II
We
shall now go forward from the thoughts which were intended to prepare
for the explanations of human destiny or karma. From the abstract
element of thought we shall go forward to real life. Step by step, we
shall bring before our souls the several domains of life into which
man is placed, in order to derive from the constituents of life the
foundations for a characterisation of karma, of human destiny.
Man,
after all, belongs to the whole universe, and in a far wider sense
than we are wont to think. He is a member of the universe, and
without it he is really nothing. I have often used the comparison
with a member of the human body, say a finger. It is a finger as long
as it is on the human body; the moment it is cut off from the body,
it is no longer a finger. Outwardly, physically, it is still the
same; and yet, it is no longer a finger when it is cut off from the
human body.
Likewise,
man is no longer man if he is lifted out of the universal
world-existence. For to this world-existence he belongs, and without
it he can neither be looked upon nor understood as man at all.
Now
as we saw again in yesterday's lecture, the world-environment of man
is naturally divided into distinct regions. There to begin with, is
the lifeless region of the world which in common parlance we call the
mineral. We only become like this mineral or lifeless region of the
world when we have laid aside our body; when-as regards this body-we
have passed through the gate of death. With our true being, we never
really become like this lifeless world. Only the bodily form which we
have laid aside becomes like it.
Thus,
on the one hand, we see that which man leaves behind him in the
lifeless kingdom — the physical corpse. And on the other hand,
we see the far-spread lifeless universe of Nature, crystalline and
non-crystalline. We human beings, as long as we are living on the
earth, are quite unlike this mineral world. This too, I have often
pointed out. We in our human form are at once destroyed when we are
relinquished as corpse to the mineral world. In the mineral world we
are dissolved away, that is to say, what holds our form together has
nothing in common with the mineral. Even from this fact it is evident
that man, as he lives in the physical world, can receive practically
no influences from the mineral as such.
By
far the widest influences which he does actually receive from the
mineral nature come to him via the senses. We see the mineral, we
hear it, we perceive its warmth; in short, we perceive it through the
senses. Our other relations to the mineral are very slight. You need
but think how little of the actual mineral nature comes into relation
to us in our earthly life. The salt with which we salt our food is
mineral; so are a few other things which we take in with our food.
But by far the greater part of the food the human being absorbs comes
from the plant and the animal kingdoms. Moreover, what he absorbs
from the mineral kingdom bears a remarkable relation to that which he
receives of mineral nature through his senses, purely as
psychological impressions, namely as sense-perception. In this
connection you should again observe an important point which I have
often mentioned here. The human brain weighs on the average 1,500
grammes. That is a pretty fair weight. If it pressed with its full
weight on the vessels that are underneath it, they would be utterly
crushed. It does not press so heavily, for it is subject to a certain
law. I described it again a short while ago. When we put a body in a
liquid, it loses some of its weight. You can investigate it, if you
have a balance. Imagine this vessel of water removed, to begin with.
You weigh the body which is suspended here; it has a certain weight.
Then put the vessel of water beneath it, so that the body hanging
from the beam is steeped in water. Immediately the equilibrium is
upset. The beam of the balance goes down on the other side, for the
body has become lighter. And if you now investigate how much, it will
prove to have become as much lighter as is represented by the weight
of the liquid it displaces. That is to say, if the liquid be water,
the body — immersed in the water — will become lighter by
the amount of weight of the body of water it displaces. It is the
well-known principle of Archimedes, who, as I told you, found it when
in his bath. He sat in his bath, and found his leg grow lighter or
heavier, according as he laid it in the water or lifted it out. Then
he exclaimed: “Eureka!” (I have found it).
It
is a thing of great importance but important things, too, are
sometimes forgotten. For if the art of engineering had not forgotten
this principle of Archimedes, probably one of the worst elemental
catastrophes of recent times would not have happened as it did, in
Italy. Such things arise even in the outer life, owing to the lack of
clarity and synthesis in the prevailing science.
