Karma
GA 235
24 February 1924, Dornach
IV. Karma Impulses through Recurring Earth Lives
Today I wish, primarily, to bring before you some of the more comprehensive aspects in the development of karma, in order to be able gradually to go more and more into matters of detail. If we wish to gain insight into the course of karma, we must be able to imagine how the human being gathers his whole organization together as he descends out of the spiritual world into the physical. You will understand, my dear friends, that in the language of today there are no suitable expressions for certain processes which are practically unknown to modern civilization, and that, therefore, the expressions employed here for what takes place under certain conditions can only be approximate.
When we descend out of the spiritual into the physical world for an earth life, we have, to begin with, prepared our physical body by means of the stream of heredity. We shall see how this physical body is, nevertheless, connected in a certain sense with what the human being experiences between death and a new birth. Today, however, it will suffice if we are clear about the fact that the physical body is given to us from the earth; on the other hand, those members which we may describe as the higher members of the human being—the ether body, astral body, and ego—come down from the spiritual world.
The human being attracts, so to speak, the ether body out of the whole universal ether before he unites himself with the physical body which is given to him by heredity. The union of the soul-spirit man—i.e. ego, astral body, and ether body—with the physical human embryo can ensue only through the gradual withdrawal of the ether body of the maternal organism from the physical human embryo.
The human being, thus, unites himself with the physical germ after having attracted his ether body out of the common universal ether. The more precise descriptions of these events will occupy us later. At present we are to interest ourselves mainly in asking: Whence come the individual members of human nature which the human being possesses during earth life between birth and death?
The physical organism comes, as we have seen, from the stream of heredity, the etheric organism out of the universal ether from which it is attracted. The astral organism—of which the human being remains, we might say, in all respects unconscious or only sub-consciously aware during his earth life—this astral body contains all the results of the life between death and a new birth. And it is a fact that between death and a new birth, according to what the human being has become through his preceding earth lives, he comes, in the most manifold way, into relationship with other human souls who are also in the life between death and a new birth, or with other spiritual beings of a higher cosmic order who do not descend to earth in a human body, but have their existence in the spiritual world.
All that a man brings over from his former lives on earth according to what he was, according to what he has done, all this is met by the sympathy or antipathy of the beings whom he learns to know while he passes through the world between death and a new birth. What sympathies and antipathies he meets among the higher beings according to what he has done in his preceding earth life is of great significance for karma during this period; but, above all, it is of deep significance that he comes into relationship with those human souls with whom he was in relationship on earth, and that a peculiar reflection takes place between his own nature and the nature of the souls with whom he had this relationship. Let us assume that someone has had a good relationship with a soul whom he now encounters again between death and a new birth. All that the good relationship implies had lived in him during former earth lives. Then this good relationship is reflected in the soul, when this soul is encountered between death and a new birth. And it is really true that the human being during this passage through the life between death and a new birth sees himself reflected everywhere in the souls with whom he is now associated because he was associated with them on earth. If he did good to a human being, something is mirrored to him from the other soul; if he did him an evil turn, something is likewise mirrored to him from the other soul. And he has the feeling—if I may use the word “feeling” with the reservation made at the beginning of these observations—he has the feeling: “You have advanced this human soul. What you have experienced through advancing him, what you then felt for this soul, that impulse in your feelings which led to your attitude toward him, your own inner experiences in performing the deed that advanced this soul, come back to you from him. They are reflected to you from this soul. In another case you have injured a soul; what has lived in you during this injury is reflected to you.”
And the human being has actually spread out before him, as though in a mighty and wide-extending reflector, his previous earth lives, but chiefly the last one, mirrored from the souls with whom he was associated. And we gain the impression, just in regard to our life of action, that all that is departing from us. We lose the ego-feeling which we had on earth in the body, or we really lost it a long time ago between death and a new birth. Now, however, the ego-feeling arises in us from this whole reflection. With the mirroring of our deeds, we come to life in all the souls with whom we were associated during our earth life.
On earth, our I, our ego, was like a point. Here between death and a new birth, it is reflected to us everywhere from the periphery. This is an intimate association with other souls, but an association in accordance with the relations into which we have entered with them.
And in the spiritual world all this is a reality. If we go through a room hung with many mirrors, we see ourselves reflected in each one. But we also know that the reflections—according to ordinary human parlance—are “not there;” when we depart they do not remain; we are no longer reflected. But that which is reflected there in human souls remains as something present. And there comes a time in the last third of the life between death and a new birth when we form our astral body out of these mirrored images. We draw all this together to form our astral body, so that, in truth, when we descend from the spiritual world into the physical, we carry in our astral body what we have taken up again into ourselves, in accordance with the reflection to which our actions of the former earth life have given rise in other souls between death and a new birth. This gives us the impulses which impel us toward or away from the human souls with whom we are born again at the same time in the physical body.
In this way, between death and a new birth, the impulse for the karma of the new earth life is fashioned. I shall, very soon, have to describe the process more in detail by taking the ego into consideration also.
And now we can trace how an impulse from one life works on into other lives. Let us take, for example, the impulse of love. We can perform our deeds in relation to other human beings out of that impulse which we call love. There is a difference whether we perform our acts out of a mere sense of duty, of convention, of decency, or the like, or whether we perform them out of a greater or lesser degree of love.
Let us assume that during an earth life a human being is able to perform actions warmed through and through by love. This, indeed, remains as a real force in his soul. What he now takes with him as result of his deeds, what is mirrored there in the other souls, comes back to him as a reflection. And from this he forms his astral body with which he descends to the earth. There the love of the former earth life, the love which has streamed out of him and which now returns to him from other human beings, transforms itself into joy. So that, when the human being does something for his fellow-men that is sustained by love, something in connection with which love streams out of him and accompanies the deeds which advance his fellow-men, then the metamorphosis in the passage through life between death and a new birth is of such a character that what is outpouring love in one life on earth is, in the next earth life, transmuted, metamorphosed, into joy streaming toward him.
If you experience joy, my dear friends, through a human being in one earth life, you may be sure it is the outcome of the love which you have shown for him in a former life. This joy now flows back again into your soul during earth life. You know this inwardly warming feeling of joy. You know what meaning joy has in life, especially the joy which conies from human beings. It warms life, it sustains life, we may say that it gives wings to life. It is karmically the result of love bestowed.
In our joy, however, we again experience a relation to the other human being who gives us joy. So that in our former earth lives we have had something within us that made the love flow out from us; in our subsequent earth lives we already have, as a result, the inward experience of the warmth of joy. And that is again something that streams from us. A human being who is allowed to experience joy in life, is of importance to his fellow-men, has warming significance. A human being who has cause for going joylessly through life behaves differently toward his fellow-men from the one who is permitted to go through life joyfully.
But what is experienced in joy in the life between birth and death is reflected again in the souls of the most various kinds with whom we were associated on earth and who are now also in the life between death and a new birth. And this reflection, which in manifold ways then comes back to us from the souls of the human beings known to us on earth, this reflection works back in turn. We carry it again in our astral body when we descend into the next earth life—we are now dealing with the third earth life. Once more it is instilled, imprinted, in our astral body. And it now becomes in its result the underlying basis, the impulse for a quick and ready understanding of human beings and the world. It becomes the basis for that soul condition which sustains us by virtue of our having the ability to understand the world. If we find the conduct of human beings interesting and can take joy in it, if we understand their conduct and take interest in it in a given incarnation on earth, then that directs us back to the joy of our previous incarnation, to the love of our still earlier incarnation. Human beings who are able to go through the world with a free and open mind, so that the free and open mind permits the world to flow into them, so that they have an understanding for the world, these are human beings who have gained this attitude to the world through love and joy.
What we perform in our deeds out of love is altogether different from what we do out of a rigid and dry sense of duty. You know, indeed, that I have always emphasized in my books that the deeds springing from love are to be understood as the truly ethical, as the truly moral deeds. I have often been compelled to indicate the great contrast, in this regard, between Kant and Schiller. Kant, both in life and in knowledge, “kantified” [Kante in German means a hard edge or angle. (Note by translator)] everything. Through Kant, everything in knowledge became sharp and angular; and thus, also human conduct. “Duty, thou great and exalted name, thou who containest nothing of pleasure, nothing that curries favors ...” this passage I quoted in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity to the pretended vexation—not the sincere, but the pretended, hypocritical vexation—of many opponents, and I opposed to it what I must acknowledge to be my view: “Love, thou impulse that speaketh warmly to the soul. ...”
Over against the dry and rigid Kantian concept of duty, Schiller coined the expression: “Gladly I serve my friends; yet alas, I do it with pleasure, wherefore it oftentimes vexes me that I am not virtuous,” For, according to the Kantian ethics, that which we do out of inclination is not virtuous, but only that which we do out of the rigid concept of duty.
Now, there are human beings who, in the first place, do not attain to love. But, because they cannot tell their fellow-man the truth out of love (for if we love a human being we tell him the truth, and not lies), because they are unable to love, they tell the truth out of a sense of duty; since they cannot love, they refrain, merely out of a sense of duty, from thrashing their fellow-man, or boxing his ears, striking him, or doing something similar, when he does anything they do not like. There is, indeed, a difference between the deeds of love and acting out of a rigid sense of duty—which, to be sure, is absolutely necessary in social life, necessary for many things.
Now, the deeds that are done out of a rigid concept of duty, or out of convention or propriety, because it is “the proper thing to do,” will not call forth joy in the next earth life, but in that they pass in the same way through the reflection by the souls, as I have described it, they call forth in the next earth life something which we might describe as follows: We sense that we are an object of indifference to other human beings. Many a person carries through life the sense that he is an object of indifference to other human beings and suffers from it. And rightly he suffers from it, if he is of no concern to other human beings, for human beings are there for one another, and the human being is dependent upon not being a matter of indifference to his fellow-men. What the human being thus suffers here is simply the result of the lack of love in a former earth life where he behaved as a decent human being because of the rigid duty which hung over him like the sword of Damocles—I will not say, a sword of steel, for that would be disquieting for most dutiful people, but just like a wooden sword of Damocles.
We have now reached the second earth life. That which comes as joy from love becomes in the third life, as we have seen, a free and open heart, bringing the world near to us, giving us open-minded insight into all things beautiful and true and good. That which streams to us as indifference from other human beings, and what we experience thereby in one earth life, fashions us for the third, that is to say for the next earth life, into a human being who does not know what to do with himself. When such a person enters school, he is at a loss what to do with that which the teachers impart to him. When he grows a little older, he does not know whether to become a locksmith or Privy Councilor. He does not know what to do with himself in life. He actually drifts aimlessly through life without direction. In regard to his observation of the outer world, he is not exactly dull. Music, for instance, he understands well enough, but it gives him no pleasure. It is, after all, a matter of indifference to him whether the music is more or less good or more or less bad. To be sure, he feels the beauty of a painting or other work of art, but there is always something in his soul that irritates him: “What is the good of it, anyhow? To what purpose is all this?” These, in turn, are the things that make their appearance in karmic connection in the third earth life.
