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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Manifestations of Karma
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Manifestations of Karma
Schmidt Number: S-2241
On-line since: 11th October, 2000
INDIVIDUAL AND HUMAN KARMA. KARMA OF THE HIGHER BEINGS.
THERE is much still to be said about the various manifestations of
karma; but as this is our last lecture, and time is necessarily short
for so wide a subject, you easily understand that much that could be
said, perhaps much of that which is in your minds in the way
questions, cannot be dealt with this time. But our anthroposophical
movement will continue, and that which in one course of lectures must
necessarily remain unanswered, can on another occasion be carried on
and explained further.
It will repeatedly have come before your minds that in the law of
karma, man experiences something which is so organised that at every
moment of our life we can look upon what we have gone through, upon what we
have done, thought and felt in the incarnations preceding our own, and
we shall always find that our momentary human inner and outer fate may
be understood in the light of a Life-account, in which on
the side we set down all the clever, reasonable and wise experiences,
and on the other all that is unreasonable, wicked or ugly. On one side
or the other there will be an excess which signifies at any moment of
life the destiny of that moment.
Now various questions may arise in this connection, and the first one
would be: How is that which human beings do as a society connected
with what we call Individual karma? We have already
touched upon these questions from other aspects. If we look back at
any event in history, back, for instance, to the Persian wars, it will
be impossible for us to believe that these events looked at in
the first place from the Greek point of view represent
something only to be written in the book of fate of individual men, who
upon the physical plane may appear to be the persons most directly
interested. Think of all the leaders in the Persian wars, of all the
men who sacrificed themselves at that time, of all that was done by
individuals from the leaders down to the separate individuals
in the Greek legions at that time. If we really consider such
an event in a reasonable light, could we possibly ascribe what each
separate person did at that time solely to the karmic account of that
individual? We should find it impossible so to do. For could we
imagine that in the events which happen to a whole nation or to a
great part of civilised humanity, nothing further occurs than that
each separate human individual simply lives out his own karma? This is
not possible. We must in the course of historical evolution always
proceed from one event to the next, and we shall see that in the
evolution of mankind itself both meaning and significance are to be
found, but that such events cannot be identical with the particular karma
of separate individuals.
We may reflect on an occurrence such as that of the Persian wars, and
ask what significance they had in the course of human evolution. In
the East a certain brilliant civilisation had developed. But as every
light has its shadow, so must we clearly see that this Eastern
civilisation was only to be attained by humanity at the cost of
certain darker shadowy elements which should have had no place in
human evolution. This civilisation had one pronounced shadow-side
the impulse to extend its frontiers by means of physical force.
If this desire for aggrandisement had not been there, it is evident
that the whole of that Eastern civilisation would not have come into
being. The one cannot be thought of without the other. In order that
man might evolve further, the Greek civilisation, for instance, had to
develop from quite different principles. But the Greek civilisation
could not of itself make a direct beginning. It had to obtain certain
elements from outside and it borrowed these from the Eastern
civilisation. Various legends about heroes who from Greece passed over
to the East, do in fact represent how the pupils of certain Greek
schools went over to the East and brought back to the Greeks those
treasures of Eastern culture which could then be transformed by means
of the national Greek talent. But for this it was necessary to
eradicate the shadow-side of this culture the impulse to press
forward to the West by means of purely external force. The Roman
civilisation which succeeded the Greek, and all that contributed to
the evolution of European mankind would not have been possible if the
Greeks had not prepared the ground by a further development of the
Eastern civilisation if they had not beaten back the Persians
and what pertained to them. Thus that which had been created in Asia
was purified by the driving back of the Asiatics.
Many events in the evolution of the world can be considered in this
way, and one then obtains a striking picture. If we gave a course of
lectures extending over three or four years and during that time gave
our thought only to the traditional, historical documents of humanity,
we should then see the unfolding of something which we might really
call a plan in the evolution of mankind. We could then survey such a
plan and say to ourselves, this had to be attained; it had this
shadow-side which later had to be cast off; the treasures which had
been acquired had to pass over to another, and there be perfected
further.
