Submenu: Reincarnation and Karm

Law of fate and karma Through the ego and the refined part of the astral body, man lives from one earthly embodiment to the next. A life on earth is followed by a life in the spiritual world, this again by an embodiment on earth. Man is predisposed as an immortal being. The place, the family, the culture, the social conditions into which we were born are dependent on our eternal individuality. So man is a special individual being that develops from one life on the physical earth, to the next in many embodiments, from a previous lower to a subsequent higher state. This rhythm of embodiment is in general, in the range of several hundred years spent in the spiritual world until the next birth, but in special periods of time this duration can be only a few decades (Rudolf Steiner: Cycles "Esoteric Observations of Karmic Contexts I-VI"). The one can be born as an unhappy contemporary and the other as an apparently happy millionaire, because it requires both their qualities and course of development. One time as a woman, another time as a man, a mathematician, an artist, a housewife, a Jew, a German or an Arab, just as the necessities of fate require. And it is now this world of ours that can make available to the children of mankind, at birth, various bodies, races, cultures, possessions, nationalities and religions, in order to live out their peculiarities and worldly necessities. As described above, in his life after death, man takes the results and proceeds of his deeds with him. Higher beings form the seeds for the destiny of the next earthly life. In this way we can understand that our experiences and blows of fate were caused by ourselves. If an unpleasant, emotionally painful experience confronts us, we can learn to accept our fate as our own higher will by understanding repeated earth lives. It is we ourselves who, in our previous embodiments, have put these difficulties and blows of fate in our path. So the unpleasant things were caused by ourselves and it is something like a grace to be allowed to live through this experience. Thus overcoming one's own imperfection and compensating for the injustice done to others. In this way, a person can find the strength within himself to be open-minded and balanced in the face of blows of fate, because what happens is what he himself wants. This knowledge gives man the possibility to develop greater spiritual and mental powers. "In his previous life, man has created disturbing forces that have shown themselves during the backward migration after death" (B007, page 118). Man has, for example, inflicted something painful, damaging on another. Now this act stands before him as an obstacle. From this it follows for him, as a train of fate, that he has to make up for this in the person. He feels attracted to this person in this life or in a next life, in order to be able to compensate for this obstacle to his own progress. Now all these obstacles of his next life are presented to the person as in a forerunner, where he sees what he will have to remove in these lives in order to advance in his development. "The deeds of this new life are caused by those of the previous one in a certain way. This lawful connection of an earlier existence with a later one must be regarded as the law of destiny." (B007, page119). If one was a good orator, he will probably be a bad orator at the next rebirth. Good mathematicians appear in the next incarnation as not equipped with any mathematical talent. It is often possible that where one has no talents at all, one was very gifted in the previous incarnation. But all the above occurs only probably and not surely, because the karmic connections are much more complicated than man could understand in his daily consciousness. If you could not fully live out your gifts in one incarnation because of early death, you will almost certainly be endowed with the same strong gifts in a next incarnation. A talent as a mathematician, for example, works its way into the inner organ formation in the next incarnation. The eyes, for example, are specially trained by previous thinking in forms. A good architect, for example, may develop hearing tools in the next incarnation (B056, page 65ff). So we see from today's knowledge, the human being determined by fate how he was born into his environment. This cultural environment, the familial-genetic connections shape him, as well as his eternal individuality grows out of this basic environment and can gradually be realized as a special personality. Man is a spiritual being that can embody itself on earth in a physical body. When man is not embodied on earth then he lives in the spiritual world with the members of the being that belong to him. So there are two different states that alternate for him: life between birth and death in an earthly body and life between death and next birth in the spiritual worlds. In the second one man carries mainly in himself his astral body1 and his ego. During this time he prepares his next life on earth in an earthly-physical embodiment due to his pre-incarnations and the necessities of human development. For the benefit of our individual