V
Speaking
in detail about karma, we must of course distinguish between those
karmic events of life which come to a man more from outside, and
those which arise, as it were, from within. A human being's destiny
is composed of many and diverse factors. To begin with, it depends on
his physical and etheric constitution. Then it depends on the
sympathies and antipathies with which he is able to meet the outer
world, according to his astral and his Ego-constitution; and on the
sympathies and antipathies with which others in their turn are able
to encounter him according to his nature. Moreover, it depends on the
myriad complications and entanglements in which he finds himself
involved on the path of life. All these things work together to
determine — for a given moment, or for his life as a whole —
the human being's karmic situation.
I
shall now try to show how the total destiny of man is put together
from these several factors. Today we shall take our start from
certain inner factors in his nature. Let us observe, for once, what
is in many respects of cardinal importance. I mean, his
predisposition to health and illness; and, with this underlying
basis, all that comes to expression in his life, in the physical
strength — and strength of soul — with which he is able
to confront his tasks, and so on ...
To
judge these factors rightly, we must however be able to see beyond
many a prejudice that is contained in the civilisation of today. We
must be able to enter more into the true original being of man; we
must gain insight, what it really signifies to say that man, as to
his deeper being, descends from spiritual worlds into this physical
and earthly life.
All
that people refer to nowadays as heredity, has even found its way, as
you are well aware, into the realms of poetry and art. If any one
appears in the world with such and such qualities, people will always
begin by asking how he inherited them. If, for example, he appears
with a predisposition to illness, they will at once ask, what of the
hereditary circumstances?
To
begin with, the question is quite justifiable; but in their whole
attitude to these things nowadays, people look past the real human
being; they completely miss him. They do not observe what his true
being is, how his true being unfolds. In the first place, they say,
he is the child of his parents and the descendant of his forebears.
Already in his physiognomy, and even more perhaps in his gestures,
they fondly recognise a likeness to his ancestors emerging. Not only
so; they see his whole physical organism as a product of what is
given to him by his forefathers. He carries this physical organism
with him. They emphasise this very strongly, but they fail to observe
the following:
When
he is born, to begin with undoubtedly man has his physical organism
from his parents. But what is the physical organism which he receives
from his parents? The thoughts of the civilisation of today upon this
question are fundamentally in error. For in effect, when he is at the
change of teeth, man not only exchanges the teeth he first received,
for others, but this is also the moment in life when the entire human
being — as organisation — is for the first time renewed.
There is a thorough-going difference as between what the human being
becomes in his eighth or ninth year of life, and what he was in his
third or fourth year. It is a thorough-going difference. That which
he was — as organisation — in his third or fourth year,
that he undoubtedly received by heredity. His parents gave it to him.
That which emerges first in the eighth or ninth year of his life is
in the highest degree a product of what he himself has brought down
from spiritual worlds.
To
picture the real underlying facts, we may put it as follows —
though I am well aware it will shock the man of today. Man, we must
say, when he is born, receives something like a model of his human
form. He gets this model from his forefathers; they give him the
model to take with him into life. Then, working on the model, he
himself develops what he afterwards becomes. What he develops,
however, is the outcome of what he himself brings with him from the
spiritual world.
Fantastic
as it may seem to the man of today — to those who are
completely immersed in modern culture — yet it is so. The first
teeth which the human being receives are undoubtedly inherited; they
are the products of heredity. They only serve him as the model, after
which he elaborates his second teeth, and this he does according to
the forces he brings with him from the spiritual world. Thus he
elaborates his second teeth. And as it is with the teeth, so with the
body as a whole.
A
question may here arise: Why do we human beings need a model at all?
Why can we not do as indeed we did in earlier phases of
earth-evolution? Just as we descend and gather in our ether-body
(which, as you know, we do with our own forces, and bring it with us
from the spiritual world), why can we not likewise gather to
ourselves the physical materials and form our own physical body
without the help of physical inheritance?
For
the modern man's way of thinking, it is no doubt an grotesquely
foolish question — mad, I need hardly say. But with respect to
madness — let us admit it — the Theory of Relativity
holds good. To begin with, people only apply the Theory to movements.
They say you cannot tell, from observation, whether you yourself —
with the body on which you are — are moving, or whether it is
the neighbouring body that is moving. This fact emerged very clearly
when the old cosmic theory was exchanged for the Copernican. Though,
as I said, they apply the Theory of Relativity only to movements, yet
we may also apply it (for it certainly has its sphere of validity) to
the aforesaid ‘madness.’ Here are two people, standing
side by side: each one is mad as compared to the other ... The
question only remains, which of the two is absolutely mad?
