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

GA 349/1923-04-18/p044 ·1923-04-18 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
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Now it is said: Yes, but one cannot remember it; and if a person does not have a memory of previous earthly lives, then he cannot have had any previous earthly lives. — But in this way one can also say: A person cannot calculate, one can prove that a person cannot calculate – and now someone introduces a small child of four years as proof and shows that it cannot calculate at all. He is a human being and yet cannot calculate! One will say: He will certainly learn to calculate. If one knows human nature, one knows that he will learn to calculate. — If someone today points out a person who cannot remember his earlier lives on earth, one must say: Yes, but nothing has been done in the past to help people remember. On the contrary, there are still so many stragglers from earlier times today who want to keep people ignorant, so that they know nothing of the spiritual, so that they do not know at all what they are supposed to remember in the next life on earth, so that they become quite confused, like the man with the shirt button. First, man must learn to think in life, so that he can remember later.

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Cite: GA 349/1923-04-18/p044 · edition English