World Mysteries and Theosophy

GA 54 — 15 February 1906, Berlin

Reincarnation and Karma

There are mysteries of the world that interest those who want to delve deeper into the structure, into the fabric of our existence. Such mysteries of the world include, for example: Where do matter and forces come from, where does life in the world come from? Where does the purposefulness in nature come from, where does what we call consciousness come from? How should we evaluate the question of the origin of language, or the question of the mystery of free will? These are all questions that certainly impose themselves on those who want to delve deeper into the understanding of existence, questions that cannot be far from an advanced, educated intelligence. But before these questions, there are more immediate, great questions of humanity that initially have no theoretical or scientific value, but which also impose themselves on us, causing us to look up from the work and struggles of life to what we might call the imperishable as opposed to the perishable. These questions are connected with what we encounter at every turn, with what must confront us as a mystery everywhere in the world. These are questions whose answers not only satisfy our theoretical or scientific interest, but also determine whether we have strength, courage, and security in life, whether we have hope for a prosperous future for the human race and for each individual.

Such questions of life arise when we look at the immediate existence of human beings, when we see how one person is born with limited abilities and strength and is so predisposed by these minor aptitudes and talents that we can foresee how he is doomed to a miserable, poor existence that he must drag along between birth and death. They may be born into a family in such a way that, through circumstances and facts beyond their control, they appear to be condemned to misery. Others are born into a family that ensures from the outset that they will have a happy, joyful existence; they have talents and abilities that allow us to say that they will accomplish great and significant things in life. All this and more, which we encounter every day, every hour, and every moment when we look at life as it comes to us with an open mind, encompasses the great and immediate mysteries. The great worldviews and their proponents have always sought to solve these mysteries of existence for humanity. But in every new era, the mysteries of existence require a new solution. It is not that the old truths are no longer true; that is not the issue. Rather, it is that people's thinking and feeling are changing, that the feeling of the soul is changing more than is commonly believed, that different questions are not being raised, but rather that the old questions are being raised in a different way. The theosophical or spiritual-science view of life, which has been spreading in educated cultures for thirty years, attempts to solve the riddles of existence in such a way that modern man can find satisfaction in such a solution.

There are two concepts that run through the spiritual scientific worldview, which form the subject of our topic today and are intended to provide answers to the questions raised: the two ideas of reincarnation, or the repeated earthly lives of human beings, and karma, or the great law of destiny in existence. Through these two ideas, the spiritual-scientific worldview seeks to answer the riddles of existence in the same way that natural scientists, researchers in general, answer their questions based on knowledge and insight, not mere belief. The spiritual-scientific worldview offers nothing different from what other research offers, except perhaps that certain preconditions are necessary for understanding and comprehending scientific truths. A certain scientific basis is also almost part of all popular scientific presentation. However, the theosophical or spiritual scientific worldview will be truly understandable to everyone, it will give satisfaction to everyone, from the simple, naive mind, which is only able to follow the questions and answers with feeling and emotion, up to the most learned sage, who initially approaches these things with the greatest doubt and who, if he only has the patience and perseverance to work his way into these things, will find satisfaction in doing so. Not only will they all find satisfaction, not only will they experience that redeeming feeling that enters our soul when we have longed expectantly for an answer to some question—those who know this feeling know something of the intimate happiness of the soul—but it also offers something else entirely in relation to the question of life. It is not a question of satisfying our thirst for knowledge, but of giving us security for life, something that provides answers not only for individuals but for all the powers of the soul.