In
relation to the real facts of the spiritual world, this question must
none the less be raised: Why does the human being need a model?
Ancient world-conceptions answered it in their way. Only in modern
time, when morality is no longer included in the cosmic order but
only recognised as human convention, these questions therefore are no
longer asked. Ancient world-conceptions not only asked the question;
they also answered it. Originally, they said, man was pre-destined to
come to the earth in such a way that he could form his own physical
body from the substances of earth, just as he gathers to himself his
ether-body from the cosmic ether-substance. But he then fell a prey
to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences, and he thereby lost the
faculty, out of his own nature to build his physical body. Therefore
he must take it from heredity. This way of obtaining the physical
body is the result of inherited sin.
This
is what ancient world-conceptions said — that this is the
fundamental meaning of “inherited sin.” It signifies the
having to enter into the laws and conditions of heredity.
We
in our time must first discover and collect the necessary concepts so
as to take these questions sincerely, in the first place; and in the
second place, to find the answers. It is quite true: man in his
earthly evolution has not remained as strong as he was pre-disposed
to be before the onset of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences.
Therefore he cannot form his physical body of his own accord when he
comes down into the earthly conditions. He is dependent on the model,
he needs the model which we see growing in the first seven years of
human life. And, as he takes his direction from the model, it is but
natural if more or less of the model also remains about him in his
later life. If, in his working on himself, he is altogether dependent
on the model, then he forgets — if I may put it so — what
he himself brought with him. He takes his cue entirely from the
model. Another human being, having stronger inner forces as a result
of former lives on earth, takes his direction less from the model;
and you will see how greatly such a human being changes in the second
phase of life, between the change of teeth and puberty.
This
is precisely the task of school. If it is a true school, it should
bring to unfoldment in the human being what he has brought with him
from spiritual worlds into this physical life on earth.
Thus,
what the human being afterwards takes with him into life will contain
more or less of inherited characteristics, according to the extent to
which he can or cannot overcome them.
Now
all things have their spiritual aspect. The body man has in the first
seven years of life is simply the model from which he takes his
direction. Either his spiritual forces are to some extent submerged
in what is pressed upon him by the model; then he remains quite
dependent on the model. Or else, in the first seven years, that which
is striving to change the model works its way through successfully.
This
striving also finds expression outwardly. It is not merely a question
of man's working on the model. While he is doing so, the original
model gradually loosens itself, peels off, so to speak — falls
away. It all falls away, just as the first teeth fall away.
Throughout this process, the forms and forces of the model are
pressing on the one hand, while on the other hand the human being is
trying to impress what he himself has brought with him to the earth
... There is a real conflict in the first seven years of life. Seen
from the spiritual standpoint, this conflict is signified by that
which finds expression — outwardly, symptomatically — in
the illnesses of childhood. The typical diseases of childhood are an
expression of this inward struggle.
Needless
to say, similar forms of illness often occur later in life. In such a
case — to take only one example — it may be that the
patient did not succeed very well in overcoming the model in the
first seven years of life. And at a later age an inner impulse
arises, after all to rid himself of what has thus karmically remained
in him. Thus in the 28th or 29th year of life, a human being may
suddenly feel inwardly roused, all the more vigorously to beat
against the model, and as a result, he or she will get some illness
of childhood.
If
you have an eye for it, you will soon see how remarkable it is in
some children — how greatly they change in physiognomy or
gesture after the 7th or 8th year of their life. Nobody knows where
the change comes from. The prevailing views of heredity are so strong
nowadays that they have passed into the everyday forms of speech.
When, in the 8th or 9th year, some feature suddenly emerges in the
child (which, in real fact, is deeply, organically rooted) the father
will often say: “Anyhow, he hasn't got it from me.” To
which the mother will answer: “Well, certainly not from me.”
All this is only due to the prevailing belief which has found its way
into the parental consciousness — I mean of course, the belief
that the children must have got everything from their parents.
On
the other hand, you may often observe how children grow even more
like their parents in this second phase of life than they were
before. That is quite true. But we must take in earnest what we know
of the way man descends into the physical world.
Among
the many dreadful flowers of the swamp which psycho-analysis has
produced, there is the theory of which you can read on all hands
nowadays, namely that in the hidden sub-conscious mind every son is
in love with his mother and every daughter with her father; and they
tell of the many conflicts of life which are supposed to arise from
this, in the sub-conscious regions of the soul. All these are of
course amateurish interpretations of life. The truth however is, that
the human being is in love with his parents already before he comes
down into earthly life. He comes down just because he likes them.
