Chapter III: Sleep and Death (2)

There are three regions in the spiritual world, which may be compared to the three divisions of the physical sense-world. The first region is in a certain respect the “solid land” of the spiritual world, the second the “sphere of ocean and river,” and the third the “atmospheric region.” That which assumes physical form on earth, so that it can be perceived by physical organs, in accordance with its spiritual nature, is to be seen in the first region of the spirit-world. There, for instance, may be seen the force that fashions the form of a crystal. Only what is there revealed is the opposite of that which appears in the sense-world. In that world the space which is filled by a mass of rock appears to spiritual sight as a kind of hollow space; but round about this hollow is seen the force which fashions the form of the rock. The colour of the rock in the sense-world appears in the spiritual world as its complementary colour; thus a red stone is green when seen from the spirit-world, a green stone is red, and so on. Other qualities also appear in their opposites. Just as stone, masses of earth, and like materials make up the solid land—the continental region of the world of sense—so do the structures described above compose the solid land of the spiritual world.

All that is life in the sense-world belongs to the ocean-region of the spiritual world. To the physical eye, life appears in its effects in plants, animals, and men. To spiritual vision, life is a flowing substance, like oceans and rivers, diffused through the spirit-world. A still better comparison is that of the circulation of the blood in the body; for whereas seas and rivers are seen to be irregularly distributed in the physical world, a certain regularity in distribution of the flowing life reigns in the spirit-world, as in the circulation of the blood. This “flowing life” is simultaneously heard as spiritual sound.

The third region of the spirit-world is its “atmosphere.” What is known in the physical world as “feeling” is also present there, permeating everything like the air on the earth. We must imagine a rushing sea of feeling. Pain and sorrow, joy and rapture, flow through this region, like wind and storms in the atmosphere of the physical world. Imagine a battle fought on earth. There confront one another not merely human forms, as seen by the physical eye, but feelings opposed to feelings, passions to passions; pain fills the battlefield just as much as do the forms of men. All that is seething there of passion, pain, and the joy of victory is not only perceptible in its effects as revealed to the physical senses; it may be seen with the spiritual senses as an atmospheric process in the spirit-world. Such an event in the spiritual world is like a thunderstorm in the physical, and the perception of these events may be compared to the hearing of words in the physical world. For this reason it is said that as the air envelops and permeates earthly things, so do “interweaving spiritual words” pervade the beings and events of the spirit-world.

And still further observations are possible in this spirit-world. What may be compared to light and heat in the physical world is there too. That which permeates everything in the spirit-world, as earthly things and beings are permeated by heat, is the world of thought itself. There, however, thoughts must be regarded as living and independent beings. What is understood by man in the manifested world as thought is but a shadow of what lives as a thought-being in the spirit-world. Imagine thought, as it now exists in man, raised out of him and as an active, energetic being, endowed with an inner life of its own, and you have a feeble illustration of that which fills the fourth region of the spirit-world. In the physical world between birth and death what man understands as thought is but the manifestation of the thought-world as it is able to mould itself by means of the instruments afforded by the bodies. All such thoughts cherished by man, that carry with them an enrichment of the physical world have their origin in this region. By such thoughts are meant not only the ideas of great inventors and men of genius; but those ideas found in every individual which he does not owe solely to the external world, but through which he, so to speak, transforms that world.

In so far as feelings and passions are concerned, the cause of which lies in the outer world, these feelings are perceptible in the third region of the spirit-world; but everything which so lives in a man’s soul as to make him a creator,—influencing, transforming and fertilizing his environment,—is manifest in its original and intrinsic form in the fourth division of the spirit-world.

That which exists in the fifth region may be compared to physical light. In its archetypal form it is wisdom in manifestation. Beings who diffuse wisdom throughout their surroundings, as the sun pours light on physical beings, belong to this realm. Whatever is illuminated by their wisdom stands forth in its true meaning and significance for the spiritual world, just as the colour of a physical object is seen when the light falls upon it. There are still higher regions of the spirit-world, which will be described later in this work.

