The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Reincarnation and Karma

[ 1 ] Eight days ago, I spoke about the composition of the human being and the various parts of the human being. If we set aside the finer distinctions we discussed at that time, we can say that the human being is divided into three aspects: body, soul, and spirit. Now, a consideration of these three aspects of the human being leads to the great laws of human life—to the very same laws of the soul and spirit—just as a consideration of the external world leads us to the laws of physical life. Our conventional science, of course, knows only the laws of physical life. It has nothing to say about the laws of soul and spiritual life in the higher realms. But there are indeed such laws in these higher realms, and these laws of soul and spiritual life are undoubtedly even more important and significant for human beings than what happens externally in physical space. But humanity’s higher purpose—understanding our destiny, understanding why we are in this body, and what the meaning of this life is—the answers to these questions can be found solely in the higher realms of spiritual life.

[ 2 ] Now, a consideration of spiritual life reveals to us the great fundamental law of spiritual life: the law of development in the spiritual realm, the law of reincarnation. And a consideration of spiritual life reveals to us the law of cause and effect in spiritual life—the law we know so well in the physical realm, that every event has its cause. Every act of spiritual life has its cause and must have its cause, and this law in spiritual life is called the law of karma. The law of reincarnation or rebirth consists in the fact that human beings do not live just once, but that human life unfolds in a whole series of repetitions, which, however, once had a beginning and will one day come to an end. Proceeding from other states of life, the human being, as we shall see in later sessions, has entered into this law of reincarnation, and will later overcome this law again in order to pass into other phases of his development. The law of karma states that our destiny—that which we experience in life—is not without cause, but that our deeds, our experiences, our sufferings, and our joys in one life depend on previous lives; that we have fashioned our own destiny in our past lives. And just as we live now, we create the causes for the destiny that will befall us when we are reincarnated; this will be the cause that shapes the destiny of our lives in the future.

[ 3 ] Let us now examine these concepts of soul development and spiritual causation in greater detail. The law of reincarnation, or rebirth, holds that the human soul appears and lives on this Earth not just once, but many times. Of course, this law in its immediate reality can only be fully understood by those who, through mystical and theosophical methods, have advanced to the point where they are able to observe the spiritual realms of existence just as the ordinary person observes the external realms of sensory life and sensory facts. Only when the higher realities unfold before his spiritual eyes, just as the realities of the physical world unfold before the physical senses of the sensory human being, does reincarnation become a fact for him. There is also much that human beings today do not yet perceive in terms of their true nature, but they can see it in its effects and therefore believe in it. Reincarnation is something that most people cannot see as a fact, nor have they become accustomed to regarding it as an external effect, and therefore they do not believe in it. The phenomena of electricity are such that any physicist will say that the actual essence of electricity is unknown to us; yet people do not doubt that something like an essence of electricity exists. They see the effects of electricity—the light and the movement. If people could see the external effects of what memory is playing out before their physical eyes, then they could not doubt that reincarnation exists. Memory can still be recognized. Nevertheless, one must first become acquainted with what is outwardly expressed of reincarnation, in order thereby to gradually accustom oneself to the idea, so as to arrive at seeing in the right way what Theosophy calls reincarnation.

[ 4 ] I would therefore like to begin by considering, from a purely external perspective, those facts that are accessible to everyone, that anyone can observe, but which people are simply not accustomed to viewing from the right perspective. However, if they were to get into the habit of viewing these external facts from the right perspective, they would say to themselves: I do not yet know reincarnation as a fact, but I can, as with electricity, assume that such a thing exists. — Anyone who wishes to see the external physical facts in the right light must closely follow the law of evolution, which we have observed everywhere in the external world since the scientific research of the 19th century. They must ask themselves: What is happening before our eyes in the living world? — I note from the outset that I wish only to touch upon this fact in general terms, because in the next lectures I will speak about Darwinism and Theosophy. All the questions that may arise in connection with this part of today’s lecture relate to doubts and reflections on whether theosophy could be refuted by modern Darwinism. You will find answers to these questions in the lecture I will give in eight days’ time.

