The Rudolf Steiner Archive

6. Hidden Aspects of Human Existence and the Christ Impulse

[ 1 ] It is always a pleasure for me, following the public lectures and events, to be able to speak here in The Hague as well, and this evening I will try to share with you some thoughts that may serve as a more intimate continuation and supplement to what I was able to express in the public lectures. After all, what matters most for gaining insight into the spiritual world and for achieving an inner communion with it is to see in the proper light what one might call the hidden side of human existence. It is, after all, the hidden aspects of human existence that are the most important for the overall assessment and evaluation of human life. People who think in external and materialistic terms may be reluctant to admit this, but it is nevertheless true. No one can come to know human existence unless they are able to engage with its hidden aspects.

[ 2 ] Perhaps one could, if I may put it this way, object to the gods that they have placed precisely what is most valuable to human beings in the hidden aspects of life, that they have not, so to speak, presented to us in the obvious what is most valuable to us. If that were the case, then human beings would remain powerless in a higher sense. It is precisely through this—that we must first earn our true human dignity and our very humanity, that we must first do something spiritually and psychologically in order to become human beings in the true sense—that we come to possess spiritual and psychological powers capable of permeating our entire existence. And in this overcoming—in this necessity of first doing something in order to become human—lies what can make us powerful, what can permeate us with strength right at the very core of our being.

[ 3 ] And so today, in order to explore this central theme I have introduced in greater depth, I would like to speak to you once again—from a certain perspective—about the hidden side of human existence, which is shrouded in the unconsciousness of sleep. And I would then like to share with you some of what is veiled in states of existence that remain unconscious during earthly life: the states of existence of pre-earthly life and life after death.

[ 4 ] For human beings, the life of sleep unfolds in such a way that, with the transition into dreams—which, however, have a highly dubious existence and a highly dubious significance for human life if one simply accepts them as they appear — into the unconsciousness of sleep, from which they emerge again upon awakening, when they submerge their ego and astral body into their etheric body and physical body, thus using these two organisms as a tool to perceive their physical surroundings and then to act within those surroundings through their will. But that which lies beyond birth and death is precisely enveloped in that aspect of the human being that becomes unconscious upon falling asleep. And I want to describe to you the states that a person undergoes there as if they were conscious. They can only become conscious to the imaginative, inspired, and intuitive consciousness. But this is merely a difference in perception compared to what every human being experiences at night. The one who, as a modern initiate, looks into the life of sleep knows what it is like. But as a result, the life of sleep becomes nothing other for him than it is for every human being—even for those who experience it entirely unconsciously. And so one can describe it truthfully by simply describing what remains unconscious as if the person were experiencing it consciously. And that is what I will now do first.

[ 5 ] After passing through the realm of dreams—as I have already hinted—the human being, from the perspective of ordinary consciousness, slips into unconsciousness. But this unconsciousness, in its reality, appears to higher, supersensible perception in such a way that, immediately after falling asleep, a person enters a kind of blurred state of existence. If they were to consciously perceive their condition, they would feel as if they were poured out into an ethereal world. They would feel outside their body, but not confined within narrow limits, rather spread out widely; they would sense and perceive their body as something objective, located outside of themselves. If they were to become conscious of this state, it would be inwardly filled, in the human soul, with a certain fear or anxiety: one feels that one has lost the firm support of one’s body; one feels as if standing before an abyss.

[ 6 ] What is called the threshold to the spiritual world must exist for the very reason that a person must first prepare themselves to experience such a feeling: the feeling of having lost the support provided by the physical body, and of carrying within the soul that anxiety that arises from initially facing something completely unknown and undefined.

[ 7 ] This feeling of anxiety, as I said, is not present for the ordinary sleeper; it is not present in consciousness, but the person experiences it nonetheless. And what, for example, is anxiety in one’s physical daily life is expressed—albeit in subtle processes of the physical body—in precisely such processes: certain vascular activities of the physical body are different when a person is anxious than when they are not. Something objective is therefore taking place, apart from what the person feels in their consciousness as restlessness and so on. A person experiences this objective aspect of a psychological-spiritual fear by entering the state of sleep through the gateway of sleep. But this feeling of fear is connected to something else: to a feeling of deep longing for a divine-spiritual presence that permeates and interweaves the world.

