The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] When we consider life as it unfolds around us, as it, so to speak, washes over us, into our inner being—into all that we ourselves must feel and suffer during our physical existence on Earth, or all that we have to rejoice in—we can identify several distinct groups or types of experience.

[ 2 ] We find, first of all, that when we look more closely at ourselves—at what lies within our abilities and talents—we find that when we succeed at this or that, we can say to ourselves: Well, since we are this or that kind of person, it is only natural and understandable that we had to succeed at this or that. — But we can also find certain failures that have affected us—perhaps precisely what we must call misfortune and misadventure because we did not succeed—to be understandable within the overall context of our being.

[ 3 ] Perhaps we are not always able to demonstrate precisely how this or that failure, this or that thing we have not succeeded in, is connected to our inability in this or that area. But when we then have to admit to ourselves in general: “You were, after all, a reckless person in many respects during your current earthly existence, so you can understand that under certain circumstances you may justly have to suffer this or that failure”—then perhaps we cannot immediately see the connection between failure and inability, but we can generally understand that if we were reckless, not everything could go smoothly.

[ 4 ] From what has just been discussed, you can see that we might, in a sense, recognize a kind of causal connection between what was bound to happen given our abilities and our limitations. However, there are many things in life where, no matter how carefully we proceed, we cannot readily connect our successes or failures with our abilities or inabilities; in these cases, it remains somewhat unclear to us how we brought this or that upon ourselves, or how we deserved it. In short, if we take a closer look at our inner life, we will be able to distinguish between two groups of experiences. One group is that in which we are aware of the causes of our successes and failures; in the other group, we will not be able to grasp such a connection. In the latter group, it will seem to us more or less like a coincidence that this particular thing failed us, while another succeeded. Let us first note that there are plenty of such facts and experiences in life, and let us turn our attention to this group later on.

[ 5 ] Contrary to what has just been discussed, we can then take our external fate more into account. In doing so, we will actually have to consider two groups of facts regarding our external fate. We can consider cases in which we inwardly recognize that, with regard to these events that befall us—that is, not what we ourselves have undertaken—we have, so to speak, brought certain things about ourselves, are to blame for such things. But regarding another group, we will be very inclined to say: We cannot see the connection with what we wanted, what we intended. These are the events that, in ordinary life, are described as having burst into our lives like a coincidence that apparently has nothing to do with anything we ourselves have brought about.

[ 6 ] It is this second group that we now wish to consider in relation to inner life—that is, those events which we cannot see as having a direct, immediate connection to our abilities and inabilities; that is, external events—what we call chance occurrences—which we cannot, from the outset, recognize as having been brought about by anything that preceded them.

[ 7 ] Now, one can, so to speak, conduct a sort of experiment with these two groups of experiences. After all, the experiment does not initially commit one to anything. One should, so to speak, simply try out what has just been said, what is now to be characterized.

[ 8 ] We can conduct this experiment by creating a mental image of ourselves constructing a kind of artificial human, if we were to conceive of such an artificial human being that we would say of this artificial thought-being we have conceived—precisely those things of which we know no connection to our own abilities—that they are such that we would endow the artificial human being we have conceived with the properties and abilities that have brought about these things incomprehensible to us. In other words, a human being who possesses such abilities that he must succeed or fail at things which we cannot attribute to ourselves as succeeding or failing according to our own abilities or inabilities. We thus imagine him as a human being who, artificially and quite intentionally, would have brought about the things that seem to have occurred by chance in our lives.

[ 9 ] We can start with simple examples to illustrate this. Suppose a brick had fallen on our shoulder and injured us there. At first, we would be inclined to say: That is a coincidence. — But let us construct, as a trial, an artificial person—as an experiment—who would do the following strange thing. We construct a person who climbs onto the roof and quickly loosens a brick there, but only enough so that the brick still retains a certain hold; then the artificial person runs back down quickly, so that when the brick comes loose, it falls directly onto his shoulders. We do this with regard to all events that occur to us as having happened by chance in our lives. We construct an artificial human being who causes or brings about everything that, in ordinary life, we cannot see how it is connected to us.

