THE DESTINATION OF THE EGO-CONSCIOUSNESS IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE
CHRIST-PROBLEM
THE life of the soul in its earthly existence is passed in the facts
of thinking, feeling and willing. In thinking we have a mirrored
picture of the experience of the astral organism and the ego-being
within the physical sense-world. These higher parts of the human
nature were also experienced during the state of sleep. But this
experience remains unconscious during the stay on earth. The soul is
then too weak in its inner being to present its own content to its
consciousness. As soon as the consciousness perceives this content, it
takes it for a purely psycho-spiritual one.
In awaking, the astral organism and the ego enter into the etheric and
physical organisms. Through thinking the sense-perceptions are
experienced by the etheric organisms. But in this experience it is not
the world surrounding man, which is active, but a copy of this world.
In this copy the sum-total of the formative powers underlying the
earthly course of man manifests itself. And a copy of the outer world
is present in man at every instant. Man does not directly experience
this thinking, but its reflection is presented to ordinary
consciousness by the physical organism.
Ordinary consciousness cannot perceive what is happening behind the
reflective activity of thinking in the physical organism, it can only
perceive the result, namely the reflected images, presented as
thoughts. These unperceived happenings in the physical organism are
activities of the etheric and astral organism and of the ego. In his
thoughts man perceives what he himself is enacting in his physical
organism as a psycho-spiritual being. There is in the etheric organism
a copy of the outer world as inner activity, filling the physical
organism. In the astral organism there exists a copy of the
pre-earthly existence; in the ego exists the eternal central being of
man.
In the etheric organism the outer world is active in man. In the
astral organism continues to be active whatever man has experienced in
the pre-earthly existence. This activity has not changed in kind
during its earthly existence from what it was in its pre-earthly
existence. It was of a kind which occurred in a spiritually changed
physical organism. In the waking state it is similar. The inner
head-organization of man strives continually to be changed from a
physical state into a spiritual one. But this change can only remain a
tendency during earthly existence. The physical organization resists
it. Precisely at the moment at which the astral organism in its
changing activity arrives at a point at which the inner physical
head-organization would have to cease as a physical one, the state of
sleep intervenes. It replenishes the inner head-organization with
strength from the rest of the physical organization by means of which
it can continue in the physical world.
This strength lies in the etheric organism, which grows less and less
differentiated inside the head-organization during the waking state.
During sleep however it is differentiated internally into definite
formations. In those formations are manifest the forces which during
existence on earth act in rebuilding the physical organism.
In the head-organization a two-fold activity is thus enacted during
the waking state; one building up through the etheric organism and one
tearing down, that is, one which destroys the physical organism. This
destruction takes place through the astral organism.
Through this astral activity man carries death in him continually
during his existence on earth. Only this death is vanquished day by
day by forces opposing it. But we owe to these constantly acting death
tendencies the ordinary consciousness. For in the dying life of the
head-organization is found that which is capable of reflecting the
soul activity as thought-experience. An organically-growing activity
urging towards life cannot produce a tissue of thought. For that a
tendency towards death is required. The organically-growing activity
reduces the machinery of thought to stupor or unconsciousness.
What finally happens to the whole human organism in physical death
accompanies human life during existence on earth as a tendency, as an
always recurring beginning of death. And to this continued dying
within him man owes his ordinary consciousness. Before this
consciousness stand the etheric and the physical organism as
non-transparent things; man does not see them but the
thought-reflections mirrored by them and experienced by him in his
soul. The physical and etheric organizations hide for him the astral
organization and the Ego; and just because the consciousness of soul
is filled by the reflections of the physical organism during existence
on earth man is prevented from seeing his etheric and astral
organization and his Ego.
In death the physical organism separates from the etheric and astral
one and from the Ego. Now man carries his etheric and astral organism
and his ego in himself. Through the casting off of the physical
organism the obstacle to man's perceiving the etheric organism has
been removed. The picture of his life on earth just passed through
stands before man's soul. For this picture is only the expression of
the formative powers, which in their sum represent the etheric body.
What is present in the etheric body has been woven into man from the
etheric part of the Cosmos. He can never be entirely free of the
Cosmos. The Cosmic-etheric act continues inside the human organization
and this continuation inside man is the etheric organism. Thus it is
when after death man becomes conscious of his etheric organism this
consciousness begins already to change into a cosmic one. Man feels
the world ether as well as his etheric organism as part of himself.
