The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Significance of the Celestial Bodies Surrounding the Earth for Human Life I

[ 1 ] Human beings owe their present earthly life—for we know that they undergo repeated earthly lives—in part to the external world, and specifically to the external world in the broader sense; not only to what is immediately present on Earth in the various kingdoms of nature around them, but also to what comes to them from the stars and from the vastness of the cosmos. But that is only one part of the world to which human beings owe their present earthly life; above all, they also owe it to the other part, from which, however, they bring into this earthly life only the inner results and effects: they owe it to their own previous earthly lives. As you know from anthroposophical literature, we divide the human being, first of all, into four parts. The human being separates from his physical body and his etheric body—from these two—every time he falls asleep; he separates from his physical and etheric bodies with his astral body and his “I.” Only our physical body and our etheric body owe their entire being to the external world that surrounds us, whether visible or—as the etheric world—invisible. In contrast, what a person carries within themselves in their astral body and in their “I,” they actually owe entirely to the past in their present earthly existence; they owe it to what they have experienced with the world in previous earthly lives.

[ 2 ] Now there are also two gates in the outer physical world—let us begin today with this cosmic perspective and then conclude with a very human one—there are, I say, two gates in the physical world through which human life in its entirety actually extends beyond this physical world. And for us inhabitants of Earth, these two gates are, on the one hand, the Moon, and on the other, the Sun.

[ 3 ] You see, my dear friends, the fact is that today’s conventional science really knows only the very bare minimum about extraterrestrial celestial bodies. It knows only the physical aspects that can be determined by calculation or observed with instruments. Just think for a moment what a Martian, for example, would know about Earth if he were to acquire his knowledge of Earth in the same way that Earthlings acquire their knowledge of Mars or even other stars. He, too, would know only this much about Earth: that it is a glowing body that radiates the sunlight reflected from it out into space. He might formulate all sorts of hypotheses about whether there are beings on Earth or not—just as humans do regarding Mars, and so on. But the Earth dweller, of course, knows from Earth itself that he inhabits the Earth together with beings like himself and with beings from other realms. Now, the one who can draw his knowledge from the inner spiritual destinies of Earth’s humanity emerges from spiritual depths to a deeper understanding of what the other celestial bodies—such as the Moon and the Sun—actually signify within the world.

[ 4 ] Let us now consider, in the context of the physical, soul, and spiritual realms, what can be said about the existence of the Moon. I must recall various points that you can read about in my Outline of Esoteric Science and in various series of lectures that have been published. From these sources, we know that the lunar existence was once connected to earthly existence. Even today, conventional science—at least among its leading representatives—assumes that the entire physical body of the Moon once separated from the Earth and, so to speak, chose its own place in the cosmos.

[ 5 ] But spiritual science shows us that it was not only the physical Moon that separated from the Earth, but along with this Moon, other beings who once inhabited the Earth together with human beings—beings who were, admittedly, of a much more spiritual nature than human beings in their physical bodies, but who nevertheless maintained an intense relationship with human beings, even if not in the same way that human interaction is conducted today.

[ 6 ] Anyone who studies the Earth’s ancient past—perhaps at first only superficially—through its spiritual creations will, as they trace back through the various civilizations, develop a deep sense of awe for the civilizations that once existed on Earth. However, as intelligent as we modern people imagine ourselves to be in our current sense, our ancestors—that is, ourselves in earlier earthly lives—were certainly not that intelligent. But these ancestors knew more. Knowledge is not acquired solely through intelligence. Intelligence comes from the intellect, and the intellect is merely one of humanity’s faculties, even though it is currently valued above all other faculties, particularly by science. But ultimately, when we look at the world today and see how it has developed in moral and social terms—particularly during the blessed 20th century—we really have no reason to be particularly proud of our intellectual culture. This intellectual culture has only emerged over the course of time. And as I said, if we look back at external history and observe what has emerged—say, from the ancient Orient, for example—we may be overcome with a deep sense of awe. We could even cite some achievements of so-called “primitive” peoples; but let us stick to the achievements of the Indian Orient and the Persian Orient, and let us look at the wonders that lie behind it all—in ancient poetry, in Vedic poetry, in ancient philosophy, in Vedanta philosophy, and in Yoga philosophy. If one does not merely let this sink in superficially, but allows it to take effect with all the depths it holds, then one develops an ever-greater sense of awe for what ancient times produced—not through ordinary cleverness, but certainly through some other means. Yet they did indeed produce it.

