HOW KARMA WORKS
by Dr. Rudolf Steiner
Read this Essay in the
original German
SLEEP has often been called the younger brother of death. This simile
illustrates the paths of the human spirit more exactly than a
superficial observation might feel inclined to assume. For it gives us
an idea of the way in which the most manifold incarnations passed
through by this human spirit are interrelated. In the first chapter of
this book,
Reincarnation and Karma, Concepts Compelled by the Modern Scientific Point of View,
it has been shown that the present
natural-scientific mode of thought, if it but understands itself
properly, leads to the ancient teaching of the evolution of the
eternal human spirit through many lives. This knowledge is necessarily
followed by the question: how are these manifold lives interrelated?
In what sense is the life of a human being the effect of his former
incarnations, and how does it become the cause of the later
incarnations? The picture of sleep presents an image of the relation
of cause and effect in this field.
(See Appendix (e))
I arise in the morning. My
continuous activity was interrupted during the night. I cannot resume
this activity arbitrarily if order and connection are to govern my
life. What I have done yesterday constitutes the conditions for my
actions of today. I must make a connection with the result of my
activities of yesterday. It is true in the fullest sense of the word
that my deeds of yesterday are my destiny of today. I myself have
shaped the causes to which I must add the effects. And I encounter
these causes after having withdrawn from them for a short time. They
belong to me, although I was separated from them for some time.
The effects of my experiences of yesterday belong to me in still
another sense. I myself have been changed by them. Let us suppose that
I have undertaken something in which I succeeded only partially. I
have pondered on the reason for this partial failure. If I have again
to carry out a similar task, I avoid the mistakes I have recognized.
That is, I have acquired a new faculty. Thereby my experiences of
yesterday have become the causes of my faculties of today. My past
remains united with me; it lives on in my present; and it will follow
me into my future. Through my past, I have created for myself the
position in which I find myself at present. And the meaning of life
demands that I remain united with this position. Would it not be
senseless if, under normal conditions, I should not move into a house
I had caused to be built for myself?
If the effects of my deeds of yesterday were not to be my destiny of
today, I should not have to wake up today, but I should have to be
created anew, out of the nothing. And the human spirit would have to
be newly created, out of the nothing, if the results of its former
lives were not to remain linked to its later lives. Indeed, the human
being cannot live in any other position but the one which has been
created through his previous life. He can do this no more than can
certain animals, which have lost their power of sight as a result of
their migration to the caves of Kentucky, live anywhere else but in
these caves. They have, through their deed, through migration, created
for themselves the conditions for their later existence. A being which
has once been active is henceforth no longer isolated in the world; it
has inserted itself into its deeds. And its future development is
connected with what arises from the deeds. This connection of a being
with the results of its deeds is the law of karma which rules the
whole world. Activity that has become destiny is karma.
And sleep is a good picture of death for the reason that the human
being, during sleep, is actually withdrawn from the field of action
upon which destiny awaits him. While we sleep, the events on this
field of action run their course. For a time, we have no influence
upon this course. Nevertheless, we find again the effects of our
actions, and we must link up with them. In reality, our personality
every morning incarnates anew in our world of deeds. What was
separated from us during the night, envelops us, as it were, during
the day.
It is the same with the deeds of our former incarnations. Their
results are embodied in the world in which we were incarnated. Yet
they belong to us just as the life in the caves belongs to the animals
which, through this life, have lost the power of sight. Just as these
animals can only live if they find again the surroundings to which
they have adapted themselves, so the human spirit is only able to live
in those surroundings which, through his deeds, he has created for
himself and are suited to him.
Every new morning the human body is ensouled anew, as it were. Natural
science admits that this involves a process which it cannot grasp if
it employs merely the laws it has gained in the physical world.
Consider what the natural scientist
Du Bois-Reymond
says about this in his address, Die Grenze des Naturerkennens
(The Limits of the Cognition of Nature): “If a brain, for
some reason unconscious, as for instance in dreamless sleep, were to be
viewed scientifically” — (Du Bois-Reymond says
“astronomically”) — “it would hold no longer any
secrets, and if we were to add to this the natural-scientific
knowledge of the rest of the body, there would be a complete
deciphering of the entire human machine with its breathing, its heartbeat,
its metabolism, its warmth, and so forth, right up to the nature
of matter and force. The dreamless sleeper is comprehensible to the
same degree that the world is comprehensible before consciousness
appeared. But just as the world became doubly incomprehensible with
the first stirring of consciousness, so the sleeper becomes
incomprehensible with the first dream picture that arises in him.”
