Love/Fate Relationship Redux

In January of 2020, Love/Fate Relationship began its journey to become the most widely read post since I began the blog. It has over 3.5 times as many views as the next most viewed post and is largely responsible for gathering viewers from 70 countries. In light of this, and because it’s the 3-year anniversary of Who Are You?, I decided to repost it.  

Why do we love the people we love? It isn’t always due to common interests because sometimes we are drawn to people before we even know what their interests are, and we certainly aren’t drawn to everyone who shares our interests. Conversely, sometimes we know right away that we don’t like someone. We might say we have a gut feeling, but do we understand the origin of such a feeling? Probably not. So what’s going on?

Perhaps the whole phenomena is like consciousness itself: unable to be explained within the confines of our rational mind but rather must be considered with spiritual ideas.

Maybe it’s fate or karma that draws us to those we love. We are all familiar with the word karma; it’s an old Sanskrit term dating back before 1500 BCE and recognized as a universal law in both Hinduism and Buddhism. Karma connotes both action and result. We use it mostly when we consider good deeds that result in good fortune or the opposite, bad deeds that result in less favorable results. We will try to use this word more broadly to consider what it is that attracts or repels us from the people we feel strongly about.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner* has to say:

Necessity and freedom interweave in our destiny… We meet some human being. As a rule, the fact that we have met him is enough in itself; we accept life as it comes without being very observant or giving it much thought. But deeper scrutiny of individual human life reveals that when two persons meet, their paths have been guided in a remarkable way. Think of two individuals, one aged twenty-five and the other aged twenty, who meet; they can look back over the course of their lives hitherto and it will be evident to each of them that every single happening in the life of the one, say the twenty-year-old, had impelled him from quite a different part of the world to this meeting, at this particular place, with the other. The same will be true of the twenty-five-year-old. In the forming of destiny very much depends upon the fact that human beings, starting from different parts of the world, meet as though guided by an iron necessity directly to that meeting-point. No thought is given to the wonders that can be revealed by studies of this kind, but human life is infinitely enriched by insight into such situations and impoverished without it.

If we begin to think about our relationship to some human being whom we seem to have met quite by accident, we shall have to say to ourselves that we had been looking for him, seeking for him, ever since we were born into this earthly existence… and as a matter of fact, even before then. But I do not want to go into that at the moment. We need only remind ourselves that we should not have come across this individual if at some earlier point in earthly life we had taken only a slightly different direction to the left or to the right and had not gone the way we did. As I said, people do not give any thought to these matters. But it is sheer arrogance to believe that something to which one pays no attention is non-existent. It is a fact and will eventually reveal itself to observation.

There is, however, a significant difference between what takes place before the actual meeting of two individuals and what takes place from that moment onwards. Before they met in earthly life, they had influenced each other without having any knowledge of the other’s existence. After the meeting the mutual influence continues, but now they know each other. And this again is the beginning of something extremely significant… What occurs between two human beings before they become acquainted can only be regarded as the outcome of iron necessity and what happens afterwards as the expression of freedom, of mutually free relationship and behavior.

Excerpt from: Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies, Vol. VI, Lecture given in Berne, Switzerland, January 25, 1924 by Rudolf Steiner. [See note at end of post.]

The above passage from Steiner’s lecture on karmic relationships asks our acceptance of the idea of karma in terms of our relationships to others. If we can entertain such an idea, we must ask whether all karma is just personal? Do we deserve to meet our soul mate – interesting term – or to meet an arch enemy? Based on what? What does Steiner mean by iron necessity guiding us toward certain people? Questions such as these expose us to some of the deep mysteries of our lives.

When we contemplate the people we know in our lives, we can easily recognize those with whom we feel a deeper (karmic) relationship, whether it’s good or bad, and those with whom we feel but a passing relationship. We can trace the events that brought us into the lives of those we care about. We can marvel at the multitude of decisions we (and they) made that resulted in our meeting each other. Enjoy the beautiful complexity of our lives as a welcoming first step toward understanding the bigger picture of karma.

* See Having an Openness of Mind in sidebar.

“Is Love at First Sight Real?”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/meet-catch-and-keep/201801/is-love-first-sight-real?amp

Dr. Steiner’s gave his lectures on karmic relationships the year before he died, and they are arranged in eight volumes. Eight volumes! While extensive, these books by no means cover all Steiner had to say about karma. For example, the two posts appearing after Love/Fate Relationship have different sources. One is Theosophy, a book rather than a series of lectures. This introductory book gives us an overview of Steiner’s spiritual science and is a great place to start researching spiritual science in earnest. The state of the world begs us to understand our purpose for being, and Steiner’s insights provide us with a means for that understanding.  

My Country Now

“Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter; my refuge is humanity. I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds, and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live.”

—Rabindranath Tagore (Nobel Prize in Literature 1913)

What does it mean to love one’s country or one’s culture? Is it an innate feeling? Is it what we are taught? Is it our country or our culture that we claim allegiance to?

Today we will focus on the issues of nationalism and culturalism as they play out in our current lives. The lecture featured below was given by Rudolf Steiner in Berlin just three months after the beginning of World War I. Steiner chose this subject knowing that emotions were running high because people from many of the countries opposing each other in the war were working together to build a center for Anthroposophy with sounds of gunfire nearby.

Though not all of us are at war now, the civil unrest and so-called culture wars in many of our countries can feel like we are under attack. So, it’s not just nationalism that is dividing us. The divisiveness within our own countries feels threatening. Extreme views have found a voice in various media thus creating group polarization, while balanced news has become ineffectual at bringing cogent reason to these groups. Everywhere we look, our sense of self as belonging to a particular race, gender, and culture is being provoked; we are being divided. These divisions are real, but how do they appear in light of reincarnation and karma?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

There is one particular great truth that we should have in mind these days as we look for love and understanding, for a loving comprehension of what is happening all around us – an insight that, fundamentally speaking, is at the center of everything we aim for in spiritual science. In our day this has to present itself to our souls with the full gravity and moral weight inherent in it. It is the realization – and this has by now become the simplest and most elementary fact in our spiritual life – that life on earth recurs. The fact is that in the course of time our souls progress from body to body. The part of man that is eternal hastens from body to body through man’s successive incarnations on earth. On the other hand, there is the part that has to do with human existence in a physical body, the part present on the physical plane that provides the configuration, the formation, the particular stamp to human existence in an outer physical body.

One particular thing that provides the outer stamp, determining the character of a person as it were, in so far as he is living in a physical body on the physical plane is what may collectively be referred to as nationality. This is something we should never forget, especially today. If we turn the mind’s eye to what we call man’s higher self, the concept of nationality loses significance. For when we pass through the gate of death everything encompassed by the term ‘nationality’ is among the things we cast off. And if we do in all seriousness want to be what we think people with spiritual aims should be, it is proper to remember that in passing through successive incarnations the human being belongs not to one but to a number of different nationalities. The part of him that links him to a particular nationality is among the things that are cast off, have to be cast off, the moment we pass through the gate of death…

The only life impulses we are able to take there are those that animate the efforts of our hearts and minds and in the final instance aim to join all peoples on the earth in brotherhood …

Truths that belong to the realm of the eternal do not have to be easily understood. Indeed, they may well be truths which at times go against our feelings – truths we achieve with difficulty particularly in difficult times, and also find difficult to achieve and retain in their full strength and clarity in difficult times such as these …

Today we see the members of different nations facing one another in dislike, in hatred. I am not at this point speaking about what is going on in the combat situation. I am speaking of what is going on in the feelings, the passions, of human souls. Here we have a soul. It needs to prepare for its reception into a spiritual world through which it will now have to pass between death and its next birth, a world that will guide it towards an incarnation that will belong to quite a different nationality from the one it is now leaving.

This is a fact which shows very clearly, in the best and most powerful way, how man resists the higher self that is within him. Consider some real ‘nationalist’ today, someone with national feelings who directs his antipathy very particularly against the members of another nation and, indeed, may be ranting and raving against this other nation in his own country… This is man raging against his own higher self. Wherever the ranting and raving is worst, wherever the hatred felt against other nationalities is greatest and where the most lies are told about them, someone seeing things not as Maya but in truth can perceive the true reason, which is that a great many members of the nation that rages most, is most cruel in its attitudes and lies the most, will have to assume that other nationality at their next incarnation.

Excerpt from: The Destinies of Individuals and of Nations, Lecture 2: Nationalities and Nationalism in the Light of Spiritual Science by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, October 31, 1914

If each of us, every citizen of every country, recognized the spiritual reality that our patriotism – our affinity to our own nationality or culture – will be discarded at the entrance to the afterlife, we might be able find a more expansive view of ourselves and others. When we incarnate once again, we will most likely be citizens of a different nation or a different gender or a different race than we are now. With this in mind, can we contemplate ourselves and others without the passions that stir so many of us to dark thoughts and even physical violence toward those who aren’t like us in thought or appearance? Can we accept two distinct ideas at the same time – that we must honor each other’s gender, race, and culture, while at the same time acknowledge that these factors are temporary circumstances of this lifetime? Can we seek unity?

From The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman

“…We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all...”

Hanging in the Balance

Some people find validity for their own views by deeming as good those who agree with them and evil those who disagree with them. These terms, strong as they are, become meaningless or even laughable when they are applied so indiscriminately. But these terms are not meaningless in the cosmic order. In fact, without both good and evil, humanity would never develop free will.

When we look back to civilizations from Egypt to the present, we find abundant evidence of humankind’s endeavor to understand its place between heaven and hell. Before that, humanity had an instinctive clairvoyance; we didn’t have to believe in spiritual beings, we experienced them. This state of being did not cultivate free will. With the consciousness we’ve developed since then, we don’t directly experience the spirit, nor are we are likely to believe in things simply because an authority has told us what to believe. Our thinking of today, based on logic and reason, demands an approach to the concepts of good and evil that makes sense, especially if we hope to incorporate these concepts into our understanding of karma and reincarnation.

