Karma and Reincarnation, Page 26

Further Comments on the Nature of Karma:

A high percentage of Steiner’s works are laced with aspects of Karma and Reincarnation, and a significant number of lecture cycles as well as individual lectures have “karma” or “karmic” in their titles. To complement the above Overview of Karma and Reincarnation, a few salient aspects seem to merit some brief remark. Largely this is true because of the considerable extent, previously indicated, to which his insights differ from the general concept as it seems to have made its way into modern Western thinking. While other points may be equally or more qualified for inclusion under that standard, the following are given:

1. “A person is not born in a new physical body in a later millennium in order to repeat experiences already undergone, but to experience in what respects humanity has advanced in the intervening time” (GSMt, Lect 9). In accordance with this, the general scheme presented by Steiner is that an Individuality returns to earthly incarnation (as a personality) twice within each Cultural Era (2,160 years), once as a male and once as a female. He also indicated on occasion that the average is about once each 600 years,²¹ but that no rule is rigidly applicable. The circumstances that may bring about variations are many. The importance of these remarks is to show that the seemingly general impression that reincarnations normally recur after short intervals is inconsistent with anthroposophy. Transmigration, as apparently envisioned in the Hindu faith is not within the anthroposophical understanding of Karma and Reincarnation.

2. Neither animals nor any of the lower kingdoms reincarnate, for the Egos of the lower kingdoms are never on the Earth (see I-11). Human beings reincarnate only as human beings, never as creatures of a lower kingdom. Metempsychosis or any concept involving reincarnation of a human being other than as another human being is incompatible with anthroposophy. The concept of “beasthood” in Revelation is applicable to human beings to the extent they fail during Earth evolution to take Christ into their being. The later they wait to do so, the more difficult it becomes for them to escape—hence the importance of Christianity’s historical stress upon the significance of each life, and the reason it was not to teach Karma and Reincarnation for the first two millennia, until the proper state of human evolution had been reached.

3. In general, Individualities tend to reincarnate together, both individually and as groups, because of the karmic relationships between them (see Ezek 16,61).

4. All of the suffering and disease that exist on Earth are due to the karma of human beings and to the evil spiritual beings that are created or nourished thereby. Essentially, this is indicated by Gen 3, but is much more fully elaborated by Steiner. All karma has to be properly compensated for by humanity in the process of its evolution, e.g., Mt 5,18.

However, see “Forgiven Sins” and “Lord of Karma” for the relationship of Christ to this compensation.

5. The principle of Karma and Reincarnation is a manifestation of the grace of God, applied over evolutionary periods of time.

6. Heredity has little to do with a personality’s talents or characteristics in that the reincarnating Individuality, along with the higher powers, choose the parents for the personality. Even beyond this the effect of heredity progressively disappears during the preadult years so that thereafter the emerging personality is primarily a reflection of the incarnated Ego.

7. All of a person’s circumstances in life are attributable to past karma, save only as one is able to modify those circumstances. The manner in which one handles those circumstances is the test for which the incarnation occurred.

8. It is detrimental to one’s own future karma to take the attitude that another’s circumstances are of his or her own doing and not to attempt to help alleviate the other person’s difficulties to the extent it is within one’s power to do so.

9. Karma can be good as well as bad.

10. Every conscious event during one’s life is an opportunity either to address past karma or to create future karma, or both. A human being is the result of past incarnations, though no one incarnation can address all one’s accumulated karmic debt at this stage of humanity’s evolution (unless one is approaching “nirmanakaya,” or buddha, status—see I-23).