Supplements to Member Lectures
GA 246 — 10 March 1912, Frankfurt
49. Theosophy in Relation to the Immediate Life
We can make Theosophy both an impulse and a force in our lives. Above all, we must recognize karma and reincarnation as facts.
An experiment of the soul: look back as far as we can survey our life up to the first awakening of consciousness, and try to recall things which have become pleasant or unpleasant to us, which we have followed gladly or unwillingly. -- Then think up a person who has longed for just the opposite of our will, a fantasy person; also a fantasy person who brings about and desires all coincidences.
Three examples: A person who climbs onto the roof and loosens the tiles that are supposed to hit him and so on. If we follow the idea closely, we can't get rid of it. The imaginary image has something to do in our perception, as if it were bringing something out of our memory. In response to our efforts, the past event emerges from our memory. Reflection brings a state of exhaustion, the result acts as redemption. The imaginative person achieves both: reflection and redemption.
The imaginary person gradually transforms into us and, as a result of the effort, the feeling arises that the imaginary person has something to do with us.
The sensation of feeling versus the sensation of imagination. Example: Bismarck before the war of 1866. The sense of imagination does not pass from incarnation to incarnation, but the sense of feeling (memory of feeling from a previous incarnation) does, and the phantasy man is the instrument. Through this, one feels something of how one has placed oneself in the present life.
In the future, children will be educated in such memory experiments. If a person in the middle of life (30 years) is either practical or clumsy, one cannot speak of inheritance on the part of the parents in this incarnation. This inheritance, which comes out mainly in mid-life, is due to the person's parents or grandparents in previous incarnations. One's own education for practical life in mid-life results in being drawn into a practical family in the next incarnation. The actual blood relatives do not come together again in the next life.
When people are brought together in midlife through true friendship and love, they are blood relatives [in the next] life. A self-chosen circle of friends in the middle of life becomes a family circle in the next life. Example: Entering a monastic community and self-chosen friends among the monastics.
In the future, after committing an act, a vision, a dream, rises before the person - the outlook on the future of karma.
Until now, only clairvoyants were able to systematically lead people to recognize visions from previous incarnations.
Old clairvoyance and development into new clairvoyance. - Later, the law of karma will become fully known through visions. - Theosophy thinks strictly scientifically in all spiritual areas. - What we have acquired as soul property in one life builds up a body of power in the next life.