Karma is continually playing out so that we can fix our error (evil) in order purify our souls, to evolve as souls, to become good. If we are willing to identify a virtue as being good, our natural inclination is to identify the opposite of that virtue as evil. So, for example, we could say that courage is good, so cowardice is evil. But it is more complicated than that. Aristotle said, “Virtue is a human capacity or skill guided by reason and insight, which, as regards man, hold the balance between the too-much and the too-little.” What does he mean?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

… The pupils of the Mysteries were shown that free will can only be developed if a person is in a position to go wrong in one of two directions; further, that life can only run its course truly and favorably when these two lines of opposition are considered as being like the two sides of a balance, of which first one side and then the other goes up and down. True balance only exists when the crossbeam is horizontal. They were shown that it is impossible to express the true attitude of man by saying; this is right and that is wrong. It is only possible to gain the true idea when the human being, standing in the center of the balance, can be swayed each moment of his life, now to one side, now to the other, but he himself holds the correct mean between the two.

Let us take the virtue valor, bravery. In this respect human nature may diverge on one side to foolhardiness—that is, unbridled activity in the world and the straining of the forces at one’s disposal to the utmost limit. Foolhardiness is one side; the opposite is cowardice. A person may turn the scale in either of these directions.

In the Mysteries the pupils were shown that when a man degenerates into foolhardiness, he loses himself and lays aside his own individuality and is crushed by the wheels of life. Life tears him in pieces if he errs in this direction, but if, on the other hand, he errs on the side of cowardice, he hardens himself and tears himself away from his connection with beings and objects… the pupils were told that goodness cannot merely be striven for as goodness obtained once and for all; rather does goodness come only through man being continually able to strike out in two directions like a pendulum and by his own inner power able to find the balance, the mean between the two.

You have in this all that will enable you to understand the freedom of the will and the significance of reason and wisdom in human action. If it were fitting for man always to observe the eternal moral principles, he need only acquire these moral principles and then he could go through life on a definite line of march, as it were, but life is never like this.

Freedom in this consists rather in man’s being always able to err in one direction or another. But in this way the possibility of evil arises. For what is evil? It is that which originates when the human being is lost to the world or the world is lost to him. Goodness consists in avoiding both these extremes. In the course of evolution, evil became not only a possibility, but an actuality; for as man journeyed from incarnation to incarnation, by his turning now to one side and now to the other, he could not always find the balance at once, and it was necessary for the compensation to be karmically made at a future time.

Excerpt from: Anthroposophical Ethics, Lecture III by Rudolf Steiner. May 30, 1912. Norrkoping.

If we sit with this for just a moment, we can see how this way of looking at good and evil helps us to become less judgmental of others – instead of being evil, they are off balance. It helps us be less judgmental of ourselves, too. In a way, we can see that we already possess the virtue; however, we may have too much or too little of it. We must swing to the other side to become more centered.

As we explore this method of viewing virtue or good as the mean between two extremes, we find a practical way to work on ourselves. For example, we may admire someone we know who always keeps their temper, who exhibits the virtue of patience. By placing patience as a mean between its two extremes—its deficiency is irascibility, and its excess is apathy—we can see which side of the scale we tip to and work toward the center. Likewise with all the virtues. Here is the spiritual work/life balance.

Stop Lying Around

The enormous suffering in our world today is exacerbated by our inability to trust what we are being told by our leaders, our media, and each other. What is real? Each side thinks it knows, and the incivility between factions has reached alarming and often dangerous levels.

We need to remember that these cultural divisions are made up of individuals like us, and each of us needs to take seriously the karmic effects we have on ourselves and others by our thoughts and deeds. We may not be able to make one faction stop hating the other or suddenly convince our leaders and our media to tell the truth, but we can make these demands of ourselves. Neglecting to do so has consequences more dire than we might know.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

Human beings determine their future by their past, and because their innermost being is not confined to one incarnation but passes through many, the causes of what confronts them in a given life are to be sought in an earlier life.

We will now consider the chain of events that becomes comprehensible if we think of the consequences of human deeds, thoughts and feelings. It is often said in everyday life: Thoughts don’t cost anything!—meaning that we can think what we like and nobody in the external world will be affected. This is one important point where someone who has really grasped spiritual impulses is at variance with the materialistic thinker.

The materialist agrees that injury is caused if he throws a stone at somebody, but he thinks that a thought of hatred which he may harbor against a fellow human being does not hurt him. However, those who have real knowledge of the world know that far, far stronger effects proceed from a thought filled with hatred than can ever be caused by a stone. Everything we think and feel has its effects in the astral world, and the clairvoyant can follow with great precision the effect of a loving thought that goes out to someone, and the very different effect that is produced by a thought filled with hatred. When you send out a loving thought to someone, the clairvoyant perceives a form of light, shaped like a sort of flower-calyx, playing lovingly around that person’s etheric and astral bodies, thereby contributing something to his vitality and happiness. On the other hand, a thought of hatred bores its way into the etheric and astral bodies like a wounding arrow.

Very varied observations are to be made in this domain. There is a tremendous difference in the astral world if someone voices a thought that is true or one that is untrue. A thought is related to a specific thing and is true if it coincides with that thing. Every event that happens causes an effect in the higher worlds. If someone relates this event truly, an astral form rays out from the teller, unites with the form emanating from the event itself, and both are strengthened. These strengthened forms help to make our spiritual world richer and more full of content—which is necessary if humanity is to make progress. But if the event is related untruthfully, in a way that does not coincide with the facts, then the thoughtform of the teller comes up against the thoughtform that has proceeded from the event; the two thoughtforms collide causing mutual destruction. These destructive ‘explosions’ caused by lies work in the way a tumor works in the body, destroying the organism. Thus lies kill the astral forms that have arisen and must arise, and in this way, they obstruct or paralyze a part of evolution. Everyone who tells the truth actually promotes the evolution of humanity, and everyone who lies obstructs it. Therefore there is this esoteric law: Seen with the eyes of spirit, a lie is a murder. Not only does it kill an astral form, but it also kills the self. Anyone who lies places obstacles along his own path. Such effects are to be observed everywhere in the spiritual world. The clairvoyant sees that everything a person thinks, feels and experiences has its effect in the spiritual world.

Excerpt from: Rosicrucian Wisdom: An Introduction, Lecture 6. The Law of Destiny, May 30, 1907 by Rudolf Steiner.

We are each of us a work-in-progress. If we take an earnest look at ourselves, we realize we might be judgmental toward others and we might exaggerate or shade the truth. We do not have to struggle alone toward addressing these faults. As we learned in the last post, we can ask for help from our guardian angel, as hard as that may be for some of us to believe. As Steiner often says, the fact that we don’t believe in angels does not deny them their existence. Steiner also said that more and more people will begin to experience their angels.

In her first book about angels, Angels in My Hair, Lorna Byrne describes her lifelong relationship with her guardian angel and other angels, as well as the guardian angels of each person she meets. In her humble narrative, we get a glimpse of how angels work with us to guide and protect us. Though we do not all share Byrne’s gift of sight, we know that we can acquire this gift by various methods already referred to many posts since this blog began in September of 2018.

And here’s the thing, every single one of us has a guardian angel – even those with whom we disagree. Let’s ask our angels to help us be more truthful and more tolerant. Let’s ask the angels of others to help them to be the same. Let us encourage peace and charity to enter our hearts and thereby make the world a better place.

Lorna Byrne: The Lady Who Sees Angels Documentary on YouTube >

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssAmweLstLE

What Angels Do

From the moment we wake up in the morning until we fall asleep at night, we do lots of things. We do other things while we sleep. As discussed in previous posts (August – November 2019), while we sleep, our astral and ego bodies enter the spiritual realms leaving our physical and etheric bodies behind. Last month we discussed our encounters with our guardian angel; what else is there to know?

Our guardian angel sees far back into our past and forward into our future. Steiner talks about “nudges” we may get that save us from catastrophes, or “feelings” we may get to call someone we know who needs to hear from us. These contacts with our angel during waking life are very subtle and almost always pass by without our noticing; angels are careful to give us total freedom to respond or not. Though we may be amazed when we narrowly escape a disaster by leaving home late or missing a flight, it wouldn’t occur to most of us that perhaps an angel had intervened.

Steiner reveals that the “limits to man’s knowledge” were lifted at the end of the 19th century, and the capacity for us to know the spiritual world directly is once again possible after a long period of darkness. We can actively pursue this knowledge and experience the spiritual world for ourselves; we might as well get started. One of the things we can learn about is the work of the angels in our astral bodies.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say.

Beings of the Hierarchy of the Angels – particularly through their concerted work, although in a certain sense each single Angel also has his task in connection with every individual human being – these Beings form pictures in man’s astral body… If we are able to scrutinize these pictures, it becomes evident that they are woven in accordance with quite definite impulses and principles. Forces for the future evolution of mankind are contained in them. If we watch the Angels carrying out this work of these – strange as it sounds, one has to express it in this way – it is clear that they have a very definite plan for the future configuration of social life on earth.

People may shy away from the notion that Angels want to call forth in them ideals for the future, but it is so all the same. And indeed in forming these pictures the Angels work on a definite principle, namely, that in the future no human being is to find peace in the enjoyment of happiness if others beside him are unhappy.

But there is a second impulse in the work of the Angels… Through the pictures they inculcate into the astral body their aim is that in future time every human being shall see in each and all of his fellowmen a hidden divinity… To conceive man as a picture revealed from the spiritual world, to conceive this with all the earnestness, all the strength and all the insight at our command – this is the impulse laid by the Angels into the pictures. Once this is fulfilled, … every meeting between one person and another will of itself be in the nature of a religious rite, a sacrament, and nobody will need a special church with institutions on the physical plane to sustain the religious life. If the church understands itself truly, its one aim must be to render itself unnecessary…

And there is a third objective: To make it possible for us to reach the Spirit through thinking, to cross the abyss and through thinking to experience the reality of the Spirit… Purely through the Spiritual Soul, through their conscious thinking, people must reach the point of actually perceiving what the Angels are doing to prepare the future of humanity. The teachings of Spiritual Science in this domain must become practical wisdom in the life of humanity…

Spiritual Science for the spirit, freedom of religious life for the soul, brotherhood for the bodily life – this resounds like cosmic music through the work wrought by the Angels in the astral bodies of mankind… Man must gradually come to understand this in his wideawake consciousness.

