The Rudolf Steiner Archive

16. General Attitude toward Human Karma

My dear Theosophical friends!

[ 1 ] It is not without significance that, at the conclusion of both public lectures, I have emphasized more and more strongly that Theosophy should not be a theory for human beings, not a mere science, not something that is called knowledge in the ordinary sense, but rather something that can be transformed within our soul from mere knowledge, from mere theory, into immediate life, into an elixir of life. So that through Theosophy we not only know something, but above all, forces flow to us through it that help us not only in the ordinary life we lead here in physical existence, but in the whole of life that we lead both in physical existence and in the disembodied state between death and a new birth. The more we experience Theosophy in this way—as something that supplies us with strengthening forces and life-sustaining elements—the better we understand Theosophy. Now, upon hearing such a statement, the question may well come to the lips of some: If Theosophy is to be something that strengthens our lives and gives us strength, why must we then, in Theosophy, acquire all manner of seemingly theoretical knowledge? Why are we, so to speak, plagued in our spiritual life with all sorts of knowledge about the planetary incarnations that preceded our Earth? Why must we learn about things that took place in distant times? Why must we also familiarize ourselves with the more intimate, subtle laws of reincarnation, karma, and so on?—Some might believe that this is merely another form of science, much like the sciences that are presented to us today in our outer life in the physical world.

[ 2 ] Now, my dear Theosophical friends, when it comes to this question—which has just been raised here as one that, so to speak, may be on everyone’s lips—we must set aside all complacency. We must carefully examine ourselves to see whether, in asking this question, we are not already introducing into it something of the ordinary sloth of life, which—forgive me, my dear Theosophical friends—can all too easily be expressed in words: People are actually reluctant to learn anything, to acquire knowledge spiritually. It is inconvenient for them. We must ask ourselves whether not something of this mood of discomfort is creeping into this question. For in truth we assume, believing it just a little, that the highest thing theosophy is meant to give us can be attained by a more comfortable path than the one shown to us, for example, in the literature we cultivate. It is also often emphasized in a somewhat flippant manner that people need only to know themselves, need only to try to become good people, and then they are actually already theosophers enough. Yes, my dear Theosophical friends, this very point gives us a deeper insight: that being a good person is one of the most difficult things in the world, and that nothing requires as much preparation as precisely this ideal of being a good person.

[ 3 ] And as for the question of self-knowledge, it is in truth not one that can be answered in the blink of an eye, as many people would like to believe. We shall therefore take a closer look today at some of the questions that are often expressed in the words just spoken. We want to consider to what extent Theosophy, even if only seemingly, presents itself to us as a doctrine, a science, even though it nevertheless yields, in the most eminent sense, precisely what can be called self-knowledge and must yield what is referred to as a striving to become a good person. The main point here, however, is that we examine from various perspectives how theosophy can flow into life.

[ 4 ] Take a specific example from the big questions of life. I do not mean those concerning scientific research, but rather the questions that everyday life brings—questions that each of us is certainly familiar with: the question of the comfort we can find in life when we suffer in one way or another, when we cannot find full satisfaction in life in this or that way. In other words, let us ask ourselves: To what extent, for example, can Theosophy offer comfort to a grieving person when they need it? Of course, each individual must apply what can be said about such a question to their own particular case. When speaking to many people, one can only speak in general terms.

[ 5 ] Why do we need comfort in life? Because we can feel sad about this or that, because we can suffer, because pain can afflict us. Now it is natural for a person facing pain to feel as if something within them must react so strongly against this pain that they ask themselves: Why must I endure pain, why does this pain befall me? Couldn’t life pass by for me in such a way that no pain afflicts me, that I am content? — The person who asks this question can only arrive at an answer if they gain a true understanding of the nature of our human karma, of human destiny. Why do we suffer in the world? And this refers to both external sufferings and the inner ones that arise from our inner constitution—that we are not always enough for ourselves, that we cannot always find our way clearly. That is what is meant here. Why do such things, which leave us unsatisfied, befall us in life?

