XVI
The day before
yesterday I tried to picture for you the cosmic drama, as it were,
wherein human beings are shown in their relation to Beings of the
spiritual world, so that one can see how there stems from this
relationship not only the working out of karma, but also the living
out of karma during physical life on earth. To-day I should like to
turn to a thought touched upon in that lecture. I said that the
present period in human evolution confronts anyone who has the
knowledge of Initiation-Science with problems of world-karma in the
deepest sense of the words. And before proceeding to consider how
knowledge of karma is acquired, we will study its world-historic
aspects, which in the nature of things must closely concern the whole
of civilised humanity at the present time.
Things are
happening in the world to-day which stir even the everyday
consciousness of man and the heart that is bound up with this
everyday consciousness. A heavy cloud looms over the civilisation of
Europe and from one point of view it is amazing to find what little
willingness there is on the part of mankind in general to feel and
realise what this cloud portends.
Think only of what
is emerging as the result of views of life and of the world widely
prevalent in humanity to-day. Look at what is being made of
Christianity in the East of Europe! Information — not entirely
to be discredited — has reached us that the works of Tolstoy
are to be banned by the present Government of Soviet Russia with the
object of keeping them out of the reach of future generations.
Although such things do not always work out exactly as they are
announced, we must not blind ourselves to the gravity of the present
moment in world-history; we do well to listen to the warning which
Initiation-Science would like to repeat day in and day out —
that now is the time when the many petty concerns occupying
men's minds ought to be silenced and the attention of numbers
of souls directed to the great concerns of life. But in point of
fact, interest in these great concerns is dwindling rather than
increasing.
We see views of
life and of the world arising to-day with a certain
‘creative’ force, although this actually takes effect in
destruction; these views are the offspring of human passions and
emotions, of an element in human nature working entirely in a
Luciferic direction. It may truly be said that reality is denied and
rejected by a large portion of humanity to-day. The essential nature
of matter is not understood by materialistic thinkers. Matter can be
understood only when the creative spirit within it is apprehended.
Therefore anyone who denies the reality of the creative spirit within
matter knows only a false image of matter and the consequent idolatry
is a far greater menace than that of the primitive peoples who are
said to represent civilisation in the stage of infancy. Fantastic
ideas and conceptions of what is, after all, unreality, hold sway in
mankind. — This is one side of the picture.
Such things have
of course occurred in various forms throughout human history. But
spiritual science teaches us to recognise their connections in the
whole World-Order, and to realise with what earnestness they must be
studied.
And so we must be
mindful of what is brought into existence when certain social orders
are created under the influence of materialistic, fantastic ideas
— ideas which have sprung entirely from human aberrations, have
nothing to do with reality and could never have originated elsewhere
than in man himself.
Having turned our
minds to a phenomenon of history which has, however, immediate
bearing upon our present age, let us consider occurrences in
elemental nature like those mentioned in the last lecture, when
groups of human beings are suddenly snatched away from earthly
existence as the result of an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, or the
like. The news reaches us of a catastrophe of this kind and we hear
that a large number of people have met their death or suffered grave
disablement. — Again, there are events for which the devices of
civilisation are responsible. We hear, for example, of a railway
accident, where again the karmic threads of life are abruptly
severed, but in this case as the result of man-made
institutions.
If we are earnest
in our study of karma, we must ask, on the one hand: What form does
karma take in the case of adherents of a social order originating
from sheer emotionalism, sheer fantasy in man himself and devoid of
objective reality? And on the other, we must ask: What form does
karma take when the thread of life is suddenly severed by a
catastrophe of nature or one that is the outcome of
civilisation?
Here is one of the
points where Initiation-Science enters deeply into man's life
of feeling and perception. Ordinary, everyday consciousness does not
ask about the consequences of such happenings in the successive
earthly lives of men. In the case of catastrophes of civilisation
particularly, the question of human destiny in the wider sense is
never asked. The destiny of a man who has been the victim of such a
catastrophe is regarded by ordinary consciousness as finished and
done with.
Initiation-Science
observes on the one side what takes place in the foreground of earth
life and, in the background, the deeds of gods in connection with the
souls of men. And it is what proceeds in the background that provides
Initiation-Science with a criterion for assessing earthly life. For
as we shall see in our further studies of karma, a great deal has to
be moulded, recast in one way or another in earthly existence in
order that the divine things behind it may take effect in the lives
of men — in accordance with the will of the
gods.