The Work of the Angels in Man’s Astral Body. Lecture by Rudolf Steiner in Zurich, October 9, 1918.

Most of us are unable to be happy near someone who is suffering, and we are disheartened by institutions that fail to recognize the divinity in each person. Thus these first two tasks of the angels are already familiar to us even if we don’t believe in angels; we already hold these objectives as ideals. The third task of the angels is the one least developed in us: crossing the abyss to the spirit through thinking. Dr. Steiner’s task was to build the bridge between our physical consciousness and our spiritual consciousness through spiritual science. It’s our task to take up this work in all seriousness.

Rudolf Steiner, a 20th century initiate, is not our only source for spiritual knowledge, but his research by direct experience in the spiritual realms, which he calls spiritual science, combined with his standing as a natural scientist makes a compelling case for reading his work. He wrote dozens of books and articles and gave thousands of lectures. One of Steiner’s basic works, Theosophy: An Introduction to the Spiritual Processes in Human Life and in the Cosmos, is a great way to begin.

This book is available to read free at: https://www.theosophy.world/sites/default/files/ebooks/theosophy.pdf.

Or have it read aloud at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOdk5FaUY3U

A Clear Consciousness

Accepting the premise of reincarnation and karma might be easier for us than imagining that spiritual beings inhabit the world outside our senses. Spiritual science, however, teaches us that these beings are a profound reality. One way to open ourselves to this idea is by reviewing what we already know: we are spiritual beings who live in physical bodies for a time and enter the spiritual world when we die. We reside there between our death and subsequent rebirth. Furthermore, we know that when we go to sleep, our astral and ego bodies leave our physical and etheric bodies behind as they enter the spiritual world. What do we find when we go there?

The Buddhist and Hindu deva, Islam’s malaikah, Judaism’s malachim or mal’akh, and the Christian angel are all names for a hierarchy of beings acknowledged within the core tenets of these religions. Devas or angels, who are the beings belonging to the closest realm above us, do not incarnate into physical bodies. What little we’ve heard about them outside of our religious texts is often sensationalized or trivialized or romanticized, so that even if we are willing to open our minds to the idea of angels, our references may include movies like It’s a Wonderful Life with James Stewart or pictures of beings with harps, halos and wings. Are we curious to know more?

If we can make the leap to imagine that we are not alone in the spiritual world, what do we encounter in spiritual science when we contemplate the realm of malachim? What is our relationship to this realm of beings? And, more specifically, what is meant by the term guardian angel?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

When we wake from sleep, we pass over into the world of animals, plants, minerals – the three kingdoms of Nature belonging to the world of sense. When we fall asleep, we pass beyond the world of sense, we are transported into the realm of the first rank of Beings above man – the Angels. And from the time of falling asleep until waking, we are connected with the Being who is allotted to us as our own Angel, just as through our eyes and ears we are connected with the three kingdoms of Nature here in the world of sense. Even if at first we have no consciousness of this connection with the world of the Angels, it is nevertheless there. This connection extends into our astral body.

If, living in our astral body during sleep, we were suddenly to wake up, we should contact the world of the Angels, in the first place the Angel who is connected with our own life just as here in the earthly world we are in contact with animals, plants, and minerals.

Now even in the earthly world, in the world of sense, if a man is attentive and deliberately trains his thinking, he sees much more than when he is unobservant and hasty. His connection with the three kingdoms of Nature can be intimate or superficial. And it is the same with regard to the world of spiritual Beings. But in the world of spiritual Beings, different conditions prevail.

A man whose thoughts are entirely engrossed in the material world, who never desires to rise above it or to acquaint himself with moral ideas extending beyond the merely utilitarian, who has no desire to experience true human love, who in his waking life has no devotion to the Divine-Spiritual world – on falling asleep, such a man has no forces which enable him to come into contact with his Angel. Whenever we fall asleep, this Angel is waiting as it were for the idealistic feelings and thoughts which come with us, and the more we bring, the more intimate becomes our relation to the Angel while we are asleep. And so throughout our life, by means of what we cultivate over and above material interests, we garner, in our waking life, forces whereby our relation to the Angel becomes more and more intimate.

But the idealistic thoughts and feelings, the pure human love, the spiritual feelings which have arisen in our waking life and have united us with our Angel, these accompany us when we pass through death. And the more idealistic thoughts and feelings, human love and piety we have brought to our Angel, the clearer does our consciousness become.

Excerpt from: Cosmic Forces in Man, Lecture II: The Soul of Man, November 27, 1921, Oslo

None of us would actively wish to have our consciousness diminished… at least not permanently. Fortunately, most of us do bring some of the right elements into our sleep at night. We may want to do more. Though we can find many paths toward the divine, following the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path is one means by which we can prepare ourselves to live in harmony with our guardian angel’s intentions. The eight endeavors are: right conceptions, right resolves, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right aspiriation, right recollection and right contemplation.*

We have enormous freedom in this regard. The choices we make now, however, have far-reaching consequences, which we will explore in future posts. We will also continue to study the vast richness of our cosmos filled with beings other than ourselves with whom we live and learn.

*For more information on Noble Eightfold Path https://www.britannica.com/topic/Eightfold-Path

What the World Needs Now…

Let’s start a bit differently by enjoying Andra Day’s cover of the song bearing the title of this month’s post.

When romance appears in our lives, it changes us. The whole world becomes more beautiful, more harmonious, more livable. Our lives have new meaning as we anticipate today, tomorrow and the next day filled with joy. Love is a force that elevates us—that moves us to turn our attention away from ourselves and toward another. We also can see ourselves reflected with glorious light in the eyes of the person who loves us; we ourselves are more beautiful.

It is this aspect, however, that entangles romantic love with a good measure of self-love. As long as the love we give is returned, the glow remains. When love isn’t returned, or it withdraws, we suffer; we may even hope the other will suffer, too. Romantic love can be selfish.

What the world needs now is more unselfish love; love reaching beyond our personal relationships. Love that becomes an actual force in the world. This won’t be easy. In the excerpt below, Dr. Steiner discusses why our subconscious awareness of our own karma makes this kind of love so difficult to give.

In our previous studies of karma and reincarnation, we discovered that everything we think, say and do in this life matters forever. We are born with karmic debt from previous lives that we will work out in this or a future life, and we accrue karmic debt in this life that we will work out in subsequent lives. Deeds of unselfish love, however, do not follow this formula. Deeds of love given freely can only mitigate our past-life debts; they do not benefit us in our own future karma. Yet these free deeds of love are enormously important because they become a world-changing force.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

If we grasp the meaning of the law of reincarnation, we recognize the significance of love in the world, both in a particular and in a general sense. When we speak of karma, we mean that which as cause in the one life has its effect in the next. In terms of cause and effect we cannot, however, speak truly of love; we cannot speak of a deed of love and its eventual compensation. Deeds of love do not look for compensation in the next life…

By everything we do out of love we pay off debts. From an occult point of view, what is done out of love brings no reward but makes amends for profit already expended. The only actions from which we have nothing in the future are those we perform out of true, genuine love. This truth may well be disquieting and men are lucky in that they know nothing of it in their upper consciousness. But in their subconscious all of them know it, and that is why deeds of love are done so unwillingly, why there is so little love in the world. Men feel instinctively that they may expect nothing for their “I” in the future from deeds of love. An advanced stage of development must have been reached before the soul can experience joy in performing deeds of love from which there is nothing to be gained for itself. The impulse for this is not strong in humanity. But spiritual science can be a source of powerful incentives to deeds of love.

Our egoism gains nothing from deeds of love—but the world all the more. Love is for the world what the sun is for external life. No soul could thrive if love departed from the world. Love is the “moral” sun of the world… Our deep concern must be that an impulse for sound, healthy development shall find its way into the affairs of humanity. To disseminate love over the earth in the greatest measure possible, to promote love on the earth—that and that alone is wisdom.

Excerpt from: Love and Its Meaning in the World. Lecture 10 by the same name given in Zurich, December 17, 1912.

The very definition of selfishness is that we keep for ourselves that which we might give to another for their benefit, a sobering thought. But Steiner’s explanation of why “there is so little love in the world” is sobering on a deeper level because so very many of us in modern humanity think that the idea of changing the world with love is one of pure folly, the height of naivety.

Dr. Steiner says the belief that love can change the world is wisdom.

Elsewhere in this same lecture, he says that “when we practice love, cultivate love, creative forces pour into the world.” We see the truth of this when our own world changes because of love. We see the truth of this when we feel inspired by others’ deeds of love in the world; random acts of kindness that creatively work on our own forces of goodwill.

We all have moments when we do something selflessly for those close to us. We all have done things for which we expected no reward just to make someone happy or comfortable or safe. Thus, we are already on the path. This is the beginning of our own impulse toward a “sound, healthy development in the affairs of humanity.” The more we can expand our love to embrace the world of people outside our personal circles, the more we can offer free deeds of love, the more we actually change the world.

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Photo “The Heart Nebula” ©Alan Erickson

Future Karma

In a tradition that some believe dates back to the Babylonians 4000 years ago, many of us make New Year’s resolutions. In fact, if we don’t make a resolution at this time, we more than likely had to make that decision consciously.  Resolutions are personal; we feel vulnerable about whatever we hope to change about ourselves.

We may worry that we will not be able to keep our resolutions. Yet each year we face this issue. Rudolf Steiner says, “On New Year’s Eve it is always fitting to remember how past and future are linked together in life and in the existence of the world…”

When we do make a New Year’s resolution, we usually make one that we believe will improve us. This striving toward a better self is an important decision for our future karma. On the one hand, we understand through karma that we likely deserve our present trials and suffering; that we have a karmic debt from our previous lives that seeks resolution in this one. We can feel trapped by our own karma because the past is written; its consequences are inevitable. But that’s not the only way to look at karma. Though we must accept our present karma as it unfolds, our future karma is ours to master. How do we do this?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

It is often imagined that the human being is subject to the irrevocable law of karma in which nothing can be changed. Let us take a simile from everyday life to explain the working of this law.