[ 6 ] If we accept the laws of karma, we will see that our suffering is based on something similar to what can be illustrated in ordinary life between birth and death with the following example, which I have often mentioned before: Suppose someone has lived off his father’s money until the age of eighteen; he has lived a life of pleasure and joy, never missing out on anything. Then the father loses his fortune; he goes bankrupt. The young man must learn a proper trade; he must make an effort. Life strikes him with pain and deprivation. We will find it understandable that this young person is not particularly moved by the pain he has to endure. Let us assume that this person reaches the age of fifty. Because he had to learn something back then, he has become a decent person. He now stands firmly in life and can say to himself: The way I judged my suffering and pain back then was understandable at that time; but now I must think differently about it; now I must say that the pain could not have affected me if I had already possessed all the perfections—even if only the limited perfections of an eighteen-year-old—back then. But if the pain had not affected me, I would have remained a good-for-nothing. It was the pain that transformed the imperfections into perfection. It is thanks to this pain that I am now a different person than I was forty years ago. What actually came together in me back then? My imperfection, in which I found myself at the time, and my pain came together. And my imperfection, as it were, sought out my pain so that it might be dispelled, so that it might be transformed into perfection.

[ 7 ] This insight can already be derived from a simple view of life between birth and death. If we consider life as a whole and truly confront our karma in the manner demonstrated in the lecture from the day before yesterday, we will always come to the conviction that all the pains that befall us, all the sufferings placed in our path, are of such a nature that they are sought out by our own imperfection. Indeed, the vast majority of pains and sufferings are sought out by those imperfections that we have brought over from previous incarnations. And because these imperfections are within us, a wiser part of us than we are seeks the path to pain and suffering. For this is a golden rule of life, my dear Theosophical friends, that we all, as human beings, always carry within us someone wiser than we are ourselves, someone far wiser. For less wise is the one to whom we say “I” in ordinary life. This “less wise one,” if left to his own devices, would, when seeking either pain or pleasure, take the path to pleasure. The “wiser one” is the one who rests in the depths of our subconscious, to whom our ordinary consciousness does not extend. He veils our view of a light pleasure and kindles within us a magical power that takes the path toward pain without our knowing it. But what does it mean: without our knowing it? It means that the wiser one gains greater power over the less wise, and the wiser one always acts within us in such a way that he directs our imperfections toward our pain and causes us to suffer, because with every inner and outer suffering we eradicate an imperfection and make ourselves more perfect.

[ 8 ] One can understand such statements in theory, but that doesn’t accomplish much. Yet much is accomplished when one seeks out certain moments of celebration in life, in which one is willing to truly make something like this statement—with all one’s energy—the very essence of one’s soul. In ordinary life, with its work, its hustle and bustle, with its duties, this isn’t always possible; we cannot, so to speak, always renounce the less wise part of ourselves that we happen to possess. But if we choose a certain moment of celebration in life—and however brief such moments may be—we can say to ourselves: I will set aside for a moment everything that is rumbling out there and where I have been rumbling along with it; I will look upon my sufferings in such a way that I feel how the wiser part of me has been drawn to them with magical power, and that I have imposed certain pains upon myself, without which I would not have overcome certain imperfections. Then a feeling of blissful wisdom will come over us, which, so to speak, reveals: Even where the world seems filled with suffering, it is full of wisdom! Such a thing is then an achievement of theosophy for life. We may forget such a thing again in our outer life. But if we do not forget it and practice it again and again, then we will see that we have planted something like a seed in our soul, and that many things within us that are gloomy feelings, many things that are weak moods, are transformed into a cheerful attitude toward life, into strength, into a sense of power. And then, from such celebratory moments in life, we will emerge as more harmonious souls and stronger human beings.