[ 8 ] If a person were to experience the first moments—or perhaps, for many people, hours—after falling asleep with full consciousness, they would initially be in this state of fear and this longing for the divine. The fact that we feel religiously inclined at all during our waking daytime lives depends primarily on this sense of fear and this longing for the divine—which we experience at night—spilling over into our daytime mood. These are spiritual experiences—projected, so to speak, into physical life—that fill us with the aftereffects of that anxiety which drives us to want to recognize what is real in the world, and with the aftereffects of that longing which we carry within us during sleep and which finds expression in religious feeling while we are awake during the day.

[ 9 ] But this is only the case in the early stages after falling asleep. As sleep continues, something peculiar occurs: the soul is as if split, as if divided into many souls. If a person were to consciously experience this state—which today only the modern initiate can fully perceive—he would perceive himself as many souls, and as a result, he would have to conclude that he had lost himself. All these individual soul beings—which are actually only shadow images of souls—represent something into which the person has lost himself. In this state of sleep, the human being already appears different, depending on whether we consider him before or after the Mystery of Golgotha. For the human being needs external cosmic help in the face of this—if I may put it this way—splitting into many soul images.

[ 10 ] In ancient times, before the Mystery of Golgotha, the initiates—the ancient initiates—gave humanity certain religious instructions indirectly through their disciples, through the teachers they sent out into the world for the sake of humanity; these instructions evoked specific feelings in waking daily life. And these instructions, which were then lived out by people in ritual practices, strengthened the souls, so that they in turn carried something like an aftereffect of this religious mood into their sleep.

[ 11 ] You can see the interplay between sleep and wakefulness! On the one hand, in the first stage of sleep, a person’s longing for God leads them to experience something that, in their waking life, inspires them to develop a religious life. If this religion is developed in waking daily life—and it was developed in ancient times by the initiates—then this in turn has an effect on the second stage after falling asleep: the soul then feels strong enough, through the aftereffects of this religious mood, to endure its fragmentation, so to speak, and at least to persist within the multiplicity.

[ 12 ] That is precisely the difficulty faced by non-religious people: they lack such nocturnal support to cope with being split into many souls, and as a result, they carry what they experience into their daily lives without religious fortification. For everything that is experienced during the night carries over into daily life in its aftereffects. It was not so long ago that irreligiousness and areligiousness played such a major role among humanity as they did in the 19th century. People still felt the aftereffects of what earlier, more sincere religious times had meant to them. But as these irreligious times continue, they will have a significant consequence: people will carry over into their daily lives, from their states of sleep, the aftereffects of this division of the soul, and this will contribute in particular to the fact that, during the day, people will lack the cohesive forces in their organism necessary to distribute the effects of food properly throughout their bodies. And the consequences of irreligiosity will manifest themselves in significant human illnesses in the not-too-distant future.

[ 13 ] One must certainly not believe that the spiritual-soul aspect has no connection whatsoever to the physical! It is not related in such a way that whatever form of irreligion develops today is directly punished with illness by some demonic gods. Existence does not unfold in this outward manner, but an inner connection nevertheless exists between what a person experiences spiritually and psychologically and the nature of their physical constitution. In order for a person to be healthy during waking hours, they need to carry into their sleep life a sense of belonging to the divine-spiritual beings, into whose realm they immerse their own eternal core of being during sleep. And only by correctly perceiving the spiritual-soul world that exists between falling asleep and waking up can a person draw forth the right forces—forces that are also spiritually and soulfully healing—for their waking hours.

[ 14 ] During this second stage of sleep, a person reaches a point where, in place of their usual physical consciousness, they do not experience a cosmic consciousness, but rather a cosmic experience. As mentioned, only the initiate brings this cosmic experience into conscious awareness, but every person experiences it at night, from the moment they fall asleep until they wake up. And during this second stage of sleep, a person is in such a state of being that their inner self performs reproductions of the planetary movements of our solar system. During the day, we experience ourselves within our physical body. When we speak of ourselves as physical human beings, we say: Within us are our lungs, our heart, our stomach, our brain, and so on—that is our physical inner self. In the second stage of sleep, our spiritual-soul inner being is the movement of Venus, the movement of Mercury, the movement of the Sun, the movement of the Moon. This entire interplay of the planetary movements of our solar system—we do not carry it directly within us, not the planetary movements themselves, but replicas, astral replicas of them—these then constitute our inner organization. We are not, so to speak, extended throughout the entire planetary cosmos; yet we are of immense size compared to our physical size during the waking day. We do not carry the actual Venus within us during every state of sleep, but rather a reflection of its movement. And what takes place in our spiritual-soul life between falling asleep and waking up in the second stage of sleep consists of such circulations of planetary movements in astral substance, just as—stimulated by the respiratory movement during the day—our blood circulates through our physical organism. So that at night, we have, so to speak, an afterimage of our cosmos circulating within us as our inner life.

