The Rudolf Steiner Archive

23. Insights and Fruits of Spiritual Science: The Law of Karma as the Consequence of One’s Actions; The Causes of Illness and Heredity

[ 1 ] Today we want to discuss the law of karma as it applies to human beings in detail. You know that this law operates throughout each individual human life. Any examination of this law, no matter how precise, is of course always incomplete, for the occultist should not speak of hypothetical cases, but rather of experiences that have been made in this field and about which he has definite knowledge—for example, through observing a person who was such-and-such and whose various lives one has traced. We now ask: How does one’s fate come about—the position a person occupies in life, their character, their inclinations, habits, and so on? One person is born with a fierce, angry temperament; another as a mild, gentle person. One is granted a good fate; the other faces a constant struggle. Hardship and worry accompany them.

[ 2 ] Above all, we must take into account the various bodies of human beings and ask how karmic causes operate in the three bodies—the physical, etheric, and astral—within a person. Let us first consider the physical body again and what happens through it. Above all, it is the factor through which our actions are carried out in the world, for what we do occurs through the movements that our physical body makes. Our outer destiny in the next incarnation depends on these actions of ours. Whether we are born poor or rich, in this place or that, in this environment or that, is the result of the actions of our physical body in past lives. If we commit evil deeds, we will be born into a bad environment; good deeds bring us a good environment. This is the first law.

[ 3 ] Now we come to the second law. The easiest way to understand this is to put ourselves back in our own childhood. We will all find that since then we have absorbed many new concepts and ideas and that we have learned a great deal. We, for example, who have come to spiritual science, have already absorbed many new concepts simply through that experience. For what do we not learn through it, and what new trains of thought does it give us! The content of what we learn and take into our life of thought is received through the astral body. This brings about changes in it, and since this is, comparatively speaking, the thinnest and most subtle of the bodies that a human being possesses, it also reacts most quickly to any influence. But it is not only in our concepts and ideas that we have changed since childhood; our temperament, our inclinations, our habits, and our character have also changed. We recall that these latter qualities were formed in the child through influences on the etheric body.

[ 4 ] Because the etheric body is a much denser body than the astral body, these habits persist much more tenaciously and for much longer; indeed, unless they are consciously addressed, they can last almost an entire lifetime. The ideas and concepts we absorb—which bring about changes in the astral body—transform it in giant leaps, in contrast to the slowly changing character traits, which in turn gradually reshape the etheric body. We can compare this to the two clock hands, the large one and the small one: the large one moves quickly, the small one more slowly. So it is with the rapid changes in the astral body and the slower ones in the etheric body.

[ 5 ] In the physical body—which is, after all, the coarsest—changes naturally take place even more slowly; it is the one that works the slowest. We will hear in the coming evenings that the initiate learns to work with increasing speed on his astral and etheric bodies, and ultimately even on his physical body. Indeed, he will eventually reach the point where he can alter his pulse rate. Of course, we are not yet at that stage; rather, what we learn in this life will only bring about the corresponding changes in the next life. The change that the astral body undergoes in this life manifests in the etheric body in the next incarnation by exerting a formative influence upon it. Good deeds give rise to a tendency toward good deeds in the next life. We must prepare our habits now for the next life so that we may reap the benefits there. If, for example, someone wishes to be born with a good memory in the next life, they should strive to remember everything as much as possible and to recall everything they have experienced. For instance, in the evening, they should reflect on what they did today, and then go on to think about what they did yesterday, a month ago, last year, and what they have done and experienced in past years. This is how one develops one’s memory. People who merely rush thoughtlessly through life will be born with dispositions that make it impossible for anything they encounter to stick with them. Of course, someone may also be forced to rush; I meant what I said earlier only in reference to superficially glancing over everything they experience.