[ 10 ] If one does this, it might at first seem like a mere thought experiment. And doing so does not commit one to anything. But a curious phenomenon emerges when one does this. Once you have conceived of such a person and endowed them with the characteristics described, this artificial thought-person makes a very peculiar impression on us. For we can no longer shake off the image of a human being that we have created there, even though it seems so artificially constructed; it fascinates us, it gives the impression that it must have something to do with us after all. This is ensured by the very feeling one has toward the artificial thought-being. If one really immerses oneself deeply in this image, it certainly will not let one go. A strange process takes shape in our mind; a process that can be compared to the following: We arrive at an inner mental process that a person goes through every moment. We can think of something, we can make a decision; to do so, we need something we once knew, and we employ all manner of artificial means to recall what we knew. In this effort to recall something from memory that has slipped our minds, we naturally go through a mental process—the act of remembering, as we call it in everyday life. And all the thoughts we use to help us remember something are auxiliary thoughts. Just try to figure out how many such auxiliary thoughts you often have to employ, which you then let go of again in order to arrive at what you want to know. Such auxiliary thoughts are there to open the way to what we actually need to recall at the moment,

[ 11 ] In just this way, though on a somewhat broader scale, the “thinking person” we have described is an auxiliary process. He no longer lets us go; he works within us in such a way that we say he is something that dwells within us as a thought, something that continues to work there, that transforms itself within us; that actually transforms itself into the idea, into the thought that now appears as something that occurs to us when we reflect in the ordinary process of recollection, that appears as something that overwhelms us. As if something were saying: It cannot remain this way; it transforms within you, it unfolds life, it becomes something else! This imposes itself upon us—try the experiment!—it imposes itself upon us in such a way that it tells us: Yes, this is something that has something to do with an existence on earth other than your present one. A kind of reflection on another earthly existence; the thought certainly arises. It is more of a feeling than a thought, a sensation, but one such that we feel what arises in the mind as what we ourselves once were in a previous incarnation on this Earth.

[ 12 ] When we consider it as a whole, anthroposophy is certainly not merely a collection of theories or statements of facts that simply exist; rather, it provides us with guidelines and instructions on how to achieve this or that. Anthroposophy says: You will be led more and more to a point where you can reflect more easily when you do this or that. — One can also say, and this is drawn entirely from the realm of experience: If you proceed in this way, you will gain a mental impression, an emotional impression of the person you used to be. — We arrive at what one might call: an expansion of our memory. Now, what opens up to us here is, at first, really only a mental fact, as long as we are constructing the “thinking human” described. But the thought-person does not remain a thought-person. It transforms into impressions of feeling and mood, and as it does so, we know: In what we feel, we have something that has to do with our previous incarnation. Our memory expands to include our previous incarnation.

[ 13 ] In this incarnation, we remember the things we are mentally engaged with. You all know that it is relatively easy to remember the things our thoughts have focused on. In everyday life, however, what has touched our feelings does not remain so easily vivid in our memory. If you try to think back to what caused you great pain ten or twenty years ago, you will easily recall the mental image; you will transport yourself back in your imagination to what took place then; but you cannot attain a vivid sensation of the pain you felt at that time. The pain fades, the memory of it pours into our mental image. What has just been described is a memory of the soul, a memory of feeling. And indeed, it is in this way that we feel our past incarnation. In fact, what we might call a memory of past incarnations occurs. It cannot simply be regarded as something that plays into the present incarnation, as the bearer of the memory of past incarnations. Just consider how intimately our mental images are intertwined with the expression of those mental images, with our language. Language is the embodied world of ideas. And every human being must relearn language in each individual life. Even the greatest linguist or expert in language must struggle as a child to learn their mother tongue. There has never been a case where a college student learned Greek easily simply because they quickly recalled the Greek they had spoken in past incarnations!

[ 14 ] The poet Hebbel jotted down a few ideas for a play he intended to write. It’s a shame he didn’t follow through; it would have been a very interesting drama. The plot was conceived so that Plato, reincarnated as a college student, would receive the very worst grade from the older Plato during a lecture! Unfortunately, Hebbel’s plan was never carried out. We need not merely consider that teachers are, in part, pedantic and so on. We know that what Hebbel recorded is based on the fact that the imaginative realm, which plays out in the immediate experiences of the imagination, is more or less directly limited to the present incarnation. And it is as has now been indicated, that the first impression from the previous incarnation arises immediately as emotional memory, as a new kind of memory. What we experience as an impression when this memory arises from the thinking human being we have constructed is more of a feeling, but a feeling such that one understands: The impression comes from a fellow who once existed and who was you yourself! — One gets something like a sense of recollection as the first impression of the previous incarnation.