[ 5 ] So, we must understand this development correctly. In the 18th century, the great naturalist Linnaeus still maintained that as many plant and animal species exist side by side as were originally created. No naturalist shares this view anymore. It is assumed that the more perfect living beings have evolved from less perfect organisms. Thus, natural science has transformed what could previously only be viewed as existing side by side into a sequence in time. If we now ask ourselves: What makes evolution possible? What makes it possible for a connection to exist in the succession of different species and genera in the animal and plant kingdoms?—then we arrive at a law that is admittedly somewhat obscure to our natural science, yet is connected to the law of physical development. And that is the fact expressed in what is called heredity. As is well known, the offspring of an organism is not different from its ancestor. We thus observe a similarity between ancestors and descendants. And because a difference is added to this similarity over time, diversity arises. It is, so to speak, the result of two factors: that in which the descendants resemble their ancestors, and that in which they differ. This also gives rise to the diversity of animal and plant forms, from the most imperfect to the most perfect. It would be impossible to understand why this difference exists if the law of heredity were not present. Nor could one understand why the descendant is different, so that this difference is added to the similarity. This connection between similarity and difference gives rise to the concept of physical development. You find it in plant, animal, and human life. But if you ask: What develops in the physical realm, what in plant life, what in animal life, and what in human life? — then we arrive at a fundamental difference between human life and animal life.

[ 6 ] One must have made this distinction clear to oneself and thought it through thoroughly; only then will one not stop where the physical researcher stops. One will feel compelled to move forward; one will have to significantly expand the concept of evolution. It is only clinging to old ways of thinking that prevents people from reaching higher stages of development. I would now like to clarify this distinction with regard to humanity and the animal kingdom. It is expressed in a fact that is indisputable but is simply not given sufficient consideration. But once grasped, it is illuminating and thoroughly enlightening. This fact can be expressed with the following statement: Man has a biography; the animal has no biography. — Of course, every dog, horse, or monkey owner will object that an animal has peculiar, individual inclinations and, in a certain sense, an individual existence, and that one can therefore also write the biography of a dog, a horse, or a monkey. That is not to be doubted. But in the same sense, one can also write the biography of a quill pen. No one will dispute, however, that it is not the same when we speak of a human biography. Everywhere there are only transitions, degrees of difference, and therefore what applies primarily to humans also applies, in a figurative sense, to subordinate beings; indeed, it can even be applied to external objects. Why should we not be able to describe the characteristics of an inkwell? But you will surely find that there is a radical difference between the biography of a human being and the biography of an animal. If we wish to speak of what interests us in animals to the same extent as the biography of an individual human being, then we must provide a description of the species. When we describe a dog or a lion, what we describe applies to all dogs or to all lions. We need not think of the biographies of outstanding people. We can write the biography of a Mr. Lehmann or a Mr. Schulze. Yet it differs significantly from any animal biography, and it is of equal interest to humans as the description of the species is to animal life.

[ 7 ] This makes it clear to anyone who thinks in this entirely precise manner: Biography means to humans what the description of a genus means to animals. In the animal kingdom, therefore, one speaks of the evolution of genera and species; with humans, one must begin with the individual. Human beings are a genus unto themselves, not in the physical sense—insofar as humans are at the highest level of animality—for in terms of generic characteristics, the situation with humans is the same as with animals: when we describe humans as a genus, we describe them in the same way we describe the lion genus or the tiger species, the cat species. The description of the individual human being is fundamentally different. The individual human being is a genus unto itself. This statement, thoroughly understood, is what leads us to a higher conception of describing evolution within the human realm. If you wish to learn about the generic nature of human beings, if you wish to learn about what constitutes external form—for that is the generic nature of human beings—then, just as in the development of animals, you will turn to the concept of heredity; then you will know why Schiller had a certain shape of nose, a certain physiognomy; then you will, with more or less success, trace Schiller’s features back to his ancestors. Beyond that lies what constitutes a person’s biography. It is here that we find what radically distinguishes one human being from all others. Of these two realms, the generic aspect is not relevant to the concept of reincarnation or re-embodiment. What matters is the other realm, which we distinguish from the generic as the actual soul, as the inner life of the human being—that which distinguishes one human being from every other.

