LECTURE XXIX
Berlin, 3rd November 1905
We will now throw yet more light on the hidden working of Karma and
consider the Karmic relationships between peoples and individuals.
Those who take earnestly the principle of not looking at the world
materialistically, but who seek for explanations out of the spirit
will understand this.
We have learned from history that illnesses which previously did not
exist make their appearance in the course of evolution. So today, to
begin with, we shall hear something about the origin of such illnesses
as are connected with epochs and peoples.
We shall understand this from out of the spirit. The explanation the
doctor gives is that this or that illness is caused by bacilli. We
must however ask: where do the bacilli come from? They are just as
much incarnated living beings as man. Of those beings too which act as
disturbers of human life we must ask: Where do they come from? What
has brought them into their present material existence? What were they
before they incarnated?
Let us suppose, for example, that some nation or race is in its
decline, is moving towards its downfall. It puts up a resistance.
This resistance to its downfall is a spiritual expression of something
that lives in the astral body of the nation in question. Were such a
decline to concern only that which was to come to an end, then the
feeling engendered would have no special effect upon others in the
world. Let us assume however that it comes in conflict with another
nation, plunging it into fear and anxiety and thus sets up a reaction
in this other nation. Then we have a two-fold situation: the nation
suffering decline, and what arises out of the confluence of the
disturbance of the one people fighting against their own decline, and
the fear and alarm of the other people. This is something lasting.
Let us take a particular case: the Mongolian onslaughts of the Middle
Ages, when the Mongols came into conflict with the Europeans,
spreading among them fear and alarm. Such fear and such alarm are then
present in the peoples in question. When one looks at these attacking
hordes, of which the Mongolians are the last, placing oneself in the
mood of all these mediaeval peoples, one sees how the desperation of
the last branches of the Fourth Root-Race and the fear and alarm
engendered in the Europeans created spiritual forms. If such an
onslaught were to be met with courage and love, then the putrefying
substance would be dissolved. But fear, hate and alarm conserve such
decaying forms and these provide a source of nourishment for beings
such as bacilli. Later they incarnate in those material forms suitable
for such an incarnation. Thus the decaying substances embedded
themselves in the fear and alarm of the European peoples as seeds of
decay. These are minute living beings. In this way arose the mediaeval
disease, leprosy. It arose out of the decaying substance of the
declining Mongolian peoples.
What then is the origin of those disturbers of human physical nature?
They come from earlier spiritual causes, from sinfulness. This is
Karma as it manifests in national communities. From this you can
estimate how the moral life of a nation conditions the external life
of the future. It lies in the power of a nation to care for its
physical future through a corresponding moral life in the present.
All the European esoteric schools say that all the bacterial illnesses
of modern times have a similar origin. The illnesses caused by bacilli
are traced back to their spiritual origin. This is an esoteric
tradition among the Rosicrucians and in other esoteric schools where
these things are taught. A fundamental teaching exists in small
circles of esoteric schools, the content of which is that in the
seventies quite definite battles took place in the astral world which
caused things to take a better turn, even though ... [Gap in text
...]. These events are called the battle between the hosts of the
archangel known to Christian esotericism as Michael and the hosts of
the god Mammon.
(76)
Mammon is, on the one hand, the god of
hindrances, who places destructive, hindering things in the path of
progress. On the other hand one sees in this god Mammon the creator of
quite definite forms which work disturbingly in human life just in the
sphere of infectious illnesses. Certain infectious illnesses, unknown
in earlier times, are brought about by the god Mammon.
We can estimate to what degree the esoteric schools must rouse a
progressive thinking in the inmost depths of the human being when one
realises that the actual source of these modern illnesses is nothing
other than a retrogression, the longstanding conservatism of the
so-called upper classes as opposed to the poverty-striken lower
classes who are striving towards a new ... [Gap in text ...]. They are
hindered, held back by what the god Mammon brings about. We find two
forces confronting one another: the sentimental world of the declining
upper classes, who like to preserve antiquated conditions, and the
feeling of hatred in the lower classes an astral life projected
against the others by the masses. In this opposition esotericism again
sees decaying substance and therein the cause of modern infectious
illnesses. Whoever sees into these things will of course not take them
as a reason for opposing modern medicine with its external remedies.
