Speaking
in detail about karma, we must of course distinguish between
those karmic events of life which come to a person more from
outside, and those which arise, as it were, from within. A human
being's destiny is composed of many and diverse factors. To begin
with, it depends on his physical and etheric constitution. Then
it depends on the sympathies and antipathies with which he is
able to meet the outer world, according to his astral and his Ego
[“I”]-constitution; and on the sympathies and
antipathies with which others in their turn are able to encounter
him according to his nature. Moreover, it depends on the myriad
complications and entanglements in which he finds himself
involved on the path of life. All these things work together to
determine — for a given moment, or for his life as a whole
— the human being's karmic situation.
I
shall now try to show how the total destiny of man is put
together from these several factors. Today we shall take our
start from certain inner factors in his nature. Let us observe,
for once, what is in many respects of cardinal importance. I mean
his predisposition to health and illness; and, with this
underlying basis, all that comes to expression in his life, in
the physical strength — and strength of soul — with
which he is able to confront his tasks, and so on ...
To
judge these factors rightly, we must however be able to see
beyond many a prejudice that is contained in the civilisation of
today. We must be able to enter more into the true original being
of man; we must gain insight, what it really signifies to say
that man, as to his deeper being, descends from spiritual worlds
into this physical and earthly life.
All
that is referred to nowadays as heredity has even found its way,
as you are well aware, into the realms of poetry and art. If
someone appears in the world with such and such qualities, people
will always begin by asking how he inherited them. If, for
example, he appears with a predisposition to illness, they will
at once ask: what of the hereditary circumstances?
Actually
the question is quite justifiable; but in their whole attitude to
these things nowadays, people look past the real human being;
they completely miss him. They do not observe what his true being
is, how his true being unfolds. In the first place, they say he
is the child of his parents and the descendant of his forebears.
Already in his physiognomy, and even more perhaps in his
gestures, they fondly recognise a likeness to his ancestors
emerging. Not only that; they also see his whole physical
organism as a product of what is given to him by his forefathers.
He carries this physical organism with him. They emphasise this
very strongly, but they fail to observe the following:
When
he is born, to begin with undoubtedly man has his physical
organism from his parents. But what is the physical organism
which he receives from his parents? The thoughts of the
civilisation of today upon this question are fundamentally in
error. For in effect, when he is at the change of teeth he not
only exchanges the teeth he first received for others, but this
is also the moment in life when the entire human being — as
organisation — is for the first time renewed. There is a
clear difference as between what the human being becomes in his
eighth or ninth year of life, and what he was in his third or
fourth year. It is a clear difference. What he was — as
organisation — in his third or fourth year, he undoubtedly
received by heredity. His parents gave it to him. That which
first emerges in the eighth or ninth year of his life is in the
highest degree a product of what he himself has brought down from
spiritual worlds.
To
picture the real underlying facts we may put it as follows —
though I am well aware it will shock the people of today. Man, we
must say, when he is born, receives something like a model of his
human form. He gets this model from his forebears; they give him
the model to take with him into life. Then, working on the model,
he himself develops what he afterward becomes. What he develops,
however, is the outcome of what he himself brings with him from
the spiritual world.
Fantastic
as it may seem to the people of today — to those who are
completely immersed in modern culture — yet it is so. The
first teeth which the human being receives are undoubtedly
inherited; they are the products of heredity. They only serve him
as the model, after which he elaborates his second teeth, and
this he does according to the forces he brings with him from the
spiritual world. Thus he elaborates his second teeth. And as it
is with the teeth, so with the body as a whole.
A
question may here arise: Why do we human beings need a model at
all? Why can we not do as indeed we did in earlier phases of
earth evolution? Just as we descend and gather in our ether-body
(which, as you know, we do with our own forces, and bring it with
us from the spiritual world), why can we not likewise gather to
ourselves the physical materials and form our own physical body
without the help of physical inheritance?
For
the modern person's way of thinking it is no doubt a grotesquely
foolish question — mad, I need hardly say. But with respect
to madness — let us admit it — the theory of
relativity holds good. To begin with, people only apply the
theory to movements. They say you cannot tell, from observation,
whether you yourself are moving, or whether it is the
neighbouring body that is moving. This fact emerged very clearly
when the old cosmic theory was exchanged for the Copernican one.
Though, as I said, they apply the Theory of Relativity only to
movement, though we could also apply it (for it certainly has its
sphere of validity) to the aforesaid ‘madness.’ Here
are two people, standing side by side: each one is mad compared
to the other ... The question only remains, which of the two is
absolutely mad?
