Karma is the mental causation of an event in human life by something that preceded it. examples of karmic effects between birth and death; Wine consumption, anger, devotion, forced job change. Effects of karma from previous incarnations. Consequences of disharmony between heredity and what has been brought from earlier incarnations. How does what lives in the sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul affect the physical? skull design. Karmic causes of misfortunes. The meaning of death. Understanding of the Christ Event and its importance in the attainment of the earth goal.
St. Gallen, 21. November 1909
Reincarnation and karma are to be discussed in the public lecture tonight, and it may be justifiable if we now choose, as the subject of our branch lecture, a consideration that goes into some questions of the law of karma more closely, and in a certain respect a more intimate one A supplement to what can only be given in public lectures in a general characterization.
Karma, the great law of existence, the law of destiny, can be discussed, so to speak, in the very beginning of spiritual science, because it is something that belongs to the most elementary things of the world view. The more intimate questions, however, are such that, in order to understand them, again a familiarity with spiritual science is required, such as can only be found when one has worked for a while in a working group and has not acquired empty theories, but that which flows quite unnoticed from the spiritual teachings into the human soul: a certain kind of sensations and feelings. This is something that every spiritually striving person soon notices, that spiritual science is something different than another world view, since it gives us such concepts and ideas, which are transformed in our hearts into feelings and sensations, and that we become different people through it, people with a completely different way of facing our fellow human beings.
This kind of preparation is what is meant when talking about a relative inner maturity that one acquires in this way through spiritual science. We know that karma means, in the first place, the mental causation of a later event, quality, or ability in man by something antecedent. Regardless of whether this spiritual causation occurs in a life between birth and death, or whether it runs through the various earthly lives as the great law of destiny of mankind, so that the causes for something that happens in a life lie in a previous life or in a life far in the past - this law, this all-encompassing law of destiny is what we call karma. Now, truly, karma, if you want to look at it in detail, can be talked about for many months and even longer, and only slowly and gradually does one master the things connected with it. That is why one can only present the facts of the law of karma in a narrative manner in a lecture, and this shows the maturity of the spiritual-scientific aspirant, who can now accept these things as facts, as results, and then continue to think about them and seek them out in life. Individual life shows the effects of karma in the most varied ways; only the human view of life does not usually go very far. People usually survey themselves or those around them with attention only for a short period of their lives, because their vision is not sharpened by the spiritual eye.
How little this is the case, I would like to discuss first, so that you get an idea of how the spiritual view is to be acquired in ordinary life. This will be done through a kind of personal experience. Some of you will already know that I spent fifteen years of my life as an educator, where I had to deal with the most diverse cases of educational activity, even difficult ones, perhaps, where there were problems that could only be solved through prolonged observation and study. It is obvious that such a life activity offered me the opportunity to observe not only the children directly under my care, but also their relatives, the cousins, who were always there. Then one sees how they grow up, and one can observe a large circle of people entering the world. Well, who then follows life a little, sharpened with the spiritual eye, can already perceive some things in such details. For example, at the time when I was doing this job, there was a widespread, but at the time extremely respected medical habit, which consisted in keeping the children "strong" by giving them a daily small glass of red wine. It was the fashion at the time for doctors to give little ones a glass of red wine with their meal. This rule was followed conscientiously by the parents. I have now had the opportunity to observe those children who have done this and those who have not. Once you are alive, you can observe people in many different ways who were still children when you got to know them. The children who were treated to this wine back then are now people from twenty-six to twenty-eight years old.
So I have had the opportunity in the most diverse way to look not only at a few years, but also at larger periods of time. The people who were one to three years old when I met them and who are now twenty-eight years old can be divided into two groups: those who had their glass of red wine with them to "strengthen their life" and those who did not. The former have become people who today all, speaking in the physical sense, have to struggle terribly with their nervous system - speaking in the spiritual-scientific sense with their astral body. They have become people who lack what is called: sticking energetically to a goal in life, having backbone; while those who did without wine in their youth have become people of backbone, of solid foundations, of knowing what they want, of having no need at a time when their business least permits it , having to go here and there for their rest, and who, because they have become fidgety people, do not get this rest after all. The others, on the other hand, have become more solid individualities. I don't just want to point out what it's like to approach such a person after years, but to point out that life looks a little different when you look at it in terms of cause and effect, not just so far considered as far as the human nose can reach, but also the larger and deeper connections of the causes and effects.
