Anthroposophical Guidelines

What is Revealed when between Death and a New Birth, One Looks Back into Previous Lives - Part 2

In a second period man passed out of the Archai realm into that of the Archangeloi, with whom he was not as bodily-spiritually bonded as previously with the Archai. His bonding with the Archangels was more spiritual. But it was still intimate enough that one cannot yet speak of a separation from the divine-spiritual world.

The Archangel hierarchy gave to man’s etheric body the element which corresponds to what the Archai gave to his physical body. Just as the physical body’s form is adapted to the earth in order to become the vehicle of self-consciousness, the etheric body is adapted to the outer-earthly cosmic forces. The earth lives in the physical body and the star-world lives in the etheric body. The inner force that enables the human being to live on the earth and at the same time wrest himself from it through posture, movement and gesture, he owes to the Archangels’ creative activity in his etheric body. Just as the earth-forces can exist in the physical body through the figuration, so do the forces exist in the etheric body that stream to the earth from all sides of the circumference of the cosmos. The living earth forces which appear physically in the body are those that make its form relatively firm and enclosed. The human contours remain fixed for earthly life subject to a subordinate metamorphosis; the capacity for movement solidifies through habit, etc.

In the etheric body there is permanent flexible mobility, which is a mirror image of the ever changing constellations during a person’s life on earth. Even the changing sky by day and night corresponds to the shaping of the etheric body - but also the changes that take place during the time between birth and death

This adaptation of the etheric body to the heavenly forces does not contradict the gradual separation of the stars in the sky from the divine-spiritual powers as described in the previous contemplation. It is correct that in very old times divine will and divine intelligence lived in the stars. In later times the stars became “calculable”. The gods were no longer active in their creation. But through his etheric body man gradually attained his own relationship to the stars, as he did to the earth’s gravity through his physical body.

The etheric body, created during the second period by the Archangeloi hierarchy and inserted in man when he descends from the spiritual world to earth at birth, absorbs the extra-earthly cosmic forces.

An essential aspect which man received through this hierarchy is that of belonging to a group of people on earth. People are differentiated all over the earth. When looking back at this second period, one does not see the present day differentiation of races and peoples, but a somewhat different, more spiritual one. This is attributable to the star forces in the different constellations appearing at different locations on earth. On the earth in the distribution of land and water, in the climate, in plant growth and so on, live the stars. Insofar man must adapt to these conditions on earth, which are conditions of the heavens, this adaptation belongs to the etheric body and is a creation of the Archangeloi choir.

However, it was just during this second period that the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers entered into human life in a special way. This was necessary, although at first it seems that man was being driven to a lower level of his nature. If man was to develop selfconsciousness in his earthly life, it was necessary that he separate himself from the divine-spiritual world from which he originated to a greater extent that was possible by means of that world itself. It happened during the time when the Archangels acted upon him, for then the spiritual force of the Archangels was less able to keep Lucifer and Ahriman at bay then when the stronger Archai forces acted upon him.

The Luciferic powers caused a stronger inclination in the etheric body towards the stars than it would have had if only the divine-spiritual powers originally bound to man had been active. And the physical organization was made more subject to the earth’s gravity than would have happened had these powers been unable to act.

In this way the seed of complete self-consciousness and free will was planted in man. Even though the ahrimanic powers hate free will, they brought about the predisposition for free will in man by detaching him from his divine-spiritual world.

First, however, in that second period what the various hierarchies, from the Seraphim to the Archangels, brought about in man was impressed more into the physical and etheric bodies than would have happened without the luciferic and ahrimanic influences. Without these influences the activities of the hierarchies would have remained more in the astral body and the I. By this means the more spiritual groupings of humanity over the earth striven for by the Archangels did not occur.

Being impressed into the physical and etheric bodies, the spiritual forces were transformed into their opposite. A differentiation according to races and peoples instead of the more spiritual one took place.

