The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday I began to outline some perspectives on understanding human destiny, and I mentioned how a sense of the workings of destiny can arise in a person when significant experiences occur in their life. And I said: Suppose one encounters another person at a certain stage of life; suppose one encounters that person in such a way that the future destinies of the two people who meet unfold together, but that the entire life they have led up to that point is also transformed in a profoundly decisive way. When such an event occurs, it would be meaningless if everything a person had previously experienced on earth were in no way related to this event. Nor is that the case. For an unbiased observation looking back clearly reveals that, in fact, almost every step we have taken in life was a step leading toward that experience. We can look back as far as our childhood; we will always see that even actions we performed long before this experience—the entire path of life we have taken—are directed toward this event as if we had consciously and deliberately chosen this path. It is precisely this kind of reflection that is suited to drawing people’s attention, time and again, to what we in anthroposophy must call karmic connections.

[ 2 ] And then I also pointed out how encounters with people take on different forms, and I cited two extreme cases: We encounter a person, and a relationship develops with them, regardless of how they appear to our sensory perception or our aesthetic sensibility. We pay no further attention to their specific characteristics. It is something that arises from within us and inspires our attraction to them. We encounter other people, I said, with whom such an inner impulse does not assert itself. We become more attentive to the characteristics they present to us from the outside—those they instill in our senses, our imagination, and our aesthetic sensibility. This extends even into our dreams, I said. We encounter people of the former kind and, when we are in the “I” and astral bodies at night—apart from the physical and etheric bodies—we immediately engage with them. Dreams about them arise. These are precisely a sign that we have stirred something within ourselves during the encounter. We encounter other people, yet we cannot dream of them because they do not stir us, because nothing stirs within us. We may live very close to them, but we do not dream of them because they do not stir anything within us that can engage us down into the astral body and the ego organization.

[ 3 ] We then related what is presented here to the forces with which human beings are connected outside of their earthly existence—forces that today’s worldview pays little attention to—namely, the forces that act upon Earth from the surrounding environment and from beyond the Earth. And we have pointed out that human beings must connect the forces active through the spiritual lunar beings with everything that is, for them, a thing of the past. Yes, my dear friends, it is a thing of the past for us when we approach a person and something immediately wells up within us that draws us toward them.

[ 4 ] But how these things are connected only becomes clear when the science of the initiated takes the place of an external, intuitive observation—that science of the initiated which can truly reveal the inner connections. The initiate, to whom the spiritual world lies open, experiences these two phenomena I have spoken of in a far more intense way than ordinary consciousness ever can. In the one case where ordinary consciousness experiences this inner rising, the initiate, when encountering another person, experiences that an image—or even a series of images, entirely essential images—truly rises from within. It is as if these images were emerging from within, as if one were holding a text before oneself and could read the meaning it intends to express. Thus the experience one has with these images becomes clear: the image that rises within you, that comes from your inner being—you experience it as an inner oneness with the image, as if the painter were not standing before the painting, before the canvas, but were weaving within the canvas itself, moving with each color and experiencing each color inwardly. That is how one experiences it, and one knows that the image that arises has something to do with the person one has encountered in life. And through an experience similar to that of encountering a person again after many years—something one experiences time and again—one recognizes in the person standing physically before one, facing one physically, the repetition of what is rising up within oneself. By comparing the image rising within you with what stands before you externally, you know: what rises within you is the image of what you experienced together with that person in a previous earthly life. And you truly step back into earlier times when you shared experiences with them. And through what one has gone through to prepare for the science of initiation, one experiences—not merely as a vague feeling, as is usually the case in ordinary consciousness—but as a vivid image the shared experiences from a previous earthly life or a number of previous earthly lives with the person one now encounters. One can certainly say that the science of initiation makes it entirely possible to see what one has lived through with a person to whom one is karmically connected rise up so intensely from within oneself that it appears as if the person standing before you is stepping out of their own being, appearing before us in their former form, and encountering themselves in their present form. That is how intensely it affects one. But precisely because one experiences the matter in such a tangible way, one learns to relate it to the forces underlying it, and one is led to reflect on the way in which one arrived at this image.

