I
EOPLE
who have made some study of Anthroposophy, and particularly of the basic
principles of reincarnation, karma and other truths connected with man
and his evolution, may well ask: Why is it so difficult to gain a
true, first-hand conception of that being in man which passes through
repeated earth-lives — that being, which, if one could only
acquire more intimate knowledge of it, would inevitably lead to an
insight into the secrets of repeated earth-lives and even of karma?
It is certainly true to say that as a rule man misinterprets
everything connected with this question. At first he tries, as is
only too natural, to explain it through his ordinary world of
thought, through the ordinary intellect, and he asks himself: To what
extent can we find, in the facts of life, proof that the conception
of repeated earth-lives and karma is true? This endeavour, which is
essentially of the nature of reflection, can, admittedly, lead man to
a certain point, but no further. For our world of thought, as at
present constituted, is entirely dependent on those qualities of our
human organism which are limited to one incarnation; we possess them
because, as men living between birth and death, we have been given
this particular organism. And on this particular formation of the
physical body, with the etheric body which is only one stage higher,
everything that we can call our thought-world is dependent. The more
penetrating these thoughts are, the better able they are to enter
into abstract truths — so much the more are they dependent on
the outer organism that is limited to one incarnation.
From this we may
conclude that when we pass into the life between death and a new
birth — that is to say, into the spiritual life — we can
least of all take with us what we experience in our souls — our
thoughts! And our most penetrating thoughts are what we have most of
all to leave behind.
It may be asked: What
is it that man more particularly discards when he passes through the
Gate of Death? First of all, his physical body; and of all that
constitutes his inner being he discards practically to the same
extent all the abstract thoughts formulated in his soul. These two
things — physical body, abstract thoughts, scientific thoughts
as well — are what he can least of all take with him when he
passes through the Gate of Death. It is in a certain sense easy for
man to take with him his temperament, his impulses, his desires, as
they have been formed in him, and especially his habits; he also
takes with him the mode and nature of his impulses of will —
but his thoughts least of all. Therefore, because our thoughts are so
intimately bound up with the outer organism, we may conclude that
they are instruments not very well adapted to penetrate the secrets
of reincarnation and karma, which are truths extending beyond the
single incarnation.
All the same, man can
reach a certain point, and indeed he must develop his
thinking up to a certain point, if he wishes to gain insight into the
theory of reincarnation and karma. What can be said on this subject
has practically all been said either in the pamphlet,
Reincarnation and Karma from the standpoint of modern
Natural Science,
or in the chapter on reincarnation and karma in the book
Theosophy.
Scarcely anything can be added to what is
said in these two publications. The question of what can be
contributed by the intellect will not further concern us to-day, but
rather the question of how man can acquire a certain conception of
reincarnation and karma; that is to say, a conception of more value
than a mere theoretical conviction, able to bring about a kind of
inner certainty that the real soul-spiritual kernel of being within
us comes over from earlier lives and passes on into later lives.
Such a definite
conception can be acquired by means of certain inner exercises which
are by no means easy; indeed they are difficult, but they can
nevertheless be carried out. The first step is in some degree to
practise the normal kind of self-cognition, which consists in looking
back over one's life and asking oneself: What kind of person
have I been? Have I been a person with a strong inclination for
reflection, for inner contemplation; or am I one who has always had
more love for the sensations of the outer world, liking or disliking
this or that in everyday life? Was I a child who at school liked
reading but not arithmetic, one who liked to hit other children but
did not like being hit? Or was I a child always bound to be bullied
and not smart enough to bully others?
It is well to look
back on one's life in this way, and especially to ask oneself:
Was I cut out for activities of the mind or of the will? What did I
find easy or difficult? What happened to me that I would like to have
avoided? What happenings made me say to myself: “I am glad this
has come to pass ”— and so on.
It is good to look
back on one's life in a certain way, and above all to envisage
clearly those things that one did not like. All this leads to a more
intimate knowledge of the inner kernel of our being. For example, a
son who would have liked to become a poet was destined by his father
to be a craftsman, and a craftsman he became, although he would
sooner have been a poet. It is well to know clearly what we really
wanted to be, and what we have become against our will, to visualise
what would have suited us in the time of our youth but was not our
lot, and then, again, what we would have liked to avoid.
All that I am saying
refers, of course, to life in the past, not in the future —
that would be a false conception. We must therefore be quite clear as
to what such a retrospect into the past means; it tells us what we
did not want, what we would have liked to avoid. When we have made
that clear to ourselves, we really have a picture of those things in
our life which have pleased us least. That is the essential point.
