The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. Life Questions in the Light of Reincarnation and Karma

[ 1 ] Today, in this branch meeting, we want to begin by addressing some questions of life that directly affect human existence. Then we will move on to higher spiritual perspectives. I would like to begin with two human traits—two human faults or vices—that are perceived as unsympathetic, as something that diminishes a person’s worth. Let us discuss what are known as envy and deceitfulness.

[ 2 ] If you look around in life, you will easily find that there is a very natural aversion to these two human traits. And even when we look up to people who serve as role models for others, we see that they place great importance on not having precisely these two vices. For example, Goethe, who devoted much time to cultivating self-knowledge and reflecting on his faults, remarks: “I have this or that fault, this or that virtue, but what seems most important to me is that I cannot count actual envy among my vices.” — And the great Benvenuto Cellini says he is glad that he need not accuse himself of lying. — Thus we see that these great figures recognized the importance of combating these two human traits. And even the simplest, most naive person agrees with the leaders of humanity in their assessment—or rather, in their aversion—toward these vices.

[ 3 ] If we ask ourselves why these two traits are instinctively condemned, we will realize that hardly anything is as far removed from one of the most important earthly virtues as envy and lies. They are far removed from what we call empathy toward other people. For when we envy someone, we are not inclined to embrace that virtue which responds to the deepest, innermost core of being—to the divine nature of the other person. For empathy only has value when we not only feel compassion but can also appreciate the core, the spiritual essence of the other person. But respect for others—as the foundation of compassion—implies that we acknowledge the merits of others and can rejoice in their successes and stages of development. And all of this precludes envy. Envy manifests as a trait closely linked to the strongest form of human selfishness.

[ 4 ] We can say the same about lies. When we tell a falsehood, we violate the law that establishes truth as a bond uniting all people. What is true is true for all people, and there is no better way to cultivate a consciousness that encompasses all people than through truth. If we tell a falsehood, we commit a sacrilege against the bond that should entwine itself from one human heart to another. This is how things appear when we consider them from a human perspective. And when we consider them from the perspective of Spiritual Science, we know that our past incarnations continue to have an effect in this life and that we are exposed to various influences. There are two major influences that must be experienced time and again: the two influences we call the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic influences. We will not delve into these from a cosmological perspective today; let us remain with human life and create a mental image of ourselves as having passed through many incarnations, and that, as we went through our first incarnation, the Luciferic power acted upon our astral body. Since that time, this Luciferic power has been the tempting force acting upon our astral body. There are forces exerted by Lucifer upon our astral body. It is, in essence, Lucifer’s endeavor to gain influence over the human astral body here on Earth. We must seek him in everything that drags us down. We must seek him in all the qualities that live in the astral body as selfish passions, cravings, impulses, and desires, and thus be clear that envy is one of Lucifer’s worst influences. Everything that can dwell in our soul and be classified as envy belongs to his realm, and every time we experience a pang of envy, Lucifer seizes us through the “instincts” in our astral body.

[ 5 ] Ahriman, on the other hand, exerts an influence on our etheric body, and everything related to disturbances of judgment can be traced back to him—both the involuntary, when we make a wrong judgment, and the voluntary, when we tell a lie. If we succumb to a tendency to lie, Ahriman is at work in our etheric body.

[ 6 ] It is interesting that we humans feel these influences so strongly that we develop such intense aversion when they arise, and that people do everything they can to combat these two traits—lying and envy. It would be rare to find people who would consciously admit, “I want to be envious.” — Admittedly, a certain turn of phrase has crept into the German language: “I envy you.” — But it is not meant in a negative sense. The speaker does not mean actual envy. As soon as we realize that we are envious, that we are lying, we do everything we can to combat it. In this way, we take up the fight against Lucifer and Ahriman in this realm.