A merchant makes entries of debits and credits in his account books; taken together, these entries tell him the state of his business. The financial state of his business is subject to the inexorable law governing the calculation of debit and credit. If he carries through new transactions, he can make additional entries and he would be a fool if he were unwilling to embark on other business because a balance was once drawn up. In respect of karma, everything good, intelligent and true that has been done by a man stands on the credit side; evil or foolish deeds stand on the debit side. At every moment he is free to make new entries in the karmic book of life. It must never be imagined that life is under the sway of an immutable law of destiny; freedom is not impaired by the law of karma. In studying the law of karma, therefore, the future must be borne in mind as strongly as the past. Bearing within us the effects of past deeds, we are the slaves of the past, but the masters of the future. If we are to have a favorable future, we must make as many good entries as possible in the book of life.

It is a great and potent thought to know that nothing we do is in vain, that everything has its effect in the future. The law of karma is the reverse of depressing; it fills us with splendid hope and knowledge of it is the most precious gift of Spiritual Science. It brings happiness inasmuch as it opens out a vista into the future. It charges us to be active for its sake; there is nothing in it whatever to make us sad, nothing which could give the world a pessimistic coloring; it lends wings to our will to co-operate in the evolution of the earth. Such are the feelings into which knowledge of the law of karma must be translated.

Excerpt from: Theosophy of the Rosicrucian. Lecture VII: The Technique of Karma. Munich. May 31, 1907

The human soul’s evolution ultimately flows forward toward perfection, but in any one life, a person can veer from this path in manifold ways; a person can stall or even move backward in the course of one lifetime. We see this happening to our brothers and sisters when they choose to lie, cheat, steal, etc. We see them going in the wrong direction in their current lives, against their own evolution’s flow, often dragging others with them, thus incurring more karmic debt. When we focus on other people’s destructive choices, we may feel disheartened or frozen by a sense of helplessness to generate positive change in the world.

But we’re never really helpless. Even if all we can do in this moment is improve our own selves, no matter how trivial our resolution may seem to the world at large, we actually succeed in making the whole world better. Eating healthier, going for walks, watching less tv, learning a new language, reading more, whatever our resolution is, changing ourselves for the better benefits us, the people we know, and even the people we don’t know. Whether we inspire others or not is beside the point. In every moment that we master ourselves, we are actively working for humankind’s evolution.

May we succeed in keeping our new resolutions.

Happy New Year!

Someone Besides Me

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”
– Dalai Lama XIV, The Art of Happiness.

As we look toward the holidays at this time of year, some of us choose to celebrate our religious beliefs. Others do not. Either way, most of us want to share the holidays with our family and friends. Yet this year, all around the world, we are being cautioned to forego gathering together, which seems antithetical to celebrating at all. How can we celebrate with those we care about if we aren’t going to be with them?

Let’s consider a basic tenet of spiritual science. Steiner tells us that we need to recognize that “thoughts and feelings are as important for the world as actions.” He tells us that, for the world, it is just as destructive to hate people as it is to hit them. The inverse, of course, is that the world “benefits as much from pure feelings and thoughts as from good deeds.” As unlikely as this idea may seem to us – physical proof is more compelling – perhaps we can think about seasonal words like love and peace and compassion and goodwill to all and what they might mean for us if we embodied them.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

“Those who go heedlessly through the world do not regard compassion as having any great mystery about it; but to the thoughtful, compassion is a great and mysterious secret. When we look at a being only from the outside, impressions come from him to our senses and intellect; with the awakening of compassion we pass beyond the sphere of these impressions. We share in what is taking place in his innermost nature and, transcending the sphere of our own “I”, we pass over into his world. In other words: we are set free from ourselves, we break through the barriers of ordinary existence in the physical body and reach over into the other being. Here, already, is the Supersensible – for neither the operations of the senses nor of the reasoning mind can carry us into the sphere of another’s soul.

The fact that compassion exists in the world bears witness that even in the world of sense we can be set free from, can pass out beyond ourselves and enter into the world of another being. If a man is incapable of compassion, there is a moral defect, a moral lack in him. If at the moment when he should get free from himself and pass over into the other being, feeling, not his own pain or joy but the pain or joy of that other – if at that moment his feelings fade and die away, then something is lacking in his moral life. The human being on Earth, if he is to reach the stature of full and complete manhood, must be able to pass out beyond his own earthly life, he must be able to live in another, not only in himself…

… Another telling fact points to the significance inherent in the concept of love and compassion. At a certain point in the evolution of humanity, and among all the peoples, something is made manifest which, while differing in many essentials, is identical in one respect all over the Earth, namely in the adoption of the concept of love, of compassion… It is of the highest significance that, six centuries before our era, Lao-tse and Confucius should have been living in China, the Buddha in India, the last Zarathustra (not the original Zarathustra) in Persia, and Pythagoras in Greece. How great the difference is between these founders of religion! Yet in one respect there is similarity among them all; they all teach that compassion and love must reign between soul and soul! The point of significance is this: six centuries before our era, consciousness begins to stir that love and compassion are to be received into the stream of human evolution.”

Excerpt from: Earthly and Cosmic Man: Lecture VI. Given by Rudolf Steiner in Berlin, 1912.

We typically observe a moment of silence when someone has died. In the United States, it’s actually a public law to observe two minutes of silence on Veteran’s Day. Also in the U.S., a bill was just passed for public schools to observe a moment of silence for 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. Many of us observed a national moment of silence that lasted eight minutes and 46 seconds for George Floyd.

How do these moments make any sense unless thoughts are real? They are inspired by feelings of shared love and compassion. It is significant that we believe we are accomplishing something by doing this.

Those of us who are separated from our friends and family for the holidays this year may want to consider what can be accomplished by a mutual ceremony celebrated at the same time in each household. Maybe we could all read the same story or poem or light a candle, separate from the phone calls and facetiming, etc. These moments are so very powerful.

And, while we’re at it, we might try to love people with whom we disagree and feel compassion for all who are suffering in these challenging times regardless of their beliefs. Maybe the differences of religion or politics won’t matter so much as we soar above them on the wings of love and compassion. Too much? Well, we won’t know until we try. We should try.

Happy Holidays!

Burning Desires

In Dante’s Purgatory, the second part of The Divine Comedy, we read about the various levels of purgatory, which correspond to the seven deadly sins. Dante has arranged these seven levels with the lowest level being the worst sin and each level in turn above representing a less terrible sin.

Thus, Dante has lust as the worst sin occupying the lowest level, with gluttony, avarice, sloth, wrath, envy and pride following. Maybe the fact that we are still aware of the work of this thirteenth century poet is an indication that he was onto something.

Dr. Steiner speaks of seven different levels of Kamaloca, with the desires of the lowest level – the first level we reach – being the “coarsest, lowest, most selfish desires of the physical body.” We do not have the option of entering this “region” once we’ve crossed the threshold of death. Just like physical laws of nature, we are subject to spiritual laws. They operate whether we believe in them or not; whether we are conscious of them or not. Our freedom as human beings is that we can work to harmonize ourselves with these spiritual laws while we’re alive or wait until we face ourselves after death.

As we embark on our third and final exploration of Kamaloca, we may wish to refresh our memory of last month’s post. In October, we recognized that in addition to assessing our relationships with others, we need to relinquish our earthly desires so that our spiritual journey can continue. Now we will look with more detail into the first “region” of Kamaloca, the lowest, and ask ourselves what affinity we may have for this level in which we cleanse ourselves of lust.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

The lowest region of the soul world is that of Burning Desire. Everything in the soul that has to do with the coarsest, lowest, most selfish desires of the physical life is purged from the soul after death in this region… (because) now the desires aim at physical enjoyments that cannot be satisfied in the soul world. The craving is intensified to the highest degree by the impossibility of satisfaction. Owing to this impossibility, at the same time it is forced to die out gradually. The burning lusts gradually exhaust themselves and the soul learns by experience that the only means of preventing the suffering that must come from such longings lies in eradicating them.

During physical life, satisfaction is ever and again attained. By this means the pain of the burning lusts is covered over by a kind of illusion. After death in the “cleansing fire” the pain comes into evidence quite unveiled. The corresponding experiences of privation are passed through. It is a dark, gloomy state indeed in which the soul thus finds itself. Of course, only those persons whose desires are directed during physical life to the coarsest things can fall into this condition. (Those who possess) natures with few lusts go through (this region) without noticing it because they have no affinity with it. It must be stated that souls are the longer influenced by burning desire the more closely they have become related to that fire through their physical life. On that account there is more need for them to be purified in it.

Such purification should not be described as suffering in the sense of this expression as it is used in the sense world. The soul after death demands its purification since an existing imperfection can only thus be purged away.

Excerpt from: Theosophy, Chapter III: The Three Worlds: The Soul in the Soul World After Death by Rudolf Steiner. 1904.

Though the quote above is dense, as we read over it, we discern that the soul which has already rid itself of the baser desires while still living in its earthly body no longer has any affinity for this first realm. In other words, if we don’t have that problem, we don’t need to fix it. Steiner describes six more “regions” in which the soul cleanses itself so that it may move into the higher realms of the spirit world.  Each soul that had desires in one or another of these regions, stays within that region until the soul is cleansed. Souls not feeling an affinity within a region go on without feeling the effects of purification necessary in that realm.

Ages ago, these ideas of purification of the soul were common to humankind and formed the basis for lives lived in privation within the various religious sects. Seven various virtues were listed beside each sin that would guard against that sin. Today, we can rely on our own intellects to observe our lives objectively. We can figure out ways to resist succumbing to our own worst natures and determine whether we need help from others or not.

It is no longer appropriate to remove ourselves from society in order “cleanse” ourselves. Today, the appropriate response is for us to work on ourselves within our normal daily lives. If we meditate, if we practice mindfulness, the work begins. Dr. Steiner spent his life trying to show us the necessity for this work and the means by which to do it.