[ 5 ] As human beings descend from their spiritual-soul existence—which they spend between death and a new birth—into earthly life, they pass through various regions. The final region they pass through, so to speak, is the lunar region; before that, they pass through other stellar and spiritual regions. There, on their way through the lunar region, they truly encounter those beings who, as I explained yesterday, were once the primordial teachers of humanity. He encounters them in outer space before descending to earthly existence, and it is they who inscribe into that subtle substance—which the Eastern sages call Akasha in contrast to earthly substances—everything that is experienced in human life among human beings. It is simply this: everything one goes through in life, everything experienced by human beings, is observed by those beings who once inhabited the Earth alongside humanity—not as incarnate beings, but as spiritual beings. This is observed and recorded not in an abstract script, as ours is, but in living form within the Akashic substance. These lunar beings, who were once the great teachers during the age of primordial wisdom—these spiritual beings—are the recorders of humanity’s experiences. And when a human being, on the path that lies between death and a new birth, approaches the Earth once more to unite with the seed given to them by their parents, they pass through the realm where the lunar beings have recorded what was experienced on Earth in earlier incarnations. While these lunar beings, when they lived on Earth, brought wisdom to humankind—a wisdom that pertained specifically to the past of the universe—in their present cosmic existence they preserve that past. As the human being descends into earthly existence, everything they have preserved is, so to speak, imprinted upon his astral body. Yes, my dear friends, it is so easy to speak of this: human beings consist of an “I”-organization, an astral body, an etheric body, and so on. The “I”-organization is precisely the part that is most inclined toward the Earth; it is what we learn and experience in earthly life; but the situation is different with the deeper aspects of the human being. Even the astral body is different; it is full of imprints, full of images. What is usually called merely “unconscious” becomes something extraordinarily rich when it rises up into consciousness. And initiation provides precisely the opportunity to delve down into this astral body and bring everything that the lunar beings have imprinted—which is precisely of the nature of shared experiences with other human beings—into the realm of vision. In this way, through the science of initiation, one truly uncovers the mystery of how the entire past rests within the human being, and how “fate” arises from the fact that beings associated with the lunar existence hold the past fast, so that it rests within us when we set foot on Earth.

[ 6 ] Another case: When the initiate approaches people whose ordinary consciousness is such that it has an aesthetic, imaginative impression—one that the initiate cannot even dream of—then, at the moment of this encounter, nothing pictorial initially rises from within the initiate; but as the initiate faces such a personality, his gaze is directed—just as in the other case toward the moon—now toward the sun. And just as the moon is connected to the beings I was able to characterize for you in the manner described, so the sun is not merely the ball of gas that physicists speak of today. Physicists would be most astonished if they could ever equip an expedition and reach the place they believe to be filled with all manner of incandescent gases—the place which, in their opinion, constitutes the Sun. For the physicists would find that where they had presumed incandescent gases to exist, there is absolutely nothing—far less than space, less than nothing: a hole in the cosmos. What does “space” mean? People do not know what space is—least of all those who think about it a great deal: the philosophers. For you see, if there is a chair here, and I walk toward it without paying attention to it, I will bump into it. It is solid; it does not let me pass through. If there is no chair there, I walk through the space unhindered.

