Causal Body

At each death, at the end of each incarnation, this memory-picture has appeared before his soul and left behind what I have called a concentrated essence of forces. So with each life a picture is added. After his first incarnation a man had his first memory-picture when he died; then came the second, richer than the first, and so on. The sum-total of these pictures produces a kind of new element in man. 

Before his first death a man consists of four bodies, but when he dies for the first time he takes the first memory-picture with him. Thus on reincarnating for the first time he has not only his four bodies but also this product of his former life. This is the “causal” body. So now he has five bodies: physical, etheric, astral, ego and causal. Once this causal body has made its appearance, it remains, though it was first constituted from the products of previous lives. 

Now we can understand the difference between individuals. Some of them have lived through many lives and so have added many pages to their Book of Life. They have developed to a high level and possess a rich causal body. Others have been through only a few lives; hence they have gathered fewer fruits and have a less developed causal body.

-Rudolf Steiner 

Kāraṇa-Śarīra:

A Sanskrit term which literally translates as “causal body” and is equivalent to the theosophical use of the term CAUSAL BODY. An alternative term, sometimes used, is kāraṇopādhi (i.e., kāraṇa + upādhi). It is one of three such bodies identified in the Vedānta literature.

It is the reincarnating soul or jīva, retaining within itself the essence of one’s life experiences which cause the conditions of one’s future incarnations.
Since the kāraṇa-śarīra or Causal Body is the receptacle of the essences of a life’s experiences and tendencies, and since in the normal process of REINCARNATION the vehicles which would normally store specific memories and behavioral tendencies are shed, it is only in unusual cases of rapid reincarnation that one would recall a former life. Furthermore, the distilled experiences of a human incarnation could never result in the rebirth in an animal form, so theosophical theory does not admit of the popular Hindu notion of transmigration. Only in cases of the most extreme cruelty or debauchery could future incarnations be considered even a human retrogression. Evolution of consciousness and conscience may be slow for the majority of people, but it is steady.

It is stated in theosophical literature that the kāraṇa-śarīra or Causal Body is formed at the time of Individualization, that is, at the transition from animal to human consciousness.

-Richard W. Brooks 

https://www.theosophy.world/encyclopedia/karana-sarira

A Fresh Look at Health & Illness- extract

THERE are two causes of sickness and two types of death which we may discern, one which brings the ultimate blessing, healing and life, and that which only answers with cessation.

Pneumonia brings the rains within, where the patient is awash with such fluids as would drown him. As the fevers rise to dispel the cold, as the tremulous changes challenge the life within, they also in their own way, bring blessings. With both congestion and with heat there are effects upon the nature of the individual which exceed the physical condition and all that that implies. 

As far as the body is wakefully concerned it has not the consciousness of death or an understanding of the threat of death. It is true that it may be labored under certain conditions - that the pulse will quicken and the astral body may be inflamed in accordance with the infliction - but it does not factor its own dissolution to be had in a permanent fashion. The body cannot and does not concede to cessation, or for that matter, to rest (totally at rest i.e. of the internal organs)........

The miracle of the healings of Christ, was that through His Intervention an individual not only received a respite from his physical aggravation but also was afforded the full power of virtue which he spiritually required. Physical healers there have been before and after Him who could effect their cures but take the soul no further. In point of fact, the results of many 'healings' have been deleterious because the spiritual connection was disturbed and the fellow concerned made paralyzed in that important area. In this way it was correctly said that we die a little death when we take antibiotics also. 'Spiritual' healers can cause such deathly processes as well, because the correspondence between the inflowing forces and the physical condition are no longer allowed to operate as the determining consciousness would have it. There is a predetermining and an interruption to what would have invoked much virtuous benefit.

However, when Christ confronted the sufferer, the sin and the disease, He came with a choice which was accepted by the day-consciousness of the man for betterment, which his star-consciousness would have enforced upon him. When the choice was brought into the day-consciousness and that day-consciousness embraced the goodness with clarity, that decisiveness in the being of that individual transformed the physical, restoring it accordingly, releasing also the starry-consciousness of its imposing and infill.

The Resurrected Body brought about a likeness which was unlike the previous likeness, didn't it? When Christ Himself had drawn the powers into His Physical Form during the Crucifixion, He did so in a way which affected the process to follow in Man further on. He took the day-consciousness of Man through to death, and brought the star-consciousness into his egoic reckoning. Bringing two realms together, the physical existence was to be blended through the divine insights of Man, that in his conscious abilities he could retain a power which he hitherto had not had within the spiritual worlds before. 

This mystery has not been seen or realized in Man as yet. We are at the very beginnings of this transformation which is given to us in possibility, that we may negotiate two worlds with the powers enabled from both. For those who are the 'runners' for Humanity certain talents in this regard have been won, and yet the true transaction as is possible through Christ has not occurred at this time.

When He was seen in His resurrected Glory, the body which became visible (to many) actually resembled in truth that of their own form spiritually. It shall not be said that the form 'mirrored' that of the individual for a mirror is something of the reverse (in this world). It was that this form was the form that they knew within their star-consciousness. Although a woman may well have perceived a man, what is meant here is that the impression given to the new form of Christ was first and foremostly impressioned by the soul who stood before Him. This is another secret which suggests to us that the physical body is not as it appears and can be remarkably different.

At first the Christ when received was always unrecognized [John 20:14-15]… this of course may be understandable. But what was outstandingly remarkable was that His body shared substance with others, that when the day-night consciousness has become transcended into the one body, the physical properties become respecters to the desire and will of the one God within. 

