Reincarnation and Karma
The belief in the pre-existence of souls and reincarnation was prominent in the early Christian Church. However, in the year 553 A.D., 165 Church officials condemned reincarnation. Prior to that time, it had been a fundamental Christian teaching and following that time leads to a trail of conspiracy that changed the world.
A Brief History
In addition to many citations from the New Testament (Matthew 11:11–15, Matthew 16:13–4, Matthew 17:9–13, John 3:3, John 9:34, John 11:23-26, to name a few), evidence shows that reincarnation was part of the Church’s early doctrine and was promoted by Church Fathers, writers who established Christian doctrine prior to the eighth century and whose works were used to disseminate Christian ideas to populations of the Roman Empire. To be considered a Church Father one had to meet the following criteria. One had to lead a holy life, one’s writings had do be free of doctrinal error, one’s interpretation of Christian doctrine was deemed to be exemplary, and one’s writings had to have approval of the Church.
A number of Christian Church Fathers believed in and wrote about reincarnation:
- St. Justin Martyr (100–165 A.D.) expressly stated that the soul inhabits more than one human body.
- Origen (185–254 A.D.), who was considered by St. Jerome as “the greatest teacher of the Church after the Apostles,” defended the idea that the soul exists before the body, fundamental to the concept of reincarnation.
- Another Church Father, St. Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa (257–332 A.D.), wrote: “It is absolutely necessary that the soul should be healed and purified, and if this does not take place during its life on earth it must be accomplished in future lives. . . . The soul . . . is immaterial and invisible in nature, it at one time puts off one body . . . and exchanges it for a second.”
- St. Gregory also wrote: “Every soul comes into this world strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of its previous life.”
- St. Augustine (354–430 A.D.), one of the greatest theologians of the Christian church, speculated that philosopher Plotinus was the reincarnation of Plato. St. Augustine wrote: “The message of Plato . . . now shines forth mainly in Plotinus, a Platonist so like his master that one would think . . . that Plato is born again in Plotinus.”
- Other Church Fathers who demonstrated a belief in reincarnation included Synesius (the Bishop of Ptolemais), St. Ambrose, Pope Gregory I, Jerome, St. Athanasius, St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and Clement of Alexandria.
If the belief in the pre-existence of souls and reincarnation was prominent in the early Christian Church, why is it not present in contemporary doctrine?
A Roman Emperor named Justinian made arrangements for reincarnation to be removed from official Church doctrine in 553 A.D.
In the sixth century, the Church was divided over the issue of reincarnation. Western bishops in Rome believed in pre-existence of the soul while Eastern bishops were opposed to it. Emperor Justinian, who controlled the Eastern Church, was against the doctrine of reincarnation. As an example of his interference in Church matters, Justinian excommunicated the Church Father Origen, who openly supported the idea of reincarnation.
To further his agenda, Justinian convened the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553 A.D., with only six bishops of the Western Church in attendance. On the other hand, 159 bishops of the Eastern Church, which Justinian controlled, were present.
Here is the particular excerpt from the Second Council of Constantinople held in 553 A.D.:
If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema.
The Importance of Reincarnation
But it may be asked, Why should we be reborn? Why must we return to this limited and miserable earth existence? Why can we not get experience in those higher realms without coming to Earth? We are tired of this dreary, weary earth life!
Such queries are based upon misunderstandings of several kinds. In the first place, let us realize and engrave it deep upon the tablets of our memory that the purpose of life is not happiness, but experience. Sorrow and pain are our most benevolent teachers, while the joys of life are but fleeting.
This seems a stern doctrine and the heart cries out passionately at even the thought that it may possibly be true. Nevertheless, it is true, and upon examination it will be found not such a stern doctrine after all.
