Chapter III: Sleep And Death

Now before the new etheric body has been formed and incorporated with the astral body, an event of great significance is undergone by the human being about to re-enter physical existence. In his preceding life, as we saw, he engendered hindering and disturbing forces, revealed to him during his backward journeying after death. Let us return to the above example. At age forty in his former life, in a sudden upsurge of anger, a man did harm to another. He was confronted after death by the other's suffering, as a force hindering the development of his own Ego. So too with all such occurrences of the preceding life. Now on re-entry into physical life these hindrances to his development confront the *I* of man. As after death a kind of memory-tableau of the past, he now experiences a pre-vision of his coming life. He sees it in a kind of tableau once again, showing him all the obstacles he must remove if his development is to go forward. What he thus sees becomes the source of active forces which he must carry with him into the coming life. The picture of the suffering he caused his fellow-man becomes a force impelling his Ego, now about to enter earthly life once more, to make good the hurt which he inflicted. Thus does the former life wield a determining influence upon the new; the deeds of the new life are, in a way, caused by the deeds of the old. In this relationship of law and causation between an earlier and a later life we have to recognize the real Law of Destiny—often denoted by a word taken from Oriental Wisdom, the law of “Karma.”