Because we are dealing with such important, such fundamental questions today, let me say right away in what sense the answers provided by Spiritual Science are to be understood on the basis of life. Often, out of complete misunderstanding, spiritual scientists are told: Bring us proof of what you claim, if we are to believe what you tell us about higher spiritual worlds and things that are initially inaccessible to the ordinary senses of experience. The spiritual scientist can only respond appropriately: No one needs to believe me; I ask nothing more of anyone than to trust my assertions, for the kind of proof that is usually demanded cannot exist for spiritual-scientific truths. Those who demand it do not understand the character and meaning of spiritual science truths. The evidence for spiritual science truths is provided by life, and life provides it not only when we consider it sensually, here within the realm of what our own eyes, ears, and sense of touch teach us, but also in the broadest sense, up to the highest spiritual realms of life. If someone comes and says, “I don't believe what you're saying, because it could be something you've made up, it could be fantasy,” you can reply, “Fine, believe that, believe that Spiritual Science is the greatest swindlers in the world.” But there is something else that lies between belief and disbelief. That is impartial listening. Take a drastic example. Take a map of Asia Minor. A man says, that is not a map of Asia Minor, you have made it up. One can only answer him: Fine, that doesn't matter, but remember what I have shown you on it, take note of it and commit it to memory. When you come to Asia Minor, you will see that it is true. — It is the same with the teachings of Spiritual Science. No one needs to believe them. If we are willing to observe attentively and impartially, there is enough evidence for them in life, even for life after we have passed through the gate of death and are in the beyond.

The old questions must be answered in a new way. Even in the 17th century, it was not merely the superstition of the masses, but a common conviction of all learned people who believed they understood something of natural science, that not only very low animals, but even earthworms could grow out of ordinary river mud. This was generally believed. People did not believe that an earthworm must come from an earthworm, but believed that it arose from the mud. The Italian naturalist Redi formulated the sentence: Living things come only from living things. Living things never come from non-living things. The earthworm does not arise from the mud, but through the reproduction of an earthworm. — This conviction is so recent! This is how the human race progresses in relation to truth. Today, anyone who believed that earthworms could grow out of mud would be considered a fool. What Redi said back then — and narrowly escaped the fate that befell Giordano Bruno — applies today to the spiritual scientific worldview. Just as it was completely contrary to the thinking habits of the time to admit that living things must come from living things, so the doctrine of reincarnation is contrary to the thinking habits of the present. Some people become downright furious about spiritual-scientific truths, just as people in the past became furious when it was claimed that earthworms do not grow out of mud. In the same sense as what I have just claimed, the spiritual science worldview says: Spiritual-soul things come only from spiritual-soul things. — If folly does not triumph over reason, then it is certain that in another two centuries, just as with scientific truth, the spiritual science worldview will have taken hold in all circles.

What does it mean that spiritual-soul things come only from spiritual-soul things? It is spiritual-soul when we encounter the fate of human beings as it depends on external facts, on dispositions and abilities, on the whole character. Only those who are unable to observe the subtle, intimate characteristics of a human soul in its development, only those who have a sense only for the coarse physical, can deny that we see something growing up in the child that can no more be explained by something non-soulful, non-spiritual than the earthworm can be explained by the mud. Schiller's nose, Schiller's red hair, and many other features of his physiognomy can certainly be explained by physical heredity, just as the carbon and oxygen particles in the earthworm come from other carbon and oxygen particles in the environment. The inanimate parts of the earthworm come from the inanimate parts of the surrounding nature, and so too do the physical parts of our body come from the physical environment. But we can explain Schiller's abilities and talents from the environment just as little as we can explain earthworms from the mud. But it is not Schiller that matters. He is only cited as a radical example. It is true for every human being, even the simplest, that they gradually develop from what is generic in them. It is impossible to derive the individual from physical heredity. Even in broad terms, this is easy to understand. Try to understand how Goethe's statement applies here: “Mysterious in the light of day, nature cannot be robbed of its veil, and what it does not reveal to your mind, you cannot force out of it with levers and screws.” So this is not something for pliers and microscopes. Look at the child as it approaches you in the first months and years of life. Its face expresses what it has inherited from its father, mother, and ancestors. It expresses what is generally human, what is generic, the tribal character, the family character. We often say that a child's gentle features come from their father, mother, uncle, or aunt. But then, as we watch the child grow up, a strange change takes place, which is quite visible to a more sensitive eye. What we perceive as the confluence of father, mother, grandmother, and so on, like an imprint, transforms and takes shape from the inner being. And that which lives in the innermost being, which cannot be derived from the father and mother, gradually expresses itself in the facial features. The more individual, the more sublime the soul is, the more the soul creates from within the body and transforms it. And where could the image of a great thinker, a great benefactor of the world, who works from within and enriches the world with new things, be explained by heredity? From the face you can see how the human being grows beyond mere generic life. In every human being, a spiritual core is revealed that is not born out of physical heredity, but is born into it. If you cannot trace this spiritual core back to your father and mother, ancestors and forefathers, then we must be able to trace it back to something spiritual. The spiritual-soul originates from the spiritual-soul. There is only the idea of development, the idea of repeated incarnation. The being that imprints its characteristics on the child was already there, was repeatedly there in the body. There you will find an explanation for the spiritual-soul just as you find an explanation for the earthworm when you say that the earthworm arose from an earthworm and not from mud or sand. Once there was something imperfect, but we cannot go into that in this lecture.

