must strive to gain, perhaps through some comparison with earthly life, a picture of what spiritual perception reveals about this prenatal life. This picture can perhaps best be gained by first thinking of the end of sensory earthly life.

[ 2 ] What I am about to say is only to give you a picture, for the actual facts underlying this picture stem from spiritual research, from spiritual insight as such. When a human being passes through physical death—that is, when their higher organization withdraws from the lower organization—the physical body remains behind, and this physical body is then subject to the ordinary earthly laws; it, so to speak, continues to live within the entire earthly organization.

[ 3 ] One can imagine the experience a human being goes through when entering sensory life from the supersensory life in a similar way. From the moment of conception or birth, the supersensory life lies behind sensory life. At first, this supersensory life is not such that a human being can develop full consciousness within it. It is filled with a state of consciousness that is dull and dark—one that a person here on Earth experiences only between falling asleep and waking up. One might even say: Whenever a person falls asleep, their supersensible nature returns to that realm where the human being exists between death and a new birth. But whenever a person remains in this period between falling asleep and waking up, their consciousness is dulled. In a sense, they do not live fully consciously in this state. But it is precisely into this state of not living fully consciously in one’s “I”—into this state—that a human being has just entered upon descending into a physical organism. And this dulling of consciousness, this inner darkening of consciousness, corresponds, for the life between death and a new birth, to the approach toward death in physical life. In a sense, a human being dies to the supersensible life as he moves toward birth, and he then hands over to human life a kind of corpse. Just as the physical human being, when he dies, hands over a kind of corpse to the earth, so too does the human being hand over a kind of corpse to this human life here on earth when he is born. And this being that we then carry within us—which is, in a sense, dead to the supersensible life—is actually our ordinary life of imagination, the life of imagination that cannot be nourished by the supersensible world, by imagination, by inspiration, or by intuition.

[ 4 ] So we can say: In our thinking, we are actually carrying around the corpse that we brought with us from the supersensible world. That is why this thinking is so well suited to comprehending the dead world—because it is, in fact, the corpse of our supersensible being. We must hold fast to the fact that, while we do indeed have in this thinking the only conscious remnant of the supersensible world, it is nevertheless a dead creature, just as it lives within us as thinking. We do, in fact, carry the dead supersensible world within us through our thinking.

[ 5 ] Now, in every physical human life here on Earth, this dead thinking would lead not only to physical death but also to the death of the soul, unless this dead creature were to be revived again during its lifetime. Yes, it is brought back to life! And it is brought to life by the fact that in our soul life, alongside thinking—and, in a sense, in opposition to it—the will stirs. The will is that which emerges from our entire organism, from our earthly organism, to enliven our dead thinking. And our earthly life is, in essence, the connection—lasting throughout our life course—between dead thinking and the will that is reborn within us anew in every earthly life during incarnation. This will is constantly reborn. It leaves its remnants behind when we pass through the gate of death. And when it is exhausted by the supersensible world, then thinking becomes dead again, and it must descend once more into the physical-sensory world. You see how we humans are, in fact, two-part beings in this regard, how we carry within us the remnants of prenatal life, and how—due to our constitution—we possess the young life of the will, which must unite with the aged life of thought, and which we then carry through the gate of death.

[ 6 ] The physical expression of human organization is entirely consistent with this spiritual structure of the human world: on the one hand, the head organization, which clearly shows anyone willing to study it impartially that it is a kind of final organization—the most perfect, yet also the culminating product of humanity’s evolution. In the organization of the head, we find the human organization that is constantly wrestling with death, one that is entirely adapted to dead thinking. In contrast, in the organization of the rest of our human organism, we have that which is adapted to the organization of the will, which is always born anew. Therefore, everything connected with our head organization points us back to the past; everything connected with the rest of our organism points us toward the future—toward the future in a physical sense, and also toward the future in a physical-spiritual sense. Our head is the metamorphosis of the rest of our organism from the previous incarnation—in terms of forces, of course, not physical substances. And the rest of our organism is undergoing a metamorphosis to become the head of the next incarnation. This is something we have already discussed here on several occasions.