This cannot be otherwise. For, what the scientist describes here as
the dreamless sleeper is that part of the human being which alone is
subject to physical laws. The moment, however, it appears again
permeated by the soul, it obeys the laws of the soul-life. During
sleep, the human body obeys the physical laws: the moment the human
being wakes up, the light of intelligent action flashes forth, like a
spark, into purely physical existence. We speak entirely in the sense
of the scientist Du Bois-Reymond when we state: the sleeping body may
be investigated in all its aspects, yet we shall not be able to find
the soul in it. But this soul continues the course of its rational
deeds at the point where this was interrupted by sleep. — Thus the
human being, also in this regard, belongs to two worlds. In one world
he lives his bodily life which may be observed by means of physical
laws;in the other he lives as a spiritual-rational being, and about
this life we are able to learn nothing by means of physical laws. If
we wish to study the bodily life, we have to hold to the physical laws
of natural science; but if we wish to grasp the spiritual life, we
have to acquaint ourselves with the laws of rational action, such, for
instance, as logic, jurisprudence, economics, aesthetics, and so
forth.
The sleeping human body, subject only to physical laws, can never
accomplish anything in the realm of the laws of reason. But the human
spirit carries these laws of reason into the physical world. And just
as much as he has carried into it will he find again when, after an
interruption, he resumes the thread of his activity.
Let us hold on to the picture of sleep. If life is not to be
meaningless, the personality has to link up today with its deeds of
yesterday. It could not do so did it not feel itself joined to these
deeds. I should be unable to pick up today the result of my activity
of yesterday, had there not remained within myself something of this
activity. If I had today forgotten everything that I have experienced
yesterday, I should be a new human being, unable to link up with
anything. It is my memory which enables me to link up with my deeds of
yesterday. — This memory binds me to the effects of my action. That
which, in the real sense, belongs to my life of reason, — logic, for
instance, — is today the same it was yesterday. This is applicable
also to that which did not enter my field of vision yesterday, indeed,
which never entered it. My memory connects my logical action of today
with my logical action of yesterday. If matters depended merely upon
logic, we certainly might start a new life every morning. But memory
retains what binds us to our destiny.
Thus I really find myself in the morning as a threefold being. I find
my body again which during my sleep has obeyed its merely physical
laws. I find again my own self, my human spirit, which is today the
same it was yesterday, and which is today endowed with the gift of
rational action with which it was endowed yesterday. And I find —
preserved by memory — everything that my yesterday, that my
entire past has made of me. —
And this affords us at the same time a picture of the threefold being
of man. In every new incarnation the human being finds himself in a
physical organism which is subject to the laws of external nature. And
in every incarnation he is the same human spirit. As such he is the
Eternal within the manifold incarnations. Body and Spirit
confront one another. Between these two there must lie something just as
memory lies between my deeds of yesterday and those of today. And this
something is the soul. It preserves the effects of my deeds from
former lives and brings it about that the spirit, in a new
incarnation, appears in the form which previous earth lives have given
it. In this way, body, soul, and spirit are interrelated. The
spirit is eternal; birth and death rule in the
body according to the laws of the physical world; both are brought
together again and again by the soul as it fashions our destiny
out of our deeds. (Each of the above-mentioned principles: body,
soul, and spirit, in turn consists of three members. Thus the
human being appears to be formed of nine members. The body
consists of: (1) the actual body, (2) the life-body, (3) the sentient-body.
The soul consists of: (4) the sentient-soul, (5) the intellectual-soul,
(6) the consciousness-soul. The spirit consists of: (7) spirit-self,
(8) life-spirit, (9) spirit-man. In the incarnated human being, 3 and 4,
and 6 and 7 unite, flowing into one another. Through this fact the nine
members appear to have contracted into seven members.)
In regard to the comparison of the soul with memory we are also in a
position to refer to modern natural science. The scientist Ewald
Hering published a treatise in 1870 which bears the title: Ueber das
Gedaechtnis als eine allgemeine Funktion der organisierten Materie
(Memory as a General Function of Organized Matter). Ernst
Haeckel
agrees with Hering's point of view. He states the following in his
treatise: Ueber die Wellenzeugung der Lebensteilchen (The Wave
Generation of Living Particles): “Profound reflection must bring the
conviction that without the assumption of an unconscious memory of
living matter the most important life functions are utterly
inexplicable. The faculty of forming ideas and concepts, of thinking
and consciousness, of practice and habit, of nutrition and
reproduction rests upon the function of the unconscious memory, the
activity of which is much more significant than that of conscious
memory. Hering is right in stating that it is memory to which we owe
nearly everything that we are and have.” And now Haeckel tries to
trace back the processes of heredity within living creatures to this
unconscious memory. The fact that the daughter-being resembles the
mother-being, that the former inherits the qualities of the latter, is
thus supposed to be due to the unconscious memory of the living, which
in the course of reproduction retains the memory of the preceding
forms. — It is not a question here of investigating how much of the
presentations of Hering and Haeckel are scientifically tenable; for
our purposes it suffices to draw attention to the fact that the
natural scientist is compelled to assume an entity which he considers
similar to memory; he is compelled to do so if he goes beyond birth
and death, and presumes something that endures beyond death. He quite
naturally seizes upon a supersensible force in the realm where the
laws of physical nature do not suffice.