Now let us assume, however, that out of hate or an inclination to antipathy a human being does certain injuries to his fellow-men. Here we may imagine every conceivable degree. One individual with criminal feelings of hatred may harm his fellow-men. Or—I am omitting the intermediate stages—he may be a critic. To be a critic, one must always hate a little—unless one is a praising critic, and such critics are few nowadays, for it is not interesting to show recognition of other people's work; it becomes interesting only when one can make fun of things. Now, there are all manner of intermediate stages. But we have here to think of human deeds which proceed from a cold antipathy—antipathy about which we are often not at all clear—or, at the other extreme, from hatred. All that is brought about in this way by human beings against their fellow-men or even against sub-human creatures, all this vents itself in soul conditions which in turn also mirror themselves in the life between death and a new birth. And then, in the next earth life, out of the hatred is born that which streams to us from the world as sorrow, as unhappiness caused from without, as the opposite of joy.
You will reply: “But really, we experience so much sorrow; is that all due to hatred, greater or lesser hatred, in our preceding life? I cannot possibly imagine”—a man will be apt to say—“that I have been such a bad lot, so that I must experience so much sorrow, because I have hated so much.” Well, if we wish to think without prejudice on these things, we must become aware of how great is the illusion which gives us satisfaction and to which, therefore, we easily surrender if it is a question of our suggesting away from our conscious mind any feeling of antipathy against other human beings. People really go through the world with far more hatred than they think—at least, with far more antipathy. And it is a matter of fact that hatred, because it gives satisfaction to the soul, is not as a rule consciously experienced. It is eclipsed by the satisfaction it gives. But, when it returns as sorrow which streams to us from without, then we notice it, as sorrow.
But just consider for a moment, my dear friends—in order to represent in a quite trivial fashion what is present there as a possibility—think of an afternoon-tea chatter, a real, a genuine gossiping tea party where half a dozen (half a dozen is quite enough) “aunts” or “uncles”—it can be uncles, too—or “cousins,” if you will, are sitting together discussing their fellows. Just think how many antipathies are unloaded on human beings, say, in the course of an hour and a half—often it is longer. While this antipathy pours out, people do not notice it; but when it returns in the next earth life, then it will, indeed, be noticed. And it returns, inexorably.
Thus, in actual fact, a portion—not all; we shall still become acquainted with other karmic connections—a portion of what we experience in one earth life as sorrow caused from outside may very well be due to our feelings of antipathy in a former earth life.
In connection with all this we must, naturally, always realize that karma, that some sort of karmic stream, must begin at some time, somewhere. So that, if you have here, for example, a succession of earth lives:
a b c (d)
and this (d) is the present life; not all pain, naturally, that falls to our lot from without need be due to our former earth lives. It may also be an original sorrow, which will work itself out karmically only in the next earth life. I say, therefore, that a large part of that sorrow which streams to us from outside is a result of hate which was brought into being in former earth lives.
If we now proceed again to the third earth life, the result of what streams to us there as sorrow—but only the result of that sorrow which comes to us, so to speak, out of stored-up hate—the result of this sorrow which then unloads in our soul is, in the first place, a kind of mental dullness, a sort of dullness in the capacity of insight into the world. If you have a human being who confronts the world phlegmatically and with indifference, who does not confront the things of the world, or other human beings, with an open heart, the fact is, very often, that he has acquired this obtuseness of mind through the sorrow of a previous earth life, caused in his own karma. This sorrow, however, when it expresses itself in this way in obtuseness of soul must be retraced to the feelings of hatred which occurred at least in the second earth life prior to this one. We can be absolutely sure that stupidity in any one earth life is always the consequence of hatred in a certain former earth life.
Yet, my dear friends, the understanding of karma shall not rest only on the fact that we comprehend karma for the purpose of understanding life, but that we are also able to comprehend it as an impulse of life, that we are conscious that with life there is not merely an “a, b, c, d,” but also an “e, f, g, h,”
a, b, c, (d), e, f, g, h
that there are also earth lives still to come, and that what we develop as the content of our soul in a present earth life will have its effects, its results, in the next earth life. If any one wishes to be especially stupid in his second earth life after this one, he need, really, only hate a great deal in this present earth life. But, if someone wishes to have a free and open insight in the second earth life after this one, he need only love with special intensity in this earth life. And insight into karma, knowledge of karma, gains real value only through the fact that it flows into our will for the future, that it plays a role in this will for the future. And it is true in every respect that the moment is now at hand in the evolution of mankind when the unconscious can no longer continue to be effective in the same way it was effective previously, while our souls were passing through previous earth lives, for human beings are becoming constantly freer and more conscious.
Since the first third of the fifteenth century we have been in the age in which human beings are continually becoming freer and more conscious. Hence, those individuals who are human beings of the present time will have in a subsequent earth life a dim feeling of previous earth lives. And just as the modern man, if he notices that he is not very bright, does not ascribe this to himself, but to his natural lack of ability—the cause of which he usually seeks in his physical nature in accordance with the theories of modern materialism—so will the human beings who will be the re-incarnated human beings of the present time, have at least an obscure feeling which will worry them. If they are not very bright, they will feel that something must have taken place which was connected with feelings of hate and antipathy.
And, if we speak today of a Waldorf School pedagogy, we must naturally take into account the present earth civilization. We cannot yet educate in complete frankness in such a way that we consciously employ repeated earth lives in education, for modern human beings have not yet even a dim feeling for repeated earth lives. The beginnings, however, that have been made just in the Waldorf School pedagogy, if they are taken up, will continue to develop in the coming centuries with the result that the following will be included in ethical, moral education: If a child has little talent, it is due to former earth lives in which it has hated intensely, and we shall then, with the help of spiritual science, seek out whom it might have hated. For the human beings who were hated, and against whom deeds were committed out of hate, must be rediscovered somewhere in the child's environment. Gradually, in coming centuries, the education of a child will have to be related far more definitely to human life. We shall have to see, in regard to this dull child, whence that is reflected or has been reflected in the life between death and a new birth, which goes through a metamorphosis resulting in unintelligence in this earth life. We shall then be able to do something to the end that in childhood a special love is developed for those human beings for whom the child felt specific hatred in former earth lives. And we shall see that through such a specifically aroused and directed love, the child's intellect, nay, the child's whole soul state, will brighten.
It is not in general theories about karma that we shall find what can aid education, but in looking concretely into life in order to see what the karmic connections are. We shall soon notice that the fact that children are brought together in a school class by fate is, indeed, not something to be regarded with complete indifference. And when we shall have risen beyond the hideous carelessness that prevails in these things nowadays, when the “human material”—for so it is often called—which is thrown together in a school class is actually conceived as though it were thrown together by mere chance, not as though destiny had brought these human beings together,—if we shall have risen beyond this appalling indifference, we shall then gain a new outlook as educators, we shall then be able to perceive what strange karmic threads are spun from one child to the other as a result of former lives. And we shall then bring into the children's development that which can effect equalization.
In a certain respect, karma is under the domination of an inexorable necessity. Out of an inexorable necessity we are able definitely to establish the sequence:
Love |
—Joy |
—Open Heart |
Antipathy or Hatred |
—Sorrow |
—Stupidity |
These are unconditional connections. Although it is true that we are confronted by an absolute necessity when a river follows its course, yet we have frequently regulated rivers, have given them a different course. So in like manner is it also possible to regulate, if I may say so, the karmic stream, to affect its course. Indeed, this is possible.
Thus, if you notice that in childhood there is a tendency to idiocy, and if you then realize the necessity of guiding the child, especially of developing love in his heart, if you discover—and this should be possible even today for people with a fine observation of life,—if you discover to which other children the child is karmically related, and if you are able

to bring the child to the point of loving just these children, to perforin deeds of love for them, you will then see that you are able with love to give a counterweight to antipathy, and that you are able by means of it to correct this idiocy in the next incarnation, in the next earth life.
There are educators, trained, as it were, by their own instinct, who often do some such thing out of their instinct, who bring dull-witted children to the point where they are able to love, and thus educate them by degrees to become more intelligent human beings.
It is such things that make our insight into karmic connections of service to life.
Love |
—Joy |
—Open Heart |
Antipathy |
—Sorrow |
—Stupidity |
Before we go further in considering the details of karma, yet another question will have to confront our souls. Just ask yourself: What is a human being really with whom—in general, at least—we may know ourselves to be karmically related? I must use an expression which is often used today rather ironically: such a man is a “contemporary”; he is on the earth at the same time that we are.
If you bear this in mind, you will say to yourself that, if you are associated with certain human beings in one earth life, you were associated with them in a previous earth life also (generally speaking, at least; matters may, of course, be somewhat shifted). And you were, likewise, associated with them in a still earlier life. (See Figure V)
Now, those individuals, who live fifty years later than you, were associated in turn with human beings in former earth lives. Generally speaking, the human beings of, let us say, the B series do not, in accordance with the thought we have developed here, come in contact with the human beings of the A series. This is an oppressive thought, but a true one.

I shall later speak about other debatable questions, such as arise, for instance, through the fact that people often say that humanity multiplies on the earth. Today, however, I should like to place the following thought before you; it is, perhaps, an oppressive thought, but it is none the less a true one. It is an actual fact that the continued life of men on earth takes place in rhythms. One shift of human beings—if I may put it so—proceeds, as a general rule, from one earth life to another; another shift of human beings does the same, and they are in a certain sense separated from one another; they do not come together during earth life. To be sure, in the long intervening life between death and a new birth they do come together; but for earth life it is, indeed, a fact that we descend to the earth with a limited circle of people. To be “contemporaries” has an inner meaning, an inner importance just for repeated earth lives.
Why is it so? I can assure you, this question which, in the first place, may occupy us intellectually, has caused me the greatest imaginable pain in the field of spiritual science, because it is necessary to discover the truth regarding this question, the inner nature of the facts. And thus, we may ask ourself—forgive my using an example which really concerns me only as a matter of research—we may ask ourself the question: “Why were you not a contemporary of Goethe's? By your not a contemporary of Goethe's you can, according to this truth, conclude on general principles that you have never lived with Goethe on the earth. Goethe belongs to another shift of human beings.”
What really lies behind this? Here we must reverse the question. But to do so we must have an open, liberal mind for human social relationships. We must be able to ask ourself a question—and I shall have very much to say in the near future about this question—we must be able to ask ourself the question: What is it really to be another man's contemporary? What is it, on the other hand, to be able to know of him only from history, so far as the earth life is concerned? What does this mean?