After the Greeks had carried on the acquired treasures for some little
while, the downfall of Greece occurred, and Rome took her place. In
this way we should arrive at a plan of human evolution, so that when
speaking of this plan we could never fall into the error of saying:
How did it come about, for instance, that just Xerxes or
Miltiades or Leonidas had this or that individual karma? We must
consider this individual karma as something which must be determined
by and interwoven with the plan of the evolution of mankind. This
cannot be understood in any other way; and this, too, is the view of
Spiritual Science. But if this is the case, we must say: In this
well-planned advance of human evolution we must see something which is
a thing by itself, which is continuous in itself, in a similar way to
that in which karmic events in individual human lives are connected
with each other, and we must further enquire: What relation does
such a plan of the whole evolution of mankind bear to the individual
karma of man? Let us first of all consider what one might call
the destiny of human evolution itself.
When we look back we see how one civilisation after another arises,
and how the evolution of one people follows upon that of another. We
see further how one nation after another acquires this or that which
is new, how something remains out of the separate national
civilisations which is permanent but how just on that account the
nations must die out, so that the treasures each separate nation has
acquired may be saved for the corresponding later epochs of human
evolution. We must, therefore, find quite comprehensible what
Spiritual Science has to say, that in the continuous advance of human
evolution one can in the first place clearly distinguish two currents.
Consider how in the whole course of the evolution of mankind there is
what we may look upon as a continuous current, within
which wave after wave develops, and that which the foregoing wave has
acquired is carried over into the next. We can get an idea of this if
we look back to the first civilisation of the Post-Atlantean age, and
observe the great achievements of ancient India. But if we compare
that with the feeble echo of it which is contained in the old Vedas,
which are, to be sure, wonderful enough, but which are but a faint
reflection of that to which the Rishis attained and of what Spiritual
Science relates to us of the great culture of the Indians, we then are
compelled to admit that the original greatness of what this people
accomplished for mankind had already faded when a beginning was made
to preserve this treasure of human culture in those beautiful poetical
productions. But that which the Indian culture first gained flowed
over into the general course of human evolution and this alone made it
possible for that to develop later which again was required by a young
people, not by a people already grown old. The Indians had first to be
driven back to the southern Peninsula, and then the Zarathustran view
of the world evolved in Persia. How sublime was this view of the world
when it arose, and how low had it fallen in a comparatively short time
in the people who had received it! In Egypt and Chaldea we see the
same thing happen. Then we see the passing over of the Eastern wisdom
into Greece, and we see the Greeks beat back that which is Eastern on
the external physical plane. We then see all that the whole East had
acquired taken up into the lap of Greece and interwoven with much that
had been acquired in various domains of Europe. Out of this there was
created a new culture, which then in various indirect ways became
capable of receiving the Christ Impulse and of transplanting it into
the West.
We find this continuous stream of civilisation in which we see wave
after wave, and each successive wave is both a continuation of the
preceding and a new contribution to mankind. But what was the origin
of all this? Remember all that each nation experiences in its own
culture. Think of the accumulation of emotion and perceptions in
countless individuals, of wishes and enthusiasms fostering the impulse
of this culture. Think how the individuals were united in the one
cultural impulse, so that through countless centuries of human
development, one nation after another, developing the successive
cultural impulses, each one lived its enthusiasms; but lived too in a
sort of illusion. Every one of them believed the particular
achievement of that culture to be not transitory but eternal. For that
reason only was the devoted work of the separate peoples made
possible, because the illusion always survived. Even today the
illusion exists; although we are not so absolutely bound by it and do
not speak of our culture as necessarily everlasting.
There you have two things necessary to national civilisations, and
which are only beginning to change in our own day. For the first
domain of human spiritual life in which such illusions cannot persist,
is that of Anthroposophy. It would be a grave error for an
Anthroposophist to believe that the forms in which our knowledge is
now clothed and the train of thought which we are able to give out
today from our Anthroposophical thought, feeling and will, are
eternal. It would be very short-sighted to suppose that in three
thousand years there would still be persons who would speak of the
Anthroposophical truths just as we ourselves do today. We know that we
are compelled on account of the conditions of our time to impress
something of the continuous stream of evolution into present forms of
thought and that our successors will express their experiences of
these things in completely different forms. Why is this so? Throughout
many centuries and many thousands of years of human culture,
civilisation imposed on single individuals experiences through which a
contribution was made to the collective evolution of the nations.