[ 9 ] And then we might well—but the theosophist should make it a rule to seek out these other moments only after he has made the first ones, the moments of comfort in the midst of suffering, effective within his soul—then we might well add something else: Glimpses of our joys, glimpses of what we can experience as pleasure in life. For those who face fate with an open heart, as if they had willed their own pain, something quite peculiar emerges when they contemplate their pleasure and joy. They cannot cope with it in the same way they cope with their suffering. For it is easy for us—and whoever does not believe this may try to put themselves in that position—to find comfort in suffering. But it becomes difficult to cope with pleasure and joy. One may try as hard as one likes to put oneself in the mindset that one has willed one’s suffering: when one applies this to pleasure and joy, one will have no choice but to feel ashamed. One will feel a genuine sense of shame, and the only way to overcome this shame is by telling oneself: No, I truly did not bring this pleasure and joy upon myself through my own karma!—This is the only cure, for otherwise the shame can become so intense that it nearly destroys one’s very soul. The only cure is not to expect the wiser part of oneself to believe that one has been driven toward joy. From this thought, one realizes that one is right, because the sense of shame disappears. The fact is that pleasure and joy come to us in life as something bestowed upon us by the wise guidance of the universe without our doing, something we must accept as grace, and from which we always recognize that it is meant to integrate us into the totality of the universe. Pleasure and joy should thus affect us in the festive moments of life, in the lonely hours, so that we perceive them as grace, as the grace of the universal powers of the world, which wish to embrace us, which wish, as it were, to enfold us within themselves.

[ 10 ] So while we find our way to ourselves through our pain and suffering, making ourselves more complete, we develop—through our pleasure and joy, but only if we regard them as grace—that feeling which can only be described as a sense of blissful repose in the divine powers and forces of the world. And the only justified attitude there is is gratitude toward pleasure and joy. And no one can cope with pleasure and joy who, in lonely hours of self-knowledge, attributes pleasure and joy to their karma. If they attribute it to their karma, then they succumb to that error which weakens and paralyzes the spiritual within us. Every thought that a pleasure or joy is deserved weakens and paralyzes us. This may seem harsh, for some would likely wish—since they already attribute their pain to their own volition and to their individuality—that they might also be masters of their own pleasure and joy. But even a casual glance at life can teach us that pleasure and joy have a destructive quality. Indeed, this destructive aspect of pleasure and joy is scarcely depicted more vividly anywhere than in *Faust*, where the paralyzing effect of pleasure and joy in human life is brought to life with the words: “Thus I stagger from desire to pleasure. And in pleasure I languish for desire.” And anyone who reflects even a little on the influence of pleasure, when taken personally, will see that pleasure has something about it that leads us into a kind of life-long intoxication and extinguishes our sense of self.

[ 11 ] This is not meant to be a sermon against pleasure, nor a call for us to indulge in self-torture, perhaps pinching ourselves with red-hot tongs or the like. That is not the point. Recognizing something in the right way does not mean that we should flee from it. The word is not “flee,” but rather that we should calmly accept it wherever it comes our way. But we should cultivate the attitude of experiencing it as grace, and the more, the better, for the more we do so, the more we immerse ourselves in the divine. So these words are spoken not to preach asceticism, but to awaken the right attitude toward pleasure and joy.

[ 12 ] But anyone who were to say: “Pleasure and joy have something paralyzing and destructive about them; therefore I flee from pleasure and joy”—the ideal of false asceticism, of self-torture—would be fleeing from the grace bestowed upon him by the gods. And, fundamentally, the ascetics’, monks’, and nuns’ self-torture is nothing but a constant rebellion against the gods. It befits us to regard pain as something we deserve through our karma, and joy as a grace—that the divine deigns to descend to us. Let us find delight and joy as a sign of how close God has drawn us to Himself, and let us find suffering and pain as a sign of how far we are from what we, as rational human beings, must achieve. This sets the fundamental attitude toward karma, and without this fundamental attitude, we cannot truly move forward in life. We must perceive, in what the world bestows upon us as good and beautiful, that behind this world stand the powers of which the Bible says: they saw that it was good and beautiful, the world. But to the extent that we can feel sorrow and pain, we must acknowledge what humanity has made of the world—which was initially good—over the course of incarnations, and what it must improve by training itself to bear these pains with fortitude.

