The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Theosophy and Rosicrucianism VII

[ 1 ] Today we are going to talk about what is called the law of karma, the law of cause and effect in the spiritual world. We must first recall the last lectures, which showed us how the entire course of life unfolds in a series of embodiments, so that you have all been in the world many times and will return many more times. We shall hear later on how it is not correct to assume that these embodiments will repeat themselves backwards and forwards for all eternity. Rather, we shall see that they began at some point and that there will come a time when they will cease again, when man will develop further in a different way.

[ 2 ] We therefore first consider the period in which such re-embodiments take place, and we must realize that everything we call fate, regarding our character and inner qualities, as well as our outer destiny and our circumstances, is caused by our previous embodiments, and that what we do in this life has an effect on our following lives. Thus, the great law of cause and effect runs through all our embodiments.

[ 3 ] Let us realize how this law works in the whole world, not only in the spiritual world, but also in the physical.

[ 4 ] Suppose you have two jugs of water; then take an iron ball that you have heated to glowing embers and drop it into the first jug of water. What happens? The water hisses and the ball cools down. Then take the ball out and throw it into the second jug: the water no longer hisses and the ball does not cool down significantly. So the ball behaves quite differently in the two cases: it would not have done what it did in the second case if it had not been thrown into the first jug beforehand. So the behavior in the second case is the effect of what happened to it in the first jug. Such a connection is called karma. So it is the karma of the ball that it no longer hisses and does not cool down in the second jug. — And now an example from the animal kingdom, which shows you that the subsequent conditions depend on the previous life. Take the animals that migrated to the caves of Kentucky: due to the complete deprivation of sunlight, their eyes gradually regress. The substances that are otherwise used for the eyes migrate to other organs, and as a result the eyes atrophy; the animals gradually become blind. And now it is the fate of all their descendants to be born blind. If the parents had not migrated into the dark caves, the descendants would not have been destined to be blind. This state of blindness is therefore the result of an earlier activity, of migrating into the dark caves.

[ 5 ] Spiritual science says: Everything that happens in the world is dependent on karma. Karma is the general law of the world. — The Bible also speaks of this Karma right at the beginning. It says, namely: “In the beginning God created the world.” If you read it superficially, as it is generally read today, you do not notice that it is in the sense of the law of karma; but you notice it immediately if, for example, you take the original text of this ancient document in which this creation is spoken of, or if you take one of the oldest translations of the document into Latin, such as, for example, the Septuagint, which is still regarded today by the entire Catholic Church as the authoritative translation of the Old Testament and especially of Genesis. And since this is precisely the kind of introductory cycle that is supposed to gradually familiarize you with the tremendous depths of the spiritual scientific worldview, it is not inappropriate for us to take a step away from our actual topic.

[6] Today's people actually have no connection with the living word. Language has become, on the one hand, a conventional means of communication and, on the other hand, a business language. It was quite different when the word was coined in ancient times: then man still had a living connection with the word. Yes, in the very earliest times, the individual letter that led to the composition of the word had a deep meaning. Today's man has no more idea of what moved the soul of an ancient Hebrew sage when he pronounced the word “bara”, which stands in the first sentence of Genesis and which was translated by posterity, that is, first by the Latin world, as “creare” and by us as “schaffen”. What is the deep meaning of the word bara? In our German language we still have the same stem bar in the word gebären (to give birth).

[ 7 ] Now the root kr is the basis of the word karma, and this root is also the basis of the word creare, so that when one says creare” in Latin means ‘to create’ and it means nothing other than that something arises through the effect of previous conditions. This means that something arises that is karmically conditioned by something earlier.

[ 8 ] Now, we can only speak of karma in the modern sense since the Luciferic impact, that is, from the moment when man has taken on a guilt, and therefore there is always something of the concept of guilt in everything connected with the word karma. Thus Creare means: to bring forth something that is karmically indebted through earlier states, while the root “bar” does not imply this karmic conditionality. How did that come about? It undoubtedly stems from the fact that the ancient Hebrew was still much more intimately connected with the spiritual world and was still perfectly aware that at the time when the Elohim creatively conceived the world, there could be no question of karma in the sense in which we usually speak of karma. But in the Latin epoch of human development, as we shall see some other time, man was already completely cut off from the spiritual world, and therefore he could not even think of the creative design of the Elohim in any other way than in terms of the karmic connection.

