X. Why Don't We Remember Our Past Lives?

Yesterday I said to the teachers here: Yes, when the child turns about seven years old, it should learn something. It should learn, after having learned all its life so far, that the person standing in front of it, whom it knows, is the father – it should now learn that this here (it is written) means “father”. The child should learn this all of a sudden. It has nothing at all to do with this “father.” These are very strange signs that have nothing to do with the father! The child is suddenly supposed to learn this. It resists it. Because the father is this and that man who has hair like this, a nose like this; it has always seen it. The child resists the fact that what is written should now mean “father.”  Blackboard 2 Gentlemen, let us now take a brief look at history. As I told you last time, all of our souls were already there at a time when only a few people had learned to think. People did not think at all in the beginning. In primeval times, people lived in the spiritual. But it was already abnormal if someone thought in the beginning. In the beginning, in the Middle Ages, people did not think at all. They have only been thinking since the 15th century; they have not yet thought in the way we understand everything today. This can be proven historically. No wonder you do not remember your past lives today! Now people have learned to think. Now is the time in historical development when people have learned to think. In the next life they will remember their present life on earth just as a person remembers his shirt button in the morning. That is to say, history is such that if someone now really learns to think about the things of the world, learns to think as I showed you, then it is as if he is thinking about his shirt buttons. And the way today's natural scientists do it is as if one is not thinking about the shirt buttons. If someone merely describes: “You get delirious, your lips turn blue, your face turns red, and so on.” In the next life, he will not think of the most important things, he will not remember anything at all, and everything will be confused, like the other person who throws everything together because he has to leave quickly and cannot find his things. But the one who thinks that this simply comes from the etheric body, astral body, ego, learns to think in such a way that he can remember properly in the next life on earth. Only then will it become apparent. And only some are instructed at the present time, because there were few in the last life on earth who knew the matter. They come across it today and can draw the attention of others to it. And then, when they do this, as it is described in my books, when they do what is written in 'How to Know Higher Worlds', it may be that it also dawns on people in the present that they have already lived in previous earthly lives. But we are just beginning with anthroposophical spiritual science. Therefore, people will gradually remember.