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

Sometimes we just need a hug. We’re distraught or tired or lonely or hurt or scared or, hey, we just need a hug. Our feelings, including the desire for the hug that would assuage them, reside in our astral body. After we die, we still retain our astral body once we’ve laid aside our physical and etheric bodies, as discussed in the two previous posts. What happens with our desire for a hug when we no longer have a body to receive it?

The answer lies in the period referred to by Dr. Steiner as Kamaloca, which means Place of Desires in Sanskrit. In last month’s post we explored a process occurring during the Kamaloca period wherein we experience the karmic relationships of our previous life. This month we will discuss another aspect of Kamaloca: our habits and desires.

What we want in life initially matches our basic needs, but our desires soon reach beyond what we actually need. Food, clothing and shelter, though influenced strongly by economics and culture, are also influenced by our individual choices. The way we satisfy both our needs and our desires during life has an influence on what we encounter in Kamaloca. Once we’ve crossed death’s threshold, we must let go of all these things we’ve enjoyed while residing in our physical body. The more deeply immersed we are in the material world, the more arduous is the task of letting go.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

After death there follows for the human spirit a time during which the soul is shaking off its inclinations toward physical existence in order to follow once more the laws of the spirit-soul world only and thus set the spirit free. The more the soul was bound to the physical, the longer, naturally, will this time last. It will be short for the man who has clung but little to physical life, and long for the one whose interests are completely bound up with it, who at death has many desires, wishes and impulses still living in the soul.

The easiest way to gain an idea of this condition in which the soul lives during the time immediately after death is afforded by the following consideration. Let us take a somewhat crass example—the pleasure of the “bon vivant”. His pleasure is derived from food. The pleasure is naturally not bodily but belongs to the soul. The pleasure lives in the soul as does the desire for the pleasure. To satisfy the desire, however, the corresponding bodily organs, the palate, etc., are necessary. After death the soul has not immediately lost such a desire, but it no longer possesses the bodily organ that provides the means for satisfying it. For another reason, but one that acts far more strongly in the same way, the human soul now experiences all the suffering of burning thirst that one would undergo in a waterless waste. The soul thus suffers burning pain by being deprived of the pleasure because it has laid aside the bodily organ through which it can experience that pleasure. It is the same with all that the soul yearns for and that can only be satisfied through the bodily organs. This condition of burning privation lasts until the soul has learned to cease longing for what can only be satisfied through the body. The time passed in this condition may be called the region of desires, although it has of course nothing to do with a “locality.”

Excerpt from: Theosophy: Chapter III: The Soul in the Soul World After Death. Germany, 1904.

This may sound pretty scary and awful, but our spirit wants more than anything to advance on the path toward perfection. To do this we must first cleanse the astral body of all passions and desires connected with our physical body because the only way to get to the next level is in purity. Our spirit wants this and willingly undergoes the suffering it takes to liberate itself. We choose this.

What if we started earlier? If we realize that we will, ultimately, take full responsibility for the choices we make that bind us to the physical world, we might look at our desires differently. We might adjust the degree to which we placate ourselves each time a desire arises. We might start exercising some self-discipline. That’s one way to change the world.

Not So Very Instant Karma

When somebody has done something that hurts another person, it has a certain effect on his whole life. Any action of man that hurts another being or creature or the world in general, hinders the doer in his development. This is what the pilgrimage of life means for me, that the primary force of the soul, as it goes from incarnation to incarnation, is set for further development. – Rudolf Steiner

What comes next in our journey after we’ve crossed the threshold? In the last two posts we discussed the moment of death in Our Last Moment, and the retrospective of our life in Panorama of Life. Now we come to the next phase: Kamaloca. We may remember discussing karma and reincarnation previously; now we will find how we recognize the need for karmic justice in our lives. During Kamaloca, a term Dr. Steiner uses from the Sanskrit meaning Place of Desire, we review our lives going backwards from our last moment before death to our first moment at birth. This process occurs over a period of time that lasts roughly 1/3 of our lifetime, so that a person who dies at age 60 would experience Kamaloca for approximately 20 years. (You may have noticed how this corresponds with the period of time we spend asleep during our lives.)

We can imagine that this thorough life review will show us the effect we had on the people we encountered while we lived. However, we do not merely observe our effect on others, we actually feel exactly what they felt from their encounter with us. The good and the bad, all of it. As we go backward through our entire life and finally arrive at our birth, we will have experienced objectively our entire life on earth. How, then, do all these feelings resolve themselves into karmic action?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

You experience objectively in the spiritual world everything you yourself did in the external world, and in the process, you acquire the strength and the inclination to compensate for the pain in one of your future incarnations. Your own astral body tells you what it felt like, and you realize you have laid an obstacle in the way of your further development. This has to be cleared away, otherwise you cannot get beyond it. This is the moment you form the intention of getting rid of the obstacle. So when you have lived through the Kamaloca period, you arrive back in your childhood filled with the intention of getting rid of all the hindrances you created in life. You are full of intentions, and it is the force of these intentions that brings about the special character of your future lives on earth.

Let us suppose that in his twentieth year B hurt A. He now has to feel the pain himself, and resolves to recompense A in a future life, that is, in the physical world, where the injury was done. The force of this good resolution forms a bond of attraction between B and A and brings them together in the next life. That mysterious force of attraction that brings people together in life springs from what they have acquired in Kamaloca. Our experiences there lead us to those people in life whom we have to recompense or with whom we have any kind of connection.

Now you will realize that the Kamaloca forces we have taken into ourselves for the righting of wrongs in life can by no means always be worked out in a single life. It can then happen that we form connections with a great number of people in one life, and that next time we are in Kamaloca we have the possibility of meeting them again. Now this depends, too, on the other people, whether we meet them again in the following life. That spreads itself over many lives. In one life we correct this, in another life that, and so on. You must certainly not imagine that we can immediately put everything right in one life. It depends entirely on whether the other person also develops in his soul the corresponding bond of attraction.

Excerpt from: The Being of Man and His Future Evolution, Lecture 6: Illness and Karma, by Rudolf Steiner. Berlin. January 26, 1909,

If we just step back a bit, we can see what a miracle we are contemplating now: the true justice, the harmony, of the universe and our place within it. We are always making progress, moving forward, becoming better human beings. We aren’t punished in the afterlife for the wrong we’ve done by some external and imperious judgment; we ourselves—our highest selves, our spiritual selves—are consciously resolving to right our wrongs by fully realizing them. As a result of our time in Kamaloca, we are filled with good intentions that bring us back into our next lives. These good intentions brought us back into the life we’re living now. All of us.

Recognizing that everything done has karmic consequences, however, does not mean that we get to sit idly by while injustice or pollution or hunger or poverty or any of the evils still exist in the world. We must resolve to change all these things for the better within our power to do so. Every gift of love and service we give to the world is a movement in the positive evolution of us all.

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If you would like to know more about Steiner’s work as it is applied today, please take a look at this site:
https://appliedanthroposophy.org/overview, especially the Introductory Course. The faculty members are inspiring; it is exciting to see them all in one place.

Panorama of Life

“… and then I saw my whole life flash before my eyes!” With those words alone, we know the speaker has experienced either a horrible fright or a brush with death. Why does this happen? In previous posts, we’ve explored sleep, dreams, altered consciousness, and even the moment of death. Now we will look at what happens during our first few days after death.

Thousands of cases of near-death experiences (NDEs) have accrued over the last 45 years since the phrase was coined by Dr. Raymond Moody. Many of these documented accounts include survivors who have said that “they re-experience in vivid detail the events of their lives in a sort of holographic, full-color panorama.” Spiritual science tells us that this is very close to the truth of what we experience shortly after we die. The observations of the spiritual scientist recounted in a previous post (More Sleep, September 2019) show us that during sleep, our astral and ego bodies leave our physical and etheric bodies behind, but in death, our etheric body also leaves the physical body. Because we retain our etheric body along with our astral body and ego in these first days after death, we experience the life tableau. *

In the context of our study of reincarnation and karma, we must look at this initial life review as an important part of our experience between death and rebirth. Last month we saw that immediately after we die, we are filled with great joy. We recognize the body we just left behind as the means by which we know ourselves to be a unique individual. Then we begin our life review. What does it mean?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

We know that our next experience is a kind of retrospective memory that lasts for days… This retrospective memory… resembles a tableau, or a panorama, woven out of all we have experienced during our past life. It does not, however, rise up in the same way in which an ordinary memory rises up in our physical body. You see the memories that live in our physical body... rise up in the form of thoughts; through the power of memory we draw them out successively within the stream of time. But the retrospective memory after death is of such a kind that everything that occurred during our early life now surrounds us simultaneously, as if it were a panorama. Our life-experiences now rise up in the form of imaginations. We can only say that we now live, for whole days, within these experiences. What we experienced just before death and what we experienced during our childhood stand before us simultaneously in powerful pictures. A panorama of our life, a life-picture, stands before us and it reveals, simultaneously, in a “fabric” woven out of the ether, what normally occurs successively within the stream of time…

We feel, above all, that we are now surrounded by something that is alive. Everything within it lives and weaves. And then we experience that it resounds spiritually, that it shines forth spiritually and gives warmth spiritually…

We know that this life-tableau disappears after a few days. What makes it cease and what is its essence?

In regard to the physical world, we have the impression that our physical body falls away from us when we die; in a similar way we now have the impression that our etheric body too falls away from us after a certain number of days… It becomes interwoven with the whole universe, with the whole world. It lives in the world and stamps its impressions upon the whole world while we are experiencing our life-tableau.

An excerpt from the lecture: The Moment of Death and the Period Thereafter by Rudolf Steiner, Leipzig, Germany, February 22, 1916.

This panoramic view of our whole life gives us a chance to assess the value of the life we’ve lived; the people who filled our world and with whom we had relationships. After we’ve lived within this life tableau, our etheric body falls away, just as our physical body fell away a few days before.