[ 7 ] However, there is something that frequently occurs which we should take into account when we devote ourselves to Spiritual Science. We can combat individual bouts of envy and lying, but if these traits are rooted in our soul—if we acquired them in previous incarnations and are now fighting against them—then they manifest as different traits. When we try to combat a tendency toward envy stemming from past incarnations, the envy takes on a mask. Lucifer says: “The human being is fighting against me; he has become aware of his feeling of envy.” I hand this person over to my brother Ahriman.”—And another effect sets in, which is a consequence of combating envy. Traits that are fought against appear in disguises. And the envy we combat then often manifests in life in such a way that we develop a desire to seek out other people’s faults and to criticize them quite a lot. We encounter many people in life who, as if endowed with a certain clairvoyant power, always uncover the faults and dark sides of others; and when we get to the bottom of this phenomenon, we find that it stems from envy having transformed itself into a habit of fault-finding, which seems to the person in question to be quite a good quality. It is good, they say, to draw attention to the existence of these bad qualities. Behind such a tendency to criticize, however, lies nothing other than transformed, masked envy. And we should learn to recognize whether such traits are innate or whether they have been transformed from others. We must consider whether someone was envious in their youth. Perhaps we drove that envy out of them, and now they have become a person with a tendency to criticize.

[ 8 ] Lies, too, change very frequently in life and appear in different guises. A tendency to lie can lead us to feel ashamed of it. But we do not easily root it out; it very often transforms into a certain superficiality toward the truth. It is important that we know this, so that we may take note of what we encounter in others throughout life. Such people are satisfied with an answer that makes us wonder: How can he be satisfied with such an answer? — They readily say: “Yes, yes, that’s right, that’s right!” — This is very often the transformed form of actual deceitfulness. We must examine the law of karma particularly in relation to such characteristics. People do not pay attention to this, for they are the most forgetful race compared to all others that assert themselves on the various planes.

[ 9 ] It turns out, for example, that someone was acquainted with us. We remain close to him throughout his life and observe: many things change in him. We are still close to him thirty years later, and when we look back on our lives, we would find remarkable connections in his life. But the person himself knows nothing of this; he has forgotten everything. Yet one really ought to observe such things in life. Essential connections then become apparent. For example, a person is envious in his youth. Later on, the envy no longer manifests itself, and its transformation reappears in old age in the form of a lack of self-reliance—a desire to depend on other people or a belief that one is incapable of standing on one’s own two feet, always needing others to advise and help. A certain moral weakness arises as a consequence of this transformed envy, and whenever we see someone exhibiting this moral weakness, we can be certain that the karmic consequence of the transformed envy is at work.

[ 10 ] And a disposition toward lying, once transformed, produces a shy nature later in life. Those who were prone to lying in their youth do not dare to look people in the eye in old age. In rural areas, people have an instinctive, elemental understanding of this, even if it is not fully articulated in words. It is said that one should not trust a person who cannot look you in the eye. Shyness and reserve—not out of modesty, but out of fear of facing other people—are the karmic consequences of a deceitful nature in a previous incarnation.

[ 11 ] What appears as moral weakness in one incarnation has an organizing effect in the next. The spiritual weakness resulting from envy cannot particularly destroy the body in the present incarnation, where the body is already formed. But when we pass through death and return to a new incarnation, these forces act in such a way that they become a weakness that builds up the physical body, and we see that a weak body is built up by those who had experienced this transformed envy in a previous incarnation. When we say that a person is weak—but without prejudice, for people should know what is weak or strong—when a person is easily susceptible to this or that influence and lacks resilience, then we know that their body is weak and that they have this weak body as a result of earlier, transformed envy.

[ 12 ] But now we must tell ourselves: If a child is born into a certain environment as a frail child, we must consider not only this inner karma, but also that we have been brought together with the people in our environment for specific reasons—not by chance. It is precisely this aspect of karma—that we are adapted to our environment—that is incredibly easy to understand. An edelweiss, for example, can only thrive in an environment to which it is adapted. Human beings, too, can only thrive in an environment that is suited to them. The simplest logic would tell us this, for one can only understand life by taking this into account. Every being is suited to its environment; nothing happens by chance.

