Reincarnation - principle and evolutionary perspective
Page to be developed
Aspects
- when did it start, when will it stop
- how does it change
Illustrations
Lecture coverage and references
1906-11-03-GA094
To understand this better, we must step to the edge of a mystery, the fourth of the seven unspeakable mysteries. Yesterday we spoke of the mystery of numbers, today we will touch on the fourth, that of birth and death.
[see also Seven secrets]
Birth and death, what are they in the occult sense? ... Are they always necessarily linked to life?
Let us think back to pre-Lemurian times, before man descended into gross physical matter.
[image]
Man had a kind of light and fire body and was embodied in etheric matter.
His contemporaries on Earth are beings who are slightly higher than animals in physical bodies. In the animal body, a kind of cavity is formed.
The etheric man descends into the cavity and fills the physical body. The man of light had condensed himself into an air man, who now moved into the physical body.
This is the moment depicted in the history of creation with the words: “And God breathed into him the living breath, and he became a living soul.”
With the breath we actually draw in our etheric body. The etheric man had condensed to the air when his connection with the earthly body could be made, and he entered the lungs.
With each breath we actually draw our etheric body into us.
The entire way of life was different for early man than it was for later man.
[initially - continuous exchange]
Parts were constantly being released from his etheric body, and new etheric substance was constantly being drawn into it: renewal and excretion were taking place. There were also constant intensive changes within it, corresponding to the higher subtlety of the etheric body; this happened continuously without the abrupt change of birth and death. So there was no birth and death, only a transformation occurred. Dying and being born could only take place after the etheric body had entered into matter.
[mystery of secret of death]
Strictly speaking, birth and death are changes in the state of consciousness.
Death can and must only occur where a soul dwells in a body that is actually foreign to it and uses foreign organs.
The soul's previous purpose in life dissolves when the physical body is discarded.
These two bodies are subject to two completely different laws and worlds, since the body belongs to the Earth and the soul to the astral.
The spiritual Man who dwells in the body receives it when he enters the world, and the Earth takes it away from him again.
It is as if I live in the Earth as a tenant: the tenement house is subject to the property laws and regulations - so is the earthly body. Through it, Man can see outward. This looking outwards is a condition for knowledge; therefore birth and death are inseparable from the arising of knowledge. The Bible says this with the words: “Your eyes will be opened and you will know what is good and what is evil.”
Thus, since Lemuria, manas has been prepared, organized in opposition to what was formed in the lower realms.
[manas - astral wisdom, earthly knowledge through mineral cognition]
Manas enters the physical body through the senses; death is conditioned by manas, without manas there would be no death.
This is the passage in the Gospel of John: “Your fathers ate manna and died.”
One cannot die from the bread of life.
It is Christ who brings the etheric evolution again. The Christ impulse is the penetration of buddhi.
Manas is therefore a point of transition that took place when the etheric body entered the physical body in Lemuria. Budhi is brought into the etheric body from within through Christ, but from within. This principle of inward vitalization is brought by Christianity. “I am the bread of life.” As long as the world was bound to the physical body, the principle of heredity, man had no possibility of looking beyond death. But this happens at the moment when his life body, his ether body, can be enlivened from within through Budhi, when Manas receives Budhi. Moses is therefore the messenger for Manas, Christ the bringer for Budhi. At this stage, the initiate can be outside his body.