development we can choose here easy, happy or tragic, painful paths of fate for our next life on earth. If a heavy destiny is predetermined for us, it requires a correspondingly strong will of destiny to want to go this way as a handicapped person, victim of acts of violence, perfidious dictatorships or the like. People who live with a limitation or disability have often chosen it from the point of view of a higher self in order to work on their own progress. It is not the struggling with one's own fate or the looking down on people who go a different, maybe not so pleasant way, but the understanding, support and recognition of these decisions of fate. Concepts that know a divine moral world that knows the meaning of human development will also see the mistakes, problems and disasters of today's humanity. Difficulties that one could despair of in the face of the divine ideal. There man can get lost and only seek spiritual development, wanting nothing more to do with the earth incarnation and this world full of sins. But then he willfully turns back to this world to be able to fulfil his own task and development at all. Means the true recognition of fate. An esoteric-exoteric life begins with the transformation of the spiritual knowledge gained into the most loving moral creation possible for one's fellow men. Because only the creation of something new is true life; to preserve everything from existing, to hold on to achieved possessions, is only a holding on to what has once lived. To understand one's own destiny and oneself better, to work on oneself in order to overcome weaknesses and acquire missing talents and qualities. To face daily problems, annoyances and suffering purposefully and willingly. Whoever sees the problems and trials of life as the insurmountable and does not have the chance to develop from them, loses himself in despair. The one who can distinguish good from evil experiences himself as being surrounded by evil and threatens to sink into hopelessness. So one has to stand up with all one's might to want to see the good, the positive in every person, always and everywhere. Great strength and great courage are part of it. Not blindness for the bad (the problems), but consciously objective assessment of his facts, paired with the powerful, loving look for the good. In this way, a world of joyful hope, affirming one's own destiny, is created from one's own strength. In our present situation, man can only try to bear the confusion and blows of fate patiently. To endure all the problems that arise from fellow human beings and their weaknesses. In desperation, not closing oneself off from the problems, not suppressing them, not fleeing, consciously seeing, feeling and experiencing the difficulties. And in hopeful faith in a common future, to give as much interest, affection, positive, loving as possible to your fellow men. To live consciously with the facts and the seriousness of one's own karma means to bring oneself in harmony with one's own life and one's own destiny events. What happens to us is our fate, wanted by a higher self. Let's take that which causes our anger, rage, reluctance as the will of our own higher self, also the joys that come our way as something that is given to us from a higher point of view. Then we will no longer stand like a plaything of events in life. We will be able to see everything as a grace and a gift that supports our development and enables us to recognize ourselves. "But it is true: We carry our fate with our own ego, and we receive the impulses according to our previous incarnations ...", (B173, 3.1.1915). As long as we live in the world of thoughts that come to us through sensual perception, we are closed off from fate and the reality of the spiritual world. These thoughts must die away before we can absorb worldly thoughts and our own fate, because we ourselves are contained in everything that surrounds us in our experience. "It is more difficult to grow together with one's fate than to resist it, but what we lose when our thought dies, we can only regain if we draw in this way what is outside of us ... if we have grasped our karma, our fate in the true sense. That's when we wake up again." (B173, 3.1.1915). Consider destiny as a grace; because one can live out his destiny with all problems. If fate no longer grants this grace, then one stands on one's own feet and must have learned everything. To be ready to impose upon oneself the tests of fate that one needs because of one's own imperfection. To understand fate, it is a help to understand the diversity of how cause and effect occur on earth. We live on earth in four different realms: The mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom and the human kingdom. In these realms the causes for existing effects at different places and times are to be sought. In the mineral realm, the cause must be present in the mineral realm at the same time in order for an effect to occur. If there is no cause, there can be no effect. If a metal forms into a new shape, a transforming cause (casting, cutting, forming, forging, ...) is immediately present. In the plant kingdom, the effects lie in the etheric world. Here