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IX - The Continuation of Ego Consciousness after Death in Relation to the Christ
September 14, 1922
The
ordinary earthly soul life runs its course in the
inwardly experienced manifestations of thinking, feeling
and will. In reality, as we have seen in the previous lectures,
the reason for this is that when we wake up an etheric and
astral organism as well as an ego being are contained in man's
physical organization. In a certain respect, man's astral
organization and ego being are outside his physical body during
sleep, or, more accurately, outside the head organization
of the physical body. When man is awake in earthly life,
however, the etheric and astral organisms and the ego being are
completely united with the physical organism. They are active
in the physical corporeality. During sleep, the soul's own
system of forces is not strong enough to become conscious of
what it experiences in the astral and ego organisms. On the
other hand, in the waking condition only that enters clearly
into ordinary consciousness which the physical body reflects as
thoughts from the activity of the etheric and astral organism
and the ego being.
If,
in his waking state, man were fully capable of
experiencing the activity of his own entire soul being,
he would experience first of all the course of his own life,
namely, what underlies the memories as the reality of the
course of life. He would be equally aware of the cosmic
experience in the higher worlds that we have learned about and
which, during sleep, remains unperceived and beyond
consciousness. For if man were fully capable of using his
astral body, there would descend into his waking consciousness
what he experiences each night as a replica of the planetary
movements. He would feel how the after-images of these
planetary movements stream through his breathing and
circulatory system. As paradoxical as it sounds to ordinary
consciousness, he could say: Through my veins streams the
power of the Sun, intensified by the force of Mars, permeated
by the substantial force of Jupiter, etc. Man would be able to
say that he was feeling an after-effect in his own being of the
planetary movements. And if he could experience his
complete ego being during waking consciousness, he would
also feel how the spiritual essence of the fixed stars in the
sky permeates his own self.
All
this is suppressed during ordinary waking consciousness.
Man experiences nothing in waking consciousness of the ether
body's activity, which, after all, comprises the actual
foundation that underlies the course of his life. He knows
nothing of the impulses that come from the movements of
the planets and live as stimuli in his breathing, and pulse
through his blood circulation. Nothing comes to
experience in ordinary waking consciousness of the many
activities of the astral organization. He also
experiences nothing of what is expressed in the constellations
of the fixed stars and is reproduced in the eternal core of his
ego being, and which, if he could experience it, would lead him
to say, “I am permeated by God.” This too does not
come into awareness in ordinary consciousness because the
activities that are carried out in the everyday condition of
wakefulness by the etheric and astral bodies and the ego relate
to the physical organization in the same manner in which man
clothes himself with it anew each morning. Although
unaware of them, he actively permeates his physical organism
with the forces that he has gathered during sleep out of the
starry world and has acquired from the planetary movements.
Because man actively penetrates his physical body, because his
three soul elements — etheric and astral organizations
and the ego being — affect the physical organism with
their activity from the moment of waking up until the moment of
falling asleep, the bodily organization is worked upon in a
specific way. For the purely physical activity which then
arises in the body itself causes and enables the whole soul
life to express itself in concepts, in thoughts that are
reflected images thrown by the physical body back into the
soul.
Man
has no awareness of the vitality that courses through him, he
is not conscious of the planetary movements and the world
of the fixed stars, because all the activity of his inner
being is reflected during waking life onto the physical body.
Through its senses, the physical body carries the effects of
the outer world into the physical inner being; the phenomena of
light stream in through the eyes and through the ear, the world
of sounds; the realities of heat and cold enter through the
sense of warmth. By means of the activity put forth by the soul
all this is reflected as thoughts in the physical organism, and
the soul experiences these reflected thoughts in its clear,
ordinary consciousness.
These are the facts surrounding the soul's experience in
ordinary wakefulness, and this poses the question to us: What
does the soul actually do to the physical organism so that
thoughts appear as reflections? — But first, let us keep
firmly in mind that the physical organism really prevents the
soul from having a consciousness of the cosmic facts, which
actually reverberate and produce after-effects in it. We shall
next occupy ourselves with the details of how the waking
consciousness unfolds.