This, too, is observation of life in the highest degree, when we are also observing life in the highest degree when we try to observe the human being with regard to the qualities that are of an inner, karmic nature. It is unfortunately a fact that man does not usually associate the beginning of human life with its end. One observes well children, but who has the patience to observe, where he has the possibility, to observe what arises, depending on what the life of man's soul has been in the first years of childhood in a certain way, and then again, how the life is, when the course of life is coming to an end? And nevertheless there shows up a quite certain karmic connection between the beginning and the end of the life. Certain things that occur at the end of life or in the second half of it have definite causes in the early years or youth of life.
Let's take a concrete case, for example, a person who is angry, irascible in early youth, who is easily inclined to become irascible about something that happens in his environment. This anger, and mainly the irascibility that occurs in children, can take a twofold form. It can be, so to speak, merely what is called a naughtiness, which is, in a sense, merely an outburst, an angry outburst of excessive egoism. But it can be something else. One must learn, especially as an educator, to distinguish between these two kinds. The outburst of anger in a child can also be what comes to us when a child sees an injustice happening near him. A child does not yet have the power of judgement, cannot use its intellect to tell what is happening. If one were to try to explain that what is happening is not wrong, one would soon become convinced that the child cannot yet understand it. It is therefore based on the world order, on the spiritual conduct of the world, that what appears later as the power of judgment comes to light in childhood in the form of affects and emotions. The child cannot yet understand what is happening, but it becomes angry. This anger, this affect, is a preceding soul proclamation of what later is judgment. These two types of anger and short temper must be carefully distinguished. The anger in the first case must be treated in such a way that the child lives out this anger by letting it really feel the effects of this anger and also the wrongness of the anger in a correct way. Because if, for example, you always do something out of love for the child, through which it gets the fulfillment of its will, then the anger misses its effect. Anger always has an effect on the soul. Where anger arises in the soul and is not resolved by achieving what it desires, it lashes back within. And that's good. That is why the vernacular, which often has a fine feeling for something like this, calls anger "poison" in various places where the German language is spoken. Being angry is called poisoning oneself. This word is really taken from the facts of soul life. Anger enters the soul, and by the action of anger within, when it fights back, excess egoism is pushed out. So even anger has its good side. It is an educator of man, it acts like such a poison that curbs the excess egoism.
Something quite different is the anger that occurs where a child sees a wrong. This anger is an anticipated judgment. It is justified. In this case, one must not merely try to punish - by punishing, one would beat the anger back into the interior - but one must try to use this affect in the child to gradually teach him an understanding, to teach him the power of judgment. This anger is to be overcome by developing the power of judgment. If a child becomes angry over an injustice he sees, then the following would happen: One would introduce the child to a kind of understanding that the injustice happens from the nature of man; one would give him an explanation of what happened, depending on his maturity. Then such anger will also have its right effect. It will make the child mature to judge the world, because it is a harbinger of judgment. This is said in order to draw attention to the fact that man is not always unjustifiably angry. Anger has its value for the development of man. Man must purify himself, he must overcome anger. Anger is something that works beneficially by being overcome. Man could never rise to perfection without overcoming anger.
Now you might ask: Why is there anger in the world government? There is anger because one becomes strong by overcoming it; one becomes more powerful over oneself by overcoming it. If you observe someone who had that noble anger in youth in the years when idealism appears, when something filled him with anger because he was not yet able to see the deeper connections, then in his later age you see: in old age the good effect of it appears. On the other hand, he who in his youth was not able to overcome anger, to purify himself, to become master of his affects, will not easily attain in later years that mild activity which touches so beneficially. For mildness is precisely the effect of anger overcome. Mildness in old age is the effect of anger overcome in youth.
A completely different effect has that soul characteristic which also appears in youth: devotion. It consists in the fact that man acquires a feeling for what he cannot yet see through. Anger is a rejection, devotion a looking up to what one cannot yet see through, a looking at that which one is not yet equal to. No one can come to knowledge who cannot worship that which is above him in devotion. Devotion is the best way to knowledge. People would never come to knowledge if they had not first worshipped those spiritual powers that stand above them out of a dark background. Devotion is a power that leads up to what one wants to attain. Therefore, it is basically necessary that devotion be developed. The person who can look back on many moments of devotion in later life will look back on them with bliss. If it has happened to one that in early childhood one has heard a family member speak of whom it is said that he is very venerated, and if as a child one has also absorbed this feeling, and the day approaches when one can see this personality for the first time - if one then has a holy shyness to press the handle of the door behind which the venerated person is to appear, then this is also a very devout feeling, and we will have much in later life if we have had several such moods in youth.