[ 15 ] What has been described here as the mental construction of a thinking person is merely a means. This means transforms into a certain emotional or feeling-based impression. Anyone who approaches anthroposophy actually has, to a greater or lesser extent, the opportunity to easily carry out what has just been described. And when they do so, they will already see that they truly receive an impression within themselves—to use another example—an impression they might describe as follows: I once saw a landscape; I have forgotten what it looks like, but I liked it! — Now, if it was in this life, the landscape will no longer make a very vivid emotional impression; but if the impression came from a previous incarnation, it will make a particularly vivid emotional impression. We can thus form such a particularly vivid impression as an emotional impression from our previous incarnation. And when we then objectively observe the impressions described, we will sometimes have something like a bitter or bittersweet or sour feeling arising from what emerges as the transformation of the thinking human being. This bittersweet or other feeling is the impression our earlier incarnation makes on us; it is a kind of emotional or mental impression.

[ 16 ] This was an attempt to draw your attention to something that can lead to a kind of immediate certainty in every person that they have existed in past lives; a certainty arising from the fact that they experience a feeling, that they have emotional or sensory impressions of which they know: You certainly did not acquire this anywhere in this life. — But such an impression arises in the same way that a memory arises in ordinary life. Now one might ask: How can one know that the impression one has is a memory? — You see, one can only say that such a thing cannot be proven. But the same facts are present as in other aspects of life when we remember something and are of sound mind. Then we can know that what arises in our thoughts truly relates to something we have experienced. The experience itself provides the certainty. The mental image we create in the manner described gives us the certainty that the impression arising in the mind does not relate to something that had to do with us in the present life, but to something that had to do with us in a previous life.

[ 17 ] In this way, we have artificially evoked within ourselves something that connects us to our past lives. We can draw upon various other types of inner, tentative experiences and sensations, and through them move forward once more to evoke within ourselves something akin to feelings from past lives. In another respect, we can also categorize the experiences of what we go through in life; we can group them in different ways. On the one hand, we can group together what we have endured in terms of suffering, pain, and obstacles in life; on the other hand, what has become conscious to us as support, joy, pleasure, and so on.

[ 18 ] Now, let us tentatively adopt the following perspective. We might say: Yes, we have experienced this pain, this suffering. Given our current state in this incarnation and the way normal life unfolds, our pain and suffering seem like something inevitable—something we would, in a certain sense, like to cast aside. Let us, for the sake of argument, not do this. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that for some reason we ourselves have brought about these pains, these sufferings, and these obstacles, for through these past lives—if they truly exist—we have, in a certain sense, become more imperfect through what we have done. After all, through the succession of incarnations, we do not only become more perfect, but in a certain way we also become more imperfect. Or are we not more imperfect than we were before when we have inflicted an insult or a hardship upon another person? We have not only inflicted something upon that person; we have also deprived ourselves of something; we would be of greater worth as a whole personality if we had not done so. We have many such things to our credit—things we have done—and which, because we have done them, constitute our imperfection. If we have caused someone distress and wish to regain the value we previously possessed, what must happen? We must make amends for the harm, we must perform a compensatory act in the world, must devise something that, so to speak, compels us to overcome something. And when we reflect on our sufferings and pains in this light, we can often say: Our sufferings, our pains are suitable, if we overcome them, for gaining strength in overcoming our imperfections. We can become more perfect through suffering. — In ordinary human life, we do not think this way; there we react with aversion to suffering. But we can say: Every pain, every suffering, every obstacle in life should be a hint that we have a wiser person within us than we ourselves are. We regard the person we ourselves are—even though he is the one who encompasses our consciousness—as the less wise one for a time; but we have a wiser one who slumbers in the depths of our soul. We, with our ordinary consciousness, react with aversion to pain and suffering, but the wiser one leads us, against our consciousness, toward these pains, because by overcoming them we can shed something. He leads us toward the pain and suffering; he instructs us to go through it. — It may be a difficult thought at first, but it doesn’t oblige us to do anything; we can simply try it out. We can say: Inside us there is a wiser person who leads us toward suffering and pain, toward something we would most like to avoid in our consciousness. We believe that this is the wiser person within us. In this way, we arrive at the inner conclusion—disturbing to some—that the wiser person always leads us toward what we find unpleasant!

