The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Today's reflection is dedicated to things that may be of interest to anthroposophists in the broader sense of the word and that are intended to shed light on this or that topic for those who have been attending these evening lectures for some time. Above all, it is good to remind ourselves from time to time that in spiritual science it is not enough to know this or that in general as a theory or doctrine, but that it is important to deal with the corresponding questions and riddles of life again and again in greater detail and depth. Someone might say: What one needs to know about life from spiritual research could easily be put into a small booklet of perhaps sixty pages, if you wanted to include everything, and then everyone could make this sixty-page booklet their own; they would then have a conviction about the nature of the human being, about reincarnation and karma, about the development of humanity and the earth, and could now go through life with this conviction. And someone who would like that might say: Yes, why doesn't the anthroposophical movement do this, scatter these most essential points of view throughout the world in as many copies as possible, so that every human being can acquire a conviction about them? Why does this movement do something that seems strange at first, calling together once a week those who want to study spiritual science in order to describe over and over again what could easily be covered in sixty pages? What, one might ask, do these anthroposophists have to say to their followers week after week?

[ 2 ] Well, it may correspond to certain creeds of our time, also with regard to spiritual research, to have such a brief summary for the pocketbook, so that one can acquire the most important things in this way. But that is precisely what we should remind ourselves more and more: that such “summary knowledge” is not enough in spiritual research — that knowledge is not what matters at all, even though spiritual research consists of knowledge and insight — that it is not enough to see the essence of spiritual research in general phrases, but rather in very specific insights. But again, it is not enough to have acquired these insights in the sense of today's thinking as a general conviction and then be satisfied with that. For it is not a matter of once having such a conviction, of knowing that human beings do not live only once, that there are causal relationships that carry over from one life to another, that there is reincarnation and karma. The real benefit of spiritual research is not to spread these teachings, but to engage with them thoroughly and intimately, especially in relation to their details, over and over again, allowing them to have a constant effect on one's soul. For basically, we have no conviction that simply makes us believe: Yes, human beings do not live only once between birth and death, they live many times; there is reincarnation, karma, and so on. Basically, one does not have much faith in these things. And basically, there is not much difference between the soul of a person who does not know that there is reincarnation and karma and the soul of a person who does know this, in terms of the real depths of life. In the anthroposophical sense, our soul only becomes different when we repeatedly engage not only with generalities, but with the particular depths that spiritual research has to tell us. This is why it is good to continually communicate with each other about the anthroposophical view of this or that detail of life. It is not enough to know in general terms that there is a great law of destiny that creates a connection between a person's past deeds, past feelings, and past thoughts and between their present and future experiences. Spiritual science only becomes a matter of life when we can apply these general teachings to the individual experiences of life, when we are able to attune our whole soul, so to speak, to the perspective through which we view life in a new way. Therefore, today we will begin with a brief consideration of the law of karma, that great law of destiny in relation to the details of life. Things that are already familiar to most of you will be summarized from the point of view of the law of karma, but they must also be viewed from the perspective of karma.

[ 3 ] “Karma” generally means that there is a connection in the spiritual world between what happens today and what will happen in the future, and what happened in the past. It is not even particularly appropriate to call the law of karma or destiny the law of causation and then compare it with the law of cause and effect in the external world. If we want to find a comparison for this great law of destiny, we must always ensure that this comparison is accurate and that it truly illustrates what the law of destiny says.

[ 4 ] Let us take the following as a comparison. We have two vessels containing water and two metal balls at normal room temperature. We throw one ball into one of the vessels of water: the water remains as it is. Now we take the other ball, heat it until it is red-hot, and throw it into the other vessel of water: the water inside becomes hot! Why did the water in the second vessel become hotter? Why not in the first? It became hotter because the ball itself underwent a change before it was thrown into the water, and the change caused by being heated caused the water to heat up. An event occurred that was the result of another event, namely, the heating. What we experience in the present or future as an event or phenomenon is connected to what happened in the past, to what was activity.