[ 7 ] But there is also a third case. In this third case, if I were to walk away, I would not be stopped or pushed, but I would be absorbed; I would disappear: there is no space there; the opposite of space is present. And this opposite of space is precisely in the sun. The sun is negative space, it is hollowed-out space. And precisely because there is this negative, hollowed-out space, it is the seat—the usual seat—of the beings closest to and above humankind: Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai. And in the case I have described, the initiate’s gaze is directed toward those beings who are in the sun, toward the spiritual beings of the sun. In other words: such an encounter with a human being—one that is not part of a karmic past but occurs anew—serves as a means for the initiate to come into connection with these beings. And it becomes apparent that there are certain beings with whom the person has a closer connection, and others with whom the connection is more distant. And from the way these beings approach him, it becomes clear to him—not in detail, but in general terms—what karma is unfolding there: not old karma, but karma he is encountering for the first time. There the human being becomes aware that these beings, who are connected to the sun, have just as much to do with the future as the beings connected to the moon have to do with the past.

[ 8 ] You see, it truly deepens one’s entire inner life when a person comes to understand what the science of initiation draws forth from the depths of the spiritual being—even if that person is not yet an initiate. For these things can already make sense. Just as one can understand a painting without being a painter—I have often used this comparison—one can understand these truths without being an initiate. But when one allows these truths to take effect within oneself, the entire relationship that a person has with the universe deepens immensely. Just think how abstract, dry, and matter-of-factly people today look up from the Earth toward the structure of the universe. When a person looks down at the Earth, they still have some interest in it. They regard the animals of the forest with some interest. If they are a noble person, they take pleasure in them—the slender gazelle, the nimble deer. If they are less noble, they still interest them as game—they can eat them. The cabbage in the field interests them. All of this relates to that part of the human being which they first perceive within themselves. But just as human beings have relationships with this earthly realm that stirs their emotional world, they can also stir their emotional world and develop their relationships with the extraterrestrial cosmos. And everything that comes to us from the past as a matter of destiny—when it makes an impression on us—calls upon our heart and our soul to look toward the lunar beings and to say to ourselves: Here on Earth, human beings walk about; on the Moon live beings who were once with us on Earth. They sought a different setting, a different place to live, but we humans have remained connected to them; they take note of our past. What they do lives on within us when the past exerts its influence on our earthly existence.

[ 9 ] We look up to these beings with a certain reverent fervor, and the outer, silvery-shining moon is merely a symbol of those entities that are so intimately connected with our past. And we learn, in a sense, to have a relationship with these cosmic, extraterrestrial powers—of which the stars are symbols—to relate to them through what we experience as human beings, just as we otherwise relate, through our physical existence, to all that lives on Earth. Likewise, when we as human beings look toward the future with a sense of foreboding, as if in anxious anticipation, when we live into this future with our hopes and aspirations, then we are not alone with our souls, but we intuitively connect with that which shines toward us from the sun. Angels, archangels, and archai become solar beings for us; they become beings of whom we know: they guide us from our present into the future. When we then look up into the cosmos and see how the moonlight depends on the sunlight, how these celestial bodies are in mutual relationship, then we see out there in the cosmos an image of what lives within ourselves. For just as the sun and moon are related to one another out there in the world of the stars, so too within us does that which is moon-like—our past—stand in relation to that which is sun-like—our future. And destiny is, after all, that which flows through the human being from the past into the future via the present. We see—as it were, woven into the cosmos, the course of the stars—reflected on a grand, vast scale through the mutual relationships of the stars that which lives within our own inner being.

[ 10 ] Yes, my dear friends, but this broadens our perspective deep into the interconnections of the worlds. For when a person passes through the gate of death, he has at first merely detached himself from his physical body. He lives within his “I”-organization, his astral body, and his etheric body. But after a few days, the etheric body detaches itself from the astral body and from the “I.” What the person experiences is something that, so to speak, grows out of them; at first it is small, then it becomes larger and larger: it is their etheric body. It grows out into the vastness, it grows out into the world of the stars—that is how it appears to them. But as it grows, it becomes so thin that after a few days it already vanishes from the person’s sight. Yet there is something else at work here as well. As we thus surrender our etheric body to the cosmos—as it thins out and expands—it is as if, after death, we were grasping the mysteries of the stars, as if we were living our way into the mysteries of the stars.