In
relation to the real facts of the spiritual world, this question
must none the less be raised: Why does the human being need a
model? Ancient worldviews answered it in their way. Only in
modern times, when morality is no longer included in the cosmic
order but only recognised as a human convention, these questions
are no longer asked. Ancient worldviews not only asked the
question; they also answered it. Originally, they said, man was
predestined to come to the earth in such a way that he could form
his own physical body from the substances of earth, just as he
gathers to himself his ether-body from the cosmic
ether-substance. But he then fell a prey to the Luciferic and
Ahrimanic influences, and he thereby lost the faculty out of his
own nature to build his physical body. Therefore he must take it
from heredity. This way of obtaining the physical body is the
result of original sin.
This
is what ancient worldviews said — that this is the
fundamental meaning of “original sin.” It signifies
having to enter into the laws and conditions of heredity.
We
in our time must first discover and collect the necessary
concepts so as to take these questions sincerely, in the first
place; and in the second place, to find the answers. It is quite
true: man in his earthly evolution has not remained as strong as
he was predisposed to be before the onset of the Luciferic and
Ahrimanic influences. Therefore he cannot form his physical body
of his own accord when he comes down into the earthly conditions.
He is dependent on the model, he needs the model which we see
growing in the first seven years of human life. And, as he takes
his direction from the model, it is but natural if more or less
of the model also remains with him in his later life. If, in his
working on himself, he is altogether dependent on the model, then
he forgets — if I may put it so — what he himself
brought with him. He takes his cue entirely from the model.
Another human being, having stronger inner forces as a result of
former lives on earth, takes his direction less from the model;
and you will see how greatly such a human being changes in the
second phase of life, between the change of teeth and puberty.
This
is precisely the task of schools. If it is a true school, it
should bring to unfoldment in the human being what he has brought
with him from spiritual worlds into this physical life on earth.
Thus,
what the human being afterward takes with him into life will
contain more or less of inherited characteristics, according to
the extent to which he can or cannot overcome them.
Now
all things have their spiritual aspect. The body man has in the
first seven years of life is simply the model from which he takes
his direction. Either his spiritual forces are to some extent
submerged in what is pressed upon him by the model; then he
remains quite dependent on the model. Or else, in the first seven
years, that which is striving to change the model works its way
through successfully.
This
striving also finds expression outwardly. It is not merely a
question of man's working on the model. While he is doing so, the
original model gradually loosens itself, peels off, so to speak —
falls away. It all falls away, just as the first teeth fall away.
Throughout this process, the forms and forces of the model are
pressing on the one hand, while on the other hand the human being
is trying to impress what he himself has brought with him to the
earth ... There is a real conflict in the first seven years of
life. Seen from the spiritual standpoint, this conflict is
signified by what finds expression — outwardly,
symptomatically — in the illnesses of childhood. The
typical diseases of childhood are an expression of this inward
struggle.
Needless
to say, similar forms of illness often occur later in life. In
such a case — to take only one example — it may be
that the patient did not succeed very well in overcoming the
model in the first seven years of life. And at a later age an
inner impulse arises, after all to rid himself of what has thus
karmically remained in him. Thus in the 28th or 29th year of
life, a human being may suddenly feel inwardly roused, all the
more vigorously to act against the model, and as a result he or
she will get some illness of childhood.
If
you have an eye for it, you will soon see how remarkable it is in
some children — how greatly they change in physiognomy or
gesture after the 7th or 8th year of their life. Nobody knows
where the change comes from. The prevailing views of heredity are
so strong nowadays that they have passed into the everyday forms
of speech. When, in the 8th or 9th year, some feature suddenly
emerges in the child (which, in real fact, is deeply, organically
rooted) the father will often say: “Anyhow, he hasn't got
it from me.” To which the mother will answer: “Well,
certainly not from me.” All this is only due to the
prevailing belief which has found its way into the parental
consciousness — I mean of course, the belief that the
children must have got everything from their parents.
On
the other hand, you may often observe how children grow even more
like their parents in this second phase of life than they were
before. That is quite true. But we must take in earnest what we
know of the way man descends into the physical world.
Among
the many dreadful flowers of the swamp which psychoanalysis has
produced, there is the theory of which you can read everywhere
nowadays, namely that in the hidden subconscious mind every son
is in love with his mother and every daughter with her father;
and they tell of the many conflicts of life which are supposed to
arise from this, in the subconscious regions of the soul. All
these are of course amateurish interpretations of life. The truth
however is that the human being is in love with his parents
already before he comes down into earthly life. He comes down
just because he likes them.