[ 7 ] Now, spiritual science shows us that what has actually been preserved through external documents is, in fact, only the remnants of a wondrous primordial wisdom of humanity—a wisdom that, admittedly, manifested itself in a far more poetic and artistic way than our knowledge today, but which was nonetheless a wondrous primordial wisdom of humanity. Humanity received this primordial wisdom from beings who far transcend humanity’s own development on Earth. Thinking—rational thinking—takes place through our physical body. These beings did not have physical bodies; this explains why they transmitted their primordial knowledge to humanity in a more poetic, artistic manner.

[ 8 ] But these beings did not remain on Earth; rather, the majority of them actually inhabit the lunar world today. What modern science can explore is merely the outer surface of the Moon. The Moon is the abode of high spiritual beings who once had the task of inspiring Earth’s humanity with primordial wisdom, who then withdrew and, in a sense, had to establish this lunar colony in the cosmos. Even what I must say about these beings—who are, in fact, the inhabitants of the Moon today—shows us that our own human past is linked to them. In earlier earthly lives, we were the earthly companions of these beings. And our connection to them becomes immediately apparent when we look beyond what external knowledge and external life can offer human beings. For when we look at all that is decisive within us—not what depends on our intellect, but what, so to speak, lies beyond the intellect and is connected to our deeper human being—we find that even today these lunar beings, though they no longer have their home on Earth, are linked to our inner being. For before we descend to Earth and receive a physical body through our ancestors, we were—or rather, we are—in a spiritual world in our pre-earthly existence. In this pre-earthly existence, we still have much to do today with these ancient companions of our earthly existence. We descend, so to speak, from the spiritual worlds into our earthly existence by passing through the sphere of the Moon, by passing through the lunar existence. And just as these lunar beings once had a profound influence on us humans right here on Earth, so too do they continue to influence earthly human beings today by imprinting upon the human “I” and the human astral body that which is then transferred into the physical body when the human being becomes a physical earthly human being.

[ 9 ] Isn't it true that you can't just decide to be talented, or even to be a genius? You can’t even simply decide to be a good person. Nevertheless, there are talented people, there are geniuses, and there are, so to speak, people who are good by birth. This is something the intellect cannot bring about; it is connected to the deep inner essence of the human being, a good part of which the person brings with them when they enter earthly existence from a pre-earthly existence at birth. To imprint this upon their “I” and their astral body—which then, so to speak, flows into their blood and nerves as talent, as gift, as the will toward good or evil—to imprint this upon them: that is the task of the lunar beings when a human being passes through the lunar sphere during their pre-earthly existence. And it is not only when, in those familiar poetic moods, lovers stroll in the moonlight that the Moon exerts an influence on what lies deeper within the human being—what weaves and lives beneath the surface of consciousness—but in all of this, this lunar existence is at work, rising up from the depths of the human being and, beneath the level of the intellect, making him what he truly is in earthly life. And so these lunar beings are still connected to our past today in that they are the ones who shape us after our earlier earthly lives—in our pre-earthly existence, so to speak—so that we can appear as this particular human being in earthly existence.

[ 10 ] So let us look back on our lives, to that point where, so to speak, our lives move beyond the earthly realm and into the truly spiritual realm—that spiritual realm from which we are then guided according to our innermost abilities, our temperament, and even the innermost essence of our character. When we look back, we find in the Moon the gateway from the physical world into the spiritual. It is the gateway through which the past enters our human life, and it is what actually gives us our individuality, what makes us this particular individual human being.