[ 11 ] First of all, it is true—and this remains the case even after we have passed through the gate of death—that as we ascend and pass through the lunar region, the lunar beings read from our astral body what we have just experienced during our earthly existence. Upon departing from earthly life, these lunar beings receive us; to them, our astral body—in which we now find ourselves—is like a book from which they read. And they faithfully record this information so that they may inscribe it into our new astral body when we descend once more to Earth.

[ 12 ] From the lunar region, we then pass through other regions—the Mercury and Venus regions—into the solar region. In this solar region, everything we experienced, accomplished, and did as human beings in past lives comes to life within us. We enter into the beings of the higher hierarchies, into their workings, into their deeds, and we are now within the cosmos. Just as we wandered about on Earth during our earthly existence, as it were bound by the conditions of the Earth, so are we now in the vastness of the cosmos. We experience the vastness, whereas here on Earth we live in confinement. It seems to us, as we spend our existence between death and a new birth, as though we had been imprisoned on Earth, for everything now becomes vast; we experience the mysteries of the cosmos. We do not experience them as something subject to physical laws of nature; these physical laws of nature appear to us as petty products of the human mind. We experience what takes place in the stars as the deeds of divine-spiritual beings; we become part of the deeds of these divine-spiritual beings. To the best of our ability, we act among them and with them, and it is precisely from within the cosmos that we prepare for our next earthly existence.

[ 13 ] This is what must truly be understood in a deeper sense: that what a human being carries within has been developed by him or her while in the cosmos, between death and a new birth. After all, so little of one’s physical constitution is perceived externally. What lies within each organ can only be understood if the organ in question is understood in the context of the cosmos. Let us take the noblest organ of all: the human heart. Yes, today’s natural scientist dissects the embryo, observes how the heart gradually forms; he gives it no further thought. But this external, three-dimensional structure—the human heart—is, in its individual form within each person, the result of what that person has worked out together with the gods between death and a new birth. First, as a person goes through the life between death and a new birth, they must work in the direction that leads from the Earth toward Leo, the constellation of Leo in the zodiac. This direction, this current from the Earth toward the constellation of Leo, is, after all, filled with all manner of forces. A person must work in this direction so that they can bring forth the heart as a seed; for within it lie cosmic forces. Then, once a person has passed through this region, which lies in the vastness of the cosmos, they must enter regions closer to the Earth, so to speak—the solar region. There, in turn, forces are developed that further perfect the heart. And then the human being enters that region where they are already touched by what might be called “earthly warmth”; out there in outer space, after all, there is no earthly warmth—there is something entirely different. There, the human heart is prepared in a third stage. The forces through which the heart is prepared are, in the direction of Leo, initially purely moral-religious forces; purely moral-religious forces are first instilled into our hearts. To those who see through this, it actually seems wicked how modern natural science regards the stars—without perceiving the moral aspect—as indifferent, neutral physical masses. And as the human being passes through the solar region, these moral-religious forces are taken up by the etheric forces. And only when the human being draws closer to the Earth—to warmth, to the region of fire—are the final steps, so to speak, added to this preparation. There the forces begin to take effect that then shape the physical germ for the human being who descends as a spiritual-soul being.

