The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] For years now, we have been examining anthroposophical truths and insights here. We have sought to approach what we feel compelled to call anthroposophy from a wide variety of perspectives and to take in whatever may emerge from these anthroposophical insights. It will now be advisable, particularly in the course of the reflections we have recently undertaken here and will continue to undertake, to raise the question: What is it that anthroposophy is actually meant to give—and can give—to the people of the present, to the people of our time? We already know quite a bit about what it contains through our reflections, and we can therefore approach the question on the basis of our familiarity with certain anthroposophical truths: What can anthroposophy offer people of the present day?

[ 2 ] When we approach this question, we must above all be careful to make a clear distinction—at least in our thoughts—between anthroposophical life and the anthroposophical movement on the one hand, and any social institution, or anything that might be labeled the Anthroposophical Society, on the other. In reality, of course, the whole of present-day life will inevitably require, time and again, that those who wish to pursue anthroposophy unite in a social manner. But if this union is necessary, it is necessary more because of the whole of present-day life outside of anthroposophy than, for example, because of the content, the attitude, or anything else within anthroposophy itself. Anthroposophy in and of itself could certainly be presented today just as anything else is currently presented to people. Anthroposophy as such could—and this is entirely conceivable—be presented just as chemistry is presented to people today, and people could approach the anthroposophical truths just as they approach chemistry or mathematics. What then follows for the soul of the individual—how the soul of the individual takes in anthroposophy and makes it an impulse of life—that could then be a matter for each individual. An Anthroposophical Society or any association dedicated to promoting anthroposophy renders necessary the circumstance, the fact, that anthroposophy as such is something that enters our present as something entirely new, as a completely new insight, and is to be taken up by spiritual life, whereas people out in non-anthroposophical life actually need not only, let us say, the general state of mind of the present to allow anthroposophy to take effect upon them, but also, in addition to this ordinary state of mind that people have today, a special preparation of the mind and the heart. And such a preparation of the mind and the heart can only be acquired through living together in our anthroposophical branches or anthroposophical societies or the like. There we acquire a certain way of thinking, a certain way of feeling, so that we thereby become able to view things seriously which people who stand out in the world today and have hardly heard anything about anthroposophy must, quite naturally and understandably, perhaps even regard as wild fantasies.

[ 3 ] Certainly, one might object that anthroposophy is also disseminated through public lectures that address people who are completely unprepared. But precisely those who, in the strictest sense, belong to our circles socially will know that the entire tone and manner of an anthroposophical lecture must be different when delivered to an unprepared audience than when addressed to those to whom one can speak in such a way that, through the impulse of their hearts, through the very nature of their inner disposition, take seriously what the general public is not yet able to take seriously. And what has now been hinted at will not improve in the near future—there can be no question of that—but will become ever more pronounced and acute in the near future. External opposition to everything anthroposophical will grow ever greater in the world, precisely because anthroposophy is, in our present time, something of the utmost relevance, something of the utmost necessity, and because human resistance is, in essence, always strongest against what is most necessary and most relevant.

[ 4 ] Now the question might arise: Why is that? Why is the rebellion of human hearts in any given age strongest against precisely what that age needs most of all? — This is something an anthroposophist should be able to grasp, but it is too difficult to explain even in the vaguest terms to an unprepared audience.

[ 5 ] The anthroposophist knows that there are Luciferic forces and beings that have lagged behind general evolution. These forces work through human hearts and human souls, and they have the greatest interest in making their attacks most intense during times when the striving upward is at its greatest. Since the rebellion of human hearts against that which strives forward in human development stems from the Luciferic forces, and since these forces will launch their attacks when they are, so to speak, in dire straits, these attacks—and thus also the rebellion of human hearts—must be at their strongest during such times. Thus we will understand that the truths most significant for humanity have always taken root in human development precisely because they had to reckon with the fact that they would encounter the strongest resistance. Something that does not differ greatly from what otherwise occurs in the world will hardly encounter strong resistance. But what enters the world because humanity has long thirsted for it and has not received it is at the same time what provokes the strongest attacks from the Luciferic forces. And so a society is really nothing more than a protective wall against this entire behavior of the outside world, which is characterized as understandable. One must have something within which one can advocate these things in such a way that one can say: Those to whom one speaks, or with whom one is together, show a certain understanding of the matter, and the others, who have not united with those who speak of it, have no business with it. — Regarding what is advocated in public, all people believe that it concerns them and that they must pass judgment on it, naturally goaded by the Luciferic forces. From this we see that while it is necessary to pursue anthroposophy, anthroposophy brings into our present something that must come and is demanded by the spiritual thirst and the need for spiritual nourishment of our time, and which will come in any case, in one way or another. For the spiritual powers dedicated to evolution ensure that it does indeed come in.

