6. The Relationships Between Karma and Accidents

That this is so can be confirmed from the reports of those mystics who attempted really to penetrate the inner being of man. Let us consider Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, and other mystics of the Middle Ages, who in order to descend into their own inner being dedicated themselves to a state in which their attention and interest was entirely turned away from the external world. Let us read the biographies of many Saints and Mystics who tried to descend into their inner selves. What was their experience? Temptations, tribulations, and similar experiences which they have depicted in vivid colours. These were compressed in the astral body and Ego, and made themselves felt as opposing forces. That is why all those who as Mystics have attempted to descend into the inner self found that the further they descended, the more were they impelled to an extinguishing of their Ego. Meister Eckhart found an excellent word to describe this descending into his own inner self. He speaks of ‘Ent Werdung,’ that is to say the extinction of the Ego. And we read in “;The Theologia Germanica”; (German Theology) how the author describes the mystic path into the inner human being, and how he insists that he who wishes to descend will act no longer through his own Ego, but that Christ with Whom he is fully permeated, will act within him. Such Mystics sought to extinguish their Ego. Not they themselves, but Christ within them should think, feel, and will, so that there may not emerge what dwells within them in the form of passion, desire and greed, but rather that which streams into them as Christ. That is why St. Paul says ‘Not I, but Christ in me.’