III
Karma
is best understood by contrasting it with the other impulse in man —
that impulse which we describe with the word Freedom. Let us
first place the question of karma before us, quite crudely, if I may
say so. What does it signify? In human life we have to record the
fact of reincarnation, successive earthly lives. Feeling ourselves
within a given earthly life, we can look back — in thought, at
least, to begin with — and see how this present life is a
repetition of a number of former earthly lives. It was preceded by
another, and that in turn by yet another life on earth, and so on
until we get back into the ages where it is impossible to speak of
repeated earthly lives as we do in the present epoch of the earth.
For as we go farther backward, there begins a time when the life
between birth and death and the life between death and a new birth
become so similar to one another that the immense difference which
exists today between them is no longer there at all. Today we live in
our earthly body between birth and death in such a way that in
everyday consciousness we feel ourselves quite cut off from the
spiritual world. Out of this everyday consciousness men speak of the
spiritual world as a “beyond.” They will even speak of it
as though they could doubt its existence or deny it altogether.
This
is because man's life in earthly existence restricts him to the outer
world of the senses, and to the intellect; and intellect does not
look far enough to perceive what is, after all, connected with this
earthly existence. Hence there arise countless disputations, all of
which ultimately have their source in the “unknown.” No
doubt you will often have stood between, when people were arguing
about Monism, Dualism and the rest ... It is, of course, absurd to
argue around these catch-words. When people wrangle in this way, it
often seems as though there were some primitive man who had never
heard that there is such substance as “air.” To one who
knows that air exists, and what its functions are, it will not occur
to speak of it as something that is “beyond.” Nor will he
think of declaiming: “I am a Monist; I declare that air, water
and earth are one. You are a Dualist, because you persist in
regarding air as something that goes beyond the earthly and watery
elements.”
These
things, in fact, are pure nonsense, as indeed all disputes about
concepts generally are. Therefore there can be no question of our
entering into these arguments. I only wish to point out the
significance. For a primitive man who does not yet know of its
existence, the air as such is simply absent; it is “beyond,”
beyond his ken. Likewise for those who do not yet know it, the
spiritual world is a “beyond,” in spite of the fact that
it is everywhere present just as the air is. For a man who enters
into these things, it is no longer “beyond” or “on
the other side,” but “here,” “on this side.”
Thus
it is simply a question of our recognising the fact: In the present
earthly era, man between birth and death lives in his physical body,
in his whole organisation, so that this very organisation gives him a
consciousness through which he is cut off from a certain world of
causes. But the world of causes, none the less, is working as such
into this physical and earthly life. Then, between death and a new
birth he lives in another world, which we may call a spiritual world
by contrast with this physical. There he has not a physical body,
such as could be made visible to human senses; he lives in a
spiritual form of being. Moreover, in that life between death and a
new birth the world through which he lives between birth and death is
in its turn as remote as the spiritual world is remote and foreign
for everyday consciousness on earth.
The
dead look down on to the physical world just as the living (that is,
the physically living) look upward into the spiritual world. But
their feelings are reversed, so to speak. In the physical world
between birth and death, man has a way of gazing upward, as to
another world which grants him fulfilment for very many things which
are either deficient or altogether lacking in contentment in this
world. It is quite different between death and a new birth. There,
there is an untold abundance, a fulness of events. There is always
far too much happening compared with what man can bear; therefore he
feels a constant longing to return again into the earthly life, which
is a “life in the beyond” for him there. In the second
half of the life between death and a new birth, he awaits with great
longing the passage through birth into a new earth-existence. In
earthly existence man is afraid of death because he lives in
uncertainty about it, for in the life on earth a great uncertainty
prevails for the ordinary consciousness about the after-death. In the
life between death and a new birth, on the other hand, man is
excessively certain about the earthly life. It is a certainty that
stuns him, that makes him actually weak and faint — so that he
passes through conditions, like a fainting dream, conditions which
imbue him with the longing to come down again to earth.
These
are but scant indications of the great difference now prevailing
between the earthly life and the life between death and a new birth.