[ 11 ] The other gate is the sun. But we do not owe our individual lives to the sun. Not only does the sun shine equally on the good and the evil, but it also shines equally on geniuses and fools. The sun, as far as earthly life is concerned, knows of nothing that is directly connected to individuality. Indeed, there is only one thing that connects earthly individuality to the sun. And this could only come about because, at a certain point in the Earth’s evolution, a high solar being—Christ—did not remain on the Sun, but descended from the Sun to Earth, became an earthly human being in a human body, and thereby united his own cosmic destiny with the earthly destiny of humanity. By becoming an earthly being from a solar being, Christ gained access to individual human personalities. The other solar beings who remained on the Sun do not have access to individual human personalities, but only to the collective essence of humanity. Christ has even retained something of this, but something that is infinitely beneficial for our earthly humanity: what he has retained is that his work knows no human differentiation whatsoever. Christ is not the Christ of this or that nation, not the Christ of this or that social class, not of this or that group; Christ is the Christ for all people without distinction of class, race, nation, and so on. Nor is Christ the Christ of individualities, insofar as, in his activity, he provides inner help to the genius and the fool alike. The Christ impulse has access to the individuality of the human being, and it is precisely there that it must work in the deepest inner being if it is to become effective in the human being at all. It is not the powers of the intellect, but the deepest powers of the soul and heart that must receive the Christ impulse; but once it is received, it does not work in the sense of the individual human being, but entirely in the sense of universal humanity. This universal human activity is characteristic of the Christ, because he is a solar being.

[ 12 ] But you see, by looking back and feeling connected—in that act of looking back—to our lunar existence, we know that we carry within us something that we do not owe to the present, something that is actually a piece of a past that is not only earthly but even cosmic. We humans, in our present earthly existence, connect this fragment of the past with the present. One usually does not consider what is actually contained within this fragment of the past. We would not amount to much as human beings if this past were not within us. What we acquire immediately upon descending from our pre-earthly existence into our earthly one actually has something automatic about it—the automatic nature of our physical and etheric bodies. That which, in a certain way, makes us this or that human being is intimately connected with our past and thus with our lunar existence. But just as we are connected to the past through our lunar existence, so too are we connected to our future through our solar existence. We were, so to speak, ready for the Moon in earlier times—especially with regard to the beings who have withdrawn to it; but we will not be ready for the Sun—which today impels only what is universally human—until much later times, when a great deal of development has yet taken place. Today, the Sun can only reach our outer being. It will not be able to reach our individuality, our inner being, until future times. When the Earth no longer exists as the Earth, when it has undergone a completely different metamorphosis, only then will we be ready for the solar existence. Human beings are so proud of their intellect; but the intellect, as it currently exists in humanity, is truly a product of the Earth, for it is actually bound to the brain, and the brain is the part of the human being that becomes most physical, even if people do not generally believe it.

[ 13 ] The sun is actually constantly pulling us out of this bondage to the earthly realm, for the sun does not actually act upon our brain. We would produce much wiser thoughts from our brain if the sun were to act upon it. The sun actually acts upon our heart, if we consider the physical aspect. And that which radiates from the heart, my dear friends, is the effect of the sun. Through the brain, people are actually selfish; through the heart, they become free of selfishness and are elevated to the universal human. So that, through the sun, we are actually more than we can be through ourselves in our present earthly existence. I would just like to say: Christ, in turn, gives us—if we truly find access to him, because he is a solar being—more than we can be today as human beings.

[ 14 ] The sun truly stands in the sky before us as a being of the future, while the moon stands in the sky as a being of the past. It is the other gateway that leads into the spiritual world; it is the gateway into the future. For just as we are, so to speak, drawn into earthly existence by the lunar beings and lunar forces, so too are we, in death, drawn out again by the solar forces. The forces of the Sun are connected to that within us which we have not yet mastered—that which the gods have given us, so to speak, so that we do not wither away in earthly life but reach beyond ourselves. And so the Moon and the Sun are truly the two gates: one leading out of the universe into earthly life, and the other leading from earthly life into the spiritual world. The Moon is inhabited by beings with whom we were once connected in the way I have described. The Sun is inhabited by beings with whom we—with the exception of Christ—will only be connected in the future of our cosmic existence. Christ will lead us to his former companions in the Sun. But this is, for human beings, the world of the future.

[ 15 ] And what comes from the spiritual realm through the Sun as the world of the future has just as much of an effect on our physical body and our etheric body as that which comes from the spiritual realm through the Moon. Let us consider, for example, our temperament. There are already forces within our temperament that certainly influence the physical body, but especially the etheric body: this regulates the interplay of the Sun and the Moon within us. Those who have a strong melancholic tendency in their temperament are strongly influenced by the lunar. Those who have a strong sanguine tendency in their temperament are strongly influenced by the solar aspect. Those in whom the solar and lunar aspects balance and neutralize one another become phlegmatic. Where the physical aspect influences us and manifests itself in the soul—as in the temperament—the solar and lunar aspects also influence the entire being that we carry within us as human beings. But at first, human beings perceive these solar and lunar qualities only where they confront them in their outer physical form—where, so to speak, the Moon reveals itself through the outer disk that appears to them, just as the Sun does. Yet there are effects that go far beyond the physical; we must certainly speak of a spiritual aspect of the Moon and the Sun. And we can indeed easily see this.