[ 8 ] You all know that each of us has a very special inner life, and that this is expressed in what we call our true sympathies and antipathies, what we call our character, and what we recognize as the unique way in which we can express ourselves emotionally. Just as that which enables lions to accomplish something bears the specific stamp of lions, of the lion species, so too does the specific achievement of a Mr. Müller or Mr. Lehmann bear the specific imprint of these individual souls. Sympathy, antipathy, inclinations, habits—in short, everything we call a person’s temperament and what we call their character—their desires, drives, passions, the way in which they wish to be strong or weak, of one disposition or another—we can address these only in human beings as individual entities. We do, however, find everywhere in the animal kingdom the very same things that we have just regarded as the distinctive features of the soul in living human beings. We find there too sympathies and antipathies, inclinations, drives, indeed a certain character. We generally call, again apart from finer distinctions, the sum of what we observe in the animal as its habits, the expression of animal instincts. Now, nineteenth-century natural science attempted to explain this instinct, this psychological aspect in animals, in the same way as external form—namely, through heredity. It was said that animals perform certain activities, and because they have performed many activities over and over again, these activities become imprinted in their nature, so that they become habitual; then they appear in the offspring as inherited specific instincts, for example, when certain dogs are trained to run fast by using them for hunting. Through this practice of running fast, the offspring of these dogs are then born with the instinct to run fast as hunting dogs predisposed to do so. This is the way in which Lamarck seeks to explain the instincts of animals; they are supposed to be inherited practices.

[ 9 ] However, a moment’s reflection quickly reveals that it is precisely the complex instincts that cannot possibly be inherited and cannot possibly be linked to any inherited practice. Precisely those instincts that are the most complex reveal to observers, by their very nature, that one cannot possibly claim they derive from heredity. Take a fly that flies away when one approaches it. This is an instinctive response. How is the fly supposed to have acquired this instinct? Its ancestors would not have had this instinct. They would have had to have made the conscious or unconscious experience that remaining in one place is harmful to them under certain circumstances, and through this they would have had to have acquired the habit of flying away to avoid the harm. Anyone who truly overlooks the context will hardly be able to say that so many insects, because they found that they were being killed, got into the habit of flying away to avoid being killed. To pass these experiences on to their offspring, they would have had to stay alive. So, you see, it is impossible to speak of heredity in this way without entangling oneself in the worst contradictions. We could speak of hundreds and thousands of cases where animals do something only once. Take pupation: This is done only once in a lifetime, and from this it is strikingly evident that it is not possible to speak of heredity in the realm of the soul life in the same way as in physical life. Therefore, the natural scientist completely abandons the notion that instincts are inherited habits. Here we are not dealing with a transmission of what is directly experienced in physical life, but with an effect of the animal soul world. We will speak in more detail about this animal soul world in the coming lectures. Today we can content ourselves with the observation that it is impossible to speak of the transmission of soul qualities from ancestors to descendants in the same sense as one speaks of heredity in the physical realm. Nevertheless, if a person wishes to perceive any meaning or order in the world at all, they must introduce a connection into the world; he must be able to trace every effect back to its cause. Thus, whatever occurs in the individual soul life—whatever arises in the individual human being in terms of sympathies and antipathies, expressions of temperament and character—must be traceable to causes.