[ 9 ] But neither the word “bara” nor the word “creare” ever means: God created the world out of nothing; because both words are based on the meaning: God let earlier states flow into new ones; just as the mother does not give birth to the child out of nothing, but to give birth means: the child visibly emerges into the world from the earlier hidden state in the mother's womb.

[ 10 ] You see how the meaning of the Bible can be twisted. At first, theology said: God created the world out of nothing - because this theology no longer knew anything about the cosmic development periods that preceded earthly existence, and entire libraries have been written about this. But all these theologians fought like Don Quixote against windmills. However, one must always know what one wants to fight against; that is, one must always clarify the original meaning of the ancient documents.

[ 11 ] If we now think of this law of karma as it should be thought of, as the connection between cause and effect not only here for physical life between birth and death, but also for life after death in the spiritual world, then this law of karma becomes an enlightener of one's own life. Insight into this law of karma not only gives our minds a deep satisfaction, but also, in the deepest sense, our souls, and it gives us the right insight into our relationship to the world. You will see more and more clearly what a deep meaning it has and how only the right insight into this law of karma enables us to shape our lives harmoniously with our environment. It does not enlighten us about such world puzzles that one must first spin out, but about those that we actually encounter at every turn in life. Or are they not life puzzles when one sees how, seemingly through no fault of their own, one person is born into hardship and misery, while another's most beautiful talents must wither away due to the social situation into which his life has placed him? We often ask ourselves in life: How is it that this person is born into need and misery through no fault of his own, and the other, without any action on his part, is born into abundance and prosperity, so that he is surrounded by tenderly loving parents right from the cradle? These are questions that only the carelessness of today's people can overlook.

[ 12 ] The deeper insight into the law of karma we gain, the more we will see that all the harshness that seems to be present at first glance disappears when we look at the law of karma only superficially. We shall then realize more and more clearly how it comes about that one person must stand in these circumstances in life, while another stands in those. We can and must see hardship in one or other situation in life only if we consider only this one life. But when we know that this one life is the absolute effect of former deeds, then this hardship completely disappears, then we realize that man prepares his life himself.

[ 13 ] Now someone might say: Yes, but that is a terrible thing, when you have to think that everything that befalls a person in the way of strokes of fate here in life is their own fault! Here we must realize that the law of karma is not meant for sentimental brooding, but that it is a law of action that makes us strong and gives us courage and hope. For even if we have brought upon ourselves the life that we now face with all its hardships, we know that this law is concerned not with the past but with the future. Even if we are still oppressed in the present by the effects of past deeds, it is precisely our insight into the law of karma that will bear fruit in later lives. Depending on how we behave, the fruits of these deeds will be in future lives, because no deed is done in vain. And how much more theosophical it is to understand the law of karma as the law of action! For, whatever we do, we shall not escape the fruits of these deeds. The worse off we are in this life, the better we bear it, the better off we shall be in future lives. Thus the law of karma is a law that solves the riddles of life that confront us at every turn.

[ 14 ] How is our previous life connected with our later life? We must be clear about the fact that everything we have as inner effects of external experiences, as pleasure and pain, has its effects in future lives.

[ 15 ] Now you know that everything that lives in us as pleasure, suffering, joy or pain is something that is borne by the astral body. Everything that the astral body experiences in this life, and especially when these experiences are repeated more and more often, will show up in the next life as a property of the etheric body. The joy that you awaken in your soul over and over again in one life through an object causes you to have a deep inclination and preference for this object in the next life. But inclination and preference are character traits and have the etheric body as their carrier, so that what the astral body brings about in the previous life becomes the properties of the etheric body in the next life. What you experience repeatedly in this life becomes your basic character in the next life. A melancholy temperament, for example, comes from the fact that in the previous life a person had many sad impressions that repeatedly put him in a sad mood; as a result, the next etheric body has a tendency towards a sad mood. The opposite is true for those who see the good side of everything in life, who have thus created joy and gladness in their astral body; in the next life this gives the ether body a permanent character trait and produces a cheerful temperament. But if, despite the hard schooling of life, a person overcomes all the sad things with strength, then in the next life his ether body will be born with a choleric temperament. So, if you know all this, you can almost prepare your ether body for the next life.

