CW 170 The Riddle of Humanity: Lecture 12 (Dornach, 27 August 1916) by Rudolf Steiner
Oct 6, 2026 · 38 min · 13 segments
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Oct 6, 2026 · 38 min · 13 segments
I would like to begin with some observations I made in the last lecture.
Memory, in the form in which it appears in the present period, the earth period, is a metamorphosis of other capacities of soul which mankind possessed on old moon.
As I said, during this period of dreamlike imaginative vision, mankind did not possess a memory of the kind we have today.
It was unnecessary, because everything that was experienced in dreamlike imaginations was was engraved objectively in the world and followed behind a human being like the tail of a comet.
This mode of experience disappears with the arrival of the earth period.
And now there is something further one must keep in mind if one is to understand this matter fully.
Conscious experiences cannot be engraved in the world substance in this fashion.
unless they have already been, in a certain sense, experienced beforehand.
They are not experienced for the first time when the being in question, in this case the human being, experiences them.
They must somehow already have been experienced before.
You can see, therefore, that everything mankind experienced through its moon consciousness, consisted in re-experiencing what had been thought for it by the beings of the higher hierarchies.
On Old Moon, the dreams men dreamed consisted of thoughts that had already been thought by the higher hierarchies.
Human thoughts followed in the wake of these, if we can refer to the experiences of this dreamlike imaginative consciousness as thinking.
other conditions obtain on earth.
Here, human life proceeds in such a way that a person's thoughts do not consist in a repetition of something that has already been thought and which then remain visible.
Rather, as we heard yesterday, when a person thinks his thoughts are preserved only within himself due to the forces of resistance in his physical body, They are engraved in his own etheric substance and are only given over to the universal substance of the world when he dies.
Only then is it possible to look back on everything one has consciously experienced in the manner in which one was formerly able to look back on it.
During the time between death and a new birth, it is possible to look back consciously on everything one has experienced.
What someone has engraved in his own etheric body and then carried through the gates of death out into the universal world ether is destined, however, to undergo gradual changes.
These changes are accomplished in the course of successive earth incarnations as the person experiences the whole of earth existence.
Just consider how much is contained in what a person thinks.
Would it not be the most horrible thing imaginable if all people's thoughts were objectively engraved in the substance of the world and had to remain there eternally? But that is what would happen if, in the course of repeated lives on earth, humanity were not in the position to be able to make good the thoughts that should not remain.
to either improve them or eradicate them and replace them with something entirely different, and so on.
That is one of the things established by an evolution through successive lives on earth.
It gives mankind the opportunity to improve on what it carries with it through the gates of death into the substance of the world.
I would like to begin with some observations I made in the last lecture.
Memory, in the form in which it appears in the present period, the earth period, is a metamorphosis of other capacities of soul which mankind possessed on old moon.
As I said, during this period of dreamlike imaginative vision, mankind did not possess a memory of the kind we have today.
It was unnecessary, because everything that was experienced in dreamlike imaginations was was engraved objectively in the world and followed behind a human being like the tail of a comet.
This mode of experience disappears with the arrival of the earth period.
And now there is something further one must keep in mind if one is to understand this matter fully.
Conscious experiences cannot be engraved in the world substance in this fashion.
unless they have already been, in a certain sense, experienced beforehand.
They are not experienced for the first time when the being in question, in this case the human being, experiences them.
They must somehow already have been experienced before.
You can see, therefore, that everything mankind experienced through its moon consciousness, consisted in re-experiencing what had been thought for it by the beings of the higher hierarchies.
On Old Moon, the dreams men dreamed consisted of thoughts that had already been thought by the higher hierarchies.
Human thoughts followed in the wake of these, if we can refer to the experiences of this dreamlike imaginative consciousness as thinking.
other conditions obtain on earth.
Here, human life proceeds in such a way that a person's thoughts do not consist in a repetition of something that has already been thought and which then remain visible.
Rather, as we heard yesterday, when a person thinks his thoughts are preserved only within himself due to the forces of resistance in his physical body, They are engraved in his own etheric substance and are only given over to the universal substance of the world when he dies.
Only then is it possible to look back on everything one has consciously experienced in the manner in which one was formerly able to look back on it.
During the time between death and a new birth, it is possible to look back consciously on everything one has experienced.
What someone has engraved in his own etheric body and then carried through the gates of death out into the universal world ether is destined, however, to undergo gradual changes.
These changes are accomplished in the course of successive earth incarnations as the person experiences the whole of earth existence.
Just consider how much is contained in what a person thinks.
Would it not be the most horrible thing imaginable if all people's thoughts were objectively engraved in the substance of the world and had to remain there eternally? But that is what would happen if, in the course of repeated lives on earth, humanity were not in the position to be able to make good the thoughts that should not remain.
to either improve them or eradicate them and replace them with something entirely different, and so on.
That is one of the things established by an evolution through successive lives on earth.
It gives mankind the opportunity to improve on what it carries with it through the gates of death into the substance of the world.
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