we have a cause in the supernatural, extraterrestrial and an effect in the physical, but these must occur simultaneously. If a plant is to grow or wither, the causes of forces must be present at that moment. The animal in turn is formed in the womb from the effects of the star world, the zodiac and planetary connections. It is the cause in past super-physical processes which seek the becoming of the animal in its sensitivity and mobility. "There we must come out of space and walk in time", (B191, 16.2.1924). In the human kingdom we can find the predisposition of fate through place, time and human environment, but these have their cause in the formation of fate, in the prenatal time between death and birth (see World Midnight). However, this fate is based on the results of our previous earth incarnations. So that we have to look for the cause of the effects in the human kingdom in the physical, but temporally in the pre-incarnations. Man lives in these four realms and it is important to learn the distinction between the cause-effect relationships of these realms: "Mineral rich: Simultaneousness of causes in the physical Plant kingdom: Simultaneousness of causes in the physical and superphysical Animal kingdom: past superphysical causes to present effects Human kingdom: past physical causes to present effects in the physical", (B191, 16.2.1924). What man experiences as destiny is like a framework within which he can move. One can recognize in it a lack of freedom, because fate is often inexorable, blows of fate like merciless, coming at us. But in it we can always find a freedom of thought. And where we come to the freedom of our thinking, there also begins the freedom of wanting and acting within the framework of fate. What man has achieved so far in connection with his development wanted by God, and his relationship to his fellow human beings in the pre-embodiments, is drawn upon by the highest spiritual beings for his further fate. What we have done to our fellow human beings in terms of good and evil, where they promote us or we promote them, where we cause them or them harm, where we or they have shown love. This will lead in one way or another, to encounters with them in these or in the next lives on earth. In order to push this relationship forward, in a supportive sense, or to balance out what is wrong and evil. If man were without sin, without specialization from God, there would be no adversary effect, Luciferian and Ahrimanic spirits, then man would pursue his God-given development in uninhibited contact with the good divine beings. The freedom that has come about through the separation leads to sin, error and evil. In order to compensate for this, man was given karma. In order to overcome the separation and to find back to the good divine beings. (B037, 22.3.1909). Thus what we experience in the human kingdom as the causal effect of karma is brought about by the highest angelic hierarchies: the thrones, cherubim and seraphim. It is that which accommodates our ego in its development as experiences and events. What we have done bad to other people damages our being. "... by doing something bad to a human being. This takes something away from your human value, this makes you mentally crippled", (B191, 23.2.1924). This must be compensated by a new fate. "For this purpose those beings are necessary who transform moral deeds into world deeds, metamorphose. These are the entities of the first hierarchy, seraphim, cherubim, thrones", (B191, 17.2.1924). With our astral body we are part of the effects that are given to us from the respective place on earth on astrals and this astral gives rise to our sympathies and antipathies. "... so the sympathies and antipathies that we as human beings develop within the earthly existence, and that we bring with us from the pre-earthly existence, depend on what constitutes the animal atmosphere, so to speak ... what do we as human beings carry within us, which corresponds in our own inner being to the manifold animal forms that are outside? Hundreds, thousands of times these animal creatures are! Hundreds, thousands of times are the shapes of our sympathies and antipathies, only most of them remain in the unconscious or subconscious", (B191, 17.2.1924). What we call inherited, how we give birth, depends in many ways on our sympathies and antipathies, and these do not come from genetic inheritance or the cultural environment, but from how we stand inside the animal kingdom. And there we live in a reflection of what the second hierarchy is, which is the exusiai, dynamis and kyriotetes. "That which is the earthly image of the high, glorious forms of this second Hierarchy, that lives in the animal kingdom. But that which these beings, when we associate with them between death and a new birth, transplant into us lives in what we carry with us from the spiritual world into the physical world as the sympathies and antipathies that are innate to us", (B191, 17.2.1924). Mit unserm Ätherleib leben wir im Pflanzenreich, der Ätherleib, die Wirkung der Bildekräfte hat Einfluss auf unser Innenleben, auf unser eigens inneres Wohl- oder Unwohlbehagen hinsichtlich der leiblichen Gestaltung. Hier erleben wir das, was uns schicksalsgemäß von der dritten Hierarchie zukommt. „Und je nachdem wir diese Beziehungen und Verhältnisse zu diesen Wesenheiten der dritten Hierarchie entwickeln, gestaltet sich unser inneres, ich möchte sagen, unser Wesenheitskarma, dasjenige Karma, welches abhängt davon, wie unser Ätherleib unsere Säfte zusammensetzt, wie er uns groß oder klein werden lässt uns so weiter.