The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Meditation

The meditator tries to form an idea of the vision of the repeated earthly lives of man

[ 1 ] To speak of the dangers of the wandering of the soul into the supersensible worlds is not really justified if this wandering is a proper one. Such a journey would not achieve its goal if its spiritual behavioral measures included something that would lead to danger for the human being. Rather, the aim is always to make the soul strong, to draw together its powers so that the human being becomes capable of enduring the spiritual experiences he has to go through if he wants to see and understand worlds other than the senses.

[ 2 ] An essential difference between the sense world and the supersensible worlds also results from the fact that seeing, perceiving and comprehending are in a different relationship in the supersensible worlds than in the sense world. Whoever hears about a part of the sensory world will have the feeling, with a certain right, that he can only reach a complete understanding through seeing, through perception. A landscape or a painting will only be understood when you have seen it. The supersensible worlds can be fully understood when one receives a proper description through unbiased judgment. To comprehend and experience all the life-enhancing, life-satisfying powers of the spiritual worlds, one needs only the descriptions given by those who can see. Real knowledge of such worlds can only be gained by those who are able to observe outside the sensory body. Descriptions of the spiritual world must ultimately always come from observers of it. However, the knowledge of these worlds that is necessary for the life of the soul is achieved through comprehension. And it is quite possible that someone has no personal insight into the supersensible worlds and yet understands them and their peculiarities perfectly; understands them in such a way as the soul will and must always demand this with full right under certain circumstances.

[ 3 ] Therefore it is also possible that someone takes the means of his inner contemplation from the treasure of ideas which he has acquired about the spiritual worlds. Such immersion material is the very best. It is the one that leads most surely to the goal. The belief does not correspond to the facts which suggest that it is a hindrance to the acquisition of supersensible vision to have acquired the knowledge of these worlds before this acquisition through comprehension. On the contrary, the opposite is true, namely that it is safer and easier to see with prior apprehension than without it. Whether someone leaves it at grasping or strives for seeing depends on whether the urge to observe has already arisen in him or not. If it has arisen, then he cannot help but seek the opportunity to really embark on the journey into the supersensible worlds. - From our times onwards, however, more and more people will demand an understanding of these worlds, for a true observation of life shows that from the present time onwards, human souls enter into such a state that they cannot enter into the necessary relationship with life without understanding the supersensible worlds.

[ 4 ] When the human being has reached the stage of transmigration of the soul where he carries within himself as a memory everything that he calls "himself", what he calls his being in the senses, and experiences himself in a now acquired superior "I", then he becomes capable of seeing the course of life beyond the sensual earthly existence. Before his spiritual gaze comes the fact that this sensual existence was preceded by another existence of himself in the spiritual world. And that in this spiritual being lie the true causes for the shaping of the sense being. One learns the fact that before this sense life, into which one has entered when one has received a sensual body, one has already lived purely spiritually. - How one is now as a human being, with these or those abilities, these or those instincts, that is what one sees prepared in an existence which one has previously lived in a purely spiritual world. One sees oneself as a spiritually living being that has preceded one's entry into the sense world and that has striven to live as a sense being with the abilities and soul characteristics that one has carried and developed since birth. He would be mistaken who would say, for example, how could I have striven for abilities and instincts in my spiritual being which I do not like at all now that I have them in me. It does not matter whether the soul likes something in the senses or not; it has quite different points of view for striving in the spirit than afterwards in the senses. The nature of knowledge and volition is quite different in the two worlds. In the spiritual being one knows that one needs a sensual life for one's overall development, which may be unpleasant or oppressive for the soul in the sensual being; and yet one strives for it, because in the spiritual being one does not look at what is pleasant and agreeable, but at what is necessary for the right development of one's own being.

[ 5 ] The fate of life is similar. One sees them and sees how one has prepared the pleasant and also the unpleasant in one's spiritual being, how one has brought about the means that cause one to experience this or that happiness or pain in one's senses. Here too, as long as a person experiences himself merely in his senses, he may find it incomprehensible that he has brought about this or that situation in life himself; but in his spiritual being he has had what can be called a supersensible insight, in the sense that he has said to himself that you must go through the painful or unpleasant, for only such an experience will take you one step further in your overall development. One can never recognize the extent to which an earthly life brings a person forward in his overall development from the mere assessment of his sensuality.

[ 6 ] After recognizing the spiritual existence that preceded the sensual earthly existence, one then considers the reasons why, in spiritual existence, one strove for a certain type and a certain destiny for sensual existence. These reasons lead to an earlier earthly life that one lived through in the past. Depending on how this life unfolded, depending on the experiences one had or the skills one acquired, one strives in the subsequent spiritual existence to improve on inadequate experiences in a new earthly life and to develop skills that remained untrained. In the spiritual being, one feels that one has done wrong, for example, to a person, in such a way that one has disturbed the world order, and that it is necessary to be on earth at the same time as the person in question in another life in order to make amends for the wrong in the appropriate relationships with him or her. — As the soul's development progresses, the view expands to include a series of previous earthly lives. In this way, one arrives at an observant understanding of the true life course of the higher “I.” One sees that the human being goes through his entire existence on earth in repeated earthly lives, and that between the repeated earthly lives there are purely spiritual lives that are connected to the earthly lives in a lawful manner.

[ 7 ] In this way, the knowledge of the repeated earth lives is brought to real observation. (Just to prevent misunderstandings that occur again and again, I would like to mention what is described in more detail in other of my writings. The total existence of man does not proceed in such a way that life repeats itself eternally. A certain number of repetitions take place, followed before and after by quite different kinds of existence; and all this shows itself in its overall course as a wisdom-filled development).

[ 8 ] The realization that man undergoes his development in repeated lives can also be gained through rational observation of the senses. In my book "Theosophy", in my "Outline of the Secret Science" as well as in smaller writings of mine, proofs have been attempted for the repeated earth lives and their connection, which are held in such a form, which is peculiar to the scientific considerations of the current natural scientific development theory. The aim was to show how a logical way of thinking and research, which really takes scientific research to its logical conclusion, cannot help but shape the idea of development, as it has been presented in recent times, in such a way that the true essence, the soul-individuality of man is seen as something that develops through repeated sense lives with purely spiritual life courses in between. What has been attempted as evidence can naturally be developed and perfected much further. But the opinion cannot appear unjustified that evidence in this field has exactly the same scientific value as what is otherwise called scientific evidence. There is nothing in the science of the spiritual that cannot be supported by such evidence. It must be said, however, that the proofs of the spiritual sciences naturally find it much more difficult to gain recognition than those of the natural sciences. But this is not because they are less rigorous, but because, when man has them before him, he does not feel the sensuous ground of fact which in the natural sciences makes it easy for him to assent to the proofs. But this has nothing to do with the power of proof as such. And anyone who is able to compare the evidence of the natural sciences with the evidence of the humanities given in the same way without bias will be able to convince himself of the equal value of the evidence. Thus, in addition to what the observer of the spiritual worlds can give as a description of the repeated earth lives from his vision, there can also be added what can be confirmed by such evidence. The one can help the other to gain a conviction of the repetition of the entire course of human life through mere comprehension. - An attempt has been made here to show the path that leads beyond comprehension to the supersensible vision of this repetition.