Man, Nature and the Cosmos

GA 91 — 27 June 1905, Berlin

7. Evolutionary Laws of Inner Karma

On the body of sensation hangs the sense sensation, the power to see and to hear. Our intercourse with the environment is related to our sense sensations, how much of it we can take in, whether or not we have a well-organized ear or eye. Our perceptions are regulated by this. How much we can absorb into our inner being in a lifetime depends on this. The sentient body has significance only for one incarnation of man between birth and death; it has no more influence for the immediately next incarnation. Now the sentient soul sends its Indriyas into the perceptions. Something higher is how man processes the impressions. This is imprinted on the sentient soul; this still has meaning for the next incarnation. Something still higher is the impression that man makes on his mind soul - as memory, feeling - how one enjoys something in the mind soul, and that has significance for the third incarnation. So that man with the construction of his external senses belongs only to the present, but what he processes with them goes into other incarnations.

Those who process little will bring nothing into the next incarnation through themselves; the other adds something from within himself which has a lasting effect. Let us think of such people opposite leading individualities. Who processes little, little can be implanted in him. Through the receptive mind-soul, the achievements are taken over into the future.

What now even man works into the consciousness soul, that goes into the fourth incarnation. Concepts belong to the consciousness soul; so that concepts, which seem to be innate, are acquired before [four] incarnations. Now even the highest mental images, as we experience them about the Divine, enter into the spirit self and work into the fifth incarnation.

According to this, one can calculate how to lead humanity as an initiate. If in the fifth sub-race Theosophy should come out, in the fifth preceding race this Divine had to arise.

Those whom I can now influence through my Rishis will then be ripe to receive the same in terms - said the Manu.

What man develops in his life-mind through meditation, he takes across to his sixth incarnation. And when he has learned to act on his etheric body through meditation, he takes what he has learned as chela over into the seventh incarnation. When the spiritual man is trained, it passes over into the eighth incarnation. And the master affects the ninth incarnation.

So we see that higher beings have had influence on the etheric body for seven incarnations, and on our physical body powers from the fourth sub-race of Atlanteans through nine incarnations. Therefore, the present bodies are built up by the beings who at that time had an effect on the Atlanteans.

Laws of evolution of the inner karma We thus see the working of the inner karma and will understand what the Manu did when he prepared in the fifth sub-race of the Atlanteans - Ur-Semites - the little cluster that became the next tribal race. Something had to be prepared that could work after the sixth - Akkadians - and the seventh sub-race of Atlanteans - Mongols - had passed, still during four incarnations. After four incarnations comes out what has been implanted in the consciousness soul: the ego.

According to this scheme, the initiates calculated the future plan of mankind.