Devotion is the reason, is the karmic cause of blessing power in later years of life, in the second half of life. That power which flows out and makes us able to be a comforter to other people, it is not gained by anything other than devotional mood in youth. Look around you where there is a person who comes to other people who are sad, who then only needs to be there to comfort the sad by his mere presence, to be their comforter, to spread active love - you will find: the karmic cause to this active power lies in these devotional moods of youth. The power which is poured into the soul of the growing man as devotion is something lasting in him; it passes through the soul as a current and comes out as a blessing power in later age. Thus we could consider many cases where the karmic law already works in a pronounced way between birth and death.
Let us examine the law of karma more closely in a concrete case. Suppose a young person had studied. In the eighteenth year it would have happened that the father would have gone bankrupt. The young man therefore had to stop studying, he was torn out of the profession for which he had been prepared; he must take a different career path. Well, all jobs are equal, aren't they; we are only interested in the facts of the change of profession. So the young man had to become a merchant. Now, if you are not a life observer, you will say: well, the event was there - and you will observe what was before and what was after. But only those who observe life with a sharpened spiritual eye will find out a connection between what was before and what was afterwards. If the young person is now in the other job and everything goes normally - I won't say that it always goes like this, but it can go like this - we will be able to see something different in the later years of life. First of all, the job is new to him. He grasps what comes into consideration for him. But already in the twenty-first year it will become apparent that something is different in this man than in a man who was prepared for the profession of a merchant from the beginning: In the twenty-first year it already becomes apparent that he has less interest in what is incumbent upon him in his profession. Certain feelings appear in his soul which separate him from what he is supposed to do, so that he cannot do with proper satisfaction what is required of him. Now, if you investigate where this comes from, you will perceive the following: When a special point occurs where the course of life is bent, a knot in life, when, for example, a change of profession occurs, then according to the karmic law it is so that in the first years little is to be noticed. Then, however, it follows, so that in the twenty-first year feelings, sensations, moods assert themselves, which are to be explained from what comes in the eighteenth year from the preparations for the other profession, feelings which he has taken up, but which he has not led to realization. At first he repressed them, but then they asserted themselves in such a way that he no longer felt satisfied by his new profession. That which was put into him three years before the change of profession will become so apparent three years after this change that the person concerned can no longer have the right satisfaction. And from there the thing can come in such a way that in the twenty-second year the fourteenth year of life repeats itself, in the twenty-third year the thirteenth. It can come, because in the life everything crosses itself, also differently. For example, in the twenty-third year he can start a household; there interests arise that cross the past ones and make them run differently. But the law is still valid. Even in the case when a new interest appears, the former interests are still there, which have been bent.
By such an example you can see the course of the life process as it presents itself to spiritual science. That is the least, that one gets all kinds of concepts through spiritual science; but the most important thing is that through it one penetrates into the process of life. Let us assume - I never tell other cases than those that have occurred; one must acquire the habit of never making things up, but always choose such cases as have really occurred - that a mother comes to me who has to lead her only son into another profession in life because his father has been torn away from him. In today's world, the right thing will hardly happen, because true observation of life is hardly compatible with today's view of life. If such a mother becomes acquainted with spiritual science, she learns to reckon with the law of karma and can just become a good friend of the young man who is to be led over the years of such a change of profession. Such was the case some time ago. A mother came to me and said, What is my best mission in life? - I said that she should use the few years to gain her son's confidence quite a lot. Then spiritual science would train his mind in such a way that it could help him bear what was sure to happen. The feelings of piety transplanted into his soul would assert themselves in a strong way in all the later years of his life, and he would be able to see correctly that which occurs so surely. If one day the son comes home and says: I don't know what to do, my profession doesn't satisfy me at all -, then she will be able to trace it back to what happened earlier. She will recognize the cause and will find out from inner tact how she has to intervene to help the son overcome the difficulty. She will certainly be able to do it better than if she had no idea of how karma works and would only believe that the mood, the depression grew out of something indifferent. Nothing arises like that without a cause; but often the causes are much closer than one thinks. Only we have to observe such a node, trace back life from there and see what is different there. It is like this: Think of yourself as having a violin string. You have strung it and you stroke it with a suitable object. The string gives off a certain sound. If you now hold it in the middle, then something is happening on both sides: the string vibrates on both sides. There are such events in life, from which you can determine how what happens before is reflected afterwards.