How does Spiritual Science explain the perfect and the imperfect in the spiritual-soul realm? Just as the small plasmodial animal — according to Haeckel's theory — arose from simple living conditions, and just as the subsequent animal gradually formed through the development of its external physical form, so we can say of a perfect soul that it gradually formed from an imperfect soul that gradually became more perfect. The imperfect savage with his childlike soul has preserved for us the form of our soul that we had to go through in order to elevate ourselves to the spiritual form of our soul. Or compare the soul of an average European with the soul of a person such as Darwin still encountered. The soul of a person today has concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, false and true. Darwin once wanted to explain to a savage who was still a cannibal: You must not eat people, that is bad, you must not do that. — The savage looked at him curiously and said: Yes, how can you know that, you would have to have eaten him first. When we have eaten him, then we will know whether he was good or bad. — So you have an imperfect soul, which will become more and more perfect through development. Our soul is not born with each individual as a baby, but this soul has first developed in imperfect incarnations, where it understood nothing else about good and bad than what was pleasant and unpleasant to the palate and the like. Through such stages it has developed and, through many incarnations, has always been learning until it has advanced to our stage. We carry our soul within us with the abilities and powers we have, with the fate it suffers. We will see more clearly when we return in another incarnation on earth; we will appear more and more perfect on earth until we reach the stage where we are ready to ascend to a higher and more divine existence, which we need not discuss today. There are certainly other explanations of existence than the doctrine of reincarnation, but this alone can solve the riddles of existence for human beings. A core of existence confronts us in that human being whom we say goes through many lives, through repeated lives. While the materialist tells us that spirit and soul are only appendages to the body, are only formed out of the body, that thoughts and language are only a higher development of what we also encounter in the physical-animal world, while the materialist makes it clear to us that our most sublime moral ideals, our most sacred religious feelings, are nothing more than the results of our physical organization, the spiritual-scientific worldview shows us that all that rests in our soul is our eternal core being, which, on the contrary, has shaped and formed its body from stage to stage. The physical originates from the spiritual and soul: this is the teaching of the spiritual-scientific worldview, which will become clearer and clearer the deeper you immerse yourself in this worldview. It is a teaching that is not based on blind faith, although if one wants to present it popularly in a short hour, one can only sketch it briefly and not introduce it at length. But it is a teaching that is as certain and firmly founded as any scientific teaching. It works with the same methods, only in the spiritual realm, as sensory science works in the physical realm. Spiritual Science speaks of the fact that human beings consist of a higher and a lower nature, and that when they pass through the gate of death, their lower nature is returned to the elements to which it belongs. The body is given to the earth, other parts are given to other elements. But there is an eternal core of being in man, which always takes on new human forms and shapes, just as the lily, as a species, always takes on new forms by passing through the seed again and again to come into a new living existence.

This teaching of the reincarnation of the being, which shows us development in the spiritual realm as the higher counterpart of development in the sensory realm, leads us to see those finer, more intimate things in human beings. We speak of the fact that this core of the human being contains a threefold fundamental nature, that it is threefold in nature. We speak of the fact that something resides in the deepest innermost part of the human being which, as it lives in normally educated people among us today, is still completely undeveloped in most people, existing only in a germinal form. We call this innermost core of the human being the Atma or the spiritual human being. For the majority of people today, it is not even visible to the soul's gaze.