[ 13 ] Thus, we are reborn among those people whom we have envied or whom we have criticized. And so, with a weak body, we find ourselves among those people whom we envied in our previous incarnation because of what they had achieved, or for similar reasons. It is of infinite importance to know this, for only by considering it can we understand life. When a child is born with a frail body into a certain environment, we should ask ourselves: How should we behave in this situation? — The most appropriate response must be the one that is morally the most noble: to forgive. This will also lead to the best outcome in this situation, and it is also the best education for the person in question. It has an immensely educational effect when we can lovingly forgive a frail child born into our midst. The one through whom this is done with true strength will see that the child thereby becomes stronger and stronger. Forgiving love must reach even into the child’s thoughts, for through this the child can gather the strength to redirect its past karma and steer it in the right direction. The child will also grow physically strong. Such a child often exhibits traits that are unpleasant. If we love the child—from the very depths of our heart—this acts as the most powerful remedy, and we will soon discover just how effective this remedy is.

[ 14 ] The same applies when we consider the other characteristic, a tendency to lie: in one incarnation, a person becomes shy in old age. This is a psychological trait. But in the next incarnation, this trait manifests as the architect of the body. In such cases, the child does not merely appear weak, but is unable to establish any proper relationship with its surroundings at all—it is mentally disabled. We must then remind ourselves that we are the people who have often been lied to by such a person, and we should repay the evil that has befallen us with the best. We must try to teach such a person a great deal about the truths of spiritual life; then we will see how he blossoms. We should always keep this thought in mind: We have been lied to many times by such a person in past incarnations, and we must do everything we can to establish a true relationship between such a child and his surroundings.

[ 15 ] When we consider these things, we see that we, as human beings, are always called upon to help others work through their karma in the right way. Anyone who thinks they must leave a person to their karma understands nothing about karma. If we encounter someone who has lied to us and we were to believe that they must work through their karma, we would thereby demonstrate that we do not truly understand karma. For the correct approach would be to offer help as much as possible first. When it is said that we should leave people to their karma, this could at most be said in an esoteric context, but never in everyday life.

[ 16 ] Let’s imagine we strive to help others according to their karma. Take, for example, a person who is shy by nature. We care for them lovingly. In doing so, we establish a connection between that person and ourselves. We will then see that, in that person’s old age, something comes back to us in return. But we must leave that to karma; we must not speculate about it. We must regard it as our duty to help another person. And here I come to a subtle law. Everything we do for another person to help them endure and overcome their karma will always result not only in helping the other person, but also in doing something for ourselves. But what we do for ourselves—for example, to make rapid progress—will generally not help us much. Only what a person does for others can bear fruit. We cannot do anything good for ourselves. When we help a person overcome their karma, the best results follow, for what we do for others is a benefit to humanity. We cannot do anything for ourselves; that, in turn, must be done by others. That is why we must understand compassion for other people in the highest sense. — If we develop this compassion in the highest sense, then we will also feel this duty of compassion toward other people with regard to envy and lies. In this way, we develop a sense of solidarity that extends to all human souls.

[ 17 ] Humanity is fundamentally predisposed to the point where every single person always feels their connection to the whole of humanity. And this feeling, in its various expressions in life, should also be alive in humanity’s struggles against Lucifer and Ahriman. By striving to help frail human beings—whose physical bodies have been weakened by the influence of the overcome impulse of envy—and by clarifying for ourselves how we should relate to these people, we can come to realize that the world is filled with these impulses from Lucifer and Ahriman, and how they can be overcome in the course of Earth’s evolution. Thus, when a person follows such connections with feeling, they inevitably come to have an ever-deeper sense of humanity as a whole. In a sense, every person has the possibility of feeling something that can connect them with all other human beings. This feeling has changed greatly in the course of human development.

[ 18 ] If we go back three to four millennia, the sense of what people consider to be universally human was clearly pronounced in all people. If we go back even further—through the post-Atlantean cultures, back to ancient Atlantis—we were always incarnated there; and if we go back even further, we arrive at an incarnation in which we descended into a physical body for the first time. Before that, we existed in a spiritual realm, as people still believed three to four millennia ago. We find such wisdom-filled feelings in all people around that time. And the soul asked itself: What are you by virtue of being human? — And it answered itself: Before I descended into my body for the first time, I was in a sea of divine-spiritual life and activity. I was there, and all other human souls were there as well. That was our common point of origin. — Such a fundamental feeling in human souls made it possible to feel a sense of brotherhood and universal humanity, since the origin of all human souls was perceived as a shared one. And if we recall how, in all the ancient mystery schools, people were guided to become good human beings, it was always the case that—in order to make people good and to make them receptive to the deepest, most intimate, and most moving feelings—reference was made to the common origin, to the fact that all human beings spring from the common divine source. And it was easy to strike this chord in the soul. But it became increasingly difficult. If, for example, one had struck this chord among such a large number of people as are seated here, it would have made an overwhelming impression at that time.