But a real improvement will never come about through these external
methods.
What will come about later always reveals itself in advance through
esoteric knowledge. This consists of rightly perceiving how the
morality of the present day can lead to better health in the future.
One can judge from this how profound was the perception of those who
introduced the Theosophical Movement into the world. It arose out of
the knowledge of such relationships. It was foreseen that the threat
of the War of All against All would take on ever more menacing forms.
The things that must come about fulfil themselves with an inner
necessity, just as events in the East develop like a fire there where
there is especially inflammable material.
(77)
It would be senseless
to wish to arrest such things. The appropriate and serviceable means
to avert the War of All against All was sought by the Theosophical
Movement through the spreading of the axiom of brotherhood. For
brotherhood dissolves what streams into the world as means of decay,
as hate. For as regards races we find ourselves on a downward path. If
one were to believe that this downfall could be delayed and contained
by hatred, not resolved by love, then naturally the very worst would
follow. The Theosophical Movement would overcome this decline by love.
Its founders know that the Theosophical Society is not only a remedy,
but the source of the development of humanity as it goes into the
future.
So one sees how the physical is a result of what preceded it
spiritually and how in particular circumstances people have it in
their power, through knowledge of certain relationships, to connect
the physical with its spiritual origin. For example, if one knows how
a particular illness is connected with particular feelings and
emotions, he knows that by calling up these feelings he can also call
up the illness. The black magician can make use of this knowledge to
destroy the people. The deep occult truths can therefore not be taught
to everyone without due consideration, for it would immediately bring
about a sharp demarcation between good and evil. This is the danger
inherent in the spreading of occult teachings, for no-one can be
taught how to make people well, without at the same time learning how
to make people ill. Where occult teachings have penetrated more into
certain peoples such things have happened. There are districts in the
East where one can hear true reports that there are sects who make it
their task to produce definite illnesses. Thus we penetrate to an ever
greater degree into the understanding of the ways in which the
material arises out of the spiritual.
Now we will try to survey somewhat longer periods of time. We know
that today there is a beautiful complementary interaction between
everything that exists as animal life and the plant world. The plant
makes use of carbon for itself and breathes out oxygen, thereby
creating the source of life for all creatures in its surroundings who
need to breathe. This source arises from the plant world. All that
breathes today is there through the action of this mysterious workshop
of the plant world. From this we can form a concept of how Worlds go
under, how the World which preceded our Earth passed away. On the Old
Moon breathing did not exist as it does now in human beings and
animals. A quite different process took the place of the breathing
process on the Old Moon. We can form a picture of the earlier process
when we look at something remaining over from this time: the varying
warmth of animals which develop the same temperature as their
surroundings. On the Moon there was warmth or fire breathing. The
inhaling and exhaling of fire or warmth corresponded at that time to
the present day inhaling and exhaling of the air. In the middle of the
Lemurian Age the breathing process began to take on the form it has
today.
The spiritual process of the embedding of the Monad in the lower man
finds its material reflection in breathing. Breathing signifies the
inhaling of the Monad. In Hatha Yoga therefore the pupil goes through
a breathing process. He regulates rhythmically what man has today as a
natural process in order to bring breathing under his control. Just as
before man advanced to this process of breathing, he inhaled and
exhaled warmth, transforming this into the circulation of the warm
blood, so the pupil of Hatha Yoga seeks to form the breathing process
into something inward, to bring it inwardly under his control. The
Hatha Yoga rules signify the transformation of the breath into a
process that does not go from within outwards, but is inwardly
regulated, just as today the circulation of the blood is also inwardly
regulated. In the case of animals with variable temperature the
process of blood circulation has the same relationship to that of
human beings as the breathing process of the Hatha Yoga pupil. Behind
all these things lie deep thoughts concerning evolution which ought to
be the foundation of real processes.