Midlife is also such a junction. What is prepared in youth comes out in old age. It is necessary to pay attention to these things so that gradually one really gets a sense that spiritual science is not something impractical, but that the whole of life can be made practical from the spiritual-scientific point of view. A mere life of love is of no use unless wisdom is connected with love. Love must be connected with wisdom, with knowledge of what is right. Love alone is not enough for life.
We may mention one more case which took place in the first half of the eighteenth century and which has been closely examined. A mother brought up her little daughter. She had certainly seen how this little daughter, when she was very young, began stealing things. But in her love, which is an excellent quality, she could not make up her mind to punish. The little daughter stole once, twice, a third time, and did other things as well; and if you follow the course of her life you will see that the child became a famous poisoner. Here you have love that is not united with wisdom. Love must be permeated with the light of wisdom. Love can only really unfold when it is imbued with wisdom. How else can a friend, as a friend, help a young person who is to develop through important moments in his life, when you know that there is a law which sometimes shows the causes of an event in a fairly obvious way, the causes that can be found without knowledge of the law would not understand. So it would be right not only to know in general that there is a law of karma, but to pursue karma in detail by acquiring a correct world view. It is seriously up to the spiritual scientist to familiarize himself with the concrete operation of these laws and to know how they appear in life. This is the most important thing: not to fling out phrases about karma, but to engage in pursuing the law of karma in life. This is necessary!
Now I would like to tell you something else. You can also highlight some cases that relate to karma passing from one life to another. Of course, one can also limit oneself to individual cases. Thus, we can present ourselves with a question concerning the inner karma of a human being, which comes about because the human being basically always has to be a two-part entity in life. If you look at life, you will have to say to yourself: when a man comes into existence through birth, one has to distinguish two things. One is what he has inherited from his forefathers. Schiller, for example, inherited the form of his nose from his grandfather; but what is specifically Schiller's, he did not inherit, but that comes from his earlier incarnations, his earlier embodiments. On the one hand, there is the stream of inheritance of that which is propagated through generations; on the other hand, there is that which man himself takes over from one life to another. Whoever has acquired an eye for the spiritual will always ask himself how much a man has from his parents, and how much comes from his previous incarnation.
In a rational sense, one cannot teach in any other way than by making this distinction. The art of education will receive the right form only when men have learned to distinguish between these two currents. Only at the end of earthly development will these two currents flow together, so that man will be able to find the body into which he fits. At the present time this is not yet possible. If a complete matching of outer corporeality and inner individual organization were to take place in our present time, it would be impossible for a man to die before normal old age through inner causes; for, since dying is not something accidental, but a disharmony, premature death would then not be able to occur, since harmony would prevail in man. Thus, however, this disharmony between what is inherited and what is brought along from earlier embodiment can become so strong that death is brought about earlier.
If a person wanted to delve a little into the spiritual teachings, he could already grasp reincarnation with his hands today - this is not to be taken metaphorically, but literally - if only the materialistic theories did not interpret the relevant facts incorrectly, but correctly. This can be demonstrated in certain cases. There are people who are so little advanced in their development that their feelings are still completely in their sentient soul. Your whole consciousness is connected with the sentient soul. And you can already see that in people's outward gestures: they reveal certain causes that lie in the astral body. When a person is still fully immersed in the sentient soul and feels really well inside, it happens, for example when he has had a good meal, that he thumps his body with pleasure. This is a sign that he still has too strong a feeling soul. When a person is deep in the mind soul, this is also expressed. Because the sensation of truth is in the mind, a person who is in the mind soul to affirm a truth will beat his chest. A person who is deep in the consciousness soul will grab his nose when he thinks predominantly deeply about something. On the lower body, that which relates to the sentient soul is expressed; that which relates to the intellect or mind soul is expressed on the chest, and that which relates to the consciousness soul is expressed on the head: one also tickles behind the ears. I say this only to show how that which is in the astral body is expressed in the physical body.
Now the following can occur. Man can take into his consciousness the highest feelings and ideas and ideals that he can have at first in this cycle of time; for example, our ethical ideals, which alone should be proof for man of the existence of a spiritual world. If we become enthusiastic about these ethical ideals through an inner voice, if we devote ourselves to these high ideals, the stimulus for this cannot come from outside. Now this can go so far that man elevates something he feels without ideals into them, so that he does not live up to a certain idea out of a sense of duty, but simply because he can no longer do otherwise. For him who lets himself be penetrated by a moral idea, it will occur that he lives into this idea in such a way that he commands himself what is right in its sense. Thus the ideals must shine forth in the consciousness soul, then they flow down and become instincts.