Think of the numberless experiences which were gone through in ancient
Greece, and think of what issued from that later as an extract for the
whole of humanity! You will then say: There is more in this than
merely the individual currents. Many things occur for the sake of this
primary current.
So we must observe two things: first, something which must spring up
and die away, in order that from its entirety a second thing, which
reckoned by quantity is the smallest part, may survive as something
lasting. When we realise that in the evolution of mankind since there
has been human individual karma, two powers or beings are at work whom
we have always found to be active Lucifer and Ahriman
then only shall we understand the progress of human evolution. For the
aim of this evolution is that finally, when the earth shall have
attained its goal, those experiences which were gradually embodied in
the whole human evolution out of the different civilisations, will
bear fruit for every separate individual, quite regardless of what
particular destiny he may have had. But we can see this goal only if
we look at the evolution of the world in the light of Anthroposophy.
For let no man deceive himself. To think of such a goal in the right
way, with the full strength of the human individuality, without the
merging of the individuality into some nebulous pantheistic unity, but
in such a way that the individuality is completely maintained, so that
into it flows that which mankind has as a whole acquired this
goal can only be clearly and definitely seen when the soul develops
by means of Anthroposophy.
If we glance back at the earlier civilisations, we see that ever since
human individualities have incarnated, Lucifer and Ahriman have had a
share in the evolution of humanity. Lucifer on his side always seeks
to take part in the progressive stream of civilisation by settling
down into the human astral bodies, and impregnating them with the
Lucifer impulse. Lucifer carries on his existence during the course of
the evolution of mankind by working in upon the human astral bodies.
Man could never acquire what Lucifer gives him, solely from those
powers which bring about the continuous stream of civilisation just
described. If you separate this stream of civilisation from the whole
progressive course of mankind, then you have as ever increasing wealth
that which the normally progressing Spiritual Beings of the
Hierarchies cause to be poured down into humanity. We must look up to
the Hierarchies and say: Those who go through their normal evolution
furnish the earth-civilisation with that which is the lasting
possession of humanity, which was, it is true, transformed later, but
has nevertheless become a lasting possession. It is just like a tree
and the pith within it. And so we obtain a continuous living stream in
the progressing civilisations.
Through these powers who are going through a normal evolution on their
own account, man would have led his Ego more and more with this
progressing enrichment of human evolution. From time to time there would
have flowed in that which brings man on further. Man would have filled
himself more and more with the gifts of the spiritual world, and at
last, when the earth had reached its goal, it stands to reason that man
would have possessed within himself everything which was given from
the spiritual worlds. But then one thing would not have been possible.
Man would not have been able to develop the original, sacred ardour,
devotion and enthusiasm arising in one age of civilisation after
another. Out of the same soil from which springs every wish and every
desire, springs forth also the wish for great ideals, the desire for
the happiness of mankind, for the accomplishments of Art in the
successive periods of human civilisation. From the same soil whence
spring injurious desires leading to evil, springs forth also the
striving after the highest which can be accomplished upon earth. And
that which enkindles the human soul for the highest good, would not
exist if, on the other hand, the same desire might not sink into
wickedness and vice. The possibility of this in human evolution is the
work of the luciferic spirits. We must not fail to recognise that the
luciferic spirits have brought freedom to mankind at the same time as
the possibility of evil free receptivity for that which
otherwise would only flow into the human soul.
But we have seen on other occasions, that everything provoked by
Lucifer finds its counterpart in Ahriman. We see Lucifer and all his
hosts work in that which gave to human evolution the impulse of the
Greek civilisation, in the Greek heroes, in the great men and artists
of Greece. He penetrates into the astral bodies and enkindles
enthusiasm within them for that which they honour as the highest. So
that what was to flow into evolution through Greece became at the same
time an enthusiasm in the soul of the people. This is precisely
Lucifer's realm, because Lucifer owes his power to the Moon-evolution
and not the Earth-evolution. He is a challenge to Ahriman, and as
Lucifer develops his activity from one age to another, Ahriman joins
in and, bit by bit, spoils that which Lucifer has brought about on
earth. The evolution of man is a continual action and reaction between
Ahriman and Lucifer. If Lucifer were not in humanity, the zeal and
fire for the continuous progress of human development would be
lacking; if Ahriman were not there, he who in nation after nation
destroys again that which comes, not from the continuous
stream, but from the luciferic impulse then Lucifer would want
to perpetuate each civilisation. Here you see Lucifer drawing down his
own karma upon himself. This is a necessary consequence of his
evolution on the old Moon. And the consequence now is, that he must
always chain Ahriman to his heels: Ahriman is the karmic fulfilment of
Lucifer.