A second link in this spiritual core of the human being is the Buddhi. In our German language, we would say the spirit of life. This second element in the human soul is something that is expressed in a certain way in the most highly developed individuals, in the leaders, the guides of humanity. We can describe in a certain way what this spirit of life is. It is this Buddhi in its highest glory and sublimity that lived within the ancient founders of religions, within Hermes, Buddha, Zarathustra, and to the highest degree within Christ Jesus. If I am to explain what this Buddhi means in the spiritual realm, I can only do so through a parable. One must either see the spiritual, or, like Goethe, who says, “Everything transitory is only a parable,” one must grasp the eternal, the imperishable in a parable. I would like to give such a parable for Buddhi. If you form in your mind the mental image of the ordinary productive power in ordinary sensual life, paired with love, but not as receiving love, but as a completely giving love: that is Buddhi. There is hardly any other parable in nature than the hen sitting on her eggs, conjuring up new life with her own warmth, sacrificing her own existence in a loving quality for the new life. Now imagine this translated into the spiritual realm, imagine an individuality that brings forth the great driving forces in human nature, the impulse in our human development, in a spiritual way, as just described, then you have it. Or was not that which for two millennia has flooded Western and American hearts as a blessing of mind and feeling, filling us with bliss, was not the element of Christian feeling and sensation a fundamental force, not something that was brought forth by Christ and present in Christ? And was it not brought into this world in the most glorious way, representing in spirit what lives in the sensual, the devoted love that brings forth—not a human being, but a spiritual love that creates the world wisdom that continues through the centuries? Think of this element in human nature, and we have what we call Christ in Christian mysticism, Chrestòs in Greek mysticism, Buddhi in Eastern mysticism, the spirit of life in its highest potency. Anyone who feels something of what it means to produce spiritually, what is incorporated as a force in human development, what gives impulses in spiritual life, anyone who feels something of this has, in spiritual, bright, luminous clarity, a feeling similar to that expressed here below by a parable, the true feeling of bliss with which the hen sits on her egg. That is the Buddhi. To a certain extent, it is present in every single human being, at least in potential.

The third power of the soul is that through which we comprehend the world, perceive the world. It would be extremely foolish to believe that one could draw water from a vessel if there were no water in it. But those who say that they can draw wisdom from the world when there is none in it are just as foolish. The astronomer seeks to calculate and comprehend wisdom in the world. Only through wisdom can the world be understood. Would it not be the greatest folly to want to draw wisdom from the world if there were no wisdom in it? If wisdom were not given, we could never draw wisdom from it. The world is made by the same wisdom with which we want to understand it. This is the third element that permeates the whole world. This is the manas. It is best translated into English by saying: Wisdom is born out of the world. — Our spirit self is this third element. If you take these three things: Atma, Buddhi, Manas, then you have the deepest essence of the human being, then you have that which goes from reincarnation to reincarnation, that which is only imperfectly formed in the wild, where this trinity is also present at lower levels, up to where we see it in the current normal human being, up to where we see it in the great leader of humanity. From reincarnation to reincarnation, the human being goes from being spiritually educated to being not only an ideal but a holy leader of humanity, up to Francis of Assisi, Bernard, or others. The student can fully understand the passage through repeated earthly lives by the way in which human beings stand side by side in this development.

To those who see more intimately, what I have described is expressed in the whole human being. I have said that this core essence of the human being is only present in the predisposition of the normally educated person. It will become more and more perfect. But what we develop today from our core essence has shaped and created us from the beginning. Thus we see how this threefold being, this core of being, works in the human being, first unconsciously and then consciously. Earlier I mentioned only one example of how the inner being of the human being is expressed in the physiognomy of the thinker. The core of being is expressed not only in the permanent physiognomy, but also in the gestures and mobility of the facial features. They are gradually shaped according to how the core of the being develops in the child. What is actually called spiritual research, occultism, gives you the connection between this threefold being of the human being and what is expressed externally in his body, in his instruments. The so-called occultist says that in man, what we call Manas, the spirit self, is first expressed in the features of the face. What we call Buddhi is formed in his speech organ, lives in his voice, preparing and foreshadowing future stages. The third, what we call Atma, lives in man in his gestures, in the movement of his hands. I said that the second member, the Buddhi or, as you saw earlier, the Christ, lives in the speech organ and in the voice. Christian mysticism has expressed this in the deepest way in the Gospel of John, where we read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John directly refers to language as Christ. In female nature, it is somewhat different. This is of course not to say anything against the absolute equality of the sexes practiced in theosophy. Atma, Buddhi, Manas are the same in men and women. They have nothing to do with gender, but rather with outward appearance. In women, Manas is expressed in language, Buddhi in the gesture of the hand, and Atma in the whole body. These are the so-called occult differences between the male and female forms, not between the essence of man and woman.