Be
that as it may, the body loses in weight by the weight of the liquid
it displaces. Now the brain is immersed entirely in the
cerebro-spinal fluid. It swims in the cerebral fluid. — Here
and there, you can already find it recognised in science that man,
inasmuch as he is solid, is like a kind of fish. Yes, he is really a
fish; for he consists, as to 90 per cent, of a body of water, and in
this the solid parts are swimming, like the fish in water. —
So, too, the brain is swimming in the cerebro-spinal water; and it
thereby becomes so much lighter that it only weighs 20 grammes. The
brain only weighs 20 grammes — only with 20 grammes does it
press on the surface beneath it. Think what this means; then you will
realise how strongly, inasmuch as our brain is floating in the
cerebro-spinal fluid, we human beings have the tendency to become
free of the earth — and that in an organ of such importance. We
think with an organ that is not subject to earthly gravity; we think
in direct opposition to earthly gravity. The organ of our thought is
first relieved of earthly weight.
Bear
in mind the wide range and immense importance of the impressions you
receive through your senses, which you confront with your own free
will. Think, by comparison, of the minute influences you receive from
salt, and other such substances taken as food or condiment. Then you
will come to the conclusion that what comes from the mineral kingdom
and has a direct influence on man is also as 20 to 1,500 grammes ...
so great is the predominance of what we receive as mere
sense-impressions, where we are independent of the stimuli —
for our sense-impressions do not take hold of us and rend us.
Moreover, those things in us which are still subject to earthly
gravity like the mineral condiments or constituents of our food, are
generally such as to preserve us inwardly. Salt has in itself a
preserving, a sustaining, a refreshing power.
Man,
therefore, is on a large scale independent of the surrounding mineral
world. He takes into himself from the mineral world only that which
has no immediate influence upon his being. He moves in the mineral
world freely and independently.
Indeed,
my dear friends, if it were not for this freedom and independence in
the mineral world, what we call human freedom would not be there at
all. The mineral world, we may truly say, exists as the necessary
counterpart to human freedom. If there were no mineral world, neither
should we be free beings. The moment we rise into the plant-world, we
are no longer independent of it. It only seems to us as though we
looked out over the world of plants just as we do over the crystals,
over the far-spread mineral realm. In reality it is not so. There is
the plant-world spread out before us. We human beings are born into
the world as breathing, living beings, endowed with a specific
metabolism. All this is far more dependent on our environment than
the eyes and ears and other organs which convey our
sense-impressions. The far and wide expanse of the plant-world lives
by virtue of the ether, which pours in on to the earth from all
sides. Man, too, is subject to this ether. When we are born and we
begin to grow as little children, when forces of growth make
themselves felt in us, these are etheric forces. The very forces
which enable the plants to grow are living in us as etheric forces.
We carry the ether-body within us. The physical body contains our
eyes and our ears ... As I explained just now, this physical body has
nothing in common with the remainder of the physical world. This is
proved by the very fact that, as the corpse, it falls to pieces in
the physical world. But it is quite different with our ether-body. By
virtue of the ether-body we are very much related to the world of
plants.
Now
you must think of this. That which develops in us as we grow, is,
after all, connected very deeply with our destiny. Only to choose
grotesque and radical examples, we may have grown in such a way as to
be short and thick-set, or tall and lanky, as the case may be; or so
as to receive this or that shape of nose. In short, the way we grow
is not without its influence on our external form. And this is
certainly connected, in however loose a way, with our destiny. But
our way of growth is expressed not only in these crude externals. If
our instruments and methods of investigation were only delicate
enough, we should discover that every man has a different composition
of the liver, of the spleen, or of the brain. “Liver” is
not simply “liver”; it differs — though in its
finer aspects, needless to say — in every human being. And this
is connected with the same forces which cause plants to grow. As we
look out over the plant-bedecked earth, we should be conscious: That
which pours in from the wide ether-spaces, causing the plants to
grow, works in us human beings too, bringing about the original and
native predisposition of each one of us, and this has very much
indeed to do with our destiny. For it belongs very deeply to his
fate, whether a man receives out of the ether-world this or that
constitution of liver, lung or brain. Man sees, however, only the
outer aspect of it all. When we look out over the mineral world we
see, more or less, what is contained in it. That is why people are
scientifically so fond of the mineral world (if, nowadays, one can
speak of scientific fondness at all). They like it, because it
contains in itself everything they want to find. For the sustaining
forces of the plant-world, this is no longer so. You can perceive at
once, as I have told you, the moment you rise to Imaginative
Cognition, that the minerals are self-contained within the mineral
kingdom; such is the nature of the mineral. That which sustains the
plant-world does not appear externally at all to everyday
consciousness. To find it we must penetrate into the universe more
deeply.