[ 5 ] If we consider the law of spiritual connections between the past, present, and future in this way, we will find it confirmed in ordinary life, in the life that takes place around us and that we can observe if we only want to, even if we have not yet developed any clairvoyant abilities. For we must always remember this golden rule: A law of the spiritual world can only be proven correctly through clairvoyant observation, only by the spiritual researcher; on the other hand, such a law can always be confirmed by external evidence through experiences in the external world. However, in order to find confirmation of the law of karma in life, people will have to get into the habit of observing their external life a little more closely than they usually do. For people usually do not observe life beyond, figuratively speaking, the length of their nose. They do not observe anything that lies a little further away. But those who observe external life more deeply will be able to find sufficient confirmation of the law of karma here and there in human existence between birth and death.

[ 6 ] Let us stick to concrete examples as much as possible; let us take the following case. A young person, at the age of fifteen, has been torn from his previous life by some event. Let us say that, thanks to his parents' circumstances, he had been able to study until the age of fifteen, and that at the age of fifteen he was forced, perhaps because his father had lost his fortune, to take up a commercial profession. He has thus been thrown out of one profession and into another. Of course, it is not a question of considering one profession more valuable than another, but rather that a change occurs in life when something like this happens. Now, if one views life in the materialistic sense that is common today, one will probably not seek anything significant in the influence of such an event in a person's life, and one will not find anything. But if you look more closely, you will find that a person who enters a new profession in this way may initially feel joy and sympathy for their profession because of the change it offers them, and that they grow into their profession with interest, so to speak. But then something strange can happen. What soul experiences are, what sympathies and antipathies are in a profession, can begin to take on a different form between the ages of eighteen and nineteen. The joy in one's profession can cease, and the person can begin to behave quite differently toward their profession. If one has never heard anything about anthroposophy, one will be at a loss to understand what is happening in the soul of such a person.

[ 7 ] What has happened? What has happened is that from the age of fifteen, when they started a new job, they found interest in that job. This interest initially pushed back the feelings and moods that had developed when they were doing something completely different. But then a time comes when all this breaks through with even greater force. Just as when you press down on an elastic body — you can press for a while, but then the mass springs back all the more strongly — so the result can be that the interests that have been pushed back for a while now break out with particular force. In the eighteenth to nineteenth years, everything that has been pushed into the soul in the form of feelings and moods three years before that change breaks out, that is, in the eighteenth to nineteenth years, everything that was pushed into the soul in the eleventh to twelfth years, and so on. And one can only find one's way in a person's life if one can say to oneself: At the age of fifteen, a turning point in life occurred, and after this point in time, events occur whose effects are as many years later as their causes are as many years before this turning point.

[ 8 ] Think for a moment how you can help someone with their moods and difficulties in life if you are able to ask yourself: Where is such a spiritual turning point in this person's life? — It can be very intimate. But when you come to such a junction, you can calculate backwards and then have a spiritual effect as many years after this junction in life as you have a cause as many years before it. In this way you gain an insight into karma. This insight helps us in life and we can say to ourselves: such causes and effects in a person's life are connected after certain periods of time, so that they are oriented toward a certain point in life; and if we count forward and backward from this point, we can find the connection between cause and effect.

[ 9 ] Now, of course, something like this can be obscured by the occurrence of other events. Someone might come along and say, for example, “The example you gave us is not correct!” I just experienced this with a young person for whom this is not the case. — Yes, I have also experienced that two people were playing billiards together, and the waiter came by and bumped into the person who was playing, and the ball flew in a completely different direction than it would have otherwise. But that does not mean that the law of causation is wrong; it just means that other circumstances have arisen. However, we must bear in mind that we will never learn the law if we do not disregard those things that interfere with it. After the age of fifteen, other circumstances may arise that thwart the law. Laws are not learned by merely observing life, but by first acquiring the right way of bringing together the phenomena of life. For in life, things are constantly being disrupted, and laws do not reveal themselves so easily. Nevertheless, one can only regulate life if one knows the laws as they must be found. If one knows the details, one can say to a young person who has experienced such a reversal in life: It is now the task of the educator to pay attention! — That is when karma becomes a law of life, when the case arises where one can apply the law in life, when it first becomes useful. In such a case, perhaps only then, when one can no longer give the child what one has given him before, can one now be an advisor to him. But one can only be that if one knows such connections, if one knows what the person is lacking and can intervene and work precisely where the deficiency in life sets in. If one does not know this, one cannot be an advisor to the young person. There the law of karma becomes an impact on life; there one learns to be an advisor in life if one regards the law of karma as a law of life.