What, then, is the law of karma in relation to this idea of reincarnation? Karma comes from, or at least is related to, the Sanskrit word karnoti, which means to do, to make, to act. It is exactly the same root as in the Latin creare, to create. Creare, to make and to create, is therefore exactly the same thing. Karma and creation are the same, only expressed in two different languages. Now let us clarify what karma means. Karma means, in English, activity, becoming, action. Let me clarify what karma means with a simple example. Imagine you are working on something from morning to night. You then go to sleep, sleep through the night, and get up again in the morning. If you now say to yourself: What I worked on yesterday is none of my concern, I'll start afresh today — you would be foolish. The only possible thing to do is to pick up again in the morning what you left off in the evening, saying, this is my work and where I left off yesterday, I must start again today. What does that mean? It simply means that my work yesterday determines my fate today. Yesterday I created my fate for today. That sums up the whole concept of karma. Every being carves out its own fate for the future.

Take another example. Animals migrated into dark caves. Something peculiar happens to these animals. They lose their eyesight. The nutrients are drawn to other parts of the body that need them more than the sense of sight. The result is that their eyesight recedes and the animals become blind. What do we see when we observe these animals producing blind generations again and again? We must conclude that the blindness of the animals is the result of their having entered dark caves. How did these animals bring about their present form? Through their previous actions. Karma is nothing other than preparing one's destiny for the future through one's actions in the past. Cause and effect are always connected. When a person goes through an earthly life between birth and death, they commit a number of actions. In the meantime, they go through death and new birth and then enter a new life. It is as if we woke up and picked up again what we left behind in the evening. What we have sown in past earthly lives, we reap as fruit in our new earthly life. If we have built up an evil, repulsive fate in our past life, then the effect of our own actions confronts us in our new earthly life. If we have done evil to a person, they will reappear to us in our new life and do evil to us in return. When a person confronts me and does evil, I can assume that I was with them in a previous earthly life and myself laid the cause for what they are now doing to me. Thus, the fate of the individual becomes more transparent and explainable through the great law of karma, and the greatest mystery of life, which confronts us at every turn, is illuminated and solved. Now I am given the explanation as to why one person was born into deepest need and deepest misery and why such an unpleasant fate seems to confront him here in life, which he does not deserve. It is like the person who did not do his work properly yesterday. He will be condemned by yesterday's poor preparation to do poor work again today. So it is when I say that those who are now in need and misery have brought this upon themselves in a previous life. I also know that nothing remains without effect. What I do now, good and evil, will have its effect in the next life. The effect in the world is connected with the cause, which can be observed instructively in the stars and the sun. It is the same in the spiritual-soul world. What we bring upon ourselves now will be balanced out in a later life. The biblical saying is true: God will not be mocked; what you sow, you will also reap. As an initiate, Paul knew well why he spoke these words in particular. This is the great law of the world that governs human destiny.

Now I know that it is also necessary to get a little mental image of how this law works, and I would like to say a few words about that. Those who have heard other lectures of mine already know what I mean by this. When we look at human beings with spiritual insight, we do not see them as physical bodies, but we know that these physical bodies are only part of a greater being, that behind them there is something that Paul calls the spiritual body and spiritual scientists call the etheric body. The etheric body is like a reflection of the physical body, or rather, the physical body is a reflection of the etheric body. This is the second member of the human being, the etheric body. The third member is the astral body, that which the human being carries within himself as pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, instincts, drives, passions, and desires, everything that stands before us when a human being stands before us, but which we cannot see or perceive with our physical senses. What do we see when a human being stands before us? We see the skin, its color, and so on. The anatomist can use physical means to examine bones, muscles, nerves, and so on, but pleasure and pain, instincts, desires, and passions, which are also in the same space, cannot be perceived by the senses. This is called the astral body, and it is in this body that the spiritual essence of the human being resides, which we call our I, which we call the bearer of our self-consciousness. By having this, we in turn become the bearers of Atma, Buddhi, Manas, of what I have described as the spirit self, the life spirit, and the spirit man.