Of
course, the judgment of life which people have on earth must differ
in this respect from the judgment they have outside the earthly life
between death and a new birth. On one occasion, in the early stages
of our anthroposophical work, a lady appeared among us who said:
“No,” when she heard of reincarnation. She liked the rest
of Anthroposophy very well, but with reincarnation she would have
nothing to do; one earthly life, she said, was quite enough for her.
Now we had very well-meaning followers in those days, and they tried
in every imaginable way to convince the good lady that the idea was
true after all, that every human being must undergo repeated lives on
earth. She could not be moved. One friend belaboured her from the
left, and another from the right. After a time, she left; but two
days later, she wrote me a post-card to the effect that, after all,
she was not going to be born again on earth!
To
such a person, one who wishes simply to tell the truth from spiritual
knowledge can only say: No doubt, while you are here on earth, it is
not at all to your liking that you should come down again for a
future life. But it does not depend on that. Here on earth, to begin
with, you will go through the gate of death into the spiritual world.
That you are quite willing to do. Whether or no you want to come down
again will depend on the judgment which will be yours when you no
longer have the body about you. For you will then form quite a
different judgment.
The
judgments man has in physical life on earth are, in fact, different
from the judgments he has between death and a new birth. For there
the point of view is changed. And so it is, if you say to a human
being here on earth — a young human being, perhaps-that he has
chosen his father, it is not out of the question that he might make
objection: “Do you mean to say that I have chosen the father
who has given me so many thrashings?” Yes, certainly he has
chosen him; for he had quite another point of view before he came
down to earth. He had the point of view that the thrashings would do
him a lot of good ... Truly, it is no laughing matter; I mean it in
deep earnestness.
In
the same way, man also chooses his parents as to form and figure. He
himself has a picture before him — the picture that he will
become like them. He does not become like them by heredity, but by
his own inner forces of soul-and-spirit — the forces he brings
with him from the spiritual world. Therefore you need to judge in an
all-round way out of both spiritual and physical science. If you do
so, it will become utterly impossible to judge as people do when they
say, with the air of making an objection: “I have seen children
who became all the more like their parents in their second phase of
life.” No doubt; but then the fact is, that these children
themselves have set themselves the ideal of taking on the form of
their parents.
Man
really works, throughout the time between death and a new birth, in
union with other departed souls, and with the beings of the Higher
Worlds; he works upon what will then make it possible for him to
build his body.
You
see, we very much under-estimate the importance of what man has in
his sub-consciousness. As earthly man, he is far wiser in the
sub-conscious than in the surface-consciousness. It is indeed out of
a far reaching, universal, cosmic wisdom that he elaborates within
the model that afterwards emerges in the second phase of life —
what he then bears as his own human being, the human form that
properly belongs to him. In time to come, people will know how little
they really receive — as far as the substance of the body is
concerned — from the food they eat. Man receives far more from
the air and the light, from all that he absorbs in a very
finely-divided state from air and light, and so on. When this is
realised, people will more readily believe that man builds up his
second body quite independently of any inherited conditions. For he
builds it entirely from his world-environment. The first body is
actually only a model and that which comes from the parents —
not only substantially, but as regards the outer bodily forces —
is no longer there in the second period of life. The child's relation
to his parents then becomes an ethical, a soul-relationship. Only in
the first period of life — that is until the seventh year —
is it a physical, hereditary relationship.
Now
there are human beings who, in this earthly life, take a keen
interest in all that surrounds them in the visible cosmos. They
observe the world of plants, of animals; they take interest in this
thing and that in the visible world around them. They take an
interest in the majestic picture of the starlit sky. They are awake,
so to speak, with their soul, in the entire physical cosmos. The
inner life of a human being who has this warm interest in the cosmos
differs from the inner life of one who goes past the world with a
phlegmatic, indifferent soul.
In
this respect, the whole scale of human characters is represented.
There, for example, is a man who has been quite a short journey. When
you afterwards talk to him, he will describe with infinite love the
town where he has been, down to the tiniest detail. Through his keen
interest, you yourself will get a complete picture of what it was
like in the town he visited.
From
this extreme we can pass to the opposite. On one occasion, for
instance, I met two elderly ladies; they had just traveled from
Vienna to Presburg, which is a beautiful city. I asked them what it
was like in Presburg, what had pleased them there. They could tell me
nothing except that they had seen two pretty little dachshunds down
by the river-side! Well, they need not have gone to Presburg to see
the dachshunds; they might just as well have seen them in Vienna.
However, they had seen nothing else at all.