Thus in the example of the ahrimanic and luciferic beings we get an
insight into the karma of the higher beings. There also karma reigns.
Karma is everywhere where there are egos. Lucifer and Ahriman
naturally have egos and therefore the effects of their deeds can react
upon themselves. Many of those secrets will be touched upon in the
summer, in the series of lectures on Secrets of the Bible Story
of Creation, but there is just one thing to which I should now
like to draw your attention, showing you the profound importance of
each single word in the true occult records.
Have you never thought why it is that in the Bible History of the
Creation, at the end of each day of creation comes the sentence:
And the Elohim saw the work, and they saw that it was very
good! That is a significant statement. Why is it there? The
sentence itself shows that it refers to a characteristic of the Elohim
who evolved in a normal way on the old Moon and whose opponent is
Lucifer. It is given as a sort of characteristic belonging to the
Elohim that after each day of creation they saw that it was very
good. It is given for the reason that this was the degree of
attainment reached by the Elohim. They could on the Moon only see
their work as long as they were performing it, they could not have a
subsequent consciousness of it. That they were able subsequently to
look back reflectively upon their work, marks a particular stage in
the consciousness of the Elohim. This only became possible upon the
earth, and their inner character is shown by the fact that the element
of will streams out from the being of the Elohim, so that when they
saw it they saw that it was very good. Those were the Elohim who had
completed their work upon the Moon and who, when they looked at it
afterwards on the earth, were able to say: It can remain, it is
very good. But for that it was necessary that the Moon-evolution
should be completed.
Now what of the Lucifer beings, who had not completed their
Moon-development? They must also try to look back upon their work when
on earth, for instance, to their share in the ardour and enthusiasm of
the Greek civilisation. They will then see how, little by little,
Ahriman crumbled it away; and they will have to say, because they did
not complete it: They saw their day's work, and behold, it was
not of the best; it had to be blotted out!
That is the great disappointment of the luciferic spirits; they are
always trying to do their work over again, always trying to swing the
pendulum again to the other side, and always they find their work
again destroyed by Ahriman. You must think of it as an ebb and flow in
the tide of human evolution, a continuous rousing of new forces by
beings who are higher than we are ourselves, and the experiencing by
them of continual disappointments. That comes into the experience of
the luciferic spirits in the earth-evolution. Man had to take up this
karma into himself, because only thus could he attain to real freedom
which can develop only when man himself gives the highest purpose to
his earth Ego. That Ego which man would have had, if at the end of the
earth-evolution all goals were given to him, could not in a true sense
be free; for from the beginning it was predestined that all the good
of the earth-evolution should flow into him. Man could only become
free, by adding to the Ego another Ego which is capable of error,
which is always swinging backwards and forwards between good and evil,
and which still is able to strive again and again after that which is
the purpose of the earth-evolution. The lower Ego had to be joined to
man through Lucifer, so that the upward struggle of man to the higher
Ego should be his own deed. Only thus is free will
possible to mankind. Free will is something which man may acquire
gradually, for he is so situated, that in his life, free will floats
before him as an ideal. Does there exist a movement in human evolution
when the human will is free? It is never free, because at any moment
it may succumb to the luciferic and ahrimanic element; it is not free
because every man, when he has passed through the gates of death, in
the ascending time of purification perhaps during several
decades has impressions which are definite and determined. It
is the essential part of kamaloca that we should see to what an extent
we are still imperfect by reason of our failings in the world, that we
should see in detail in what way we have become imperfect. From that
issues the decision to reject everything which has made us imperfect.
