Karma, Moral Development, and Esoteric Practice

GA 266II — 10 March 1912, Frankfurt

Esoteric Lesson

About indifference towards karma,
Observing oneself and one's surroundings.
Observing and guiding one's feelings.
Purifying one's morality and intellectuality.
Karmic connections = revenge of spiritual beings.
Practice productivity and serenity.

The most important aspect of our esoteric life is our exercises, through which we gradually work our way up into the spiritual world. What is important is the manner and attitude in which we perform them, through which we should work in connection with higher worlds and beings.

We must not be dominated by greed for spiritual knowledge, but rather the mood that we feel in moral actions, such as compassion and joy, should spread. Otherwise, there is a great danger for the esotericist that he will become morally unstable in his exoteric life, even worse than he was before; that is why, in addition to the actual meditations, supplementary exercises for intellectual and moral consolidation and education are always required.

A further danger lurks for the esotericist in the course of his karma, which he is working to transform and master. Here, the phenomenon occurs almost regularly that those who work intensively on their inner life become lax toward external karmic phenomena and circumstances. Previous karmic transgressions that the esotericist has brought upon himself and which, between death and a new birth, have triggered in him a strong urge for karmic compensation, place him in circumstances and bring him into contact with personalities toward whom he would now be in a position to fulfill his karmic obligations.

In normal exoteric development, karma would slowly unravel or partially take effect.

If the student is too preoccupied with his esoteric development and does not pay sufficient attention to the external circumstances that make up his destiny, then karma breaks upon him. And what would otherwise take years or several incarnations to unfold must now naturally have a concentrated effect on him, accompanied by severe shocks. In the process, he may be driven to the brink of despair and also bring disaster upon his surroundings, dragging them into the karmic collapse. But even in the simplest initial exercises, he has the consolation that there are forces that hold and support him. We should and must always remember this.