[ 6 ] Therefore, in a purely anthroposophical sense, we can ask the question: What are the most important things that anthroposophy is currently meant to instill in humanity? They will be the things for which humanity today thirsts most deeply, the things that are most essential. It is precisely in answering such a question that one is most likely to be misunderstood. That is why it is so necessary to first distinguish between the ideas of anthroposophy and the Anthroposophical Society. For what anthroposophy is meant to bring to humanity are new insights, new truths. But a society can never—and least of all in our time—be bound to any particular truths. The question would be the most nonsensical of all: What faith do you anthroposophists hold? — It is nonsensical if by “anthroposophists” one means a person who belongs to the Anthroposophical Society; for one would thereby be assuming that an entire society would have a common conviction, a common dogma. That cannot be. The moment an entire society—in accordance with its statutes—were required to swear to a common dogma, it would cease to be a society, and sectarianism would begin. Here we have the boundary where a society ceases to be a society. The moment a person were obliged to hold a belief demanded by the society, one would be dealing with sectarianism. Therefore, a society that dedicates itself to what has now been characterized can do so only from the perspective that it is acting under a natural spiritual impulse. One might ask: Which people come here to hear about anthroposophy? — And one could say: They are those who want to hear something about spiritual matters, who have an impulse to hear something about spiritual matters. — This urge is not a dogma. For when someone seeks something without saying, “I will find this or that,” but simply seeks as they seek, this seeking is the common ground that a society which does not wish to become a sect must possess. But quite apart from that, the question is: What does Anthroposophy as such offer humanity? — And one must say: Anthroposophy as such offers humanity something that is similar, yet more spiritual and, in relation to the human soul, deeper and more significant than all the great spiritual truths that have ever been brought to humanity.

[ 7 ] Now, among the things we have considered in the course of our reflections, there are some of which one can say: they are such that they cannot really be described as significant or characteristic when we speak of what present-day humanity is actually meant to receive as something new. But they are fundamental things, fundamental truths that are truly entering humanity as something new. And we need not go very far to characterize what actually constitutes the newness of the anthroposophical movement. It lies in the fact that the two truths that belong, so to speak, to our most fundamental matters, approach the human soul in an ever more convincing way: the two truths of reincarnation and karma. One can say: What the anthroposophist finds first and foremost on his path, when he strives earnestly today, is the necessity of the knowledge of reincarnation and karma. We cannot say, for example, that in Western culture certain things, such as the possibility of ascending to higher worlds, appear through anthroposophy as something fundamentally new; for anyone familiar with Western development, anyone who knows I only want to say that there have been mystics, even such mystics as Jakob Böhme or Swedenborg or the entire Böhmean school—who also knows that this—even if it was often controversial—has always been believed, that it has always existed as a view: that human beings can rise from the ordinary sensory world to higher worlds; so that this, then, is not the fundamentally new thing. Furthermore, certain other things are not the fundamentally new thing either. Even when we speak of what is fundamental in relation to evolution; when we speak, for example, of the Christ question: in relation to the anthroposophical movement as such, it is not the most fundamental thing; rather, the most fundamental thing is the form that the Christ question takes as a result of reincarnation and karma being accepted as truths in people’s hearts. The illumination that the Christ question receives on the basis of the truths of reincarnation and karma—that is the essential point. For the Christ question has occupied humanity in a truly profound way at various times throughout history. We may recall the times of Gnosticism, or the times when esoteric Christianity—for example, among those who gathered under the sign of the Grail or the Rosicrucians—delved deeply into the Christ question. So that is not the fundamental aspect. The question becomes fundamental and essential for Western minds, for their understanding and religious needs, only through the truths of reincarnation and karma, so that whoever experiences an expansion of their mind through the knowledge of reincarnation and karma also necessarily demands a new understanding of old questions. — As for the knowledge of reincarnation and karma, we must say the exact opposite. At most, we can point out that reincarnation and karma, one might say, timidly find their way into Western culture at the time of Lessing, who touches upon them in his *The Education of the Human Race*. We then also find further examples of how deeper minds address this question. But that reincarnation and karma assert themselves as a component of human consciousness, that they are taken up into the heart and mind of the human being in the way that happens through anthroposophy—that is precisely something that can truly happen only in our present time. Therefore, one could say: The relationship of a person of the present to anthroposophy is characterized by the fact that they can come to be in a position to take reincarnation and karma into themselves as insights, based on certain prerequisites. That is the essential point at stake. Basically, everything else then follows more or less naturally from whether the individual is able to relate to reincarnation and karma in the appropriate manner.