Well, my dear friends, we must have an open, liberal mind in order to answer the intimate question: “How do matters stand with regard to all the inner accompanying phenomena of the soul when a contemporary of yours speaks to you, performs actions which come near you? How do matters stand?” And, after having acquired the necessary knowledge, you must then be able to compare this with what the situation would be were you to come into contact with a personality who is not your contemporary, perhaps has never been such in any life on earth, and whom you may, nevertheless, revere to the highest degree, much more, perhaps, than any of your contemporaries—what would be the situation were you to encounter this personality as a contemporary? In a word—pardon the personal note—what would the situation be, had I been a contemporary of Goethe? If you are not an indifferent kind of person—naturally, if you are an indifferent person and have no comprehension of what a contemporary can be, you cannot very well answer such a question—then you can ask the question: “How would it be if I, walking down the Schillergasse in Weimar toward the Frauenplan, had seen the fat Privy Councilor approaching me, say in the year 1826, 1827?” Now, we know quite well, we could not have stood it. Our contemporary we can stand. If the one with whom we cannot be contemporary were, nevertheless, our contemporary, we should not be able to endure him; he would, in a certain sense, act like a poison on our soul life. We endure him as a historical character, because he is not our contemporary, but our successor or predecessor.
Of course, if we have no feeling for such things, they remain in the unconscious. We can well imagine that a certain man has a fine feeling for the spiritual and knows that, had he walked down the Schillergasse in Weimar toward the Frauenplan, and had he, as a contemporary, encountered the fat Privy Councilor Goethe with the double chin, he would then have felt himself in an inwardly impossible state. The one, however, who has no feeling for such things—well, he would, perhaps, have taken off his hat!
These things, my dear friends, do not derive from the earth life, be- cause the reasons why we cannot be the contemporary of some particular man are not to be found within earth life, because here we must penetrate with our preception into the spiritual relationships. This is why, for earth life, such things appear at times paradoxical. Nevertheless, they are facts, most certainly facts.
I can assure you that I wrote with genuine love an Introduction to Jean Paul's works, published in the Cotta'sche Bibliothek der Weltliteratur. Yet, if I had ever had to sit side by side with Jean Paul at Bayreuth—without doubt, I should have had a stomach ache. That does not hinder us from having the highest reverence. But such an experience comes to every human being, only, with most people it remains in the subconscious, in the astral or in the ether body; it does not take hold of the physical body. For the soul experience which must seize upon the physical body must, indeed, become conscious. But the following must also be clear to you, my dear friends: If you wish to gain knowledge of the spiritual world, you cannot escape hearing things which seem grotesque and paradoxical, because the spiritual world is different from the physical.
It is, of course, easy enough for anyone to ridicule the statement that if I had been a contemporary of Jean Paul's, it would have given me a stomach ache to sit in his company. It goes without saying that for the everyday, banal, philistine world of earthly life ridicule is to be expected. But the laws of the banal, philistine world do not hold good for spiritual relationships. If we wish to understand the spiritual world we must accustom ourselves to think with other thought forms; we must be prepared to experience many quite surprising things. When, in our everyday consciousness, we read about Goethe, we may naturally feel impelled to say: “How I should like to have known him personally, to have shaken hands with him!” and so on. That is thoughtlessness, for there are laws according to which we are predestined for a certain epoch of the earth in which we can live. Just as we are preconditioned to stand a certain pressure of the air in our physical body, and therefore cannot rise above the earth beyond a certain height where the pressure is not agreeable, so is a man who is predestined for the twentieth century unable to live at the time of Goethe.
These were the things which, at the outset, I wished to bring forward about karma.


Vierter Vortrag
Heute möchte ich zunächst einige umfassendere Gesichtspunkte in bezug auf die Entwickelung des Karmas bringen, um dann allmählich immer mehr und mehr auf diejenigen Dinge eingehen zu können, die eigentlich nur durch die, wenn ich so sagen soll, speziellen Ausführungen wenigstens veranschaulicht werden können, Wir müssen uns, wenn wir in den Gang des Karmas Einsicht gewinnen wollen, vorstellen können, wie eigentlich der Mensch beim Heruntersteigen aus der geistigen Welt in die physische Welt seine ganze Organisation zusammensetzt.
Sie werden ja begreifen, daß es in der gegenwärtigen Sprache nicht eigentlich geeignete Ausdrücke gibt für Vorgänge, die in der gegenwärtigen Zivilisation ziemlich unbekannt sind, und daß daher die Ausdrücke für das, was da geschieht, eigentlich nur ungenau sein können. Wir haben, wenn wir aus der geistigen in die physische Welt heruntersteigen zu einem Erdenleben, zunächst unseren physischen Leib durch die Vererbungsströmung vorbereitet. Dieser physische Leib, wir werden sehen, wie er dennoch in einer gewissen Beziehung mit dem zusammenhängt, was der Mensch zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt erlebt. Für heute kann es uns genügen, wenn wir uns eben darüber klar sind, daß dieser physische Leib uns eigentlich von der Erde aus gegeben wird. Diejenigen Glieder der menschlichen Wesenheit dagegen, welche als höhere Glieder angesprochen werden können, ätherischer Leib, astralischer Leib und Ich, die kommen ja herunter aus der geistigen Welt.
Den ätherischen Leib zieht der Mensch gewissermaßen aus dem ganzen Weltenäther heran, bevor er sich mit dem physischen Leib, der ihm durch die Abstammung gegeben wird, vereinigt. Es kann eine Vereinigung des seelisch-geistigen Menschen nach Ich, astralischem Leib und ätherischem Leib mit dem physischen Menschenembryo nur dadurch erfolgen, daß sich der ätherische Leib des mütterlichen Organismus allmählich von dem physischen Menschenkeim zurückzieht.
Der Mensch also vereinigt sich mit dem physischen Menschenkeim, nachdem er seinen ätherischen Leib aus dem allgemeinen Weltenäther herangezogen hat. Die genaueren Beschreibungen dieser Vorgänge sollen uns später beschäftigen. Jetzt soll uns vorzugsweise interessieren, woher die einzelnen Glieder der menschlichen Wesenheit kommen, die der Mensch während seines Erdenlebens zwischen Geburt und Tod hat.
Der physische Organismus also kommt aus der Abstammungsströmung, der ätherische Organismus aus dem Weltenäther, aus dem er herangezogen wird. Der astralische Organismus — er bleibt ja, man möchte sagen, in jeder Beziehung während des Erdenlebens dem Menschen unbewußt oder unterbewußt -, er enthält alles dasjenige, was Ergebnisse des Lebens zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt sind.
Und zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt ist es ja so, daß der Mensch nach Maßgabe dessen, was er geworden ist durch die vorigen Erdenleben, in der mannigfaltigsten Weise zu anderen Menschenseelen in Beziehung kommt, die sich auch zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt befinden, oder zu anderen geistigen Wesenheiten höherer Weltenordnung, die nicht in einem Menschenleibe zur Erde herabsteigen, sondern in der geistigen Welt ihr Dasein haben.
Alles das, was der Mensch herüberbringt aus früheren Erdenleben, nach dem, wie er war, nach dem, was er getan hat, das findet die Sympathie oder Antipathie der Wesenheiten, die er kennenlernt, indem er durchgeht durch die Welt zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt. Da ist für das Karma nicht nur von einer großen Bedeutung, welche Sympathien und Antipathien bei höheren Wesenheiten der Mensch findet durch das, was er getan hat im vorigen Erdenleben, sondern da ist vor allen Dingen von einer großen Bedeutung, daß der Mensch in Beziehung kommt zu denjenigen Menschenseelen, mit denen er auf Erden in Beziehung war, und daß eine eigentümliche Spiegelung stattfindet zwischen seinem Wesen und dem Wesen derjenigen Seelen, mit denen er auf Erden in Beziehung war. Nehmen wir an, irgend jemand hat zu einer Seele, die er nun wieder trifft zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt, eine gute Beziehung gehabt. In ihm hat gelebt während früherer Erdenleben alles das, was eine gute Beziehung begleitet. Dann spiegelt sich diese gute Beziehung in der Seele, wenn diese Seele zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt getroffen wird. Und es ist wirklich so, daß der Mensch bei diesem Durchgange durch das Leben zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt in den Seelen, mit denen er nun zusammenlebt, weil er mit ihnen auf Erden zusammengelebt hat, überall sich selbst gespiegelt sieht. Hat man einem Menschen etwas Gutes zugefügt, es spiegelt sich etwas von der Seele herüber; hat man ihm etwas Böses zugefügt, es spiegelt sich etwas von der Seele herüber. Und man hat das Gefühl — wenn ich mich da des Ausdruckes «Gefühl» mit der Einschränkung, die ich im Beginne meiner Auseinandersetzungen gemacht habe, bedienen darf -: du hast diese Menschenseele gefördert. Was du da erlebt hast durch die Förderung, was du da empfunden hast für diese Menschenseele, was aus Empfindungen heraus zu deinem Verhalten geführt hat, deine eigenen inneren Erlebnisse während der Tat dieser Förderung, sie kommen zurück von dieser Seele. Sie spiegeln sich von dieser Seele aus. Eine andere Seele - man hat sie geschädigt; dasjenige, was in einem gelebt hat während dieser Schädigung, es spiegelt sich.
Und man hat eigentlich wie in einem mächtigen, ausgebreiteten Spiegelungsapparat seine vorigen Erdenleben, namentlich das letzte, aus den Seelen, mit denen man zusammen war, gespiegelt vor sich. Und man bekommt gerade bezüglich seines Tatenlebens den Eindruck: das alles geht von einem fort. Man verliert, oder hat eigentlich längst verloren, zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, das Ich-Gefühl, das man auf Erden im Leibe gehabt hat; man bekommt aber das IchGefühl von dieser ganzen Spiegelung. Man lebt in all den Seelen mit den Spiegelungen seiner Taten auf, mit denen man im Erdenleben zusammen war.
Auf Erden war das Ich als ein Punkt gewissermaßen. Hier zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt spiegelt es sich überall aus dem Umkreise. Es ist ein inniges Zusammensein mit den anderen Seelen, aber ein Zusammensein nach Maßgabe der Beziehungen, die man mit ihnen angeknüpft hat.
Und das ist alles in der geistigen Welt eine Realität. Wenn wir durch irgendeinen Raum gehen, der viele Spiegel hat, sehen wir uns in jedem Spiegel gespiegelt. Aber wir wissen auch: das ist — der gewöhnlichen Menschensprache nach -— nicht da; wenn wir weggehen, bleibt es nicht, spiegeln wir uns nicht mehr. Aber das, was sich da in den Menschenseelen spiegelt, das bleibt, das bleibt vorhanden. Und es kommt eine Zeit im letzten Drittel zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, da bilden wir uns aus diesen Spiegelbildern unseren astralischen Leib. Da ziehen wir das zusammen zu unserem astralischen Leib, so daß wir durchaus in unserem astralischen Leib, wenn wir von der geistigen Welt in die physische heruntersteigen, dasjenige tragen, was wir in uns wieder aufgenommen haben nach der Spiegelung, die unsere Taten im vorigen Erdenleben in anderen Seelen gefunden haben zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt.
