In continuation of my last post: Memory and the etheric body, which is also related to Destiny and the Christ.
In the Daoist parable of the horse, one fortune leads to misfortune which leads to another fortune. Because of life's infinite complexity, we cannot identify the chain of effects that originate from a course of action from rational thought alone. From there, we can begin to understand the nature of etheric vision.
There will be people, for instance, who, while carrying out some deed, suddenly become aware—there will be more and more cases of this from now on, during the next 3,000 years—of an urge to refrain from what they are doing, because of a remarkable vision.
They will perceive in a dreamlike way what appears to be an action of their own; yet they will not be able to remember having done it.
How can clairvoyance and clairaudience, which used to be part of the human being, even if only in a dreamlike way, but has been lost through deviation from the rhythm of nature, be acquired again? This can only be done by the influence of the principle of Budhi on the etheric body, which is its shadow in the lower worlds.
Through the influence of Budhi, the etheric body is awakened and transformed, and the power to consciously change a habit arises, which actually means to renounce a habit or to unlearn a moral failing.
Think of films where the protagonist is stuck in a time loop until they learn the important lesson that breaks the cycle, eventually making right of everything they did wrong. In real life, we don't get the opportunity to relive the same exact day, but we see reoccurring themes that serve to teach us about the right way to live.
If one lives in knowledge, one knows, with what difficulty—sometimes over decades—one has attained the simplest truths.
Past, present, future
Humanity exists within a cycle of evolution. In its proper continuation, it follows the course of action that fixes its past mistakes and wrongdoings. Within the greater cycle of humanity there exists the individual cycles that are also resolving themselves. This is the true meaning of Destiny, brought about by redemption.
It is an eternal cosmic law that each individual must perform a particular deed repeatedly. He must, above all, perform the deed twice—one time as though doing the opposite of the other time.
Most of humanity has incurred karmic debt from prior incarnations, particularly during earth's densest stage of evolution, the Atlantean epoch. At that time, earthly desire was immensely powerful and destructive. This was a time when humanity had mis-used its spiritual abilities, like its power over the life-force (ether.)
Many of us are now working off the effects of the evil Karmic causes produced by us in Atlantean bodies. – Madame Blavatsky
In the chaos of modern times, humanity has a great need to receive a view into the future consequences of any given action. Etheric vision will arise as the personal guidance for many so that they can contribute to the harmony and balance in the world that has been lost.
All this points to the growing of new human faculties enabling men to see into the spiritual world. They will also realise that the picture appearing to their soul is a forewarning of the karmic deed that must be brought about—either in this life on earth or in a later one—to compensate for what they have done.
In short, people will gradually achieve, through their own efforts, the faculty for perceiving in a vision the karmic adjustment, the compensating deed, which must come about in future.
To ensure that in future, when we have found our way to Christ, our karmic account will be balanced—inserted in the cosmic order—in such a way that the settlement of it will benefit as many people as possible—that will be the concern of Him who in our time is becoming Lord of Karma—it will be the concern of the Christ.
This taking over by Christ of the judging of a man's deeds is a result of His direct intervention in human destiny. This intervention is not in a physical body, but on behalf of those men on earth who will increasingly acquire the capacity of perceiving Him.
As humanity develops moral intuition through the Christ, etheric vision will become more common. Through the course of these events, another faculty will emerge that is inseparably connected to the etheric body. That is, the power over ether, the life-force — the one that was lost during Atlantean times. This the energy lying dormant within the seed of a plant.
In the future, it will be possible to produce plants in the laboratory, but only when human beings will regard this as a sacrament, as a holy rite. Only when man has become so earnest and purified, that he looks upon the laboratory-table as an altar, will he be permitted to produce living substance.
Until this time has arrived, however, not even the slightest detail concerning the way in which living beings are constituted, will be revealed to him. In other words: The Ego lives, as a cognitive being, in the mineral kingdom, but it will ascend, in the future, to the plant kingdom, and it will learn to know this kingdom, just as today, it knows the mineral kingdom.
Rudolf Steiner had already sketched for himself his intellectual mission: “To re-unite Science and Religion. To bring back God into Science, and Nature into Religion. Thus to re-fertilize both Art and Life."