The Rudolf Steiner Archive

81. On the Shaping of Destiny

My dear friends!

[ 1 ] I am very pleased that we can discuss here some matters that are better suited for a more intimate circle. Today we want to discuss some issues related to the shaping of a person’s destiny.

[ 2 ] We begin with the start of human life on Earth. Human beings must first form their bodies from within themselves. A child’s consciousness is dreamlike. From the twilight of this dreamlike childhood consciousness, three things emerge that are of particular importance for life. The child learns more during this time than in later years. During this time, the child learns to walk, speak, and think. Walking, for example, is only a partial expression of everything the child is learning. First, the child must learn to find its balance. But it must also learn to adapt to earthly conditions in other ways. For example, it must first learn that hot objects burn and so on.

[ 3 ] Learning to speak is based on the instinct to imitate. Thinking develops out of speech. Thinking is the last to develop. What exactly is the nature of thinking? The child descends from its pre-earthly existence. Shortly before incarnating, the child first forms its etheric body. The “I” and the astral body descend, drawing the etheric body from all corners of the world, and then incarnation takes place. Through the etheric body, the child learns to think; the physical body is merely the foundation. At first, this etheric body is only very dimly active. Thinking, however, is based on a more external manipulation of the etheric body. What underlies these processes? Thoughts are actually contained within the world ether; they do not arise in the head. Anyone who would say that would be just as clever as someone who says: “I drink water, therefore water arises on my tongue.”

[ 4 ] In very young children, the world ether still participates in thinking; it has not yet been separated from the personal etheric body. Only when it has been separated does personal thinking emerge. If this were not the case, human beings would always feel themselves to be part of the cosmos.

[ 5 ] Speech is a function of the astral body. However, this body is not yet fully developed in the child. We gradually develop the astral body between death and rebirth over the course of many, many years. It is thanks to the astral body that we are able to develop our physical organization. As we learn to speak outwardly, the inner astral nature of the world is subdued. In the words we speak outwardly lies the echo of what speaks within us continuously between death and rebirth.

[ 6 ] The “I” that journeyed through the entire world between death and rebirth becomes part of the human being as we learn to walk and move. That is why learning to walk is something of extraordinary significance. The entire way a child behaves while learning to walk is extraordinarily characteristic of each individual.

[ 7 ] As the child learns to walk, the “I” takes full hold of the child. Along with the “I,” the person’s karma now slips into them. This is also expressed in the way the child learns to walk and grasp objects. For example, people say: A child stands up stiffly on its legs. Then they say: The child is learning to walk in a choleric manner. — Such a child was, in a previous incarnation, a person whom many others naturally looked up to. This is then expressed in the way the child learns to walk. You can see it in every movement, such as how the child turns its little head and so on. A child like this, who learns to walk in such a choleric manner, will also seek out its destiny in a choleric way in this life. This does not affect our freedom, any more than our blond hair or blue eyes—which we were also born with—impair our freedom.

[ 8 ] When we simply stand up as children, a great deal is already happening. The position of the blood cells in relation to the body changes. The way the blood cells are positioned makes a huge difference internally (illustration missing). The same applies to the nerves. We must be clear about this: When we look at a flower, there is nothing moral about it. It is quite different when I learn to walk. That is where the moral impulses lie that I bring with me from my previous life. So you see that the physical constitution can contain elements of how a person will behave later in life. Their predisposition to health also becomes apparent.

[ 9 ] But what will be in the later incarnation, we are preparing now. So not everything we do now is determined by the past. Only gradually, and with great effort, does a person learn to distinguish between what is actually part of them and what is not. That is why there is no fatalism as there is among the Turks. The question of fate must not merely concern us in a theoretical sense; rather, we must grasp it from the depths of our hearts.

[ 10 ] Fate must be perceived in such a way that we can say to ourselves: There is balance, [regardless of] whether what befalls us happened in the past or later. There is balance. This does not in any way lessen the intensity with which we experience misfortune and suffering. But the feeling that balance and justice in the world exist—that feeling is what matters most.

[ 11 ] When you see the child learning to walk and grasp objects, when you have this image vividly before your eyes, then you truly see the previous earthly life extending into this one. From this dim consciousness of the child, the first karmic predisposition shoots into this life.