Let
us examine to begin with what it is that this triad — the
etheric and astral bodies and the ego being — produces as
it works in the physical head organization of man. It turns out
that the activity that is exercised on the human head
organization by this triad has a degenerative effect. If the
human etheric body alone were to penetrate the physical
organization, a continuous revitalizing activity would be
present in the physical head system. In a manner of
speaking, the head's activities would be completely
filled with life. But in that case no physical consciousness
would arise. Physical consciousness only arises because the
astral organism intervenes in the head organization. This
astral organism is adapted and attuned to man's pre-earthly
life, something that we have already become familiar with. The
astral organism must consider it its task, if I may put
it like this, not to work upon this densely material, physical
corporeality but to fill with its own astral activity the
body's cosmic spirit form as it did in pre-earthly existence.
This astral organism of man is, after all, an after-image of
what the soul brought forth out of the secrets of the planetary
movements and the constellations of the fixed stars in order to
form what I have called earlier the cosmic germ of the physical
organization. The activity of the astral organism is therefore
not directed to the earthly metamorphosis of the physical body,
but toward the cosmic spirit-metamorphosis of the physical
organism. This means that while the astral organism is active
in the physical organism, it continually wants to spiritualize
the physical insofar as the brain or head organization is
concerned. Indeed, our astral organism works constantly
to transform our head organization into something spiritual. An
actual, outwardly visible transformation is not achieved, only
the tendency toward transformation is always there.
This tendency, then, is present continually. Degenerative
forces are constantly added by the head organization of the
astral body to the regenerative forces of the human head
organization that would otherwise produce fresh, sparkling, but
unconscious life in the human head. To the extent that it is
head organization, these degenerative forces try to destroy the
physical organism, making it feasible for a spirit organization
to shine forth from it, for that is what the astral organism is
accustomed to from pre-earthly life. The physical head
configuration, however, offers resistance, it cannot be broken
down. This resistance is expressed in the fact that each time
sleep must intervene at the moment when the physical
configuration of the head would otherwise disintegrate
due to the astral body's activity. Then, in sleep, the forces
of the etheric body alone are active once again in the
head.
The
alternating states of waking and sleeping may also be
characterized by saying that during the waking state the astral
forces continually expose the human head organization to
death. The instant their destructive activity is on the verge
of changing from a latent to an active state, if I may put it
that way, sleep intervenes. The imaginative consciousness
of modern initiation knowledge can observe these facts in the
appearance of man's etheric body during the periods of waking
and sleeping.
In
regard to the head organization, the etheric body, which
permeates the physical body as spiritual activity,
becomes increasingly undifferentiated during the waking
hours. In a man who is awake you find an etheric organism that
is markedly differentiated inwardly and possesses complicated
forms in those parts of the physical body where the lungs, the
liver, the stomach, and limbs are located. The etheric organism
has an abundance of shapes in these areas during waking hours.
By contrast, the longer wakefulness lasts, the more
undifferentiated the ether body in the head organization
becomes. Finally, it turns into something comparable to a
uniform cloud in the head, for the characteristic
regenerative forces that are otherwise present in this
etheric organism lose their impact as the degenerative forces
of the astral organism in the waking state exercise their
deadening effect upon the head system.
It
is quite different during the state of sleep. You see with
imaginative consciousness how this element of
differentiation, of manifoldness of the etheric organism
penetrates the etheric head system. In sleep, the head's
etheric organization acquires the same kind of forms as
possessed by the rest of the etheric organism during the waking
state. In sleep, the life forces, the formative forces of the
etheric body wake up in the head. Then, the head becomes an
unconscious but most alive organization.
So
you can see that in earth existence, due to waking
consciousness, man bears potential death continually in his
head organization. The tendency to die is present in the head
all the time. The astral organism wants to transform the head
system continually into spirit. It wants to make the head into
an organ of planetary motion, into an image of the starry
constellations. The astral organization is an ever-present
destroyer of the physical head configuration.
If
present-day science knew about these facts, it would find it
utterly impossible to succumb to materialism. For what is it
that those people say who want to interpret the whole human
organization in a materialistic way? They say that the organic
processes of life take place in the head just as they do in the
liver or in the stomach, only in the brain they are expressed
as thoughts, as soul activity. Compared to the facts, however,
this is sheer nonsense. We do not think and experience the soul
in ordinary consciousness due to constructive life processes
that go on in the head, but because our nervous system is
continually on the verge of being destroyed as a result of the
presence of death in us. To be awake in the life of soul in
ordinary consciousness signifies that organic processes
are not developed but rather made to die down. They must first
die down within themselves and make room for the soul, if
they are to unfold in ordinary consciousness. If this were
correctly understood, people would have to say that quite
certainly soul life cannot originate from organic processes,
because these processes have to come first to the point of
dying down. They must first withdraw from the head organization
if the soul is to be active there.