Christ's Will was to provoke the men into examining themselves consciously through Him and to find the possibility of this, however the nature of the physical world and its propensity is to corrupt over time. The willing of the spiritual star-consciousness in its call to the higher powers was given to remain prevailing during this period of physical uncertainty and corruption:

Truly, truly, I say to you, When you were young, you gird yourself, and walked where you would: but when you shall be old, you shall stretch forth your hands, and another shall gird you, and carry you where you would not.
-John 21:18 [American KJV]

This 'other' still calls within us dividedly, yet with the difference now being that Christ Himself has proved the glory of Death and will eventually assist the two in conjoining concurrently in Man. 

To 'feed' within the world is to honor the world. We give to Life and all that it requires and the spiritual worlds will reward us. If there is to be a healing, we pray that Christ's presence be there for us at that time, so that the powers may still enter into us with a wholesome constancy and the spiritual consciousness may converse within us freely.

-B.Hive 

The Appearance of the Etheric Christ

A number of individuals will see the Etheric Christ and will themselves experience the event that took place at Damascus. But this will depend upon such men learning to be alert to the moment when Christ draws near to them. In only a few decades from now it will happen, particularly to those who are young — already preparation is being made for this — that some individual here or there has certain experiences. 

If he has sharpened his vision through having assimilated Anthroposophy, he may become aware that suddenly someone has come near to help him, to make him alert to this or that. The truth is that Christ has come to him, although he believes that what he saw is a physical man. He will come to realise that what he saw was a super-sensible being, because it immediately vanishes. 

Many a human being will have this experience when sitting silent in his room, heavy-hearted and oppressed, not knowing which way to turn. The door will open, and the etheric Christ will appear and speak words of consolation to him. The Christ will become a living Comforter to men.

However strange it may as yet seem, it is true nevertheless that many a time when people — even in considerable numbers — are sitting together, not knowing what to do, and waiting, they will see the Etheric Christ. He will Himself be there, will confer with them, will make His voice heard in such gatherings. These times are approaching, and the positive, constructive element now described will take real effect in the evolution of mankind."

-Rudolf Steiner

The Etherisation of the Blood


Rudolf Steiner explained that the Etheric Christ has the only etheric body that can appear as a physical body. Moreover, He can appear simultaneously to 10, 100, 1000 people all around the globe. “[Christ has] the only etheric body able to work in the physical world as a human physical body works. It will differ from a physical body in this respect only, that it can be in two, three, even a hundred, a thousand places at the same time.”

Great Ideals

Napier Waller

If a man strives for sublimely great ideals, it is because they are the content of his own being, and their realization will bring him a joy compared to which the pleasure that a limited outlook gets from the gratification of commonplace desires is a mere triviality. Idealists revel, spiritually, in the translation of their ideals into reality.

Anyone who would eradicate the pleasure brought by the fulfillment of human desires will first have to make man a slave who acts not because he wants to but only because he must. For the achievement of what one wanted to do gives pleasure. 

What we call good is not what a man must do but what he will want to do if he develops the true nature of man to the full. Anyone who does not acknowledge this must first drive out of man all that man himself wants to do, and then, from outside, prescribe the content he is to give to his will.

Man values the fulfillment of a desire because the desire springs from his own being. What is achieved has its value because it has been wanted. If we deny any value to what man himself wants, then aims that do have value will have to be found in something that man does not want.

- Rudolf Steiner – GA 4

Magnetic Healing

There are people who are, by nature, magnetic healers — certainly there are. But the important thing is this, that the faculty is, as a rule, of limited duration. The natural magnetic healers have this magnetism, as it is called. When they begin to apply it, it may work very well; after a time it begins to wane, and later on it often happens that magnetic healers, after this faculty has died down in them, go on acting as if they still had it, and then charlatanism begins.

This is the precarious element when magnetic healing becomes a profession. This kind of healing really cannot be made into a profession. That is what must be said about it. The process of magnetic healing — when a person has the faculty for it — is only unconditionally effective when it is carried out with genuine compassion for the patient, a compassion that goes right down into one's organism. If you practice magnetic healing with a real love for the patient, then it cannot be done as a profession. If real love exists it will always be able to lead to something good, if no trouble arises from another side. But it can only be done on occasions, when karma leads us to a person whom we are able, out of love, to help; then the outer sign may be a laying on of the hand, or a stroking and then what is happening is that the astral body is passing on its forces to the etheric body which then works upon the ether body of the other person.

Something must still be said from another aspect about what goes on here. The healing always proceeds from the astral body, either from the patient's own astral body or from the astral body of the magnetizer. The reverse is the case in therapy where medicaments are used. When you give medicaments you introduce into the physical body substances which then work partly upon the inner forces and partly upon the rhythm of the physical body in such a way that the etheric body of the patient is influenced. The healing always proceeds from the etheric body. If you influence the etheric body from the astral body — which is a psychical healing — this lies in the realm of magnetic healing and is somewhat problematic, having a humanitarian, social element in it, something to do with the relations of one human being to another.

Rational therapy must proceed from intervention by means of medicaments which proceed from the physical body and pass into to the etheric body. Always, however, the healing proceeds from the etheric body. It is a complete illusion that the physical body, when it has become ill, can itself bring about any healing. The physical body has, precisely, the basis of illness within it, and the cause of healing must always come from the etheric body.

-Rudolf Steiner