So
do some people go through the world. And, as you know between these
outermost ends of the scale, there are those who take every kind and
degree of interest in the physical world around them.
Suppose
a man has little interest in the physical world around him. Perhaps
he just manages to interest himself in the things that immediately
concern his bodily life — whether, for instance, one can eat
more or less well in this or that district. Beyond that, his
interests do not go; his soul remains poor. He does not imprint the
world into himself. He carries very little in his inner life, very
little of what has radiated into him from the phenomena of the world,
through the gate of death into the spiritual realms. Thereby he finds
the working with the spiritual beings, with whom he is then together,
very difficult. And as a consequence, in the next life he does not
bring with him, for the up-building of his physical body, strength
and energy of soul, but weakness — a kind of faintness of soul.
The model works into him strongly enough. The conflict with the model
finds expression in manifold illnesses of childhood; but the weakness
persists. He forms, so to speak, a frail or sickly body, prone to all
manner of illnesses. Thus, karmically, our interest of
soul-and-spirit in the one earthly life is transformed into our
constitution as to health in the next life. Human beings who are
“bursting with health” certainly had a keen interest in
the visible world in a former incarnation. The detailed facts of life
work very strongly in this respect.
No
doubt it is more or less “risqué” nowadays to
speak of these things, but you will only understand the inner
connections of karma if you are ready to learn about the karmic
details. Thus, for example, in the age when the human souls who are
here today were living in a former life on earth, there was already
an art of painting; and there were some human beings even then who
had no interest in it at all. Even today, you will admit, there are
people who do not care whether they have some atrocity hanging on the
walls of their room or a picture beautifully painted. And there were
also such people in the time when the souls who are here today were
living in their former lives on earth. Now, I can assure you, I have
never found a man or a woman with a pleasant face — a
sympathetic expression — who did not take delight in beautiful
paintings in a former life on earth. The people with an unsympathetic
expression (which, after all, also plays its part in karma, and
signifies something for destiny) were always the ones who passed by
the works of art of painting with obtuse and phlegmatic indifference.
These
things go even farther. There are human beings (and so there were in
former epochs of the earth) who never look up to the stars their
whole life long, who do not know where Leo is, or Aries or Taurus;
they have no interest in anything in this connection. Such people are
born, in a next life on earth, with a body that is somehow limp and
flabby. Or if, by the vigour of their parents, they get a model that
carries them over this, they become limp, lacking in energy and
vigour, through the body which they then build for themselves.
And
so it is with the entire constitution which a man bears with him in a
given life on earth. In every detail we might refer it to the
interests he had in the visible world — in an all-embracing
sense — in his preceding life on earth.
People,
for instance, who in our time take absolutely no interest in music —
people to whom music is a matter of indifference — will
certainly be born again in a next life on earth either with asthmatic
trouble, or with some disease of the lung. At any rate, they will be
born with a tendency to asthma or lung disease. And so it is in all
respects; the quality of soul which develops in our earthly life
through the interest we take in the visible world, comes to
expression in our next life in the general tone of our bodily health
or illness.
Here
again, some one might say: To know of such things may well take away
one's taste for a next life on earth. That again, is judged from the
earthly standpoint, which is certainly not the only possible
standpoint; for, after all, the life between death and a new birth
lasts far longer than the earthly life. If a man is obtuse and
indifferent with regard to anything in his visible environment, he
takes with him an inability to work in certain realms between death
and a new birth. He passes through the gate of death with the
consequences of his lack of interest. After death he goes on his way.
He cannot get near certain Beings; certain Beings hold themselves
away from him; he cannot get near them. Other human souls with whom
he was on earth, remain as strangers to him. This would go on for
ever, like an eternal punishment of Hell, if it could not be
modified. The only cure, the only compensation, lies in his resolving
— between death and a new birth — to come down again into
earthly life and experience in the sick body what his inability has
signified in the spiritual world. Between death and a new birth he
longs for this cure, for he is then filled with the consciousness
that there is something he cannot do. Moreover, he feels it in such a
way that in the further course, when he dies once again and passes
through the time between death and new birth, that which was pain on
earth becomes the impulse and power to enter into what he missed last
time.
Thus
we may truly say: in all essentials, man carries health and illness
with him with his karma, from the spiritual world into the physical.
Of course we must bear in mind that it is not always a fulfilment of
karma, for there is also karma in process of becoming. Therefore we
shall not relate to his former life on earth, everything the human
being has to suffer in his physical life as regards health and
illness. None the less we may know: in all essentials, that which
emerges — notably from within outward — with respect to
health and illness, is karmically determined as I have just
described.