Das aber gibt uns die Impulse, die uns drängen zu den Menschenseelen, oder abdrängen von den Menschenseelen, mit denen wir dann im physischen Leib zugleich wiederum geboren werden. "
Und auf diese Art - ich werde demnächst noch ausführlicher den Vorgang zu beschreiben haben, indem ich später auch auf das Ich Rücksicht zu nehmen haben werde -, aber auf diese Art bildet sich zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt der Impuls zum Karma im neuen Erdenleben aus.
Und da läßt sich verfolgen, wie ein Impuls des einen Lebens in die anderen Leben hinüberwirkt. Nehmen wir zum Beispiel den Impuls der Liebe. Wir können unsere Taten den anderen Menschen gegenüber aus dem heraus verrichten, was wir Liebe nennen. Es ist ein Unterschied, ob wir unsere Taten aus bloßem Pflichtgefühl heraus verrichten, aus Konvention, aus Anstand und so weiter, oder ob wir sie aus einer größeren oder geringeren Liebe heraus verrichten.
Nehmen wir an, ein Mensch bringt es dazu, Handlungen zu verrichten in einem Erdenleben, die von der Liebe getragen sind, die durchwärmt sind von der Liebe. Ja, das bleibt als Kraft in seiner Seele vorhanden. Und was er nun mitnimmt als Ergebnis seiner Taten, und was sich da spiegelt in den Seelen, das kommt auf ihn zurück eben als Spiegelbild. Und indem der Mensch sich seinen astralischen Leib daraus bildet, mit dem er herunterkommt zur Erde, wandelt sich die Liebe des vorigen Erdenlebens, die von dem Menschen ausgeströmt ist, rückkommend von anderen Menschen, in Freude. So daß also, indem der Mensch seinen Mitmenschen gegenüber in einem Erdenleben irgend etwas tut, was von Liebe getragen ist, wobei also die Liebe von ihm ausströmt, mit den Taten mitgeht, die den anderen Menschen fördern, dann die Metamorphose beim Durchgang durch das Leben zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt so ist, daß sich, was ausströmende Liebe in einem Erdenleben ist, im nächsten Erdenleben metamorphosiert, verwandelt in an den Menschen heranströmende Freude.

Erleben Sie durch einen Menschen Freude, meine lieben Freunde, in einem Erdenleben, so können Sie sicher sein, daß diese Freude das Ergebnis der Liebe ist, die Sie ihm gegenüber in einem vorigen Erdenleben entfaltet haben. Diese Freude strömt nun wiederum in Ihre Seele zurück während des Erdenlebens. Sie kennen jenes innerlich Erwärmende der Freude. Sie wissen, was Freude im Leben für eine Bedeutung hat, Freude insbesondere, die von Menschen kommt. Sie wärmt das Leben, sie trägt das Leben, sie gibt dem Leben, können wir sagen, Schwingen. Sie ist karmisch das Ergebnis aufgewendeter Liebe.
Aber wir erleben ja wiederum an der Freude eine Beziehung zu dem anderen Menschen, der uns Freude macht. So daß wir in den früheren Erdenleben innerlich etwas gehabt haben, was ausströmen machte die Liebe; in den folgenden Erdenleben haben wir schon als Ergebnis innerlich erlebend die Wärme der Freude. Das ist wiederum etwas, was von uns ausströmt. Ein Mensch, der im Leben Freude erleben darf, ist auch wiederum etwas für die anderen Menschen, was erwärmende Bedeutung hat. Ein Mensch, der Gründe dafür hat, freudelos durchs Leben zu gehen, ist anders zu den anderen Menschen als ein Mensch, der in Freuden darf durch das Leben gehen.
Das aber, was da erlebt wird in der Freude zwischen der Geburt und dem Tode, das wiederum spiegelt sich in den verschiedensten Seelen, mit denen man auf Erden zusammen war, und die jetzt auch in dem Leben zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt sind. Und dieses Spiegelbild, das in vielfacher Weise dann von den Seelen der uns bekannten Menschen kommt, das wirkt wiederum zurück. Wir tragen es wiederum in unserem astralischen Leib, wenn wir zum nächsten — also jetzt sind wir beim dritten Erdenleben -, zum nächsten Erdenleben heruntersteigen. Und wiederum ist es eingeschaltet, eingeprägt unserem astralischen Leibe. Und jetzt wird es in seinem Ergebnis zur Grundlage, zum Impuls des leichten Verstehens von Menschen und Welt. Es wird zur Grundlage derjenigen Seelenverfassung, die uns trägt dadurch, daß wir die Welt verstehen. Wenn wir Freude haben können an dem interessanten Verhalten der Menschen, verstehen das interessante Verhalten der Menschen in einer Erdeninkarnation, so weist uns das zurück auf die Freude der vorhergehenden, auf die Liebe der weiter vorangehenden Erdeninkarnation. Menschen, die mit freiem, offenem Sinn so durch die Welt gehen können, daß der freie, offene Sinn die Welt in sie hereinströmen läßt, so daß sie für die Welt Verständnis haben, das sind Menschen, die diese Stellung zur Welt sich durch Liebe und Freude errungen haben.
Das ist etwas ganz anderes, was wir in den Taten aus der Liebe heraus tun, als dasjenige, was wir aus starrem, trockenem Pflichtgefühl heraus tun. Sie wissen ja, wie ich in meinen Schriften immer darauf gesehen habe, die Taten, die aus der Liebe kommen, als die eigentlich ethischen, als die eigentlich moralischen aufzufassen.
Ich habe oftmals auf den großen Gegensatz hinweisen müssen, der in dieser Beziehung zwischen Kant und Schiller besteht. Kant hat ja eigentlich im Leben und in der Erkenntnis alles verkantet. Es ist alles eckig und kantig in der Erkenntnis durch Kant geworden, und so auch das menschliche Handeln: «Pflicht, du erhabener, großer Name, der du nichts Beliebtes, was Einschmeichelung bei sich führt, in dir fassest...» und so weiter. Ich habe die Stelle in meiner «Philosophie der Freiheit» zum geheuchelten Ärger vieler Gegner — nicht zum wirklichen, zum geheuchelten Ärger vieler Gegner - zitiert und habe dasjenige dagegengestellt, was ich selber als meine Anschauung anerkennen muß: Liebe, du warm zur Seele sprechender Impuls — und so weiter.
Schiller, gegenüber dem starren, trockenen Pflichtbegriffe Kants, hat ja die Worte geprägt: «Gerne dien’ ich den Freunden, doch tu’ ich es leider mit Neigung, und so wurmt es mich oft, daß ich nicht tugendhaft bin.» Denn nach Kantscher Ethik ist dasjenige, was man aus Neigung tut, nicht tugendhaft, sondern dasjenige, was man aus dem starren Pflichtbegriff heraus tut.
Nun, es gibt eben Menschen — die kommen nicht zum Lieben zunächst. Aber weil sie dem anderen Menschen nicht aus Liebe die Wahrheit sagen können — man sagt zu dem anderen Menschen, wenn man Liebe für ihn hat, die Wahrheit und nicht die Lüge -, aber weil sie nicht lieben können, sagen sie die Wahrheit aus Pflichtgefühl; weil sie nicht lieben können, vermeiden sie es aus Pflichtgefühl, den anderen gleich zu prügeln oder ihn mit Ohrfeigen zu traktieren, anzustoßen und dergleichen, wenn er irgend etwas tut, was ihnen nicht gefällt. Es ist eben ein Unterschied zwischen dem Handeln aus starrem Pflichtbegriff, das aber durchaus im sozialen Leben notwendig ist, für viele Dinge notwendig ist, und zwischen den Taten der Liebe.
Nun, die Taten, die in starrem Pflichtbegriff oder in Konvention, «weil sich’s so schickt», getan werden, die rufen im nächsten Erdenleben nicht Freude hervor, sondern, indem sie eben so wie ich es geschildert habe, durch jene Spiegelung durch die Seelen gehen, rufen sie im nächsten Erdenleben etwas hervor, was man nennen könnte: Man spürt, man ist den Menschen mehr oder weniger gleichgültig. Und das, was mancher durchs Leben trägt, daß er den Menschen gleichgültig ist und daran leidet — man leidet mit Recht daran, wenn man den anderen Menschen gleichgültig ist, denn die Menschen sind füreinander da, und der Mensch ist darauf angewiesen, daß er den anderen Menschen nicht gleichgültig ist —, das, was man da erleidet, das ist eben das Ergebnis des Mangels an Liebe in einem vorigen Erdenleben, wo man sich als anständiger Mensch deshalb betragen hat, weil die starre Pflicht über einem hing wie ein Damoklesschwert, ich will nicht sagen wie ein stählernes, denn das würde beunruhigend sein für die meisten Pflichtmenschen, sondern eben wie ein hölzernes.
Nun aber sind wir beim zweiten Erdenleben. Was als Freude von der Liebe kommt, das wird im dritten Erdenleben, wie wir gesehen haben, ein offenes, freies Herz, das uns die Welt nahebringt, das uns für alles Schöne, Wahre, Gute den freien, einsichtsvollen Sinn gibt. Das, was als Gleichgültigkeit von seiten anderer Menschen zu uns strömt, und was wir dadurch erleben in einem Erdenleben, das macht uns für das dritte, also für das nächste Erdenleben, zu einem Menschen, der nichts Rechtes mit sich anzufangen weiß. Wenn er in die Schule kommt, weiß er nicht, was er mit dem anfangen soll, was die Lehrer mit ihm tun. Wenn er etwas älter wird, weiß er nicht, ob er Schlosser oder Hofrat werden soll. Er weiß nichts mit sich im Leben zu machen. Er geht eigentlich ohne Richtung, direktionslos im Leben dahin. In bezug auf die Anschauung der äußeren Welt ist er nicht gerade stumpf. Er kann zum Beispiel Musik schon verstehen, aber er hat keine Freude dran. Es ist ihm schließlich gleichgültig, ob es mehr oder weniger gute oder mehr oder weniger schlechte Musik ist. Er empfindet schon die Schönheit irgendeines malerischen oder sonstigen Werkes, aber immer kratzt es ihn in der Seele: Wozu eigentlich das alles? und so weiter. Das sind Dinge, die wiederum im dritten Erdenleben im karmischen Zusammenhange sich einstellen.
Nehmen wir aber an, der Mensch begeht gewisse Schädigungen seiner Mitmenschen aus dem Haß oder aus einer Neigung zur Antipathie heraus. Man kann da an alle Stufen denken, welche dabei vorkommen können. Es kann einer, sagen wir, mit verbrecherischem Haßgefühl seine Mitmenschen schädigen. Er kann aber auch, ich lasse die Zwischenstufen aus, er kann aber auch ein Kritiker sein. Man muß, um Kritiker zu sein, immer ein bißchen hassen, wenn man nicht ein lobender Kritiker ist, und die sind ja heute selten, denn das ist nicht interessant, die Dinge anzuerkennen. Interessant wird es ja nur, wenn man Witze macht über die Dinge. Nun gibt es ja alle möglichen Zwischenstufen. Aber es handelt sich hier um dasjenige an Menschentaten, das aus kalter Antipathie, aus einer gewissen Antipathie, über die man sich oftmals gar nicht klar wird, bis zum Haß hin hervorgeht. Alles das, was in dieser Weise von Menschen bewirkt wird gegenüber anderen Menschen oder selbst gegenüber untermenschlichen Wesenheiten, all das lädt sich wiederum in Seelenzuständen ab, die sich nun auch spiegeln in dem Leben zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt. Und da kommt dann im nächsten Erdenleben aus dem Haß dasjenige heraus, was uns zuströmt von der Welt als leidvolles Wesen, als Unlust, die von außen verursacht wird, als das Gegenteil der Freude.