[ 15 ] We must first go through the fragmentation of the soul; only then can we experience this circulation of the planetary aftereffects. As I said, before the Mystery of Golgotha, the initiates gave the people of that time instructions so that they could endure this fragmentation of the soul and so that the soul could “find its way in these movements, which now constituted its inner life.” After the Mystery of Golgotha, something else took the place of this old teaching. What has come to take its place is that which a person can internalize as a feeling, a sensation, a soul life, and a soul mood when they feel truly connected to what Christ accomplished for humanity on Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. Whoever feels connected to Christ to such an extent that the words of Paul are fulfilled within them: “Not I, but Christ in me”—such a person, through this connection with Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha, has developed within their inner life something that continues to work into their sleep, so that they now have the strength to overcome the fragmentation of the soul and find their way through the labyrinth of planetary orbits that now constitute their inner being. For we must find our way, even if we do not consciously carry within us what the planetary circulation is to the soul—in place of the blood circulation during the day—which continues in the physical body we have left behind.

[ 16 ] After going through this, we enter the third stage of sleep. In the third stage—for the elements of the first stage always remain, while the experiences of the next stage are added—in the third stage of sleep, what I would like to call the “fixed-star experience” is added. After we have experienced the circulation of the planetary reproductions, we actually experience the formations of the fixed stars—what in earlier times were called, for example, the zodiacal constellations. And what is experienced there is necessary for the soul aspect of the human being, because he must carry the aftereffects of this experience with the fixed stars into his waking daily life in order to have the strength at all to control and enliven his physical organism from the soul at any time.

[ 17 ] In fact, every human being goes through an ethereal preliminary stage during the night characterized by fear of the world and a longing for God, followed by a planetary stage in which, in their astral body, they feel the afterimages of the planets’ movements, and they pass through a stage of fixed-star experience, in which they then feel—or would feel, if they were conscious—that their own soul-spiritual inner being is a replica of the fixed-star sky.

[ 18 ] Well, for those who understand these stages of sleep, a meaningful question arises—I would say—every night. The human soul, the astral organism, and the I-being step out of the physical body; their inner being is filled with reflections of the planetary movements and the arrangements of the fixed stars. The question that arises is this: Why does the human being return to his physical existence every morning, after every sleep?

[ 19 ] And here it becomes clear to the science of initiation that human beings would in fact not return if, by entering into the planetary movements and the forms of the fixed stars, they did not—even as they grow outward into the reproductions of cosmic existence—also live themselves into the forces of the Moon,

[ 20 ] He immerses himself in the spiritual forces of the Moon—those cosmic forces that find their reflections in the physical Moon and in the changes of the physical Moon. While all other planetary and fixed-star forces actually draw the human being out of the physical body, it is the lunar forces that bring him back, again and again, into his physical body upon waking. The Moon is connected, in general, with everything that brings the human being from spiritual existence to physical existence. Thus it is also irrelevant—for the physical constellation is not what matters here, although it does have a certain significance—whether it is a new moon, full moon, quarter moon, or waning moon; in the spiritual world, the moon is always present: it is the lunar forces that guide the human being back into the physical world, into his physical body.

[ 21 ] You can see that when I describe to you—even if only in broad strokes—what a person goes through between falling asleep and waking up, there is in this something like a reflection of the human being’s stay in the spiritual world in general. And that is indeed the case. Essentially, every night we experience a reflection of what we go through between death and a new birth. When we look back through imagination, inspiration, and intuition into our pre-earthly existence, we first see ourselves as spiritual-soul human beings at a very early stage of our pre-earthly existence. We see ourselves as possessing a cosmic consciousness. There we are not in a state of life that merely contains reflections of the cosmic, as in the life of sleep, but there we are in fact poured out over the actual cosmos. And around the middle of the period between death and a new birth, we feel ourselves to be fully conscious spiritual-soul beings—indeed, with a much clearer, more intense consciousness than we could ever have on Earth—surrounded by divine-spiritual beings, by the divine-spiritual hierarchies. And just as we work with the forces of nature on Earth, just as we have external natural objects as tools, so a process of work takes place between us and the beings of the higher spiritual hierarchies.