Thus life in kamaloca adds one intention to another, and the
conclusion that we make good again everything that we did and thought
which lowered us. What we then feel is imprinted into our further life
and we enter into existence through birth with that decision and
intention thus charged with our own karma. Therefore we cannot speak
of free will when we have entered into existence through birth. We can
say we are approaching nearer to free will, only when we
have succeeded in mastering the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman, and
we can obtain the mastery over the luciferic and ahrimanic influences,
only by means of knowledge. Firstly, through self-knowledge, we make
ourselves more and more capable even in the life between birth
and death of learning to know our weaknesses in all three
departments of the soul, in Thought, Feeling and Will. If we
constantly strive to yield to no illusion, then that strength grows
within our Ego by means of which we are able to resist the luciferic
influence; for then we shall realise more and more how much those
treasures of mankind are really worth. Secondly, we can obtain this
mastery by means of the knowledge of the external world, which must be
supplemented by self-knowledge both must work together. We must
unite self-knowledge and the knowledge of the external world with our
own being and then we shall be quite clear as to how we stand
regarding Lucifer.
It is characteristic of Anthroposophy that through it we are able to
throw light upon these questions how far inclinations and emotions,
and how far Lucifer and Ahriman play into every human action. What
have we done in this course of lectures other than to explain in how
many different ways the luciferic and ahrimanic forces work in our
lives! In our present age, enlightenment as to the luciferic and
ahrimanic forces may begin, and man must be enlightened regarding
these if he really wishes to contribute something towards the
attainment of the goal of earthly humanity. If you look around you,
everywhere where human feeling and human thinking exist, you can see
how far removed men still are from a really true enlightenment of the
influences of Lucifer and Ahriman and you will find that by far the
greater number of people do not wish for such enlightenment. You will
see a great part of mankind succumbing to a certain religious egotism,
and being overcome by the feeling that above all they should in their
own souls attain the greatest degree of well-being. This egotism is
such that people are not in the least conscious that the strongest
passions may play a part in it. Nowhere does Lucifer play a greater
part than when people, driven by their emotions and desires, strive to
ascend to the Divine without having had the Divine illuminated by the
light of knowledge. Do you not think that Lucifer is frequently
involved where people believe they are striving for the highest? But
the forms which are striven for in this way will also belong to the
disenchantments of Lucifer, and those people whose erroneous desires
cause them to believe that they are able to receive this or that form
of spiritual culture, who preach over and over again that this
Anthroposophy is so bad because it believes in something new, ought to
reflect that it does not depend upon human will that Ahriman fastens
himself to the heels of Lucifer. That which came about in the course
of evolution in the forms of religion will, because Ahriman mingles
into them, go under again through Lucifer. The continuous stream of
human evolution will alone be preserved.
In a preceding evolution as we know, certain beings sacrificed
themselves by retarded development. These beings live out their karma
for our sake, so that we may in a normal way express what these beings
can bestow on us. Indeed Jehovah originally poured into mankind by
means of the Divine Breath, the capacity for absorbing the Ego. If
only that Divine Breath had entered which pulsates in the human blood,
without that which leads us away from it; if in fact the luciferic as
well as the ahrimanic impulse were not at work, man would, it is true,
have been able to attain to the actual gift of Jehovah, but he would
not have perceived it with a self-conscious freedom.
Today we may indeed look back upon many disappointments of Lucifer,
but we can also look forward to a future in which we may learn more
and more to understand what the real current of evolution is.
Anthroposophy will be the instrument for the understanding of this and
will help us to be more conscious of the influences of Lucifer, more
able to recognise it within ourselves, and therefore more able to make
good use of it consciously; for formerly it worked but as a dim
impulse. The same applies of course to ahrimanic influences.
In this regard I may perhaps call attention to the fact that an
important period of human evolution is before us, an age in which
soul-forces are reversed. It is an age in which certain persons
very few will develop capacities different from those
recognised to-day. For example, the etheric body of man, besides the
physical body can be seen only by those who have undergone a
methodical training. But even before the middle of the twentieth
century there will be people possessed of a natural etheric
clairvoyance, who, since mankind has reached the epoch in which this
will develop as a natural gift, will perceive the etheric body as
permeating the physical body and extending beyond it. Just as man,
once able to see into the spiritual world, has descended to the merely
physical perception and intellectual comprehension of the external
world, so he begins gradually to evolve new and conscious capacities
which will be added to the old ones. One of these new capacities I
should like to characterise.