Sie werden sagen: Ja, wir erleben doch so viel Leid, soll das wirklich alles von größerem oder geringerem Haß im vorigen Erdenleben herrühren? Ich kann doch von mir unmöglich denken, daß ich ein so schlechter Kerl gewesen bin — so wird der Mensch leicht sagen -, daß ich so viel Unlust erleben kann, weil ich so viel gehaßt habe! Ja, wenn man auf diesem Gebiete vorurteilslos denken will, dann muß man sich schon klarmachen, wie groß die Illusion ist, die einem wohltut und der man daher sehr leicht sich hingibt, wenn es sich darum handelt, irgendwelche Antipathiegefühle gegen andere Menschen sich abzusuggerieren. Die Menschen gehen mit viel mehr Haß, als sie denken, eigentlich durch die Welt, wenigstens mit viel mehr Antipathie. Und es ist nun schon einmal so: Haß, er wird zunächst, weil er der Seele ja Befriedigung gibt, gewöhnlich gar nicht erlebt. Er wird zugedeckt durch die Befriedigung. Wenn er zurückkommit als Leid, das uns von außen zuströmt, dann wird eben das Leid bemerkt.
Aber denken Sie nur einmal daran, meine lieben Freunde, um, ich möchte sagen, in einer ganz trivialen Art sich vorzustellen, was da als Möglichkeit vorliegt, denken Sie nur einmal an einen Kaffeeklatsch, an einen so richtigen Kaffeeklatsch, wo ein Halbdutzend — es genügt schon! - irgendwelcher Tanten oder Onkels — es können auch Onkels sein — beisammensitzen und über ihre Mitmenschen sich ergehen! Denken Sie, wieviel da an Antipathien in anderthalb Stunden - manchmal dauert es länger — abgeladen wird auf die Menschen! Indem das ausströmt, bemerken es die Leute nicht; aber wenn es im nächsten Erdenleben zurückkommt, da wird es sehr wohl bemerkt. Und es kommt unweigerlich zurück.
So daß tatsächlich ein Teil — nicht alles, wir werden noch andere karmische Zusammenhänge kennenlernen -, so daß ein Teil dessen, was wir in einem Erdenleben an von außen zugefügtem Leid empfinden, tatsächlich von Antipathiegefühlen in früheren Erdenleben herrühren kann.
Bei alledem muß man sich natürlich stets klar sein, daß ja das Karma, daß irgendeine karmische Strömung irgendwo einmal anfangen muß. So daß, wenn Sie zum Beispiel hier hintereinanderliegende Erdenleben haben
a b c (d) e f g h
und dieses d das gegenwärtige Erdenleben ist, so muß natürlich nicht aller Schmerz, der uns von außen zukommt, im früheren Erdenleben begründet sein. Es kann auch ein ursprünglicher Schmerz sein, der dann im nächsten Erdenleben sich erst karmisch auslebt. Aber deshalb sage ich: Ein großer Teil jenes Leides, das uns von außen zuströmt, ist die Folge von Haß, der in früheren Erdenleben aufgebracht worden ist.
Wenn wir nun zum dritten Erdenleben wieder übergehen, dann ist das Ergebnis dessen, was da als Leid uns zuströmt — aber nur das Ergebnis desjenigen Leides, das uns aus sozusagen aufgespeichertem Haß zukommt -, dann ist das Ergebnis dieses Leides, das sich dann in der Seele ablädt, zunächst eine Art Stumpfheit des Geistes, eine Art Stumpfheit der Einsicht gegenüber der Welt. Und wer gleichgültig und phlegmatisch der Welt gegenübersteht, nicht mit offenem Herzen den Dingen oder den Menschen gegenübersteht, bei dem liegt oftmals eben das vor, daß er sich diese Stumpfheit erworben hat durch das in seinem eigenen Karma verursachte Leid eines vorigen Erdenlebens, das aber zurückgehen muß, wenn es in dieser Weise in einer stumpfen Seelenverfassung sich ausdrückt, auf Haßgefühle mindestens im drittletzten Erdenleben. Man kann nämlich immer sicher sein: Töricht in irgendeinem Erdenleben zu sein, ist immer die Folge von Haß in einem bestimmten früheren Erdenleben.
Aber sehen Sie, meine lieben Freunde, das Verständnis für das Karma soll nicht nur darauf beruhen, daß wir das Karma zum Begreifen des Lebens auffassen, sondern daß wir es auch als Impuls des Lebens auffassen können, daß wir uns eben bewußt sind, daß es mit dem Leben nicht bloß ein «a, b, c, d» gibt (siehe Schema), sondern auch ein «e, f, g, h», daß auch kommende Erdenleben da sind, und daß dasjenige, was wir in einem gegenwärtigen Erdenleben an Inhalt in unserer Seele entwickeln, Wirkungen, Ergebnisse im nächsten Erdenleben haben wird. Wenn einer in dem drittnächsten Erdenleben besonders töricht sein will, braucht er im gegenwärtigen Erdenleben ja nur sehr viel zu hassen. Wenn einer aber im drittnächsten Erdenleben einen freien, offenen Sinn haben will, braucht er ja nur in diesem Erdenleben besonders viel zu lieben. Und erst dadurch gewinnt die Einsicht, die Erkenntnis des Karmas ihren Wert, daß sie in unseren Willen für die Zukunft einströmt, in diesem Willen für die Zukunft eine Rolle spielt. Es ist durchaus so, daß gegenwärtig derjenige Zeitpunkt für die Menschheitsentwickelung vorhanden ist, wo nicht mehr in derselben Art, wie das früher der Fall war, während unsere Seelen durch frühere Erdenleben gegangen sind, das Unbewußte weiterwirken kann, sondern die Menschen werden immer freier und bewußter. Seit dem ersten Drittel des 15. Jahrhunderts haben wir das Zeitalter, in dem die Menschen immer freier und bewußter werden. Und so wird für diejenigen Menschen, welche Menschen der Gegenwart sind, ein nächstes Erdenleben schon ein dunkles Gefühl der vorigen Erdenleben haben. Und so wie der heutige Mensch, wenn er an sich bemerkt, daß er nicht besonders klug ist, das nicht sich selber, sondern eben seiner Anlage zuschreibt, gewöhnlich es in seiner physischen Natur sucht nach der Ansicht des heutigen Materialismus, so werden die Menschen, die diejenigen sein werden, welche wiederkommen aus den Gegenwartsmenschen, wenigstens schon ein dunkles Gefühl haben, das sie beunruhigen wird: Wenn sie nicht besonders klug sind, so muß da irgend etwas gewesen sein, das mit Haß- und Antipathiegefühlen zusammenhing.
Und wenn wir heute reden von einer Waldorfschul-Pädagogik, so müssen wir natürlich der gegenwärtigen Erdenzivilisation Rechnung tragen. Da können wir noch nicht mit voller Offenheit so erziehen, daß wir sozusagen für das Bewußtsein in wiederholten Erdenleben erziehen, denn die Menschen haben heute auch noch nicht einmal ein dunkles Gefühl für die wiederholten Erdenleben. Aber die Ansätze, die gerade in der Waldorfschul-Pädagogik gemacht werden, sie werden sich, wenn sie aufgenommen werden, in den nächsten Jahrhunderten dahin weiter entwickeln, daß man in die ethische, in die moralische Erziehung das hineinbeziehen wird: Ein wenig begabtes Kind geht zurück auf frühere Erdenleben, in denen es viel gehaßt hat, und man wird dann an der Hand der Geisteswissenschaft aufsuchen, wen es gehaßt haben könnte. Denn die müssen sich in irgendwelcher Umgebung wiederfinden, die Menschen, die gehaßt worden sind und denen gegenüber Taten begangen worden sind aus dem Haß. Und man wird die Erziehung nach und nach in den kommenden Jahrhunderten viel mehr ins Menschenleben hineinstellen müssen. Man wird bei einem Kinde sehen müssen, woher sich spiegelt oder spiegelte in dem Leben zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt dasjenige, was da in einer Metamorphose des Unverstandes sich auslebt im Erdenleben. Und dann wird man etwas tun können, damit im kindlichen Alter zu denjenigen Menschen besondere Liebe entwickelt wird, zu denen in früheren Erdenleben ein besonderer Haß vorhanden war. Und man wird sehen, daß durch eine solche konkret aufgewendete Liebe der Verstand, überhaupt die ganze Seelenverfassung sich aufhellen wird. Nicht in allgemeinen Theorien über das Karma wird dasjenige liegen, was der Erziehung helfen kann, sondern in dem konkreten Hineinschauen in das Leben, um zu bemerken, wie die karmischen Zusammenhänge sind. Man wird schon bemerken: daß schließlich Kinder in einer Klasse zusammengetragen werden vom Schicksal, das ist doch nicht ganz gleichgültig. Und wenn man hinauskommen wird über jene scheußliche Sorglosigkeit, die in bezug auf solche Dinge heute herrscht, wo man ja das, was an «Menschenmaterial» — man nennt es ja oftmals so — zusammengewürfelt ist in einer Klasse, wirklich so auffaßt, als ob es zusammengewürfelt wäre vom Zufall, nicht zusammengetragen wäre vom Schicksal, wenn man hinauskommen wird über diese scheußliche Sorglosigkeit, dann wird man gerade als Erzieher in Aussicht nehmen können, was da für merkwürdige karmische Fäden von dem einen zu dem anderen gesponnen sind durch frühere Leben. Und dann wird man in die Entwickelung der Kinder dasjenige hineinnehmen, was da ausgleichend wirken kann. Denn Karma ist in einer gewissen Beziehung etwas, was einer ehernen Notwendigkeit unterliegt. Wir können aus einer ehernen Notwendigkeit heraus unbedingt aufstellen die Reihe:
Liebe - Freude - offenes Herz.
Antipathie oder Haß — Leid - Torheit.
Das sind unbedingte Zusammenhänge. Aber es ist auch so, daß geradeso wie man einer unbedingten Notwendigkeit gegenübersteht, wenn ein Fluß läuft und dennoch man schon Flüsse reguliert hat, ihnen einen anderen Lauf gegeben hat, es auch möglich ist, die karmische Strömung, ich möchte sagen, zu regulieren, in sie hineinzuwirken. Das ist möglich.