[ 13 ] What has been described is merely a twofold way of accepting our karma. After all, our karma consists, in a certain sense, of suffering and joy. We face our karma with the right intention, as if we truly desired it, when we are able to confront suffering and joy in the right way. But we can take this even further. And today’s and tomorrow’s reflections will show exactly how we can face karma.

[ 14 ] Our karma does not merely reveal to us what is painful and joyful in relation to our lives; rather, we encounter people throughout the course of our lives in such a way that we must recognize karmic effects in them—for example, many people with whom we make fleeting acquaintances, and people who, through various relationships of kinship or friendship, remain close to us for a long time. We meet people with whom we interact in such a way that they cause us suffering, or that through our interaction with them, suffering—that is, obstacles—arise; or we meet people who support us or whom we can support; in short, manifold relationships arise. Faced with such a fact of life, if what was said the day before yesterday about accepting karma is to bear fruit in the theosophical sense, we must realize that we have, in a certain way, willed it with the wiser part of ourselves—that is, we have willed a person who has seemingly crossed our path, willed precisely the one with whom we are dealing with this or that matter. What, then, can this wiser part of us possibly want if it wishes to meet this or that person? On what can it base itself? Is it not true that there is no other reasonable thought than that we say to ourselves: We want to meet him because we have met him before and because this was already in the making earlier? It need not have been in a past life; it may have been much earlier. Because we had this or that to do with this person in past lives, because we had a debt of some kind, this wiser part brings us together with him. It is a being led by magical power to the person in question.

[ 15 ] Now, however, my dear Theosophical friends, we are entering a field that is extraordinarily diverse and complex, and regarding which only general points of view can really be presented. But only that which has truly been experienced through clairvoyant research should be presented here. This can be useful to everyone, because each person can, in a certain way, adapt it to their own life.

[ 16 ] A curious fact emerges. Around the very middle of our lives, we all experience that period when, so to speak, the upward curve turns into a downward one—when we have exhausted all our youthful energy, passed a peak, and then begin to move back down the curve. This point, which falls around the age of thirty, cannot be stated as a general rule, but it nevertheless applies to each of us. It is the period of our lives in which we live most on the physical plane in our world. In this regard, one can succumb to an illusion. You will see. Yes, what has gone before has actually, ever since childhood—even if it has grown weaker and weaker—consisted of drawing out things we brought with us into this present incarnation. We have brought these out, built our lives upon them, so that we have still been drawing upon forces we brought with us from the spiritual world. Those are exhausted when the aforementioned moment arrives. And when we then look again at the descending life line, the situation is such that we accumulate and process what we have learned in the school of life in order to take it with us into the next incarnation. We channel that into the spiritual world; previously, we drew from it. That is when we live most fully in the world of the physical plane; that is when we are most entangled in everything that concerns us from the outside. There we have, so to speak, completed our apprenticeship; there we approach life directly; there we must cope with our lives. There we are, so to speak, occupied with ourselves, most occupied with arranging the circumstances of the external world for ourselves and with establishing a relationship with the external world. But what enters into a relationship with the world is the intellect and the impulses of the will that arise from the intellect. What flows out of us most strongly there is the most alien element, to which the spiritual worlds are closed. We are, so to speak, furthest from the spiritual in the midst of life.