“, (B191, 17.2.1924). Und wir leben mit unserem physischen Leib in dem Mineralreich und in der spüren wir eigentlich keine Abhängigkeit. „Der Mensch ist also im großen unabhängig von dem, was die umliegende mineralische Welt ist. Er nimmt aus der mineralischen Welt nur das in sich auf, was einen unmittelbaren Einfluss auf sein Wesen nicht hat. Er bewegt sich frei und unabhängig in der mineralischen Welt.“, (B191, 17.2.1924). Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi 1st component of karma: Well-being, comfort, discomfort. Dynamis, Exusiai, Kyriotetes 2nd component of karma: Sympathies, antipathies. Seraphim, cherubim, thrones 3rd component of karma: Events, experiences. Table 2: How man is integrated in his embodiment on earth, in the realms of plants, animals and humans, how the environment affects his etheric body, astral body and ego in connection with the realms of the angelic hierarchies (B191, p.44). What the beings of the hierarchies work out for our life on earth as fate is based on our own development, on our past deeds, but also on what is to come to us in the future. So our fate on earth is one thing above all: It is our being, that is what we are, "because we are actually our karma ourselves. That which comes over there from previous lives on earth, that is actually ourselves,...", (B191, 23.2.1924). So there is no sense for us to be dissatisfied with our physical characteristics, with our earthly and human environment. For all these are we ourselves, that what we need for our development. Only then will we really get to know ourselves. If we understand our karma in such a way that everything that comes our way in good and bad is caused by ourselves. If we are embodied in our physical body, we experience our ego-consciousness through its mirror function. We experience ourselves, but not the effects of our thoughts and deeds on our fellow human beings. If we follow the path of a higher spiritual development or are in life between death and the next birth, this effect of the physical body ceases. We then experience our ego in our surroundings, our thoughts about our fellow human beings, our deeds to our fellow human beings, we experience their effect on them. "And one has actually mirrored one's previous life on earth, namely the last one, from the souls with which one was together, before oneself, as in a mighty, extended mirror apparatus. One lives up in all those souls with the reflections of his deeds with which one was together in life on earth. On earth the I was as a point, so to speak. Here, between death and a new birth, it is reflected everywhere from the surroundings", (B191, 24.2.1924). This experience of one's own ego in the effect we have produced on our fellow human beings then helps us to build up a new astral body for the next birth. "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", (B191, 24.2.1924). Man lives on earth together with other people, with these people his fate connects him, in the life between death and the next birth he lives again with these people in the described way, thus loosely karmic groups of people are formed, who live more or less alternately on earth. "If you are together with certain people in an earthly life, then you were also in a previous earthly life - at least in general ...", (B191, 24.2.1924). When the new astral body is formed from the thoughts, words and deeds that we have done to our fellow human beings in previous lives, then it is possible to trace how love or hate is transformed into abilities or inabilities in the next life. "And as man forms his astral body from this, with which he comes down to earth, the love of the previous life on earth, which emanated from man, coming back from other men, transforms into joy," and this coming back joy transforms in the following life "... to the basis, to the impulse of easy understanding of people and the world. It becomes the foundation of that soul condition which sustains us by understanding the world", (B191, 24.2.1924). Thus, acts of love or hatred are physical causes in past lives, which have their effect in the following lives, so that "love - joy - open heart. Antipathy or hate - suffering - folly", (B191, 24.2.1924). "But if we look up to the spiritual worlds, we see how that which was once the earthly deeds of men, after having passed through Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, is received, is spread above as heavenly deeds by thrones, cherubim, seraphim (it is written on the tablet): Table 3 1. Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai receive the web of human destiny in etheric weaving. 2. in Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, in the astral perception of the cosmos, the just consequences of man's life on earth decay. 