[ 22 ] And what does this work consist of? Well, this work consists in the spiritual-soul human, in union with an immense number of sublime spiritual beings of the universe, weaving the cosmic spiritual seed of his physical human body in the spiritual realm. As strange as this may seem to you: weaving the physical human body as a spiritual seed out of the cosmic universe—that is the greatest, most significant work conceivable in the entire universe. And it is not only the human soul in the described state that works on this; this human soul works on it in conjunction with entire hosts of divine-spiritual beings. For if you imagine the most complex thing that can be formed here on Earth, it is primitive and simple compared to that immense fabric of cosmic magnitude and grandeur that is being woven there—a fabric that is then compressed and condensed through conception and birth, interwoven with physical earthly matter, and becomes a physical human body.

[ 23 ] When we speak of a seed here on Earth, we are referring to a small seed that eventually grows to be relatively large. But when we speak of the human body’s cosmic spiritual seed—as a product of the spiritual realm—it is of immense size. And as the human being lives from that point in time—which I have indicated to you—toward his birth, the spiritually and soulfully magnificent human germ becomes smaller and smaller. The human being continues to develop it with this in mind: it is woven together and pressed together, condensed into the physical human body.

[ 24 ] Indeed, it is not for nothing that the ancient initiates—albeit through a kind of clairvoyance that can no longer be ours, but modern initiatory science shows us the same thing—it is not for nothing that these initiates called the human body a “temple of the gods.” It is indeed a temple, for it is woven by the human soul each time between death and a new birth in union with divine beings from the cosmos. And then, in the manner yet to be described, it is given its physical form. As the human being weaves the spiritual seeds of his physical body at this stage, he is in a state of mind, in a mood of the soul, that can only be compared to what the modern initiate calls intuition. Human beings live with their souls within the deeds of the gods. They are completely immersed in cosmic divine existence. In this intermediate state between death and a new birth, they experience what the gods live.

[ 25 ] But as the human being progresses further, as he moves further away from conception or birth, this changes. In a sense, he then has the impression, in his consciousness, that the divine-spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies are withdrawing from him. And what appears to them is something like a revelation, like a reflection—as if the gods had withdrawn and their misty afterimages still lingered before the human soul, and as if a kind of veil were being woven as a misty afterimage of what had previously been woven in reality. The intuitive consciousness one once possessed now transforms into a cosmically inspired consciousness. One no longer lives with the divine-spiritual beings; one lives with their revelation. But in return, an inner “I” is increasingly taking shape within the soul’s consciousness. In what I would call the highest stage of life between death and a new birth, one lives entirely with the divine-spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies; the “I” has no inner strength; it only becomes inwardly aware of itself again when the gods withdraw and only the revelation of the gods remains. The radiance of the gods, their aura, enters into a kind of inspired consciousness; in return, however, the human being feels itself to be a distinct being. And what first awakens within the human being there is a kind of—I might say—longing, a kind of desire.

[ 26 ] In the space between death and a new birth, the human being works—in a sense, driven by a deeper inner satisfaction—on the spiritual seed for the physical body. Although they look toward the goal—their physical body in the next earthly life—they are not driven by desire, but rather, one might say, by a sense of wonder at what this physical human body actually is, viewed from a universal perspective. At the moment when a human being no longer lives in the divine realms but in the revelations of those realms, the desire to incarnate on Earth once more awakens within them. Precisely as the sense of self grows ever stronger, this desire to incarnate on Earth again awakens. In a sense, one moves away from the divine realms and draws closer to what one will then become as an earthly human being. This longing grows ever stronger, and what one perceives externally also changes. Previously, one had lived among pure beings, within the divine-spiritual hierarchies; one knew oneself to be one with these divine hierarchies. When one spoke of one’s inner self, that was the cosmos; but the cosmos consisted of beings—beings with exalted levels of consciousness—with whom one lived in communion. Now there is an outer appearance, and within this outer appearance the first images gradually emerge of what will then be the physical afterimages of the divine-spiritual beings. From the being one came to know over there as a high solar being, the radiance emanates, and within that radiance the sun appears, as it were, as seen from the outside, as viewed from the world. Here on Earth, we look up at the sun. Next, when we come down, we see the sun from the other side. But the sun appears, the fixed stars appear, and behind the fixed stars the planetary movements appear. And as the planetary movements appear, a very specific kind of force emerges: the spiritual lunar forces, which now take hold of us. It is these forces that now gradually carry us back into earthly life.