For on looking
into the background we perceive the karma that is woven between one
human soul and another during the life between death and rebirth; we
perceive how human souls work together with the Beings of the higher
Hierarchies. We see, too, the activities of the Luciferic and
Ahrimanic powers. Within the living organism of gods behind the
organism of the earth we perceive the justification for this
intervention by the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers; we realise that
Lucifer and Ahriman play an essential part in the deeper, spiritual
ordering of the world. But although this necessity becomes evident to
us, we must nevertheless often stand aghast at the way in which
Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences penetrate into the earthly
world.
When our vision
extends beyond the earthly into the spiritual world, many things must
be viewed in the light of their inter-connections, which need not
necessarily be the case in ordinary consciousness. If in times when
Initiation Science was regarded with the reverence that must prevail
once again — if in those ancient times the question arose
whether a person was in truth an Initiate, men knew the right
attitude with which such a question must be approached. And when a
man who took life earnestly met another like him and their opinions
differed as to whether a third person was an Initiate, the question
was wont to be put to the one who felt uncertain: “Have you
looked into his eyes?” For in those olden times, when
clairvoyance was a natural gift in civilisation all over the earth,
Initiates were recognised by the deep, earnest look in their eyes.
— And something similar will come again. Without losing sight
of the humour of life, men must again be mindful of its
gravity.
Many of these
lessons can be learned from what is happening in our present time and
has indeed happened in some form through all ages, but they stand
before humanity now as a great and mighty riddle ... And now let us
think of the facts connected with a certain kind of
event.
Numbers of human
beings have perished in some region where a terrible earthquake has
taken place. Contemplating the event in the light of spiritual
science, it cannot be said that the thread of karma belonging to the
present earthly lives of these men has in every case come to an end.
Think of the thread of karma in those who have met their death: in
the case of the aged, whose earthly karma in this incarnation would
soon have been completed, the thread of life will be shortened
possibly only by months or at most by a few years. Younger people in
the prime of life who have thought a great deal about what they
wanted to achieve in the time ahead of them for themselves, for their
family, or for a wider circle of humanity, are robbed of many years
of activity. Children in process of education as a prelude to manhood
are torn away from earthly existence together with the elderly and
aged. Babies just weaned or still unweaned are snatched away,
together with the old and the young.
The great riddle
is this: How does karma work in an event of this
kind?
And now think of
the difference between such an event in elemental nature and an event
that is due, fundamentally, to civilisation, for example, a terrible
railway accident. There is obviously a difference, a difference that
becomes significant and fundamental when studied from the point of
view of karma.
As a rule it will
be found that when human beings perish together, let us say in an
earthquake, there is some kind of karmic connection between them all
— just as men who live in a particular district are, broadly
speaking, karmically connected or at any rate have some link with one
another. These people have a certain common destiny into which they
have been impelled through having descended from prenatal existence
to a particular locality on the earth, and with this common destiny
they are led along their path to the point where the threads of their
lives are severed.
On the other hand,
in the case of a railway accident it will generally be found that
only a few of the victims are karmically connected with one another.
What, then, is their situation? As a rule they are human beings
between whom there is no definite link, who are brought together
without any such connection as invariably exists between victims of a
particular earthquake. The victims of a railway accident may be said
to have been brought together at a certain spot by destiny. Do we not
see karma working quite differently in these two
cases?
With the help of
Initiation-Science, let us think of a catastrophe like that of a
devastating earthquake. We are concerned there with human beings
whose karma at birth did not entail the severance of the thread of
earthly life by the time the catastrophe occurred. As the result of
this event they were torn as it were out of their
karma.
How could this be?
It is the decree of the gods that karma shall come to fulfilment,
shall be lived out to the full. Now upheavals in nature —
earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, great floods and the like —
are not an integral part of the onflowing evolution of the earth;
something extraneous — although still under the sway of natural
laws — intervenes here in the evolutionary process, something
that in times when man was not subject to birth and death as we know
them to-day was both necessary and propitious for evolution. To form
a clear conception of what this means, we must turn our minds to the
epoch of the Old Moon.
In the epoch of
the Old Moon which preceded that of the Earth, man was not led into
physical existence by a transition as abrupt as birth or conception,
nor led out of physical existence by a transition as abrupt as death.
The transition in each case was much gentler; it was a
transformation, a metamorphosis, rather than a sudden change. The
Moon-man was not as densely material as the man of to-day; nor in the
spiritual world was he as bereft of spirit as he is
to-day.