Of
course, the judgment of life which people have on earth must
differ in this respect from the judgment they have outside the
earthly life between death and a new birth. On one occasion, in
the early stages of our anthroposophical work, a lady appeared
among us who said: “No,” when she heard of
reincarnation. She liked the rest of Anthroposophy very well, but
with reincarnation she would have nothing to do; one earthly
life, she said, was quite enough for her. Now we had very
well-meaning followers in those days, and they tried in every
imaginable way to convince the good lady that the idea was true
after all, that every human being must undergo repeated lives on
earth. She could not be moved. One friend belaboured her from the
left, and another from the right. After a time, she left; but two
days later, she wrote me a postcard to the effect that, after
all, she was not going to be born again on earth!
To
such a person, one who wishes simply to tell the truth from
spiritual knowledge can only say: No doubt, while you are here on
earth, it is not at all to your liking that you should come down
again for a future life. But it does not depend on that. Here on
earth, to begin with, you will go through the gate of death into
the spiritual world. That you are quite willing to do. Whether or
not you want to come down again will depend on the judgment which
will be yours when you no longer have the body with you. For you
will then form quite a different judgment.
The
judgments man has in physical life on earth are, in fact,
different from the judgments he has between death and a new
birth. For there the point of view is changed. And so it is, if
you say to a human being here on earth — a young person
perhaps – that he has chosen his father, it is not out of
the question that he might object: “Do you mean to say that
I have chosen the father who has given me so many thrashings?”
Yes, certainly he has chosen him; for he had quite another point
of view before he came down to earth. He had the point of view
that the thrashings would do him a lot of good ... Truly, it is
no laughing matter; I mean it in deep earnestness.
In
the same way, man also chooses his parents as to form and figure.
He himself has a picture before him — the picture that he
will become like them. He does not become like them by heredity,
but by his own inner forces of soul-and-spirit — the forces
he brings with him from the spiritual world. Therefore you need
to judge out of both spiritual and physical science. If you do
so, it will become utterly impossible to judge as people do when
they say, with the air of making an objection: “I have seen
children who became all the more like their parents in their
second phase of life.” No doubt; but then the fact is that
these children themselves have set themselves the ideal of taking
on the form of their parents.
Man
really works, throughout the time between death and a new birth,
in union with other departed souls, and with the beings of the
Higher Worlds; he works upon what will then make it possible for
him to build his body.
You
see, we very much underestimate the importance of what man has in
his sub-consciousness. As earthly man, he is far wiser in the
subconscious than in the surface-consciousness. It is indeed out
of a far reaching, universal, cosmic wisdom that he elaborates
within the model that afterward emerges in the second phase of
life — what he then bears as his own person, the human form
that properly belongs to him. In time to come, people will know
how little they really receive — as far as the substance of
the body is concerned — from the food they eat. Man
receives far more from the air and the light, from all that he
absorbs in a very finely made state from air and light. When this
is realised, people will more readily believe that man builds up
his second body quite independently of any inherited conditions.
For he builds it entirely from his world-environment. The first
body is actually only a model which comes from the parents and is
no longer there in the second period of life, not only
substantially, but as regards the outer bodily forces as well.
The child's relation to his parents then becomes an ethical, a
soul relationship. Only in the first period of life — that
is until the seventh year — is it a physical, hereditary
relationship.
Now
there are people who in this earthly life take a keen interest in
all that surrounds them in the visible cosmos. They observe the
world of plants, of animals; they take interest in this thing and
that in the visible world around them. They take an interest in
the majestic picture of the starlit sky. They are awake, so to
speak, with their soul, in the entire physical cosmos. The inner
life of a human being who has this warm interest in the cosmos
differs from the inner life of one who goes past the world with a
phlegmatic, indifferent soul.
In
this respect, the whole scale of human characters is represented.
There, for example, is a person who has been on a short journey.
When you afterward talk to him, he will describe with infinite
love the town where he has been, down to the tiniest detail.
Through his keen interest you yourself will get a complete
picture of what it was like in the town he visited.
From
this extreme we can pass to the opposite. On one occasion, for
instance, I met two elderly ladies; they had just traveled from
Vienna to Presburg, which is a beautiful city. I asked them what
it was like in Presburg, what had pleased them there. They could
tell me nothing except that they had seen two pretty little
dachshunds down by the river-side! Well, they need not have gone
to Presburg to see the dachshunds; they might just as well have
seen them in Vienna. However, they had seen nothing else at all.
So
do some people go through the world. And, as you know, between
these outermost ends of the scale there are those who take every
kind and degree of interest in the physical world around them.