[ 16 ] To understand this, all you need to do at first is look at a human body. Today, this human body no longer contains the same substances it had about ten years ago. You are constantly shedding external physical substances and replacing them with new ones. What remains is the spiritual form, the human form: these are the inner forces. If you were sitting here ten years ago—the flesh and blood that you possessed back then as material substance—you cannot bring that same physical substance back to this very chair today: the physical is in a constant flow from the inside out; it is continually being shed. People don’t always consider this, but at least today we know it applies to the Earth. Yet we don’t even know that this is also the case in the universe, for people think: The same moon that shines down today is the very same moon that shone upon the ancient Caesar or Alcibiades or upon Buddha. Spiritually, yes, but not in terms of physical matter! And as for the Sun, physicists and astrophysicists calculate when it will disintegrate in outer space. They know, at most, that it will disintegrate, but they’re calculating in terms of millions of years. The same result would come out if one were to make such a calculation with regard to human beings. These calculations are absolutely correct; there is nothing at all to object to—but they are simply not true. They are entirely correct, but they work as follows: If you examine a human heart today, then again after five days, and again after another five days, you can deduce from the small changes what the structure of this heart was like three hundred years ago, and what it will be like three hundred years from now. You do come up with something when you make such calculations: only it wasn’t there exactly three hundred years ago, and it won’t be there again in three hundred years. In the same way, geological science today allows us to calculate what the Earth looked like twenty million years ago. Just as people calculate what it looked like then, so they also calculate today what it will look like in twenty million years. The calculation is entirely correct; according to a perfectly accurate calculation, the Earth looked the way it did, and it will look the same way twenty million years from now. But it did not yet exist twenty million years ago, and it will not exist again twenty million years from now! The calculations are absolutely correct, but they are not true! Indeed, not even for the shortest time spans is this any different in outer space than it is for human beings. Even though mineral substances last considerably longer than the forms of substances in living bodies, the purely physical, the substantially physical, is still a passing phenomenon even for mineral substances. And the moon that stands in the sky today is, in its physical composition, no longer the same as it was when it shone down upon Caesar, or upon Alcibiades, or upon Emperor Augustus; for the moon has exchanged its matter just as a physical human body exchanges its matter. What remains out there is, in fact, entirely the spiritual, just as in human beings, what remains from birth to death is the spiritual, not the physical matter.

[ 17 ] So that one actually begins to see the world properly only when one views it in such a way that, with regard to human beings, one says: What remains between birth and death is the human soul. What remains out there in the celestial bodies are the beings; there, it is a multiplicity. In human beings, it is a unity, a soul; out there, a multiplicity. And when we speak of the moon and the sun, we should actually be aware that if we wish to speak of the truth, we must speak of what exists as the entities of the moon and as the entities of the sun: as entities of the moon, those linked to our past; as entities of the sun, those that will be linked to our future. But they influence our present existence.

[ 18 ] And what they directly bring about in a human being is what we call karma: the entirety of the structure and development of that person’s destiny. As the past and future intertwine, a person’s destiny is determined. And in this interweaving of destiny, lunar forces and solar forces, lunar beings and solar beings, work together.

[ 19 ] One can only truly establish a foundation for contemplating human karma and human destiny when one is able to place human beings in this way within the totality of the universe.

[ 20 ] No matter how hard we try, we can never change the past. Therefore, the forces of the Moon, by acting upon and influencing our human nature, possess a certain quality of unalterable necessity. Everything that comes to us from the Moon has this character of unalterable necessity. Everything that comes from the Sun and points toward the future has an aspect where our will—indeed, our freedom—can intervene. So one could also say: When human beings once again truly perceive the divine in the cosmos—not merely speaking in general, dreamy, and vague terms about the divine in the world, but when they once again speak in a specific way about the divine as it reveals itself in the individual members of the universe, in the celestial bodies—then, for human beings, I would say, a special language will emerge as they look up at the celestial bodies from this heartfelt and genuine human insight.