Into this world the ego is plunged after death, together with the results it carries with it out of physical life. And these results are still united with that part of the astral body which is not cast off at the end of the time of purification. In fact, only that part falls away which, in its desires and wishes, turned, after death, toward physical life. The plunging of the ego into the spiritual world, with what it has acquired in the physical world, may be compared to the planting of a grain of seed in the soil in which it can mature. As the grain of seed draws substances and forces from its surroundings in order that it may develop into a new plant, so the condition of the ego, when implanted in the spiritual world, is one of development and growth.

Hidden within that which is perceived by an organ, there lies the force whereby that same organ was formed. The eye perceives light; but without light there would be no eye. Creatures spending their lives in darkness do not develop organs of sight. Thus the whole of man’s physical body is created out of the hidden forces of that of which he becomes conscious through his bodily organs. The physical body is built up by the forces of the physical world, the etheric body by those of the life-world, and the astral body is formed out of the astral world. Now when the ego is transferred to the spirit-world it is met by just those forces which remain hidden to physical perception.

What appear to man’s view in the first region of the spirit-world are the spiritual beings that are always surrounding him, and that have built up his physical body. Thus in the physical world man perceives nothing but the manifestations of those spiritual forces which have formed his own physical body. After death he is in the very midst of these moulding forces, which, previously hidden, now appear to him in their true forms. In the same way, in the second region, he is in the midst of the forces by which his etheric body was organized, and in the third region there pour in upon him the potencies out of which his astral body was formed. The higher regions of the spirit-world also direct toward him those forces from which he was built in the life between birth and death.

These denizens of the spiritual world are at present working in co-operation with that which man has brought with him as the product of his last life, which now becomes a germ; and through this co-operation man is, first of all, built up anew as a spiritual being. The physical and etheric bodies are still joined in sleep; the astral body and the ego are, it is true, outside them, but still connected with them. Whatever influences the astral body and the ego receive, in such a state, from the spiritual world, can serve only to recuperate the forces exhausted during the waking state.

But when the physical and etheric bodies have been laid aside, and, after the time of purification, also those parts of the astral body still bound by their desires to the physical world, then everything pouring in upon the ego from the spiritual world is not only a reforming but a reorganizing force. After a certain period, to be dealt with in later chapters, the ego again gathers round it an astral body which will be able to live in such an etheric and physical body as man possesses between birth and death. A man can once more pass through birth and renew his earthly existence, in which, however, will be incorporated the results of his former life. Until the rebuilding of his astral body, man is a witness of his reconstruction. As the powers of the spirit-world are not manifested to him through external organs, but from within outward, like his own ego in self-consciousness, he is able to observe that manifestation as long as his attention is not turned to an outer world of perception. But from the moment that the astral body is reconstituted, his attention is turned outward; the astral body once more craves an outer etheric and physical body. It is thus turned away from the inner revelations. For this reason there is now an intermediate state, during which man is immersed in unconsciousness. Consciousness can emerge again in the physical world only when the necessary organs for physical perception are formed.

During this period, in which consciousness illuminated by inner perception ceases, the new etheric body begins to link itself to the astral and man can once again enter a physical body. In the linking together of these two bodies only such an ego could consciously take part as had of itself created the Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man out of the creative forces, hidden in the etheric and physical bodies. Until the individual has evolved as far as this, beings further advanced than himself in evolution must guide this linking together. The astral body is guided, by such beings as these, to parents through whom it may be endowed with the appropriate etheric and physical bodies. Before the attachment of the etheric body takes place, something of very great importance happens to the man who is about to re-enter physical existence.

In his former life he created disturbing forces, which were revealed to him on the journey retraced after death. Let us again take an example. He caused some pain in an outburst of anger in the fortieth year of his former life. After death, the other’s pain came before him as a force which had interfered with the evolution of his ego. It is likewise with all such events of his former life. On his re-entrance into physical life these hindrances to his evolution confront the ego anew. As, on the threshold of death, a sort of memory-picture arose before the human ego, so there now arises a vision of the life approaching. Again he sees a picture, this time showing all the obstacles which he has to clear away, if he is to advance in evolution. And what he thus sees becomes the starting-point for forces which he must bring with him into his new life. The picture of the pain he has caused the other man becomes a force which impels the ego, on entering life again, to make amends for this pain. Thus the previous life has a determining effect on the new one. The deeds of the new life are in a certain way caused by those of the former life. This connection, following the law, between an earlier and later existence is to be looked upon as the “Law of Destiny”; it has become usual to designate it “Karma,” a term borrowed from oriental wisdom.