We must, however, realize that we are dealing here merely with a
comparison, with a picture, when we speak of memory. We must not
believe that by soul we understand something that is equivalent to
conscious memory. Even in ordinary life it is not always conscious
memory that is active when we make use of the experiences of the past.
We bear within us the fruits of these experiences even if we do not
always consciously remember what we have experienced. Who can remember
all the details of his learning to read and write? Moreover, who was
ever conscious of all those details? Habit, for instance, is a kind of
unconscious memory. — By means of this comparison with memory we
merely wish to point to the soul which inserts itself between body and
spirit and constitutes the mediator between the Eternal and that
which, as the Physical, is inwoven into the course of birth and death.
The spirit that reincarnates thus finds within the physical world the
results of its deeds as its destiny; and the soul that is bound to it,
mediates the spirit's linking up with this destiny. Now we may ask:
how can the spirit find the results of its deeds, since, on
reincarnating, it is certainly placed in a world completely different
from the one in which it existed previously? This question is based
upon a very externalized conception of the web of destiny. If I
transfer my residence from Europe to America, I, too, find myself in
completely new surroundings. Yet my life in America is completely
dependent upon my previous life in Europe. If I have been a mechanic
in Europe, my life in America will take on a form quite different from
the one it would take on had I been a bank clerk. In the one case I
shall probably be surrounded in America by machines, in the other by
banking papers. In every case my previous life determines my
surroundings, it attracts, as it were, out of the whole environment
those things which are related to it. This is also the case with my
spirit-soul. It surrounds itself quite necessarily with what it is
related to out of its previous life. This cannot constitute a
contradiction of the simile of sleep and death if we realize that we
are dealing only with a simile, although a most striking one. That I
find in the morning the situation which I myself have created on the
previous day is brought about by the direct course of events. That I
find on reincarnating an environment that corresponds to the result of
my deeds of the previous life is brought about through the affinity of
my reborn spirit-soul with the things of this environment.
What leads me into this environment? Directly the qualities of my
spirit-soul on reincarnating. But I possess these qualities merely
through the fact that the deeds of my previous lives have implanted
them into the spirit-soul. These deeds, therefore, are the real cause
of my being born into certain circumstances. And what I do today will
be one of the causes of my finding myself in a later life within
certain definite circumstances. — Thus man indeed creates his destiny
for himself. This remains incomprehensible only as long as one
considers the separate life as such and does not regard it as a link in
the chain of successive lives.
Thus we may say that nothing can happen to the human being in life for
which he has not himself created the conditions. Only through insight into
the law of destiny — karma — does it become comprehensible why
“the good man has often to suffer, while the evil one may experience
happiness.” This seeming disharmony of the one life disappears when
the view is extended upon many lives. — To be sure, the law of karma
must not be conceived of as being so simple that we might compare it
to an ordinary judge or to civil justice. This would be the same as if
we were to imagine God as an old man with a white beard. Many people
fall into this error. Especially the opponents of the idea of karma
proceed from such erroneous premises. They fight against the
conception which they impute to the believers in karma and not against
the conception held by the true knowers.
What is the relation of the human being to his physical surroundings
when he enters a new incarnation? This relation is composed of two
factors: first, in the time between two consecutive incarnations he
has had no part in the physical world; second, he passed through a
certain development during that period. It is self-evident that no
influence from the physical world can affect this development, for the
spirit-soul then exists outside this physical world. Everything that
takes place in the spirit-soul, it can, therefore, only draw out of
itself, that is to say, out of the super-physical world. During its
incarnation it was interwoven with the physical world of facts; after
its discarnation through death, it is deprived of the direct influence
of this factual world. It has merely retained from the latter that
which we have compared to memory. — This “memory remnant”
consists of two parts. These parts become evident if we consider what has
contributed to its formation. — The spirit has lived in the body and
through the body, therefore, it entered into relation with the bodily
surroundings. This relation has found its expression through the fact
that, by means of the body, impulses, desires, and passions have
developed and that, through them, outer actions have been performed.
