The law of form is birth and death.
The law of life is rebirth.
The law of the spirit is karma.
Life goes through birth and death
and appears always in new forms.
The form is transient,
life repeats itself,
the spirit is imperishable, eternal.
(GA132)
Everything that is in us is the result of an activity.
There is no being that was not first activity.
All being is the effect of an activity.
This is true in all fields of existence, in all plans.
Every being is the result of an activity.
If someone is to be a happy person, he must have
created happiness himself in a previous existence.
Happiness, which a person enjoys is the result
of some beneficial activity emanating from him.
(GA132)
Prolog
We know that we could not get by with what we have to say about the gospels and other spiritual documents of mankind if we had not presupposed that the development of our whole world system, which we call the embodiments of our planets themselves through the existence of Saturn, through the existence of the sun, the existence of the moon, up to the present existence on earth. Whoever remembers how often these basic ideas had to be linked to, knows how necessary these basic ideas are for all occult observation of the development of mankind. If you now take a look at the information given, for example, in the "Secret Science in Outline" about the development of Saturn, the sun and the moon up to the development of the earth, you will admit that it can only be a sketch - and even if it were much more detailed, it could not be otherwise - only information which can be given from a certain point of view. For as the earth existence offers an infinite abundance of details, so it is quite natural that we also have to record an infinite series of details for the Saturn, sun and moon existence, and that always only a very rough charcoal sketch, a kind of outline, can be given. But for us a characteristic of the evolution is still necessary from another side. If we ask ourselves: Where do all the indications come from that have been given? - then we know that they come from the so-called entries in the Akashic Chronicle. We know that what has happened or is happening in the course of the evolution of the world can be read as it were by an entry into a fine spiritual substance, into the Akashic substance. Of everything that has taken place, there is such an entry, from which can be taken, how the things were once. Now we will naturally be able to assume that, just as to the ordinary eye which surveys anything of our physical world, things which are near will appear more or less clear and distinct in their details, and the farther away they are, more or less obscure and indistinct, so also those things which are near us in time, which belong to the earth or moon evolution, will be able to be indicated more exactly; On the other hand, things which are farther away in time will become more indistinct, for example, when we look back clairvoyantly into the existence of Saturn or the sun. Why do we do this at all, that we put a certain value on it, to pursue so far behind us lying periods of time? Someone might say: Why do these anthroposophists still bring up all kinds of such ancient things today? One does not need to worry about these ancient things in the world, because one has enough to do with what is going on at present. It would be very wrong to speak like that. Because, what has happened once, that still takes place today continuously. What took place in the Saturnian time was not only then, but is still going on today, only it is covered, made invisible by what is today externally around the human being on the physical plan. And indeed, the old Saturnian existence, which took place so long ago, is made quite strongly invisible. But it still concerns man, still today, the old Saturn existence. And to get an idea of how it concerns us, let us put the following before our souls.
GA132
Observation of Saturn
In order to understand what the world is based on, it is not enough to talk about it in terms, to form concepts, ideas about it; but it is much more necessary that one can evoke an idea of the feeling that arises in relation to the infinite emptiness of the old Saturn existence. The mind then, when it receives only an inkling of it, seizes the feeling of shuddering. If one wants to ascend clairvoyantly, so that one then comes to see this state of Saturn, one must prepare oneself in such a way that one indeed acquires a feeling which in a certain respect proceeds from the feeling, more or less known to every man, of vertigo on a high mountain, when man stands over an abyss and believes to have no safe ground under his feet; a feeling that he could not remain in any place, so that he feels himself handed over to powers, to forces over which he no longer has any power. But this is only the elementary, the initial feeling. For one loses not only the ground under one's feet, but also what eyes can see, ears can hear, hands can grasp, in general what is in the spatial environment; and it cannot be otherwise than that one either loses all thought, that one lapses into a kind of twilight or sleep state, in which one can also come to no cognition; or else one lives oneself into that sensation, and then there is nothing else than that one comes to that shuddering state. But one must be prepared, otherwise it is a being caught by a state of dizziness that cannot be conquered. Now there are two possibilities for today's man. The one certain possibility is that someone has understood the Gospels, has understood the Mystery of Golgotha. Who has really understood them in their full depth - of course not in the way modern Theologians talk about it today, but in such a way that he has extracted from it the deepest thing that man can inwardly experience from it - he takes something with him into that emptiness that enlarges as if from a point and fills the emptiness with something that is similar to courage, that is a feeling of courage, of security through being united with that entity that was on Golgotha, with the entity that made the sacrifice on Golgotha. That is one way. - The other way is that we enter the spiritual worlds without the Gospels, that we enter the spiritual worlds through true, genuine anthroposophy. This can also happen. You know that first of all we always emphasize: we do not start from the Gospels when we look at the Mystery of Golgotha, but we would come to it even if there were no Gospels at all. This could not have happened before the Mystery of Golgotha; but this is the case today, because something has come into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha, by which man can experience the spiritual world directly out of the impressions themselves. This is what we can call the working of the Holy Spirit in the world, the working of the world thoughts in the world.
GA132