Animals already have the astral body. They experience pleasure, joy, and pain. But what is present in its highest form in the leaders of humanity and in its potential in all human beings is the eternal core of the human being, which progresses from incarnation to incarnation. When a human being dies, what remains and what passes away? The physical body, what can be seen with the eyes and touched with the hands, is given back to the earth. The etheric body dissolves into the general life ether, shortly after we have passed through death. The third is the astral body, that on which the human being has already worked. Take such a soul, which lives in a cultured human being, and you have the inner core of being and then the sum of the instincts and passions. In the savage, at the first stage of incarnation, Atma, Buddhi, and Manas have worked little on the instincts. Therefore, they are still animalistic. What does the spiritual core of the being do? It works continuously to refine the animalistic passions. This is how the civilized human being differs from the savage: the astral body is no longer animalistic. Then the human being dies and enters the spiritual-soul world. There one sees what was still in him as an instinct from his first incarnation. When the human being enters incarnation for the first time, the animal passions are unpurified. He consumes his fellow human beings and so on. Then the consequences arise. There he begins to understand something in the crudest way. Let us take the radical case that he says to himself, if I can consume the other, the other can also consume me. He understands that he too can perhaps be consumed. At the last moment, it becomes clear to him where this leads, and his first moral consciousness dawns within him, very dimly. He then purifies his instinct through the judgment he has formed, and this judgment comes from the core of his spiritual being. What he has formed as a judgment appears as a predisposition in his second incarnation. He has become a little nobler. And now he purifies his passions and instincts more and more. He elevates them from incarnation to incarnation. This is what really happens when a person dies. The physical body is returned to the earth, the etheric body dissolves into the life ether. What happens to the person now, what occurs?

Not only the ability to see clairvoyantly into the world, but even the intellect could teach those who think more deeply what must happen. The human being is now disembodied, he has no physical body. But what has he done throughout his life? Throughout his life, he has used his sense of taste to obtain the pleasures of eating. This pleasure of eating, the deliciousness of food, the enjoyment of the palate, is spiritual. The palate itself is physical. If humans did not have the physical, they could not obtain spiritual enjoyment. If they did not have physical ears, they could not hear; if they did not have physical eyes, they could not see. Everything we perceive, we first perceive with our physical senses. Modern humans cannot perceive anything without their physical senses. They are bound to them and accustomed to them. They are accustomed to satisfying desires that can be satisfied through the sensory organs. The habit of having desires, of having pleasures, remains, but the means by which they can satisfy them fall away; the tongue, eyes, and ears fall away. They are no longer there. Now, after death, they are missing. They still crave the pleasure that can only be obtained and satisfied through the sensory organs. The consequence of this is that after death, humans enter a state of consciousness that essentially consists of weaning themselves off being satisfied only through the sensory organs. The soul must wean itself from the desire for sensual satisfaction, must purify itself of what satisfied it on earth and can only be satisfied through sensual, physical means. This is called Kamaloka in the theosophical worldview. It lives in the form of purgatory, the fire of purification in our world. What a person experiences there can be aptly compared to a burning thirst, a kind of burning deprivation. Such is the state after death. Sensually and physically, the corresponding means are not there after death; the organ through which the thirsty soul can be satisfied is not there. When a soul has weaned itself from this connection with the physical in the course of years in Kamaloka, it lives in the spiritual world to which it belongs as a soul. And it takes this with it into the spiritual world. The spiritual scientific worldview calls this spiritual world Devachan or the spirit world. What does the soul take with it? Its purified desires and passions. These are now spiritualized and purified from the physical. When a person was incarnated on earth, they take what they have conquered with them to Devachan and process it there for a new earthly incarnation. It must become a life force from an experience they have had. It is not enough for a person to have an experience. Consider carefully the difference between experience and life force. When an undeveloped soul learns through consequence that it is impossible to devour one's fellow human beings without putting oneself in danger and harm, when this comes before the soul as experience, then this is the experience that must be transformed into force, so that an inner voice is present: You must not devour a human being. — Then it becomes will, the voice of conscience, which will become more and more perfect the more incarnations we have gone through. Experience is transformed into will, into the voice of conscience, in the course of incarnations. And now you know what man does in Devachan. In Kamaloka, they purify themselves; in Devachan, they transform the experiences they have had into strength for their next life on earth, in order to appear as a powerful, inner, individual nature. That is why you can see when an undeveloped soul appears in the wild; it can be recognized in their gestures and facial features, in their hand movements, as something generic. The more incarnations one has gone through, the more the individual emerges. And what is it that is developed? It is the experiences of one's previous incarnations that become character.