Suppose, however, that we now go back, say, no farther back than the
Egyptian time — the third to the first millennium before the
founding of Christianity. (After all, the men to whom we there go
back are but ourselves, in former lives on earth.) In yonder time,
the consciousness of man during his earthly life was quite different
from ours today, which is so brutally clear, if you will allow me to
say so. Truly, the consciousness of the men of today is brutally
clear-cut, they are all so clever — I am not speaking
ironically — the people of today are clever, all of
them. Compared to this terribly clear-cut consciousness, the
consciousness of the men of the ancient Egyptian time was far more
dream-like. It did not impinge, like ours does, upon outer objects.
It rather went its way through the world without “knocking up
against” objects. On the other hand, it was filled with
pictures which conveyed something of the Spiritual that is there in
our environment. The Spiritual, then, still penetrated into man's
physical life on earth.
Do
not object: “How could a man with this more dream like, and not
the clear-cut consciousness of today, have achieved the tremendous
tasks which were actually achieved, for instance, in ancient
Egypt?” You need not make this objection. You may remember how
mad people sometimes reveal, in states of mania, an immense increase
of physical strength; they will begin to carry objects which they
could never lift when in their full, clear consciousness. Indeed, the
physical strength of the men of that time was correspondingly
greater; though outwardly they were perhaps slighter in build than
the people of today — for, as you know, it does not always
follow that a fat man is strong and a thin man physically weak. But
they did not spend their earthly life in observing every detail of
their physical actions; their physical deeds went parallel with
experiences in consciousness into which the spiritual world still
entered.
And
when the people of that time were in the life between death and a new
birth, far more of this earthly life reached upward into yonder life
— if I may use the term “upward.” Nowadays it is
exceedingly difficult to communicate with those who are in the life
between death and a new birth, for the languages themselves have
gradually assumed a form such as the dead no longer understand. Our
nouns, for instance, soon after death, are absolute gaps in the dead
man's perception of the earthly world. He only understands the verbs,
the “words of time” as they are called in German —
the acting, moving principle. Whereas on earth, materialistically
minded people are constantly pulling us up, saying that everything
should be defined and every concept well outlined and fixed by
clear-cut definition, the dead no longer know of definitions; they
only know of what is in movement, they do not know that which has
contours and boundaries.
Here
again, it was different in ancient times. What lives on earth as
speech, and as custom and habit of thought, was of such a kind that
it reached up into the life between death and a new birth, and the
dead had it echoing in him still, long after his death. Moreover, he
also received an echo of what he had experienced on earth and also of
the things that were taking place on earth after his death.
And
if we go still farther back, into the time following the catastrophe
of Atlantis — the 8th or 9th millennium B.C.
— the difference becomes even smaller between the life on earth
and life in the Beyond, if we may still describe it so. And thence,
as we go backward, we gradually get into the times when the two lives
were similar. Thereafter, we can no longer speak of repeated earthly
lives.
Thus,
our repeated lives on earth have their limit when we go backward,
just as they have their limit when we look into the future. What we
are beginning quite consciously with Anthroposophy today — the
penetration of the spiritual world into the normal consciousness of
man — will indeed entail this consequence. Into the world which man
lives through between death and a new birth, the earthly world will
also penetrate increasingly; and yet man's consciousness will not
grow dream-like, but clearer and ever clearer. The difference will
again grow less. Thus, in effect, our life in repeated incarnations
is contained between two outermost limits, past and future. Across
these limits we come into quite another kind of human existence,
where it is meaningless to speak of repeated earthly lives, because
there is not the great difference between the earthly and the
spiritual life, which there is today. Now let us concentrate on
present earthly time — in the wide sense of the word. Behind
our present earthly life, we may assume that there are many others —
we must not say countless others, for they can even be counted by
exact spiritual scientific investigation. Behind our present earthly
life there are, therefore, many others. When we say this, we shall
recognise that in those earthly lives we had certain experiences —
relationships as between man and man. These relationships as between
man and man worked themselves out in the experiences we then
underwent; and their effects are with us in our present earthly life,
just as the effects of what we do in this life will extend into our
coming lives on earth. So then we have to seek in former earthly
lives the causes of many things that enter into our life today.