[ 14 ] And so it is that every single organ is formed from the vastness of the universe. We carry a starry sky within us. And we are connected not only through the semolina porridge we have just put into our stomachs—which is now in the process of being assimilated into our organism, together with the plant world that nourishes us—but we are also connected to the forces of the entire cosmos. These things, however, only become clear to a person when they have the sensibility to truly observe life. We will eventually come to consider the macroscopic realm as well, in contrast to the microscopic, which is practically worshipped today. Today, people seek to uncover the secrets of the organization of the animal and human realms by isolating themselves as much as possible from the universe. So they fix their gaze through a tube—they call it microscopy—and they cut out a tiny specimen, place it in a test tube, and strive to distance themselves as much as possible from the world, to leave life behind as much as possible. They tear off a tiny piece and examine it through something that blocks their view of the rest of the world. Of course, nothing is to be said against this kind of research—all sorts of wonderful things come to light through it. But one cannot truly get to know human beings in this way. And you see, when one looks out from the earthly realm into the extraterrestrial realm of the cosmos, one still has only a part of the world. For ultimately, that is only a part that strives to enter the visible realm. The stars, to be sure, are not what they appear to be to the eye—that is merely a symbol—but they are still visible! Yet the entire world we pass through between death and a new birth is invisible; it is supersensible. And there are realms that lie beyond the sensible world. Yet human beings, by their very nature, belong just as much to these supersensible realms of existence as they do to the sensible world, and one can only truly come to know what a human being is by considering how the human being has journeyed through the vastness of the cosmos. When a human being has passed through the gate of death into the vastness of the cosmos and has returned once more to Earth, this also lives within us within the cosmic context; what has passed through the vastness of the cosmos—what once lived on Earth, ascended into the cosmos, and descended once more into the confined existence on Earth—lives within us. And we gradually learn to look back upon what we were in our former earthly existence. Our gaze is torn away from the physical and lifted up into the spiritual. For when we look back on former earthly lives, the power of initiatory science dispels our desire to imagine everything solely through the senses.

[ 15 ] It is true that much has been experienced in this regard as well. There was a time when certain Theosophists knew that human beings live through repeated earthly lives. They knew this from Eastern wisdom, but they wanted to conceive of the whole thing in a way that could be sensually imagined. They were mistaken about this, but they needed a sensory conception. Thus, people were told back then that when the human being, as a physical organism, passes through the gate of death, it disintegrates and dissipates; but one atom would remain, and this single atom would pass on to the next earthly life through wondrous paths—and these Theosophists called this the “permanent atom.” It was merely a detour to be able to conceive of the matter in materialistic terms. Any such inclination toward materialistic thinking vanishes when one truly experiences what the soul can undergo, when one sees that this human heart is formed from the vastness of the worlds.

[ 16 ] In contrast, the liver is formed only very close to the earthly region; it has little connection with the vastness of the cosmos. Through the science of initiation, one gradually comes to understand the human being in such a way that one says to oneself: the heart could not possibly be within the human being if it were not prepared, if it were not inwardly shaped from the vast expanses of the cosmos. In contrast, an organ such as the liver or the lungs is formed only in the vicinity of earthly existence. In terms of the lungs and liver, the human being resembles the Earth’s vicinity on a cosmic scale; in terms of the heart, he is a vast cosmic being. The whole world opens up to one in the human being. When one maps out the liver, lungs, and certain other organs through spiritual anatomy, one feels as though one were mapping out the Earth and what lies in its vicinity; this is actually the case with regard to the forces. When one turns to the heart, one would like to depict the entire universe. The human being is the entire universe, condensed and rolled up. The human being is an immense mystery; he is a true microcosm. But this macrocosm, into which the human being is transformed after death, completely detaches cognition from sensuality and materiality. And one now learns to recognize the lawful connections that exist between the spiritual and the physical, between the soul and the soul.