Here
again, the world becomes intelligible only when we can look beyond
this earthly life. In no other way can we explain it; the world
cannot be explained out of the earthly life.
If
we now pass from the inner conditions of karma which follow from a
man's organisation, to the more outward aspect, here once again —
only to strike the chords of karma, so to speak — we may take
our start from a realm of facts which touches man very closely. Take,
for example, our relation to other human beings, which is
psychologically very much connected with the conditions of our health
and illness, at any rate as regards the general mood and attunement
of our soul.
Assume,
for example, that someone finds a close friend in his youth. An
intimate friendship arises between them; the two are devoted to one
another. Afterwards life takes them apart — both of them,
perhaps, or one especially — they look back with a certain
sadness on their friendship in youth. But they cannot renew it.
However often they meet in life, their friendship of youth does not
arise again. How very much in destiny can sometimes depend on broken
friendships of youth. You will admit, after all, a person's destiny
can be profoundly influenced by a broken friendship of youth.
Now
one investigates the matter ... I may add that one should speak as
little as possible about these things out of mere theory. To speak
out of theory is of very little value. In fact, you should only speak
of such things either out of direct spiritual perception, or on the
basis of what you have heard or read of the communications of those
who are able to have direct spiritual vision, provided you yourselves
find the communications convincing, and understand them well. There
is no value in theorising about these things. Therefore I say, when
you endeavour with spiritual vision to get behind such an event as a
broken friendship of youth, as you go back into a former life on
earth, this is what you generally find. The two people, who in a
subsequent earthly life, had a friendship in their youth which was
afterwards broken — in an earlier incarnation they were friends
in later life.
Let
us assume, for instance: two young people — boys or girls —
are friends until their twentieth year. Then the friendship of their
youth is broken. Go back with spiritual cognition into a former life
on earth, and you will find that again they were friends. This time,
however, it was a friendship that began about the twentieth year and
continued into their later life. It is a very interesting case, and
you will often find it so when you pursue things with spiritual
science.
Examine
such cases more closely and to begin with, this is what you find: If
you enjoyed a friendship with a person in the later years of life,
you have an inner impulse also to learn to know what he may be like
in youth. The impulse leads you in a later life actually to learn to
know him as a friend in youth. In a former incarnation you knew him
in maturer years. This brought the impulse into your soul to learn to
know him now also in youth. You could no longer do so in that life,
therefore you do it in the next.
It
has a great influence when this impulse arises — in one of the
two or in both of them — and passes through death and lives
itself out in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. For
in the spiritual world, in such a case, there is something like a
“staring fixedly” at the period of youth. You have an
especial longing to fix your gaze on the time of youth, and you do
not develop the impulse to learn to know your friend once more in
maturer years. And so, in your next life on earth, the friendship of
youth — pre-determined between you by the life you lived
through before you came down to earth — is broken.
This
is a case out of real life, for what I am now relating is absolutely
real. One question, however, here arises: What was the older
friendship like in the former life, what was it like, that rouses the
impulse in you to have your friend with you only in youth in a
new life on earth? The answer is this: for the desire to have the
other being beside you in your youth and yet not to develop into a
desire to keep him as your intimate friend in later life as well,
something else must also have occurred. In all the instances of which
I am aware, it has invariably been so: If the two human beings had
remained united in their later life, if their friendship of youth had
not been broken they would have grown tired and bored with one
another: because, in effect, their friendship in maturer years in a
former life took a too selfish direction. The selfishness of
friendships in one earthly life avenges itself karmically in the loss
of the same friendships in other lives.
| Diagram 5 Click image for large view | |
These
things are complicated indeed; but you can always get a guiding line
if you see this, for it is so in many cases: Two human beings go
their way, each of them apart, say, till their twentieth year;
thenceforward they go along in friendship (I). Then in the next
earthly life, correspondingly, we generally get this second picture
(II) — the picture of friendship in youth, after which their
lives go apart.
This
too you will find very often: If, in your middle period of life in
one incarnation, you meet a human being who has a strong influence on
your destiny (these things, of course, only hold good as a general
rule — not in all cases), it is very likely that you had him
beside you by forces of destiny at the beginning and at the end of
your life in a previous incarnation. Then the picture is so: In the
one incarnation you live through the beginning and ending of life
together; in the other incarnation you are not with him at the
beginning or at the end, but you encounter him in the middle period
of life.
| Diagram 6 Click image for large view | |
Or again it may be that
in your childhood you are united by destiny with another human being;
in a former life you were united with him precisely in the time
before you approached your death. Such inverse reflections often
occur in the relationships of karma.
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