[ 6 ] We are all familiar with the temperaments. The choleric person, with his strong will and urge to be very active—traits that are already evident in childhood—wants to dominate and set the tone among his peers. He is courageous, bold, and eager for action. Napoleon, Caesar, and Hannibal were choleric by nature. The melancholic child, on the other hand, keeps to himself; he is distrustful, would prefer to keep his belongings under lock and key, and checks to see if his peers have taken anything with them after they’ve left. He is very preoccupied with himself. This is the contemplative person, not the man of action. The phlegmatic child shows no particular interest. In a certain sense, they explore everything, but nothing makes a deep impression on their soul. They daydream a lot, are inactive, and seek sensory pleasure. The sanguine temperament does show interest in everything, but this interest does not last; it soon fades away. Yet one cannot categorize people strictly into the various temperaments. In each person, usually only one temperament is present as a fundamental tone, but the others also play a role. These four temperaments express themselves in the etheric body as four distinct forms and can be recognized in the astral body as four distinct fundamental hues. The melancholic temperament will come to the fore in the next incarnation if a person now has a tendency to live within the narrowest and quietest circle and to concern themselves only with themselves. The other person, however, who has encountered many things, explored them thoroughly, and gone through many experiences—including difficult ones—will be born as a choleric. Those who have had a pleasant life without much struggle or hardship will become a sanguine or a phlegmatic. What happens to the astral body in this life is karmically transferred to the etheric body in the next life as a fundamental quality.

[ 7 ] In the schools of initiation, work is now consciously carried out on the various bodies in accordance with this insight—and this was done even more so in the past than it is today. This is related to cyclical development. Today, the Esoteric Teaching has a completely different way of teaching than it did five thousand years ago. Back then, it was necessary to work more with groups of people. Conscious effort was made to ensure that entire categories of people could harmonize with one another in their next lives. In India, the entire population was divided into four castes, and work was done on them in such a way that people would fit into a specific caste in their next lives. Human education was systematically designed to ensure the future for millennia, to shape the worldview for millennia to come. It was precisely this that gave the occult leaders their great power. Now, all of that has changed completely. The ongoing development of the human being is detaching him from these groups, these castes; he can no longer, so to speak, be educated en masse. The human being is becoming—and should become—increasingly individualized.

[ 8 ] How, then, does a person influence their etheric body with regard to the next life? All the inclinations and habits of the present etheric body determine a person’s predisposition toward health or illness in the next life. From what is now slowly developing in the etheric body as specific habits—both good and bad—a person’s good or bad character in the coming life gradually crystallizes. For example, one person seeks to cultivate diligence, while another works to overcome anger. Yet another becomes accustomed to drinking, which weakens his will. Another becomes lazy, and so on. Whatever is imprinted in the etheric body during one lifetime finds its expression in the physical body in the next. A bad habit in a previous life is a cause of illness in the next; a good habit is, of course, a cause of health. A particular passion brings us a particular illness in the next life. One could see how a person’s predisposition to infectious diseases is acquired in this way. We know very well that someone can go to all kinds of people, to all places where epidemics or contagious diseases are rampant, without putting themselves at risk of contracting these diseases. Another person, however, picks them up, as it were, right off the street and becomes infected immediately. Whether or not he becomes infected depends solely on his predisposition. Now the initiates know very well that the predisposition leading to infectious diseases is based on a pronounced, selfish drive for acquisition in a previous life—a drive that thinks in a self-centered way about amassing wealth for oneself. Anyone who seeks to become rich in one lifetime harms themselves for their next incarnation. This selfish drive for acquisition and wealth is a quality of the etheric body that manifests in the next life as a predisposition to infectious diseases.

[ 9 ] If one wishes to learn about health and illness, one must, however, bear in mind that many factors interact here. The causes of illness do not necessarily lie solely in individual karma. There is also such a thing as collective karma when it comes to illness. An observed example can illustrate this. This case concerns certain health conditions among races and entire peoples. We are all familiar with the Migration Period and its history. We know that at that time various tribes—the Huns and Mongols—set out from the East and came to Europe. They poured across the land from Asia and clashed with the Germanic peoples. These Huns, like the Mongol race in general, were stragglers of the Atlanteans—as the name Attila or Atli already suggests—those left behind from this great race. While the Germanic peoples, Persians, and Indians represented the more advanced races, the Mongols—the Atlanteans who had remained stagnant at a certain stage—were in decline. As the great stream of humanity continues to evolve forward, such individual, lower racial groups lag behind and become separated. The astral bodies of these lagging races now carry within them astral substances of decay. Naturally, large numbers of them came over to us. The Europeans were seized by fear and terror at the sight of these surging masses, and because of this fear and terror they felt, the astral substances of decay flourished even more, for fear and terror are qualities of the astral body that favor the proliferation of these harmful influences. The European astral bodies became infected, and this infection manifested in later generations as leprosy, that terrible disease that wreaked such havoc in the Middle Ages. This was the physical consequence of the influence of the Mongol astral bodies on the European ones, and the channel, so to speak, through which this influence poured into the European bodies was the fear and terror that filled the Germanic peoples in the face of the devastating hordes that flooded their land. One can see how diseases arise here within the collective karma of a people, and how these are passed down from generation to generation. The ancestors experienced the disease spiritually, and it manifested physically in later generations. This—and nothing else—is the meaning of the biblical saying: “I will punish the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generations.” We can take this quite literally. This is the kind of national karma that is meant here.