[ 21 ] What if a person were standing before us with his hands, arms, head, chest, legs, and feet, and we—for example, referring to his fingers—were to answer the question “What is that?” by saying: “That is human!”—pointing to his feet: “That is human!” — and at their nose: “That is human!” — If we make no distinctions but simply label everything with the general term “human,” we begin to flounder in vagueness. Likewise, we flounder in vagueness when we merely gaze out into the universe, looking at the sun, moon, and stars, and speak only of the universal-divine. We must return to a specific conception of the divine. We arrive at a specific conception of the divine when, for example, we recognize the deep connection between the moon and our past existence—indeed, with the past of the entire Earth. Then we can look up at the moon and say: “O Son of the World of Necessity, I feel—as I contemplate within myself all that over which I have no will—I feel intimately connected to you, divine Son of the World.” Then our understanding of the moon becomes a feeling. For everything that becomes perceptible to us out of inner necessity becomes akin to the moon.

[ 22 ] And when we truly sense the sun’s presence in the same way—not merely calculating it, not merely observing it through instruments—we feel it to be connected to everything within us that lives as freedom, as that which can come to be through ourselves for the future. And just as every new morning, with its solar existence, calls us to act as human beings, so the night welcomes us with our dreams, which show us what we were, what lives and weaves within us, and what is linked to us as the past. The night, ruled by the moon, reveals our past to us; every new morning, with its rays of sunlight, points us toward what can arise from our freedom. — Thus, throughout our entire existence in the world, our humanity is connected to the existence of the sun, and we can, addressing the sun, feel this way: O Son of the World of Freedom, I feel you are kindred to everything within me that gives my own being the freedom and the capacity for decision-making for the future!

[ 23 ] With such feelings, we would reconnect with the instinctive wisdom of early humanity. For what radiates in a wonderfully poetic way from ancient civilizations can only be understood if we still feel such things within ourselves today—such as looking up at the moon as the necessity of the past, and looking up at the sun as the freedom of the future. And so, in the weaving of our destiny, necessity and freedom intertwine. When we speak in earthly, human terms, we speak of necessity and freedom. When we speak in heavenly, cosmic terms, we speak of lunar and solar existence.

[ 24 ] And now let us seek out the lunar and solar aspects in the weaving of our destiny. We encounter a person in life. We are usually content simply to encounter this person, for we do not observe much of life; rather, we accept life for the most part without reflection. But if one takes a deeper look into an individual’s life, one discovers that when two people meet in life, their paths have truly been guided in a remarkable way. Two people who meet—let’s say, one at twenty-five and the other at twenty— can look back on what they have experienced so far, and it will become very clear to them—as in the case of the twenty-year-old—how, from a completely different corner of the world, all the individual facts of his life have driven him in such a way that he has met the other person precisely there—a person who, in turn, can look back on his twenty-five years, who comes from yet another corner of the world and meets him there. And how much of the shaping of our destiny depends on the fact that people, setting out from two different corners of the world, then come together as if guided by a truly ironclad necessity that points everywhere toward this very point where they meet. One cannot even begin to grasp with the eye of the soul the wonder that can be revealed in such reflections! Human life becomes impoverished if one does not view it in this way, and it becomes infinitely rich if one does. One must then become aware of how, when encountering a person whom one seems to have met quite by chance, one must say to oneself—when looking at the entire way one then behaves toward that person—that one has been seeking them, seeking them ever since one entered this earthly existence; one could even say: before that, but I do not wish to go into that now. One need only consider how one would not have come across this person if, here or there in one’s past earthly life, one had taken just a slightly different step to the left or right and had not gone where one did go. As I said, these reflections are not made; but it is indeed an infinite arrogance on the part of human beings to believe that whatever they do not observe does not exist. It is simply there! As soon as one begins to observe, it reveals itself. And there is now a very significant difference to be noted between everything that took place before two people met and the moment when they do meet. For before they met, before they found one another in earthly life, they influenced one another, but without knowing anything about each other. Now, after they have met, they influence one another while being aware of each other. But here, once again, something extraordinarily significant begins.

[ 25 ] Of course, we also meet a great many people in life whom we haven’t, so to speak, reached out to. I don’t mean to say that we meet a great many people in life about whom we tell ourselves it would have been wiser if we hadn’t met them; that’s not what I’m saying. But we do meet a great many people for whom we cannot apply the perspective I’ve just outlined—that we definitely reached out to them.