[ 19 ] But humanity’s feelings toward this common origin grew colder and colder. This was bound to happen, since humanity had to pass through a certain stage of development. If I am to characterize this stage, we must look to the future of humanity, to the goal of Earth’s development.

[ 20 ] Just as we share a common origin and all human souls arose from a common source, all human souls will come together in a common goal. And how can we humans find this goal, so that we may continue to develop, when the Earth has reached its end and, as a material sphere, sinks beneath us and shatters? How can we understand this goal in such a way that we may enter the future together? Awareness of this commonality must penetrate to the very depths of the soul. This is possible only if we, as human beings, learn to feel toward the future the way the ancients felt toward the origin of humanity. This feeling has grown increasingly cold within humanity. But within our souls, the life, the feeling, and the certainty that something can be common to all human beings as a shared human goal must grow ever warmer. Regardless of our stage of development, no matter where we stand in life, simply by virtue of being human, something must be able to take place within our souls that allows us to say to ourselves: We are all striving toward a common goal. And looking toward this goal, we must be able to say to ourselves: This is something that concerns every human being. — We must be able to find something deep within ourselves in which we come together on a common ground.

[ 21 ] In occultism, this is given the name Christ. For just as people millennia ago were able to feel, sense, and know that our souls are all born from the common divine source and origin, so will people increasingly learn to say to themselves: Just as we, when we think, come together in a commonality—just as we can be united in a common thought that lives in every human mind—so there is something that can live as a commonality in every human heart. There is something that can flow like a life-giving blood through all human hearts. — If this increasingly fills us with fervor in the coming incarnations, then these will unfold in such a way that, when the Earth has reached its goal and transitions into the future planetary state—Jupiter—human souls will come together in the Common One, the Christ, and will be one. Therefore, for this to happen, the Mystery of Golgotha had to take place. For this purpose, the Christ became human in Jesus, so that this shared current of warmth might flow from human heart to human heart. The sense of humanity’s common goal emanates from the cross on Golgotha. Thus, the past and the future are united. This is the goal of humanity’s future development. Whether people retain this common name of Christ is not the point; what matters is that all people learn to understand that the same feeling they originally had of their common origin is transformed into a feeling of a shared earthly future.

[ 22 ] Earth’s evolution is divided into these two halves: one extends up to the Cross on Golgotha, and the other from the Cross on Golgotha to the end of the Earth. And human beings have much, much work to do to understand Christ and his evolution. And when this is understood, people will unite in a common goal for the evolution of Jupiter. And all of our individual insights ultimately lead to discovering this Christian principle.

[ 23 ] If we have tried today to recognize how karma shapes the physical form from one incarnation to the next, then we understand how human beings can become ever more perfect as they pass through their incarnations. Without calling him Christ, we are still speaking of the Christ. We look beyond the personal. When we have a child before us who lies to us, we say to ourselves: This child has lied to us. How can we help him transform his karma? — We do not ask that he harm us. We look to the child’s inner essence, and in doing so we help his karma move forward. Deep human compassion will assert itself more and more in the world in this way.

[ 24 ] Thus, what we call Spiritual Science—if by that we truly mean an understanding of life processes in the sense of reincarnation and karma—is the preparation for a true grasp of the Christ impulse in the world. It does not matter how a person chooses their words; rather, whoever truly understands the law of evolution cannot help but be a Christian, whether they are a Hindu, a Muslim, or a follower of any other religious system. What matters is that one takes into one’s soul the impulse that is the impulse toward humanity’s common goal, just as the impulse once lived in the ancient people to look toward the common origin of humankind.