[ 8 ] Now, when we consider the question in this light, we must also realize what it means for Western humanity—and for humanity as a whole—if reincarnation and karma become insights that, so to speak, become part of everyday life, just as other truths have become part of everyday life. In the near future, reincarnation and karma must become part of human consciousness to an even greater extent than, for example, the Copernican worldview did. With regard to the latter, we need only consider how quickly it took root in people’s minds. Just think of what I also said in my public lecture: how recently, in terms of world history, this Copernican worldview has spread, and consider that this worldview has taken hold of people even down to the lowest schools.

[ 9 ] There is, however, a significant difference between this Copernican worldview and the anthroposophical worldview with regard to their understanding of the human soul, insofar as the latter is built upon the foundation of reincarnation and karma. To characterize this difference, one truly needs an anthroposophical gathering of people sitting together in good will; for there is actually something one must say in order to characterize this difference—something that is bound to turn the stomachs of those outside the anthroposophical movement.

[ 10 ] What, then, was it that led people to adopt the Copernican worldview so quickly, so readily, and even from childhood onward? Those who have heard me speak about the Copernican worldview or about modern natural science will certainly know that I do not pass any kind of negative judgment on this modern scientific view. Therefore, if one truly wishes to characterize this particular difference, it is permissible to say: To embrace this worldview, which is limited purely to a characterization of space, to external spatial relationships, an epoch of superficiality was necessary! — And the reason why the Copernican worldview took root so quickly is none other than that people had become superficial over the course of an entire age. Superficiality in the conception of the world was the necessary precondition for the Copernican worldview to take root. Depth, inner life—that is, precisely the opposite—will be necessary if the truths of anthroposophy are to take root, and especially with regard to the basic and fundamental truths of reincarnation and karma. If, therefore, we come to the conviction today that the truths of reincarnation and karma must take root in humanity in a far, far stronger way and on a much greater scale, we must at the same time be clear that in this regard we stand at the threshold of two eras: the age of superficiality—and the age of necessary deepening, of the innerization of the human soul and the human heart. This is what we must, above all, take to heart if we wish to be fully aware of what anthroposophy has to offer modern humanity today. And then we must ask ourselves: How will this life have to take shape under the influence of the insights of reincarnation and karma?

[ 11 ] We need only consider what it actually means for the human heart to realize that reincarnation and karma are a truth. What does this mean for the whole of human consciousness, for the entire range of feeling and thinking of the human soul? — It is nothing less, as anyone can see if they reflect on these things, than an expansion of the human self through knowledge, through insight beyond certain boundaries that are otherwise set for knowledge and insight. For the idea that one can know and perceive only what lies between birth and death was, after all, emphasized with the utmost clarity in the past age, and the conviction that one could at most look up in faith to one who enters a spiritual world with knowledge was growing ever stronger. But the matter is not of such great significance if one remains at the level of intellectual understanding; rather, it only becomes significant when one moves from the intellectual level to the moral level, to the spiritual-moral level. Only then does the full greatness and significance of the ideas of reincarnation and karma become apparent.