[ 26 ] If we view everything I have just said in the light of spiritual science, it becomes clear that everything that takes place between two people before they meet in earthly life is determined by the lunar principle, and that everything that takes place between them after they have met is determined by the solar principle. Therefore, what takes place between two people before they get to know each other can only be viewed in the light of ironclad necessity; what takes place after they get to know each other must be viewed in the light of freedom, in the light of mutual, free behavior. It is indeed the case that when we get to know a person, our soul, in the subconscious, looks back and forward: backward toward the spiritual moon, forward toward the spiritual sun. And this is connected to how our karma, our destiny, is actually woven.

[ 27 ] Today, very few people still possess the sensory faculties for such things. But it is precisely for this reason that so much is brewing in our age—because these sensory faculties are beginning to develop for such things. They are already present in numerous people; it’s just that these people are unaware of it. They attribute this to all sorts of other things. In reality, these capacities for feeling are striving to emerge in people—so much so that when people get to know one another, they will observe how much they owe to the iron necessity, to the lunar, and how much will be incumbent upon them in the light of the bright sun, in the light of freedom. To perceive destiny in this way is itself a cosmic destiny for humanity, stretching from the present into the future! For when one encounters a person in the world, one can clearly distinguish between two ways of relating to them. One judges one person in such a way that everything that arises within us in relation to them stems from the will; one judges another person in such a way that everything that stems from our judgment arises, to a greater or lesser extent, from the intellect or the aesthetic sense.

[ 28 ] Just consider for a moment how subtly people differ in their understanding of others with regard to these matters, even in their youth, even in childhood: We may love one person, or we may even hate him. If our feelings do not reach that intensity, then we feel sympathy or antipathy toward them; but it does not run deep—we pass them by and let them pass us by.

[ 29 ] There’s no denying that, let’s say, most of the teachers we encounter in school are perceived by us in this way: We pass them by, and they pass us by. It is simply part of a person’s happiness to get to know another person.

[ 30 ] But there is another kind of relationship, one that begins in childhood. It is the one that moves us deeply, where we say: “This person is doing something—we must do it too!” — In such cases, we do not judge the person in such a way that we can simply let them pass us by. It arises naturally from the relationship between them and us, so that we choose them as heroes, following in their footsteps up the paths to Olympus. In short, there are people who appeal solely to the intellect, to intellectual sympathy and antipathy, or at most to aesthetic sympathy and antipathy; other people appeal to our will.

[ 31 ] Or if we consider the other side of life more closely: Don’t you all know, my dear friends, that people come into our lives—and under certain circumstances, due to external circumstances, may even come quite close to us—but it is impossible for us to dream of them? We do not dream of them! And others we meet just once: we cannot get them out of our minds; we dream of them forever. And if we are not granted the opportunity in this earthly life to form a deeper relationship with them, then we must simply save that for another earthly life. But that relationship with a person truly runs deeper for us when, no sooner have we met them than we immediately dream of them, than when we meet someone we cannot dream of at all.

[ 32 ] Then there is also waking dreaming. For most people today, however, this waking dreaming still takes place in a state of considerable vagueness. But as you know, there are also initiated people who experience life quite differently! When such a person encounters someone who influences their will, that person also influences their inner speech. They do not merely speak when standing before you; rather, they speak from within us. If one is initiated into the mysteries of worldly existence, human relationships present themselves in the following twofold manner: One encounters people and listens to them. One then leaves them again; once far enough away, one no longer needs to listen to them. — But one encounters other people, and one listens to them; then one can walk away from them, and they speak from within oneself: They are there; they speak!

[ 33 ] Well, for the initiate, it works just as I have just described to you: he actually carries within himself, with the full timbre of their voices, the people who affect him in this way. For others—those who are not initiated—it manifests more on an emotional level, more through their senses, but it is still there, very strongly present in the subconscious. One might say: Someone meets a person, and then goes on to other people who also know him, and depending on the way he expresses himself, he says: “He’s a great guy!” — Perhaps some others will also say: “Yes, he’s a great guy.” — That is to say: he has observed him and is passing judgment on him with his intellect.

[ 34 ] But we do not behave toward every person in such a way that we regard them as a fine fellow or a good-for-nothing or the like; rather, there are simply people who directly determine—through our will, which, as I have often explained to you, leads a sort of slumbering existence within us while we are otherwise awake—whether we will follow them or resist them. They do not speak to uninitiated people, but they live within their will. What exactly is the difference?