Wenn Sie also bemerken, im kindlichen Alter ist Anlage zur Torheit, und Sie kommen darauf, das Kind anzuleiten, besonders in seinem Herzen Liebe zu entwickeln, und wenn Sie - und das würde für Menschen, die eine feine Lebensbeobachtung haben, schon heute möglich sein —, wenn Sie entdecken, mit welchen anderen Kindern das Kind karmisch verwandt ist, und das Kind dazu bringen, gerade diese Kinder zu lieben, ihnen gegenüber Taten der Liebe zu tun, dann werden Sie sehen, daß Sie der Antipathie ein Gegengewicht in der Liebe geben können, und in einer nächsten Inkarnation, in einem nächsten Erdenleben damit die Torheit verbessern können.
Es gibt ja wirklich, ich möchte sagen, instinktgeschulte Erzieher, die oftmals so etwas aus ihrem Instinkte heraus tun, die schlecht veranlagte Kinder dazu bringen, lieben zu können, und sie dadurch zu auffassungsfähigeren Menschenwesen allmählich heranerziehen. Diese Dinge, sie machen eigentlich erst die Einsicht in die karmischen Zusammenhänge zu einem Lebensdienlichen.
Nun, bevor wir weitergehen in der Betrachtung von Einzelheiten des Karmas, muß sich ja noch eine Frage vor unsere Seele stellen. Fragen wir uns: Was ist denn der Mensch, demgegenüber man sich, im allgemeinen wenigstens, in einem karmischen Zusammenhange wissen kann? Ich muß einen Ausdruck gebrauchen, der heute oftmals in einem etwas spöttischen Sinne gebraucht wird: Ein solcher Mensch ist ein Zeitgenosse. Er ist eben zu gleicher Zeit mit uns auf der Erde. Und wenn Sie dies bedenken, so werden Sie sich sagen: Wenn Sie in einem Erdenleben mit gewissen Menschen zusammen sind, so waren Sie auch in einem früheren Erdenleben — wenigstens im allgemeinen, die Dinge können sich auch etwas verschieben — mit den Menschen zusammen, und ebenso wiederum in einem früheren Erdenleben.

Ja, aber nun diejenigen, die fünfzig Jahre später leben als Sie, die waren im früheren Erdenleben wiederum zusammen mit Menschen! Im allgemeinen werden die Menschen, ich will sagen der B-Reihe, mit den Menschen der A-Reihe, nach diesem Gedanken, den wir hier entwickelt haben, nicht zusammenkommen. Das ist ein bedrückender Gedanke, aber ein wahrer Gedanke.
Über andere Zweifelsfragen, die sich ergeben dadurch, daß die Menschen oftmals sagen: die Menschheit vermehrt sich auf der Erde und so weiter, werde ich ja später sprechen. Aber ich möchte Ihnen jetzt diesen Gedanken nahelegen; er ist ein vielleicht bedrückender Gedanke, aber er ist ein wahrer Gedanke: Es ist tatsächlich so, daß das fortlaufende Leben der Menschen auf der Erde in Rhythmen sich vollzieht. Ich möchte sagen, ein Menschenschub geht im allgemeinen fort von einem Erdenleben zum anderen, ein anderer Menschenschub geht fort von einem Erdenleben zum anderen, und die sind in einer gewissen Weise voneinander getrennt, finden sich nicht im Erdenleben zusammen. In dem langen Leben zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, da findet man sich schon zusammen; aber im Erdenleben ist es in der Tat so, daß man immer wiederum mit einem beschränkten Kreis von Leuten auf die Erde herunterkommt. Gerade für die wiederholten Erdenleben hat die Zeitgenossenschaft eine innere Bedeutung, eine innere Wichtigkeit.
Und warum das? Ich kann Ihnen sagen, diese Frage, die einen zunächst verstandesmäßig beschäftigen kann, diese Frage hat mir wirklich auf geisteswissenschaftlichem Boden die denkbar größten Schmerzen gemacht, weil es ja nötig ist, über diese Frage die Wahrheit herauszubringen, den inneren Sachverhalt herauszubringen. Und da kann man sich fragen — verzeihen Sie, daß ich ein Beispiel gebrauche, das wirklich, ich möchte sagen, eine Rolle für mich spielt, nur in bezug auf die Untersuchung -: Warum warst du nicht ein Zeitgenosse von Goethe? Dadurch, daß du nicht ein Zeitgenosse von Goethe bist, kannst du ungefähr schließen im allgemeinen nach dieser Wahrheit, daß du niemals mit Goethe zusammen auf der Erde gelebt hast. Er gehört zu einem anderen Schub von Menschen.
Was liegt da eigentlich dahinter? Da muß man die Frage umkehren. Aber um eine solche Frage umzukehren, muß man einen offenen, freien Sinn haben für menschliches Zusammenleben. Man muß sich fragen können, und über diese Frage werde ich nun in der nächsten Zeit sehr viel zu reden haben hier: Wie ist es denn eigentlich, Zeitgenosse eines Menschen zu sein, und wie ist es, von einem Menschen nur aus der Geschichte wissen zu können für das Erdenleben? Wie ist denn das?
Nun, sehen Sie, da muß man eben einen freien, offenen Sinn haben für die Beantwortung der intimen Frage: Wie ist es mit allen inneren Begleiterscheinungen der Seele, wenn ein Zeitgenosse mit dir spricht, Handlungen verrichtet, die an dich herankommen -, wie ist das? Und man muß das dann vergleichen können, nachdem man sich die nötige Erkenntnis erworben hat, wie das wäre, wenn man mit einer Persönlichkeit zusammenkäme, die nicht ein Zeitgenosse ist, vielleicht in gar keinem Erdenleben ein Zeitgenosse war — die man deshalb doch aufs höchste verehren kann, viel mehr als alle Zeitgenossen —, wie es wäre, wenn man mit ihr als Zeitgenosse zusammenträfe? Also, wie wäre es, wenn — verzeihen Sie das Persönliche - ich ein Zeitgenosse von Goethe gewesen wäre? Ja, wenn man kein gleichgültiger Mensch ist — selbstverständlich, wenn man ein gleichgültiger Mensch ist und eben nicht Verständnis hat für dasjenige, was ein Zeitgenosse sein kann, dann kann man sich auch nicht gut die Antwort darauf geben -, dann kann man fragen: Wie wäre es, wenn ich nun in der Schillergasse von Weimar hinuntergegangen wäre gegen den Frauenplan und mir «der dicke Geheimrat» entgegengekommen wäre, meinetwillen im Jahre 1826, 1827? - Nun, man weiß ganz gut, das hätte man nicht vertragen! Den «Zeitgenossen» verträgt man. Denjenigen, mit dem man nicht Zeitgenosse sein kann, verträgt man nicht; er würde in einer gewissen Weise wie vergiftend auf das Seelenleben wirken. Man verträgt ihn, weil man nicht Zeitgenosse ist, sondern Nachfolger oder Vorgänger. Gewiß, wenn man für diese Dinge kein Empfinden hat, so bleiben sie im Unterbewußten. Man kann sich vorstellen, daß einer eine feine Empfindung für Geistiges hat und weiß: Wenn er die Schillerstraße in Weimar hinunterginge gegen den Frauenplan und würde als Zeitgenosse dem dicken Geheimrat Goethe mit dem Doppelkinn etwa begegnet sein, er würde sich wie innerlich unmöglich gefühlt haben. Derjenige aber, der keine Empfindung dafür hat, nun, er hätte vielleicht gegrüßt.
Ja, sehen Sie, diese Dinge sind eben nicht aus dem Erdenleben, weil die Gründe, warum wir nicht Zeitgenossen irgendeines Menschen sein können, eben nicht innerhalb des Erdenlebens sind, weil man da schon hineinschauen muß in geistige Zusammenhänge; deshalb nehmen sie sich für das Erdenleben zuweilen paradox aus. Aber es ist so, es ist durchaus so.
Ich kann Ihnen die Versicherung geben, ich habe in wahrer Liebe eine Einleitung zu Jean Paul geschrieben, die in der Cottaschen «Bibliothek der Weltliteratur» erschienen ist. Hätte ich jemals in Bayreuth mit Jean Paul selber zusammensitzen müssen — Magenkrämpfe hätte ich ganz bestimmt bekommen. Das hindert nicht, daß man die höchste Verehrung hat. Aber das ist für jeden Menschen der Fall, nur bleibt es eben bei den meisten Menschen im Unterbewußten, bleibt im astralischen oder im ätherischen Leib, greift auch nicht den physischen Leib an. Denn das seelische Erlebnis, das den physischen Leib angreifen muß, muß eben zum Bewußtsein kommen. Aber Sie müssen auch darüber sich klar sein, meine lieben Freunde: Ohne das geht es nicht ab, wenn man Erkenntnisse über die geistige Welt gewinnen will, daß man Dinge zu hören bekommt, die einem grotesk, paradox erscheinen, eben weil die geistige Welt anders ist als die physische Welt.
Natürlich kann jemand leicht spotten, wenn irgendwie behauptet wird: Wäre ich Zeitgenosse von Jean Paul gewesen, dann würde ich Magenkrämpfe bekommen haben, wenn ich mit ihm zusammengesessen hätte. — Das ist natürlich für die gewöhnliche, banale, philiströse Welt des irdischen Lebens, ganz selbstverständlich, durchaus wahr; aber die Gesetze der banal-philiströsen Welt gelten nicht für die geistigen Zusammenhänge. Man muß sich daran gewöhnen, in anderen Denkformen denken zu können, wenn man die geistige Welt verstehen will. Man muß sich daran gewöhnen, schon durchaus das Überraschende zu erleben. Wenn das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein über Goethe liest, so kann es sich natürlich gedrängt fühlen, zu sagen: Den hätte ich gern auch persönlich gekannt, ihm die Hand gedrückt und dergleichen. Das ist eine Gedankenlosigkeit, denn es gibt Gesetze, nach denen wir eben für ein bestimmtes Erdenzeitalter vorbestimmt sind und in diesem Zeitalter leben können. Geradeso wie wir für einen bestimmten Luftdruck für unseren physischen Leib vorbestimmt sind, und uns nicht erheben können über die Erde bis zu einem Luftdruck, der uns nicht genehm ist, ebensowenig kann ein Mensch, der für das 20. Jahrhundert bestimmt ist, im Zeitalter Goethes leben.
Das ist dasjenige, was ich zunächst über das Karma habe vorbringen wollen.


Fourth Lecture
Today I would first like to bring some more comprehensive points of view with regard to the development of karma, in order to then gradually be able to go more and more into those things that can actually only be at least illustrated by the, if I may say so, special explanations, We must, if we want to gain insight into the course of karma, be able to imagine how man actually puts together his whole organization when he descends from the spiritual world into the physical world.