[ 10 ] People now present themselves to us with different characteristics. We must therefore explain the diversity of human individuals. We cannot explain it otherwise than by introducing the same concept of development in the spiritual realm as we have in the physical. Just as it would be absurd to believe that a perfect lion, as a species, suddenly sprang from the earth or that an imperfect animal suddenly developed, so too is it impossible that the individuality of human beings developed out of the indeterminate. We must derive the individual just as we derive the perfect species from an undeveloped species. No one, if they really think about it, would honestly want to explain a person’s spiritual characteristics—just as they would their physical characteristics—through heredity. What is connected to the body, what is determined by the fact that I have weaker hands than another person, that is physical heredity. Because I have a weak physical constitution, the weakness of my hands will also be greater than that of another person who has a stronger physical constitution. Everything connected with the physical body can, in terms of its development, be described by the word “heredity,” but not that which belongs to the inner life of the soul. Who would attribute Schiller’s characteristic traits, his gifts, his temperament, and so on, or Newton’s talent, to his ancestors? Only those who close their eyes will be able to do so. But it is impossible to arrive at such a view for those who do not close their eyes in this way. If the human being, as a spiritual being, is a species unto itself, then the complex spiritual qualities we encounter in this or that individual must not be attributed to their physical ancestors, but must be attributed to other causes in the past that lay elsewhere than with the ancestors. And since the causes pertain only to the individual human being, they also have to do only with the individual human being. And just as we cannot trace the lion back to the bear species in the animal kingdom, so too can individuality not be derived from another human being, but only from the human being himself, because the human being is the individual of his own species. Therefore, it can only be derived from the individual himself. Because the human being possesses certain characteristics that define him just as the species defines the lion, these must also be derived from the individual himself. We thus arrive at the chain of various incarnations that the individual human being, just like the lion species—the entire species—must already have undergone. This is the external perspective. When we look around us in physical life, it seems only understandable to us if we are able to go beyond mere heredity and conceive of a law of reincarnation that is the natural law on the spiritual level.

[ 11 ] For anyone capable of spiritual observation, this is not a hypothesis but a conclusion. What I have said is, after all, merely a conclusion. The fact of reincarnation itself is evident to anyone who, through the methods of mysticism and theosophy, can rise to the level of direct observation. In the last session, we sought, as it were, to learn theosophical microscopy. Today we wish to state that theosophists have reached the point where what we call sympathies and antipathies, passions and desires—in short, character—lies before their spiritual eye as a fact, just as the outer physical form lies before the eye of the physical observer. If this is the case, then the soul-observer is in the same position as the external researcher; then the soul-observer has the same facts before him; then he regards the complex structure—that luminous form embedded in the external form—as an external reality just as the external form is reality for the physical observer. This auric structure expresses to him, in this case, the fact that he is dealing with a high, perfect spiritual being, with a differentiated, organized aura equipped with many organs, just as we are dealing with a being that has many organs in the case of the lion.

[ 12 ] And when we consider the soul, the aura, of imperfect savages, it appears relatively simple; it appears in simple colors, appearing in such a way that we can contrast this simple aura—this undifferentiated, colorless aura of the savage—with the complex aura of a cultured European in terms of its perfection, just as we might contrast an imperfect snail or amoeba with the perfect lion. And then we trace the development in the spiritual realm just as we do with the aura. Then we see that a perfect aura can only arise through the process of development, namely by observing that the aura, when we look back, was a more imperfect one. This provides, for those who can observe in this realm, a direct observation of spiritual life itself.

[ 13 ] When we now ascend to the spiritual life, we encounter the physical law of cause and effect in the higher realm: the law of karma. This law of karma applies to the spirit in exactly the same way as the law of cause and effect—the law of causality—applies to external, physical phenomena. When you observe any fact in the outer physical world, when you see a stone falling to the ground, you ask: Why is the stone falling?—and you do not rest until you have determined the cause. When you encounter spiritual phenomena, you must likewise inquire into the spiritual causes. And how close at hand are spiritual facts! One person is someone we call happy, another is condemned to misfortune throughout his entire life. What we call human destiny is encompassed in the question: Why is this and that? In the face of this “why,” all external science stands completely at a loss, because it does not know how to apply its law of cause and effect to spiritual phenomena. If you have a metal ball and you throw this metal ball into the water, a very specific fact will occur. But the fact will be quite different if you have first made the metal ball red-hot. You will seek to understand the various phenomena in terms of cause and effect. And in the same way, you must ask in spiritual life: Why does something succeed for one person but not for another? Why does this succeed for me, why not for another? — This leads to recognizing why a certain fact exhibits a very specific character trait in reality. It is because I first heated the metal ball that the boiling occurs in the water. It does not depend on the water, but rather the change that previously took place with the metal ball determines the fate that the metal ball experiences in the water. Thus, the fate of the metal ball depends on the conditions it has previously undergone; this determines what phenomena will approach it in a subsequent experience—to stick with the example.