At
this point, many people are prone to retort: “If then the
things I experience are caused, how can I be free?” It is a
really significant question when we consider it in this way. For
spiritual observation always shows that our succeeding earthly life
is thus conditioned by our former lives. Yet, on the other
hand, the consciousness of freedom is absolutely there. Read my
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
and you will see: the human
being cannot be understood at all unless we realise that the whole
life of his soul is oriented towards freedom — filled with the
tendency to freedom.
Only,
this freedom must be rightly understood. Precisely in my
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
you will find a concept of freedom which it
is very important to grasp in its true meaning. The point is that we
have freedom developed, to begin with, in thought. The
fountain-head of freedom is in thought. Man has an immediate
consciousness of the fact that he is a free being in his thought. You
may rejoin: “Surely there are many people nowadays who doubt
the fact of freedom?” Yes, but it only proves that the
theoretical fanaticism of people nowadays is often stronger than
their direct and real experience. Man is so crammed with theoretical
ideas, that he no longer believes in his own experiences. Out of his
observations of Nature, he arrives at the idea that everything is
conditioned by necessity, every effect has a cause, all that exists
has a cause. He does not think of repeated earthly lives in this
connection. He imagines that what wells forth in human Thinking is
causally determined in the same way as that which proceeds from any
machine.
Man
makes himself blind by this theory of universal causality, as it is
called. He blinds himself to the fact that he has very clearly within
him a consciousness of freedom. Freedom is simply a fact which we
experience, the moment we reflect upon ourselves at all.
There
are those who believe that it is simply the nervous system; the
nervous system is there, once and for all, with its property of
conjuring thoughts out of itself. According to this, the thoughts
would be like the flame whose burning is conditioned by the materials
of the fuel. Our thoughts would be necessary results, and there could
be no question of freedom.
These
people, however, contradict themselves. As I have often related, I
had a friend in my youth, who, at a certain period had quite a
fanatical tendency to think in a “sound,” materialistic
way. “When I walk,” he said, “it is the nerves of'
the brain; they contain certain causes to which the effect
of my walking is due.” Now and then it led to quite a long
debate between us, till at last I said to him on one occasion: “Look
now. You also say: ‘I walk.’ Why do you not say, ‘My
brain walks?’ If you believe in your theory, you ought never
to say: ‘I walk; I take hold of things,’ and so on, but
‘My brain walks; my brain takes hold of them,’ and so on.
Why do you go on lying?”
These
are the theorists, but there also those who put it into practice. If
they observe some failing in themselves which they are not very
anxious to throw off, they say, “I cannot throw it off; it is
my nature. It is there of its own accord, and I am powerless against
it.” There are many like that; they appeal to the inevitable
causality of their own nature. But its a rule, they do not remain
consistent. If they happen to be showing off something that they
rather like about themselves, for which they need no excuse, but on
the contrary are glad to receive a little flattery, then they depart
from their theory.
The
free being of man is a fundamental fact — one of those facts
which can be directly experienced. In this respect, however, even in
ordinary earthly life it is so: there are many things we do in
complete freedom which are nevertheless of such a kind that we cannot
easily leave them undone. And yet we do not feel our freedom in the
least impaired.
Suppose,
for a moment, that you now resolve to build yourself a house. It will
take a year to build, let us say. After a year you will begin to live
in it. Will you feel it as an encroachment on your freedom that you
then have to say to yourself: The house is ready now, and I must move
in ... I must live in it; it is a case of compulsion. No. You will
surely not feel your freedom impaired by the mere fact that you have
built yourself a house. You see, therefore, even in ordinary life the
two things stand side by side. You have committed yourself to
something. It has thereby become a fact in life — a fact with
which you have to reckon.
Now
think of all that has originated in former lives on earth, with which
you have to reckon because it is due to yourself — just as the
building of the house is due to you. Seen in this light, you will not
feel your freedom impaired because your present life on earth is
determined by former ones.
Perhaps
you will say: “Very well. I will build myself a house, but I
still wish to remain a free man. I shall not let myself be compelled.
If I do not choose to move into the new house after a year, I shall
sell it.” Certainly — though I must say, one might also
have one's views about such a way of behaving. One might perhaps
conclude that you are a person who does not know his own mind.