[ 27 ] This is indeed the view that a human being has as he descends from the cosmic worlds into earthly existence: that he passes from an experience of divine-spiritual hierarchies to images of them. But these images of beings gradually become constellations, and the human being enters into something that—I would say—he initially sees from behind: he enters into what presents itself to him here on Earth as the cosmos. What the human being accomplishes there can be understood in detail, and modern initiatory science can go quite far in understanding what the human being goes through there.

[ 28 ] It is precisely through details in this area that one truly comes to know life. For no one knows life who is capable of viewing human beings only in the context of earthly existence. What, after all, does our connection to earthly existence matter to us? During the immeasurably long periods between death and a new birth, the Earth is, after all, of no consequence to us at first; and that which appears to us, I might say, merely as an external reality has, during this long time, been transformed into entire worlds of the gods, in which we then live, and which only reveal themselves externally as stars when we approach the Earth for a new earthly existence.

[ 29 ] What a human being first wove as the spiritual seed of his physical body, he initially knows to be one with the entire universe, with the spiritual universe. Then, as he perceives only the revelation of the divine-spiritual worlds, this increasingly becomes his body, which is now also a reflection of the cosmos. And from this body of his arises the longing for an earthly existence, a sense of “I” within his body.

[ 30 ] In this body, much remains untouched by earthly existence, for it is, after all, a spiritual body. For example, at a certain stage, it is still completely undecided for this body whether the human being will be a male or female personality in his or her next earthly existence. For during this entire period between death and a new birth—right up to a very late stage before one is born on Earth—it makes no sense at all to ask about male and female. These are entirely different conditions than those reflected on Earth as male and female. There are also relationships that play out in spiritual existence and are reflected on Earth; but what appears as male and female on Earth only gains significance relatively late, before one descends to Earth. And we can trace in detail how the human being—if, based on certain earlier karmic connections, it believes that in its coming earthly life it would be best to experience this earthly existence as a woman—chooses, upon descending into earthly existence to then unite with the physical human embryo, the time that is regarded here on Earth as the time of the full moon.

[ 31 ] So we can say: When we look up at the full moon from Earth in any region, that is the time chosen by the beings who wish to become women to descend to Earth. That is when the decision is made. And the new moon is the time chosen by the beings who wish to become men. Thus, human beings enter earthly existence through the gate of the Moon. But the power that a man needs to enter the earthly realm then flows out into the cosmos; one meets it by coming in from the cosmos, and it is radiated by the Moon when it is a new moon as seen from Earth. The force that a woman needs is radiated by the Moon when it is full; at that time, its illuminated side faces the Earth, while its unilluminated side extends out into the cosmos, and this force—which the Moon can send out into the cosmos from its unilluminated side—is what the human being needs if it wishes to become a woman.

[ 32 ] What I have just described to you shows that the ancient concept of astrology—which has been brought to complete decadence today solely by so-called astrologers—had sound grounds. One need only be able to look inwardly at how things are connected. One must not merely look at the physical constellations in a calculating way, but must see through to their corresponding spiritual aspects. Then it is truly possible to go into detail.

[ 33 ] Isn’t it true that, at a certain stage, the human being descends from the cosmos? From the spiritual cosmos, he enters the etheric cosmos. And I am actually still speaking entirely of the etheric cosmos; the physical aspect of the stars is of less consideration here, and the physical aspect of the Moon is of even less consideration. The crucial moment, the decisive instant when a human being makes the decision to descend to Earth, depends—as I have described—on the lunar stage, on the conditions of the Moon. But during this descent, the human being is often exposed to the full moon or the new moon, and so it may be that the human being initially exposes themselves, so to speak, to a decisive new moon in order to become a man, or to a decisive full moon in order to become a woman. But then—since the descent does not happen so quickly, and the person remains exposed for a longer period of time—he or she may still somehow decide, even after descending as a man through the new moon, to nevertheless expose themselves to the coming full moon. So, having made the decision to descend as a man—having used the forces of the new moon for this purpose— but even during his descent, he still has the subsequent lunar phase at his disposal—the full moon phase. During this time, he imbues himself with the lunar forces in such a way that these forces no longer act upon his relationship as a man or a woman, but rather primarily upon his head organization and upon that which is connected to the head organization from the outside, from the cosmos, precisely when the constellation I have just described occurs. So if a person has made the decision: “I will become a man during a new moon phase”—and then continues to live in the universe so that they have not yet fully passed through the lunar influence but are still exposed to the next full moon phase—then, through the influence of the lunar forces in this state, they will, for example, develop brown eyes and black hair. So we can say: The way a person passes through the moon determines not only their sex but also their hair color and eye color. If, for example, a person has passed through the full moon as a woman and is subsequently still exposed to the new moon, they may develop blue eyes and blond hair as a woman.