[ 14 ] We must therefore say: Every action I perform contributes to my spiritual being and changes it, just as the heating process changed the physical metal ball. Here, an even more subtle way of thinking is required than in the realm of the soul. Here one must calmly and patiently realize that an action changes the spiritual human being. If someone steals something today, that is an action that stamps the spiritual human being with a lower quality than if I do a good deed for another person. It is not the same whether I perform a moral action or a physical one. What the heated metal ball is to the water, that is the moral stamp to the human being. Just as a physical act will not remain without effect for the future, so too will the moral stamp not remain without effect for the future. In the spiritual realm, too, there are no causes without corresponding effects. From this follows the great law that every action must necessarily produce an effect—an effect for the spiritual being in question. The moral imprint must find expression in the spiritual being itself, in the destiny of the spiritual being.

[ 15 ] This law, by which the moral imprint of an action must take effect under all circumstances, is the law of karma. Thus we have become acquainted with the concepts of reincarnation and karma. Many objections are raised against these concepts; however, no true thinker can raise any objection to their fundamental nature. Human life shows us in all its manifestations, and external facts prove it, that evolution is also present in spiritual life, that cause and effect are also present in spiritual life. Even those who do not stand on the standpoint of theosophy have attempted to seek cause and effect in the spiritual realm as well; for example, a philosopher of recent times, Paul Ree, a friend of Friedrich Nietzsche. He attempted to explain a spiritual phenomenon in an external way through evolution. He asks: Has conscience always been present in evolution?—And he then shows that there are people who do not possess what we call conscience in our evolution. He says there have been times when what we call conscience was not yet developed in the human soul. Back then, people had certain experiences that were different from ours. People discovered that when they committed certain acts, these acts brought them punishment, that society took revenge on those who harmed society. Through this, a sense of what ought to be and what ought not to be developed within the human soul. Over time, this has become a kind of inheritance, and today people are born with the feeling that is expressed precisely in the conscience—that something ought to be or ought not to be. This, Ree believes, is how conscience has generally developed throughout humanity. Ree has beautifully demonstrated here that we can also apply the concept of development to the qualities of the soul, that is, to the conscience. Had he taken one more step, he would have entered the realm of theosophy.

[ 16 ] I would like to mention just one more point: namely, that in European cultural history we can pinpoint the exact moment when the concept of conscience first appeared. If you go through the entire ancient Greek world and follow the descriptions and accounts, you will find nowhere, not even in the ancient Greek language, a word for what we call conscience. There was no word for it. Particularly striking is what we hear Plato say about Socrates. In all of Socrates’ dialogues, the word that later—only in the last century before the birth of Christ—appeared in Greece is not yet present. Some believe that the daimon is the conscience. But this can easily be refuted, and therefore cannot be seriously considered. We find conscience only in the Christian world. There is a trilogy of plays, the Oresteia by Aeschylus. If you follow these three plays, you will see that Orestes is under the immediate impact of matricide. He murdered his mother because she had killed his father. Now we are shown how Orestes is pursued by the Furies, and we are shown how he faces trial and the court acquits him. Nothing appears but the concept of gods taking vengeance from the outside. The process is expressed in the fear of external powers. There is nothing in it of what the concept of conscience entails.