There will be people at first only a few, for only in the
course of the next two or three thousand years will these capacities
evolve in larger numbers, and these first forerunners will be born
before the end of the first half of the twentieth century who
will have an experience something like the following. After taking
part in some action they will withdraw from it, and will have before
them a picture which arises from the act in question. At first, they
will not recognise it; they will not find in it any relation to what
they have done. In the end they will see that this picture, which
appears to them as a sort of conscious dream-picture, is the
counterpart of their own action; it is the picture of the action which
must take place, in order that the karmic compensation of the previous
action may be brought about.
Thus we are approaching an age in which men will begin to understand
karma not only from the teachings and presentations of Spiritual
Science, but in which they will begin actually to see karma. Whereas
until now karma was to man an obscure impulse, an obscure desire,
which could be fulfilled only in the following life, which could only
between death and a new birth be transformed into an intention, man
will gradually evolve to a conscious perception of the work of Lucifer
and its effect. Certainly only those will have this power of etheric
clairvoyance who have striven after knowledge and self-knowledge. But
even in normal circumstances men will have more and more before them
the karmic pictures of their actions. That will carry them on further
and further, because they will see what they still owe to the world
what is on the debit side of their karma. What prevents us from
being free is that we do not know what we still owe and so we cannot
really speak of free will in connection with karma. The expression
free will itself is incorrect, for man only becomes free
through ever-increasing knowledge, through rising higher and higher
and growing more and more into the spiritual world. By so doing he
fills himself with the contents of the spiritual world, and becomes in
greater degree the director of his own will. It is not the will which
becomes free, but man who permeates himself with what he can know and
see in the spiritualised domain of the world.
Thus do we look upon the deeds and the disappointments of Lucifer and
say: In this way, thousands of years ago, the foundations were laid
for that on which we stand; for if we did not stand upon those
foundations, we should not be able to evolve to freedom. But after we
have enlightened ourselves about Lucifer and Ahriman, we can gain a
different relation to these powers; we can gather the fruits of what
they have done; we can, as it were, take over the work of Lucifer and
Ahriman. Then, however, the acts of which Lucifer is the author, and
which have always led to disillusions must be transformed into their
opposite when they are performed by us. The deeds of Lucifer
necessarily roused desires, and led man into that which could result
in evil. If we ourselves are to counteract Lucifer, if we are to
regulate his affairs in the future, it will only be the love in us
which can take the place of the acts of Lucifer: but love will be able
to do it.
In the same way when we gradually remove the darkness which we
interweave into external substance so that we completely overcome the
ahrimanic influence we shall recognise the world as it really is. We
shall penetrate to that of which matter really consists to the
nature of Light. At the present day science itself is subject to
manifold deceptions as to the nature of light. Many of us believe that
we see light with our physical eyes. That is not correct. We do not
see light, but only illuminated bodies. We do not see light, but we
see through light. All such deceptions will be swept away so that the
picture of the world will be transformed; for necessarily under the
influence of Ahriman it was interwoven with error, but hence-forward
it will be permeated with wisdom. Man, in pressing forward towards the
light will himself develop the psychic counterpart of light
which is wisdom.
By this means Love and Wisdom will enter the human soul. Love and
Wisdom will become the practical force, the vital impulse which
results from Anthroposophy. Wisdom which is the inner counter-part of
Light, Wisdom which can unite with Love, and Love when it is permeated
with Wisdom; these two will lead us to the understanding of what at
present is immersed in external wisdom. If we are to partake in the
other side of evolution, and to overcome Lucifer and Ahriman, we must
permeate ourselves with Wisdom and Love, for these elements will flow
from our own souls as our offering to those who as the luciferic and
ahrimanic powers in the first half of the evolution sacrificed
themselves to give us what we needed for the attainment of our
freedom. But it is indispensable that we should be aware of the
following: Because evolution must be, we must accept the civilisations
that are the expression of it. We shall gladly and lovingly devote
ourselves to an Anthroposophical culture which will not be eternal
nevertheless we shall accept it with enthusiasm, and we shall
create with love what was before created under the influence of
Lucifer; we shall, too, develop within ourselves a superabundance of
love, without which culture after culture could not be developed. We
shall not be under the delusion that everything will last for ever,
for by our attitude we shall counter-balance Lucifer's
disappointments; we repay to Lucifer consciously the services he has
done us and by this repayment we redeem him.