[ 10 ] In general, religious texts are taken far too lightly. At first, a person is naive—as is still often the case today, for example, among people in rural areas. There, people take Bible verses literally. Then a person becomes wise and, as a result, skeptical. They cast aside all traditional teachings—that is the second stage. The third stage is marked by modern freethinkers, who wish to view everything solely as a symbol. Bruno Wille can serve as an example here. However, much depends on how wise such an interpreter is, for one may find an even better symbol than another and then believe they must proclaim theirs as the only correct one in the world. But here, much is imposed rather than merely interpreted. There is, however, a fourth stage: Esoteric Science. It teaches us to understand and interpret religious texts literally once again. Finally, one becomes an initiate, having first been a naive person, then a freethinker, and then a symbolist.

[ 11 ] In our examination of the karma of illness—both that of individuals and of entire tribes—we have seen that what has been spiritually prepared beforehand manifests itself later in physical life. If we therefore ensure a good upbringing and good habits for humanity, we will thereby also promote health! Not only is the moral element fostered by good inclinations, but in fact health is as well, since a bad habit creates a disease for the next life. Nervousness, which is actually the most widespread form of illness today, is the consequence of a certain mental disposition in a previous life. It would never have arisen had the materialistic worldview, with its patterns of thought, not become dominant. If this mindset were to persist, it would have a devastating effect on public health and drive humanity to the brink of insanity. Children would be born already trembling from nervous weakness; indeed, an epidemic of insanity would be to be feared as a result of increasing materialism, and people would experience an agonizing sense of pain in every sensation. This is the terrible influence of materialism, as it will manifest itself physically after it has infected the minds.

[ 12 ] This vision of the future was, in fact, the true reason why the occult leaders of humanity felt compelled to allow some of the treasure of spiritual truths to flow into the world. For only through a spiritual worldview—one that, freed from the shackles of materialism, looks up to the highest currents of life within humanity and allows them to flow into itself—only through such a worldview can a sound constitution be restored to future generations. The reasons why our spiritual-scientific worldview is being disseminated today run much deeper than many realize, and within it and through it, everyone can play their part in this healing of humanity. In the past, the word “nervous” had a completely different meaning than it does today. It meant: muscular, having nerves of steel. One can already see from this shift in the word’s meaning how something entirely new has come into the world.

[ 13 ] Let us now turn to the question: What about the individual inheritance of a child—both mental and physical—and what about karma? We know that both characteristics and physical resemblances are inherited from the father, the mother, the uncle, the aunt, and the grandparents. One child resembles his father, another his mother. A musical aptitude, for example, can be passed down through generations. In the Bach family, there were about twenty-eight musicians over the course of two hundred and fifty years—though only one of them was truly famous—and in the Bernoulli family of mathematicians, there were eight notable mathematicians. There are many examples where heredity plays a major role. However, one must understand the true meaning of karma and reincarnation; only then can one properly comprehend heredity, for the theory of heredity in materialistic science is only partially true and, in some respects, presents a distorted view. For example, a great musician is not defined solely by a musical predisposition in the soul. This alone could not have an effect if that soul were unable to incarnate in a body endowed with a musically attuned ear. As for the physical aspects in such a musical family—these well-developed and finely constructed auditory organs—they are inherited from parents to children; and a human germ that comes from Devachan and is hastening toward a new incarnation will feel drawn to such a family, where its musical soul can express itself through well-formed musical organs. Just as a pole attracts a magnetic needle, so such a child is born into a family where its personal aptitudes find the best physical conditions. Everything simply fits together perfectly. An astral human germ is drawn to a family that is physically suited to it. The trite saying—“One must be careful in the choice of one’s parents”—is therefore not quite as nonsensical as it may sound. It is not the child who resembles the parents, but rather the child is born to the parents who are most like it, whom it already loves. The deepest sympathy already exists before birth; the child already feels drawn to the mother. A mother’s love is the secondary love; it is the response to the child’s love that already existed.