Consider the blessings of pain. If we could place our hand upon a hot stove and feel no pain, the hand might be allowed to remain until it and perhaps the arm were burned away, without our knowing anything about it until too late to save them. It is the pain resulting from the contact with the hot stove which makes us snatch our hand away before serious damage is done. Instead of losing the hand, we escape with a blister which quickly heals. This is an illustration from the Physical World. We find that same principle applies in the Moral and Mental Worlds. If we outrage morality the pangs of conscience bring us pain that will prevent us from repeating the act and if we do not heed the first lesson, nature will give us harder and harder experiences until at last the fact is forced into our consciousness that “the way of the transgressor is hard.” This will continue until at last we are forced to turn in a new direction and take a step onward toward a better life.
Experience is “knowledge of the effects which follow acts.” This is the object of life, together with the development of “Will,” which is the force whereby we apply the results of experience. Experience must be gained, but we have the choice whether we gain it by the hard path of personal experience or by observation of other people’s acts, reasoning and reflecting thereon, guided by the light of whatever experience we have already had.
This is the method by which the occult student should learn, instead of requiring the lash of adversity and pain. The more willing we are to learn in that way, the less we shall feel the stinging thorns of “the path of pain” and the more quickly shall we gain “the path of peace.”
The choice is ours, but so long as we have not learned all there is to learn in this world, we must come back to it. We cannot stay in the higher worlds and learn there until we have mastered the lessons of earth life. That would be as sensible as to send a child to kindergarten one day and to college the next. The child must return to the kindergarten day after day and spend years in the grammar school and the high school before its study has developed its capacity sufficiently to enable it to understand the lessons taught in college.
Man is also in school–the school of experience. He must return many times before he can hope to master all the knowledge in the world of sense. No one earth life, however rich in experience, could furnish the knowledge, so nature decrees that he must return to Earth, after intervals of rest, to take up his work where he dropped it, exactly as a child takes up its work in school each day, after the intervening sleep of night. It is not argument against this theory to say that man does not remember his former lives. We cannot recall all the events of our present lives. We do not recollect our labors in learning to write, yet we have acquired a knowledge of the art of writing, which proves that we did learn. All the faculties we possess are a proof that we acquired them sometime, somewhere. Some people do remember their past, however, as a remarkable instance related at the end of the next chapter will show, and is but one among many.
Again, if their were no return to Earth, what is the use of living? Why strive for anything? Why should a life of happiness in an eternal heaven be the reward for a good life? What benefit could come from a good life in a heaven where everybody is already happy? Surely in a place where everybody is happy and contented there is no need for sympathy, self-sacrifice or wise counsel! No one would need them here; but on Earth there are many who need those very things and such humanitarian and altruistic qualities are of the greatest service to struggling humanity. Therefore the Great Law, which works for Good, brings man back to work again in the world for the benefit to himself and others, with his acquired treasures, instead of letting them go to waste in a heaven where no one needs them.
Karma
With a simple example, let me make clear what one calls karma. Imagine, you work on anything from morning to night. Then you go to bed, sleep the whole night through, and get up in the morning again. If now you say to yourself, what I have worked yesterday does not concern me, I start afresh today, and then you are brainless, are you not? Nevertheless, the only possibility is that you take up in the morning again, what you have left in the evening, saying to yourself, this is my work and where I have stopped yesterday, I must resume today. What does that mean? That only means that my destiny of today is determined by my work of yesterday. Yesterday I have created my destiny of today. With it the whole concept of karma is given. Every being makes his future destiny.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 54 – The Riddles of the World and Anthroposophy: Lecture XII: Reincarnation and Karma➚ – Berlin, 15th February 1906
- We acquire karmic debt in the current life
- We pay off karmic debt in the current life via deeds of selfless love
- Some karmic debt acquired in a life may be paid by deeds of selfless love in the same life
We acquire karmic debt in the current life. We pay off karmic debt from past lives in the current life via deeds of selfless love. Such deeds, it must be understood, brings no profit for the future – it does not create a debt whereby the Universe “owes” us something. The individual knows this at an subconscious level, which is why there is so little true deeds of selfless love in the world today. It is possible for some karmic debt acquired in a particular life to be paid by deeds of selfless love in the same lifetime – this is the act of humility and the receiving of forgiveness.
