[Music] [Music] Let us continue with our observations, whose aim is to enable us to understand

the real nature of the human being at his task in the world, from an ever-deepening perspective. You will

recall that in one of the lectures given here this winter, I spoke of the four primary ways in which human disease can

manifest, saying that we could only later come to discuss what we can call the real karmic causes of disease. Today we

will consider, to some extent at least, this karmic causation of disease. On that previous occasion, describing the human

being in terms of four aspects—physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I—we simultaneously offered a

certain overview of diseases such that each of these aspects of the human being comes to expression in particular organs

and organ systems of the physical body itself. Thus, the ego, within the physical body, comes largely to

expression in the blood; the astral body in the nervous system; and the etheric body in all that we regard as the glandular

system and what belongs to this. The physical body expresses itself as itself—as physical body. We then presented the

diseases that originate in the ego as such, which therefore come to outward physical manifestation as irregularities

of blood functions. We indicated that conditions caused by astral body irregularities express themselves as irregularities of the nervous system,

while causes originating in the etheric body express themselves in the glandular system. Then we saw how diseases we must

regard as originating in the physical body are caused primarily by external factors. In all this, though, we only

considered disease in relation to everything that occurs in a single life, between birth and death. But someone able to draw on spiritual

Science, when considering what unfolds in the universe, will have a sense that the illnesses a person suffers must be

connected in some way with his karma; that is, with the great law of causation involving spiritual connections between

different incarnations. Yet the ways of karma are very convoluted, very diverse, and if we wish to understand anything at

all about karmic causes and contexts, we will have to enter fully into these subtle interrelationships. Today we will

discuss a little of what people initially find most interesting to know: how diseases are connected with

causes which a person himself initiated in former lives. But to do so, by way of introduction, we must first say a few

words about the workings of karma within human biography. We will need to mention some things that most of you already

know from other lectures, since it is important to remind ourselves very clearly how karmic causes become effects

working over from one life into another. Here we must again recall, in a few words, what happens to us during the period

following death. We know that on passing through the gate of death, the experiences we initially have are due to

our being, for the first time, in a position we were not in during our lifetime: we have no physical body, but

our astral body is still connected with the etheric body. We have laid aside our physical body. During life,

this only occurs in exceptional instances, as has often been mentioned. During life, in sleep, when we lay aside the physical body, the etheric body is also

laid aside with it, and so this connection of astral body and etheric body is only present for a while afterward,

and only for a few days. We have also spoken of the experiences during this time that follow immediately after death.

describing how we feel ourselves becoming ever larger, as though growing beyond the spatial bounds we previously

occupied and encompassing all things. We spoke of how the image of our past life stands before us in a great panorama.

Then a period follows, varying individually and taking a matter of days in our time reckoning; the laying aside

of the second corpse, the ether body, which is then absorbed into the universal ether. The only exceptions to this are the instances we have referred

to when discussing delicate, intimate questions of reincarnation, when the ether body is, in a sense, preserved for subsequent use. But in essence, remains of

this ether body, as the fruit of what we experienced and underwent during our life, we live on after death in this life,

governed by the coexistence of the I with the astral body, now without any connection to the physical body. The time

follows which we have become accustomed to call, in spiritual scientific literature, Kama Loca, and have also

often referred to as the period of growing beyond a connection with the physical body, or with physical existence;

in general, of shedding the habit of it. We know that after passing through the gateway of death, our astral body

initially still possesses all the powers that were present in it at the moment of death. We have only laid aside the

physical body, the instrument of enjoyment and action. We no longer possess it, but do still have the astral

body as the bearer of passions, drives, desires, and instincts. After death, out of habit, you might say, we still long for

precisely the same things that we longed for during life. In life, of course, we satisfy our longings and

desires through the instrument of the physical body. Without this instrument, after death, we lack all possibility of satisfying such things. We experience