Because he has a corporeal existence, the human being acts under the
influence of impulses, desires, and passions. And these have a
significance in two directions. On the one hand, they impress
themselves upon the outer actions which the human being performs. And
on the other, they form his personal character. The action I perform
is the result of my desire; and I myself, as a personality, am what is
expressed by this desire. The action passes over into the outer
world;the desire remains within my soul just as the thought remains
within my memory. And just as the thought image in my memory is
strengthened through every new impression of like nature, so is the
desire strengthened through every new action which I perform under its
influence. Thus within my soul, because of corporeal existence, there
lives a certain sum of impulses, desires, and passions. The sum total
of these is designated by the expression “body of desire.” —
This body of desire is intimately connected with physical existence, for it
comes into being under the influence of the physical corporeality. The
moment the spirit is no longer incarnated it cannot continue the
formation of this body of desire. The spirit must free itself from
this desire-body in so far as it was connected, through it, with the
single physical life. The physical life is followed by another in
which this liberation occurs. We may ask: Does not death signify the
destruction also of this body of desire?
The answer is: No; for to the degree in which, at every moment of
physical life, desire surpasses satisfaction, desire persists even
when the possibility of satisfaction has ceased. Only a human being
who does not desire anything of the physical world has no surplus of
desire over satisfaction. Only a man of no desires dies without
retaining in his spirit a certain amount of desire. And this amount
must gradually diminish and fade away after death. The state of this
fading away is called “the sojourn in the region of desire.”
It can easily be seen that the more the human being has felt bound to the
sense life, the longer must this state persist.
The second part of the “memory remnant” is formed in a different
way. Just as desire draws the spirit toward the past life, so this second
part directs it toward the future. The spirit, through its activity in
the body, has become acquainted with the world to which this body
belongs. Each new exertion, each new experience enhances this
acquaintance. As a rule the human being does a thing better the second
time than he does it the first. Experience impresses itself upon the
spirit, enhancing its capacities. Thus our experience acts upon our
future, and if we have no longer the opportunity to have experiences,
then the result of these experiences remains as memory remnant. — But
no experience could affect us if we did not have the capacity to make
use of it. The way in which we are able to absorb the experience, the
use we are able to make of it, determines its significance for our
future. For
Goethe,
an experience had a significance quite different
from the significance it had for his valet; and it produced results
for Goethe quite different from those it produced for his valet. What
faculties we acquire through an experience depends, therefore, upon
the spiritual work we perform in connection with the experience. — I
always have within me, at any given moment of my life, a sum total of
the results of my experience. And this sum total forms the potential
of capacities which may appear in due course. — Such a sum total of
experiences the human spirit possesses when it discarnates. This the
human spirit takes with it into supersensible life. Now, when it is no
longer bound to physical existence by bodily ties and when it has
divested itself also of the desires which chain it to this physical
existence, then the fruit of its experience has remained with the
spirit. And this fruit is completely freed from the direct influence
of the past life. The spirit can now devote itself entirely to what it
is capable of fashioning out of this fruit for the future. Thus the
spirit, after having left the region of desire, is in a state in which
its experiences of former lives transform themselves into potentials —
that is to say, talents, capacities — for the future. The life of
the spirit in this state is designated as the sojourn in the “region
of bliss.” (“Bliss” may, indeed, designate a state in which
all worry about the past is relegated to oblivion and which permits the
heart to beat solely for the concerns of the future.) It is self-evident that
the greater the potentiality exists at death for the acquirement of
new capacities, the longer will this state in general last.
Naturally, it cannot be a question here of developing the complete
scope of knowledge relating to the human spirit. We merely intend to
show how the law of karma operates in physical life. For this purpose
it is sufficient to know what the spirit takes out of this physical
life into supersensible states and what it brings back again for a new
incarnation. It brings with it the results of the experiences
undergone in previous lives, transformed into the capacities of its
being. — In order to realize the far-reaching character of this fact
we need only elucidate the process by a single example. The
philosopher,
Kant,
says: “Two things fill the soul with ever
increasing wonder: the starry heavens above me and the moral law
within me.” Every thinking human being must admit that the starry
heavens have not sprung out of nothingness but have come gradually
into existence. And it is Kant himself who in 1755, in a basic
treatise, tried to explain the gradual formation of a cosmos.