The building up of a new set of bodies, however, is not the only task incumbent upon man between death and a new birth. While this building up is taking place, man lives outside the physical world. That world, however, continues to evolve during this time. The surface of the earth changes in comparatively short periods of time. What aspect did those regions which are now occupied by Germany bear a few thousand years ago? When man appears on earth in a new existence, the earth rarely looks the same as it did at the time of his last incarnation. During his absence from the earth all sorts of changes have occurred. Now hidden forces are also at work in this alteration of the face of the earth, proceeding from that very world in which man finds himself after death; and he himself must co-operate with these forces in the transformation of the earth. He can do so only under the direction of Higher Beings until, by the creation of his Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man, he has acquired a clear perception of the connection between the spiritual and its expression in the physical. But he takes part in the transformation of earthly conditions. It may be said that during the period between death and a new birth, man so transforms the earth that its conditions are in keeping with what he has evolved in himself. If we look at a given place on the earth at a definite moment, and see it again after a long lapse of time, under entirely changed conditions, the forces which have wrought the change have proceeded from those who are now dead. And it is this kind of connection which exists between them and the earth until the time of rebirth.

Clairvoyant observation sees in all physical existence the manifestation of a hidden spiritual element. To physical observation it is the light of the sun, climatic changes, and so on, that effect the transformation of the earth, but to clairvoyance it is the force of the dead that acts in the rays of light which fall on the plant from the sun. The clairvoyant sees how human souls hover about plants, how they change the surface of the earth. Not alone upon himself nor upon the preparations for his own new earthly existence, is man’s attention bestowed after death.—No, he is called upon then to work upon the outer world, just as he is in life between the time of his birth and death.

Not only does the life of man affect the conditions of the physical world from the spirit-land; but vice versa, activity during physical existence has its effects in the spiritual world. An example may explain what happens in this respect. A bond of love exists between mother and child. This love arises from a mutual attraction caused by the forces of the sense-world. But in the course of time it changes. A spiritual tie gradually grows out of the sense-bond, and this spiritual tie is not created for the physical world only but for the spirit-world as well. The same applies to other ties. Whatever is created in the physical world by spiritual entities continues to exist in the spiritual world. Friends who were closely united in life belong to each other in spirit-land also, and when their bodies are laid aside they are in much more intimate communion than during physical life. For as spirits they exist for each other in the same way as, in the above description, spiritual beings reveal themselves to others by inner manifestation; and a tie created between two persons brings them together again in a new life. Thus in the truest sense of the word we may speak of finding one another again after death.

What has once happened to a man between birth and death and from then till a new birth, repeats itself. Man returns to earth again and again when the fruit he has earned in a physical life has ripened in the spirit-world. It is not, however, a case of repetition without beginning or end; but man has emerged out of other forms of existence and passed into those which run their course in the manner just described, and he will again in the future pass into other forms. A viewpoint of these transition stages will be gained when the evolution of the universe in connection with man is subsequently considered from the standpoint of occult science.

The occurrences between death and a new birth are of course still more concealed from outer sense-observation than is the spiritual foundation underlying manifested life between birth and death. This sense-observation can see only the effects of that portion of the hidden world where they impinge upon physical existence. With regard to this the question must arise whether man, on entering this life at birth, brings with him any results from the events described by occult science as having taken place between his last death and re-birth. If one finds the shell of a snail in which there is no trace of the animal he will, in spite of that, recognize that this snailshell was formed by the activity of an animal, and he cannot believe that the shell constructed a form for itself, by means of mere physical forces.

In the same way one who studies a man during life, and finds something in him which cannot be due to _this_ life, might reasonably admit that it arises from what occult science describes, if by doing so an explanatory light is thrown on what is otherwise inexplicable.

Here, too, the unseen causes might appear intelligible to rational sense-observation from their visible effects, and whoever observes life with absolute impartiality will find that, with every fresh observation, this appears to be more and more true. The important question, however, is how to find the right point of view from which to observe their effects in life. Where, for example, are the effects of that to be found which occult science describes as incidents of the time of purification? How are the effects of the experience which, according to occult investigations, man undergoes in purely spiritual regions, manifested after this time of purification?