[ 17 ] Now, a curious fact emerges in occult research. When one examines how one interacts with other people in middle age and seeks acquaintances in life, it is, curiously enough, those people with whom one was together in a previous incarnation or an earlier one at the very beginning of one’s life, in the earliest childhood. For it has turned out that, as a rule—though not always—in the middle of one’s life, through certain external circumstances of karma, one encounters those people who were once one’s parents. These are the very rare cases where we come together with the people who were once our parents, not in the very earliest childhood, but precisely in the middle of life. This certainly appears to be a curious fact, but it is so. And only when we try to apply such a rule to our lives, when we adjust our thoughts accordingly, can we gain an immense amount for our lives. When a person, say around the age of thirty, enters into some kind of relationship with another person—whether they fall in love with them, form a friendship, get into a conflict, or something else entirely—much becomes clear and understandable to us if we first tentatively consider that we were once in a parent-child relationship with this person. Conversely, a highly remarkable fact emerges. The people we encountered in our very earliest childhood—parents, siblings, playmates, or others in our childhood environment—are generally those with whom we developed relationships in a previous or some earlier incarnation such that we formed this or that acquaintance around the age of thirty. It very often turns out that these people appear as our parents or siblings in the present incarnation. Even if this may seem curious to us, one should simply try applying it to one’s own life. You will see how much brighter life becomes when we view things this way. If this happens to be incorrect, a single flawed example does not matter much. But to view life in this way during lonely hours, so that it takes on meaning, is immensely valuable. However, one should not try to arrange life in this or that way; one should not select those who simply please us, those we might have liked to have had as parents. We must not allow any prejudice to cast the matter in a false light. You realize that there is a danger here and that countless prejudices lie in wait for us. But it is quite good if we train ourselves to be free of prejudice in these difficult matters.

[ 18 ] You might ask me: But what about life in the descending line? In a curious way, it has turned out that at the beginning of life we become acquainted with people with whom we were acquainted in the middle of a previous life, while now, in the middle of this life, we recognize our acquaintance with them from the beginning of that previous life. What is it like in the descending life? — It is the case that we are then brought together with individuals who may have had some connection with us in a past life, or perhaps not yet. They have had some connection with us in a past life when particularly characteristic events occur—such as those that so frequently arise in human life—when some decisive turning point—let us say, a severe trial of life through bitter disappointment—occurs. Then it happens that in the second half of life we are reunited with people who were already connected to us in one way or another. This shifts the circumstances, and as a result, much of what was caused earlier is resolved.

[ 19 ] This makes things complex and helps us realize that we shouldn’t take a overly formulaic approach. Specifically, however, in the second half of life we are brought into contact with people whose karmic ties, once established, cannot be resolved in a single lifetime. Let us suppose we have caused suffering to a person in one lifetime. One might easily imagine that we will be reunited with this person in a subsequent life, and the wiser part of us brings us together so that we can make amends for what we have done to them. But life circumstances do not always allow us to settle everything; often, we can settle only a part. This necessitates certain developments that complicate the matter and make it possible for such remaining residues of karma to be settled in the second half of life. In this way, we have understood our karma in such a way that we have, so to speak, placed our interactions and our relationships with other people in the light of this karma.

[ 20 ] But we can also consider something else in the course of our karma: what we referred to in the two public lectures—maturing, the process of assimilating our life experience. If the word does not sound presumptuous, it can certainly be used. We can reflect on how we become wiser. We can become wiser through our mistakes, and it is best for us if we do so, because we do not often have the opportunity to apply that wisdom in a single lifetime: Therefore, what we have learned from our mistakes remains with us as a source of strength for a future life. But what exactly is it that we can acquire in terms of wisdom and life experience?

[ 21 ] I already pointed this out yesterday: We cannot directly carry our ideas from one life into the next. I pointed out that even Plato could not directly carry the ideas of his soul into his next incarnation. We carry over what resembles our will and our disposition, so that we actually acquire our ideas anew with each life, just as we do our language. For the greatest part of our ideas lives in language, so that we acquire the greatest part of our ideas from language. This life between birth and death gives us ideas that actually always come from the life between birth and death.

[ 22 ] But if that is the case, then we must admit that it actually always depends on our karma; it always depends on our respective incarnations—no matter how many incarnations we go through—and on the ideas we absorb. What you can experience as conceptual wisdom, you always take in from the outside. This now depends on how karma has placed you within language, people, and family. Basically, we know nothing of the world in our concepts and thoughts other than what depends on our karma. That says quite a lot. This means that everything we can know in life, everything we can acquire as insight, is something entirely personal; we never transcend the personality through what we can acquire in life. We never reach true wisdom in life, but always remain at the level of lesser wisdom. If someone imagines that they can know more about their higher self from within themselves, from what they acquire in the world, then they are imagining something incorrect for their own convenience. This means nothing less than that we know absolutely nothing about our higher self through what we acquire in life.