And we must now try to live into a very remarkable conception: we
must desire and will everything that we have not desired or
willed. We must imagine to ourselves: What should I actually have
become if I had ardently desired everything that in fact I did not
wish for and which really went against the grain in life? In a
certain sense we must here rule out what we have succeeded in
overcoming, for the most important thing is that we should ardently
wish or picture ourselves wishing for the things we have not desired,
or concerning which we have not been able to carry out our wishes, so
that we create for ourselves, in feeling and thought, a being
hitherto unfamiliar to us. We must picture ourselves as this being
with great intensity. If we can do this, if we can identify ourselves
with the being we have ourselves built up in this way, we have made
some real progress towards becoming acquainted with the inner
soul-kernel of our being; for in the picture we have thus been able
to make of our own personality there will arise something that we
have not been in this present incarnation but which we have
introduced into it. Our deeper being will emerge from the picture
built up in this way.
You will see,
therefore, that from those who wish to gain knowledge of this inner
kernel of being, something is required for which people in our age
have no inclination at all. They are not disposed to desire anything
of the sort, for nowadays, if they reflect upon their own nature,
they want to find themselves absolutely satisfied with it as it is.
When we go back to earlier, more deeply religious epochs, we find
there a feeling that man should feel himself overwhelmed because he
so little resembled his Divine Archetype. This was not, of course,
the idea of which we have spoken to-day, but it was an idea which led
man away from what usually satisfies him, to something else, to that
being which lives on beyond the organism existing between birth and
death, even if it did not lead to the conviction of another
incarnation. If you call up the counterpart of yourself, the
following thought will dawn upon you. This counterpart —
difficult as it may be to realise it as a picture of yourself in this
life — is nevertheless connected with you, and you cannot
disown it. Once it appears, it will follow you, hover before your
soul and crystallise in such a way that you will realise that it has
something to do with you, but certainly not with your present life.
And then there develops the perception that this picture is derived
from an earlier life.
If we bring this
clearly before our souls, we shall soon realise how erroneous are
most of the current conceptions of reincarnation and karma. You have
no doubt often heard anthroposophists say when they meet a good
arithmetician: “In his previous incarnation this man was a good
arithmetician!” Unfortunately, many undeveloped
anthroposophists string together links of reincarnation in such a way
that it is thought possible to find the earlier incarnation because
the present gifts must have existed in the preceding incarnation or
in many previous incarnations. This is the worst possible form of
speculation and anything derived from it is usually false. True
observation by means of Spiritual Science, discloses, as a rule, the
exact opposite. For example, people who in a former incarnation were
good arithmeticians, good mathematicians, often reappear with no gift
for mathematics at all. If we wish to discover what gifts we may
probably have possessed in a former incarnation (here I must remind
you that we are speaking of probabilities!) — if we wish to
know what intellectual or artistic faculties, say, we possessed in a
former incarnation, it is well to reflect upon those things for which
we have least talent in the present life.
These are true
indications, but they are very often interwoven with other facts. It
may happen that a man had a special talent for mathematics in a
former incarnation but died young, so that this talent never came to
full expression; then he will be born again in his next incarnation
with a talent for mathematics and this will represent a continuation
of the previous incarnation. Abel, the mathematician who died young,
will certainly in his next incarnation be reborn with a strong
mathematical talent.
[ 1 ]
But when a mathematician
has lived to a great age, so that his talent has spent itself —
then in his next incarnation he will be stupid as regards
mathematics. I knew a man who had so little gift for mathematics that
as a schoolboy he simply hated figures, and although in other
subjects he did well, he generally managed to get through his classes
only because he obtained exceptionally good marks in other subjects.
This was because in his former incarnation he had been an exceedingly
good mathematician.
If we go more deeply
into this, the fact becomes apparent that the external career of a
man in one incarnation, when it is not merely a career but also an
inner vocation, passes over in his next incarnation into the inward
shaping of his bodily organs. Thus, if a man has been an
exceptionally good mathematician in one incarnation, the mastery he
has obtained over numbers and figures remains with him and goes into
a special development of his sense-organs, for instance, of the eyes.
People with very good sight have it as a result of the fact that in
their former incarnation they thought in forms; they took this
thinking in forms with them and during the life between death and
rebirth they worked specially on the shaping of their eyes. Here the
mathematical talent has passed into the eyes and no longer exists as
a gift for mathematics.
Another case known to
occultists is where an individuality in one incarnation lived with
intensity in architectural forms; these experiences lived as forces
in his inner soul-life and worked strongly upon the instrument of
hearing, so that in his next incarnation he became a great musician.
He did not appear as a great architect, because the perception of
form necessary for architecture was transformed into an
organ-building force, so that there was nothing left but a supreme
sensitiveness for music.