These are the true facts in regard to the way man's soul and
his physical body function together. This also shows how,
through being born, man at once bears within his head system
the predisposition for death. Through supersensible knowledge
we learn to understand that death has the tendency to
occur continually in us and is constantly kept in check only by
sleep. The once-in-a-lifetime event of dying, death in the
physical sense, is indeed only a summing up, a more pronounced
process in comparison to the continuous, if I may say so,
atomistically minute death processes that take place all the
time in waking consciousness. As long as we possess a physical
organism, it defends itself against the destruction wrought by
the astral organism. This is how matters stand with the head
organization.
Man's astral organization, however, does not merely have this
effect in waking life, only a part of it does. Another part
finds its way into earthly life more in the form in which it is
active in pre-earthly existence. This part of man's astral body
is not active in the head organization but in everything that
constitutes the rhythmic system, that is to say, those organs
of the physical body in which breathing, blood circulation and
the other rhythmic processes take place. Although this part of
the astral body, to which I refer now, lives in man's rhythmic
system, it does not unite itself as closely with the rhythmic
system as does the other part that is active in the head. That
part takes hold of the head organization so strongly that it
continually makes it incline toward death by breaking it up,
whereas the part of the astral body that enters the human
rhythmic system permeates this organization. It lives in the
breathing and in the blood circulation, but because it does not
take hold of this organization in such an intense manner,
it leaves it in some respects undisturbed. It does not lay hold
of this system for the purpose of destroying it. But for
this reason, no thought life comes into being through this
union of the astral organization of man and the rhythmic
system. The expressions of the soul life are reflected in the
physical head organism which has the constant tendency to die.
This produces fully conscious thinking. On the other hand, what
is continually taking place in the streaming together of the
astral and the rhythmic organizations is not reflected in the
same manner as in the life of thoughts so that a clear
consciousness could result. It is expressed in the more vague
form of soul life: man's emotional life, his feelings. Emotions
arise, because, in waking life, the astral organism pulses
through the breathing and blood circulation but does not
destroy these processes and does not immerse itself so
deeply into them. Instead, through its interplay with the
rhythmic system, man's life of feeling is roused.
While an element of what the human being has experienced in his
pre-earthly, cosmic sojourn lives in the rhythmic-organic
system, it does not reach clear consciousness. This has a quite
definite consequence. Through this interplay between the astral
and the physical-rhythmic organisms which I have described,
something continually takes place below in the unconscious that
enters ordinary daytime consciousness only as a weak
reflection. Let us study this in detail. Say that a person
carries out his activities, his deeds in physical life. These
actions of his do not express themselves in him as do mere
natural phenomena. Out of a certain impulse that arises from
his subconscious, he feels impelled to judge whether these
activities are moral or immoral, valuable or worthless, wise or
unwise. Moral evaluation, moral judgement joins in with
the otherwise amoral, not anti-moral life of thinking.
Now, what is it that flashes up from the depth of soul
experience and tells us: This action is good, that one is bad,
this deed is wise, that one is foolish? It is a soul activity
which has remained as it was in pre-earthly existence, which
penetrates man's rhythmic organism of breathing and blood
circulation but cannot fully stream up into the life of
thoughts. It only colors it. This way, we also have reflections
of this inner experience in our conscious life of thoughts,
which are valuable for the activities we carry on in the
physical world. We do not bear within us only what we express
in our actions as the conscious judgement of thinking.
No, in the rhythmic system of man there lives and pulses an
astral-spiritual element that is similar in form to what it was
already in pre-earthly life and which — distinctly for
itself but indistinctly for ordinary consciousness — says
Yes or No to his actions. Here, within us, lives a judge who
judges the worthiness of our soul, and this soul-judge is as
real as is our soul that lives as thinking-soul within our head
organization.
In
ancient times of humanity's evolution, those who wanted to
attain higher perception in the old manner sought, therefore,
to bring the rhythmic system into consciousness, the breathing
and also the blood circulation. Now observe what resulted from
their efforts to use an older method of entering into the
spiritual world, a method no longer to be employed today. It
turned out that those people were able to discern their own
human value from what the cosmos inscribed into their
breathing, considering it good or bad, wise or foolish. In the
old Indian Yogi, judgement as to what was morally natural and
naturally moral in him was carried up into the brain by the
breath from the rhythmic system. During his Yoga perception, he
made his brain into a breathing organ for a while and
experienced what the cosmos said about his activity.