What
is it then that is working in the plant-kingdom? What is it that is
working so that the forces pour in from the wide ether-spaces,
causing the plants to spring and sprout from the earth, and in us
too, bringing about our growth — the finer composition of our
body? What is it that is working? Here, my dear friends, we come to
the Beings of the Third Hierarchy, so-called — the Angeloi,
Archangeloi and Archai. They are invisible to us, but without them
there would not be that ebb and flow of the etheric forces, causing
the plants to grow, and working also in ourselves, inasmuch as we too
carry in us the same forces which bring about plant-growth. Not to
remain obtuse in knowledge, when we approach the plant-world and its
forces we can no longer adhere to the merely outward and visible.
And
we must also be aware that in the body-free condition between death
and a new birth, we develop our relations to these Beings —
Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai. And according to the kind of relations
we develop, so does our internal karma take shape: what I might call
our nature-karma, that of our karma which depends upon the way our
ether-body compounds the living fluids in us, making us grow short or
tall, and so forth ...
However,
the Beings of the Third Hierarchy have only a certain degree of
power. It is not owing to their power alone that plants can grow. In
this respect, the Third Hierarchy — Angeloi, Archangeloi and
Archai — are in the service of higher Beings. Nevertheless,
that which we live through before we come down from the spiritual
world into our physical body — that which determines the finer
constitution of our body — is brought about by our conscious
meeting with these Beings of the Third Hierarchy, we having prepared
ourselves for this during our former life on earth. With the
direction, with the guidance we receive from them to form our
ether-body from the wide ether-spaces, all this is achieved shortly
before we descend from super-physical into physical existence.
Thus
we must first observe that which enters into our destiny or karma out
of our own internal constitution. Perhaps we may describe this
portion of karma by the terms “well-being” or “comfort”
and “discomfort, ” “content” and “discontent”
in life. For our well-being or contentedness or our discontent in
life are connected with this inner quality which is ours by virtue of
our ether-body. Now there is a second element living in our karma. It
depends upon the fact that not only the plant-kingdom but the animal
kingdom also, peoples the earth. Think what different kinds of
animals there are in the different regions of the earth. The animal
atmosphere, so to speak, is different in the one region and the
other.
But
you will certainly admit that man also lives in this atmosphere in
which the animals are living. It may seem grotesque nowadays, but
that is only because the people of today are unaccustomed to observe
such things. For instance, there are districts where the elephant is
at home. These are simply the districts where the universe so works
down on to the earth that elephant life can arise. Do you suppose, my
dear friends — if this be a portion of the earth which the
elephant inhabits, where the elephant-creating forces are working in
from the cosmos — do you suppose that these forces are absent
if a human being happens to be there? They are still there, needless
to say, and so it is with all animal nature. Just as the
plant-forming forces from the far ether-spaces are there, wherever we
are living (for not wood walls, nor brick, nor even concrete will
keep them from us; we here are living in the forces that form the
plant-world of the Jura Alps) so, too, if he happens to be in a
region where the earth-nature is such that the elephant can have its
life, the human being also lives under the elephant-creating forces.
I
can very well imagine many a quality of animals, both large and
small, living in the souls of men! There are the animals inhabiting
the earth, and as you have now learnt, man lives in the self-same
atmosphere. And all this really works upon him. Of course, it affects
him differently from how it affects the animals, for man has other
qualities than they; man has additional members of his being. It
affects him differently; if it did not, man in the elephantine sphere
would also grow into an elephant, which he does not do. Moreover, man
constantly raises himself out of these things that work upon him.