What today is usually not understood is that in the air there is
something spiritual. When there was still a consciousness of this,
spirit was called: Air, Wind = Pneuma. Pneuma means a current of air
and also the soul-spiritual. This terminology stems from times in
which one still had a consciousness of the true connections. Let us
now take the fact that on the predecessor of our Earth (the Old Moon)
certain beings had evolved beyond the stage of the human evolution of
that time. These were the Luciferic beings. When one considers these
beings one must say: They did not live in an environment such as the
Earth has today. They could not breathe air, thus they could not take
in the spirit, for the taking in of spirit corresponds to the
breathing of air. They were obliged to carry out in the
warmth-principle what today takes place in the air. We differentiate
on the Earth seven conditions of the physical: Firstly Life-ether,
Secondly Chemical-ether, Thirdly Light-ether, Fourthly Warmth-ether,
Fifthly Air, Sixthly Water, Seventhly Solid. Thus the Luciferic Beings
had to carry out in warmth what man today carries out in air. Now you
can understand that owing to this, these Beings who gave man his
separate consciousness, his independence, are in a certain sense
connected with fire. For this reason, when they make their appearance,
it is connected with a certain craving for everything that manifests
in man as heat, as fire. The craving attaches itself to man's
individual warmth. So the donors of knowledge and freedom are bound up
with something which seeks to incarnate in the element of warmth in
man in a similar way to how this happened on the Old Moon. This is the
connection between knowledge and birth and death, illness and so on in
the world. With knowledge, birth, death and illness came into the
world. This was the price man paid for knowledge. We see therefore
also the connection between certain heat phenomena and illness, namely
fever. This is the origin of fever. Traditions of this lingered on
into the 19th century.
In the earlier Planetary conditions, the forerunners of our Earth, we
had not to do as yet with human beings, animals, plants and minerals
as they are today. At that time beings existed who had not yet
descended so deeply as present-day animals, nor yet ascended so high
as present-day man. At that time plants did not exhale oxygen. Oxygen,
this breath of life, did not as yet exist. Only with the coming into
being of our plant kingdom did nitrogen become mingled with oxygen.
The Moon was surrounded by an atmosphere of nitrogen. In the second
half of this previous Planet the beings did certainly already strive
towards such forms as could breathe, which were endowed with lungs and
so on; but only in our present Earth-Cycle did the plant kingdom
evolve as it is now. The animal beings then developed the organs of
breathing. They pushed the plant kingdom a stage lower, in order that
it should provide oxygen for breathing.
These processes on the predecessor of our Earth had to be followed by
a condition where life in the same form was no longer possible. The
form had developed into something else and needed a new Planet. The
preceding Planet had to meet its end; everything living suffocated.
Thus do the Planets with their life perish, and from what has been
prepared a new life evolves in the body of the Mother Planet. This is
how the decline and uprising of Planetary evolution is to be
understood.
Just as man previously had the other kingdoms within himself, so today
he still has the evil in his Karma within him. This he is now working
out of himself. In the future good and evil will be there in external
forms, a race of the good and a kingdom of the evil side by side. At
that future time the human countenance will appear in transfigured
form out of the separated, downward-thrust evil of animality. Let us
think of the transfigured human countenance that today slumbers like a
riddle in animal matter, separated from the animal evil and
represented symbolically. You can represent it to yourselves in no
better way than in the great intuition of the Egyptian Sphinx. This
not only points back to the past, but it also points towards the
future. Not for nothing did the old Egyptians place the Sphinx in
front of the Temple of Initiation. Initiation is the implanting of the
secret of the future into human souls. At the entrance to the Temple
it was through the Sphinx that the milieu for initiation was already
created.
What outwardly is the body of oxygen is inwardly the Monad. As soon as
oxygen appeared on the Earth the Monad had the possibility of
incarnating. It is an attempt to possess the Monad when the pupil
breathes in much oxygen and endeavours to retain it. Oxygen is not
only something externally material. One must examine oxygen in the
light of its spirit. Thus outwardly we have oxygen and inwardly the
Monad. Oxygen therefore in the Lemurian Age formed the body for the
descending sons of Manas.
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