The beings
inhabitating the Old Moon were subject to quite different natural
laws, laws under which this Moon-life was involved in constant
movement; it was inwardly mobile, in ceaseless, surging flow. This
surging, flowing life has become rigid — but only partially so
— in the present Moon, our companion in the universe. The
rigidification in the Moon — it has really a kind of hornlike
quality — points to the past inner mobility of the Moon which
takes effect in the earth when elemental catastrophes of nature occur
of the kind of which I have been speaking. The ordinary natural laws
of the earth are not operating, but the Old Moon is beginning to
stir, to rumble in the earth. The Moon revolving out yonder in the
universe has the constitution that is proper for it to-day, but after
its separation from the earth, forces were left behind; and it is
these Moon-forces that rumble and stir in the earth when
nature-catastrophes occur.
As you will
remember, I told you that the Beings who were once the great primeval
Teachers of humanity are connected with man's karma; it was
they who brought the ancient wisdom to mankind. They did not live on
the earth in physical bodies but in etheric bodies, and at a certain
point of time they departed from the earth to establish their abode
in the Moon; and there we encounter them during the first phase of
our life between death and a new birth. These are the Beings who
engrave a record of men's karma into the cosmic ether, in an
unerring script of soul-and-spirit.
But in the cosmos
a pledge has been taken — if I may put it so — a pledge
that use shall be made not only of the relations between the present
Moon and the earth but also of the Moon-forces that were left behind
and are still astir within the earth. And it is here that the
Ahrimanic powers can step in and take hold of the threads of human
life. It can actually be seen how from the depths of the earth the
Ahrimanic powers present a countenance of gloating satisfaction when
such catastrophes of nature befall.
With the help of
Initiation-Science we can perceive how up to the moment when the
thread of life is abruptly severed, part of the karma of one who
perishes in a catastrophe of this kind has been absolved. According
to whether death occurred in old age, adult life or babyhood, a
longer or shorter portion of life would have remained to him; life
might have continued until the completion of its course, but as
things are, the events that would otherwise have been spread across
this whole span lay their grip in a single, sudden moment upon the
physical organisation.
Think of this
situation, my dear friends. — Suppose such a catastrophe
befalls a man at the age of thirty. If he had not been a victim of
the catastrophe he might, in accordance with his karma, have reached
the age of sixty-five, living through countless experiences which now
are no more than possibilities. But everything is contained in his
karma, in the make-up of his etheric and astral bodies and of his
ego-organisation. And what would have been happening up to the
sixty-fifth year of life? After the culmination of the upbuilding
process, the organism would have been involved in a process of slow
and steady decline; a subtle, gradual decline would have been taking
place until the sixty-fifth year of life. This steady decline which, in
the slow tempo corresponding to such a lengthy period, would have
lasted for at least thirty-five years, is fulfilled in a single
moment, concentrated as it were into a single moment. Such a thing
can happen to the physical body but not to the etheric body, the
astral body or the ego-organisation.
| Diagram 1 Click image for large view | |
When the
circumstances are as described here, a man enters the spiritual world
in quite another way than would have been the case had his karma been
lived out to the full. Something is brought into the spiritual world
that would otherwise not have been there: an etheric body, an astral
body and an ego-organisation which might still have been living on
earth. Instead of remaining in earthly existence they are taken into
the spiritual world. What was destined for earthly existence is
carried into the spiritual world.
And so we see an
earthly element streaming into the spiritual world from all such
nature-catastrophes.
Such is the
situation of human beings who have been turned aside in this way from
the karmic course of their life by the working of the Ahrimanic
powers; such is their situation when they arrive in the spiritual
world.
And now we must
ask ourselves a question — for if we take spiritual science
earnestly we must learn to put questions from the standpoint of the
spiritual world and of the spiritual Beings in that world, just as
with our ordinary consciousness we put questions relating to the
physical world and its beings. We must ask the question: How do the
Beings of the three Hierarchies respond when human beings ascend to
their realm bearing with them an earthly element, bearing this
earthly element into the spiritual world?
It then becomes
the task of these spiritual Beings to re-integrate into the
World-Order what seems to have been turned to evil, to run counter to
the World-Order. The gods have now to reckon with what confronts them
in these circumstances, in order that they may transmute the
Ahrimanic evil into a higher good.
This leads to the
question: What is the situation within the World-Order of those human
beings who are destined after their death to pass into the spiritual
world in this way? The Beings of the higher Hierarchies are
confronted with a particular state of affairs and have to say to
themselves: In the previous incarnation of this human being and
through the whole sequence of preceding lives, a world of facts was
prepared, a world of experiences belonging, properly speaking, to the
incarnation that has just ended. But only the first part of what was
thus prepared has been able to come to expression; the second part
has remained without fulfilment. Hence there is part of a life which
ought, in reality, to correspond in respect of karma, to all that
went before. There ought to be complete correspondence, but there is
not ... there is only a part which corresponds to some extent with
the previous incarnation, but not with the whole of
it.
