Lecture III

To be able to gaze at what takes place between death and a new birth brings home to one the rich diversity and many-sidedness of the world. For when it is said that the qualities of aggressiveness and also of fluency of language are quickened in the Mars sphere, this is only one aspect; other aspects of life too are quickened in that sphere. And the same applies to the Jupiter sphere. The Jupiter sphere and its Beings are experienced when in the process of self-observation one looks back with the insight of Initiation over the period between the forty-ninth and fifty-sixth years of life—and then obliterates the pictures. The vista of the Jupiter sphere may be a shattering experience, for the Beings of Jupiter are utterly different from human beings. Think of a quality which is sometimes more and sometimes less in evidence, namely the quality of wisdom. Men insist that they are wise ... but what a struggle it is for them to acquire wisdom! The tiniest fragment of wisdom in any field is difficult to attain and demands inner effort. Nothing of the kind is necessary for the Jupiter Beings. Wisdom is an integral part of their very nature—I cannot say it is ‘born’ in them, for the Jupiter Beings do not come into existence through an embryo as men do on Earth. You must picture to yourselves that there is something around Jupiter like the cloud-masses around the Earth. If you were now to imagine bodies of men forming out of the clouds and flying down to the Earth, that would be a picture of how the new Beings come forth from a kind of cloud-mass on Jupiter; but these Beings have wisdom as an original, intrinsic characteristic. Just as we have circulating blood, so they have wisdom. But their wisdom is not a merited reward, nor has it been acquired by effort; they have it by nature. Therefore their thinking, too, is utterly different from the thinking of men. The experience is shattering, overwhelming, but we must gradually get accustomed to the idea. Just as we on Earth are pervaded by air, so everything on Jupiter is pervaded by wisdom. Wisdom there has substantiality, streams in the atmosphere, discharges itself like rain on Jupiter, rises like mist to the heights. But Beings are there—Beings who ascend in a cloud, a mist of wisdom. Herein live the Cherubim, who in this realm of existence gather up and give shape to the karma of human beings. Other impulses too are in operation, but what holds good unconditionally is that the experiences of an earlier incarnation are gathered together and moulded into shape by the forces of the self-subsisting wisdom of the Jupiter sphere. Then, when the individuality comes down again to incarnation on the Earth, he bears the stamp arising from the re-shaping of his earlier experiences by wisdom which ultimately takes effect in very diverse forms.—Again we will take an example.