The Rudolf Steiner Archive

48. Faith, Love, Hope

My dear friends!

[ 1 ] Theosophy is something that can provide us with insights that every person needs and that every person who lacks them is missing. One could say that Theosophy is not yet widely spread, and one might ask whether people today—even if they hate Theosophy—still need it. What does theosophy offer them? Through theosophy, one can learn things that one would otherwise not know. The materialist will say: “Well, one probably doesn’t need to know those things either.”—But one can also ask the counterquestion: Is it really possible to know absolutely nothing about theosophy?

[ 2 ] Human beings are complex beings. Let us consider the four bodies of the human being: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the “I.” It is not true that we know nothing about these four bodies. Because the terms are unfamiliar, people believe they know nothing about the etheric and astral bodies. But human beings do become aware of them, and this can even lead to their misfortune.

[ 3 ] Theosophy speaks of the supersensible world. People today no longer want to believe; they want only to know. But can human beings really bear to have all faith in a supersensible world taken from them, and to be expected to rely solely on knowledge? This question can be answered through observation. This can go on for only a certain time without any belief in a supernatural world; then the time comes when a person must turn inward. The person who can no longer believe—when that person has moments when they must turn inward—is overcome by a despair born of a terrible sense of loneliness. The person who can believe has something to hold onto in moments of solitude. We are only at the beginning of a time when people will increasingly succumb to such a sense of loneliness, and deep despair and darkness will overcome them. And people will then increasingly find themselves in a state where they do not know what to do with themselves or the world. Where does this come from?

[ 4 ] Human beings are [not] merely the bearers of the intellect, which seeks only to know. If that were all they were, then human beings would be nothing more than an “I.” But beneath this “I” lies the astral body, and it needs strength so that it does not wither away. Despair exists only where the astral body withers away. The “I” may believe it can do without the supersensible world, but deep below lies the astral body, and it can never exist without faith—it withers away. It is the body of faith. Within the astral body lie the forces that require faith. Despair—the astral body’s hunger for supersensible knowledge—will afflict humanity. This is terrible because, without insight into the spiritual world, one does not know this. One senses its manifestation—the pathological aspect. People will then come to experience the hunger of the astral body. To kindle the nourishment of the astral body—that is precisely the entrance into the supersensible world. The astral body experiences hunger—just as the physical body does when it receives no food. The powers of faith are the most important powers of the astral body. A person develops their astral body; that is to say, they develop the powers that make them strong.

[ 5 ] The Etheric Body: A person can sense their etheric body and observe it. We can say that there are people who seem predisposed to take pleasure in other people and to direct love toward them. Then there are people who cannot radiate their love outward. These are people who love only themselves. The power of love is, in a sense, connected to the power of life.

[ 6 ] Example: When a person feels compassion for a wounded wild animal or a wounded human being, and then senses that the being is the same as what is within them. — Compassion only makes sense if we assume that a being has an inner life. Compassion is a form of love that recognizes that what lives within us also lives within other beings. For those who have developed this love only weakly, it may work for a time, but without love, it cannot last. A person must have love for the world around them. A person without love, without warmth, without compassion, grows cold inside. This is a state even worse than that of despair or inner desolation; it spills over into the physical realm. The person takes on a sickly, pale appearance and feels their physical strength waning. Giving them love is like medicine for them; then things will change for them. Love acts upon others and upon us in return, like warmth upon the etheric body. The etheric body is the body of love, for the most important forces the etheric body needs are the forces of love and compassion—these are what sustain it. We must create a mental image of a body shaped like a human being but consisting solely of the forces of love; then we have correctly visualized the etheric body. Love in the world proves the existence of the etheric body. The plant is built up by the very same force that the human being feels within as love. There, this force builds up physically what it builds up in the human being on the soul-spiritual level.

[ 7 ] Physical body: “Physicality is the end of God’s ways.” It has been created thus far from the higher worlds of divine-spiritual forces up to the physical image of the Deity, in which human beings express the Spirit—for God is Spirit. And physicality denies the goal of the Deity. To recognize that human beings are placed within physicality, entirely imperfect, is what one can do from birth to death in order to draw closer to that goal. But in the very fact that human beings feel this, the urge toward perfection is also revealed.

[ 8 ] The body crumbles to dust. On the one hand, it had to be imperfect; otherwise, on the other hand, humans could not come to realize that when the physical body crumbles to dust, the soul then begins to build a new body, in which it can make amends for what it has failed to do.

[ 9 ] He has the hope, time and again, of rebuilding the physical body, so that what cannot be accomplished in one lifetime may be made right over the course of many lifetimes. We imbue ourselves with the power of hope when we seek, time and again, to build a new body. Ultimately, we will come to resemble God in truth.

[ 10 ] We would not be able to unfold our full strength and activity in this life if we were only building up to decay. On a supersensible level, our physical body needs the feeling of hope that it can be rebuilt again and again. For now, there are still forces at work through no merit of our own. But if we then turn our backs on the idea of hope, the human [physical body] withers away. The fact is that the astral body dries up without faith, the etheric body grows cold without love, and the physical body would wither away without hope.

[ 11 ] In the future, people will only be able to be healthy if they can hope. Only then will they face the coming age with the right feelings. People can test this for themselves by devoting one to one and a half hours after getting up to contemplating [the continuity of the soul from one life to the next]. Then they will sense something flowing through them like a second person. Forces of hope radiate from this into the physical body. Forces of hope underlie the physical body on a supersensory level.

[ 12 ] The fact is that this physical body is built up by forces of hope—these forces were present from the beginning and were strongest between death and rebirth. Just as salt in water forms into a crystal, so these forces are inherent in human beings. A person will be weak in life if they developed few forces of hope in their previous life, and strong if they developed many. They will have a weak constitution in a later life. Strong materialists in one incarnation will be almost paralyzed in the next. The realization of these facts is the spiritual care provided by Theosophy.

[ 13 ] The physical body is a body of hope. Human beings need faith, love, and hope to live. It arose from the wisdom of the worlds and needs faith, love, and hope to live.

[ 14 ] If a person is unwilling to come to terms with these facts, they may experience them in this way in their next incarnation. - Human beings have been endowed with a certain amount of the forces of faith, love, and hope. Once the interest and the principal have been exhausted, new capital must be created; that is why there is an urgent need today for human beings to find new sources of faith, love, and hope—and theosophy is meant to provide these for us.

[ 15 ] Human beings change as they develop, and their abilities change as well. A new ability will emerge in them in the coming, third millennium: We will turn our gaze away from what we have done—turn our gaze inward and reflect—and then human beings will see what happens later as a result of what they have just done. They will see the karmic balance of the deed they have just performed. To see karmically—that will be a human ability in the future. “Change your state of mind...” applies to our age today as well. “Change your mindset,” for very soon you will have to see Christ in the spiritual worlds, with immense pain etched on his features, yet full of compassion and love.

[ 16 ] People will feel lonely if they do not cultivate faith, love, and hope. Christ will be a friend to humanity from the supernatural world; he will reveal himself with immense pain etched on his features, yet full of compassion and love.

[ 17 ] Those who have learned to believe in the supersensible world will receive, as a power of the spiritual world, the ability to behold Christ in his ethereal form as a figure of love.

[ 18 ] Great upheavals will take place in the world during the twentieth century. Christ will balance the karma of human beings—of humanity—as it has been entrusted to him. First, people on Earth will have to learn of this and receive the necessary preparation here on Earth for the fact that Christ has become the Lord of Karma. Wherever [Christ] is needed, he will be able to be there at the same time—now, without distinction of nation, race, or color, for all people; this is how Christ will be present during his spiritual return.