[ 25 ] Therefore, Spiritual Science always leads to the Christ impulse. It simply cannot do otherwise. One could therefore simply understand Spiritual Science, as it appears today, in such a way that one says: Even if the person who becomes acquainted with it perhaps wanted nothing to do with Christianity, once he becomes an anthroposophist, he is in truth led to Christ. In reality, he would be led there even if he tried to fight against it with words.

[ 26 ] Today, we have brought to our souls what is directly connected to life. We have seen how we should respond when a child lies or feels envy. We must be clear that the karmic thread runs through all the incarnations of the human soul, that karma is woven for it as a matter of destiny, and that when we look back to the origin in God and then look toward the human goal, we are looking back to God once more.

[ 27 ] We look back on the culture of the ancient Rishis. They pointed to the origin of humankind. They referred to that world in which humankind existed before descending into its incarnations. This teaching has endured through the centuries and millennia. The great Buddha taught this when he said: “All of this—which created the connection with the world of origin—has been lost to humanity through the inclination toward incarnation.” — He urged people to leave the world of incarnations so that the soul might once again live in the spiritual worlds of origin. And the prophets, in their foreknowledge of Christ, pointed to a future in which human beings would once again find their true purpose on Earth. And then Christ Himself stands there; then He accomplishes the Mystery of Golgotha. And then, through this Mystery of Golgotha, humanity can be led toward the divine-spiritual future of the Earth. There is perhaps hardly anything as profound as two sayings, similar in both Buddha and Christ, that can bring home to us the contrast between the old and the new age. Buddha stands among his disciples; he points to his body and says: “I look back from incarnation to incarnation, seeing how I have entered time and again into a human body such as the one I now bear.” And this physical temple has been rebuilt for me time and again by the gods. And time and again, the soul sought to enter this physical temple in new incarnations. But now I know that I no longer need to return to a physical temple. I know that the beams are broken, the posts have decayed. Through my insight, I have freed my soul from this body. The desire and longing to return to such a body have been put to death. — That was a great, a tremendous achievement of the ancient era of looking back to the origin of humanity. Buddha, along with his disciples and successors, strives to become free from the body. What a tremendous difference it makes when Christ stands before his inner circle of disciples and speaks thus—no matter how we interpret it; we take them as the words of Christ, just as they are—Christ says: “Tear down the temple of my body, and I will rebuild it in three days.” — He, the Christ, does not long to be freed from this temple of the body. He wants to rebuild it.

[ 28 ] It is not as if Christ Himself were to be present again in such a physical body in subsequent incarnations. — But what he teaches his disciples and all people is this: to return again and again to this earthly temple from incarnation to incarnation, in order to make the Christ impulse greater and more intense in each one, so that we humans may be able to absorb more and more of earthly existence, until we ultimately reach a point where we can say: We have worked in these incarnations to become more like Christ. And we become more like him by absorbing into this physical temple what Christ allowed to flow forth from the cross on Golgotha as his very being. We allow this to flow from human soul to human soul, for only in this way do we understand one another now. This is what all human souls of the Earth’s future have in common. And then the time will come when the Earth as a planet will pass away, when it will shatter and disintegrate, and when human beings, in a spiritualized state, will pass over to another planet for their next incarnation.

[ 29 ] The words of the Great Buddha: I feel how the pillars of my temple of the body can no longer bear the weight, how the beams are collapsing—this can stand before our souls as a full stop marking the end of our common human origin. And when we look at what Christ says to his disciples: “I will rebuild this temple of the body in three days”—this can be for us like the beginning of the time that points toward the earthly goal. And we may expand upon this statement, for we can say: Let this temple crumble in death, but we know that we will use the best powers we have acquired in this incarnation for our next incarnation. We have received these powers by dedicating our souls to the knowledge of Christ. In this way, we will continue to progress from incarnation to incarnation. — When human beings build this temple of the body for the last time, they will have attained an understanding of the future, shared earthly goal.

[ 30 ] The Mystery of Golgotha alone can serve as the common driving force for the development of humanity and the Earth.