[ 16 ] The qualities that the etheric body has in one life will appear in the physical body in the next life. So if someone has bad habits and character traits and does nothing to get rid of them, in the next life this appears as a disposition of the physical body, and that is indeed a disposition to disease. However strange it may sound to you, this disposition to certain diseases, and especially to infectious diseases, actually stems from bad habits in the previous life. So with this insight, we also have the power to prepare ourselves for health or illness in our next life. If we break a bad habit, we make ourselves physically healthy and resistant to infections in the next life. In this way, we can ensure our health for the coming life if we strive to cultivate only noble qualities.

[ 17 ] And now a third point, which is extremely important for a correct understanding of the law of karma: this is the correct evaluation of our deeds themselves in this life. So far, we have only spoken of what takes place within a person; but what a person does in this life, that is, how he behaves towards his environment with his deeds, is what determines his effect in the next life, precisely in this environment.

[ 18 ] I have not yet done anything through a bad habit in and of itself; but when this bad habit drives me to act, then I change the external world through this act. And everything that has such an effect in the physical external world comes back to us as external fate in the next life in the external world. So the deeds of the physical body in this life become our fate in the following life. We experience this through being placed in this or that life situation. So whether a person is happy or unhappy in this or that life situation depends on the deeds of his previous life. Here again, as a striking and instructive example, is the murder of the Feme, which shows us how the deed, as an external act of one life, falls back on a person as fate in the next life.

[ 19 ] These are the karmic connections in the individual human being, drawn in brief lines. But we must not speak of karma only in terms of the individual; the human being must not regard himself as an individual, that would be fundamentally wrong, just as wrong as if the individual finger on our hand wanted to feel as an individual. Just as far as the finger would come if it were to separate itself from the organism, so would man come if he were to rise a few miles above the earth. Thus, when man penetrates into spiritual science, he is almost forced to realize, by the hand of this knowledge, that he must not succumb to the delusion of insisting on himself as an individual being. This is the case in the physical world and even more so in the spiritual world. Man belongs to the whole world and also has his destiny in the totality. Karma not only affects the individual human being, but also extends beyond the life of entire nations. An example of this: You all know that there was a plague in the Middle Ages, namely, tuberculosis; this is a kind of leprosy. It was only in the 16th century that it disappeared from Europe. There was a very special reason for this epidemic occurring in the Middle Ages, and it was a spiritual one. The materialist is naturally inclined to trace such a contagious disease to bacilli, but the physical cause is not the only one to be considered in such an illness. It is just as if a man had been beaten, and one should investigate why he had been beaten. The discerning person would readily find that the cause of the beating was that there were some people in the village who were very brutal. But it would be a foolish conclusion in this case – as it is in the materialistic case above – if someone were to come and say that the man got his bruises on his back solely and exclusively because the sticks came down on his back so and so many times. The purely materialistic cause of the bruises is undoubtedly the sticks that fell on his back, but the deeper cause is the brutal people. And so this disease, in addition to the materialistic cause of the bacilli, also has a spiritual one.

[ 20 ] Crying offers a very similar example. The spiritual cause is sadness, while the material cause is the secretion of the lacrimal glands. It is hard to believe that a fairly prominent contemporary scholar has managed to draw the same foolish conclusion as above, for he has put forward the downright outrageous proposition that a person does not weep because he is sad, but that a person is sad because he weeps!