[ 17 ] Then comes Sophocles, followed by Euripides. In their works, Orestes appears to us in a completely different light. The reason he feels guilty—this is presented to us here in a very different way. In these poets, Orestes feels guilty because he now possesses the knowledge that he has committed a wrong. And from this, the word “conscience” is derived in both Greek and Latin. To have knowledge of one’s own deed, to be able to observe oneself, to be present at one’s own deed—this must therefore have developed first. If Paul Ree were right, then—that conscience is a consequence of general human development, that it develops from what a person observes when they receive punishment for actions that harm their fellow human beings, and that it thus harms them personally when they do something that is not in accordance with a rational world order—if that were the cause, then this conscience would undoubtedly have had to arise generally as well. Since the external stimulus operates in the same way, it would have to occur among larger groups of people; it would have to arise simultaneously within a tribe and develop in a manner appropriate to the species. Here one would have to study Greek history as a history of the soul. For at the time when the concept developed in Greece among individuals—a concept we do not yet find in ancient Greece—there was a period in which public lack of conscience was virtually the order of the day. Read the accounts of the period of the wars between Athens and Sparta! We cannot, therefore, speak of anything natural with regard to conscience, as we do in the case of animals.

[ 18 ] Another objection is raised. If human beings live repeatedly, they ought to remember their past lives. It is not immediately obvious, however, why this is usually not the case. One must understand what memory means and how it comes about. I have already explained last time that, although human beings today, at the present stage of development, live in the soul-astral and spiritual-mental realms, they are not conscious of these two worlds; they are conscious only of the physical world and will only achieve in the future and on higher levels what some individuals have already attained today. The average person will only later become conscious in the soul and spirit realms. The average person is conscious in the physical world and lives in the soul and spirit worlds. This stems from the fact that their actual thinking power, the brain, requires the physical world in order to function. To be physically active means to become conscious in physical life. In sleep, a person is not conscious of themselves. Those who develop through mystical methods also develop consciousness during sleep and in higher states. This makes it possible to remember what a person experiences in the course of life. Because their brain exists in the physical world, they remember what they encounter physically. The person who works not only with the physical brain but can also make use of the soul’s material to be just as conscious within the soul as the ordinary person is within the physical body—for such a person, memory now extends further. Just as the imperfect animal does not yet possess the ability of the developed lion, but will one day possess this quality, so too will the human being who does not yet have the ability to remember past lives eventually attain it.

[ 19 ] In the even higher realms, it is difficult to gain spiritual insight into the relationship between cause and effect. This is possible in the mental world only when a person is capable of thinking not only in the physical and astral bodies, but also in the purely spiritual life. Then they are also able to explain, for every event, why it occurred. This realm is so high that it requires great patience to acquire the qualities that make it possible to perceive cause and effect in spiritual life. Those who are conscious in the physical realm and live only in the soul and spirit have only the memory of what has happened to them from birth until death. Those conscious in the soul have a memory of birth up to a certain degree. But those who are conscious in the spiritual realm see the law of cause and effect in its true context.

[ 20 ] Another objection that is raised is this: Doesn’t this lead us into fatalism? If everything is caused, then human beings are subject to fate, constantly telling themselves: “This is my karma, and we cannot change our destiny.” — One cannot say that any more than one can say: I cannot help my fellow human being, and it makes me so despondent when I cannot help him; I must despair of making him better, for it is, after all, his karma. — Anyone who compares the law of life even somewhat with the laws of nature and knows what a law is will never be able to arrive at such a mistaken view of the law of karma. Just as sulfur, water, and oxygen combine to form sulfuric acid, this is subject to an immutable law of nature. If I act against the law inherent in the properties of the three substances, I will never produce sulfuric acid. My personal action is part of the process. It is within my freedom to bring the substances together. Although the law is absolute, it can be brought into effect through my free action. So it is with the law of karma as well. An action I have committed in past lives inevitably brings about its effect in this life. But I am free to counteract the effect, to create another action that, in accordance with the law, nullifies the harmful consequences of the earlier action. Just as, according to an immutable law, a glowing ball placed on a table will burn the table, so too can I cool the ball and then place it on the table. It will no longer burn the table. In both cases, I have acted in accordance with the law. An action in the past determines me to an action; the effect of my action in a past life cannot be eliminated, but I can perform another action and, just as lawfully, transform the harmful effect into a beneficial one, only that all this proceeds according to the laws of spiritual causes and effects. The law of karma can be compared to what I have in an account book. On the left and right we have certain numbers. If we add the left and right and then subtract them from each other, we get the balance. That is an immutable law. Depending on how my previous transactions went, the balance will be good or bad. But however certain this law may be: I can still add new transactions, and the entire balance changes just as lawfully as it changed before. I am caused in a very specific way by karma, but at every moment the ledger of my life can be altered by new entries. If I want to add a new entry, I must first have added up both sides to see whether I have a cash balance or debts. So it is with the experiences in the ledger of life. They fit into life. Whoever can see how their life is caused can also say to themselves: my account closes with a credit or a debit, and I must add this or that action to counteract the bad in life, to gradually be freed from what I have accumulated as my karma. This is what we see as the great goal of human life: to be freed once again from the karma that has been created. Finding the balance points for the ledger of life lies in the hands of each and every individual.