Suppose
a person has little interest in the physical world around him.
Perhaps he just manages to interest himself in the things that
immediately concern his bodily life — whether, for
instance, one can eat more or less well in this or that district.
Beyond that, his interests do not go; his soul remains poor. He
does not imprint the world into himself. He carries very little
in his inner life, very little of what has radiated into him from
the phenomena of the world, through the gate of death into the
spiritual realms. Thereby he finds working with the spiritual
beings, with whom he is then together, very difficult. And as a
consequence, in the next life he does not bring with him for the
up-building of his physical body, strength and energy of soul,
but weakness — a kind of faintness of soul. The model works
into him strongly enough. The conflict with the model finds
expression in manifold illnesses of childhood; but the weakness
persists. He forms, so to speak, a frail or sickly body, prone to
all manner of illnesses. Thus, karmically, our interest of
soul-and-spirit in the one earthly life is transformed into our
constitution as to health in the next life. Human beings who are
“bursting with health” certainly had a keen interest
in the visible world in a former incarnation. The detailed facts
of life work very strongly in this respect.
No
doubt it is more or less “risque” nowadays to speak
of these things, but you will only understand the inner
connections of karma if you are ready to learn about the karmic
details. Thus, for example, in the age when the human souls who
are here today were living in a former life on earth, there was
already an art of painting; and there were some people even then
who had no interest in it at all. Even today, you will admit,
there are people who do not care whether they have some atrocity
hanging on the walls of their room or a picture beautifully
painted. And there were also such people in the time when the
souls who are here today were living in their former lives on
earth. Now, I can assure you, I have never found a man or a woman
with a pleasant face — a sympathetic expression — who
did not take delight in beautiful paintings in a former life on
earth. The people with an unsympathetic expression (which, after
all, also plays its part in karma, and signifies something for
destiny) were always the ones who passed by the works of art of
painting with obtuse and phlegmatic indifference.
These
things go even farther. There are human beings (and so there were
in former epochs of the earth) who never look up to the stars
their whole life long, who do not know where Leo is, or Aries or
Taurus; they have no interest in anything in this connection.
Such people are born, in a next life on earth, with a body that
is somehow limp and flabby. Or if, by the vigour of their
parents, they get a model that carries them over this, they
become limp, lacking in energy and vigour, through the body which
they then build for themselves.
And
so it is with the entire constitution which a person bears with
him in a given life on earth. In every detail we might refer it
to the interests he had in the visible world — in an
all-embracing sense — in his preceding life on earth.
People,
for instance, who in our time take absolutely no interest in
music — people to whom music is a matter of indifference —
will certainly be born again in a next life on earth either with
asthmatic trouble, or with some disease of the lung. At any rate,
they will be born with a tendency to asthma or lung disease. And
so it is in all respects; the quality of soul which develops in
our earthly life through the interest we take in the visible
world, comes to expression in our next life in the general tone
of our bodily health or illness.
Here
again, some one might say: To know of such things may well take
away one's taste for a next life on earth. That again is judged
from the earthly standpoint, which is certainly not the only
possible standpoint; for, after all, the life between death and a
new birth lasts far longer than the earthly life. If a person is
obtuse and indifferent with regard to anything in his visible
environment, he takes with him an inability to work in certain
realms between death and a new birth. He passes through the gate
of death with the consequences of his lack of interest. After
death he goes on his way. He cannot get near certain Beings;
certain Beings hold themselves away from him; he cannot get near
them. Other human souls with whom he was on earth remain as
strangers to him. This would go on for ever, like an eternal
punishment of Hell, if it could not be modified. The only cure,
the only compensation, lies in his resolving — between
death and a new birth — to come down again into earthly
life and experience in the sick body what his inability has
signified in the spiritual world. Between death and a new birth
he longs for this cure, for he is then filled with the
consciousness that there is something he cannot do. Moreover, he
feels it in such a way that in the further course, when he dies
once again and passes through the time between death and new
birth, that which was pain on earth becomes the impulse and power
to enter into what he missed last time.
Thus
we may truly say: in all essentials, man carries health and
illness with him with his karma, from the spiritual world into
the physical. Of course we must bear in mind that it is not
always a fulfillment of karma, for there is also karma in process
of becoming. Therefore we shall not relate to his former life on
earth everything the human being has to suffer in his physical
life as regards health and illness. None the less we may know: in
all essentials, that which emerges — notably from within
outward — with respect to health and illness, is karmically
determined as I have just described.