Without the luciferic and ahrimanic influences the people on earth would see themselves as having been differentiated from heaven. The groups would have comported themselves in their lives as beings who willingly give to and take the spiritual from each other lovingly. In races and ethnic groups the earth’s gravity appears through the human body; in the spiritual groupings a mirror image of the spiritual world would have appeared.

Because of all this, the later complete self-consciousness in human evolution had to be predisposed beforehand. This also required, although in a diminished form, that the primeval human differentiation which existed when man first passed from the hierarchy of the Exusiai to that of the Archai be preserved.

Man experienced - through feeling and envisioning - this stage of evolution in a kind of cosmic school, although he had not yet developed the knowledge that this was an essential preparation for his later self-consciousness. But the felt envisioning of his evolution forces was nevertheless important then for the integration of selfconsciousness in his astral body and I.

In respect to thinking, what happened was that man was equipped by the luciferic powers with a tendency to immerse himself further in the old spiritual forms and not to adapt to the new forms. For Lucifer always strives to retain the previous forms of life for man.

And thereby man’s thinking was organized in such a way that in life between death and a new birth he gradually developed the capacities which formed thoughts in him in primeval times. At that time these faculties could visualize the spiritual, despite being akin to present-day mere sense perception. For the physical bore the spiritual in its surface. At present however, the capacities for thought preserved from those times can only function as sense perception. Gradually the ability to elevate one’s self to the spiritual world diminished. And this is fully the case now when in the Consciousness Soul age the spiritual world has become veiled in darkness for man. Thus in the nineteenth century the best natural scientists, who could not become materialists, said: we have no choice but to merely investigate the world that can be investigated with the senses through measurement, number and weight; but we have no right to deny a spiritual world which is hidden behind the senses. That is, an indication that a light-filled world, unknown to man, could exist where he only stares into the darkness.

As thinking was dislocated by Lucifer, willing was by Ahriman. Man’s will was endowed with a tendency to a kind of freedom, which should have happened only later. This freedom was not real, but an illusion of freedom. Humanity lived for a long time with this illusion of freedom. It provided humanity with no possibility of spiritually developing the idea of freedom. It swung back and forth between the opinion that man is free or that he is trapped in a rigid necessity. And when true freedom arrived with the emerging Consciousness Soul age, man could not recognize it, because he had been trapped much too long in the illusion of freedom.

Everything that had been instilled in man in this second stage of evolution of his lives between death and a new birth he carried as cosmic remembrance into the third stage, the one in which he presently lives. During this stage he stands in a similar relationship to the hierarchy of the Angeloi as he did during the second stage to that of the Archangeloi. Only the relationship to the Angeloi is one in which full independent individuality is realized. For the Angeloi - now not the choir, but one for each person - concentrate on achieving the correct relation between the lives between death and a new birth and earth lives.

What at first appears to be a remarkable fact is that for the individual during the second stage of his evolution of lives between death and a new birth the entire hierarchy of archangeloi was active. Later this hierarchy assumed the guidance of ethnic groups, in which one archangel acted as ethnic spirit for a people. The Primal Forces [Archai] remained active in the races. And a Being from the hierarchy of the Primal Forces acted as race-spirit for one race.

Thus contemporary humanity retains - also in life between death and a new birth - the cosmic remembrance of previous stages of evolution. And also where in the physical world spiritual guidance appears, as in races and ethnic groups, this comic remembrance is distinctly present.

Goetheanum, New Year, 1925

150. In a second period of evolution of lives between death and a new birth, man entered the realm of the Archangeloi. During this period, after it had been predisposed in the creation of the human form during the first period, the seed was implanted in the soul for his later self-consciousness.
151. During this second period man was pushed deeper into the physical world due to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences than he would have been without these influences.
152. During the third period man entered the realm of the Angeloi, who however only made their influence felt in the astral body and the I. This period is the present one. What happened in the two previous periods lives on in human evolution and explains the fact that in the age of the Consciousness Soul (in the nineteenth century) man stared into the spiritual world as into complete darkness.