[ 34 ] As grotesque as this may seem, we are indeed predestined—by the very nature of our experience emerging from the cosmos—to work our way into this world as soul-spiritual beings within our physical and etheric organisms. It is by no means predetermined whether we will have blond or black hair. That is decided only as we pass through, as we descend from the cosmos into earthly existence, by the forces of the Moon.

[ 35 ] And just as we pass by the Moon—which actually ushers us into earthly existence—so too do we pass by the other planets. It is not a matter of indifference whether, for example, we pass by Saturn in one way or another. For example, we can pass Saturn when, through a particular constellation, the power of Saturn interacts with the power of Leo in the zodiac. By passing through the region of Saturn precisely when Saturn’s power is strengthened by Leo in the zodiac, we gain in our soul—though this is conditioned by our previous karma—the strength to face the vicissitudes of life wisely, so that they do not always overwhelm us. If Saturn is, let’s say, more under the influence of Capricorn, then we become weak human beings who crumble under the external circumstances of life.

[ 36 ] We carry all of this within us as we prepare for our earthly existence from within the cosmos. Of course, this can be overcome through appropriate education, but not by saying, as the materialists do, “That’s all nonsense; there’s no need to take any of it into account”—rather, it can be overcome precisely by developing these forces, by truly developing them. And in the future, humanity will once again learn not merely to observe—and there is absolutely no objection to this observation—whether a child receives good milk and good nourishment, but humanity will also once again learn to observe whether Saturn forces or Jupiter forces are at work in this or that person under this or that influence.

[ 37 ] Let’s say we find that, due to their karma, a person carries within them Saturn forces under the most unfavorable influence—for example, under the influence of Capricorn or Aquarius—so that they are exposed to all of life’s difficulties. In that case, if we want to make them strong, we will search most carefully for other forces within this person. We will ask ourselves, for example: Have they passed through the sphere of Jupiter, the sphere of Mars, or any other sphere? — And one will always be able to correct and neutralize one influence through another.

[ 38 ] We will simply have to learn to think of human beings not only in connection with what they begin to eat or drink during their earthly existence, but we will have to consider them in connection with what they become as they pass through the cosmic worlds between death and a new birth.

[ 39 ] When a person is nearing the end of their earthly journey, they actually experience a kind of loss of their very being. As you can see from my description, they were connected to what they had woven as the spiritual seed of their physical body. They then interwove this spiritual seed with the experiences of their descent through fixed stars and planets. At a certain stage, very close to conception and birth, the spiritual seed is no longer there. This spiritual seed has meanwhile descended to Earth with its forces as a system of forces. It has been lost to the human being. On Earth, it has independently connected itself with the physical hereditary substance passed down through the ancestors, through the father and mother. What is woven into the organism there descends to Earth rather than the human being as a spiritual-soul being itself. And then, when a human being feels that he has, in fact, surrendered to his parents that which he himself first wove in the cosmos, he is then, in the final stage before his earthly existence—precisely because he no longer has to weave at his physical body, which is essentially complete and has already been surrendered to and integrated into the stream of heredity— then he is able to draw from the world ether what he himself needs as an etheric organism. Now he draws his etheric organism together. And together with this etheric organism, he unites with what he has now prepared for himself through his parents. He takes on his physical body, in which this entire cosmic fabric of the spirit germ is drawn together, and into which is woven what the human being himself has connected to it during his descent as he passed through this or that stellar region. After all, the human being does not pass through the new moon or full moon at random and thereby become, say, a man or a woman at random, or have black or blond hair, or blue or brown eyes; rather, all of this is intimately connected with the results of his or her past karma.

[ 40 ] From all this, however, you will see that while in the state of sleep a person experiences only afterimages of the planetary world and the world of the fixed stars as their inner life, between death and a new birth they now experience these worlds in their reality. They pass through them; they become their inner life. And it is always the forces of the Moon that bring us back to Earth. They differ fundamentally from all other stellar forces in that they bring us back to Earth. They bring us back to Earth in sleep, and they also bring us back to Earth when we have gone through everything I have outlined, so that we may once again embark on a life course on Earth.

[ 41 ] But let us take another look at what exists between falling asleep and waking up—that astral and “I” organization outside the physical body. It is not woven from physical bones and physical blood; it is a spiritual-soul entity. But woven into it is our entire moral worth. Just as we, while awake, consist of bones, blood, and nerves, so that which leaves us when we fall asleep and returns to us when we wake up consists of the judgments of our own moral deeds that have become reality.