Likewise, however, we must not accept the fact of moral law without an
explanation. This moral law, too, has not sprung from nothingness. In
the first incarnations through which man passed the moral law did not
speak in him in the way it spoke in Kant. Primitive man acts in
accordance with his desires. And he carries the experiences which he
has undergone through such action into the supersensible states. Here
they become higher faculties. And in a subsequent incarnation, mere
desire no longer acts in him, but it is now guided by the effect of
the previous experiences. And many incarnations are needed before the
human being, originally completely given over to desires, confronts
the surrounding world with the purified moral law which Kant
designates as something demanding the same admiration as is demanded
by the starry heavens.
The surrounding world into which the human being is born through a new
incarnation confronts him with the results of his deeds, as his
destiny. He himself enters this surrounding world with the capacities
which he has fashioned for himself in the supersensible state out of
his former experiences. Therefore his experiences in the physical
world will, in general, be at a higher level the more often he has
incarnated, or the greater his efforts were during his previous
incarnations. Thus his pilgrimage through the incarnations will be an
upward development. The treasure which his experiences accumulate in
his spirit will become richer and richer. And he thereby confronts his
surrounding world, his destiny, with greater and greater maturity.
This makes him increasingly the master of his destiny. For what he
gains through his experiences is the fact that he learns to grasp the
laws of the world in which these experiences occur. At first the
spirit does not find its way about in the surrounding world. It gropes
in the dark. But with every new incarnation the world grows brighter.
The spirit acquires a knowledge of the laws of its surrounding world;
in other words, it accomplishes ever more consciously what it
previously did in dullness of mind. The compulsion of the surrounding
world decreases; the spirit becomes increasingly self-determinative.
The spirit, however, which is self-determinative, is the free spirit.
Action in the full clear light of consciousness is free action. (I
have tried to present the nature of the free human spirit in my book,
Philosophie der Freiheit, (Philosophy of Freedom — Spiritual
Activity.) The full freedom of the human spirit is the ideal of its
development. We cannot ask the question: is man free or unfree? The
philosophers who put the question of freedom in this fashion can never
acquire a clear thought about it. For the human being in his present
state is neither free nor unfree; but he is on the way to freedom. He
is partially free, partially unfree. He is free to the degree he has
acquired knowledge and consciousness of world relations. — The fact
that our destiny, our karma, meets us in the form of absolute
necessity is no obstacle to our freedom. For when we act we approach
this destiny with the measure of independence we have achieved. It is
not destiny that acts, but it is we who act in accordance with the
laws of this destiny.
If I light a match, fire arises according to necessary laws; but it was
I who put these necessary laws into effect. Likewise, I can perform an
action only in the sense of the necessary laws of my karma, but it is
I who puts these necessary laws into effect. And new karma is created
through the deed proceeding from me, just as the fire, according to
necessary laws of nature, continues to be effective after I have
kindled it.
This also throws light upon another doubt which may assail a person in
regard to the effectiveness of the law of karma. Somebody might say:
“If karma is an unalterable law, then it is wrong to help a person.
For what befalls him is the consequence of his karma, and it is
absolutely necessary that it should befall him.” Certainly, I cannot
eliminate the effects of the destiny which a human spirit has created
for himself in former incarnations. But the matter of importance here
is how he finds his way into this destiny, and what new destiny he may
create for himself under the influence of the old one. If I help him,
I may bring about the possibility of his giving his destiny a
favorable turn through his deeds; if I refrain from helping him, the
opposite may perhaps occur. Naturally, everything will depend upon
whether my help is a wise or unwise one.
[The fact that I am present to help may be a part of both his Karma
and mine, or my presence and deed may be a free act. (Editor.)]
His advance through ever new incarnations signifies a higher
development of the human spirit. This higher development comes to
expression in the fact that the world in which the incarnations of the
spirit take place is comprehended in increasing measure by this
spirit. This world, however, comprises the incarnations themselves. In
regard to the latter, too, the spirit gradually passes from a state of
unconsciousness to one of consciousness. On the path of evolution
there lies the point from which the human being is able to look back
upon his successive incarnations with full consciousness. — This is a
thought at which it is easy to mock; and it is easy to criticise it
negatively. But whoever does this has no idea of the nature of such
truths. And derision as well as criticism place themselves like a
dragon in front of the portal of the sanctuary within which we may
attain knowledge of these truths. For it is self-evident that truths,
the realization of which lies for the human being in the future,
cannot be found as facts in the present. There is only one way of
convincing oneself of their reality: namely, to make every effort
possible to attain this reality.
|