Now you may ask the question: Why does man not remember his previous incarnations? — This question, as it is posed, makes little sense. You will see why in a moment. It is like someone coming and saying: People call themselves human beings, and here we have a four-year-old child who cannot do arithmetic — and now he says: This child cannot do arithmetic, but it is a human being, so human beings cannot do arithmetic. — But this is a question of development. Every human being will eventually reach the point where some advanced individuals have already arrived, who can remember their previous earthly lives. If they cannot remember, it is because they first have to acquire this ability, just as a child acquires the ability to read, calculate, and write. Human beings must not let fate pass them by in dullness if they want to rise through these experiences to the point of remembering their previous earthly lives. How does this remembering of previous earthly lives occur?

This life is bound to the fact that the human being has developed as much as possible of his inner spiritual core. The more free and independent the human being has become in this life from sensuality, the more he lives in his soul, the less he is dependent on the pleasures conveyed to him through the senses, the more he approaches the state in which he recognizes himself in his previous states. But how should such a person remember previous earthly lives? Just examine what usually fills an ordinary person. Only what the senses offer! This naturally disappears, because it is not possible to remember previous earthly lives. Only when a person lives a life in his divine self does he remember to the same extent what he experienced in previous incarnations, and those who immerse themselves in spiritual life will certainly be reincarnated with a memory of spiritual life.

Another objection is usually made against the doctrine of karma. People say, well, it is the old law of fate. But now it is said that human beings have prepared everything for themselves in their previous earthly lives. Fate and character are thus irrevocably determined. There is no longer any freedom or free will. We are subject to fate. — If someone were to say this, it would be just as clever as if someone were to say: Here I have a cash book. On the left I have all the debit items, on the right all the credit items. When I add both sides together, I get a certain number. If I subtract both numbers, I get the profit or loss. If I add this back to one side, we have a balance sheet. — Certainly, it is the same with a life balance sheet. The good deeds are on one side, the bad and stupid deeds on the other. There is also a life account with a life balance sheet, just as there are accounts and balance sheets in commercial bookkeeping. Now imagine a businessman who said, my annual accounts are done, I can't enter anything else, I can't do any more business, because everything I'm still allowed to do is predetermined by my previous entries. — It would be the same if a person said, I can't do any more new deeds. The entries and the accounts don't forbid him to do so. Just as bookkeeping does not forbid the businessman from doing new business, karma does not forbid him from doing good or evil deeds. At any moment we can enter new items, at any moment we can increase the debit and credit sides. Some people also say: If I help someone in need and misery, I am interfering with their karma. But I am not allowed to do that. That is not the case. You can help people to enter new and good items in their karma and thereby make their life account favorable. What you enter there that is lazy, careless, and fatalistic is not so positively connected with the law of karma. But something else is connected with the law of karma.

When you see a chemist entering his laboratory, he may enter with a specific idea: if I combine sulfur, oxygen, and hydrogen in a certain way, sulfuric acid will be produced according to an immutable law. There is nothing wrong with this law. But the chemist can also refrain from making the mixture; he can make it or not make it. The law does not interfere with his free will at all. But the law gives him the certainty that what is to happen will actually happen when it is to happen. The same mixture does not produce carbonic acid one time and sulfuric acid another time. The law allows us to rely on a certain effect. It is the same with karma. The law of karma cannot prevent us from doing anything, but it gives us the certainty that a correct and just balance must take place in life, that every good deed must have its good effect and every clever deed its corresponding effect. The fact that everything happens according to a spiritual law gives us certainty and shows us that nothing we do is left to chance, but that everything we do is done in such a way that we can build on a correct world connection.