What we see in the mystery of our after-death experience of the life-tableau is that, ultimately, we share our whole lives with the universe. When our etheric body is released, everything we’ve thought and experienced in the course of our life from birth to death is finally given to the wide world. And the whole world is enriched by each of us.

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A modern definition of the etheric body (and the difference between sleep and death) by Dr. Adam Blanning:
https://denvertherapies.com/the-etheric-body-the-foundation-of-a-dynamic-clinical-lens/

Near-Death Experience as a Probe to Explore (Disconnected) Consciousness:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31982302/
and:
https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(19)30312-2?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS1364661319303122%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

Getting Comfortable With Death & Near-Death Experiences: Near-Death Experiences: An Essay in Medicine & Philosophy by Raymond A. Moody, MD, PhD
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6179873/
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/10/3/60/htm

If you would like to know more about Steiner’s work as it is applied today, please take a look at this site:
https://appliedanthroposophy.org/overview, especially the Introductory Course. The faculty members are inspiring; it is exciting to see them all in one place.

Our Last Moment

What if we were immortal? What if we could continue to learn and grow forever? If we could have time to do everything we needed and wanted to do? If we could stay with our loved ones forever?

Always, the promise of never-ending life entices us. Ironically, our lack of understanding death is exactly what is preventing us from knowing that we already are immortal. The presumption that we exist only within our bodies between birth and death keeps us from understanding the very basis of what it means to be human: that we are spiritual beings who occasionally occupy physical bodies before returning to our spiritual existence.

In these days of the pandemic, our focus has been turned to the death of thousands of people across the globe, and for some of us, a particular person we have known and loved. It’s a lot to take in. We may find some comfort in studying the moment of death itself. Direct knowledge of this moment, however, can be communicated to us only by a spiritual scientist who, as a result of extraordinary effort over the course of time – or lifetimes, has been initiated (see previous post Primary Source, Apr. 2020). Because fear of the unknown is natural for us; learning about the moment of death may help us look at it with more equanimity.*

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

The moment of death is of extraordinary significance. Death is something that most distinctly has two totally different aspects. Regarded here from the physical world it certainly has many sad aspects, many painful sides. However, here we really see death only from the one side; after our death we see it from the other. It is then the most satisfying and most perfect occurrence that we can possibly experience, for there it is a living fact. Whereas here death is a proof of how frail and transitory the human physical life is—when seen from the spiritual world it is actually a proof that the spirit continually wins the victory over everything non-spiritual, that the spirit is ever the life, the eternal, ever-unconquerable life.

Excerpt from: Spiritual Life Now and After Death: Forming Our Destiny in the Physical and Spiritual Worlds. Lecture on November 16, 1915, Berlin.

And:

From this side of life, death appears to be a dissolution, something in face of which the human being has a ready fear and dread. From the other side, death appears as the light-filled beginning of experience of the Spirit, as that which spreads a sun-radiance over the whole of the subsequent life between death and a new birth; as that which most of all warms the soul through with joy in the life between death and a new birth. The moment of death is something that is looked back upon with a deep sense of blessing. Described in earthly terms: the moment of death, viewed from the other side, is the most joyful, the most enrapturing point in the life between death and a new birth.

Excerpt from: The Problem of Death. Lecture I by Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, February 5, 1915.

If we accept that the moment of death is profoundly different for those going through it than it is for us, we will be able to let them go with peace of mind. Of course, we will still feel the anguish that comes with the loss of people we know. Their passage from this world still has very real and lasting consequences for us. We may yet be filled with sorrow, but those who have died are immediately filled with joy.

In our next posts we will be exploring together the three days immediately following death and then the period of time in the spiritual world that lasts about1/3 of the time of our lives – the same amount of time we will have slept during our lifetime.

*Though out-of-body experiences during a near-death trauma have been reported by many (see previous post and links: Dying to Know, Jan. 2019), these reports are made, after all, by people who have returned from the moment of death. While these reports give evidence of our consciousness continuing after signs of life have ceased, we must rely on the reports of spiritual scientists such as Rudolf Steiner for answers about death itself.

If you have never heard of Rudolf Steiner or his work, you may find this film, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXKSSBHTLzU, featuring people who at the time (1991) were leaders working out of Steiner’s ideas within many disciplines such as science, mathematics, dance, architecture, education, bio-dynamic agriculture, etc. This work continues today.

Point of Anger

“A loving hand is seldom one that has never been clenched in response to injustice or folly. Anger and love are complementary.” – Rudolf Steiner

“If the sight of injustice or folly were not to kindle a noble anger in us, the events in the outer world would carry us along with them as an easy-going spectator…” – Rudolf Steiner

The recent death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police sparked a noble anger in people that spilled from all 50 of the United States to other countries of the world. Right now at least, it seems that fewer people are comfortable being easy-going spectators to the violence and injustice that has flourished right under our noses since the first colony, Jamestown, had 20 or so West African slaves brought to our shores in 1619. So much has been and is being written and said about this fact that we should all be moved to educate ourselves; we should not assume we know anything of significance without availing ourselves of these manifold and comprehensive resources.

We do not need to condense or transcribe any of such resources here. We will instead focus on the fact of anger itself. Briefly, let’s first look at Steiner’s concept of Ego. When Steiner refers to the human Ego, he is indicating the “I” each of us refers to only when we are talking about ourselves. The Ego is what continues on from one life to another to fulfil its evolution. Through our Ego, we go about “remedying defects of former lives” while at the same time we work in the world to remedy its defects. In other words, we can’t simply work to improve ourselves, but we must, with each enhancement of personal growth, utilize our capacities selflessly to improve the world as a whole… a long, hard road in both directions.

The tools our Egos use enable us to inch ever closer to humanity’s ideals, universal ideals such as honesty, kindness, courage, compassion, etc. One such tool we use to develop ourselves is anger. Surprised?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

No one does better at acquiring an inner capacity for sound judgment than a person who has started from a state of soul in which he could be moved to righteous anger by anything ignoble, immoral or crazy. This is how anger has the mission of raising the Ego to higher levels. On the other hand… anger can degenerate into rage and serve to gratify the worst kind of egoism. But we must not fail to realize that the very thing which can lapse into evil may, when it manifests in its true significance, have the mission of furthering the progress of man. If we were not enabled by anger to take an independent stand in cases where the outer world offends our inner feeling, we would not be selfless, but dependent and Ego-less in the worst sense…

Life shows us that a person who is unable to flare up with anger at injustice or folly will never develop true kindness and love. Equally, a person who educates himself through noble anger will have a heart abounding in love, and through love he will do good. Love and kindness are the obverse of noble anger. Anger that is overcome and purified will be transformed into the love that is its counterpart. A loving hand is seldom one that has never been clenched in response to injustice or folly. Anger and love are complementary…

Transmuted anger is love in action. That is what we learn from reality. Anger in moderation has the mission of leading human beings to love; we can call it the teacher of love.

Excerpt from Metamorphoses of The Soul / Paths of Experience, Volume I. Lecture 2: The Mission of Anger, Munich, 5 December 1909 by Rudolf Steiner.

The human ego has the responsibility of educating itself, becoming ever more enriched by the concepts and ideas we gain through experience. But at the same time, we must not become egotistical and selfish by simply acquiring knowledge and experience for our own benefit. We must relate everything we have gained internally to meet that which presents itself in the world. To that end, we can see that anger has a necessary role to play on the path toward becoming enlightened human beings.

Anger is a means to an end; staying in anger’s grasp is destructive. To make anger constructive, we must act with courage to eradicate injustice and folly. If we fail to use our anger as a means to right the injustices in the world, we fail not just the world but ourselves. Steiner says anger and love are complementary; we can see the fact of this every day. We have lots of work to do. Let’s get busy… in both directions.

Trevor Noah, The Daily Show
https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1266523374207057922?s=20

https://goodblacknews.org/2020/06/04/acknowledging-your-privilege-and-becoming-an-ally-a-guide-to-resources-for-white-folks/

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

Home Remedy

What can we say now that hasn’t already been said about the massive social changes we are weathering as Covid-19 has spread around the world. Some of us live in hotspots with thousands of people dying and others don’t, but never before in our lifetimes have we shared a crisis affecting everyone on the planet. Whether or not we know someone who has suffered or died from their susceptibility to the virus, we have certainly felt compassion for those victims and their families.

We have been amazed by the dedication of all those people who are serving on the front lines. And we’ve probably felt confusion and fear about our own safety and the safety of our loved ones. What happens to our soul—the bearer of our emotions, our passions—under the stress of these biproducts of the pandemic? We know that when we allow fear and anxiety to infiltrate our soul, our physical well-being is affected, too. Is there a remedy for these soul ailments?

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

We have only to remember that feelings and sensations, fear and anxiety of the unknown future, gnaw at our souls. Is there anything that can pour some certainty about the future into our souls? It is what we may call the feeling of devoted acceptance of (that which) enters our souls from the hidden future, and it can only work properly if it arises as an attitude of prayer*. Let us avoid misunderstanding. We are not praising what here or there is considered to be acceptance, but a definite form, an acceptance of what the future can bring forth. If we look to the future with fear and anxiety, we strangle our development and hamper the free unfolding of our soul forces. Nothing so obstructs this development as anxiety about what may come to the soul from the future. Only actual experience, however, can judge the results of the right feeling of acceptance of the future. What does such devoted acceptance mean?

In its ideal form it would be the sort of soul attitude that would assure us that no matter what might come, no matter what the next hour or day might bring, were it unknown to us, we could not alter it by fear or anxiety. We should wait for it, therefore, in complete inner peace and utter tranquility…

If we develop (a) feeling of submission in regard to all that may come to us from the future, we shall find that we meet everything in the external world with the same certainty and hope. This we have gained from our submissiveness. We know that in everything it is the wisdom of the world that shines before us… Through our submission, we see how the feeling arises in us that all the wisdom of the world shines through what we long for and desire as the highest. Thus, it is hope for illumination of the entire world that comes to us in the devotions of prayer. When darkness encloses us within ourselves and narrowness and confusion surround us even in the physical, when we stand in the gloom and black of night, we feel when morning comes and we meet the light as if we are placed beyond ourselves.