[ 21 ] This gives us the two great laws: the law of soul life and the law of spiritual life. The question already arises today: What happens between the two lives; how does the spirit act between death and the next birth? — We must consider human destiny in the period between two lives and examine the stages between death and a new life. We will then see what elements of faith, knowledge, and religiosity can enter into Western knowledge. The great laws speak not only to the senses, but also to the spiritual and the soul, so that human beings can speak not only of cause and effect in the physical realm, but also in spiritual life; for what the great spirits have said will come to pass; it will become clear that we understand the world only in part if we take only what we hear, see, and touch. To fully comprehend the world, we must ascend and explore the laws that constitute the entirety of human perception, in order to learn where humanity comes from and toward what future it is heading. These laws must be sought in the spiritual realm, and then we will understand the words of Goethe, who was a representative of theosophy, and recognize what he meant by them:

Mysterious in broad daylight,
Nature cannot be stripped of its veil,
And what it chooses not to reveal to your mind,
You cannot force from it with levers and screws.

[ 22 ] Only when a person steps beyond the merely personal, when they are aware of the primacy of individuality—of the higher personal over the personal—when they understand how to become impersonal, to live impersonally, and to allow the impersonal to reign within them, only then do they move out of a culture entangled in external form and into a vibrant culture of the future. Even if this is not what Theosophy recognizes as its highest ideal, even if it is not the ultimate ethical consequence we draw from Theosophy, it is a step toward the ideal that human beings can only learn to live when they look not to the personal, but to the eternal and imperishable. This eternal and imperishable, the Buddhi, the seed of wisdom that rests in the soul, is that which must replace the culture of mere intellect. There is ample evidence that Theosophy is correct in this view of the future of human development. The most important, however, is that forces are at work in life itself that we must truly grasp and understand in order to then fill ourselves with their ideal. This is the greatness of Tolstoy: that he seeks to lift people out of the narrow circle of their thoughts and deepen them spiritually; that he does not wish to show them the ideals of our material world, nor of our socially structured life in any form, but rather the ideals that can spring only from the soul. If we are true Theosophists, then we will recognize the forces at work in world evolution; then we will not remain blind and deaf to what shines out at us in our present time as theosophical meaning, but we will recognize these forces, of which Theosophy usually speaks in prophetic terms. This must be the very hallmark of a Theosophist: that he overcomes darkness and error, that he learns to assess and recognize life and the world in the right way. A Theosophist who were to withdraw, standing cold and aloof from life, would be a poor Theosophist, no matter how much he might have to preach about Theosophical dogmas.

[ 23 ] Such theosophists, who lead us from the sensory world up into the higher worlds, who themselves look into the supersensory worlds, should also teach us on the other side how to observe the supersensory on our physical plane and not lose ourselves in the sensory. We explore the causes that arise from the spiritual realm in order to fully understand the physical, which is the effect of the spiritual. We cannot understand the physical if we remain within the physical realm, for the causes of physical life come from the spiritual. Theosophy seeks to make us clairvoyant within the physical realm. That is why it speaks of “ancient wisdom.” It seeks to open us up to the spiritual. It seeks to transform human beings so that they may look clearly into the higher, supersensory mysteries of existence. But this should not be achieved at the expense of a lack of understanding for what is immediately around us. A clairvoyant who is blind and deaf to what is happening in the sensory world—to what his contemporaries are capable of accomplishing in their immediate surroundings—would be a poor one. Moreover, he would be a poor clairvoyant if he were unable to recognize in a personality that which, in our time, leads people into the supersensible. What good would it do us if we became clairvoyant yet were unable to recognize what lies immediately before us as our next task!

