VII. The Questions of Life and the Riddle of Death I

Hence, the stupefying impression which a spiritual researcher receives because he can change nothing of that which comes from former lives. There the riddle of death and destiny faces us in special way. If we suffer in a present life, we have prepared it to ourselves in a former life. This could seem cruel. However, let us suppose once that anybody has to experience in the eighteenth year of his life that his father loses his property. Now he has to learn something, this is very disagreeable, and he can feel it as something extremely bad. However, at the age of fifty years he will judge quite different. Thus, the human being cannot always judge a misfortune correctly, as long as he experiences it. We have to say to ourselves, if we expose ourselves to distress and misery: it is at the same time a condition of development. It is only imaginary if one believes that this knowledge is cruel.