[ 19 ] Let us suppose, then, that there is such a “wiser self” within us that leads us toward what we find unpleasant, so that we may move forward.

[ 20 ] But we do something else as well. Let us take our joys, our blessings, our pleasures, and let us again consider them tentatively: What if you were to create a mental image—regardless of how things actually are—of yourself as someone who has not at all deserved your pleasures, your joys, your blessings, but that they have come to you through the grace of higher spiritual powers. — This need not be the case for everything, but let us tentatively assume that we have brought all our pains and sufferings upon ourselves in such a way that the wiser part of us has led us to them, because we recognize that we necessarily need them as a result of our imperfections and yet can only transcend our imperfections through pain and suffering. And then, for the sake of argument, let us assume the opposite: we attribute our joys to ourselves as if they were not our own merit, but as if they had been given to us by spiritual powers.

[ 21 ] For some vain people, however, this way of thinking may be a bitter pill to swallow. But to try this out is certainly something that, if a person is capable of such a mental image with great intensity in their mind, leads to the fundamental feeling, because it transforms itself and, insofar as it is incorrect, rectifies itself: There lives within you something that has nothing to do with ordinary consciousness, something that is in fact deeper than what you have consciously experienced in this life; there is thus something within you that is a wiser part of yourself, which gladly turns to the eternal divine-spiritual powers that permeate the world. — Then, within the inner life itself, it becomes a certainty that behind the outer lies an inner, higher individuality. Through such exercises of thought, we become aware of the eternal spiritual core of our being. This is extraordinarily significant. With this, we once again have something of which we can say that we can put it into practice.

[ 22 ] Anthroposophy can, in every respect, serve as a guide not merely to know something about the existence of another world, but to feel within oneself that one belongs to another world, to feel oneself as an individuality that passes through successive incarnations.

[ 23 ] There is a third type of experience. With this third type, however, it will be more difficult to use it, so to speak, to truly arrive at a kind of inner experience of karma and reincarnation. But even though what is about to be said is difficult and tedious, it can still be used in such a way that it is taken on a trial basis. And in its honest application to external life, it will become clear—first the probability, if one can believe it, but then an ever-increasing certainty—that our present life is indeed connected to the previous one in this way.

[ 24 ] Let us assume for a moment that we are living out our present life between birth and death, and let us consider the following: when we have, say, reached or passed the age of thirty—we will see that even for those who have not yet reached that point, there will be corresponding experiences later on— we reflect on how, precisely around the age of thirty, we were brought together with this or that person in the outer world; from our thirties up to the age of forty, we were brought together in various life connections with people of the outer world. It then becomes clear to us that the relationships we formed there appear to us as if we had formed them, one might say, in our most mature state of life, so that we were truly fully present as mature human beings. This can become clear to us through reflection. However, a reflection derived from the principles and insights of Spiritual Science can lead us to the conclusion that what I am now saying is correct—not merely based on such consideration, but communicated through spiritual scientific research. So, what I am saying now has not merely been logically deduced from thought, but has been established through research in Spiritual Science; yet logical thinking can corroborate the fact and find it reasonable. When one reflects in this way on various things we have learned—for example, regarding the way the various individual human members emerge in the course of life—we know that in the seventh year the etheric body, in the fourteenth year the astral body, in the twenty-first year the feeling soul, in the twenty-eighth year the intellectual soul, and in the thirty-fifth year the conscious soul emerge—if we reflect on this, then we can say: In the period from the thirtieth to the fortieth year, we are dealing with the development of the intellectual and conscious souls.

[ 25 ] The intellectual soul and the conscious soul are the forces within human nature that bring us into the closest connection with the external physical world, for they are meant to emerge most prominently precisely at that stage of life when we are most actively engaged in interaction with the external physical world. In early childhood, the forces of our physical body are directed outward and shaped by what is still directly enclosed within us. What the human being has acquired as causes in previous incarnations, what has passed through the gate of death with us, what we have gathered in spiritual forces, what we bring with us from our previous life—this works and weaves at the building of our physical body. It works continuously, invisibly, from within into the body. As we grow older, this influence becomes ever weaker; the time draws ever nearer when the old forces have shaped the body. And then comes the time when we face the world with a fully formed organism. What we carry within has found its expression in our outer body. Around the age of thirty—it may be a little earlier or a little later—we face the world in the most physical way; we stand in such a relationship with the world that we are most closely attuned to the physical plane. If we now believe that we have the greatest clarity—outer physical clarity—regarding the life circumstances we are entering into, we must say: these life circumstances we are entering into are actually the ones that, for this incarnation, are least connected to what has been working and weaving within our innermost being since our birth. Nevertheless, we can assume that it is by no means a coincidence that around the age of thirty we are brought together with people who must appear in our environment at precisely that time. Rather, we can assume that our karma is at work here as well, that these people, too, have something to do with one of our earlier incarnations.