This is a kind of thirst for physical life until we have become accustomed to living only in the spiritual world, as

such, and possessing only what derives from the world of spirit. Until we have learned this, we sojourn in the period we

refer to as that of weaning from our habits—the period of Kama Loca. In describing the very distinctive course

of this process, we saw that human life runs backward during this time. This is extremely hard for someone new to

spiritual science to understand. We pass backward through the Kama Loca period, which takes around a third of the length

of our previous life. Let us assume that someone dies at the age of 40; he passes through all the events he experienced in

life in reverse sequence. Thus, he first experiences what happened when he was 39, followed by 38, 37, 36, and

so on. He passes through his life backward to the moment of his birth. On this is based the beautiful Christian

saying, referring to the moment when human beings re-enter the world of spirit or the kingdom of heaven: "Except ye become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven." In other words, we

live our way back to the time of childhood and re-experience it. And having completed this reverse journey, we

enter Devacan, or the kingdom of heaven, and there spend the rest of our time—excuse me—spend the rest of our time in

the spiritual world. This is hard to picture since we are so used to the course of time on the physical plane

being an absolute reality. It takes some effort, therefore, for us to find our way into such ideas, but this gradually

becomes possible. Now we must call to mind what we actually do in Kama Loca. Naturally, we could offer many varied descriptions, but

Today, let us focus on something that relates directly to our question about karmic closet illnesses. What will be

said here should certainly not be seen as the only mode of experiencing comma loca, but as one among many. First, we can

illustrate how this comma loca period is used to serve our future by imagining that the person who died at the age of

40 did something at the age of 20 that harmed another. Whenever we do something that harms someone else, this has a

certain significance for the whole of life. Anything we do that harms a fellow human being, or another creature, or the

world in general, represents a developmental hindrance, an obstacle to our developmental progress. This is the whole meaning, in fact, of our human

pilgrimage. The founding power of the human soul, passing from one incarnation to another, is at all times

geared to progressive development and strives for higher evolution. But as we evolve, we repeatedly place obstacles in

our own path, as it were. If this fundamental power, which is what seeks to refuel—I guess the soul—were

active on its own, a very brief period on earth would be sufficient for us. But in that case, the whole of earthly evolution

would have taken a quite different course, and the purpose of it would not be achieved. It is only by placing

obstacles in our own path that we gain strength and gather experience. By placing obstacles in our own path and

then eradicating and overcoming these again, will we become the strong being that we must become by the end of

earthly evolution. It is absolutely part of the meaning of Earth evolution for us to place obstacles in our

path; and if we did not have to acquire the strength to remove the hindrances again, we would not develop the strength

In other words, the world would be deprived altogether of the strength which we develop in this way. We have to

overlook entirely the good and bad connected with such hindrances. From the very beginning, the wise guidance of the

world sought to enable human beings to place obstacles in their own path, so that they might remove them again and

thus develop great strength for what would come later in the world. One might even say that this wise guidance allowed

the human being to be evil; gave him the opportunity to be so, to do harm, so that by redressing the harm, overcoming the

evil, he would grow into a stronger being during karmic evolution than he otherwise would have become if he had

effortlessly attained his goal. This is how we must regard the meaning and justification of such obstacles and

hindrances. So when, after death, someone lives backward through his life in Kama Loca and arrives at any harm he has done,

say an injury he did to someone when he was 20, he experiences this harm in the same way that he re-experiences the joy

and goodness which he gave others. But in this case, he experiences within his own astral body the pain he inflicted. So let

us assume he struck someone when he was 20, and the other suffered the pain of it. This blow, as he lives back through his

experiences, he feels in his astral body the very pain he caused, which the other experienced when he received the blow in

the world of spirit. Therefore, we pass objectively through everything that we ourselves caused in the outer world by

this means we absorb the strength, the tendency to redress this pain in one of our subsequent incarnations.

In retracing our experience after death, we register in our own astral body what it felt like to be on the receiving end.

of what we did, and we also register how, in doing this, we placed a stone in the path of our further development; the

stone must be removed; otherwise, we cannot advance beyond it. At this moment, we form the intention, the tendency to

remove the stone, and so when we have passed through the Kama Loka period, we actually arrive in the period of our

childhood with pure intentions; that is, with the intention of removing all the hindrances we ourselves created in life.

The fact that we bear these intentions within us leads to the unique configuration of each person's future biography. Let us assume that at the age

of 20, B did A an injury. Now he must experience the pain of it himself, and he takes with him the intention to make

amends to A in the future life, in the physical world, since that is where the injury occurred. The fact that he bears

within him the strength, that is, the will to make amends, creates a bond of attraction between B and A, to whom the

injury was done, in the next life. This bond of attraction leads them together again; a mysterious power of attraction

that leads people together in life originates in what was absorbed in Kama Loka and the powers developed there.

During life, we are led to the people to whom we need to make reparation, or with whom we have had anything at all to do,

Disease and Karma By Rudolf Steiner

Disease and Karma By Rudolf Steiner

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