An external
consideration of similarities is generally deceptive in reference to
the characteristics of successive incarnations; and just as we must
reflect upon whatever did not please us and conceive of ourselves as
having had an intense desire for it, so we must also reflect upon
those things for which we have the least talent, and about which we
are stupid. If we discover the dullest sides of our nature, they may
very probably point to those fields in which we were most brilliant
in our previous incarnation. Thus we see how easy it is in these
matters to begin at the wrong end. A little reflection will show us
that it is the soul-kernel of our being which works over from one
incarnation to another; this can be illustrated by the fact that it
is no easier for a man to learn a language even if in his preceding
incarnation he lived in the country associated with this particular
language; otherwise our school-boys would not find it so difficult to
learn Greek and Latin, for many of them in former incarnations will
have lived in the regions where these were the languages of ordinary
intercourse.
You see, the outer
capacities we acquire are so closely connected with earthly
circumstances that we cannot speak of them reappearing in the same
form in the next incarnation; they are transformed into forces and in
that way pass over to a subsequent incarnation. For instance, people
who have a special faculty for learning languages in one incarnation
will not have this in the next; instead, they will have the faculty
which enables them to form more unbiassed judgments than those who
had less talent for languages; these latter will tend to form
one-sided judgments.
These matters are
connected with the mysteries of reincarnation, and when we penetrate
them we obtain a clear and vivid idea of what truly belongs to the
inner being of man and what must in a certain sense be
accounted external. For instance, language to-day is no longer part
of man's inner being. We may love a language for the sake of
what it expresses, for the sake of its Folk-Spirit; but it is
something which passes over in transformed forms of force from one
incarnation to another.
If a man follows up
these ideas, so that he says: “I will strongly desire and will
to be what I have become against my will, and also that for which I
have the least capacity” — he can know that the
conceptions he thus obtains will build up the picture of his
preceding incarnation. This picture will arise in great precision if
he is earnest and serious about the things just described. He will
observe that from the whole way in which the conceptions coalesce, he
will either feel: “This picture is quite near to me”; or
he will feel: “This picture is a long, long way off.”
If through the
elaboration of these conceptions, such a picture of the previous
incarnation arises before a man's soul, he will, as a rule, he
able to estimate how faded the picture is. The following feeling will
come as an experience: “I am standing here; but the picture
before me could not be my father, my grandfather, or my
great-grandfather.” If however the student allows the picture
to work upon him, his feeling and perception will lead him to the
opinion: “Others are standing between me and this
picture.” Let us for a moment assume that the student has the
following feeling. It becomes apparent to him that between him and
the picture stand twelve persons; another may perhaps feel that
between him and the picture stand seven persons; but in any event the
feeling is there and is of the greatest significance. If, for
instance, there are twelve persons between oneself and the picture,
this number can be divided by three, and the result will be four, and
this may represent the number of centuries that have elapsed since
the last incarnation. Thus a man who felt that there were twelve
people standing between him and the picture, would say: “My
preceding incarnation took place four centuries ago.”—
This is given merely as an example; it will only actually be so in a
very few cases, but it conveys the idea. Most people will find that
they can in this way rightly estimate when they were incarnated
before. Only the preparatory steps, of course, are rather
difficult.
Here we have touched
upon matters which are as alien as they can possibly be from
present-day consciousness, and it cannot be denied that if we spoke
of these things to people unprepared for them, they would regard them
as so much irresponsible fantasy. The anthroposophical world-picture
is fated — more so than any of its predecessors—to oppose
traditional, accepted ideas. For to a very great extent these are
imbued with the crudest, the most desolate materialism; and those
very world-pictures which appear to be most firmly established on a
scientific basis have, in point of fact, grown out of the most
devastating materialistic assumptions. And since Anthroposophy is
condemned to be labelled as the outlook cultivated by the kind of
person who wants to know about his previous incarnations, one can
readily understand that people of the present day are very far from
taking anthroposophical views seriously. They are as far remote from
the inclination to desire and to will what they have never desired or
willed, as their habits of thought are remote from spiritual truths.
The question might here be asked: Why, then, does spiritual truth
come into the world just now? Why does it not leave humanity time to
develop, to mature?
The reason is that it
is almost impossible to imagine a greater difference between two
successive epochs than there will be between the present epoch and
that into which humanity will have grown when the people now living
are reborn in their next incarnation. The development of certain
spiritual faculties does not depend upon man, but upon the whole
purpose and meaning, the whole nature, of earth-evolution. Men of the
present day could not be more remote than they are from any belief in
reincarnation and karma. This does not apply to students of
Anthroposophy, but they are still very few; neither does it apply to
those who still adhere to certain old forms of religion; but it
applies to those who are the bearers of external cultural life: it
sets them far away from belief in reincarnation and karma. Now the
fact that people of the present day are particularly disinclined to
believe in reincarnation and karma is connected in a remarkable way
with their pursuits and studies—that is, in so far as these
concern their intellectual faculties — and this fact will
produce the opposite effect in the future. In the next incarnation
these people, whether their pursuits are spiritual or material, will
have a strong predisposition to gain an impression of their previous
incarnation. Quite irrespective of their pursuits in this age, they
will be reborn with a strong predisposition, a strong yearning for
their last incarnation, with a strong desire to experience and know
something of it. We are standing at a turning-point in time; it will
lead men from an incarnation in which they have no desire at all to
know anything of reincarnation and karma, to one in which the most
living feeling will be this: “The whole of the life I now lead
has no foundation for me if I cannot know anything of my former
incarnation.” And the very people who now inveigh most bitterly
against reincarnation and karma will writhe under the torment of the
next life because they cannot explain to themselves how their life
has come to be what it is.