[ 26 ] And here the facts of Spiritual Science, which have been researched in various ways, show that very often the people we meet around the age of thirty are so intertwined with us in earlier incarnations that we can be connected to them, usually at the beginning of the immediately preceding incarnation or even earlier, as parents or siblings. At first glance, this is a strange, surprising fact. It does not have to be this way, but many cases show Spiritual Science research that this is indeed the case—that our parents, the people who stood by us at the starting point of our previous life, who brought us into the physical plane, from whom we later outgrew—that they are so karmically intertwined with us that in our new life they are not reunited with us again in our childhood, but only when we have stepped out onto the physical plane to the greatest extent. This need not be the case, for Spiritual Science research very often shows that we are only reunited in a subsequent incarnation with those who might be considered parents, siblings, or blood relatives in general—those with whom we came together in this incarnation around the age of thirty. So the acquaintances we make around the age of thirty in any given incarnation may turn out to be people who are blood relatives of our own from a previous or subsequent incarnation. We can therefore say: The people with whom life brings you together in your thirties—you were either with them as parents and siblings in a previous incarnation, or you can assume that they will be connected to you in that capacity in one of your next incarnations.

[ 27 ] The reverse is also true. When we consider those personalities whom we would least likely choose arbitrarily through external forces suited to the physical plane, that is, our parents and siblings whom we encountered at the beginning of our lives—when we consider them, we very often realize that we ourselves, as if by chance, selected precisely those individuals who guide us into life from childhood onward in another incarnation around the age of thirty; in other words, that in the middle of our previous life we chose those who have now become our parents and siblings.

[ 28 ] What is particularly interesting, then, is the fact—which, strangely enough, turns out to be true—that it is not the case that, in successive incarnations, we find ourselves in the same circumstances with the personalities we encounter; nor is it the case that we meet them at the same stages of life as before. Nor is the exact opposite the case: it is not the personalities we met at the end of life who are connected to the beginning of our life in another incarnation, but rather the personalities we meet in the middle of life. Thus, neither the personalities who come together with us at the beginning of life nor those at the end, but rather the personalities who now come into contact with us in the middle of life were around us as our blood relatives at the beginning of a previous incarnation. Those who were with us at the beginning of life back then now appear in the middle of our lives; and as for those who are now around us at the beginning of our lives, we can assume that we will come together with them in the middle of one of our next incarnations, that they will come into connection with us as our freely chosen, somewhere chosen life companions. Such are the strange karmic connections.

[ 29 ] What I have just said are findings from Spiritual Science research. But I have already pointed out that when one considers the inner connections between the beginning of life in one incarnation and the middle of life in another, as Spiritual Science research reveals, one realizes that this is not something nonsensical or useless. The other side of the matter is precisely that through such things, when they are brought to us and when we approach them sensibly, life becomes bright and clear. Life becomes bright and clear when we do not simply accept everything—one might say dully, not to say foolishly; it becomes bright and clear when we try to understand and interpret what happens to us in life in such a way that we make concrete the relationships that are not yet fully comprehensible as long as we speak of karma only in very abstract and general terms.

[ 30 ] It is worth reflecting on this: Why is it that, in the middle of our lives, we are literally driven by karma—seemingly with all our mental faculties—to make this or that acquaintance, about whom we might say: doesn’t it seem as though this connection was formed independently and objectively? — This is precisely because such individuals were blood relatives of ours in a previous life and are now brought together with us through our karma, because we have something to do with them.

[ 31 ] If we make such reflections every time we consider the course of our own lives, we will see that light truly enters our lives. Even if we are mistaken once, and even if it is wrong ten times over: with any person we meet in life, we can still arrive at the right conclusion. And when, based on such reflections, we say: “We met this person here or there”—such a thought is something that serves as a signpost leading us to other things we would not otherwise have noticed, and which, through their convergence, give us ever greater certainty regarding the accuracy of the individual facts.