Undoubtedly, one might well take this view of the matter; but let us
leave it. Let us not suppose a man is such a fanatical upholder of
freedom that he constantly makes up his mind to do things, and
afterwards out of sheer “freedom” leaves them undone.
Then one might well say: “This man has not even the freedom to
go in for the things which he himself resolves upon. He constantly
feels the sting of his would-be freedom; he is positively harassed,
thrown hither and thither by his fanatical idea of freedom.”
Observe
how important it is, not to take these questions in a rigid,
theoretic way, but livingly. Now let us pass to a rather more
intricate concept. If we ascribe freedom to man, surely we must also
ascribe it to the other Beings, whose freedom is unimpaired by human
limitations. For, as we rise to the Beings of the Hierarchies, they
certainly are not impaired by limitations of human nature. For them
indeed we must expect a higher degree of freedom. Now someone might
propound a rather strange theological theory — to this effect:
God must surely be free. He has arranged the world in a certain way;
yet he has thereby committed Himself, He cannot change the
World-Order every day. Thus, after all, He is un-free.
You
see, you will never escape from a vicious circle if you thus contrast
the inner necessity of karma and the freedom which is still an
absolute fact of our consciousness, a simple outcome of
self-observation. Take once more the illustration of the building of
the house. I do not wish to run it to death, but at this point it can
still help us along the way. Suppose some person builds himself a
house. I will not say suppose I build myself a house, for I
shall probably never do so! — But, let us say, some one builds
himself a house. By this resolve, he does, in a certain respect,
determine his future. Now that the house is finished, and if he takes
his former resolve into account, no freedom apparently remains to
him, as far as the living in the house is concerned. And though he
himself has set this limitation on his freedom, nevertheless,
apparently, no freedom is left to him ... But now, I beg you, think
how many things there are that you would still be free to do in the
house that you had built yourself. Why, you are even free to be
stupid or wise in the house, and to be disagreeable or nice to your
fellow-men. You are free to get up in the house early or late. There
may be other necessities in this respect; but as far as the house is
concerned, you are free to get up early or late. You are free to be
an anthroposophist or a materialist in the house. In short, there are
untold things still at your free disposal.
Likewise
in a single human life, in spite of karmic necessity, there are
countless things at your free disposal, far more than in a house —
countless things fully and really in the domain of your freedom.
Even
here you may still feel able to rejoin: Well and good. We have a
certain domain of freedom in our life. Yes, there is a certain
enclosed domain of freedom, and all around it, karmic necessity.
Looking at this, you might argue: Well, I am free in a certain
domain, but I soon get to the limits of my freedom. I feel the karmic
necessity on every hand. I go round and round in the room of my
freedom, but at the boundaries on every hand I come up against
limitations.
Well,
my dear friends, if the fish thought likewise, it would be highly
unhappy in the water, for as it swims it comes up against the limits
of the water. Outside the water, it can no longer live. Hence it
refrains from going outside the water. It does not go outside; it
stays in the water. It swims around in the water, and whatever is
outside the water, it lets it alone; it just lets it be what it is —
air, or whatever else. And inasmuch as it does so, I can assure you
the fish is not at all unhappy to think that it cannot breathe with
lungs. It does not occur to it to be unhappy. But if ever it did
occur to the fish to be unhappy because it only breathes with gills
and not with lungs, then it would have to have lungs in reserve, so
as to compare what it is like to live down in the water, or in the
air. Then the whole way the fish feels itself inside, would be quite
different. It would all be different.
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Let
us apply this comparison to human life with respect to freedom and
karmic necessity. To begin with, man in the present earthly time has
what we call the ordinary consciousness. With this consciousness he
lives in the province of his freedom, just as the fish lives in the
water. He does not come into the realm of karmic necessity at all,
with everyday consciousness. Only when he begins to see the spiritual
world (which is as though the fish were to have lungs in reserve) —
only when he really lives into the spiritual world — then he
begins to perceive the impulses living in him as karmic necessity.