The value we bring the world, to life, must be seen to lie wholly in deeds of love, not in deeds done for the sake of self-perfecting or selfish profit.
A person who knows that love is there for the paying of debts and brings no profit for the future, is a true Christian. To understand the nature of love — that is to be a Christian!
If a man has bad habits and bad characteristics and does nothing to get rid of them, this will appear in the next life in the physical body as a disposition, a predisposition to illness. Strange as this may sound the disposition towards certain illnesses, particularly infectious ones, depends on the bad habits of a preceding life. This insight therefore enables us to prepare health or illness for our next life. If we conquer a bad habit, we become healthy and immune against infections in our next life. Thus we can prepare health for our next life. By endeavouring to foster only noble qualities, we can prepare a healthy body for our next incarnation.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 100 – Theosophy and Rosicrucianism: VII. THE LAW OF KARMA➚ – Kassel, June 22, 1907
More On Karma
Written down by Mabel Collins
Consider with me that the individual existence is a rope which stretches from the infinite to the infinite and has no end and no commencement, neither is it capable of being broken. This rope is formed of innumerable fine threads, which, lying closely together, form its thickness. These threads are colorless, are perfect in their qualities of straightness, strength, and levelness. This rope, passing as it does through all places, suffers strange accidents. Very often a thread is caught and becomes attached, or perhaps is only violently pulled away from its even way. Then for a great time it is disordered, and it disorders the whole. Sometimes one is stained with dirt or with color, and not only does the stain run on further than the spot of contact, but it discolors other of the threads. And remember that the threads are living — are like electric wires, more, are like quivering nerves. How far, then, must the stain, the drag awry, be communicated! But eventually the long strands, the living threads which in their unbroken continuity form the individual, pass out of the shadow into the shine. Then the threads are no longer colorless, but golden; once more they lie together, level. Once more harmony is established between them; and from that harmony within the greater harmony is perceived.
This illustration presents but a small portion — a single side of the truth: it is less than a fragment. Yet, dwell on it; by its aid you may be led to perceive more. What it is necessary first to understand is, not that the future is arbitrarily formed by any separate acts of the present, but that the whole of the future is in unbroken continuity with the present as the present is with the past. On one plane, from one point of view, the illustration of the rope is correct.
It is said that a little attention to occultism produces great Karmic results. That is because it is impossible to give any attention to occultism without making a definite choice between what are familiarly called good and evil. The first step in occultism brings the student to the tree of knowledge. He must pluck and eat; he must choose. No longer is he capable of the indecision of ignorance. He goes on, either on the good or on the evil path. And to step definitely and knowingly even but one step on either path produces great Karmic results. The mass of men walk waveringly, uncertain as to the goal they aim at; their standard of life is indefinite; consequently their Karma operates in a confused manner. But when once the threshold of knowledge is reached, the confusion begins to lessen, and consequently the Karmic results increase enormously, because all are acting in the same direction on all the different planes: for the occultist cannot be half-hearted, nor can he return when he has passed the threshold. These things are as impossible as that the man should become the child again. The individuality has approached the state of responsibility by reason of growth; it cannot recede from it.
He who would escape from the bondage of Karma must raise his individuality out of the shadow into the shine; must so elevate his existence that these threads do not come in contact with soiling substances, do not become so attached as to be pulled awry. He simply lifts himself out of the region in which Karma operates. He does not leave the existence which he is experiencing because of that. The ground may be rough and dirty, or full of rich flowers whose pollen stains, and of sweet substances that cling and become attachments — but overhead there is always the free sky. He who desires to be Karmaless must look to the air for a home; and after that to the ether. He who desires to form good Karma will meet with many confusions, and in the effort to sow rich seed for his own harvesting may plant a thousand weeds, and among them the giant. Desire to sow no seed for your own harvesting; desire only to sow that seed the fruit of which shall feed the world. You are a part of the world; in giving it food you feed yourself. Yet in even this thought there lurks a great danger which starts forward and faces the disciple, who has for long thought himself working for good, while in his inmost soul he has perceived only evil; that is, he has thought himself to be intending great benefit to the world while all the time he has unconsciously embraced the thought of Karma, and the great benefit he works for is for himself. A man may refuse to allow himself to think of reward. But in that very refusal is seen the fact that reward is desired. And it is useless for the disciple to strive to learn by means of checking himself. The soul must be unfettered, the desires free. But until they are fixed only on that state wherein there is neither reward nor punishment, good nor evil, it is in vain that he endeavors. He may seem to make great progress, but some day he will come face to face with his own soul, and will recognize that when he came to the tree of knowledge he chose the bitter fruit and not the sweet; and then the veil will fall utterly, and he will give up his freedom and become a slave of desire. Therefore be warned, you who are but turning toward the life of occultism. Learn now that there is no cure for desire, no cure for the love of reward, no cure for the misery of longing, save in the fixing of the sight and hearing upon that which is invisible and soundless. Begin even now to practice it, and so a thousand serpents will be kept from your path. Live in the eternal.