[ 35 ] Well, you see, when we encounter people—when we come into contact with people who do not live in accordance with our will, people who do not inspire us to emulate them or to resist them in our will, but whom we merely judge—we have little karmic connection with them; we have had little to do with them in previous earthly lives. People who enter into our will—so that they follow us, so that their image is imprinted on us, so that we retain them, so that we even dream of them as if we were awake—these are the people with whom we have had much to do in past earthly lives. These are the people with whom we are, so to speak, cosmically connected through the gate of the Moon, whereas in our present life we are always connected—through the Sun’s presence—to everything that does not live within us as a necessity of the Moon’s existence.

[ 36 ] And this is how our destiny is woven. And so we can say: Human beings are, after all, polar beings. On the one hand, they have their isolated mental existence—which, after all, possesses a great deal of independence. This mental existence actually stands out continuously from humanity’s general existence in the world, even physically: The brain weighs, on average, 1,500 grams. With such a weight, it should actually crush all the veins beneath it. Just imagine, 1,500 grams of weight pressing down on those delicate veins! But it doesn’t. Why not? Well, because it is embedded in cerebrospinal fluid. And if you’ve studied physics, you know that any body in water loses an amount of weight equal to the weight of the water it displaces—the so-called Archimedes’ principle. In reality, about twenty grams—the rest isn’t there because the brain floats in cerebrospinal fluid. So in truth, our brain is pulled downward in the human body by only twenty grams, not at all by its 1,500 grams. The brain is isolated; it has its own existence, and in relation to many other things, it still has its own existence.

[ 37 ] The brain really is such that when we go about in the world, it is like a person sitting in his car. The person himself does not move in the car: the car moves, and he sits still. That is indeed the case. The brain, as the vessel of our mind, exists in isolation. That is why the intellect is actually so independent of our individuality. After all, we do not each have our own intellect. We would have great difficulty communicating if we each had our own intellect! We can only communicate because we all share the same intellect, albeit to a greater or lesser degree—these are differences of degree—but the intellect has something universal about it. That is why people communicate through the mind, which is independent of our individual qualities. And whatever occurs in human destiny as something immediately present—including the meeting of two people—affects the mind and those emotional impulses that are linked to it. That is when we speak of the “great guy,” about whom we are interested in nothing more than the fact that he simply affects our mind. Everything about us that is not karmic acts upon our intellect; everything about us that is karmic—that binds us as human beings in the sense of what we have experienced with the human individualities we encounter in physical bodies—acts through our will; it acts through the depths of the human being that lie within the will. And this is also true: Before we actually meet face to face with a person with whom we are karmically connected in life, the will is already at work. After all, the will is not always illuminated by the intellect. Just think how much darkness is at work in the will! The darkest aspect is that which bears the karma that brings two people together, so that they then realize, from the way their will is perceived, that karma is at work. The moment they get to know each other face to face, the intellect begins to take effect. And what is then woven by the intellect can, in turn, serve as the foundation for the next karma. But one can certainly say: Essentially—essentially, not entirely—karma has run its course for two people who are karmically connected once they have met. Only what they then do as a continuation of the unconscious continues to work in the sense of karma. But then much, much is woven into destiny that affects only the intellect and its sympathies and antipathies. And there, the past and the future, the lunar existence and the solar existence, intertwine. The thread of karma that reaches into the past is woven together with the thread that reaches into the future.

[ 38 ] We can look very closely into the nature of our existence in the world. — For when we look out as we watch the sun rise in the morning, or as we gaze at the moon at night, this mutual interplay that we sense there gives us, at first, a picture of how necessity and freedom interact within our own human nature in the course of our destiny. And once we have a true understanding of this interplay of necessity and freedom in human destiny, and we look back with this insight, then the sun and the moon begin to reveal their own spirituality to us. And then we do not merely speak like the simple-minded physicist who, when looking at the moon, says, “It reflects the sunlight back”—but rather, as we become aware of this reflection of moonlight, which is the very same as sunlight, we speak of the weaving and pouring forth of cosmic destiny.