Thus, this law of karma is not merely a scientific law, not something that merely satisfies theoretical interest, but something that holds the solution to the riddle of life, the riddle of the world. It gives strength and security in life, it works in such a way that we know that everything in this life is connected according to a law that is becoming more and more recognized, which we interpret first unconsciously and then more and more consciously. It is not only the thirst for knowledge that is satisfied by the spiritual-scientific worldview. It also gives us something else, namely strength, courage, and security. Not only are we told something about our destiny, but at the same time we are given the opportunity to live in accordance with this destiny, to live in such a way that we move toward an ever more perfect existence. Thus, the solution to the mystery of life through the two facts of reincarnation and the law of karma is not dogmatic and didactic, but full of life and imbued with feeling.

All those who have taken a deeper look into nature, into the nature of spiritual life, have more or less arrived at this law of destiny and the law of reincarnation. Giordano Bruno was a believer in this law, and when a new spiritual culture emerged from a period of dullness, it was Lessing who expressed his wisdom in the doctrine of reincarnation. I know that many refrain from praising Lessing. But if one likes to praise him, they will not go along with it. It is strange, however, that when it comes to a great man, people only accept what suits them. And it is the same with Giordano Bruno and Goethe, whose ideas are regarded as senility or something similar. We will see that our German theosophy is also deeply imbued with this view. But only today, only since a few decades, has it been possible to communicate this view publicly again. Throughout the centuries of new development, this was not possible because human culture had a different task, as I have already explained. The teachings of reincarnation and karma emerged dimly, and even these great minds could only proclaim many things figuratively, in symbols, grasping them in a lively way. Where life could be explained to them in its deepest depths, they often pointed to these truths with great humor, to this eternal law of reincarnation that determines what we now experience between birth and death. Goethe pointed to this when he wanted to explain his deep inner soul friendship with Frau von Stein by saying: " Ah, you were my sister or my wife in times past." But Goethe also expresses the law that governs us as the law of karma, as do other great minds. He expresses in beautiful words that we enter the world according to our disposition, as we are, following the law of cause and effect, like everything else in the world:

As on the day that brought you into the world,
The sun stood in greeting to the planets,
You immediately and continuously flourished
According to the law by which you came into being.
You must be as you are, you cannot escape yourself,
So said the Sibyls, so said the prophets,
And no time and no power can fragment
The molded form that develops itself in life.

But the deepest thing he had to say, he said in imagery, among other things in the beautiful poem where he compares the soul of man to water and the fate of man to the wind, the soul as that which flows from embodiment to embodiment in the stream of life, and fate as the wind that causes this soul to rise and fall in everlasting waves. And just as each successive wave depends in its form on the previous one, so the soul depends on its previous form, and just as the wind is always new, so something new will always enter into the account of human life, something new will always be recorded. “Soul of man, how you resemble water, fate of man, how you resemble the wind,” he says at the end of the poem, where he directly depicts reincarnation in earthly life. “The soul of man resembles water, it comes from heaven, it rises to heaven, and it must descend again to earth, eternally changing.” This is how Goethe depicts the soul. It comes from the spiritual world, descends to earth, returns to heaven, and comes back in a new incarnation:

The soul of man
Is like water:
It comes from heaven,
It rises to heaven,
And again it must descend
To earth,
Eternally changing. Flows from the high,
Steep rock face
The pure stream,
Then it sprays lovingly
In waves of clouds
Towards the smooth rock,
And, easily received,
It surges veiling,
Softly rushing
Down into the depths. Cliffs tower,
Towards the fall,
It foams discontentedly
Step by step
Towards the abyss. In the flat bed It creeps along the meadow valley, And in the smooth lake All the stars All the stars. Wind is the wave's Lovely suitor; Wind stirs from the bottom Foaming waves! Soul of man, How you resemble water! Fate of man, How you resemble the wind.