Nevertheless, he lives in this atmosphere.
| Diagram 2 Click image for large view | |
All
that exists in the human astral body is dependent upon the
atmosphere in which he lives. And as we said just now that his
well-being, his contentment or discontent, depends on the
plant-nature of the earth, so may we say at this point: The
sympathies and antipathies which we unfold as human beings in our
earthly life, and bring with us from the pre-earthly, depend upon the
forces constituting, so to speak, the animal atmosphere.
The
elephant has a trunk, and thick, pillar-like legs; the stag has
antlers and so forth. Here we behold the animal-creating,
animal-forming forces. In man, these forces only show themselves in
their effect upon his astral body, and it is in their effect upon the
astral body that they beget the sympathies and antipathies which
every human individual brings with him from the spiritual world.
Observe
them, my dear friends, these sympathies and antipathies. Observe to
what a large extent they guide us throughout life. Undoubtedly, and
with good justification in a certain respect, we are brought up and
trained so as to grow out of our strong sympathies and antipathies.
Yet in the first place they are there. One man has sympathy for this,
another man for that; one man for sculpture, another for in music:
one prefers fair people, another has sympathy for dark people. These
are the strong, radical sympathies; but our whole life is pervaded by
sympathies and antipathies. In reality they depend for their
existence on that which engenders all the variety of animal
formations.
Thus
you may ask, what do we human beings carry within us, in our own
inner being, corresponding to the animal forms that are outside us?
They are a hundred- and a thousand-fold — these forms. So are
the forms of our sympathies and antipathies, only that the greater
part remains in our unconscious — or sub-consciousness.
This
is another world — a third world. First is the world where we
feel no essential dependence — that is the mineral. Second is
the world in which Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai live. That is the
world which brings forth the springing, sprouting world of plants,
and which endows us with our inner quality whereby we bring
well-being or discomfort with us into life, so that we feel, by
virtue of our nature, happy or miserable, as the case may be.
Out
of this world is taken that which determines our destiny by virtue of
our inner constitution — our individual etheric humanity. Now
we come to a third element deeply conditioning our destiny, namely
our sympathies and antipathies. And, after all, it is through these
sympathies and antipathies that many other things are brought into
our life, belonging to our destiny in a far wider sense than the
sympathies and antipathies themselves. One man is carried into far
distances by his sympathies and antipathies. He lives in this or that
part of the world because his sympathies have taken him there, and in
that distant land, the detailed events of his destiny will now
unfold.
Yes,
these sympathies and antipathies are deeply involved in all our human
destiny. They have their life in the world in which not now the Third
but the Second Hierarchy are living: the Exusiai, Dynamis and
Kyriotetes. In the animal kingdom lives the earthly image of the
sublime, majestic formations of this Hierarchy. And what these Beings
implant in us, when we commune with them between death and a
new birth, lives in the innate sympathies and antipathies which we
bring with us from the spiritual world into the physical.
When
you see through these things, such ordinary concepts as that of
“heredity” appear really very childish. Before I can
carry in me any inherited characteristic of my father or mother, I
must first have unfolded the sympathies or antipathies for this
characteristic of father or mother. It does not depend on my having
inherited the characteristic by a mere lifeless causality of Nature.
It all depends whether I had sympathy for these characteristics.
As
to why I had sympathy for them — that is a question we shall
deal with in the coming lectures. But to speak of heredity in the way
they generally do in modern science is childish, although science
thinks itself so clever.
They
even speak today of the inheritance of specifically spiritual and
psychological characteristics. Genius is supposed to be inherited
from ancestors, and when a man of genius appears in the world, they
try to gather up among his forebears the several portions which, they
suppose, should produce this genius as a resultant. Well, that is a
strange method of proof. A sensible method would be to show that once
a man of genius is there, his genius is then transmitted by
inheritance. But if they looked for the proof of that, they would
come upon very strange things ... Goethe, too, had a son; and so had
other men of genius.