When this happens, when the human being has penetrated his feelings with his ideals, then something special asserts itself. These instincts strive to express themselves in the physical body. But between birth and death man can no longer work on his physical body. Certain currents go through the thorax to the head. If someone is enthusiastic about an ideal, glows for it and is full of fire, so that he feels with love: this should happen - then he will devote himself to it in this life, will do everything for it. But this is not all. Through this activity currents go into the upper part up to the head of the human being. These are forces which seek to work up to the physical body; but they can no longer change the head in this life, because the physical body of man is no longer capable of shaping even if one refines oneself in such a way. But these forces nevertheless flow upward. These currents remain with man in his soul, and when man goes through death and a new birth, he brings them with him into a new existence. Here occurs that which gives phrenology an individual justification: in the cusp formations of the skull* these forces, which are thus acquired, come out. One cannot say that this cusp expresses this in general, but that which the individuality has often connected with itself in this way during the preceding life and which nevertheless could no longer transform the body, that expresses itself there.
So these dispositions go through the life between death and new birth, and we really grasp what man has so often let flow into himself in the previous life. There you really grasp reincarnation and karma when you touch the different elevations and bumps of the head. But we must be aware of the fact that each person has his own laws; we must not judge these cusps in general, but quite individually. So, for example, we take hold of a cusp and know: it is the work that the person has done on his soul in the previous life. One can grasp karma and reincarnation also with the hands! There one can learn up to the body form from the spiritual science.
[ * cusp: Possibly meaning the skull sutures, which come together in a cusp formation; in context also possibly referring to the crown chakra (forces 'coming out' through the cusp formations) ]
Just as the bodily form lives from a previous life into a later life, other things also pass over. But one must not consider all these things in a petty way. One must not believe that the law of karma is as tailored as a civil code; it can only be understood through comprehensive studies.
Let us consider a great misfortune that causes deep pain. We often look at it wrongly, because we are always looking to see the effect. We then see that an event has occurred that has made us unhappy, that has thrown us off our course. We see only the effect. But we should look for the cause. There we would perhaps find the following: Yes, there was a possibility in a previous life to acquire this or that ability. But we did not do it, we failed to do it. Thus we have passed through the gate of death without having acquired this ability. Now those forces, which are already karmic forces, drive us towards the misfortune in the following life. If we had acquired that ability in the previous life, the power would not have driven us to the misfortune. By the fact that this misfortune happens to us, we now acquire this ability. Let us now suppose that this misfortune has reached us in the twentieth year, and in the thirtieth year we look back on it and ask ourselves: What has made us have these or those abilities? - Then we realize the purpose of this misfortune. We gain infinitely more when we look at things not as an effect but as a cause for what they make of us. This is also a success of the doctrine of karma, to consider things as causes. All these things are details of the law of karma. So you see that one should take part in anthroposophical life, because one can learn much that otherwise remains only a general concept.
I would like to draw your attention to something very important, which is connected with the law of karma. A person who enters spiritual science and hears that there is the possibility of acquiring spiritual abilities, of growing up to the gift of clairvoyance, might ask: Why is it always so difficult to learn what spiritual science says? - This question may be justified, but it really arises from a misunderstanding of many people who get to know spiritual science only superficially, a misunderstanding they have about the connection between physical and spiritual life. They know that physical life is not unnecessarily inserted into human life. It has its mission, as does the life between death and a new birth in the spiritual world.