[ 21 ] But back to the matter of consumption. In this case, if you want to explain the deeper spiritual cause of this disease, you have to look back to a momentous historical event: to the time when great masses of people stormed over Europe from the East and plunged Europe into fear and terror. These Asiatic hordes were peoples who had remained at the old Atlantean level and were therefore in decline, that is to say, peoples who had the character of decline, so to speak, the character of putrefaction, particularly strongly in their astral body. If these hordes had invaded Europe without arousing the alarm or fear of the Europeans, nothing would have happened. But the hordes caused fear and terror and consternation; entire nations in Europe experienced these states of fear and terror. And now the putrid astral substance of the Huns mingled with the astral bodies of the invaded peoples, which were riddled with fear and terror and horror. The degenerate astral bodies of the Asian tribes Jews their bad substances on these fear-ridden astral bodies of the Europeans, and these putrefactive substances caused the physical effect of the disease to occur later. This is the true and profound spiritual cause of the leprosy of the Middle Ages. Thus, something that has a spiritual cause manifests in the physical body at a later time. Only someone who knows this law of karma and is able to see through it is called upon to actively intervene in the course of history.

[ 22 ] Now I will tell you something that contributed to the foundation of the theosophical world view, and that is the following: Karma takes effect, precisely as with the individual human being, so also with nations, indeed with all of humanity. Anyone who has followed the course of European intellectual history knows that materialism has emerged over the past four hundred years or so. In science, this materialism is at its most innocent, because there all mistakes can be recognized and corrected at any time. It has a much more damaging effect in practical life, where everything is viewed from the perspective of material interests. But materialism would never have taken hold in practical life if people had not had a penchant for it. There would have been no Büchner and so on if people had not loved the material side of things beforehand. But materialism has its most damaging effect in the sphere of religious life, that is, in the church; and for centuries it has been steering towards materialism. Why? If you go back to the original times of early Christianity, you would never have heard that it was assumed that the seven-day work was actually carried out in seven days, as is indeed often assumed today, and that one can imagine the “seventh day” as something like someone sitting down on a chair after hard physical work and resting. The materialistic age knows nothing of the reality of this seven-day work. It is left to Theosophy to enlighten mankind again about the true meaning of this ancient document, the Genesis.

[ 23 ] And this materialistic view in religion has even eaten its way into the very depths of the lives of nations. And more and more this materialism will prevail in the religious sphere, and less and less will be understood on this side that it depends on the spirit and not on the physical material. They will readily admit that material thinking, feeling and willing has become more and more ingrained in the whole way of life of mankind, and this is ultimately reflected in the state of health of future generations.

[ 24 ] An age with a healthy view of life creates a strong inner center for people, making them self-contained personalities, so that their descendants become strong and vigorous. But an age that believes only in matter produces offspring in whom everything in the body also goes its own way, with nothing at the center, which is precisely where signs of neurasthenia and nervousness arise. This would get more and more out of hand if materialism remained the world view in the future. The spiritual seer can tell you exactly what would happen if materialism did not find its counterweight in a firm school of thought. Mental illnesses would become epidemic, and children would suffer from nervousness and tremors at birth. The further consequence of the materialistic mindset is a non-concentrated human race, as we already see today. At that time, about three decades ago, it was mainly this thought and foresight of how humanity would fare if a spiritual remedy were not applied against the effects of materialism that led to the inauguration of the Theosophical movement. One can argue a lot about a remedy, but all objections can be of little concern; the main thing is that it helps. And so it is with the healing effect of Theosophy. It wants to prevent what would inevitably happen if people continued in materialism.

[ 25 ] So you see, if you think about the law of karma in a deeper sense, you cannot look at the human being as an individual, but also as part of the whole community under the law of karma. The law of karma is not for those who only want to believe in a blind fate. Anyone who would understand the law of karma in this way would completely misunderstand it. And yet, time and again, people fall prey to this error. One person says, “I know I can't help it if this or that happens to me, it's just my karma, I have to live it out.” Another says: I see a needy person, but I must not help him, because it is his own fault that this has happened to him; it is his karma, and he must live through it! All this is a completely nonsensical interpretation of the concept of karma!

[ 26 ] To get a very easy-to-understand idea of the law of karma, you can compare it to the mercantile law of debit and credit. Just as the merchant is subject to this law in all his actions, so it is also in life with karma. Through everything you have done in the past life, good or evil, your items are balanced according to debit and credit. All good qualities are booked on the debit side, all bad ones on the credit side of your karma.