3. the righteous consequences of man's life on earth are resurrected in thrones, cherubim, seraphim, as their deeds. This, my dear friends, is, especially in the present, a significant, an infinitely significant and an infinitely sublime series of facts", (B201, 4.7.1924). Only when one sees the eternal individuality in every real human being and accordingly creates the economic, legal, spiritual conditions by means of which every human being on earth may live a dignified and humane life on earth (and also the respective fellow human being). Only then can we speak of a more highly developed human society. "For a spiritual-scientific astrology and a spiritual-scientific school such as Waldorf Education, such an insight will be helpful for the future in helping people to find their spiritual deficiencies and their prenatal causes. This will then lead to ways of healing. „... Instinct-trained educators who often do this out of instinct, who bring badly-disposed children to love and thus gradually bring them up to be more receptive human beings. These things, they actually only make the insight into karmic contexts useful for life", (B191, 24.2.1924). In a summary from Rudolf Steiner's lecture of 20.2.1912 in Stuttgart (B056, 20.2.1912), a way is described in more detail how one can form an idea of one's former embodiments while freely and powerfully working within: One comes to a certain view by doing inner things that are not at all easy, that are difficult, but that can be done. They are in contrast to the present time, where everyone wants to find only himself as absolutely right. 1. practicing the usual way of self-knowledge, the way of looking back on one's life What kind of person have I been: A person with a strong tendency to think, an inner contemplative being or always loved the sensations of the outside world more. Did I like or dislike this or that in life. I wanted to read at school but did not like calculating. I liked to hit other children, but did not like to be hit. What is easy for me, what has become difficult for me. What hit me so hard that I wanted to escape. What hit me so hard that I said, that's fine with me. Two: What was one predisposed to Intellectually, in the way that is related to the mood, in the way that is related to the will impulses. 3. above all, everything that one did not like to have wanted. (e.g. one wanted to become a poet, but was forced to become a craftsman), what one wanted to become, but did not become against one's will. 4. what suited you in your youth and what never became part of you. 5. what one wanted to escape from in one's youth. 6. a picture of those things in your life that you really didn't like the most. Settling into the idea that you didn't want or wish for anything, now you want and want energetically. 7. what would you be like if you were alive, vigorously wishing for everything that you did not wish for (thereby eliminating what you have managed to overcome) 8. create a being in your mind of which you can have the idea that you have never been before and then imagine that this very being would have been with all vehemence and intensity. 9. it shows you something that you are not in this incarnation, but that you have brought into the present incarnation. His deeper being will be absorbed in this image. 10. as difficult as this counter-image has become, you feel that you have something to do with it. Not with this life but the certainty that it has to do with a former life is emerging. 11) When we discover the most dull sides of our being, they can most likely lead us to what we shone most in the previous incarnation. 12. if one can speak many languages, this can result in a more unbiased judgement of his fellow human beings in the next incarnation. 13. if you have painted this picture in front of your soul, then you can also estimate how much this picture has faded. You get the feeling or impression that so or so many people stand between you and the picture. For example, if you get the impression that there are 12 people between you and the picture, you have to divide this number by 3 and you get the number of centuries that the last incarnation was. 14th You have to do this more often and present it quite vividly, so that you almost imagine yourself in a person who would have wanted what we did not want. The more often you repeat it, the clearer the imagination becomes. 15. a kind of memory is formed here, which must be called something other than ordinary memory (ordinary memory is the memory of imagination). This is a kind of memory of feelings and sensations. 16. to form an auxiliary thought that there is a fictitious person who is responsible for all the coincidences that happen to an event (e.g. the one who throws down the flower-bush, the one who hits you), with this auxiliary thought it is more and more possible to recognize one's own being that has prepared this incarnation. 17. a failure within us leads us to pain and suffering, because we can (learn to) get rid of something. Behind the outer one lives an inner higher individuality. (Summary from: B056, 20.2.1912).
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