This judgement by the cosmos concerning our deeds is very real
in the astral human organization. When man's physical body is
laid aside at death, the obstacle is removed which prevents
what lives in man's breathing and blood circulation from
entering his consciousness. The physical organism is like a
non-transparent cover for what takes place in the astral
organism in the way that I have just described. Therefore, the
astral experiences that live in the breathing and blood
circulation between birth and death continue to live on in
man's being beyond death. We shall comprehend how this works
when, directly after the translation of this part, I
shall describe what the human soul undergoes when it actually
passes through the portal of death.
When, at death, man's physical organism falls away from the
human entity and disintegrates, man remains at the outset in
the etheric and astral organisms and his ego being.
Inasmuch as the physical organism is no longer an
obstacle to the soul's unfolding into the cosmic element
and ceases to hold the soul back in its own sphere, the
possibility of cosmic consciousness arises at once for the
human soul. The human soul is now clothed in the etheric
organism that is no longer bound to a physical body. While this
etheric organism represents the course of man's life on the one
hand, it is at the same time the vehicle for the continuous
in-streaming of cosmic forces of life. As the soul gradually
passes through death along with the ether body, it
experiences the cosmic world-ether in the etheric
organism. The activities that take place in this world-ether
now stream into the etheric organism, for only the physical
body had prevented this earlier. Now this obstacle is
gone. In its inner activities, the etheric organism is not as
separated from the outer cosmic events and realities as is the
physical organism. The occurrences outside in the cosmic
world-ether stream actively into man's etheric organism, and
what occurs in the human etheric organism pulsates out into the
world-ether. After death, man not only lives directly in his
own etheric organism, but, inasmuch as he has liberated it from
the physical organization he finds his way into the
cosmic-etheric element, which continually streams in and out of
him.
Since the human soul is a unity, however, man's astral and ego
being are drawn along into the cosmic-etheric realm.
Increasingly, cosmic-etheric awareness lights up in the human
soul as its own inner being. But in comparison to this great,
mighty cosmic consciousness, man's own ether body represents
only a very small etheric element; and the cosmic ether
actually lives within this minute etheric element. For
this reason, man's own etheric experiences, which were held
together again and again by his physical organization, no
longer have any significance in the great cosmic ocean of ether
with its cosmic consciousness. This, however, means nothing
less than the fact that man's etheric organism dissolves quite
soon after death. Then, along with the cosmic consciousness
that he has attained, man retains his astral organization and
his ego being.
In
this astral organism, however, the after-effects are contained
of what it experienced on earth while within the physical body.
I have characterized how a part of the astral organism retains
its cosmic nature, as it were, since it is only loosely
connected with the breathing and circulatory rhythms. Now that
the physical organs of breathing and circulation are cast off,
man's inner nature, which developed along with the physical
processes of breathing and circulation during earthly
life, lives on with its content of moral qualities and
evaluation. Permeated by cosmic consciousness, this lives on
and is experienced after death. The element that found its
reflection during earth life in physical breathing and the
blood circulation comes to expression in a cosmic rhythm after
death. A rhythm is present again, but it is one in which man
feels that the moral quality-valuation holds sway which he
brought along from earthly life. He experiences his
astral content as moral qualities; how they came to be good or
bad, wise or foolish during life on earth. This is a kind of
inner pulse beat.
The
cosmic process that is not yet permeated by the moral element
but represents a purely cosmic element streams continually into
this inner pulse-beat from outside. It represents an amoral,
not an anti-moral process that is reflected on earth in the
processes of nature. We do not distinguish between
“good” or “bad” in nature, everything
proceeds according to neutral natural laws. All that goes on in
nature is a reflection of a cosmic process, and that cosmic
process pulses rhythmically into the after-effect of the
rhythmic-moral valuation. After death, man thus experiences
himself as existing in a cosmic rhythm, he inhales the
cosmos in its moral innocence and exhales into the cosmos
the moral judgements he has accumulated. A cosmic rhythm has
taken the place of the physical rhythm, and the human soul
experiences in this cosmic rhythm how a moral element arises in
the cosmos — which is designed to reflect itself amorally
in outer nature — an element which, because of human
experiences on earth, is carried out through the gate of death
into this cosmos. The moral evaluations of its deeds that the
human soul bears through the portal of death into the cosmos is
incorporated into the cosmic amorality. The moral results of
man's life that have been carried through death are now
imbedded into the depths of the cosmos. By means of his
consciousness that is no longer impeded by anything, man
becomes a witness of how a moral element develops for a future
world in the depths of the amoral cosmos. Our world is morally
neutral inasmuch as nature is a reflection of the cosmos. A
future world will arise out of ours whose nature in its
reflection (of the cosmos) will not be morally neutral;
instead, everything moral will be natural and everything
natural will be moral. The seed for this is carried by man into
the cosmos through his moral deeds. During this experience, the
human soul consciously faces the great question: As my
existence continues, do the moral qualities that I have
acquired make me worthy to take part in the future cosmos that
no longer will have a merely neutral image in nature but
a moral one?