[ 12 ] We could cite hundreds of examples to support what has just been said, but let us mention just one. Consider the people of the early periods of Western civilization and the vast majority of people still living within Western civilization today. Even if these people still cling most intensely to the belief that the human being remains intact in terms of his essence after passing through the gate of death on this earth, this entire spiritual life of the human being following death is nevertheless removed from earthly existence—without any thought of reincarnation or karma. We are dealing with the entry into a spiritual world; but with the exception of precisely those “exceptions” accepted by those of a more or less spiritualistic disposition—namely, that the deceased may, in exceptional cases, exert an influence—we are dealing—if reincarnation and karma do not apply—with the idea that whatever takes place in a spiritual world, be it punishment or reward, once a person has passed through the gate of death, is removed from the earthly sphere as such, and that what results from their life takes place on an entirely different, otherworldly stage.

[ 13 ] When a person comes to understand reincarnation and karma, the situation changes entirely. We must be clear that what lives in the soul of such a person is not merely significant for a sphere beyond the earth once they have passed through the gate of death, but that the future configuration of the earth depends on what they experience between birth and death. The earth will, so to speak, have the outer configuration that the people who were there before give it. The entire planet in its future configuration, the coexistence of human beings in the future, depends on how people lived in their previous incarnations. This is the moral aspect that is linked to these ideas; so that a person who has accepted this knows: Just as I was in that life, so will I influence everything that happens in the future, the entire culture of the future! — With the knowledge of reincarnation and karma, something expands beyond the boundaries of birth and death, something that human beings have hitherto known only within the narrowest limits: the sense of responsibility! Here we see an heightened sense of responsibility emerging. In this is imprinted what appears as a profoundly significant moral consequence of ideas such as reincarnation and karma. The person who does not believe in reincarnation and karma can say: When I have passed through the gate of death, I will at most be punished or rewarded for what I have done here; I will experience the consequences of this life in another world; but that other world is under the rule of certain spiritual powers, and they will prevent what I carry within me from becoming too harmful to the whole world. — But one who knows that reincarnation and karma are concepts derived from knowledge can no longer say this; for he knows that through reincarnation, people will become what they are according to how they lived in their previous life.

[ 14 ] What will be significant and important is that the fundamental ideas of the anthroposophical worldview will permeate people’s emotional lives and attitudes and emerge as moral impulses of which people in past times had, in essence, no inkling at all. The sense of responsibility, as we have seen, will spring forth in a way that was previously impossible; and other moral ideas will then necessarily arise in a similar way to this sense of responsibility. As human beings living under the influence of the ideas of reincarnation and karma, we will come to realize that our lives cannot be judged merely on the basis of conditions that play out between birth and death, but rather on the basis of conditions that extend over many, many lifetimes.

[ 15 ] When we approach other people under the conditions that have existed up to now, we develop sympathy, antipathy, greater or lesser love, and the like toward them. It must be said that the way people relate to one another today is, in truth, the result of a view that conceives of life on Earth as confined to the period between birth and death. In truth, we live exactly as we would have to live if it were indeed true that human beings were here on Earth only once. We can say: We encounter our friends, parents, siblings, and so on in such a way that, in everything we feel and experience, the very fact that we are on Earth only once is present. And a truly extraordinary transformation of life will take place if the belief that reincarnation and karma exist is not merely a theory living in a few minds, as is still often the case today. To this day, it remains largely a theory. One could say that today there are a number of anthroposophists who believe in reincarnation and karma; yet they live as if reincarnation and karma did not exist, but rather as if life were confined once and for all between birth and death. It cannot be otherwise. For the habits that life brings with it change less rapidly than ideas do. Only when we introduce correct and concrete ideas about reincarnation and karma—and these are the only ones that matter—into our lives will we see how such ideas can enrich this life.

[ 16 ] We see that, as human beings, we enter into life by coming together at its very beginning with our parents, siblings, and so on. We see that, by this natural arrangement, we necessarily find ourselves in the early stages of our lives primarily in such a way that those around us are placed there more or less by natural elements: through blood ties, proximity of location, and so on. Then, as we grow up, we see how these circles of blood kinship expand, how we enter into entirely different connections with this or that person that are no longer dependent on blood kinship. The point is that these things must first be understood karmically; then they will shed a whole new light on life. For karma only becomes meaningful for life when we grasp it concretely, when we truly apply to life what Spiritual Science research reveals. This can, of course, only be established by Spiritual Science research, but it can then be applied to life.

