I. Group-soulness and Ego-hood.

Here we must look to the most striking new quality of man's soul, which is preparing. The question is often put: Well, if reincarnation exists, why does a person not remember the former incarnations? That is a question which I have often answered. Such a question appears as when one brings along a four-year-old child, and because it is a human being, and cannot reckon, one would say: Man cannot reckon. But let the child become ten years old, and then it will reckon. It is thus with the human soul. If today it cannot remember, yet, the time will come in which it can remember—the time when it has the same powers as he possesses who is initiated today. But just today that transition is happening. There exist today a number of souls who are so far on in our time, who stand close to the moment where they will remember their former incarnations, or at least the last one. A whole number of human beings today are, as it were, before the self-opening of the door to that embracing memory, which comprises not only the life between birth and death, but the previous incarnations, or at least, the last, in the first place. And when, after the present incarnation, a number of human beings are reborn, then they will remember this present incarnation. It is merely a question of how they remember. Anthroposophical development should give help and direction to remember in the right way.