[ 7 ] As human beings, we are thus always confronted, on the one hand, with that which is more permeated by the life of the imagination and, on the other hand, with that which is more oriented toward death. From this springs everything that impels us to develop insights. The more perfect a human being becomes in the course of earthly evolution, the more “dead,” so to speak, their thinking becomes; the more “dead” their mental organization becomes. They will increasingly view the world unfolding around them through this organization, attempting to understand this world, but he will nevertheless—if he does not wish to lose the awareness of his human dignity—have to look inward, toward that which rises as a newly born will and which holds before him the moral ideals, which holds before him, in fact, the very ideals of his actions, of his doing. But because human beings are divided in the manner described, the conflict appears to them between the world of natural necessity—which they attempt to encompass with their knowledge—and the world of morality, which then rises to the level of the religious and finds no points of reference to unite itself with the world, with the worldview that stems from knowledge of nature. This conflict has indeed been driven to its extreme in our age. Just consider how, based on scientific knowledge of nature, people today reflect on how the Earth was formed from the primordial nebula, purely through natural causality; how, in the course of this Earth’s development, humankind also came into being; and how this process will continue for millions of years to come. Human beings are, in terms of their physical organization, entangled in this natural causality. Their moral ideals spring from it. They wish to establish a world based on these moral ideals. But what choice do they have but to reflect on this moral world when they must look toward the end of Earth’s evolution, which will fall back into the sun like slag, along with everything on it? He must ask himself: What, then, is the true nature of all that we set as moral ideals if this moral world has no foothold in natural necessity—if it is, so to speak, merely the smoke rising from the processes that arise out of natural necessity?

[ 8 ] This conflict weighs very heavily today on those people who form unbiased and deeply internalized conceptions of the world. Only a certain lightheartedness in life allows people to overlook this conflict. Yet nothing other than true spiritual science can lead us beyond this conflict. Indeed, it is precisely the natural sciences—to which people today turn with particular devotion as an authority whenever knowledge is at stake—that show that it is possible to calculate exactly what the beginning and end of the Earth are: a formless cosmic nebula at the beginning, a desolate end to the Earth, and an episode in between: human beings living in moral, ethical, and ethical illusions. But this must be the case during our earthly incarnation. Moral laws, as we experience them in our earthly humanity, are not, at first, laws like the laws of nature. If they were such laws, we would not be able to organize freedom within ourselves. If freedom were driven, as any natural process is driven, you would not be able to develop freedom within yourselves. It is precisely the fact that the earthly organization is called upon to integrate freedom into human beings that made it necessary for a time during earthly evolution for human beings, prompted by their own inner nature, must look upon the surrounding world of natural necessity and can allow only moral ideals to take root within themselves—ideals that are not laws in the sense that nature would carry them out as well. What we have in our conception of the natural world offers no guarantee that what we, as humanity and the world as a whole, seek to establish in our moral ideals will actually be realized.

[ 9 ] But things will not always remain as they are now. They will not always remain in such a way that the world of moral ideals and the world of natural necessity stand in sharp contrast to one another. The Earth is, after all, drawing to a close, and from the perspective of spiritual science—as I have already explained here on several occasions—this end appears differently than the end calculated by the natural sciences. This end of the Earth will indeed occur when the time periods have run their course—periods we can correctly imagine by, for example, looking at the time period that preceded our own, which began around 747 B.C. and ended around 1413 A.D. So now we are living in the year 1920. A period will begin that will in turn last as long as that period; that is our own. Then two more will follow this one, and if we survey these periods from a spiritual-scientific perspective up to the next end of our cultural epochs and then imagine that something else follows, which in turn is connected to larger periods of the length of the Atlantean epoch, we do indeed arrive at an end of the Earth that is small compared to the millions or even billions of years calculated by the natural sciences through calculations that are correct but do not reflect reality.

[ 10 ] But when the Earth approaches its end, the relationship between the world of moral ideals and the world as it is perceived by human understanding today will be different. The laws of morality and the laws of physics will converge. We now live in an age where the two are separate. The spiritual scientist can already perceive today how they are drawing closer together, how what is experienced, for example, in the spiritual worlds, is already producing effects that are just as enduring as the effects of nature on the other hand. The spiritual researcher perceives a merging of the spiritual laws of morality and the physical laws of natural phenomena, and can see how, at the end of the Earth cycle, the entire development of that which passes through this end of the Earth cycle and will proceed to a next planetary incarnation will experience a merging between the world of moral ideals and the world of natural laws. Moral ideals will become what the laws of nature are today, and the laws of nature will become—as the two draw closer together—what the moral laws are today. At the end of the Earth’s cycle, the moral world and the laws of nature will not be a duality; rather, we are passing through a period in which the two will become one. Within this unity, many things will become bound and many things will be dissolved that are today considered unbound, unbindable, or indissoluble.