[ 17 ] A significant karmic question is essentially this: How is it that, for example, in this present life we come together with people with whom we are related by blood in a way that is understandable to everyone? Why do we come together with them at the beginning of this life? — Well, Spiritual Science research on this question reveals something very peculiar. As a rule—for even if specific facts are cited, there are still countless exceptions—we were already together with the people we meet involuntarily at the beginning of our lives in a previous life, most often even in the one immediately preceding it, in the middle of our lives, that is, in our thirties. There we chose them voluntarily in some way, being drawn to them by the inclinations of our hearts and so on. We would be quite mistaken if we regarded the people we meet at the beginning of our lives as those with whom we were also together at the beginning of another life. Not at the beginning, not at the end, but in the middle of a life were we, through voluntary choice, together with those whom we then meet in a subsequent life through blood kinship. Very often it is the case that one is, in the next life, in a father-mother relationship or a sibling relationship with the person one was married to—that is, the person one chose by free will. Spiritual Science research shows that what one would assume based on speculation—what one would think if one were to speculate wildly about things—is usually wrong. The facts usually throw a wrench into the works of speculation.

[ 18 ] Let us just consider for a moment the fact described above and understand it as it truly emerges from Spiritual Science when investigated without prejudice—how it broadens our entire attitude and our entire relationship to life. It has gradually come to pass in the course of Western culture that people can now, in fact, do nothing other than speak of chance when they reflect on their relationship to those with whom they are related by blood. People speak of chance; in many cases, they already believe in chance. How could one believe in anything other than chance if one conceives of life as confined solely between birth and death? For this one life, one will of course admit that one is responsible for the consequences of the events one has brought about oneself. By carrying one’s own self beyond what takes place between birth and death, by feeling one’s self connected to other human beings in their other incarnations, one feels responsible for one’s own actions just as one does here in life. More and more people will have to experience these concrete facts. The general idea that one has chosen one’s parents oneself in the sense of karma does not yet amount to anything special. But one gains a mental image of this choice—one that can now truly be confirmed by all other life experiences—when one knows: Those whom you have now chosen most unconsciously, you chose in a previous life at a moment of your greatest consciousness, when you were at your most mature.

[ 19 ] This may be unpleasant for some people today, but it is nonetheless true. For one will learn, if one is dissatisfied with one’s blood relatives, that one has oneself laid the groundwork for this very dissatisfaction, that one will therefore have to make different provisions for the next incarnation; and then the idea of reincarnation and karma will bear fruit in life. And that is precisely the point: these ideas are not meant to satisfy mere curiosity or the like, but rather for our own perfection and thus for the perfection of life as a whole. Furthermore, we will know that what has been said entails something similar for the present life and its consequences; that those with whom we are brought together in our thirties—when we believe we are judging with our full reason—will be so connected to us that in a future life they will meet us right at the starting point, perhaps as parents or siblings. When we understand what is at stake in the formation of family configurations—in the coming together of these or those people—our sense of responsibility will expand significantly under the concepts of reincarnation and karma.

[ 20 ] I said that we can emphasize that these things prove to be comprehensible in life. Must not the forces that bring a human individuality down into a family be very significant and powerful? But they cannot be strong in the person who is now incarnated; for there they cannot have much to do with the worlds into which he descends. Must it not be understandable that the forces acting in the depths of the soul must originate from times in past lives, when the connections between us were brought about by the strong power of friendship, of “conscious love,” if one may call it that? What has operated as conscious forces in one life acts as unconscious forces in the next; what occurs in a more or less unconscious manner can be explained in this way.