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Let us ask ourselves the question: What about two people, one of whom is not able to develop the gift of clairvoyance in this incarnation because of his karma from the previous life course, but has to be content with diligently acquiring anthroposophical knowledge through study, so that he can see how these things are to be understood — that is, he could only make progress through study — and another who is given the opportunity to develop his clairvoyant gifts and penetrate the spiritual world? The latter could have the following mood. He says to himself: I can see into the spiritual world, I can see spiritual entities, why should I study books now? I know that there is a spiritual world, why should I still study anthroposophy? That is unfounded and boring. - This is a thing that happens again and again, that people who are karmically fortunate enough to be clairvoyant, say to themselves: Now we don't want to learn anything more; why should we study now what is given only in dry terms? - One is able to study all the more diligently, but he cannot come to the gift of clairvoyance; the other despises the studies, but his karma is so favorable that he can become a clairvoyant. Now, what about these people after death, what is the overall picture? The man who has acquired the gift of clairvoyance between birth and death, who could see into the spiritual world and who could see various things, but who did not want to learn the theoretical concepts, who did not want to understand the spiritual-scientific data with logical thinking, who despised all this, has nothing at all after death. He knows himself no better than without the clairvoyant gift he had during his lifetime. A person is even better off who was not yet able to see [clairvoiantly] in his physical life, but who was not prevented from forming a logical concept of the spiritual world through reading.
But this should not be an instruction to be lazy, to do nothing to develop the spiritual senses. No one can know whether he will not acquire the gift of clairvoyance before his death. For those who have studied the spiritual-scientific world view, these concepts are now transformed into real views. What you acquire here through concepts is no longer lost, it remains. There is an obligation: no matter how highly initiated you were, if you could look so high, but could not conceptualize what you saw, you would get nothing from it. Man should not just stop at looking, but he should pour everything into concepts taken from physical life. People are called to really take in what they can experience on earth. What is lacking in the spiritual world must be acquired in the physical world and carried up there.
What I have just said is related to something much more significant. There is one thing that people could never have come to know in the spiritual world. Never could an event have been known in the spirit world if man had not been brought down to the physical earth and carried through the incarnations. All spiritual entities that do not incarnate cannot come to know one event: that is death. Death does not exist in the astral world and even further up; it cannot be experienced there. That is why there is the old principle in esoteric philosophy: if gods want to learn to die, they must go to earth to learn it. — This is a very profound truth. And again, something else is connected with death: Man would never come to self-consciousness. Only by passing through the gate of death again and again, when an incarnation comes to an end, and by shedding his shells, only by doing so does he come to the actual consciousness of the self. Man must learn to overcome death. Without death entering the world, man would not have known self-consciousness. Thus, death had to become the great teacher of the physical world. This is connected with a great event. If he had never descended to the physical earth, if he had always remained above in the spiritual spheres, man would never have been able to experience what is the greatest event of earthly evolution: the Mystery of Golgotha.
The Christ event can be experienced only between birth and death. And it is precisely in this that the greatness of this event consists, that a God descended from heavenly heights and shared the fate of mankind. Only on earth could he accomplish this mystery. Never could the mystery of Golgotha have been set up anywhere in the spirit world. In order to teach people the victory over death, a God had to descend from spiritual heights to die on earth. And this event, understood by man on earth, that is the greatest thing that can flow into the earthly incarnation of man. This is the greatest thing that man can take with him when he leaves the physical earth through the gate of death. Man could never comprehend the greatness of the Christ if he did not learn on earth what the Christ is. When he has learned that on earth, he can preserve it and bring it with him to the spiritual world.
Humanity could never have known the Christ if it had not descended, unfolded the physical body, and had the opportunity on earth to understand a God's dying. This event had to happen, which has significance for all the future. Mankind will again evolve back into the spiritual world. Before it knew nothing of the Christ impulse; on earth it had to learn it, and now it will be carried up, taken along by all those who have acquired an understanding of it on earth. With this understanding, which is gradually acquired on earth, with that event in the soul, man lives on in the following incarnations and also in those lives which flow away between death and birth. More and more people will understand of what Golgotha is. More and more the Christ will live. And when one day the earth will be physically shattered, when only the souls, the spirits of men will have remained, they will look back on the earth evolution and say: We had to go through an evolution in a world where we prepared ourselves for the Christ. Then came this mystery, the evolution continued, we understood better and better the event of Palestine, we processed it in our lives between birth and death, and when this great mystery was understood, then the earth was ripe to disappear again, because then we assimilated what was the most important thing of the whole earth evolution. On earth we had to be, we had to pass through, in order to experience that which cannot be experienced anywhere else. Now it has been carried up into the spiritual world, but the origin of what is now in the spiritual world was down there.
Thus we see how karma works in this meaningful case, and how the Christ understanding is related to the whole earth karma of mankind. And mankind is to receive the Christ into himself. Man cannot fulfill earth karma without having achieved this Christ understanding. And the attainment of the earth goal will be a karmic effect of the acquisition of the Christ understanding. So we can say: The smallest as well as the greatest event we will understand when we look at the law of karma.