On the Astral World and Devachan

GA 88 — 27 October 1903, Berlin

18. Physical Illnesses and Cosmological Laws

The questions were asked: Why, in the context of karma, are there imperfect things, evil, pain and

disease? Is not karmic compensation also brought about by the thought of a benevolent human spirit? The thought of a forgiving God is surely closer at hand than that of a strict and just God.

The following answer can be given to these questions: Our idea of God, [as it presents itself from the theosophical point of view], includes the notion that the individual entities will be led to their highest perfection in the course of time, and not in some indefinite way, but in such a way that they reach the divine final goal on a specific path of development.

In our cosmos, we are dealing with seven planetary developmental stages: Saturn, the Sun, the Moon, then comes the Earth, which will later pass into the next developmental stage, into the fifth, then into the sixth and finally into the seventh. We can gain a certain idea of three of these seven planetary stages, that is, of the Moon, of the Earth and of the future planet Jupiter. We call our planet, the Earth, the cosmos of love, and the next one, Jupiter, the cosmos of fire. In the preceding planetary state, the moon state, we see the cosmos of wisdom.

We call the most highly developed beings of the present earth state the “masters of love and compassion”. The “Masters of Wisdom” were the most highly developed beings in the moon evolution; they guided the wise construction of the human organs from the cosmic karmic forces in such a way that hunger and thirst occur at the right time, for example. When these “Masters of Wisdom” appear in our time, they come across with too much wisdom. A piano maker, for instance, must carry out his work in his workshop; in the concert hall his work would only cause harm. So one and the same activity can be good in one place and bad in another. This also applies to these “Masters of Wisdom”; since they have too much wisdom, they would consequently cause harm here on earth, just as the piano maker would cause harm in the concert hall. If the “Masters of Love and Compassion” take too much of our earth with them into the next stage of planetary development, they would become a kind of “Brothers of the Shadow”, for this next epoch will have the task of purifying the Manas element to the level of Budhi. All these purified karmic feelings will then merge into a single power that will strive towards the original spirit that flows through our planet. Everything that the human being of today feels will, in the next state, converge in a purified form like flames, and these many individual flames will combine to form a single fire. And so this planet is called the Cosmos of Fire, which is formed from the purified feelings of human hearts as they resonate harmoniously with one another.

This Cosmos of Fire relates to our earthly cosmos as it did to its predecessor. The spiritual essence must first pass through wisdom, then through love, and finally it must merge with fire. This is the goal that the original spirit, which flows through the cosmos, is striving for. It wants to let humanity experience all the intermediate stages. Man should not only simply reach perfection, but it is also important to let him go through all the individual stages in order to let him experience the richness of existence. These intermediate goals could not be achieved if there were no diversity in time and space. In space, different levels of existence coexist. But beings also live in succession in time and go through different epochs, different levels. Thus, the original spirit strives for diversity in time and space. It allows the beings to progress to perfection through themselves. It allows the beings to truly undergo the individual lessons.

Karma can only work in such a way that the one, the perfect, corresponds to the other, the imperfect. Imagine that a child is supposed to develop in order to perfect itself in view of its later adulthood. It must first learn everything. It must learn to stand and walk, it must learn to keep itself in balance; in doing so, it will often fall over. If there were no pain associated with falling, falling would have no effect in the direction of perfecting abilities. In order to perfect itself, imperfection must be present in life. Each fact must be connected with another in such a way that this first fact becomes a lesson for us, that it teaches us something. This is what theosophy shows us. All intermediate stages of our planet are a learning through which we ascend to the highest degree. We must therefore see life as a learning. The divine original spirit gives us the opportunity to learn as much as possible from life. A God who only forgives would prevent us from learning.

Every action becomes the source of knowledge. It would not be so if the swinging to one side were not linked to the swinging of the pendulum to the other side. It is necessary that the pendulum can swing in two directions so that we are not guided by the hand of a creator like puppets. Because at certain stages of our development not the whole variety of human life appears, at other stages something must appear that looks like the other side of the pendulum.

Now there are physical illnesses. We cannot really understand the origin of physical illnesses. We can only understand that accidents happen to us; but that our body simply becomes ill out of itself, without an accident happening to it, is something we cannot readily comprehend. In occultism, the “brothers of the shadow” are also seen as the bearers of evil diseases that work from within; and we can look for the cosmic-karmic origin of physical illnesses that occur without external cause in the same direction. Too much wisdom in the wrong place causes the soul to stray into evil. In physical terms, this means that the masters of wisdom intervene too strongly in the organs. However, they should only occupy themselves with wisdom and not delve into the physical sphere of the organs in their present state on earth. In the same way, if the Masters of Wisdom do the same here that they rightly did in an earlier stage, they become the cause of physical illnesses. This self-perpetuating wisdom principle is the origin of physical evil.

Our cosmos of love, compassion and benevolence was preceded by the cosmos of wisdom, in which beings devoted their activity to the development of the physical body. The fact that they still extend their activity into our cosmos is what causes disease. Diseases, physical and moral evils, can be traced back to this common origin. This is a fact that emerges from occult historical research.

I have shown how our time has come through external research to the point where a spiritualization through theosophy is necessary. Western science comes to the gate of theosophy and knocks, because it cannot find satisfactory solutions on its own.

Lombroso's research, for example, is justified in itself; in his work, the physical and the psychological appear to be closely related. How closely he relates disease and physical abnormality in the case of criminals. Lombroso found purely physical abnormalities and irregularities in the physique of criminals; he measures the skulls, looks for asymmetries and abnormalities and says that where there is moral wrongdoing, there is also physical disharmony. In this way, he brings moral and physical illness very close together. In this way, physical science arrives at convictions that occultism also leads to. But Theosophy knows that in the case of moral and physical illnesses, it is a karmic intrusion of the lunar epoch into our earthly one; it is cosmic-karmic effects that come to light in this too deep penetration into the physical.

Now you will see why those who have the ability to see in the astral can be very different doctors than those who do not have this ability. During the lunar epoch, everything that happened was much closer to the astral than it is today; the astral forces were much more active, much more fluid, and much more powerful. The astral seer can therefore trace the connection between our world and the lunar one. He must look from the physical effects into the astral causes. One must try to imagine this in a picture. Let us imagine that the astral had been water and had now frozen, so that everything that was there before can be seen in the ice. A physician like Paracelsus, who had this ability to see, was able to discover a whole range of healing processes that are incomprehensible to the ordinary physician. He was able to determine the causes of physical illnesses through his ability to see, that is, to see the causes of illnesses in the preceding developmental epochs. He said that one must not only cure the earthly man, but also the sidereal man; that is, in our words: one must also cure the astral part of man. Paracelsus sees the relationship between the effect of the physical remedy used by him and the cause of the disease, and he also sees the effect of this remedy. The ordinary physician finds the effect only through the experiment.

Thus you see how what appears on earth as imperfection is no longer imperfect for us if we understand it as having been caused by the influence of wisdom, which was justified in the past, into our epoch. What is perfect in our epoch may be imperfect in an earlier or later one. Jesus says, “Why do you call me perfect? Only the Father in heaven is perfect. —No single being is perfect; it is only imperfect — in the place and at the time where it is.