[ 21 ] However, it is necessary not to let the facts of research cloud one’s judgment, because these facts almost always thwart speculation, so that one can only find the logic in the facts after the fact. One should not be tempted to proceed by way of speculation; for then one will not arrive at the correct point of view, but always at something similar, which can be characterized by that conversation I have already recounted. Namely, in a city in southern Germany, a theologian once said to me: “I have read your writings and have seen that they are so logical; so I thought to myself, if they are so logical, then perhaps their author arrived at them by the path of pure logic.” — If I had therefore made an effort to write less “logically,” I would have earned merit in the eyes of the theologian in question, because he would then have seen that the presentations were not arrived at by mere logic. But anyone who examines the writings will see that the logical forms were given to them afterward, and that they were not derived through logic. I, at least, could not do so; I assure you of that. Perhaps others could arrive at them through pure logic.

[ 22 ] When we look at things this way, it becomes clear that the most important impulses arising from anthroposophy must be moral and emotional in nature. Today we have emphasized the sense of responsibility in various areas. We could just as well consider love and compassion, which take on all manner of forms under the influence of the ideas of reincarnation and karma. This is also why, over the years, we have placed such great emphasis—even in our public lectures—on always viewing anthroposophy in relation to life, in relation to the most immediate phenomena of life. Thus we have spoken of the mission of anger, of the human conscience, of prayer, of the upbringing of the child, of the various stages of human life—and have placed all these things in the light in which they must be placed if one assumes the ideas of reincarnation and karma to be true. And there it became clear to us how transformatively these ideas of reincarnation and karma intervene in life. This, in fact, constituted the main part of our reflections: that we considered the fundamental ideas in their effect on life. Even if the significance is not always, I would say, derived in abstract terms from reincarnation and karma—the significance that, for example, affects mental dispositions, or the conscience, character, and prayer—even if this is not always derived in such a way that one says: If one accepts reincarnation and karma, then it follows—and so on—yet all our reflections were driven by the impulse of reincarnation and karma. And this will be significant for the near future: not only will the science of the soul be influenced by the ideas of reincarnation and karma, but so will the other sciences. If you follow a lecture such as the last public one: “Death in Humans, Animals, and Plants,” you will see that the aim was to show how people will learn to think about death in plants, animals, and humans when they perceive within themselves that which transcends the individual human life. We arrived at the significance of death in humans, animals, and plants by realizing: the Self lives differently in humans, differently in animals, and yet differently in plants. In humans, it is an individual ego; in animals, it is the group soul; and in plants, we are dealing with a part of the entire planetary soul system. Consequently, in plants we understood what appears to us externally as death and new life to be merely a falling asleep and waking up. With animals it is different again; there it is similar to what happens within ourselves, in that the self advances through an incarnation, overcoming certain instincts and so on. But it was only with the human being, who brings about his own incarnations, that we realized that only death offers the guarantee of immortality, and that the word “death” in this sense should be used only in reference to humans, or that, if we use the word “death” generally, we would have to emphasize how the human being, the animal, and the plant die, and that we would have to use an entirely new word for animals and plants.

[ 23 ] Everything else in anthroposophy is such that the human soul demands to learn about this or that; but, so to speak, the “other” is not, in essence, what defines the anthroposophist. He will come to certain things in due time. If he is initially able to take in the ideas of reincarnation and karma in the sense in which we must present them—as distinct from older ideas of reincarnation and karma, such as those found in Buddhism—then, in the course of his research, the individual will naturally come to other things on his own. That is why the main part of our work was devoted to considering the influence of reincarnation and karma on the whole of human life.

[ 24 ] In this regard, it should be clear that work within any anthroposophical association or society must be understood in the context of this mission of anthroposophy, It is therefore understandable that we actually speak of those questions which may at first appear most important to the outsider—to those less touched by anthroposophy as such—only when we wish to ascend from the fundamental truths to those things that are closest to every soul, precisely because it is a Western soul. It would certainly be conceivable that one might take up the new element—which has today been characterized as fundamentally new—from anthroposophy and initially pay no attention at all to any religious differences among people. For it is not at all the characteristic feature of this new Spiritual Science that comparative religious studies are pursued; although that is certainly done today, and indeed quite extensively. But compared to what is otherwise being done today, what is being done by the Theosophists is by no means the more spiritual. What is significant, however, is that in anthroposophy all these things are brought into the light that emanates from the ideas of reincarnation and karma.