Nevertheless,
as I said, that would be the way to prove it. But when a genius is
there, to look for certain of his qualities among his forebears is
just as though you were to prove that when I fall in the water and am
pulled out again, then I am wet. It does not prove that I have much
to do, in my essential nature, with the water that is dripping from
me.
Naturally,
having been born into this stream of inheritance through my sympathy
for its characteristics, I have them about me, as “inherited
characteristics.” Just as I have the water about me, when I
fall in and am pulled out again. People's ideas in this respect are
grotesquely childish. For the sympathies and antipathies already
emerge in man's pre-earthly life. They give him his innermost stamp.
With them he enters into his earthly life; with them he builds his
destiny from the pre-earthly.
Now
we can readily imagine: In a former life on earth we were with
another human being. Manifold things resulted from our life together,
and found their continuation in the life between death and a new
birth ... There, under the influence of the forces of the
Hierarchies, in the living Thoughts and cosmic Impulses, there is
fashioned and created what shall pass over from the experiences of
our former lives on earth into the next life, to be lived out
further. We need the sympathies and antipathies so as to unfold the
impulses through which we find one another in life. Formed in the
life between death and a new birth, under the influence of Exusiai,
Dynamis, Kyriotetes our sympathies and antipathies enable us to find
in life the human beings with whom we must now continue living,
according to our former lives on earth. All this takes shape out of
the inner structure of our human being. Naturally, manifold errors
occur in our acquiring these sympathies and antipathies. Such
aberrations, however, are balanced out again in the course of destiny
through many lives on earth.
Here,
then, we have a second constituent of destiny or karma — the
sympathies and antipathies. So we may say:
The
first constituent of karma: well-being or inner comfort amid
discomfort. The second: sympathies and antipathies. And, as we
come to the sympathies and antipathies in human destiny, we have
ascended into the sphere in which lie the forces for the forming of
the animal kingdom.
Now,
we rise into the human kingdom as such. For we live not only with the
plant-world; we live not only with the animal; we live, above all,
with other human beings in the world. This is the most important of
all for our destiny. That is quite another “living together”
than the common life with plants and animals. It is a living-together
through which is fashioned what is of main importance in our destiny.
The
impulses which bring about the peopling of the earth with human
beings, work on humanity alone. So there arises the question, what
impulses are these which work only upon humanity? Here we can let
purely external observation tell its tale. It is a course which we
have often followed.
Truly,
our life is guided — from the other side of it, so to speak —
with a far greater wisdom than is ours in guiding it from this side.
Often in later life we meet a human being who becomes of extreme
importance in our life. When we think back: How did we live until the
moment when we met him? Then our entire life seems like the very
pathway to the meeting. It is as though we had tended every step,
that we might find him at the right moment — or that we might
find him at all, at a certain moment.
We
need only ponder the following: Think, my dear friends, what it
signifies for fully conscious human reflection. Think what it means
to find another human being in a given year of life, thenceforth to
experience, work or achieve — whatever it may be — in
common with him. Think what it means, think what emerges as the
impulse that led up to it, when we reflect on this quite consciously.
When we begin to think: How did it happen that we met him? It will
probably occur to us that we first had to experience an event with
which many other people were connected, for otherwise the opportunity
would not have arisen for us to meet him in this life. And, that this
event might happen, we had to undergo still another event ... and so
on. We find ourselves in the midst of the most complex chain of
circumstances, all of which had to occur, into all of which we had to
enter, so as to reach this or that decisive experience. And now we
may perhaps reflect: If the task had been set us — I will not
say at the age of one, but let us say at the age of fourteen —
to solve the riddle consciously: to bring about in our fiftieth year
a decisive meeting with another human being; if we imagine that we
had to solve it consciously, like a mathematical problem —
think what it would involve!