As they survey
this previous earthly life the gods must say: There is something that
has not taken effect as it should have done. Causes are there which
have not been utilised or turned to account. — And now the gods
can take hold of these unutilised causes, guide them to the human
being and so strengthen him inwardly for his next earthly life. The
power of what existed as a cause in a previous incarnation can
manifest all the more forcefully in the incarnation following the
present one. If such a catastrophe had not befallen the man in
question he might have appeared again in the world in his next
incarnation with inferior faculties or very possibly with faculties
of quite a different kind. A change has been wrought in him to the
end that karma may be adjusted. But he also comes into the world
endowed with special qualities; his astral body is reinforced, as it
were, because unutilised causative forces are membered into
it.
Will you then
still be astonished by the legend of a philosopher who threw himself
deliberately into the crater of a volcano? What can have been the
motive of such a resolve on the part of one who was initiated into
the secrets of world-existence? The motive could only have been a
conscious intention to achieve through the agency of human will
something that could otherwise have been achieved only through the
agency of elemental nature: the sudden sweeping away of a process
that would otherwise have worked itself to an end by slow
degrees.
What is thus told
of a philosopher may be due to a resolve to appear in the world in
the next incarnation endowed with special powers. The world takes on
a very different aspect when we enter into the deep problems of
karma!
In principle,
therefore, this is how things are in the case of nature-catastrophes.
Let us think now of a catastrophe due to the institutions of
civilisation, where human beings between whom there are no strong
karmic links are as it were massed together by the Ahrimanic powers
to suffer common destruction.
The situation here
is altogether different. Again the Ahrimanic powers are in action;
now, however, the human beings concerned are not, to begin with,
grouped together by karmic ties, but for all that are led together.
The consequences here are essentially different from those of
nature-catastrophes.
A
nature-catastrophe evokes in a man whom it befalls a vivid,
intensified remembrance of what lies in his karma as causation. For
when the human being passes through the gate of death he is made
mindful of everything that is contained in his karma. And remembrance
of karma is intensified, made more vivid in the soul as the result of
a fatal nature-catastrophe.
On the other hand
a railway accident, any catastrophe due to the institution of
civilisation, brings about oblivion of karma. But because of this
oblivion a man becomes highly sensitive to the new impressions coming
to him in the spiritual world after death. And the result is that
such a man is impelled to ask himself: What is to become of the
unexhausted karma I bear within me?
Whereas in the
case of a nature-catastrophe the intellectual qualities
especially are intensified in the astral body of the victim, a
catastrophe of civilisation leads to a strengthening, an enhancement
of the will.
But now we will
turn from these catastrophes and think of a state of affairs arising
from fanatical emotionalism in a group of human beings, where the
sole source of the impulses is man himself, where he lives in sheer
unreality and works, moreover, as a destructive force. Let us think
of a structure of civilisation as fantastically distorted as that
presented to us to-day in the East of Europe, and ask ourselves what
happens when the men who help to produce such conditions pass through
the gate of death.
Here too —
as in the case of the other catastrophes something is carried into
the spiritual world, namely a Luciferic element which begets darkness
and devastation.
From catastrophes
of nature and of civilisation it is, in the last resort, light that
is carried from the physical into the spiritual world. But from
aberrations and misguided impulses in cultural life, darkness is
brought into the spiritual world. When men pass into that world
through the gate of death they must make their way as it were through
a dark, dense cloud. For the light which Lucifer kindled in human
emotions on earth becomes dense darkness in the spiritual world when
man enters it after death. And in this case, forces and passions
engendered entirely by man himself and are concerns of his subjective
life, are carried into the spiritual world.
These are forces
which through Ahriman's power can be changed in the spiritual
world in a way that enables use to be made of the Moon-elements still
present in the earth. Lucifer is here stretching out a helping hand
to Ahriman.
What is carried up
into the spiritual world through impulses in civilisation arising
from sheer emotionalism, from blind, misguided earthly consciousness
— this, in different guise, is what bursts from the
earth's interior in the form of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes
and the like.