[ 10 ] Of course, there are not only such connections in life, but the law of karma between birth and death also plays out in another way. There is a strange connection between a person's experiences in the first half of their life and those in the second half, but people do not observe it. For example, you get to know someone; they are young and you lose sight of them before they reach a certain age. Or you get to know someone at a later age and don't know anything about their youth; or even if you do know about their youth, you forget what happened many years ago. Looking at the beginning and end of life in cases where this is possible would provide the most beautiful confirmation of the law of karma in the existence between birth and death.

[ 11 ] You may remember something that was said in the public lectures, for example about anger, which appears as a noble anger in youth. We characterized at that time how a young person cannot yet see through an injustice that is taking place in their environment; their intellect is not yet mature enough to fully understand an injustice that is taking place. But wise world guidance ensures that we have an emotional judgment before we can arrive at an intellectual judgment. In a good person, if the predisposition is there, a noble anger arises in childhood when an injustice occurs, which is simply a feeling and is the only thing through which the soul can perceive injustice. Human beings are not yet mature enough to see through injustice with their intellect. But if this noble emotion of anger is present in a person's character, then we should pay attention to it. For everything that is experienced as an emotional judgment of injustice remains in the soul. This noble anger of youth permeates the soul and transforms itself in the course of life. And what is transformed in this way in the course of life reappears in a different form in the second half of life: it appears in an emotional inclination toward loving gentleness and blessing. Thus, the noble anger of youth, of the first half of life, is transformed so that it appears in later life as loving gentleness, as a blessing disposition. And we will not easily find — if all other things are in order and nothing disturbs the process — that in the second half of a person's life this loving, blessing gentleness appears without having been expressed in the years of youth through a noble anger caused by foolishness, stupidity, or ugliness in life. Thus we have a karmic connection in ordinary life, and we could clothe it in an image and say: That hand which could not even clench itself in noble anger in the first half of life will not easily be able to stretch out to bless in the second half.

[ 12 ] However, such things can only be observed by those who, as I said, observe life a little further than their own noses. But we don't do that in ordinary life. I could show with a very trivial example how little we are inclined to observe such things in life.

[ 13 ] I have mentioned this often: for those who want to gain intimate knowledge of life, especially in order to deepen their understanding of occult soul relationships, it is extremely beneficial to have worked as an educator for a number of years, for example. There you get to know souls in a completely different way than through ordinary school psychology, which is usually worthless for gaining insight into the soul. Insight into the soul is acquired not only by observing the soul, but by taking responsibility for guiding the lives of others year after year. This also teaches you to observe more intimately. During my many years as an educator, I was able to observe not only the children who were entrusted to me for education, but, as you know, different families come together on various occasions, and in the process you also get to know other children, not only children of various ages, but also children from the very first moment they enter the world, so to speak.

[ 14 ] It was perhaps twenty-five to thirty years ago that there was a particular period in medicine—as you may have noticed, medicine has a tendency to change its opinion of what constitutes “healthy” every five years or so—when there was a very special view: namely, the view that it would be particularly beneficial for weak children to be given a glass of red wine every day at the age of three, four, or five. I have seen children who were given this glass of red wine, and also those who were not. I was able to wait with my observations — because, of course, medicine is infallible at first; to speak out against it would not bear much fruit among the prejudices of the present — so I was able to wait with my observations. The children who were given a glass of red wine every day for their health when they were between two and five years old are now young people between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-seven, and I have found—because I have paid close attention, since that is when the effects of such a view become apparent—I have found that all the children who received their glass of red wine have become “fidgety Philips,” their astral bodies fidget, and they cannot do much with them; they do not know how to cope with their involuntarily agitated soul life. Those, on the other hand, who at that time “unfortunately,” as they said, could not be strengthened with that glass of red wine, have now become completely stable characters who are not so restless in their astral body or in their nervous system, as one would express it in materialistic terms.

[ 15 ] Here we have such a connection in life. It is a trivial one, not particularly illustrative of karma, but it is one in which we see that observation of life should not go only as far as our nose reaches, but that it must overlook longer periods of time, and that it is not enough to have established once that this or that remedy works in this or that way. For the real observer can only ascertain what is actually being stimulated after many years. Only the great connections in life, and everything that instructs us to seek the great connections in life, can truly enlighten us about the way cause and effect are connected in human life. Thus, one must try to hold together more widely scattered phenomena of life in relation to the actual qualities of the soul. Then one can already see the law of karma between birth and death, and one finds very often how the events of later life are connected with what was experienced in the first half of life.