[ 39 ] And then, through our own human destiny, we come to know the cosmic destiny! Only then do we truly interweave our human existence with cosmic existence. And so human beings must once again grow into a sense of being part of the cosmos. Just as a human finger is what it is only as long as it is attached to the human body—if you cut it off, it is no longer a finger; it has a finger-being only as long as it is attached to the human body—so, too, human beings have a being only insofar as they are a part of the cosmos. But human beings are arrogant, and the finger would probably be more humble if it possessed consciousness in the same way as a human being. Yet perhaps it would no longer be humble if it could always break free and wander about on the human body—it would have to remain within the sphere of the human being in order to remain a finger! And human beings, once they are earthly beings, must remain within the sphere of the Earth in order to be human. They are something entirely different—they are in their eternal essence—when they are outside the Earth’s sphere, in pre-earthly existence or post-earthly existence. But we, too, come to know these only when we come to know ourselves as members of the universe. We cannot do this by simply fantasizing about our connection to the universe; rather, we can do so only when, in the manner that has occurred again today, we gradually learn to empathize fully with the individual, concrete forms of the universe. Then we feel how our destiny is truly a reflection of the world of the stars, of the sun and the moon. Then we learn to look out into the universe and to interpret our human life in light of the life of the great universe. And in turn, we learn to look inward into our own soul and to understand the world from within our own soul. For no one understands the moon who does not understand necessity in human destiny; no one understands the sun who does not understand freedom in the human being. Thus, things are interconnected through necessity and freedom.

[ 40 ] With the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum, we sought to provide the impetus so that this—which can enter our hearts and minds in such a way as a truly esoteric perspective—might live even more effectively in the world in the future. And I hope that what took place at this Christmas Conference will increasingly find its way into the consciousness of our friends, our dear members. And in this regard, I would like to draw particular attention to the fact that every member can now receive the newsletter titled “What Is Happening in the Anthroposophical Society,” which has been published weekly since our Christmas Conference. Through this newsletter and through much else that is developing within the Anthroposophical Society, the Society itself will truly, in the future, share in that living life that can flow from anthroposophy. The isolation of our branches must come to an end. Only then will the Anthroposophical Society become a true whole—so that someone in an Anthroposophical branch in New Zealand knows what is happening in an Anthroposophical branch in Bern or Vienna; and someone in an Anthroposophical branch in Bern knows what is happening in New Zealand, New York, or Vienna. The opportunity for this will be there. And among the many things we are creating—or at least among the diverse things we intend to create following this Christmas Conference—will be precisely this: that this newsletter will indeed serve as a medium for everything happening in the world of anthroposophy. All it will take is a brief look at this newsletter, and then one will know what to do to help this newsletter flourish.

[ 41 ] As I speak here, the third issue of this newsletter is just being distributed over in Dornach, in which I have explained how each individual member can contribute to ensuring that this newsletter truly serves as a fitting reflection of anthroposophical work within the anthroposophical movement. Simply because I believe that life in the Anthroposophical Society must become more vibrant than it has been, simply because I believe that this requires that more anthroposophy be cultivated in the Anthroposophical Society than has been the case so far—I do not mean more in terms of content, but more in terms of intensity, enthusiasm, and love— that is why I have decided—even though, according to the usual customs of the world, I would have every right to retire—it is, after all, the age at which one does so—simply because I feel this way, I have decided to start over. Since I had already relinquished the personal leadership of the Anthroposophical Society back in 1912, I have decided to start over and imagine that I am young again and can certainly be active. And I would like it to be understood in this very sense, my dear friends, that a certain livelier interest should arise for a more vibrant life within the Anthroposophical Society. This is what I hope for—as those of you who were not in Dornach can read in the Goetheanum and the Nachrichtenblatt—that what took place at the Christmas Conference may truly reach each and every member as a spiritual message. And through this, a genuine esoteric life will once again take root. For this is why the School of Spiritual Science was founded at Christmas: so that esoteric life might once again take root in our Anthroposophical Society. This will be possible.

[ 42 ] I wanted to speak the words I have spoken to you today, my dear friends, in such a way that they might simultaneously express: May such an esoteric life once again take root among us, in the way that will be explained to you more and more, and as it will then be able to be realized through what may emanate in the future from Dornach as the seat of the general Society founded at Christmas. May the dear members of this Bern branch be able to contribute greatly to what we would like to accomplish for the anthroposophical movement from Dornach, according to the strengths we currently possess.