[ 25 ] In particular, the sense of responsibility will grow considerably in another respect under the influence of reincarnation and karma. If we consider just for a moment what has been said today about the relationship between blood relatives and freely chosen individuals, we can already see that a certain contrast exists: What is the most inner, the most hidden of impulses in one life is the most obvious in the other. When we express our deepest feelings of friendship toward people in one incarnation, we thereby prepare the ground for an outer relationship, a blood relationship, or the like. It is similar in another area. The way we think about something that seems to us the most unreal in this incarnation will become the most decisive factor, determining the actual impulses for the next incarnation. The way we think—whether we surrender to a truth with a light heart, or whether we approach a truth critically using every means at our disposal, whether we possess a sense of truth or fanaticism—this takes on a completely different relationship to human development through the familiarization with the ideas of reincarnation and karma than is the case today. For whatever we hold deep within us in the present incarnation will be most evident in the next. And whoever lies frequently or has a tendency to accept this or that lightly will become a reckless person in the next or a subsequent incarnation; for what we think, how we think, how we relate to the truth—in short, what is within us in this incarnation—will determine the nature of our behavior in our next incarnation. If, for example, without examining the matter closely, we regard a person as bad in this incarnation, whereas if we were to examine them closely, might prove to be a good person, or at most a somewhat good one—if we carry this thought through life without examining it, it will turn out that by forming judgments about people in this way, we will become intolerant, quarrelsome, and hateful people in our next incarnation! Here we have yet another expansion of the moral-emotional element within our soul.

[ 26 ] It is of the utmost importance that we take such matters very seriously and that we familiarize ourselves with the idea of the fundamental significance of taking into our innermost being, into our whole soul, that which is now truly entering the spiritual development of the present as something new—and thereby, in a certain way, renewing everything else—through the ideas of reincarnation and karma. That is why we have placed the greatest emphasis on this throughout the entire course of our anthroposophical movement, and why we treat other questions—which certainly arise out of necessity from these—only in the way that must necessarily follow. Thus, for example, our distinctive character, our entire way of conducting anthroposophy within our community, if things are presented truthfully as we do them, could never be understood as being in opposition to a movement that places reincarnation and karma at the center of its considerations. The opposition to us must always be constructed from the outside; it is impossible for it to arise if one truly presents the things that happen within our circle correctly. We need only consider this one point: how little is actually spoken of the Christ question within our circle! No one should therefore exaggerate what is said simply because they feel it is particularly important to their heart, but must view it objectively; so that no one has any reason, simply because this or that arises as a necessary consequence of a mature understanding of reincarnation and karma, to say that we speak much about the Christ question. For that is not the fundamental thing that defines the anthroposophist today, but rather what is entering the world anew, and that what is entering anew is truly being received by humanity. So we must understand this: that it would actually only be possible to construct an opposition through an incorrect, or on the basis of an incorrect, representation of the way we conduct things here; for such opposition must always be constructed from outside us. One can be an opponent of us, but we do not need to construct any opposition; for not caring about something does not mean opposition, otherwise one would have to be an opponent of everything one does not care about!

[ 27 ] I wanted to impress this upon you in particular: that we reflect on what actually constitutes the fundamental, the new, in anthroposophy. Of course, this is not to say that an anthroposophical society is one that believes in reincarnation and karma. Rather, it is to say that just as a time once ripened for the acceptance of the Copernican worldview, so has our time ripened to bring the teaching of reincarnation and karma into the general consciousness of humanity. And what is to happen in the course of human development will happen, no matter how many forces rise up against it. And with reincarnation and karma, with the true understanding of reincarnation and karma, all other things will follow of their own accord. The other things arise through the light that radiates from reincarnation and karma.

[ 28 ] It was certainly once quite useful to consider what actually constitutes the fundamental distinction between those who feel drawn to anthroposophy and those who develop opposition to it. It is not, in fact, the acceptance of a higher world as such; rather, it is what the mental images of the higher world experience through the presupposition of the ideas of reincarnation and karma. With this, we have indicated today what can be regarded as the essence of the anthroposophical worldview.