[ 16 ] Do you also remember what was said about the mission of devotion, about the importance of being able to look up with a feeling of reverence to some being, to some phenomenon that one does not yet understand, that one reveres precisely because one is not yet equal to it with one's intellect? And I always like to point out how beautiful it is when a person can say to themselves: “As a child, I once heard about a particularly venerable member of my family who was greatly revered. I had not yet seen them, but I felt a deep reverence for this person. Then, when the opportunity arose, I was taken to this revered family member. And with innermost, holy awe, I laid my hand on the door handle of the room where this important person was supposed to appear!

[ 17 ] One will be grateful for that feeling of reverent admiration later in life, because one owes an enormous amount to having been able to admire someone in the first half of one's life. And reverent admiration is particularly good in every life. I have known people who have been made aware of the feeling of reverent veneration toward something spiritual and divine, and who objected: “I am an atheist; I cannot venerate anything spiritual.” To such people one can say: “Look at the starry sky! Can you make it? Look at its wise construction and think to yourself: 'One can sink into it with a feeling of true, genuine awe!' There is much in the world that we cannot comprehend with our minds, but which we can look up to with reverence. And especially in youth there is much that we can look up to with reverence without being able to understand it.

[ 18 ] Devotion in the first half of life is transformed into a very special quality of life in the second half. We have all heard of personalities who, by virtue of what they are, are a blessing to those around them. They don't need to say anything special, they just need to be there. It is as if something invisible emanates from them through their whole manner of being and communicates itself to other souls. Their whole manner has a beneficial and blissful effect on their surroundings. To whom do such people owe this power to have a beneficial effect on their surroundings through their spiritual qualities? They owe it to the fact that they were able to experience a life of devotion in their youth, that they had a lot of devotion in the first half of their lives. Devotion in the first half of life is transformed into the power to have an invisible, blessing, and beneficial effect in the second half of life.

[ 19 ] Here again we have a karmic connection that is clearly expressed between birth and death, if one only observes it. And basically, it was out of a beautiful karmic feeling that Goethe chose the beautiful words as the motto for one of his works: “What you desire in youth, you will have in abundance in old age!” Of course, if you only observe short connections in life, you will often be able to speak of unfulfilled desires; if you look at the big picture, less so.

[ 20 ] All these things that have been characterized in this way can now in turn be transferred into real life. And basically, only those who view life in this spiritual-scientific way can be true educators. For they will be able to give people in the first half of their lives what they know they will be able to use in the second half. Today, people are unaware of the responsibility they take on when they instill this or that in young people. But today it has become so common to talk about these things from above, so to speak, from the high horse of materialistic thinking. And I would like to illustrate this assertion I have just made with a little experience we had here in Berlin.

[ 21 ] A visitor came once, one of those people who believes that if he listens to one or two meetings, just once in his life, he can then form an opinion about the matter. Such people are particularly keen to form an opinion about spiritual movements similar to ours, so that they can then write about the matter in an “informed” manner. Those who want to supply the world with newspaper articles today believe that this is the way to form an opinion about something. You go there once, and then you know what's going on! The visitor I am referring to also wrote about his experience, and it was amusing to read about a branch meeting at our center in an American magazine. Of course, the description was quite strangely accurate. But as I said, what one really wants to grasp in spiritual science cannot, of course, be acquired in this way. One must be clear that one can only enter into spiritual life if one has the will to truly experience and go through the details.