Then he looks back into his former lives on earth, and, finding in
them the causes of his present experiences, he does not feel: “I
am now under compulsion of an iron necessity: my freedom is
impaired,” but he looks back and sees how he himself built up
what now confronts him. Just as a man who has built himself a house
looks back on the resolve which led him to build it ... He generally
finds it wiser to ask, was it a sensible or a foolish resolve, to
build this house? No doubt, in the event, you may arrive at many
different conclusions on this question; but if you conclude that it
was a dreadful mistake, you can say at most that you were foolish.
In
earthly life this is not a pleasant experience, for when we stand
face to face with a thing we have inaugurated, we do not like having
to admit that it was foolish. We do not like to suffer from our own
foolish mistakes. We wish we had not made the foolish decision. But
this really only applies to the one earthly life; because in effect,
between the foolishness of the resolve and the punishment we suffer
in experiencing its consequences, only the self-same earthly life is
intervening. It all remains continuous.
But
between one earthly life and another it is not so. For the lives
between death and a new birth are always intervening, and they change
many things which would not change if earthly life continued
uniformly. Suppose that you look back into a former life on earth.
You did something good or ill to another man. Between that earthly
life and this one, there was the life between death and new birth. In
that life, you cannot help realising that you have become imperfect
by doing wrong to another human being. It takes away from your own
human value. It cripples you in soul. You must make good again this
maiming of your soul and you resolve to achieve in a new earthly life
what will make good the fault. Thus between death and new birth you
take up, by your own will, that which will balance and make good the
fault. Or if you did good to another man, you know now that all of
man's earthly life is there for mankind as a whole. You see it
clearly in the life between death and new birth. If therefore you
have helped another man, you realise that he has thereby attained
certain things which, without you, he could not have attained in a
former life on earth. And you then feel all the more united with him
in the life between death and new birth — united with him, to
live and develop further what you and he together have attained in
human perfection. You seek him again in a new life on earth, to work
on thus in a new life precisely by virtue of the way you helped in
his perfection.
When
therefore, with real spiritual insight, you begin to perceive this
encompassing domain, there is no question of your despising or
seeking to avoid its necessity. Quite the contrary; for as you now
look back on it, you see the nature of the things which you yourself
did in the past, so much so that you say to yourself: That which
takes place, must take place, out of an inner necessity; and out of
the fullest freedom it would have to take place just the same.
In
fact it will never happen, under any circumstances, that a real
insight into your karma will lead you to be dissatisfied with it.
When things arise in the karmic course which you do not like, you
need but consider them in relation to the laws and principles of the
universe; you will perceive increasingly that after all, what is
karmically conditioned is far better — better than if we had to
begin anew, like unwritten pages, with every new life on earth. For,
in the last resort, we ourselves are our karma. What is it that comes
over, karmically, from our former lives on earth? It is actually we
ourselves. And it is meaningless to suggest that anything in our
karma (adjoining which, remember, the realm of freedom is always
there), ought to be different from what it is. In an organic totality
you cannot criticise the single details. A person may not like his
nose, but it is senseless to criticise the nose as such, for the nose
a man has, must be as it is, if the whole man is as he is. A man who
says: “I should like to have a different nose,” implies
that he would like to be an utterly different man; and in so doing he
really wipes himself out in thought — which is surely
impossible. Likewise we cannot wipe out our karma, for we are
ourselves what our karma is. Nor does it really embarrass us, for it
runs alongside the deeds of our freedom it nowhere impairs the deeds
of our freedom.
I
may here use another comparison to make the point clear. As human
beings, we walk. But the ground on which we walk is also there. No
man feels embarrassed in walking because the ground is there beneath
him. He must know that if the ground were not there, he could not
walk at all; he would fall through at every step. So it is with our
freedom; it needs the ground of necessity. It must rise out of a
given foundation. And this foundation — it is really we
ourselves!
Therefore,
if you grasp the true concept of freedom and the true concept of
karma, you will find them thoroughly compatible, and you need no
longer shrink from a detailed study of the karmic laws. In fact, in
some instances you will even come to the following conclusion:
Suppose
that some one is really able to look back with the insight of
Initiation, into former lives on earth. He knows quite well, when he
looks back into his former lives, that this and that has happened to
him as a consequence. It has come with him into his present life on
earth. If he had not attained Initiation Science, objective necessity
would impel him to do certain things. He would do them quite
inevitably. He would not feel his freedom impaired, for his freedom
is in the ordinary consciousness, with which he never penetrates into
the realm where the necessity is working — just as the fish
never penetrates into the outer air. But when he has attained to
Initiation Science, then he looks back; he sees how things were in a
former life on earth, and he regards what now confronts him as a task
quite consciously allotted for his present life. And so indeed it is.
