Lecture VII

When our interest has been kindled on the earth and we try to follow the life of a man in his further course after death, we begin to realise the tremendous difficulties and hindrances. For if we observe rightly and penetratingly, we see, already in that backward course which takes about a third of the time of the past earthly life, how the dead man begins to approach and prepare for the forming of his karma. In a reverse and backward life, he sees all that he underwent during his life on earth. If he offended another man he experiences the event again. If I die at the age of seventy-three, and at the age of sixty I offended someone, I experience it again on the backward journey. But this time I experience, not the feelings which I had in giving the offence, but the feelings of the other man. I live right over into him. Thus I with my own experience live in those who were touched in a good or in a bad sense by these my experiences in life. And thus the tendency is prepared and grows in me myself, to create the karmic balance.