[ 11 ] Very special things present themselves to the spiritual researcher, and I do not wish to shy away today from elaborating on such things in a little more detail—precisely in this place—and explaining their significance, even if, of course, the opposition from the outside world—which understands nothing and wants to understand nothing of what is being done here—becomes even greater. But it does no good, after all, to somehow dull what is to be cultivated on anthroposophical ground. We must simply fight through what arises from the fact that so much in the present world is at odds with a genuine quest for truth. From the perspective of this question, the spiritual researcher is also confronted by all the terrible things that have happened, for example, over the past five to six years. We have truly experienced things that have never before been experienced in the entire course of human development—above all, not in a way where knowledge of nature was used to cause so much destruction. Certainly, much has been destroyed in the past as well; but that was all trivial, for the scientific knowledge needed to bring about such destruction did not yet exist. Just consider how vast areas of the earth have simply been razed away for long, long periods of time by covering the ground with concrete or similar measures. Just consider what human “art” has been capable of accomplishing in these five to six years in terms of destroying what nature has brought forth, reducing it to nothingness. One need only strike this note to point to something monstrous—something that also confronts the spiritual researcher in a significant way, in a tragically significant way. What actually goes on in the mind of today’s materialist when he looks at these things? He sees the end of the Earth when entropy is complete, when everything has been transformed by the heat death of the Earth, when the Earth has neared its physical end. By then, other people will have long since lived, people who in turn dreamed of other moral ideals. But what has been cemented into the destruction of nature, the destruction of human creativity, and so on, is devoid of essence.

[ 12 ] The spiritual researcher cannot share this materialist’s view, for something else presents itself to him. He envisions the moment of the Earth’s end, when the laws of nature and the laws of morality form a unity, when what humanity has accomplished morally—or, or, to put it more accurately in this case, what humanity has accomplished immorally, will continue to operate as natural law, so that at the end of the Earth’s existence there will come a moment when the Earth passes through other stages of development, but where natural laws and moral laws are one. And then it passes over to the next planetary incarnation, which I have called the Jupiter incarnation in my *Outline of Esoteric Science*.

[ 13 ] There will again be periods of development; but the mineral kingdom will no longer exist—something else will take its place. We humans will no longer carry within us the elements of the mineral kingdom, but rather, at the lowest level, the elements of the plant kingdom; and what has occurred in terms of morality or immorality—what has been absorbed from the workings of nature—will continue to exert its influence. And just as in our fifth earthly epoch—the fifth epoch of the Earth—what we have seen sweeping across the Earth as horrors occurred, so too, once these horrors—that is, the impulses behind them—have been absorbed by that process which will take place on Jupiter—a natural-moral process, a moral-natural process—what has developed there during this fifth epoch will recur on Jupiter during the third epoch at a different level.

[ 14 ] What humanity will face in this future, arising from the natural configuration of the next period—Earth’s Jupiter period—will be what will then be natural processes. But they will be natural processes. It will be confronted, from within the plant kingdom—which will then be the lowest—by what we might call poisonous plants of a natural origin. This has been sown over the past five to six years: a toxic, swamp-like substance that will rise up and grow into the Jupiter period, which will emerge from this earthly existence. It is not the case that the moral or the immoral will pass away; a unified force will form between the moral and the laws of nature, and whatever moral or immoral impulses have been at work within humanity as a whole will be carried over. I would like to say that humanity now has the choice to remain oblivious to the great interconnections into which it is, as humanity, actually woven, to live out its earthly human existence like mindless cattle, and to think: There are the laws of nature, according to which we calculate that a Kant-Laplacean worldview corresponds to the beginning of the Earth and a heat death-like state caused by entropy corresponds to the end of the Earth; that we can basically do whatever we please—indeed, that we can murder millions: once heat death has set in, they will simply have been murdered along with everything else, and the impulses that led to their murder have no significance beyond this heat death. Out of the materialism of the present, man must believe such things; but he then lives on like mindless cattle. He lives on in such a way that he gives no thought to his connection with the whole of cosmic existence. That is the danger today: that man loses the ability to reflect on his connection with cosmic existence. This gives rise to insane notions such as the Kant-Laplace theory or the theory of the heat death of the Earth; whereas in fact the Earth is an organism that began in an age when moral and natural laws were one, an organism that will come to an end in a time when, once again, moral and natural laws will be one. Unless one broadens one’s perspective beyond the immediate present to what only spiritual science can teach, one simply goes through life like mindless cattle. Only by allowing one’s vision to be sharpened to the point of perceiving that state of our earthly existence where spirit becomes matter and matter becomes spirit, so that they form a unity—only through this does one attain an awareness of human dignity, that is, to an awareness of the connection between human beings and the entire range of cosmic forces, which are neither one-sidedly moral nor one-sidedly governed by natural laws, but are such that morality itself constitutes a natural order, and the natural order itself is interwoven with morality.