FAQ

Question: How do animals, both as individuals and as a species, relate to humans?

[ 24 ] The animal, as a species, is what man is. The animal as a species is not subject to reincarnation, nor is the individual animal. The lion species, for example, will gradually become individualized and, in connection with higher beings, will undergo phases of development in the future that we can foresee but cannot call human-like, because they will not resemble what humans are today and will least of all resemble what humans will then be. Read Haeckel’s *The Wonders of Life* to learn about the time when life first arose on Earth. Animals cannot, therefore, become human. In any case, an individual animal can never become human.

Question: Does prayer have a place in theosophical thought?

[ 25 ] Prayer has existed throughout all stages of human development. For the early Christians, it was not merely a means of uniting man with his God. The very mood that Tolstoy describes as existing in the human soul—and which he feels permeates him—is what prayer is meant to evoke in the Christian. The higher the things for which a person prays, the better. Praying for external things is not in the spirit of early Christianity. “Father, not my will, but yours be done.” What is the Father’s will in the early Christian sense? It is the will that represents the primordial law of all world development. I want my successes and desires to be so perfect that they correspond to the meaning of the Father’s will—that is, to the spiritual law of the world—so that they do not deviate from the great spiritual law of the world. If I have any prayer through which I seek an arbitrary request arising from my everyday nature, from my own whim, then that prayer is not in the style of: ‘Not my will, but thine be done.’ A prayer in this style, however, exists when what is to be implored is not to be drawn down to us, when our will is not to prevail, but when we are lifted up with our will, when deification is thereby sought, the resurrection of the soul in the Divine, in the Christian. Since Theosophy seeks only the understanding of all religious creeds, it agrees with this. One can come into conflict with Theosophy only by failing to understand one’s own religion. Anyone who knows Christianity in its methods—and prayer is one of the methods of Christianity, for it is a means of union with the divine universal soul—knows that it does not contradict Theosophy.

Question: What is the Theosophist’s view of Christian baptism?

[ 26 ] If we wish to understand baptism correctly, we must go back to its original meaning. Baptism originally represented one of the first stages through which human beings gradually ascended to higher knowledge. It existed in the ancient mysteries as what was known as the “water trial.” It was one of the ceremonial acts associated with the gradual ascent of human beings to the highest wisdom. These ancient mysteries were nothing other than places of worship and schools of wisdom. Baptism was the first test for initiation. It was not merely an external form, but was linked to specific levels of knowledge. The person to be baptized had to have developed certain virtues within themselves; only then was baptism conferred upon them. Above all, those to be baptized in the ancient mystery religions were required to have acquired in life what is called firm self-confidence—the ability to always rely on oneself. This character trait was connected to the fact that in the deeper mystery religions, the Kingdom of God was sought within the human being, and that only those who had found direction and purpose within themselves—who could thus trust themselves—were admitted to the higher community. For them, the inner transformation was the keystone of a curriculum.

[ 27 ] That was the case in the Mysteries. Then Christianity came along and presented what had been taught in the Mysteries as a truth for all humanity. This is a very significant mystical fact: that now not only those who are initiated into the Mysteries can attain salvation, but also those who simply believe. Thus, baptism became a so-called sacrament of the Church. This baptism is the continuation of an ancient ceremonial practice, the water trial in the Mysteries. Here is a point where we must believe in spiritual knowledge or we will not make any progress. The acts performed during initiation into the community are such that something spiritual is connected with them—not merely an external formality, but something related to the entire spiritual life of the community—so that, from a spiritual point of view, something actually happens to the person being baptized. For the materialist, this is a completely fantastical notion. But for those who know something of the higher planes of existence, it is also a fact. Much inner spirituality has also been lost beneath the outer form. However, we must not forget, if we wish to comprehend such an act, that we must not reduce it to our present materialistic worldview.