* A true prayer can give everyone something. Even the simplest person, who knows nothing more than the mere prayer, can still feel its effect, which calls forth the power to raise him ever higher. But whatever height we may have achieved, we are never finished with a prayer. Our souls can always be raised higher.

An excerpt from a lecture by Rudolf Steiner in Berlin, February 17, 1910

We are living in an extraordinary time, yet we have no choice but to see that some of us become better, stronger examples of what it means to be human while others let fear manifest in hatred, distrust, and judgment toward others. The choice of the kind of person we wish to be is a choice only we can make. And we make that choice best when we are in a state of equanimity as the future approaches us. We can pray for this inner strength.

A Verse for Our Time

We must eradicate from the soul

All fear and terror of what comes towards man out of the future.

We must acquire serenity

In all feelings and sensations about the future.

We must look forward with absolute equanimity

To everything that may come.

And we must think only that whatever comes

Is given to us by a world-directive full of wisdom.

It is part of what we must learn in this age,

namely, to live out of pure trust,

Without any security in existence.

Trust in the ever present help

Of the spiritual world.

Truly, nothing else will do

If our courage is not to fail us.

And let us seek the awakening from within ourselves

Every morning and every evening.

Primary Source

For those who are new to Dr. Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual science, two questions often arise: Where did Steiner get this knowledge? and Why has “no one” ever heard of him? To address the second question, we may start by asking ourselves if we can name any German philosophers of the early 1900s. During Steiner’s lifetime, though, he was well-known and drew crowds sometimes numbering in the thousands for his lectures. His work in organizing the Goethe and Schiller archives in Weimar prompted Friedrich Nietzsche’s sister to invite Steiner to visit her brother, the famous philosopher, as he lay on his deathbed. Steiner died 95 years ago on March 30, 1925, and his name, at least for the general public, has faded.

Albert Schweitzer, a household name not so long ago, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952, said, “My meeting with Rudolf Steiner led me to occupy myself with him from that time forth and to remain always aware of his significance. We both felt the same obligation to lead man once again to true inner culture. I have rejoiced at the achievements his great personality and his profound humanity have brought about in the world.” Not very long ago, one would say of a greedy man: “He’s no Albert Schweitzer,” yet who in our time has even heard of him?

More recently, Willi Brandt, former Chancellor of Germany and also a Nobel Peace Prize winner said, “The advent of the Waldorf School was in my opinion the greatest contribution to world peace and understanding of the century.” And Victor Navaski, editor of The Nation for over 30 years, said in his 2005 memoir, A Matter of Opinion, that Rudolf Steiner was “light years ahead of the curve.” As Frederick Amrine (see linked site) has pointed out, the genius of Aristotle was lost for a millennium, J.S. Bach was rediscovered by Felix Mendelssohn, and Van Gogh sold but one painting in his lifetime. Will we one day look back on the relative obscurity of Rudolf Steiner as surprising?

Addressing the first question, we need to understand that Steiner isn’t the first to have gained spiritual enlightenment. Since the beginning of civilization, direct spiritual knowledge has been available to a few, mainly arising from initiation schools. In some mystery schools of yore, to reveal any of the knowledge therein would result in death, which is why so much of what we do know about the ancient mysteries from historical documentation is, at best, conjecture. Some mystery schools you might recognize include: the Pythagoreans, the Gnostics, the Essenes, the Mithraists, and the Eleusinian Mysteries.

These mystery schools offered a path of development, marked by various levels of attainment, to those students who were deemed ready. Over the course of long years of arduous training and purification, the student strove to observe in the higher worlds—strove toward “initiation” the term used for the student who has crossed the threshold between the physical and spiritual worlds.

The seven levels of initiation known as Raven, Occultist, Warrior, Lion, Persian, Sun-hero, and Father were sought within the Mithras mysteries popular among Romans from the 1st to 4th century CE. (https://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Religions/iranian/Mithraism/m_m/pt8.htm) Once a level was achieved, these students were called Initiates of that degree. Some initiates and their work in the world are completely unknown to us; others are.

Those initiates, who “soared above the lower stages of the human capacity for knowledge” shaped the major religions and philosophies and cultures in all ages. Edouard Schuré, in his book The Great Initiates, names Rama, Krishna, Hermes, Pythagoras, Plato and Jesus. Sergei O. Prokofieff, in his book Rudolf Steiner and the Masters of Esoteric Christianity, names Manes, Zarathustra (Master Jesus), Scythianos, Gautama Buddha, the Maitreya bodhisattva, Novalis, and Christian Rosenkreutz. Each of these Initiates had a purpose that was necessary for humankind’s advancement, a message that they imparted using a means and method appropriate for their time and culture.

Both Schuré and Prokofieff recognized Rudolf Steiner as an Initiate. Steiner’s mission was to share the revelations of the spiritual world without all the secrecy practiced in the mystery schools and without our needing to become initiates ourselves to understand. Dr. Steiner wrote 28 books, hundreds of articles and essays, and gave over 6,700 lectures. Thus we can appreciate the enormity of Steiner’s gift to us.

We are familiar with Buddha’s Eight-fold path and the Cabala. We can find information about the path to initiation taught in the Rosicrucian Order, in the Freemasons, and others. All of these practices point to methods of study that lead to enlightenment—to knowledge of the spiritual world that is universal; however, Steiner’s method, is the first one to use modern scientific thinking as a path toward knowledge of the spiritual world. Steiner’s path is detailed in his book: How To Know Higher Worlds.

Rudolf Steiner, as all other Initiates, was not looking at ancient texts and deciphering them in order to share them with us. He was an initiate who saw for himself what every initiate has seen after traveling the arduous path toward enlightenment. He then applied his knowledge to the ancient texts in order to show us how they should be interpreted with the mental faculties we possess today.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

“I was not setting forth a doctrine (in Philosophy of Freedom), but simply recording inner experiences through which I had actually passed. And I reported them just as I experienced them. Everything in my book is written from this personal angle, even to the shaping of the thoughts it contains. A theoretical writer could cover more territory, and there was a time when I might have done so. But my purpose was to write a biographical account of how one human soul made the difficult ascent to freedom. In such an ascent one cannot spare any attention to others in the party as they try to negotiate cliffs and precipices, so preoccupied is one with getting up and over them oneself. One’s longing to reach the goal is too keen to consider stopping and pointing out the easiest way ahead to other climbers. And I believe I would have fallen had I attempted any such thing. I found my own way up as best I could, and then, later on, described the route that I had taken. Afterwards, I could have found a hundred other different ascent-routes that other climbers might have followed. But at the time I had no desire to write about any of these alternative paths. My method of getting over many a chasm was an individual one, deliberately singled out to be such. I struggled through thickets in a way peculiar to myself alone. And only when one reaches the goal does one realize that one has actually made it…”

Letter to Rosa Mayreder, dated November 1894. (Rudolf Steiner on his book The Philosophy of Freedom: arranged and annotated by Otto Palmer, 1975.)

Steiner’s work is published, but it isn’t easy to read, which is one reason it isn’t exactly popular. His path to enlightenment isn’t easy either; even the very first step is daunting. We have all the access to Steiner’s work that we could want, but it’s challenging, like most things worth doing. The good news is that reading Steiner’s work is, in itself, a preparation – a beginning on the path toward enlightenment. (See links below.)

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The Creative Genius of Rudolf Steiner https://www.rudolfsteinerweb.com/Rudolf_Steiner_Biography.php

Discovering a Genius: Rudolf Steiner at 150 by Frederick Amrine
https://www.waldorflibrary.org/images/stories/articles/amrine_steiner.pdf

How to Know Higher Worlds: A Modern Path of Initiation, by Rudolf Steiner. Most recent edition: Anthroposophic Press 1994.

Testimonials about Waldorf schools:
https://www.steinerwaldorf.org/steiner-education/does-it-work/what-others-say/

On my site: focus on biodynamic agriculture
https://www.whoareyou.blog/about-rudolf-steiner

2018 Documentary about a farm using biodynamic principles: The Biggest Little Farm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfDTM4JxHl8

Michael Chekov: one of his pupils — Marilyn Monroe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiuB_6Zj05A
https://anthropopper.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/marilyn-monroe-and-rudolf-steiner/

Time After Time

We’ve discussed sleep, death, and even life after death in previous posts, but as we explore the law of karma further, we need to take a look at the other side of our life—our birth. We all know that who we are when we’re born is a result of genetics and enumerable other things: where we are born, our culture, education, religion, race, sexual orientation, economic status, whether or not we’re healthy or beautiful or intelligent, etc.

Already at birth—or conception—we are given some opportunities and denied others. Then, with these birthrights, we step-by-step go out into the world and build our biographies—we become who we become. The inherent advantages and disadvantages of our birth, though, appear to be arbitrary—the luck of the draw.

Believing the circumstances of our birth and our ensuing life’s advantages (or lack thereof) to be the result of random chance is not a satisfactory explanation for many of us. It doesn’t make sense because it isn’t fair—from conception and birth on we enjoy benefits or suffer deficiencies for which we seem to have no control. Karma can be the key to understanding the causes of things that seem beyond our control.

To understand karma, however, we need a larger view of life and death. Steiner’s view is larger. He shows us that not only do we continue to exist after death, but we exist before conception and birth. Our “I” is eternal. Karma works out because we were alive before this current life and we will live again after it. Yes, we are talking about reincarnation. In an effort to keep an open mind—

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

What a man did yesterday is today still present in its effects. A picture of the connection between cause and effect is given in the simile of sleep and death. Sleep has often been called the younger brother of death. I get up in the morning. My consecutive activity has been interrupted by the night. Now, under ordinary circumstances it is not possible for me to begin my activity again just as I please. I must connect it with my doings of yesterday if there is to be order and coherence in my life. My actions of yesterday are the conditions predetermining those actions that fall to me today. I have created my destiny of today by what I did yesterday. I have separated myself for a while from my activity, but this activity belongs to me and draws me again to itself after I have withdrawn myself from it for a while. My past remains bound up with me; it lives on in my present and will follow me into my future. If the effects of my deeds of yesterday were not to be my destiny of today, I should not have had to awake this morning, but to be newly created out of nothing.