Anthroposophy is not
here for the purpose of cultivating in man a retrospective longing
for former lives, but in order that there should be understanding of
what will arise in connection with collective humanity when the
people who are alive to-day will be here again. People who are
anthroposophists to-day will share with those who are not the desire
to remember, but they will have understanding, and therefore an inner
harmony in their soul-life. Those who reject Anthroposophy to-day
will wish to know something of it in the next life; they will really
feel something like an inner torment concerning their previous
incarnation but they will understand nothing of what it is that most
distresses and torments them; they will be perplexed and will lack
inner harmony. In their next incarnation they will have to be told:
“You will understand the cause of this torment only if you can
conceive that you have actually willed it into
existence.”— Naturally, nobody will desire this torment,
but people who are materialists to-day will in their next incarnation
begin to understand their inner demands and the advice of those who
will be in a position to know and who may say to them:
“Conceive to yourselves that you have willed into existence
this life from which you would like to flee.” If they begin to
follow this advice and reflect: “How can I have willed this
life?” they will say to themselves: “Yes, I did perhaps
live in an incarnation where I said that it was absurdity and
nonsense to speak of a following incarnation, and that this life was
complete in itself, sending no forces on into a later one. And
because at that time I felt a future life to be unreal, to be
nonsense, my life now is so empty and desolate. It was I who actually
implanted within myself the thought that is now the force making my
life so meaningless and barren.”
That will be a right
thought. Karmically it will outlive materialism. The next incarnation
will be full of meaning for those who have acquired the conviction
that their life, as it now is, is not only complete in itself but
contains causes for the next. Meaningless and desolate will be the
life of those who, because they believe reincarnation to be nonsense,
have themselves rendered their own lives barren and void.
So we see that the
thoughts we cherish do not pass over into the next life in a somewhat
intensified form, but arise there transformed into forces. In the
spiritual world, thoughts such as we now form between birth and death
have no significance except in so far as they are transformed. If,
for instance, a man has a great thought, however great it may be, the
thought as thought is gone when he passes through the gate of death,
but the enthusiasm, the perception and the feeling called to life by
the thought — these pass through the gate of death with him.
Man does not even take with him the thoughts of Anthroposophy, but
what he has experienced through them — even to the details, not
the general fundamental feeling alone — that is taken with him.
This in particular is the point to grasp: thoughts as such are of
real significance for the physical plane, but when we are speaking of
the activity of thoughts in the higher worlds we must at the same
time speak of their transformation in conformity with those worlds.
Thoughts which deny reincarnation are transformed in the next life
into an inner unreality, an inner emptiness of life; this inner
unreality and emptiness are experienced as torment, as
disharmony.
With the aid of a
simile we may obtain an idea of this by thinking of something we like
very much, and are always glad to see in a certain place — for
instance, a particular flower blooming in a certain spot. If the
flower is cut by a ruthless hand, we experience a certain pain. So it
is with the whole organism of man. What causes man to feel pain? When
the etheric and astral elements of an organ are embedded in a
particular position in the physical body, then if the organ is
injured so that the etheric and astral bodies cannot permeate it
properly, pain is the result. It is just like the ruthless cutting of
a rose from its accustomed place in a garden. When an organ has been
injured, the etheric and astral bodies do not find what they seek,
and this is then felt as bodily pain. And so a man's own
thoughts, working on into the future, will meet him in the future. If
he sends over into the next incarnation no forces of faith or of
knowledge, his thoughts will fail him, and when he seeks for them he
will find nothing. This lack will be experienced as pain and
torment.
These are matters
which from one aspect make the karmic course of certain events clear
to us. They must be made clear, for our aim is to penetrate still
more deeply into the ways and means whereby a man can make yet
further preparation for coming to know the real kernel of his being
of spirit-and-soul.
Notes:
1.
The Norwegian Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829), of whom
Hermite said: “He has left mathematicians something to keep
them busy for five hundred years.” Two days after Abel's death
in poverty, from tuberculosis, a letter came saying that he was
to be appointed Professor of Mathematics in the University of
Berlin.
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