[ 15 ] These are also the moral reasons why it is necessary for people today to broaden the horizons of their understanding. If they do not broaden it, they confine themselves to an understanding of the world that is limited to what cannot transcend the dualism between a moral worldview and a worldview based on natural law. In doing so, however, human beings narrow their worldview to such an extent that it becomes impossible for them to truly understand themselves in their entirety.

[ 16 ] You can see from this that it is not a matter of intellectual curiosity that needs to be satisfied by what is pursued in spiritual science, but rather that there is a moral necessity for the dissemination of spiritual science. For what has guided human beings up to their present condition has, in fact, led precisely to the fact that people today cannot comprehend how the moral world order and the physical world order are interconnected; they cannot penetrate one another today because human beings are meant to become free beings. But human beings must view the junctures of the world in such a way that, within them, the natural order and the moral order are one. It is, in essence, a terrible thing when people today calculate how our Earth might have originated from purely physical conditions, and how it would once again dissolve into purely physical conditions. One should not believe that the traditional creeds, in their present form, save humanity from this decline, as indicated precisely in the words I have used today. It is precisely these traditional creeds that have made the spiritual realm increasingly abstract and that have given rise to dualism—leading to a situation where people scarcely feel the need to seek the connection between the natural order and the moral order. If people seek it today—if they seek it from the very depths of their hearts—they can find it only in spiritual science, which points them to the end of the Earth and the beginning of the Earth as those pivotal points in the world’s development where the moral becomes natural and the natural becomes moral.

[ 17 ] But then, indeed, everything that surrounds us and in which we are entangled once again imposes moral responsibility upon us. We humans, in a sense, experience—through our successive incarnations of life during our earthly existence—the image of the entire earthly organization. We live through these successive earthly lives by always seeking, for whatever we have fallen into one-sidedness regarding between birth and death, a balance between death and a new birth. We oscillate back and forth between the sensory and the supersensory life, seeking balance, and at the end of our earthly existence we will pass through a world that, on the one hand, is very similar to the supersensory world, but where this supersensory realm will simultaneously take on the very supersensory form toward which we will have developed by then.

[ 18 ] In the order of the world, our thinking predates our present sensory perception. This does not contradict the fact that our sense organs were formed during the first earthly incarnation that we can trace. But this sensory perception, as we now have it, developed only during the Earth period, whereas thinking—which is deeply embedded in our constitution—was already present during the ancient Moon period, albeit in the form of images. The physical-sensory organization—including the organs that perceive the sensory world, specifically as our fully developed senses do today—only came into being during our earthly existence. And is what we perceive through our senses today as fleeting as it seems? — Yes, you see, that is how people think. Today they look at the green plant; today they look at the red rose. What takes place there between their sense organs and the external world, they regard as temporary. It is not temporary! It leaves an effect on the entire human organism. It matters what you direct your senses toward. All of this is embedded within your human organism, and the full scope of your sensory perception is observed in the imprints of the etheric body during the passage through earthly death and carried over into the supersensible world in the astral imprint. And that which is thus always carried from us here on Earth through death accumulates, and we then carry it further on through this state of the end of the Earth. Certainly, we carry nothing of our physical body over into the Jupiter period; but of the effects of these perceptions, we carry a great deal over. This is already being prepared in that colorful, pictorial existence we experience between death and a new birth, which, however, will undergo a significant densification as we pass through the state between Earth and Jupiter—a state that will be both moral-physical and physical-moral; through which we will be able to carry forward that which will become integrated within us through our perceptions with our higher senses. That which is integrated within us in this way is capable of passing through a world that is both moral-physical and physical-moral, where natural laws will be ideal laws and ideal laws will be natural laws.