That is the other side of the karma of higher beings, that we develop
a love which does not remain in mankind alone, but penetrates right
into the cosmos. Love will stream into beings who are higher than we
are and they will feel it as a sacrifice. This sacrifice will rise to
those who once poured their gifts upon us; just as in early days the
smoke of sacrifice ascended to the Spirits, when men still had
spiritual possessions. At that time men were only able to send up the
symbolical smoke of sacrifice, but in the future they will send up
streams of love, and out of the sacrifice higher forces will pour down
to men which will work, with ever increasing power, in our physical
world as forces guided from the spiritual world. Those will be magical
forces in the true sense.
Thus human evolution is the working out of human karma and the karma
of higher beings. The whole plan of evolution is connected with
individual karma. If a higher being or superhuman individuality in the
year 1910 did this or that which was carried out on the physical plane
by a human being, a contact is established between them. The person is
then interwoven into the karma of the higher beings and human karma is
fructified by the universal karma of the world.
Consider Miltiades, or some important personality, who played a part
in the history of his nation. This part was necessary to the karma of
the higher powers and so each man is placed at his post. Into the
individual karma is poured part of the karma of humanity which then
becomes his own karma as soon as he performs some action connected
with it. Thus do we also live and weave into the macrocosm the
individual karma of a microcosm.
We have now reached the end of this course of lectures, although not
the end of the subject. But that cannot be helped. I may just add a
few words more, namely, that I have given this course of lectures on
those very human questions which are able to stir the human heart so
deeply, and which again are connected with the greatest destiny, even
of the higher beings. When I say that I have given this course really
from the depths of my soul and am happy that it was possible for once
to speak of these things in an anthroposophical circle, among
anthroposophical friends, who have come here from all directions in
order to devote themselves to these considerations, these words come
from the bottom of my heart. Those who will have the opportunity of
hearing further courses, will see that much will be answered of what
someone may have in his soul in connection with this course. But those
also who will not be able to hear the summer courses, will later have
the opportunity to discuss something of the sort with me. And so I may
again say on this occasion that I have endeavoured to speak of the
things which have been discussed in such a way that they should not be
mere abstract knowledge, but so that they should pass over into our
thought, feeling and will, into our whole life, so that one should be
able to see in the Anthroposophists who are out in the world a
likeness and picture of that which we may call the deepest
Anthroposophical truths. Let us endeavour to bring ourselves
completely to this, for only then shall we have an Anthroposophical
movement which in our small circle exists for the study of spiritual
knowledge. Then, however, this knowledge must first of all in
the circle of our members become life and soul to us, and as
such pass over into the world. And the world will gradually see that
it was not in vain that at the turning-point of the twentieth century
there were honest and upright Anthroposophists people who
honestly and straightforwardly believed in the might of the spiritual
powers. And when they themselves believed in it, they became filled
with the force with which to work for it. Faster and faster will
civilisation proceed in our lives, if we within ourselves transform
that which we hear into life, into action and into deeds and
not by trying to convince other people. The present age is not yet
ready for that. Those only will be convinced who come to Anthroposophy
out of the deepest impulse of their hearts; the remainder will not be
convinced. We have karma in the mental sphere too, it was something
called forth by materialism; and we must look upon these defects as
that against which Anthroposophy must show itself to be a spiritual
power.
Therefore that which we have to give to the world must be given out of
the conviction that it is the most important thing. Each one who has
transformed Anthroposophy into an inner force of his soul will be a
spiritual source of strength. And whosoever will believe in the
super-sensible may be absolutely convinced that our Anthroposophical
knowledge and convictions work in a spiritual way, that is to say,
they spread invisibly into the world if we make ourselves truly into a
conscious instrument, filled with the life of Anthroposophy.
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Last Modified: 02-Nov-2024
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