This actually means that the etheric body dissolves after a very short
while in the world ether. Man keeps that part which was bound to the
physical and etheric organism during existence on earth, namely, his
astral organism and his ego.
The astral being is never wholly incorporated into the physical
organism. The head-organization represents a total transformation of
this astral organism and the Ego. But in everything that can be called
the rhythmical organization of man, in the processes of breathing,
blood-circulation, etc. the astral organization and the Ego continue
to live with a certain independence, for their activities are not
reflected by these processes as they are by the head-organization. The
astral organization and the Ego can blend with the rhythmical
processes. This union brings about a Being of spirit and of body
known to the ordinary consciousness as the Feeling life.
In man's Feeling life the astral organism and the Ego are united with
man's experiences. We must look at this union in its details. Let us
assume that man has created something within the world of the senses.
For his psychic life things do not remain there. He judges his own
act. But this judgment is not only happening in the life of thought,
the impulse towards it is derived from the astral organism, which in
conjunction with the rhythmical processes also manifests itself in
physical life. To thought-life which is passed in reflex pictures is
added a reflection of moral judgment, which appears within the
reflected thought-world as itself only bearing the character of the
reflected thought-thing. But in the astral-rhythmical organism it
lives in reality. This reality does not enter into the ordinary
consciousness during existence on earth. Its entry is prevented
because the physical rhythmical processes are felt more strongly than
the spiritual processes accompanying them. When the physical organism
is discarded in death and the physical rhythmical processes are no
longer there, then the importance of the death of man to the
spiritual-cosmic world is realized by the cosmic consciousness. This
cosmic consciousness is formed after the separation from the etheric
organism. In this state a man looks upon himself as a moral being as
in earthly life he looked upon himself as a physical being. He now has
an inner life formed by the moral quality of his activity on earth. He
looks upon his astral organism. But the spiritual-cosmic world breaks
in upon this astral organism. Whatever judgment this world pronounces
on man's earthly activities is presented as facts to his soul.
In death a man enters a form of experiences of another rhythm than
during existence on earth. This rhythm appears as a cosmic imitation
of his activity on earth. And into this imitative experience the
spirit-cosmos enters continually as does the air into the lungs in
breathing during existence on earth. In conscious cosmic experience we
have a rhythm of which the physical one is a copy. Through the cosmic
rhythm the activities of man on earth as a world of moral qualities
are united to an amoral world. And man experiences after his death
this moral kernel of a future cosmos, ripening within the cosmos,
which will not only exist in a purely natural order like the present,
but in a moral-natural one. The chief feeling passing through the soul
during this experience in a cosmic world in the making is expressed by
the question: Shall I be worthy to form part of a moral-natural order
of things in a future existence?
In my book Theosophy I have called the world of experience
through which man passes after his death, the Soul-world.
It is the consciousness of this world through Inspiration
which gives us material for a real Cosmology. Just as an
Imaginative cognition of the actual course of human life
gives us material for a true philosophy.
Man's soul cannot gain sufficient impulses out of that cosmic
consciousness into which the cosmic after-effect of man's activities
on earth have been reaching, to prepare spiritually for the future
physical organism. This organism would be spoilt if the soul remained
in a soul-world. It must enter into a world of experience in which the
non-human, spiritual impulses of the cosmos are active. I have called
this world the Spirit-Land in the same book.
The ancient Initiates were able to say to their followers out of the
knowledge gained by initiation: That Spiritual Being, who, in the
physical world, shows his reflected glory in the Sun, will meet you
after death in the spiritual world. He will lead you out of the soul
world into the Spirit Land; under His guidance you will be purified,
so that you will be able to prepare a physical organism for the next
world during your stay in the Spirit land.
At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and during the first Christian
centuries the Initiates had to tell their followers: The degree of Ego
consciousness to which you will attain during existence on earth will
by its own nature on earth be so light that its antithesis which will
begin after death will be so dark that you will not be able to see the
spiritual sun-guide. Therefore the sun-being has descended on earth as
Christ and has consummated the Mystery of Golgotha. If therefore
during your existence on earth you already let yourself be permeated
by a lively feeling of your connection with the Mystery of Golgotha,
then its significance will become part of life on earth and will
continue to be active in man after death. You can then recognize the
Christ-guide through this result. After the Fourth Century this old
initiated knowledge was lost in the course of human development. A
renewed Christian Religious knowledge should introduce once more from
inspiration into cosmological science Christ's deed for humanity even
into experiences after death. To expound how the events of human
existence on earth, hidden by Will, have their effects even after
death, will be the task of the next study.