The human spirit is no more created anew when it begins its earthly life than a man is newly created every morning. Let us try to make clear to ourselves what happens when entrance into this life takes place. A physical body, receiving its form through the laws of heredity, makes its appearance. This body becomes the bearer of a spirit that repeats a previous life in a new form. Between the two stands the soul that leads a self-contained life of its own. Its inclinations and disinclinations, wishes and desires, minister to it. It presses thought into its service. (It) receives the impressions of the outer world and carries them to the spirit in order that the spirit may extract from them the fruits that are permanent.

It plays, as it were, the part of intermediary.... The soul is really that part of a man through which he belongs to his earthly life. Through his body he belongs to the physical human species; through it he is a member of this species. With his spirit he lives in a higher world. The soul binds the two worlds together for a time.

Excerpt from: Theosophy by Rudolf Steiner, 1910 (1986 edition.)

Because we think logically, because we reason, we try to create order out of chaos, we want the answers to the larger questions of life and death to make logical sense. When we contemplate the unjust and apparent randomness of life and fail to find order, we can choose either to accept that answers are impossible or look for answers in new directions. If we are able to open our minds to the idea of returning again and again to work out karma, to become better and better at being a human being throughout several lifetimes, the inequities of life begin to make more sense.

Each of us has lived in other times, in other places, in other bodies. When we think of all the qualities mentioned at the beginning of the post and imagine ourselves within circumstances entirely different than those of our current life, we can perhaps imagine how the law of karma creates the ultimate fairness. We can think about how much of the life we lead now is contingent on the qualities given to us at birth and imagine that, in the spiritual realm between death and a new birth, we chose these circumstances of life in order to best work out our karma.

Karma stretches out behind us and in front of us; we are resolving old karma and making new karma every day. Owen Barfield, a friend to C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, wrote in an article entitled, Why Reincarnation?, “If the majority of people were to become convinced of reincarnation, as I have just outlined it as a fact (see attached article), what an enormous difference it must make to many of the discords that are at present threatening to tear our civilization to pieces!”

A short bio of Owen Barfield:
https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/academic-centers/wadecenter/authors/owen-barfield/

Why Reincarnation? by Owen Barfield.
https://owenbarfield.org/why-reincarnation/

Cause—or—Effect

What if we “deserve” everything we get? What if we’re neither lucky nor unlucky, imagined states that seem random and unfair, but are actually living within a law—the law of karma? When we are trying to attach some kind of meaning to the course of our lives, learning more about karma enhances our efforts.

Although the suffering we experience in life comes from many causes, some of it comes directly from our own decisions. Most of us will try to accept the suffering that results from a bad decision because it makes sense—we clearly deserve it. Because doing so will affect future decisions, connecting suffering to the bad decision preceding it is an important step in gaining mastery of our lives. In fact, people who are unable to do this are considered unhealthy. The cause and effect nature of karmic law is easy to comprehend because we naturally look for the reasons why things happen in our lives.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner has to say:

“… Only methodical observation will lead us to the recognition of the law of karma; and therefore, if we want to study the law of karma, we must make these methodical observations in the right way.

Let us start, then, with the study of the karma of one special person. Fate deals a man in his twenty-fifth year a heavy blow, which causes him pain and suffering. Now, if our observations are of such a nature that we merely say, ‘This heavy blow has just broken into his life and has filled it with pain and suffering,’ we shall never arrive at an understanding of karmic connections. But if we go a little further and observe the life of this person in his fiftieth year… we shall perhaps come to a different conclusion which we might be able to express thus: ‘The man whom we are now observing has become industrious and active, leading an excellent life.’

Now, let us look further back into his life. At 25, this trouble came upon him, and had he not met with this blow we may now say that he would have remained a good-for-nothing. In this case, the severe blow of fate was the cause that at the age of 50 we now find him an industrious and excellent man.

Such a fact teaches us that we should be mistaken if we considered the blow of fate at the age of 25 was merely an effect. We cannot just ask what caused it and stop at that. But if we consider the blow not as an effect at the end of the phenomena which preceded it, but place it rather at the beginning of the subsequent events, and consider it as a cause, then we learn that we must entirely and essentially change the judgments we have formed by our feelings and perceptions with regard to this blow of fate. We shall very likely be grieved if we think of it only as an effect, but if we think of it as the cause of what happens later on, we shall probably be glad and feel pleasure over it.

So we see that our attitude is essentially different in so far as we consider an event in life as cause or as effect… Thus the law of karma itself may be a source of consolation if we accustom ourselves to set an event not only at the end, but at the beginning of a series of events.”

Excerpt from: Manifestations of Karma. Lecture given by Rudolf Steiner in Hamburg, May 16, 1910.

Not all suffering comes as a direct result of a decision we make, but with a little imagination, we can look at this simple example of karma and extend it outwards toward suffering that comes to us seemingly unbidden. Eckhart Tolle says, “Every person on Earth will experience some difficulty that they cannot change. This fact can either imprison you or enlighten you. When you encounter difficulty, accept it as if you had chosen it, experience it and figure out what you can learn from it.” Accept it as if you had chosen it. Suffering can be a starting point and a teacher.

This first idea of karma is just scratching the surface. For example, it does not address why we make the decisions that lead to suffering in the first place. Nor does it address the suffering that comes from without, from the death of a loved one to that from natural disasters, war, accidents, etc. Steiner gave more than 100 lectures about karma, so we can anticipate explorations of these questions and many more as we delve deeper into the study of karmic law next month.

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Pico Iyer: The Value of Suffering, New York Times, 7 Sept., 2013 https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/opinion/sunday/the-value-of-suffering.html?pagewanted=all

https://www.yogabycandace.com/blog/2013/9/10/lessons-from-suffering

Brene Brown: https://brenebrown.com/blog/2018/05/24/the-midlife-unraveling/?fbclid=IwAR3ZPcgNA48de6KzCxAZov1F7uEG_w2orw3a3oUGKDVnNsO_ixYcXtSCHgw

Love/Fate Relationship

Why do we love the people we love? It isn’t always due to common interests because sometimes we are drawn to people before we even know what their interests are, and we certainly aren’t drawn to everyone who shares our interests. Conversely, sometimes we know right away that we don’t like someone. We might say we have a gut feeling, but do we understand the origin of such a feeling? Probably not. So what’s going on?

Perhaps the whole phenomena is like consciousness itself: unable to be explained within the confines of our rational mind but rather must be considered with spiritual ideas.

Maybe it’s fate or karma that draws us to those we love. We are all familiar with the word karma; it’s an old Sanskrit term dating back before 1500 BCE and recognized as a universal law in both Hinduism and Buddhism. Karma connotes both action and result. We use it mostly when we consider good deeds that result in good fortune or the opposite, bad deeds that result in less favorable results. We will try to use this word more broadly to consider what it is that attracts or repels us from the people we feel strongly about.

Let’s see what Dr. Steiner* has to say:

Necessity and freedom interweave in our destiny… We meet some human being. As a rule, the fact that we have met him is enough in itself; we accept life as it comes without being very observant or giving it much thought. But deeper scrutiny of individual human life reveals that when two persons meet, their paths have been guided in a remarkable way. Think of two individuals, one aged twenty-five and the other aged twenty, who meet; they can look back over the course of their lives hitherto and it will be evident to each of them that every single happening in the life of the one, say the twenty-year-old, had impelled him from quite a different part of the world to this meeting, at this particular place, with the other. The same will be true of the twenty-five-year-old. In the forming of destiny very much depends upon the fact that human beings, starting from different parts of the world, meet as though guided by an iron necessity directly to that meeting-point. No thought is given to the wonders that can be revealed by studies of this kind, but human life is infinitely enriched by insight into such situations and impoverished without it.

If we begin to think about our relationship to some human being whom we seem to have met quite by accident, we shall have to say to ourselves that we had been looking for him, seeking for him, ever since we were born into this earthly existence… and as a matter of fact, even before then. But I do not want to go into that at the moment. We need only remind ourselves that we should not have come across this individual if at some earlier point in earthly life we had taken only a slightly different direction to the left or to the right and had not gone the way we did. As I said, people do not give any thought to these matters. But it is sheer arrogance to believe that something to which one pays no attention is non-existent. It is a fact and will eventually reveal itself to observation.

There is, however, a significant difference between what takes place before the actual meeting of two individuals and what takes place from that moment onwards. Before they met in earthly life, they had influenced each other without having any knowledge of the other’s existence. After the meeting the mutual influence continues, but now they know each other. And this again is the beginning of something extremely significant… What occurs between two human beings before they become acquainted can only be regarded as the outcome of iron necessity and what happens afterwards as the expression of freedom, of mutually free relationship and behavior.

Excerpt from: Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies, Vol. VI, Lecture given in Berne, Switzerland, January 25, 1924 by Rudolf Steiner.

The above passage from Steiner’s lecture on karmic relationships asks our acceptance of the idea of karma in terms of our relationships to others. If we can entertain such an idea, we must ask whether all karma is just personal? Do we deserve to meet our soul mate – interesting term – or to meet an arch enemy? Based on what? What does Steiner mean by iron necessity guiding us toward certain people? Questions such as these expose us to some of the deep mysteries of our lives.

When we contemplate the people we know in our lives, we can easily recognize those with whom we feel a deeper (karmic) relationship, whether it’s good or bad, and those with whom we feel but a passing relationship. We can trace the events that brought us into the lives of those we care about. We can marvel at the multitude of decisions we (and they) made that resulted in our meeting each other. Enjoy the beautiful complexity of our lives as a welcoming first step toward understanding the bigger picture of karma.

* See Having an Openness of Mind in sidebar.

“Is Love at First Sight Real?”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/meet-catch-and-keep/201801/is-love-first-sight-real?amp