Lord of Karma, Page 2

Before entering Kamaloka, the individual experiences a meeting with a quite definite Being who presents him with his karmic account. And this Being, who stood there as a kind of bookkeeper for the karmic Powers, had for many men the form of Moses. Hence the medieval formula which originated in Rosicrucianism: Moses presents man in the hour of death—the phrase is not quite accurate, but that is immaterial here—Moses presents man in the hour of his death with the record of his sins, and at the same time points to the ‘stern law’. Thus the man can recognize how he has departed from this stern law which he ought to have followed.

In the course of our time—and this is the significant point—this office passes over to Christ Jesus, and man will ever more and more meet Christ Jesus as his Judge, his karmic Judge. That is the supersensible event. Just as on the physical plane, at the beginning of our era, the event of Palestine took place, so in our time the office of Karmic Judge passes over to Christ Jesus in the higher world next to our own. This event works into the physical world, on the physical plane, in such a way that men will develop towards it the feeling that by all their actions they will be causing something for which they will be accountable to the judgment of Christ. This feeling, now appearing quite naturally in the course of human development, will be transformed so that it permeates the soul with a light which little bylittle will shine out from the individual himself, and will illuminate the form of Christ in the etheric world. And the more this feeling is developed .. . the more will the etheric Form of Christ be visible in the coming centuries.

For a greater elaboration upon the appearance of Christ in the etheric world, see “Second Coming,” for that is what Steiner is here referring to as a synergetic, correlated and essentially contemporaneous event. This close relationship prompted him to go to some length in the balance of Lect. 3 to stress that the appearance of Christ in the physical form was a “once for all” event, and that his return would be in the etheric world and perceivable there by those who, while still in the physical world themselves, have developed their organs of perception to that level of the new clairvoyance. The student of anthroposophy will note that most of Steiner’s stress upon this particular fact was during the time when the controversy arose that eventually precipitated his separation from the Theosophical Society—its then leaders were pointing to a certain Oriental youth as the reincarnated Christ, a claim later admitted to have been spurious. Nothing more clearly marked anthroposophy as a totally Western development, differentiating it from the Oriental view. By the latter, the “cycles of life” or reincarnations are unending until one attains to Nirvana and does not have to reincarnate anymore, whereas for anthroposophy reincarnation is part of humanity’s evolutionary progress to “perfection.” The Oriental view is essentially a salvation for the individual, whereas the Western view recognizes the universality of Christ as the Savior of all humanity and, indeed, of all creation (Rom 8,19-23; Eph 1,9-10). This theme is taken up in Lect. 10, which again stresses the importance of humanity’s taking up the insights of anthroposophy:

Just as it was necessary that the first Christ-Event should take place on the physical plane in order that the salvation of man could be accomplished, so must the preparation be made here in the physical world, the preparation to look with full understanding, with full illumination, upon the Christ-Event of the twentieth century. For a person who looks upon it unprepared, when his powers have been awakened, will not be able to understand it. The Lord of Karma will then appear to him as a fearful judgment. In order to have an illuminated understanding of this Event, the individual must beprepared. The spreading abroad of the anthroposophical world-conception has taken place in our time for this purpose, so that men can be prepared on the physical plane to perceive the Christ-Event either on the physical plane or on the higher planes. Those who are not sufficiently prepared on the physical plane, and then go unprepared through the life between death and a new birth, will have to wait until in the next incarnation, they can be further prepared through Anthroposophy for the understanding of Christ. During the next 3,000 years the opportunity will be given to men of going through this preparation, and the purpose of all anthroposophical development will be to render men more and more capable of participating in that which is to come.