Here
again, the world becomes intelligible only when we can look
beyond this earthly life. In no other way can we explain it; the
world cannot be explained out of the earthly life alone.
If
we now pass from the inner conditions of karma which follow from
a man's organisation, to the more outward aspect, here once again
— only to strike the chords of karma, so to speak —
we may take our start from a realm of facts which touches man
very closely. Take, for example, our relation to other human
beings, which is psychologically very much connected with the
conditions of our health and illness, at any rate as regards the
general mood and attunement of our soul.
Assume,
for example, that someone finds a close friend in his youth. An
intimate friendship arises between them; the two are devoted to
one another. Afterward life takes them apart — both of
them, perhaps, or one especially — they look back with a
certain sadness on their friendship in youth. But they cannot
renew it. However often they meet in life, their friendship of
youth does not arise again. How very much in destiny can
sometimes depend on broken friendships of youth. You will admit,
after all, a person's destiny can be profoundly influenced by a
broken friendship of youth.
Now
one investigates the matter ... I may add that one should speak
as little as possible about these things out of mere theory. To
speak out of theory is of very little value. In fact, you should
only speak of such things either out of direct spiritual
perception, or on the basis of what you have heard or read of the
communications of those who are able to have direct spiritual
vision, provided you yourselves find the communications
convincing, and understand them well. There is no value in
theorising about these things. Therefore I say, when you
endeavour with spiritual vision to get behind such an event as a
broken friendship of youth, as you go back into a former life on
earth, this is what you generally find. The two people, who in a
subsequent earthly life, had a friendship in their youth which
was afterward broken — in an earlier incarnation they were
friends in later life.
Let
us assume, for instance: two young people — boys or girls —
are friends until their twentieth year. Then the friendship of
their youth is broken. Go back with spiritual cognition into a
former life on earth, and you will find that again they were
friends. This time, however, it was a friendship that began about
the twentieth year and continued into their later life. It is a
very interesting case, and you will often find it so when you
pursue things with spiritual science.
Examine
such cases more closely and to begin with this is what you find:
If you enjoyed a friendship with a person in the later years of
life, you have an inner impulse also to learn to know what he may
be like in youth. The impulse leads you in a later life actually
to learn to know him as a friend in youth. In a former
incarnation you knew him in maturer years. This brought the
impulse into your soul to learn to know him now also in youth.
You could no longer do so in that life, therefore you do it in
the next.
It
has a great influence when this impulse arises — in one of
the two or in both of them — and passes through death and
lives itself out in the spiritual world between death and a new
birth. For in the spiritual world, in such a case, there is
something like a “staring fixedly” at the period of
youth. You have a special longing to fix your gaze on the time of
youth, and you do not develop the impulse to learn to know your
friend once more in maturer years. And so, in your next life on
earth, the friendship of youth — predetermined between you
by the life you lived through before you came down to earth —
is broken.
This
is a case out of real life, for what I am now relating is
absolutely real. One question, however, here arises: What was the
older friendship like in the former life, what was it like, that
rouses the impulse in you to have your friend with you only in
youth in a new life on earth? The answer is this: for the
desire to have the other being beside you in your youth and yet
not to develop into a desire to keep him as your intimate friend
in later life as well, something else must also have occurred. In
all the instances of which I am aware, it has invariably been so:
If the two human beings had remained united in their later life,
if their friendship of youth had not been broken they would have
grown tired and bored with one another: because, in effect, their
friendship in maturer years in a former life took a too selfish
direction. The selfishness of friendships in one earthly life
avenges itself karmically in the loss of the same friendships in
other lives.
These
things are complicated indeed; but you can always get a guiding
line if you see this, for it is so in many cases: Two human
beings go their way, each of them apart, say, till their
twentieth year; thenceforward they go along in friendship (I).
Then in the next earthly life, correspondingly, we generally get
this second picture (II) — the picture of friendship in
youth, after which their lives go apart.
This
too you will find very often: If, in your middle period of life
in one incarnation, you meet a human being who has a strong
influence on your destiny (these things, of course, only hold
good as a general rule — not in all cases), it is very
likely that you had him beside you by forces of destiny at the
beginning and at the end of your life in a previous incarnation.
Then the picture is so: In the one incarnation you live through
the beginning and ending of life together; in the other
incarnation you are not with him at the beginning or at the end,
but you encounter him in the middle period of life.
Or
again it may be that in your childhood you are united by destiny
with another human being; in a former life you were united with
him precisely in the time before you approached your death. Such
inverse reflections often occur in the relationships of karma.
Thanks to the Rudolf Stgeiner Archive
Continued in the next issue of SCR.
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