What
I shall now say may sound paradoxical to you, yet it is true. In
reality, a man who has no Initiation Science practically always
knows, by a kind of inner urge or impulse, what he is to do. Yes,
people always know what they must do; they are always feeling
impelled to this thing or that. For one who really begins to tread
the path of Initiation Science it becomes very different. With regard
to the various experiences of life as they confront him, strange
questions will arise in him. When he feels impelled to do this or
that, immediately again he feels impelled not to do it. There is no
more of that dim urge which drives most human beings to this or that
line of action. Indeed, at a certain stage of Initiate-insight, if
nothing else came instead, a man might easily say to himself: Now
that I have reached this insight — being 40 years old, let us
say, I had best spend the rest of my life quite indifferently. What
do I care? I'll sit down and do nothing, for I have no definite
impulses to do anything particular.
You
must not suppose, my dear friends, that Initiation is not a reality.
It is remarkable how people sometimes think of these things. Of a
roast chicken, every one who eats it, well believes that it is a
reality. Of Initiation Science, most people believe that its effects
are merely theoretical. No, its effects are realities in life, and
among them is the one I have just indicated. Before a man has
acquired Initiation Science, out of a dark urge within him one thing
is always important to him and another unimportant. But now he would
prefer to sit down in a chair and let the world run its course, for
it really does not matter whether this is done or that is left undone
...
This
attitude might easily occur, and there is only one corrective. (For
it will not remain so; Initiation Science, needless to say, brings
about other effects as well.) The only corrective which will prevent
our Initiate from sitting down quiescently, letting the world run its
course, and saying: “It is all indifferent to me,” is to
look back into his former lives on earth. For he then reads in his
karma the tasks for his present earthly life, and does what is
consciously imposed upon him by his former lives. He does not leave
it undone, with the idea that it encroaches on his freedom, but he
does it. Quite on the contrary, he would feel himself unfree if he
could not fulfil the task which is allotted to him by his former
lives. For in beholding what he experienced in former lives on earth,
at the same time he becomes aware of his life between death and a new
birth, where he perceived that it was right and reasonable to do the
corresponding, consequential actions. (At this point let me say
briefly, in parenthesis, that the word “Karma” has come
to Europe by way of the English language, and because of its spelling
people very often say “Karma” (with broad “ah”
sound.) This is incorrect. It should be pronounced “Kärma”
(with modified vowel sound.) I have always pronounced the word in
this way and I regret that as a result many people have become
accustomed to using the dreadful word “Kirma”. For some
time now you will have heard even very sincere students saying
“Kirma.” It is dreadful).
Thus,
neither before nor after Initiation Science is there a contradiction
between karmic necessity and freedom.
Once
more, then: neither before nor after the entry of Initiation Science
is there a contradiction between necessity — karmic necessity —
and freedom. Before it there is none, because with everyday
consciousness man remains within the realm of freedom, while karmic
necessity goes on outside this realm, like any process of Nature.
There is nothing in him to feel differently from what his own nature
impels. Nor is there any contradiction after the entry of Initiation
Science, for he is then quite in agreement with his karma, he thinks
it only sensible to act according to it. Just as when you have built
yourself a house and it is ready after a year, you do not say: the
fact that you must now move in is an encroachment on your freedom.
You will more probably say: Yes, on the whole it was quite sensible
to build yourself a house in this neighbourhood and on this site. Now
see to it that you are free in the house! Likewise he who looks back
with Initiate-knowledge into his former lives on, earth: he knows
that he will become free precisely by the fulfilling of his karmic
task-moving into the house which he built for himself in former lives
on earth.
Thus,
my dear friends, I wanted to explain to you the true compatibility of
freedom and karmic necessity in human life. Tomorrow we shall
continue, entering more into the details of karma.
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