[ 22 ] Now I have only told this story to characterize the judgment of the visitor in question, which he did not hide. This visitor said: What he did not like about spiritual science was that it divided everything into the physical world, the astral world, the devachanic world, and so on. Why should one do that, divide everything up like that? He had gathered all this from one or two visits. How frightening it must have been for him if he had heard the other divisions as well! The visitor in question was of the opinion that one should not look at things in this way, but rather speak “in general” about the spiritual world. Why should one first divide it into classes? This is how people speak today in the field of education, in all areas of life, and, in essence, this is also how modern science speaks. The world talks nonsense based on arbitrary observations of life, not on proper research into individual phenomena of life. That is why it is so terrible how such reforms and programmatic speeches must affect someone who can really observe the world, for they cause something comparable to terrible physical pain. Today, one need only pick up an ordinary scientific book. No matter how conscientiously the observations may have been made, the way in which things are presented is simply terrible, because there is no concept of how the phenomena should be observed. And so today we admire all sorts of people who, out of arbitrariness, shout this or that into the world because it happens to occur to them. It is important that anthroposophists become aware that life should be observed in detail using the methods provided by karma and the other laws of life for practical application. Therefore, we can only hope for a blessing for the future development of humanity, including in relation to educational issues, if the anthroposophical view also penetrates the principles of education. Karma is something that provides a firm foundation for, for example, all observation of life that relates to education.

[ 23 ] For example, it is infinitely important that we know how a certain phenomenon in education is karmically connected, which is expressed in the view that if a child develops properly, it must turn out this way or that way. I like that for life! And now people think that the child is a sack into which you can stuff whatever you happen to think is right. You impress your own nature and what you yourself feel as sympathy or antipathy upon the child. If you knew what this meant in the karmic context, you would see things differently. You would see that what has been stuffed into the child like into a sack is fulfilled karmically in such a way that it makes the person dry and withered, that it causes the child to age prematurely and kills the very center of its being. If we want to educate a child, we must approach it indirectly, so to speak, if we believe that it should acquire this or that quality. We should not try to graft this or that quality onto the child, but must first awaken a need for this quality, a desire in the child to acquire it. We must therefore go back one step further. Even if we know that a particular food is good for a child, we must not force it on them, but rather ensure that they first develop a taste for it, so that they themselves ask for it. We must regulate desire and craving so that the child asks for what is good for them of their own accord. This is different from just throwing everything into a bag and saying, “Now eat it!” So when we first regulate needs, we touch the core of the child's life, and then we will see that this is fulfilled karmically in the second half of life, in that the person again radiates joy and vitality, so that such a person is not dry and withered in the second half of life, but remains alive from the center of their being.

[ 24 ] If we look at the law of karma in this way, we will say to ourselves that it is not enough to write in a little book: There is a law of karma, a connection between the past and the future — but we must look at life from the point of view of the law of karma. Only when we get into the details of life does anthroposophy appear in its true form, but then we must also have the will to work again and again, that is, never to stray from it again. We must find the time to view the phenomena of life from the perspective of anthroposophy.

[ 25 ] These were some of the perspectives that were intended to show the connections within life between birth and death. Now, however, we can also follow the law of karma sufficiently beyond birth and death, connecting one life with another or with others. What we experience today in this life between birth and death must also be linked to things that we experienced earlier or that we will experience later in life. Countless details could be cited here. Today, I would like to limit myself to examining an important question of life from the karmic point of view, insofar as karma extends from one life to another, namely the question of health and illness, and especially the latter.

[ 26 ] Some people might believe that when they are struck by some illness, it would be correct in terms of karma to say: I deserve this, it is my fate! — But that alone does not always characterize the law of karma in the right way. When we are faced with an illness, we must first be clear about its spiritual essence. We would do well to first consider what, for example, the essence of pain is. From there, we will then be able to move on to a spiritual understanding of illness.

[ 27 ] What is the essence of pain? Let us now consider a completely external physical pain, for example, when we cut our finger. Why does it hurt? We will never be able to understand the nature of pain spiritually if we do not know that this physical finger is permeated by an etheric finger and an astral finger. What the physical finger represents, how it is formed, how the blood flows in it, how the nerves run—all this has been formed by the etheric finger. It is the creator and still ensures today that the nerves are arranged in the right way, that the blood flows correctly, and so on. How the etheric body shapes this is regulated by the astral body, which permeates the whole. Why it hurts when we cut our finger can be explained by an external comparison.

[ 28 ] Suppose it is one of your favorite pastimes to water your flowers in the garden once a day, and you derive a certain satisfaction from doing so. One morning, however, your watering can is ruined or stolen, and you can no longer water your flowers in the garden. You are saddened by this. This is not physical pain, but in being deprived of your favorite activity, you can feel something like physical pain. You cannot perform an activity because the instrument is not there. What is externally lacking here, and which can therefore only cause moral pain, becomes physical pain through the following.