The operations of the actual laws of Karma are not to be studied until the disciple has reached the point at which they no longer affect himself. The initiate has a right to demand the secrets of nature and to know the rules which govern human life. He obtains this right by having escaped from the limits of nature and by having freed himself from the rules which govern human life. He has become a recognized portion of the divine element, and is no longer affected by that which is temporary. He then obtains a knowledge of the laws which govern temporary conditions. Therefore you who desire to understand the laws of Karma, attempt first to free yourself from these laws; and this can only be done by fixing your attention on that which is unaffected by those laws.
A Time of Decision
The more we become conscious of what we experience in the world (this means both Spiritual and physical) the more we can take consciously into our sleep – where each night we separate from our physical body and hover in the Spiritual Realms, the more we will realize that in the morning important impulses meet us from the night. Impulses that will help us with our actions and our decisions. We learn to read the Cosmic Script, what the Spiritual world has written on our Souls, impressed on our Souls in the night – in the same way that the world impresses our Souls in the day.
What occurred in the past – when we also lived – now influences the present.
We see that if we are experiencing weather events, global warming for instance, it is the result of the materialistic thinking that created the spectre of Communism. If we experience Earthquakes, we know this comes from materialistic actions in war. If we experience epidemics today we can hark back to a time when human feelings, feelings of fear and terror were experienced by human beings. We are never separate in our individual lives from that which we experience in Nature. Just as the cells in our bodies are a microcosmic reflection of the universe, so too are we intimately related and connected to the Earth. Just as we are affected by events in Nature, so too is Nature – the Earth – affected by Humanity.
- Materialistic thinking – causes future Weather Events.
- Feelings of fear – cause future Epidemics
- Violent Actions – cause future Earthquakes
This is so because the impressions that live in our thinking feeling and will, those which have been gained through materialism and intellectualism become “detached” from us at night and develop an independent life – Rudolf Steiner calls what is detached from the physical body a Phantom or Spectre, what is detached from the Etheric body a Ghost, what is detached from the Astral body* a Demon – these arise from the Soul’s experience of its environment – be it an experience of immorality, beit due to political and social conditions, or religious aberrations. Our fear of ghosts in the 19th century, for instance, is now recapitulated in our fear of germs, our fear, our terror today, will one day become the germs and diseases of the future. This kind of thinking brings with it a new sense of responsibility for what we are creating with our thoughts feelings and in our will for the future, when we shall also be incarnated – it shows us the fore-shadowings of what we will find when we return, but it also inspires in us the actions that we can initiate in the present, in concert with the progressive beings of higher worlds, to counteract the intentions of evil beings.
In Conclusion
The Bible, though it is by and large an accurate, historical account of ancient times, it must be said that it is also allegory of deeper meanings and truths. The existence of a secret tradition can be found in the New Testament:
“He [Jesus] told them, ‘The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'” [Mark 4:11-12]
“No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began.” [1 Corinthians 2:7]
“So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God.” [1 Corinthians 4:1]
It should also be noted what John said at the end of his Gospel, the Gospel Rudolf Steiner says was written for our age:
And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen. [John 21:25]