This experience of the soul after death in the cosmic rhythm,
described above as sensations and feelings — we can use
these terms even though they do not quite represent the
supersensible experience — is proof of the impact of
morality upon the physical world. This lends a nuance of its
own to the soul's experiences for a certain length of time
following death. I once described these experiences, which are
now pictured from another side, in my book, Theosophy,
and there I called them the “soul world.”
But
if, after death, man had to remain only within these
experiences, he could not reach the point where he could
properly prepare the spiritual archetype of his future
physical organism that I have described earlier, and
which he must bear within him in a new earth life. It could not
be developed in a proper, healthy way out of a soul life filled
with moral imperfections from the preceding earth life.
Consequently, at a certain point after death, the soul must
enter a world where it lives only in the purified cosmos, where
the experiences of the cosmic rhythm that I have describe
abate. This is because all moral valuation of the soul's
activities affects this cosmic rhythm, and this would only
produce a decadent spiritual archetype for the future physical
organism. A healthy physical body can only be created when the
soul is allowed to enter a world where it is no longer
influenced by the after-effects of the earthly soul experiences
of its past incarnation, where, instead, the nonhuman
spiritual impulses of the cosmos are active, as I have pictured
it. These experiences that have to be undergone by the human
soul in the purified cosmos of the spirit were also
characterized by me in my book, Theosophy, from another
side than is done here. There I have called them “spirit
land.” Man has to enter this spirit land of the soul, for
it is only then that he will be able to collaborate in the
universal, all-embracing creation of the spiritual organism
that in future time metamorphoses into the physical organism.
Man must be relieved for a while of the imperfections
stemming from an earlier life, otherwise he would have to
reincarnate in a misshapen physical organism in his next
earth-life.
We
thus arrive through inner perception at a description of what
man experiences by means of his soul forces in the spiritual
cosmos after death. Along with his astral body, he naturally
also carries into the cosmic spirit world what lives in his ego
being. This ego being, however, must be worked on in still
another way. That can be the subject of tomorrow's
lecture. Today, I will have to describe in the last
portion of my lecture how the form assumed by man after
death relates to Christian evolution and the Mystery of
Golgotha.
You
will understand that a true cosmology can only come into being
when we include in it what inspiration can know concerning the
incorporation of such a moral, cosmic germ, as I have
described. Any cosmology would remain incomplete if it
did not know that the present cosmos, which finds a neutral,
amoral reflection in physical nature, will through the lives of
men become a cosmos one day in which the natural is at the same
time moral, and the moral is natural. For this reason, a true
cosmology can only arise when ordinary knowledge is
enriched by inspiration, just as a true philosophy can only
receive a living content when it includes the results of
imagination, as I brought out yesterday. Such a
cosmology, however, also requires Christianity.
In
the age that preceded the Mystery of Golgotha there were
initiates who employed methods other than those that must be
used in initiation of the present day. Those ancient initiates,
who lived prior to this Mystery of Golgotha and who knew what
happens in the spiritual worlds that man en counters
after death, were already able to say to their followers:
“After death, you enter a soul world in which you have to
experience the consequences of your moral qualities and
qualities similar to them. But you cannot enter the spirit land
with the same soul forces that unfolded in the soul world, for
even if you were to enter there the after-effect, present in
your consciousness, of the moral evaluation present in
the astral organism would dull and extinguish your ego
consciousness, the consciousness of your self that you would
otherwise attain in spirit land after death.”
As
I said, ego consciousness has developed here in the physical
world on the basis of the physical organism. But precisely for
the cultivation of man's spirit germ, an ego consciousness had
to be present for the sojourn in spirit land even in ancient
times of human evolution.