Consciously,
we human beings are so appallingly stupid, whereas what happens with
us in the world is so infinitely wise, when we take into account such
things as these. When we begin to think along these lines, we become
aware of the immense intricacy and deep significance in the workings
of our destiny or karma. And this all goes on in the domain of the
human kingdom. All that thus happens to us is deep in the unconscious
life. Until the moment when a decisive event approaches us, it lies
in the unconscious. All this takes place as though it were subject to
Laws of Nature. Yet where are the Laws of Nature that have power to
bring about such things? For the things that take place in this
domain will often contradict all natural law — or all that we
elaborate after the pattern of outer natural laws. This, too, I have
often mentioned. The external features of human life may even be cast
into the framework of mathematical laws.
Take,
for example, the life-insurance system. Life-insurance can only
prosper inasmuch as one can calculate the probable length of life of
any human being, aged, let us say, 19 or 25. If you wish to insure
your life, the policy will be made out according to the figure of
your probable length of life. As a human being of 19, you will
probably live so or so long; this figure can be determined. But now
imagine that the allotted time has run its course. You will not feel
obliged to die. At the end of their probable length of life, two
people may long ago have died. But, on the other hand, they may be
long “dead” — according to the insurance estimate —
when they find one another in life in the decisive way I just
described. These things transcend what one can calculate for human
life from outer facts of Nature and yet they happen with inner
necessity like natural facts. We cannot but admit: With the same
necessity with which any event of Nature takes place — be it an
earthquake, or eruption, or any natural event, whether great or small
— with the same necessity two human beings meet in life
according to the ways of life which they have taken.
Thus
we here see established within the physical, another kingdom; and in
this kingdom we are living. We live not only in comfort and
discomfort, in sympathies and antipathies, but in this
realm also — in our events and experiences. We are
completely cast into this realm of the events and experiences which
determine our life by destiny.
Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi.
|
1. Well-being (comfort discomfort).
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Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai.
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2. Sympathies, Antipathies
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Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones.
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3. Events, Experiences.
|
In this realm the
Beings of the First Hierarchy — Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones —
are working. To direct all that is working here — every human
step, every impulse of soul — to guide it all in the world so
that the destinies of men grow out of it, a greater power is needed
than works in the plant-kingdom, a greater power than belongs to the
Hierarchy of Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, or to the Hierarchy of
Exusiai, Kyriotetes, Dynamis. It needs a power such as belongs to the
First Hierarchy, to the most sublime of Beings: Seraphim, Cherubim
and Thrones.
What
is lived out in this sphere lives in our true “I”, in our
Ego-organisation, and it lives over from an earlier earth-life.
Now
consider for a moment: you are living in an earth-life. In this
earth-life you effect this or that; perhaps you do it out of instinct
or passion or a strong impulse, or perhaps it is thought out —
either stupidly or cleverly. In any case what you bring to pass is
done in accordance with some impulse or other. But now all you do in
this way in an earth-life leads to this or that result; it works for
the happiness or the harm of some other human being. Then comes the
life between death and a new birth. In this life between death and a
new birth you have a strong consciousness of the fact: I have done
harm to another man, and I am less perfect than I should be had I not
done him harm. I must compensate for it. The impulse, the urge arises
in you to compensate for the harm you have done. Or again, if you
have done something to another that is for his good, that helps him
on, then you look upon what you have done and you say to yourself:
That must serve to build the foundation for the general good, it must
lead to further consequences in the world. All this you can inwardly
develop. And it can give you a sense of well-being or of discomfort
according as you form the inner nature of your body in the life
between death and a new birth. It can lead you to sympathies and
antipathies, inasmuch as you build and shape your astral body
correspondingly, with the aid of the Exusiai, the Dynamis and the
Kyriotetes.
All
this, however, will not yet give you the power to transmute what in a
former life was merely a human fact, into a deed of the cosmos. You
helped another human being or you harmed him. This must entail his
meeting you in a next life on earth, and in the meeting with him you
will have to find the impulse to balance-out the deed.
What,
to begin with, has only moral significance, must be transformed into
an outer fact — an outer event in the world. To do so, those
Beings are needed who transmute or metamorphose moral deeds into
world-deeds, cosmic deeds. They are the Beings of the First
Hierarchy: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. It is they who transmute what
goes out from us in one earthly life into our experiences of the next
lives on earth. They work in the “events and experiences”
in human life.