[ 32 ] Karmic connections are simply not the kind that can be grasped in an instant. We must acquire the highest insights into life—the most important insights that illuminate our lives—slowly and gradually. People, however, are reluctant to believe this. It is easier to believe that one might discover through some flash of insight: I was together with these or those personalities in a previous life, or I myself was this or that person. — That all of this must be knowledge acquired slowly is perhaps an uncomfortable thought, but nevertheless it is so. Even if we already harbor the belief that this might be the case, we must continue to investigate, and our belief will then become certainty. Even regarding what is already becoming increasingly probable in this realm, we make progress through research. We wall ourselves off from the spiritual world if we allow ourselves to make hasty judgments in such matters.

[ 33 ] Try to reflect on what has been said today about the acquaintances we make in the middle of our lives and their connection to people who were close to us in a previous incarnation. You will arrive at very fruitful thoughts; especially if you also take into account what is said in the book *The Education of the Child from the Perspective of Spiritual Science*. Then it will become clear that the result of your reflection is in harmony with what is stated in this book.

[ 34 ] However, what has been said today must be accompanied by a serious warning: The true spiritual researcher is careful not to jump to conclusions; he allows things to come to him on their own. When they are there, he first examines them with ordinary logic. Then something cannot happen that I recently encountered once again and that is quite characteristic of the way people today wish to oppose anthroposophy. A very intelligent gentleman said to me—I say this without any irony, with complete conviction that he really is a very intelligent gentleman—: When I read what is written in your book *Outline of Esoteric Science*, I must say that it appears so logical, so consistent with the rest of the facts the world presents, that I must admit one could arrive at these things through mere reflection. These things need not be the result of supersensible research. What is said in this book is not at all doubtful; it corresponds to reality. — I was able to assure this gentleman that I do not believe I would have arrived at these conclusions through mere reflection, and that, with all due respect for his intelligence, I do not believe he would have discovered these facts through mere reflection either. It is indeed true that everything that can be logically understood in the field of Spiritual Science could not really be discovered through mere reflection! The fact that one can logically examine and comprehend a matter should not be a reason to doubt its spiritual-scientific origin! On the contrary, I believe it should be a source of reassurance that findings of Spiritual Science can be recognized as unquestionably correct through logical reasoning. It certainly cannot be the ambition of the Spiritual Scientist to say nothing but illogical things in order to gain credence. You see that the Spiritual Scientist himself cannot claim to have discovered these things through reasoning. But when one reflects on the things discovered through methods of Spiritual Science, they can appear so logical that they seem too logical, so that one no longer has any faith in the sources of Spiritual Science from which these things originate. This is indeed the case with all things said to have arisen on the basis of pure Spiritual Science research.

[ 35 ] Even if what has been said here today seems absurd to you at first, try to think about these things logically. I truly would not have been able to deduce this from ordinary logical thinking had spiritual facts not led me to it, but now that it is here, one can examine it logically. And then one will see: the more subtle and conscientious one is in this examination, the more it will become clear that everything is correct. Even regarding matters where one cannot verify their accuracy—such as what was said today about parents and siblings in one life and acquaintances in the middle of another—one must conclude, simply from the way the various elements relate within the context, that they make an impression that is not merely probable but borders on certainty. And in particular, a certainty proves to be well-founded when one tests these things in real life. With many of the personalities one encounters, one will see one’s own behavior and that of others in a completely different light when, so to speak, one faces someone one meets in the midst of life as if one had been siblings together in a previous life. And through this, the entire relationship will become much more fruitful than if one were merely plodding dully through life.

[ 36 ] Thus we can say: Anthroposophy is increasingly becoming not only a source of knowledge and insight into life, but also a guide that shows us how to understand the conditions of life and how to make them luminous—not only for ourselves, but also for our attitude toward life and for our life’s mission. It is important that we do not believe we are spoiling our immediate, spontaneous experience of life. Only fearful people who do not take life entirely seriously can believe that. We, however, must be clear that by getting to know life more closely, we also make life more fruitful and meaningful. Whatever comes to us in life should be brought into a perspective through anthroposophy, through which all forces become richer, more confident, and more hopeful than they were before they were brought into this perspective.