You will understand that in the present language there are not really suitable expressions for processes that are quite unknown in the present civilization, and that therefore the expressions for what happens there can only be imprecise. When we descend from the spiritual into the physical world for an earthly life, we have first prepared our physical body through the hereditary current. We will see how this physical body is nevertheless connected in a certain way with what the human being experiences between death and a new birth. For today it may suffice for us to realize that this physical body is actually given to us from the earth. Those members of the human being, however, which can be addressed as higher members, etheric body, astral body and ego, come down from the spiritual world.
The human being draws the etheric body, so to speak, from the whole world ether before it unites with the physical body, which is given to him through descent. A union of the soul-spiritual human being according to ego, astral body and etheric body with the physical human embryo can only take place through the gradual withdrawal of the etheric body of the maternal organism from the physical human germ.
The human being thus unites with the physical human germ after it has drawn its etheric body from the general world ether. The more detailed descriptions of these processes will occupy us later. For now, we are primarily interested in where the individual limbs of the human being come from, which the human being has during his life on earth between birth and death.
The physical organism thus comes from the stream of descent, the etheric organism from the world ether from which it is drawn. The astral organism - one might say it remains unconscious or subconscious to the human being in every respect during life on earth - contains everything that is the result of life between death and a new birth.
And between death and a new birth it is so that man, according to what he has become through the previous earth lives, comes into relationship in the most manifold way with other human souls, which are also between death and a new birth, or with other spiritual beings of a higher world order, which do not descend to earth in a human body but have their existence in the spiritual world.
All that which man brings over from earlier earth lives, according to how he was, according to what he has done, that finds the sympathy or antipathy of the beings which he gets to know by passing through the world between death and a new birth. It is not only of great importance for karma what sympathies and antipathies the human being finds with higher beings through what he has done in the previous life on earth, but it is above all of great importance that the human being comes into relationship with those human souls with whom he was in relationship on earth, and that a peculiar reflection takes place between his nature and the nature of those souls with whom he was in relationship on earth. Let us assume that someone has had a good relationship with a soul that he now meets again between death and a new birth. Everything that accompanies a good relationship has lived in him during previous lives on earth. Then this good relationship is reflected in the soul when this soul is met between death and a new birth. And it is really the case that during this passage through life between death and a new birth, the human being sees himself reflected everywhere in the souls with whom he now lives together, because he has lived together with them on earth. If you have done something good to a person, something is reflected in the soul; if you have done something bad to him, something is reflected in the soul. And one has the feeling - if I may use the term “feeling” with the restriction I made at the beginning of my arguments - that you have fostered this human soul. What you experienced there through the nurturing, what you felt for this human soul, what led to your behavior out of feelings, your own inner experiences during the act of this nurturing, they come back from this soul. They are reflected from this soul. Another soul - you have harmed it; that which lived in you during this harm is reflected.
And you actually have your previous lives on earth, especially the last one, reflected before you from the souls you were with, as if in a powerful, extended mirroring apparatus. And one gets the impression, especially with regard to one's life of deeds, that all this is passing away. Between death and a new birth one loses, or has actually long since lost, the sense of self that one had in the body on earth; but one gets the sense of self from this whole reflection. One lives in all the souls with the reflections of one's deeds with which one was together in earthly life.
On earth, the ego was a point, so to speak. Here, between death and a new birth, it is reflected everywhere from the surrounding world. It is an intimate togetherness with the other souls, but a togetherness according to the relationships one has established with them.
And this is all a reality in the spiritual world. When we walk through any room that has many mirrors, we see ourselves reflected in every mirror. But we also know that - according to ordinary human language - it is not there; when we leave, it does not remain, we are no longer reflected. But that which is reflected in human souls remains, remains there. And there comes a time in the last third between death and a new birth when we form our astral body from these mirror images. Then we draw it together into our astral body, so that when we descend from the spiritual world into the physical world, we carry in our astral body that which we have taken up again after the reflection that our deeds in the previous earthly life have found in other souls between death and a new birth.
But this gives us the impulses that push us towards the human souls, or push us away from the human souls, with whom we are then born again in the physical body at the same time.
And in this way - I will soon have to describe the process in more detail, as I will also have to take the ego into consideration later - but in this way, between death and a new birth, the impulse to karma is formed in the new life on earth.
And there we can follow how an impulse of one life works over into the other lives. Take, for example, the impulse of love. We can carry out our deeds towards other people out of what we call love. It makes a difference whether we do our deeds out of a mere sense of duty, out of convention, out of decency and so on, or whether we do them out of a greater or lesser love.
Let us assume that a person manages to perform actions in an earthly life that are borne by love, that are warmed by love. Yes, that remains as a force in his soul. And what he now takes with him as a result of his deeds, and what is reflected in the souls, comes back to him as a mirror image. And by forming his astral body out of it, with which he comes down to earth, the love of the previous life on earth, which flowed out from man, coming back from other men, changes into joy. So that when a person does something towards his fellow human beings in an earthly life that is borne by love, whereby love emanates from him, goes along with the deeds that promote the other person, then the metamorphosis in the passage through life between death and a new birth is such that what is emanating love in one earthly life metamorphoses in the next earthly life, transforms into joy flowing towards the person.

If you experience joy through a person, my dear friends, in an earthly life, then you can be sure that this joy is the result of the love that you unfolded towards him in a previous earthly life. This joy now flows back into your soul during your life on earth. You know the inner warming effect of joy. You know what joy means in life, especially joy that comes from people. It warms life, it sustains life, it gives life, we could say, vibrations. It is karmically the result of love expended.
But we in turn experience joy as a relationship with the other person who gives us joy. So that in the earlier earth lives we had something inwardly that made love flow out; in the following earth lives we already experience the warmth of joy inwardly as a result. This, in turn, is something that emanates from us. A person who is allowed to experience joy in life is also something that has a warming effect on other people. A person who has reasons to go through life without joy is different to other people than a person who is allowed to go through life with joy.
But that which is experienced in the joy between birth and death is in turn reflected in the most diverse souls with whom one was together on earth and who are now also in the life between death and a new birth. And this reflection, which then comes in many ways from the souls of the people we know, has an effect in turn. We carry it again in our astral body when we descend to the next - that is, now we are in the third earth life - to the next earth life. And again it is switched on, imprinted in our astral body. And now, as a result, it becomes the basis, the impulse for an easy understanding of people and the world. It becomes the basis of that state of soul which sustains us through our understanding of the world. If we can take pleasure in the interesting behavior of people, understand the interesting behavior of people in an earth incarnation, then this points us back to the joy of the previous earth incarnation, to the love of the further preceding earth incarnation. People who can walk through the world with a free, open mind in such a way that the free, open mind allows the world to flow into them, so that they have understanding for the world, are people who have acquired this position towards the world through love and joy.
What we do out of love is quite different from what we do out of a rigid, dry sense of duty. You know how I have always made sure in my writings that the deeds that come from love are understood to be the truly ethical, the truly moral deeds.
I have often had to point out the great contrast that exists between Kant and Schiller in this respect. Kant actually canted everything in life and in knowledge. Everything has become angular and angular in knowledge through Kant, and so has human action: “Duty, you sublime, great name, who do not grasp in yourself anything popular that leads to ingratiation...” and so on. I have quoted the passage in my “Philosophy of Freedom” to the feigned annoyance of many opponents - not to the real, feigned annoyance of many opponents - and have set against it that which I myself must recognize as my view: Love, you impulse that speaks warmly to the soul - and so on.
Schiller, in contrast to Kant's rigid, dry concept of duty, coined the words: “I gladly serve my friends, but unfortunately I do it with inclination, and so it often bothers me that I am not virtuous.” For according to Kantian ethics, what one does out of inclination is not virtuous, but what one does out of a rigid sense of duty.
Well, there are people - they don't come to love at first. But because they cannot tell the other person the truth out of love - if you have love for another person, you tell him the truth and not a lie - but because they cannot love, they tell the truth out of a sense of duty; because they cannot love, they avoid beating the other person right away out of a sense of duty or slapping him in the face, bumping into him and the like if he does something they don't like. There is a difference between acting out of a rigid sense of duty, which is necessary in social life for many things, and between acts of love.
Now, the deeds that are done in a rigid sense of duty or in convention, “because it's convenient”, do not evoke joy in the next earthly life, but rather, by passing through the souls in the same way as I have described, they evoke something in the next earthly life that could be called love: One feels that one is more or less indifferent to people. And that which some people carry through life, that they are indifferent to other people and suffer from it - they rightly suffer from it if they are indifferent to other people, for people are there for each other and man is dependent on not being indifferent to other people - that which they suffer, that is precisely the result of a lack of love in a previous life on earth, where you behaved as a decent person because rigid duty hung over you like a sword of Damocles, I don't want to say like a sword of steel, because that would be unsettling for most people with a sense of duty, but rather like a wooden one.
But now we are in the second life on earth. As we have seen, what comes as joy from love becomes an open, free heart in the third life on earth, which brings us closer to the world, which gives us a free, insightful sense for everything that is beautiful, true and good. That which flows to us as indifference from other people, and what we experience as a result in one earthly life, makes us for the third, that is, for the next earthly life, a person who knows nothing right to do with himself. When he comes to school, he doesn't know what to do with what the teachers do with him. When he gets a little older, he doesn't know whether he should become a locksmith or a court councillor. He doesn't know what to do with himself in life. He actually goes along in life without direction, without direction. He is not exactly dull in his perception of the outside world. He can understand music, for example, but he doesn't enjoy it. After all, it makes no difference to him whether the music is more or less good or more or less bad. He already feels the beauty of some painterly or other work, but it always scratches him in the soul: Why all this? and so on. These are things that again arise in the third life on earth in the karmic context.
But let us assume that the human being commits certain harms against his fellow human beings out of hatred or out of a tendency to antipathy. We can think of all the stages that can occur. One can, let us say, harm his fellow human beings with a criminal feeling of hatred. But he can also, and I'll leave out the intermediate stages, be a critic. To be a critic, you always have to hate a little if you're not a praising critic, and those are rare today, because it's not interesting to acknowledge things. It only becomes interesting when you make jokes about things. Now there are all kinds of intermediate stages. But what we're talking about here is the kind of human actions that arise from cold antipathy, from a certain antipathy that is often not even clear, all the way to hatred. Everything that is brought about in this way by people towards other people or even towards sub-human beings, all this is in turn discharged in states of the soul, which are now also reflected in the life between death and a new birth. And then, in the next life on earth, out of the hatred comes that which flows to us from the world as a sorrowful being, as unpleasantness caused from outside, as the opposite of joy.
You will say: Yes, we experience so much suffering, is it really all due to greater or lesser hatred in the previous earthly life? I cannot possibly think of myself that I have been such a bad fellow - a person will easily say - that I can experience so much unhappiness because I have hated so much! Yes, if you want to think without prejudice in this area, then you have to realize how great the illusion is that makes you feel good and to which it is therefore very easy to give in when it comes to denying yourself any feelings of antipathy towards other people. People actually go through the world with much more hatred than they think, at least with much more antipathy. And the fact is that hatred is usually not experienced at all at first, because it gives the soul satisfaction. It is covered up by the satisfaction. When it comes back as suffering that flows to us from outside, then the suffering is noticed.