“Man cannot possess this ego consciousness by means of
his own forces,” said the old initiates to those of their
followers who wanted to listen. “He can only have it, if,
at a certain moment after he has passed through the soul world,
the lofty Spiritual Being, Whose physical reflection is the
physical sun, comes and stands beside him, and leads him from
the soul world into the spirit land, being his Guide from then
on. As man here in the physical world experiences his best
physical forces under the influence of the physical sun,”
thus spoke the initiates of old, “so he must be taken by
the hand, pictorially speaking, when he passes out of the soul
world into spirit land in order to receive his best forces from
the impulses of that Sun Being, whose physical reflection
here is the physical sun. “ In this way, the ancient
initiates presented the spiritual Sun Being as the lofty
Companion of the human soul through spirit land.
The
initiates, who lived at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and
three to four centuries later, said to those who wished to be
their followers and wanted to hear what they said: Because of
the direction taken by the physical development of man's
organization, the inner human being, after his passage through
the soul world, is so obsessed by what he has perceived of the
moral consequences that if he were to remain dependent upon his
own powers, his consciousness would darken there and he
would not be able to receive the influence of that Sun Being.
For this reason, the Sun Being Itself descended to earth,
assumed a human nature in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and
accomplished the deed of the Mystery of Golgotha.
If
man, in addition to what he can attain here on earth by means
of his sense perception and the development of his ego
consciousness, can also become aware of the Christ Being
in his feelings, if he acquires an insight into the Mystery of
Golgotha in his feelings — which are tied to the astral
body — then, the after-effect of the relationship between
earth events and Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha also
exercises its effect upon the astral being of man which lives
on after death in the manner that I have described. By means of
this after-effect, man's consciousness, which would otherwise
remain cloudy and dark, is given strength when he passes from
the soul world into spirit land after death. It is made capable
of perception in the spiritual world, which in turn enables the
soul to prepare the spiritual archetype of the next physical
organization between death and a new birth.
Therefore, the initiates, who were contemporaries of the
Mystery of Golgotha, or lived a few centuries afterwards, said
to their followers: Although man has developed in such a way
that he does not carry the forces through death that can lead
him from the soul world into the spirit land, Christ did
descend to the earth and accomplished the Deed of
Golgotha. Through the effects of this Deed of Golgotha on
the human soul, the forces of the soul can be strengthened in
such a manner that after death, in the transition from the soul
world into the spirit land, man has such rich experiences
in the cosmic world that out of its impulses he is able to
cooperate in working out the physical organism for his next
earthly life. Through the Deed of Christ, the human soul is
purified during the transition from the soul world into
the spirit land. Thus spoke the initiated contemporaries of the
Mystery of Golgotha, as had the initiates of antiquity: Through
the guidance of the sublime Sun Being, the human soul is
purified during its transition from the soul world into the
spirit land.
From this you see that what has to be summed up as the mystery
of death is connected with the Christian evolution of earthly
humanity. After the fourth century, however, as I have set
forth already, the initiation knowledge that could have spoken
to men who wished to become its followers in the way mentioned
above faded away. Now, however, the time has come when a new
initiation science is once again able to reveal the connection
between men and Christ Jesus. This new initiation science must
again say: Whosoever accepts the secret of the Mystery of
Golgotha into his life of feelings during earthly life thereby
so strengthens and invigorates his inner soul being in
the transition from the soul world to the spirit land that it
can become strong enough to avoid forming the kind of physical
organization it would form if there were no such impulse from a
renewed Christianity. For, without this impulse, physical
organizations would inevitably arise in future earth evolution
that would be pathological. Through a renewed Christianity, we
can unite ourselves with the impulse that makes possible
physical organizations that will be healthy and vigorous
throughout the rest of earth existence.
Thus, there is a profound connection between man's development
after death and the Christ Being. In a true cosmology,
Christ stands as a World Power, a Cosmic Force. His Power can
be perceived in man's transition after death from the soul
world to spirit land.
In
the next lecture we will consider how the element that lives in
the human soul and is expressed in impulses of the will in
ordinary consciousness passes through death. We shall see how
between death and rebirth it can become the germinal basis for
certain forces that will only come to expression in the
next life, and how man's destiny — formerly called karma
— continues from one earth life to another.
Tomorrow's lecture will add a contemplation of the sphere
of the human will to today's considerations of the spheres of
human thinking and feeling. That will once again show how the
significant relationship between man and the Christ
Being, the Mystery of Golgotha and the whole of Christian
evolution, must be developed in regard to the human will. Today
we have placed Christ into cosmological evolution, into true
cosmological insight; it will be our task in tomorrow's
lecture to place Christ into a renewed Christian
perception of religion.
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