[ 42 ] If I have performed a good deed during the day, its effect is reflected in my sleeping body, within the spiritual-soul aspect that departs at night. My moral character lives there within. And when a person passes through the gate of death, he carries his entire moral assessment with him in its realized form. In fact, between birth and death in earthly life, a person creates a second self within himself. This second self, which leaves the body every night, is the result of our moral or immoral life, and it passes through the gate of death with us.

[ 43 ] This result, which is integrated into our eternal core being, is not, of course, the only aspect of our spiritual-soul life that leaves us at night. But especially after death, when we are first in the etheric body and then in the astral body, we see hardly anything else in ourselves but this moral essence of the human being. Whether one was good or evil is evident: one simply is it. Just as one is here a human being of skin, nerves, blood, or bone, so there, in one’s own perception, one is what one was morally or immorally.

[ 44 ] And now, after death, one makes one’s way out—first through the lunar sphere, then through the sphere of the fixed stars—until one reaches the very moment when one can begin to work with the beings of the higher hierarchies on the spiritual seed of the next physical body. But if one were to carry this moral quality all the way up into the highest worlds, where one must weave one’s future physical organism from the spiritual seed, then this physical organism would become a veritable monstrosity. For a time between death and a new birth, the human being must be lifted out of what constitutes his moral quality. Indeed, he leaves his moral quality behind in the lunar sphere.

[ 45 ] It is indeed the case that, as we leave the lunar sphere, we leave our moral or immoral selves behind in that sphere and enter the pure sphere of the gods, where we can weave our physical bodies.

[ 46 ] Now I must return once more to the difference between the earlier times before the Mystery of Golgotha and those times that followed the Mystery of Golgotha and continue to this day. The earlier initiates made it clear to their students—and through these students, to all of humanity in the civilization of that time—that: In order to make the transition from that world—which I have called the “world of souls” in my *Theosophy* and which is actually still entirely experienced within the lunar sphere—to the world I have called the “land of spirits,” human beings must acquire here on Earth those feelings through which they are guided upward by the spiritual Sun Being, after having left behind in the lunar sphere the entire burden of his moral aftereffects.

[ 47 ] You see, everything that history tells us about the first three Christian centuries—and even about the 4th century—is, in essence, a forgery; for Christianity was something entirely different during those centuries. It was different because the view that prevailed within it stemmed from an understanding of the ancient science of initiation. From this initiatory wisdom, it was known that the very high solar being led the human being out of the lunar sphere into the life after death—after the human being had left behind his moral baggage—and then led him back in upon his return to the lunar sphere. Through this, the human being had the strength—which he could not have possessed on his own—to integrate this moral being into himself during a certain period before birth, so that he might then fulfill his destiny in the soul on Earth, and so that it would not enter the body; for otherwise, the human being would be born as a deformity and be completely sick in body. This must in turn be taken on in the lunar sphere during the descent, so that it does not enter the body.

[ 48 ] Those initiates who lived at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha—and indeed for about three to four centuries afterward—told their students: The high solar being used to dwell only in the spiritual worlds above. But with the progress of humanity, ego-consciousness on Earth has become so bright that it is correspondingly more obscured in the spiritual world. For the brighter our ego-consciousness is here on Earth—solely through the physical body—the darker it is above. Humanity would no longer be able to approach the solar being; it would not be able to find the passage—through its own power after death—from the lunar sphere into the higher spheres, had Christ not descended and undergone the Mystery of Golgotha. The Being whom human beings used to encounter only in the spiritual world after death has descended and lives here on Earth following the Mystery of Golgotha. Human beings can establish a relationship with Him in accordance with the words of Paul: “Not I, but Christ in me.” Through this, human beings take with them from this Earth the strength that Christ gives them here on Earth, so that they may leave behind in the lunar sphere the moral being they have developed within themselves as an independent entity, pass into the higher spheres, and there begin to weave at the spiritual seed of their physical body. And through this, they have the strength, upon descending once more through the lunar sphere, to take on their karma of their own free will—their good and evil deeds, along with their aftereffects. We have become free human beings in the course of historical development. But we have become so because, out of our own free inner strength through the Christ-force that we acquire here on Earth, we take on our karma as we descend to the lunar sphere. Regardless of whether we like it or not here on Earth, we do so when we become true Christians here on Earth, at this stage that I have just described.