[ 17 ] For example, we find people in the world who have an innate understanding of the things in their environment and of the people around them. Just look at life from this perspective, my dear friends! There are people who meet many others but never really get to know them. What they tell you about one of them is utterly uninteresting; there are no distinctive traits in their descriptions. Such people cannot immerse themselves, cannot devote themselves to the essence of another person; they have no understanding of others. There are people who do possess this understanding. When they have gotten to know a person and tell you about him, everything bears the mark of accuracy; you know immediately what the other person is like, even if you have never seen him—he comes to life before your eyes. It need not be a detailed account; brief, characteristic phrases are enough for someone who can immerse himself in a person’s essence to paint a complete picture. It doesn’t have to be a person; it can be anything in nature. Some people describe to you what a mountain looks like or what a tree looks like; you become frustrated, you can’t form a picture of it, everything remains empty, and you feel as if your brain is drying up. In contrast, there are others who immediately have a complete understanding of something; you could paint the very thing they’re describing to you. Such gifts or lack thereof—understanding of one’s surroundings, or a closed-mindedness toward them—did not arise out of nowhere, but are the results of our previous earthly existence. If one now observes, through the science of initiation, a person who has a great deal of understanding for their human and non-human surroundings, and then goes back —I will have much more to say about this looking back—using the science of initiation into their previous earthly life, one discovers what qualities the person possessed in that previous life and how these qualities were transformed into an understanding of the environment during the life between death and a new birth. And one then comes to realize that a person who has an understanding of their surroundings was, in their previous earthly life, of such a nature that they were able to experience great joy. This is very interesting. People who were unable to experience joy in their previous earthly life cannot develop an understanding of other people or of their surroundings either. In every person who possesses this understanding, one finds that they were someone who was able to take joy in their surroundings. But this, too, was acquired in a previous earthly life. And how does one come to possess this joy, this gift, this predisposition to find joy in one’s surroundings? One attains this by having developed love in earlier earthly lives. Love in one earthly life transforms into joy; the joy of the next earthly life transforms into an understanding perception of the environment in the third earthly life.

[ 18 ] This is how one sees one earthly life following another, and this is how one also gains an understanding of that which radiates from the present into the future: people who are capable of great hatred carry over into their next earthly life—as a result of their hatred—the gift of being deeply moved by everything. This is the case when one studies a person who must go through life as a true “Zwiderwurzen” because he is painfully affected by everything and is always suffering. One can, of course, feel compassion—and that is the right thing to do—but it always leads one back to a previous earthly life, where he was unable to rise above hatred. Please do not misunderstand me. When people speak of hatred, they easily say to themselves: “I do not hate; I love everyone.” They should just examine themselves once to see how much hidden hatred lies at the bottom of the human soul. Yes, these connections really only become clear when you hear people talking about one another. It’s truly the case—just imagine such a statistic—that far more negative things are said about a person than words of praise or appreciation. And if one were to actually compile such statistics, one would find that among people, there is a hundred times—one can really cite this figure—more hatred than love. Yes, that is how it is, but people usually do not realize it because they believe they are always justified in hating, and they find it utterly excusable when they do hate. But this hatred develops into a capacity for suffering and pain in the next earthly life, and into a lack of understanding and obstinacy in the third earthly life—an obstinacy that refuses to engage with anything and cannot immerse itself in anything.

[ 19 ] And so you have the opportunity to observe three consecutive earthly lives by contemplating the law: Love transforms into joy, and joy, in the third earthly life, into understanding of one’s surroundings. Hatred transforms into a predisposition to suffer pain; this predisposition to suffer pain, which arises from hatred, transforms in the third earthly life into obstinacy and a lack of understanding toward one’s surroundings. These are spiritual connections that carry over from one earthly life to the next.