[ 19 ] When we look out today—I know, of course, that I am speaking only in relative terms, and that any seemingly trained physicist could correct the way I’m expressing myself, but that is not the point here—when we look at the rainbow today as it spreads a vast spectrum before us, the color seems to float in space, separate from us. Something similar also arises when we do not see a rainbow, but simply look at anything else that evokes a sense of color within us; but something similar to what forms objectively out there when the rainbow appears to us—something similar takes place within us through our etheric body, preparing that body which is at first colored but then becomes condensed, and which will pass through the moral physical realm, through the physical-moral realm, during the transition between Earth and Jupiter. You see, this is where, at this point in spiritual science, human beings today can attain an inner awareness of the unity of the moral world and the physical world, whereas otherwise the moral world and the physical world fall apart for today’s materialistic consciousness. The spread of spiritual science is morally necessary. For what constitutes human morality is, in fact, literally evaporating and vanishing if the physical worldview were to prevail on its own. Once one sees through this, it certainly stirs up bitter feelings—feelings whose cause, however, must be combated with the utmost vigor—when one observes how, today, people who ostensibly wish to nurture humanity’s spiritual life are actually waging a campaign against this necessary—and morally necessary—nurturing of the spiritual life.

[ 20 ] We keep seeing new examples of this “clean” fight. A particularly charming one has, in fact, surfaced recently. It ties in with—I don’t know from which side these things are always leaked—it ties in with what Dr. Boos had brought up here regarding the collection of votes of confidence. It’s not really my place to speak about this matter; but a supposedly good Christian newspaper from this area feels it necessary to emphasize in particular that this whole affair once again poses a terrible danger to Swiss national character. I would really like to know whether anyone who believes that Swiss national character will be shaken by the practice of anthroposophy actually considers it to be particularly strong? But you see, Swiss national character is said to be in danger, and this is written in such flowery language: “As one can see, the anthroposophical cause stands on shaky ground.” A secret circular—the mask of which we have, however, torn away—is said to pave the way for Dr. Steiner’s work, to win over the authorities throughout Switzerland to his cause, and indeed, to ensure that the immigration of foreign elements is not hindered. What does this society care about our appalling housing shortage, or about the pernicious influence of this foreign race on our noble Swiss identity? They are appealing to the Swiss people for help in destroying Swiss identity.”

[ 21 ] Well, it is pointed out there that it is bad for influences from outside Switzerland to play a role here. But then comes a sentence that adds a charming touch to the whole thing, one that brings the question to mind: Where, then, does the right come from to make this accusation of supposedly foreign influences? It says: “For us Catholics, the position is clear. We have received word from Rome that no Catholic, whether directly or indirectly, may lend support to this new sect. We therefore consider it our sacred duty to alert a wide audience to this new scam.”

[ 22 ] So these people, who want to save the Swiss people from foreign influences, are actually getting the very influences they point to with such a firm hand—not from Bern or Zurich, not from the Swiss people, but from Rome! Strange logic? You see, that is today’s logic. That is how people think—but without realizing it. And they don’t realize it because our education, as imparted by our educational institutions, permits such thinking. Those who write this down know exactly what they’re aiming for, and that’s why they can put such things down on paper. But countless others—sleeping souls—must first be made aware, through harsh words, that such follies are simply accepted as logic today and are not recognized as follies. These are the hallmarks of the slumbering state of souls today. That is why it is so necessary to point this out again and again in no uncertain terms: that souls must awaken, that they must look at what lurks in our muddled thinking—the things that are permitted to be said today without the slumbering souls realizing that, even by the standards of logic, it is sheer nonsense.

[ 23 ] This also shows us, from another perspective, the moral necessity that should spur us on to be a true support for spiritual science—not to continue sleeping, but to wake up and be a true support for spiritual science. You will find the logic—which people here count on you not to notice—practiced everywhere in scientific books today. Go through the hypotheses; go through all that material that today constitutes the Kant-Laplacean theory of madness for its faithful adherents; then you will find in all of this the reason why people are still allowed to pull such stunts on humanity today. Look within the supposedly exact scientific hypotheses and theories that have been described here in recent days; look within them for the reason why people are still allowed to pull the wool over humanity’s eyes today. People are forced to send their young people to these universities, where they are taught experimental knowledge, but their thinking—their entire inner life—is thoroughly “de-logicized.” And people refuse to acknowledge the necessity that spiritual life must indeed stand on its own within the threefold social organism. People refuse to look at the evidence that is plain to see everywhere. One must say: This will not last long, for the forces that employ every means to exploit people’s illogicality find fertile ground today. And if those who have some insight into what must be done continue to sleep, it will come to pass that—at least for the time being—the grave will be dug for European culture, and then salvation must come from entirely different quarters.

[ 24 ] I have often spoken here of the responsibility that exists for the various parts of European humanity. We must become aware of this responsibility. It is a great responsibility. And it is simply not enough to devise all sorts of petty measures and believe that we can make our way with them. Today, we must recognize with our hearts and minds that our entire spiritual life is in need of renewal and that this spiritual life, in particular, cannot continue as it has developed up to the present day.