[ 49 ] I have thus endeavored to show you something of how modern initiatory science can gain insight into the worlds we might call the hidden aspects of human existence, and how, in fact, everything about the human being can only be understood by looking into these hidden aspects. And at the same time, I have tried to show you, in this context, what the Christ impulse means for people today; for we must return to it again and again. Human beings cannot be fully human in the age following the Mystery of Golgotha unless they find the path to this Christ impulse. And that is why they must become such that anthroposophical spiritual science increasingly illuminates the Christ impulse in the right way. For the way in which it has been illuminated in the past from a darkened consciousness would, after all, deprive a large part of humanity—think of the people of the East, think of the inhabitants of other continents—of the possibility of professing Christianity. That Christianity which is deepened by anthroposophical spiritual science will in fact—once the very essence of spiritual science, as understood here, is properly grasped—be received, indeed received with longing, precisely by the people of the East, who possess within themselves an ancient spirituality, even if it is in a state of decline.

[ 50 ] Only in this way can that peace come to the earth which must spring from the soul and spirit of human beings, and which—as every open-minded person feels today—is so necessary for the earth. People will have to become even more convinced of how fundamentally worthless all thinking about external institutions is today, and how necessary it is, by contrast, to address the souls directly. But one cannot address the souls unless one knows what to say to them about the soul’s true home, about what a person experiences beyond physical existence in those states of consciousness of which I have spoken to you today. Even if these states of consciousness are not present during earthly life, their effects are present. Oh, the one who sees through life sees in every human face a reflection of the cosmic destinies that the human being has undergone between death and a new birth!

[ 51 ] Today I have described to you how one’s destiny—whether one has become a man or a woman—can be understood from the perspective of the cosmos, and how even the color of one’s eyes and hair can only be understood when one is able to look into cosmic existence. Nothing in this world can be understood unless it is understood from within the cosmos. Only then will human beings truly feel like human beings—when we are once again able to tell them, based on genuine spiritual insight, what their connection is to that which lies behind sensory-physical existence. Even if the people of Earth do not yet know this, they unconsciously yearn for such knowledge. And whatever is developing convulsively today in all areas—be it in the realm of spiritual life, external legal life, or economic life—is ultimately an effect of the spiritual. All of this can only be transformed from forces of decline into forces of ascent if human beings once again come to understand their connection to extra-physical existence; for this physical existence is nothing unless it is viewed in connection with the super-physical existence. This physical human body only gains its significance when we view it, as it were, as the confluence of all those sovereign forces that are woven between death and a new birth. That is, after all, the tragedy of the materialistic worldview: that in the end it does not even know the material itself. We place the human body on the dissection table and carefully examine its tissues and individual physical components. We do this because we want to understand matter. But we do not come to know it in this way, for it is an effect of the spirit, and we will only know it when we can trace it back to those stages where it is spun forth from the spirit. It is precisely physical-material existence that will only become understandable to human beings when they are led, with their souls, into the spiritual and soul-world on a cosmic scale.

[ 52 ] If we imbue ourselves with the awareness that we must come to understand more and more how we are connected to the spiritual and soul aspects of the cosmos, then we will become true anthroposophists. And I’m sure you won’t laugh at me when I say: The world today needs true anthroposophists who, out of that awareness—which arises from the experience of the spiritual, even if at first we grasp it only in its reflection, even if we ourselves do not perceive it clairvoyantly—bring about the ascent of humanity. We do not yet need to be clairvoyant to have a beneficial effect through our possession of spiritual knowledge. Just as a person does not need to know what meat is made of when he eats it—and yet that meat nourishes him—so too does a person not need to be clairvoyant in order to bring about, through his work, his full connection with the life of the higher worlds. It is as if a person were consuming the spiritual realm; this is what happens when he accepts it even without clairvoyance. And clairvoyance, when it comes down to it, adds nothing to what we can become through spiritual knowledge of the world. It merely satisfies our curiosity—a curiosity that must exist. Of course, there must be people who study the composition of meat, but this knowledge is not necessary for eating. Likewise, in the new age, there must be clairvoyants who can investigate the nature of humanity’s connection to the spiritual world; but in order to bring about what humanity needs, it is necessary that we be healthy human souls. They will feel a spiritual capacity for assimilation when they hear about the science of the spiritual; they will take in this spiritual content, assimilate it, and incorporate it into their work. And that is what we need today throughout the entire civilized world: outward human work that is spiritualized in the true and proper sense.