[ 29 ] The etheric body and the astral body are designed to keep the finger in the condition it is now. I can never cut off the etheric finger and the astral finger. If I cut my finger in two, the etheric finger can no longer function properly. It is accustomed to the correct connection of the finger, and this connection is now disrupted, just as my activity was disrupted when I wanted to water the garden. The astral body and the etheric body cannot function, and this manifests itself in the astral body as pain, as deprivation. Not being able to perform the usual activities, not being able to function in the usual way, manifests itself in the astral body as pain. But at the moment when the etheric body and the astral body can no longer intervene properly, a greater effort also becomes apparent. Just as in our case, when we want to water the garden, we make an effort to find the watering can or something similar, so now the astral body and the etheric body must also exert greater activity in order to put things back in order. And this greater activity that must be exerted is what actually heals. The spiritual is called upon to become more energetic, and that is what actually heals. That which can call the spiritual members of the human being to greater activity brings about healing. Now, every illness is based on the fact that, due to some disorder in the physical body or also in the etheric body of the human being, the spiritual parts cannot intervene in the right way, are prevented from doing so, so to speak, and healing consists in calling forth a stronger resistance against the disorder. Now, an illness can either run its course and be healed, or we can die from it. Let us consider both cases from a karmic point of view.

[ 30 ] If the illness runs its course and we recover, then we have placed in our limbs, which we brought with us from previous incarnations, those strong life forces that can truly intervene in a healing way. And when we look back on our previous incarnations, we can say: At that time, we were not only able to provide for our bodies in the right way through what we normally have in life, but we also brought with us a reserve fund that we can draw on from the spiritual limbs of life.

[ 31 ] Now let us assume that we die. What happens then? Then we will have to say: If an attempt was made to heal us, we also called upon the stronger forces within us. But they were not enough, they were not sufficient. However, whenever we call upon forces so that they assert themselves strongly, it is not useless. We have indeed had to make greater efforts to do so. If we have not yet been able to establish order in any area of our organism in this life, we have at least become stronger. We wanted to resist. It just wasn't enough. But even if it wasn't enough, the forces we called upon are not lost. They carry over into the next incarnation, and the organ in question becomes stronger than if we had not had the illness. And we will then be able to develop the organ that caused us to die prematurely in this life with particular strength and regularity. So even if we cannot cure the illness with the right treatment, there will still be a beneficial effect. Karmically, we must also see something in an illness that can be lived out in a more favorable way in a future life. In the next life, we may then have a special strength in this or that case because we fought an illness but did not overcome it. However, one must not say that it is perhaps a good thing to let the illness run its course, because if we allow the illness to run its course and do not intervene to cure it, the forces within us will become stronger and the karma will be fulfilled all the better! That would be nonsense. It is precisely a matter of arranging the healing in such a way that the balancing forces can intervene as favorably as possible; that is to say, we must do as much as possible for real healing, regardless of whether healing occurs or not. Karma is always life-affirming, never life-denying!

[ 32 ] The law of karma, as it extends from one life to another, has thus shown itself to be life-affirming in a special example. And we can say: if we are particularly strong in this or that organ, this points us to a previous life in which this organ, in which we are now particularly strong, was once particularly sick. We were not able to heal it completely at that time. But in return, the forces were called upon that now make this organ appear particularly strong. — Thus we see how events and facts extend from one life into another, how our core being becomes stronger and stronger if we are aware in the right way of how we can make it stronger. And in this way we can come more and more to a living understanding of our spiritual core through the law of karma.