[ 12 ] But now comes the time when a clear distinction emerges between sleeping and waking. For in the early years, a child never really wakes up completely. Human sleep is, in fact, just as important as waking. For if we describe only waking in a biography, we are describing only two-thirds of a person’s life. But far more significant things take place at night than during waking hours. The soul’s daily forces are woven together during sleep. Then, when—in later life—waking and sleeping are clearly distinguished, the “I” and the astral body weave into them the beginnings of future karma, just as happened earlier during the process of learning to walk.

[ 13 ] As children, we are at our wisest, though we do not realize it. We build ourselves—the innermost part of our bodies—with divine wisdom. Even the wisdom we need merely to digest, we must acquire while we sleep. In fact, we should regard our sleep with the utmost reverence.

[ 14 ] We weave what we need during the day, between waking and sleeping. Above all, we weave our karma.

[ 15 ] But there is something that truly shows us what we must learn during our earthly life. Between death and birth, we must learn from the gods how to build up our bodies. We must come to know life in its fullness and vitality—not just dead anatomy. For this, we need a long period of time between death and birth. But we do come to know it.

[ 16 ] But the karma that we must now weave into our being—we acquire it right here. Between death and birth, we learn how to build the physical body. In the process, however, it becomes apparent here and there just how clumsy we are at weaving karma into our being—for example, when we have fantastical dreams. The less skilled we are at entering or emerging from the physical body, the more fantastical the dream becomes. Everything that is fantastical in the dream must still be refined here in earthly life. The dream is an expression of the clumsiness in finding harmony between the ego and the astral body on the one hand, and the etheric body and the physical body on the other. Just as one can observe the continuing effects of karma in a clumsy child, so too can one see in dreams how clumsily a person works at preparing their destiny for the future life. If, for example, someone has nightmares, one can roughly infer from them how that person is preparing for a life in which they will constantly have to be very careful. If someone has dreams of flying—if they dream of soaring through the air—one will observe that they are preparing for a life in which they will be quite superficial; for instance, someone who goes to the movies a lot.

[ 17 ] During deep sleep, we make no effort whatsoever to enter our physical body. When we awaken from dreamless, deep sleep, earthly life pulls us back into the body. Wisdom grows ever scarcer in life. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this here. During our earthly life, we become more and more like donkeys on the inside. This is a curious aspect of human cultural progress: In the past, people were less clever outwardly than they are today, but inwardly they were all the wiser for it. Outwardly, people have achieved an immense amount, but inwardly we have become terribly foolish. It is time to realize that culture—that civilization—must take a different direction. Anthroposophy exists precisely to shed light on the human being from within. Human beings must draw upon the strength within themselves to return to wisdom. Otherwise, between death and a new birth, we would no longer be able to acquire our wisdom at all. We would then be born in the future as human beings who could not learn to walk. If you wholeheartedly practice anthroposophy, if your entire being embraces this idea, then you will see how everything changes, even in your dreams. Through anthroposophy, you learn a great deal for life, but even more for sleep.

[ 18 ] That is why it is necessary for the Age of Michael to dawn today. Michael is a being who now wishes to become a kind of spirit of the age. Michael is to intervene in the destiny of the Earth; but he can do so only if human beings learn to use their own powers.

[ 19 ] How can we understand Michael? I’d like to illustrate this with an example. When an era has a certain character, there are always certain extremes of that character at the end of that era. When our era began, people imagined utopias. They imagined how people could become quite happy without any effort on their part. But a time will come that will not create utopias; rather, it will portray people who have achieved something through their own efforts and through education (see the article in Goetheanum on education and morality).

[ 20 ] The story will depict people who truly shape their own circumstances. In the future, we won’t have to imagine what paradise might be like; instead, poets will create characters. Poets will, for example, describe how a child is born burdened with difficulties, and how those forces are then set free through skillful upbringing. This means looking to the Michael force. Turning away from utopias to focus on our own human powers—that is one way the Michael force will work.

[ 21 ] In religious thought, this Michael force will have such an effect that people will no longer look only to the Gospels, but will remember the words:

[ 22 ] Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the earth.

[ 23 ] People will then no longer learn to write mechanically, but rather by drawing on the form itself.

[ 24 ] Michael now descends and helps people as they come toward him. We would celebrate the annual festivals more appropriately if we observed the Feast of St. Michael at the end of September. Then we could help people understand the withering away of the outer world. This festival would provide an opportunity to awaken our inner powers. Today, we would be able to have the greatest impact there of all.