With this
knowledge as a background we are led to the question of the karma of
the earth and its peoples, the karma of individuals too, inasmuch as
the karma of individuals is bound up with that of the peoples and of
the earth itself. In putting the question we shall seek for the seeds
in Luciferic activities at work in some region where ancient culture
is cast on the rubbish-heap by the working of human emotions, where
wild, misguided instincts set out to create something new but succeed
in spreading only destruction. And we must ask ourselves: Where shall
we see the forces seething in the wild passions of men burst forth
one day on the earth, in flames or convulsive upheavals of the ground
beneath us?
In respect of many
an event of elemental nature, Initiation-Science may, nay must, put
the question: When and where was this event set in train? And the
answer is that it derives from the horrors and atrocities of enmity
and warfare through the course of the development of civilisation.
There you have the connection. — These happenings lie in the
background of existence. In the light of such knowledge, events do
not appear in isolation but are seen in their great cosmic setting.
How do they find their place in the destinies of men? As I said
already, of a truth the gods are there, gods who are linked with the
evolution of mankind, and it is their unceasing task to transform
these happenings into what is propitious and beneficial for human
destiny.
In the
interworking between the earthly and spiritual worlds the destinies
of men are continually being wrenched from the pinions of Lucifer and
the claws of Ahriman, for verily the gods are good! The
unrighteousness originating from the activities of Lucifer and
Ahriman behind the scenes of existence is led by the good gods into
the path of righteousness again and the karmic connection is finally
lawful and good.
Our gaze, which
must of course be full of understanding for human karma, is now
deflected from the destiny of men to the destiny of gods. For when we
contemplate the horrors of war, the guilt and ugliness of war in
their connection with death-dealing elemental catastrophes, we are
watching the battle waged by the good gods against the evil gods
— in two directions evil. We gaze beyond the life of men into
the life of gods, beholding the life of gods as the background of
human life. We watch this life of gods — not with dry,
theoretical thoughts, but with our hearts, with deep, inner
participation; we watch it in its connection with the individual
karma of men on earth because we see human destiny inwoven with the
destiny of gods.
When we
contemplate these things, the world lying behind human life has for
the first time drawn really near to us. For something is then
revealed which cannot but stir the very fibres of our hearts. It
becomes clear to us that the destiny of men lies embedded in the
destiny of the gods, and that in a certain sense the gods yearn for
what they have to take in hand for men while their own battle is
being waged. And in making such conceptions our own we are led again
to what is brought into the world through the Mysteries — as it
was brought, too, in the days of the old
clairvoyance.
One who had
attained Initiation in the ancient Mysteries told how he was led, to
begin with, into the world of the Elements; there he beheld his
inmost being, with its moral attributes, turn outwards. But then
— and he spoke of this experience in words of power and
solemnity — he came to know the nether gods and the upper gods,
the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic gods. The good gods, the Ahrimanic
and the Luciferic gods. The good gods move in the field of
equilibrium. And as the pupil of the ancient Mysteries came to
know what must be known again by the pupil in our modern age, he was
initiated, stage by stage, into the very depths of existence. When
this is understood and its implications realised, the strange, yet
all-illuminating conception is reached: To what end does calamity
exist in the world? To the end that the gods may transmute it into
well-being. Ordinary well-being does not lead into the life of
worlds. Well-being that springs from calamities befalling man along
his path through the physical world of sense — this alone can
lead into the depths of existence.
In the study of
karma we must never call theoretical concepts alone to our aid; we
must call upon the whole man. For knowledge of karma can be acquired
only when the heart, the feelings and the will participate. If,
however, knowledge of karma is acquired in this, the right way,
human life will be deepened and due importance attached to the
relationships and circumstances by which human beings are led
together.
There will, of
course, be moments when karma weighs heavily upon a man who does not
lead a superficial life. But all such moments are balanced out by
others when karma lends him wings on which his soul can soar out of
the earthly realm into the realm of the gods. In our inmost being we
must feel the reality of the connection between the divine world and
the human world if we are to speak of karma in the right and true
way.
What we are of
ourselves, what is in us in a single earthly life passes away along
the path from death to a new birth. What remains is that wherein the
gods, that is to say the Beings of the Hierarchies, hold us by the
hand. And no one will be able to cultivate the right attitude to the
knowledge of karma who does not perceive in karma the helping hand of
the gods.
Thus you must try,
my dear friends, to grasp the knowledge of karma in such a way that
it calls up the feeling: If I am to approach the holy ground of the
spirit where something concerning karma can reveal itself to me, I
must take the hand of the gods.
Thus real, thus
immediate our experiences must become, if we are to win our way to
true knowledge of the spiritual world — which is at the same
time knowledge of karma.
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