[ 33 ] Now we come to an answer to the question: Why do we gather so often? We gather so often because we do not only want to enrich our knowledge when we take in teachings, but because the teachings, when given in the right way, are suitable for making our core being ever stronger and more powerful. When we come together and engage with anthroposophy, we pour a spiritual lifeblood into our affairs. Thus, anthroposophy is not a theory, but a life potion, an elixir of life that pours into our souls again and again, and which we know makes the soul ever stronger and more powerful. And when anthroposophy is no longer what it is today for people due to the lack of understanding of the outer world, when it intervenes in our entire spiritual life, then people will see how salvation, including that of physical life, of the entire outer life, depends on the strengthening that can be gained through anthroposophical observation and anthroposophical experience. The time will come when such anthroposophical gatherings will become the most important source of strength for people, so that they will go out and say: We owe what we can do, our health, our strength in life, to the fact that we are constantly strengthening ourselves in our very core, in the center of our being! Only when people feel that anthroposophy, through its individual observations, gives them what makes them strong and healthy right down to their physical bodies, only then will they feel the mission of anthroposophy. And today, those who are involved with anthroposophy should see themselves as pioneers for anthroposophy as something that strengthens life! Only then will it be right and only then will it be able to gain the right point of attack against something that is so life-weakening today.

[ 34 ] Finally, one more thing should be pointed out. Today, no word is heard more often than the word “hereditary burden.” How could anyone who does not use the word “hereditary burden” at least three or four times a week be considered an educated person today? An educated person must at least know that medical science has established what hereditary burden means in human life! Anyone who cannot say that if someone here or there does not know what to do with themselves, they are genetically predisposed, is not an educated person, but something else, and among that something else perhaps also an anthroposophist. This is where the science of modern life begins not only to err theoretically, but also to damage life. This is the boundary where theory approaches morality, where it is immoral to have a false theory. Here, the vitality and security of life depend on knowing exactly what is right. What will someone be capable of who strengthens and fortifies themselves from a correct spiritual view in their soul by taking in an elixir of life?

[ 35 ] Whatever they may have inherited, it is inheritance in the physical body, or at most in the etheric body. Through their correct view of life, they will become stronger and stronger in their very core, and they will overcome hereditary burdens, for the spiritual, when it is present in the right sense, is capable of balancing the physical. But those who do not strengthen themselves in their spiritual core, who say that the spiritual is only a product of the physical, are then, because they have no strong inner life, at the mercy of hereditary burdens, which must have a harmful effect on them.

[ 36 ] It is no wonder that what we call hereditary burdens have such terrible effects today, because people are first persuaded of the power of hereditary burdens and then deprived of what counteracts them. First, belief in hereditary burdens is cultivated, and then people with a spiritual worldview are deprived of the best means of fighting against hereditary burdens. First, the omnipotence of hereditary predisposition is invented, and then it takes effect. Not only is there a false view that brings to life forces hostile to life, that wrests the weapons from people's hands, but here begins a theory that is based entirely on materialistic views. Here a materialistic worldview begins to play into morality, and it is not only theoretically wrong, but also immoral. This cannot be dismissed by simply saying that those who make such claims are mistaken. There is no need to judge too harshly those who put forward such theories. The individual representatives of science should never be targeted here; it is understandable that they are stuck in this position and that they must come to such errors. One person cannot extricate himself from a scientific tradition; another can be forgiven because he has a wife and children and would perhaps find himself in a difficult position if he no longer professed the prevailing views. But attention must be drawn to the whole thing as a phenomenon of the times, because here science begins not only to spread false theories, but also to wrest from human beings the life-giving means which, as a spiritual worldview, are supposed to supply life with strength and which alone are capable of standing up to the power that would otherwise overwhelm human beings, of standing up to the physical. This physical world is only an overwhelming power as long as human beings do not develop any spiritual power to counter it. If they do develop this power, then a fighter against everything physical will awaken within them.

[ 37 ] We cannot hope for this to happen overnight. But those who understand things in the true sense will gradually come to know the spiritual scientific view of phenomena to which human beings initially appear powerless. What is not balanced out in one life is balanced out in the whole of life. And if we look at the individual life, as well as the life from incarnation to incarnation, then the law of karma, correctly understood, will not be a law that can oppress us now, but a law that will give us comfort and strength and make us ever stronger. The law of karma is a law of life force, and we should understand it as such. It is not a matter of knowing individual abstractions, but of pursuing the spiritual truths of life in detail, and of never tiring in the development of spiritual knowledge by immersing ourselves in the individual truths of spiritual research.

[ 38 ] If you keep this in mind, you will live an anthroposophical life in the true sense. Then you will know why we are not satisfied with having read this or that book, but regard anthroposophy as a matter of the heart that never ceases to occupy us, to which we gladly return again and again, and which we know will enrich our lives more and more the more we return to it.