Here
then we have the three fundamental elements of our karma. Our inner
constitution, our own internal human nature is subject to the Third
Hierarchy. Our sympathies and antipathies (which, as we saw, already
became in some sense our environment) are a concern of the Second
Hierarchy. And that which we encounter as our actual external life is
a concern of the First, the most sublime of the hierarchies above
humanity.
Thus
we perceive man's connection with the world and the whole way he
stands in it. We come to the great question, how do the many detailed
events of his destiny evolve out of these three?
He
is born to such and such parents, in such and such a home, at a
certain spot on the earth, into this or that nation, into a given
nexus of facts. But all that takes place inasmuch as he is born of
such parents, handed over to his educators, born into a certain
nation and at a certain spot on earth — all this which enters
so fatefully into his life, no matter what we say of human freedom —
is in some way dependent on these three elements of which human
destiny is composed.
All
detailed questions will be revealed to us in their true answers, if
we begin with the right foundations. Why does a man get small-pox in
his twenty-fifth year, passing through perhaps extreme danger of his
life? How does some other illness or event strike down into his life?
Or some essential help through this or that older person, through
this or that nation, this or that series of outer events — how
does it come into his life? In every case we must go back to these,
the three constituents of human destiny, whereby he is placed into
the totality of the cosmic Hierarchies. It is only in the realm of
the mineral world that man moves freely. There is the realm of his
freedom.
Only
when he becomes aware of this, does he learn to put the question of
freedom in the true way. Read my
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
[In German:
Philosophie der Freiheit (freedom)],
and see how
much importance I attach to the point that one should not ask about
the freedom of the Will. The Will lies deep, deep down in the
unconscious, and it is nonsense to ask about the freedom of the Will.
It is only of the freedom of Thoughts that we can speak. I drew the
line very clearly in my
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.
Man
must become free in his thoughts, and the free thoughts must give the
impulse to the will — then he is free. Now with his thoughts he
lives in the mineral world. In all the rest of his being, with which
he lives in the plant, in the animal, and in the purely human
kingdom, man is subject to destiny. Therefore, of freedom we may
truly say: Out of the realms that are ruled by the Hierarchies, the
human being comes into that realm which, in a sense, is free from
them — into the mineral kingdom, there to become free in his
turn. This mineral kingdom — it is precisely the kingdom to
which man only becomes similar as to his corpse, when he has laid the
corpse aside and passed through the gate of death. Man in his earthly
life is independent of that kingdom which can only work to his
destruction. No wonder he is free in it, since it has no other part
nor lot in him than to destroy him the very moment it gets him. He
simply does not belong to this kingdom. Man must first die; then only
— as a corpse — can he be, even in outer phenomenal
Nature, in the kingdom in which he is free.
Man
becomes older and older, and if no accidents occur (these, too, we
shall learn to know in their karmic aspects), if he dies as an old
man, eventually as a corpse he becomes like the mineral kingdom. As
he grows older, so does he gradually come into the sphere of the
lifeless. At length he gives up his corpse — it is separated
off from him. It is no longer man — needless to say, the corpse
is no longer man. Let us look at the mineral kingdom: it is no longer
God. Just as the corpse is no longer man, so is the mineral kingdom
no longer God. What is it then? The Godhead is in the plant, in the
animal, in the human kingdom; for we have found it there in the three
Hierarchies. But in the mineral kingdom the Godhead is not, any more
than the human corpse is man. The mineral kingdom is the corpse of
the Divine. However, as we proceed we shall encounter the strange
fact — which I shall only hint at now — that whereas man
grows older to become a corpse, the Gods grow younger ... For they
are on the other path, the path which we go through after our death.
Therefore the mineral is the youngest of the kingdoms. Yet it is the
one which is separated off by the Gods, and for this very reason, man
can live in it as in the realm of his freedom.
Such
are the real connections. Man learns to feel himself ever more at
home in the world when he thus learns to place his sensations, his
thoughts, his feelings and impulses of will into the right relation
to the world. Moreover, only in this way can he perceive how he is
placed by destiny in the world and in relation to other men.
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