[ 27 ] But one should not say: I am not allowed to intervene there. That would be just as foolish as if a merchant, after closing the balance sheet, wanted to say: Now I am no longer allowed to do business, because otherwise I will change my balance sheet. Just as a merchant improves his balance sheet with every good deal, I improve my karma with every good deed. Just as a merchant is always free to add an item to one side of his account, debit, or to the other, credit, so is a person in the ledger of life. Man is always free in his actions, not in spite of the law of karma, but precisely by taking it into account. Precisely when we know that everything we do, and do so of our own free will, will have its effects in this account book of life, precisely for that reason we cannot agree with the one who does not help the miserable. It is just as if a merchant on the verge of bankruptcy asked us for a loan of twenty thousand marks. Would you not give him the twenty thousand marks if you knew that he was an able businessman and that this loan would enable him to work his way up again? It is the same with the wretched: you help him to repair his karma, so that his fate may change for the better, and at the same time you improve your own karma by this good deed. Thus the law of karma is indeed a law for active intervention in daily life. And the fact that one learns to understand the law of karma correctly from this side is particularly important when we consider it in relation to Christianity. Today, especially on the theological side, there are serious misunderstandings. The theologians of today say: We teach that through the death on the cross sins are forgiven, and you teach the law of karma; but that is in contradiction to it. — But this is only an apparent contradiction, because the law of karma is simply not understood. And conversely, there are Theosophists who say that they, for their part, cannot accept the atoning death; but they understand the law of karma just as little.

[ 28 ] Suppose you help a person and intervene in his destiny, changing it for the better. If you were now to help two people, that would not contradict the law of karma either. Now suppose you were an individuality called upon to expiate an evil in the world by a certain deed: would that contradict the law of karma? The Christ Being did no different on the largest scale — analogous to the example given above as a human being who helped not only hundreds or thousands, but the whole of humanity through his deed. Thus the redemptive death, the vicarious atoning death of Christ, is entirely consistent with the law of karma; indeed, it can only be understood in terms of this law of karma. Only those who do not understand it can find a contradiction here. It is no more a contradiction of the law of karma than it is a contradiction for me to help a single miserable person.

[ 29 ] With regard to the law of karma, you have to think about the future, because with every deed we write an item in our account book that will bear fruit. Only as long as one was stuck in the childhood diseases of theosophy could one find a contradiction between Christianity and the law of karma.

[ 30 ] From the insight into this law of karma, many things become clear to us. Firstly, we can precisely demonstrate the connection between the present development of the body and previous courses of life. For example, a life full of love prepares the way for a development in the next life that keeps a person young for a long time; on the other hand, premature aging is caused by a lot of antipathy in the previous life. Secondly, an especially selfish sense of acquisition creates dispositions for infectious diseases in the following life. Thirdly, it is particularly interesting that, for example, pain, and especially certain illnesses that one undergoes, cause one to appear in the next life with a beautiful body. Such insight makes us bear many an illness more easily.

[ 31 ] In view of and insight into such connections of fate, one of the greatest Bible researchers, Fabre d'Olivet, used a beautiful image that makes it clear to us how things in life are interlinked. He says: “Look at the pearl in the oyster: the animal in it had to suffer an illness, and out of this illness arises the beautiful pearl.” —- And so, in fact, illness in this life is often connected with what beautifies the next life.

[ 32 ] How this can be further developed in other directions, we shall see tomorrow.

Question of “sins against the spirit”.

[ 33 ] There are sins that are caused by the fact that man has a physical body, that man has an etheric body, that man has an astral body. Within the astral body, the spirit awakens; man becomes conscious. He can therefore sin. These sins can be taken away from the person. But if we sin in such a way that we sin within our consciousness, outside help becomes ineffective. And because the cosmic order is wise, it will not grant us help in this case. It is just as if, in the example just given, the merchant who is on the verge of ruin and asks us for a loan is unworthy of this assistance; for then it would be unwise for us to help him. So it is also in the collapse of the world; where it would be unwise to help us, we will not be helped.

[ 34 ] “Sin against the spirit” is a sin we commit in our astral body, while being aware of it.