[ 23 ] Yes, how can we possibly know anything about our higher self at all? How do we come by such knowledge? Well, we must simply ask ourselves the following: What do we actually know? First and foremost, what we have acquired through experience. That is what we know—and nothing more! And the person who wants to know themselves but does not realize that their soul contains only a mirror of the external world may delude themselves into believing that they can find their higher self by looking within. They will indeed find something, but it is nothing other than what has come in from the outside. This cheap path of convenience will not work. We must ask ourselves about what occurs in the other worlds where our higher self also resides, and there is nothing else there but what is told to us, what is said to us about the various incarnations on Earth, about that very subject which Theosophy addresses. Just as one investigates a child’s soul in relation to external life by asking what surrounds the child, so must we ask: what surrounds the higher self? But we learn about the worlds in which our higher self resides through Theosophy, through what has been told to us about Saturn and all its mysteries, about the Moon, about the development of the Earth, about reincarnation and karma, about Devachan and Kamaloka, and so on. Through this, we learn solely about our higher self, about that self which we possess beyond the physical plane. And to those who do not wish to follow these mysteries, it must be said: You are actually quite a self-flattering little kitten. — For it is true that it flatters this soul so very much: Just look within yourself, there you will find the God-man. - Indeed, nothing more than what it experiences from the outside and what it has stored within! We find the God-man only when we seek within ourselves that which is reflected in this world from outside it, so that everything that may, under certain circumstances, be uncomfortable for us to learn is nothing other than self-knowledge. And true theosophy is, in reality, true self-knowledge! So that when we receive theosophy, we can say we accept it as that which enlightens us precisely about our Self. For where, actually, is this Self? Is it within our skin? No, it is poured out throughout the whole world, and what is in the world is connected to our self, and also what was in the world is connected to our self, and only when we come to know the world do we come to know the self.

[ 24 ] Such is the nature of these so-called theories: they are nothing more than paths to self-knowledge. The person who seeks to find the self by gazing inward tells himself: You must be good, you must be selfless! Yes, fine. But one can observe that he becomes increasingly selfish. In contrast, grappling with the great mysteries of existence, tearing oneself away from this personal self that flatters itself so much, and merging with what exists in the higher worlds and can be perceived from them—this leads to true self-knowledge. By reflecting on Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon, we lose ourselves in cosmic thoughts. “Worldly thoughts live in your thinking,” says the theosophically minded soul, but it adds: “Lose yourself in worldly thoughts.” The soul drawing from theosophy says to itself: “World forces weave in your feeling.” But it immediately says: “Experience yourself through world forces!” Not in the flattering world forces, not the one who closes his eyes and tells himself: I want to be a good person—but the one who opens his eyes, who also opens the eye of the spirit and sees how world forces work and reign outside, and becomes aware of how he is embedded in these world forces—he experiences them! Likewise, the soul that draws strength from theosophy says to itself: “World beings work within your will,” and immediately adds: “Create yourself from beings of will!” And this succeeds when one understands self-knowledge in this way. Then one succeeds in remaking oneself from world beings. On the surface, it seems dry and abstract, but in truth it is not merely theory, but something that, like a seed we plant in the earth, lives and grows, sending out forces in all directions and becoming a plant, a tree. That is how it is. With the feelings we absorb in the secret science, we make ourselves capable of transforming ourselves: “Create yourself from beings of will!” Thus Theosophy becomes the elixir of life. Then we expand our gaze across the spiritual worlds; then we will draw the forces from the spiritual worlds; then we will lead the forces we gain into ourselves; and then we will recognize ourselves in our depths. Only when we carry the knowledge of the world into ourselves do we grasp ourselves and gradually advance from the less intelligent—the one who is separated from the Guardian of the Threshold—to the more intelligent, and through all that which is hidden from the human being who does not yet wish to be strong, but which he is precisely gaining through Theosophy.