Lecture III

The conception of karma and its background given in the lecture yesterday can be deepened in many essential respects. We heard that behind human destiny there are worlds in relation to which the aspect of destiny usually observed amounts to no more than the letters of a script as compared with what is produced by the combinations of those letters in a work such as Goethe's Faust. Behind the destiny of a human being we can in very truth gaze at the life and weaving deeds of higher worlds and of the Beings belonging to those worlds. But this picture can be deepened and elaborated.—When man is passing through the Moon sphere after death, he lives in communion with the great primeval Teachers of humanity who have their abode in that sphere. Through the whole of the period between death and a new birth he is associated with human souls—particularly those with whom he is karmically connected—who have also passed through the gate of death and are living through the same period of spiritual existence. In the Moon sphere man lives in communion with the Beings we know as the Angeloi, Arch-angeloi and Archai, and as he passes through the following planetary spheres, with higher and ever higher Beings. It is not really correct to make demarcations and assign one particular Hierarchy to each heavenly sphere, for this is not in accord with reality. But in a general sense it can be said that the Archai, Archangeloi and Angeloi enter into communion with us before we pass into the Sun sphere; in that sphere we find our way into what has to be accomplished between death and a new birth in cooperation with the Hierarchy of the Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes. And then we gradually live on into the realms of the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim as we approach the Mars sphere and the Jupiter sphere. It is not correct to say that one Hierarchy corresponds only to one particular planetary sphere; but there is something else that will have important bearings when we come to study karmic relationships in greater detail.