But just think of it, my dear friends, in order, I would like to say, to imagine in a very trivial way what is possible, just think of a coffee klatch, a real coffee klatch, where half a dozen - it's enough! - of some aunts or uncles - they could be uncles - sitting together and gossiping about their fellow human beings! Think how much antipathy is unloaded on people in an hour and a half - sometimes it takes longer! As this flows out, people don't notice it; but when it comes back in the next earthly life, it is very well noticed. And it inevitably comes back.
So that actually a part - not all, we will get to know other karmic connections - so that a part of what we feel in an earth life in terms of suffering inflicted from outside can actually stem from feelings of antipathy in previous earth lives.
In all of this, of course, one must always be aware that karma, that some karmic current, has to start somewhere. So that, for example, if you have successive earth lives here
a b c (d) e f g h
and this d is the present earth life, then of course not all pain that comes to us from outside has to be based in the previous earth life. It can also be an original pain, which is then lived out karmically in the next earth life. But that is why I say that a large part of the suffering that comes to us from outside is the result of hatred that was stirred up in previous earth lives.
When we now pass over to the third earth life again, then the result of that which flows towards us as suffering - but only the result of that suffering which comes to us from, so to speak, stored up hatred - then the result of this suffering, which then unloads itself into the soul, is initially a kind of dullness of spirit, a kind of dullness of insight towards the world. And he who is indifferent and phlegmatic towards the world, who does not face things or people with an open heart, often has acquired this dullness through the suffering caused by his own karma in a previous life on earth, which, however, if it expresses itself in this way in a dull state of soul, must go back to feelings of hatred at least in the third last life on earth. For one can always be sure that being foolish in any earthly life is always the result of hatred in a certain earlier earthly life.
But you see, my dear friends, the understanding of karma should not only be based on the fact that we grasp karma as an understanding of life, but that we can also grasp it as an impulse of life, that we are aware that there is not merely an "a, b, c, d“ (see diagram), but also an ”e, f, g, h", that there are also earth lives to come, and that what we develop in our soul in a present earth life will have effects, results in the next earth life. If someone wants to be particularly foolish in the third next earth life, he only needs to hate very much in the present earth life. But if someone wants to have a free, open mind in the third earthly life, he only needs to love a lot in this earthly life. And it is only through this that the insight, the realization of karma, gains its value, that it flows into our will for the future, that it plays a role in this will for the future. It is certainly the case that at the present time in the development of mankind the unconscious can no longer continue to work in the same way as it did in the past, when our souls passed through earlier earthly lives, but people are becoming ever freer and more conscious. Since the first third of the 15th century we have had an age in which people are becoming ever freer and more conscious. And so for those people who are people of the present, the next earthly life will already have a dark feeling of the previous earthly lives. And just as people of today, when they realize that they are not particularly clever, do not attribute this to themselves but to their disposition, usually looking for it in their physical nature according to the view of today's materialism, so the people who will be those who come back from the present will at least already have a dark feeling that will worry them: If they are not particularly clever, there must have been something there that was connected with feelings of hatred and antipathy.
And when we talk about a Waldorf school education today, we must of course take into account the current earthly civilization. We cannot yet educate with full openness in such a way that we educate, so to speak, for consciousness in repeated earth lives, because people today do not even have a dark feeling for repeated earth lives. But the approaches that are being made in Waldorf education will, if they are taken up, develop further in the coming centuries to the point where they will be incorporated into ethical and moral education: A child with little talent will go back to earlier lives on earth in which it hated much, and spiritual science will then be used to find out who it might have hated. For they must find themselves in some environment, the people who have been hated and towards whom deeds have been committed out of hatred. And in the coming centuries, education will gradually have to be placed much more into human life. We will have to see in a child where that which lives itself out in a metamorphosis of the mindless in earthly life is reflected or mirrored in the life between death and a new birth. And then one will be able to do something so that in childhood special love is developed for those people for whom there was a special hatred in earlier earthly lives. And one will see that through such concretely applied love the mind, the whole constitution of the soul in general, will brighten. What can help education will not lie in general theories about karma, but in concretely looking into life in order to notice how the karmic connections are. You will notice that children are brought together in a class by fate, that is not entirely indifferent. And when one gets beyond the dreadful carelessness that prevails today with regard to such things, where the “human material” - as it is often called - that is thrown together in a class is really understood as if it were thrown together by hance, not put together by fate, when you get beyond this dreadful carelessness, then you will be able to see, especially as an educator, what strange karmic threads have been woven from one person to another through previous lives. And then one will take into the development of the children that which can have a balancing effect. For karma is in a certain respect something that is subject to an eternal necessity. Out of an iron necessity we can absolutely establish the series:
Love - joy - open heart.
Antipathy or hatred - suffering - folly.
These are unconditional connections. But it is also the case that just as one is confronted with an unconditional necessity when a river is running and yet one has already regulated rivers, given them a different course, it is also possible to regulate the karmic current, I would like to say, to work into it. That is possible.
So if you notice that at a child's age there is a tendency to folly, and you come to guide the child to develop love, especially in its heart, and if you - and this would already be possible today for people who have a fine observation of life - if you discover with which other children the child has karmic connections, to which other children the child is karmically related, and make the child love precisely these children, do deeds of love towards them, then you will see that you can counterbalance the antipathy with love, and in a next incarnation, in a next life on earth, you can thus improve the foolishness.
There really are, I would like to say, instinct-trained educators who often do this out of their instincts, who teach children with a bad disposition to be able to love and thereby gradually train them to become more perceptive human beings. These things, they actually make the insight into the karmic connections useful for life.
Now, before we go any further in our consideration of the details of karma, there is one more question that must come before our souls. Let us ask ourselves: What is the human being in relation to whom one can know oneself, at least in general, in a karmic context? I must use an expression that is often used today in a somewhat mocking sense: Such a person is a contemporary. He is on earth at the same time as we are. And if you consider this, you will say to yourself: If you are together with certain people in an earthly life, then you were also together with people in a previous earthly life - at least in general, things can also shift somewhat - and likewise again in a previous earthly life.

Yes, but now those who live fifty years later than you were together with people in a previous earthly life! Generally speaking, according to the idea we have developed here, people of the B series will not come together with people of the A series. That is a depressing thought, but a true thought.
I will talk later about other questions of doubt that arise from the fact that people often say that humanity is multiplying on earth and so on. But I would like to suggest this thought to you now; it is perhaps a depressing thought, but it is a true thought: it is indeed the case that the ongoing life of people on earth takes place in rhythms. I would like to say that one human impulse generally passes from one earthly life to another, another human impulse passes from one earthly life to another, and they are separated from each other in a certain way, they do not come together in earthly life. In the long life between death and a new birth, people do come together; but in earth life it is indeed the case that one always comes down to earth again with a limited circle of people. It is precisely for the repeated earth lives that contemporaneity has an inner meaning, an inner importance.
And why is that? I can tell you that this question, which at first can occupy one intellectually, this question has really caused me the greatest possible pain on spiritual-scientific ground, because it is necessary to bring out the truth about this question, to bring out the inner facts. And one can ask oneself - forgive me for using an example that really, I would like to say, plays a role for me, only in relation to the investigation -: Why were you not a contemporary of Goethe? By the fact that you are not a contemporary of Goethe, you can generally conclude, according to this truth, that you never lived together with Goethe on earth. He belongs to a different group of people.
What is actually behind this? You have to turn the question around. But in order to turn such a question around, one must have an open, free sense of human coexistence. You have to be able to ask yourself, and I will have to talk a lot about this question here in the near future: What is it actually like to be a contemporary of a human being, and what is it like to be able to know about a human being only from history for life on earth? What is that like?
Well, you see, you have to have a free, open mind to answer the intimate question: What is it like with all the inner accompanying phenomena of the soul when a contemporary speaks to you, performs actions that come close to you - what is it like? And one must then be able to compare this, after one has acquired the necessary knowledge, what it would be like if one were to meet a personality who is not a contemporary, perhaps was not a contemporary in any earthly life at all - whom one can therefore admire to the highest degree, much more than all contemporaries - what would it be like if one were to meet him as a contemporary? Well, what would it be like if - pardon the personal - I had been a contemporary of Goethe? Yes, if you are not an indifferent person - of course, if you are an indifferent person and do not have an understanding of what a contemporary can be, then you cannot give yourself a good answer - then you can ask: What would it be like if I had walked down Schillergasse from Weimar towards the Frauenplan and “the fat privy councillor” had met me, for my sake, in 1826, 1827? - Well, one knows very well that one would not have tolerated that! You can tolerate the “contemporary”. One does not tolerate those with whom one cannot be contemporaries; in a certain way they would have a poisoning effect on the life of the soul. We tolerate him because we are not contemporaries, but successors or predecessors. Certainly, if one has no feeling for these things, they remain in the subconscious. One can imagine that someone has a fine feeling for spiritual things and knows that if he were to walk down Schillerstrasse in Weimar towards the Frauenplan and, as a contemporary, were to meet the fat Privy Councillor Goethe with the double chin, he would have felt as if he were inwardly impossible. But the one who has no feeling for it, well, he might have saluted.
Yes, you see, these things are not from earthly life, because the reasons why we cannot be contemporaries of any human being are not within earthly life, because we have to look into spiritual contexts; that is why they sometimes seem paradoxical for earthly life. But it is so, it is absolutely so.
I can assure you that I wrote an introduction to Jean Paul with true love, which was published in Cottaschen's “Bibliothek der Weltliteratur”. If I had ever had to sit down with Jean Paul himself in Bayreuth, I would certainly have had stomach cramps. That does not prevent one from having the highest reverence. But that is the case for every human being, only for most people it remains in the subconscious, remains in the astral or etheric body, and does not attack the physical body. For the spiritual experience, which must attack the physical body, must come to consciousness. But you must also be clear about this, my dear friends: if you want to gain knowledge about the spiritual world, you cannot do without hearing things that seem grotesque, paradoxical, precisely because the spiritual world is different from the physical world.
Of course, it is easy for someone to scoff when something is said: If I had been a contemporary of Jean Paul, I would have gotten stomach cramps if I had sat with him. - This is of course quite true for the ordinary, banal, philistine world of earthly life, quite naturally; but the laws of the banal-philistine world do not apply to spiritual contexts. You have to get used to thinking in other ways if you want to understand the spiritual world. You have to get used to experiencing the surprising. When the ordinary consciousness reads about Goethe, it can naturally feel compelled to say: I would have liked to have known him personally, to have shaken his hand and the like. This is thoughtlessness, for there are laws according to which we are predestined for a certain age on earth and can live in that age. Just as we are predestined for a certain air pressure for our physical body and cannot rise above the earth to an air pressure that is not suitable for us, just as a person who is destined for the 20th century cannot live in the age of Goethe.
This is what I first wanted to say about karma.