[ 20 ] But let’s try to approach life from a different angle. There are people—perhaps they’ve brought this situation upon themselves—who aren’t interested in anything; they don’t want to care about anything other than themselves. But it is of great significance in human life whether a person takes an interest in something or not. Indeed, statistics reveal the most remarkable things in this regard as well. I have met people who spoke with a lady in the morning, and by the afternoon they had no idea what kind of hat she was wearing, what kind of brooch she had, or what color her dress was. There are people like that who simply don’t notice such things! There are the strangest views on this. People sometimes even consider this to be something forgivable; but it is not forgivable! It is a lack of interest—a lack of interest that sometimes goes so far that a person truly does not know whether the person they encountered was wearing a black or a light-colored coat! There is no deep connection between what a person perceives from within their own life and what exists out there. I am putting these things rather bluntly; I do not mean to claim outright that one falls prey to Ahriman or Lucifer simply because one does not know whether the lady had blonde or black hair. I merely wish to point out that people develop a certain degree of interest in their surroundings—or, conversely, indifference—and this, of course, is of great significance for the soul. If one takes an interest in one’s surroundings, then the soul is inwardly stirred by them; the soul experiences the surroundings inwardly. But what one experiences here—with interest, with engagement—one carries through the gate of death into the vast expanses of the cosmos. And just as one must have eyes here on Earth to see colors, one must have been stirred by interest here on Earth in order to have the ability, between death and a new birth, to see spiritually what is being lived through there. And if one goes through life without interest, if one’s gaze does not linger on anything, if one hears nothing of what is happening, then between death and a new birth one has no connection with the cosmos; one is, so to speak, spiritually blind and cannot work with the forces of the cosmos. As a result, however, one fails to properly prepare one’s organism and organs: one enters the Lion region and cannot undergo the initial preparation for the heart; one enters the Sun region and cannot further develop the heart; one enters the Earth’s Fire region and cannot put the finishing touches on it there; one comes to Earth and is born with a predisposition to heart disease. Thus, a spiritual factor—indifference—spills over into this earthly life. And in fact, the nature of illness can only be fully understood when one can see through these connections, when one sees how a person who is currently suffering from this or that physical ailment has come to experience this physical suffering because they developed a psychological state in a previous earthly life that has transformed into a physical condition in this earthly life. Physical suffering in one earthly life is, in one way or another, an experience carried over from a previous earthly life. People who are, as they say, as healthy as a horse—who cannot get sick, who are always in the best of health—typically cast their gaze from this earthly existence back to previous earthly existences, in which they took the deepest interest in everything around them, observed everything, and understood everything.

[ 21 ] Of course, matters relating to spiritual life must never be forced. You see, a karmic current can, of course, also begin. I may start out with a lack of understanding in this life; then the future will reflect that lack of understanding. One must not merely point from the present to the past. Therefore, one can only say: as a rule, or when karmic predisposition is at work, certain illnesses are connected with a certain type of soul.

[ 22 ] In general: What is spiritual in one earthly life is transformed into the physical in another earthly life; what is physical in one earthly life is transformed into the spiritual in another earthly life. In this regard, it is indeed true that anyone who wishes to understand karmic connections must sometimes focus their attention on trivial matters. It is immensely important not to focus on the things that we otherwise consider particularly important in life. If one wishes to recognize how one earthly life leads back to a previous one, one must sometimes turn one’s attention to trivial matters. For example, I tried to seek out karmic connections—I will have more to say about such matters in the coming days—for various figures from historical and spiritual life, in a serious manner, of course, not in the way such connections are often sought, and I found a figure who developed such a remarkable, inner, radical life that she ultimately even came to create unique word formations. This figure wrote many books, in which she created the most remarkable neologisms. For example, she railed a great deal, criticizing the state of affairs, people, and their communities. She also criticized the way in which some scholars behave out of envy toward others. In doing so, she compiled facts along these lines, aiming to characterize the underhandedness of certain scholarly personalities toward their fellow human beings, and she titled the relevant chapter: “Schlichological Aspects in the Scientific World.” It is characteristic that when a person coins the term “Schlichological,” one senses something in this Schlichological quality. And you see, it is precisely the sharp, intuitive grasp of such word formations that leads one to recognize how this personality, in a previous earthly life, was a person who had much to do with all manner of warlike undertakings, where many things had to be carried out by stealth. Karmically, this transformed into the ability to create such images of stealth, of battles, and of warfare in all kinds of undertakings, in that through such word formations he could describe from his mind the things he now perceived—what he had previously done with his feet and hands. Thus, I could cite many examples regarding this individual where, in a certain sense, the physical was transformed into the soul-spiritual.

[ 23 ] We will continue these reflections tomorrow.