Problems enough press upon every serious and profound student of life in this domain. We see one man born in want and misery, endowed only with inferior abilities, so that on account of these facts, which are incident to his birth, he appears predestined to a miserable existence. Another, from the first moment of his life, is tended and cherished by loving hands and hearts; brilliant talents are unfolded in him; his gifts point to a successful and satisfactory career. Two opposite views may be taken when met by such questions as these. The one will adhere to what the senses perceive and what the understanding, relying on these senses, is able to comprehend. This view will admit no problem in the fact that one man is born fortunate and the other unfortunate. Even if the word “chance” is not used, there will be no question of thinking that such things are brought about through any law of cause and effect. And with regard to talents and abilities, such a view will consider them as “inherited” from parents, grandparents, and other ancestors. It refuses to seek the causes in spiritual events which the man himself met with before birth—regardless of heredity—and by means of which he shaped his talents and abilities.

Another view would find no satisfaction in such an interpretation. It would assert that even in the manifested world nothing happens in definite places or surroundings without our having to presuppose causes for the event in question. Even though in many cases such causes have not yet been investigated, they are there. An Alpine flower does not grow in the lowlands. Its nature has something which associates it with Alpine regions. Just so must there be something in a man which determines his birth in a certain environment. Causes belonging to the physical world alone are not sufficient to account for this. To a more profound thinker such an explanation appears in somewhat the same light as when one has dealt another a blow, the motive for which is not attributed to the feelings of the one but is to be explained by the physical mechanism of the hand.

Any explanation of abilities and talents solely by “heredity” is to such a viewpoint equally unsatisfactory. It is true one may say: “See how certain talents are inherited in families.” During two and a half centuries musical talents were inherited by members of the Bach family. Eight mathematicians sprang from the Bernoulli family, to some of whom quite different occupations were assigned in their childhood; but the inherited talents always drove them to the family vocation. It may be further pointed out how, by an exact investigation of the line of ancestry of a person in one way or another the gifts of this person have shown themselves in the forefathers, and only represent the sum of inherited talents. Whoever holds the latter of the two views above indicated will be sure not to let such facts pass unnoticed, but to _him_ they cannot mean the same as they do to one who relies for his interpretation on the events of the world of sense alone. The former will point out that inherited talents can no more of themselves, combine into a complete personality than can the metal parts of a watch fit themselves together. And if objection is made that the co-operation of the parents may possibly produce the combination of talents,—that this as it were, takes the place of the watchmaker,—he will reply: “Look impartially at what is new in every child-personality, at that which is absolutely new; that cannot come from the parents, for the simple reason that it does not exist in them.”

Inaccurate thinking may create much confusion in this domain. It is still worse when those who hold the second view are set down by the supporters of the first as opponents of what is, after all, borne out by “ascertained facts.” But it may well be that the latter have not the slightest intention of denying the truth or value of those facts. For instance, they see that a definite mental aptitude or predisposition is “inherited” in a family, and that certain gifts accumulated and combined in one descendant result in a remarkable personality. They are perfectly willing to acquiesce when it is said that the most celebrated name seldom stands at the beginning but at the end of a line of descent. But it should not be taken amiss if they are compelled to form very different opinions on the subject from those of people who are determined to accept nothing but material evidence. To the latter it may be said that it is true a man shows the characteristics of his ancestors, because the “spirit-soul”, which enters upon physical existence at birth, draws its bodily substance from that which heredity bestows on it. But this says nothing more than that a being shows the peculiarities of the body into which it has descended.

It is no doubt a singular—a trivial—comparison, but the unprejudiced person will not deny its justification, when one says that a human being, who shows the qualities of his forefathers, proves the origin of the personal qualities of that human being as little as the fact that man is wet because he has fallen into the water, proves something regarding his inner nature. And it may further be said that if the most celebrated name stands at the end of a line of family descent, it shows that the bearer of that name needed that particular ancestry to build the body necessary for the expression of his whole personality. But it is no proof that his actual personal qualities were transmitted to him: such a statement is, on the contrary, opposed to sound logic. If personal gifts were inherited, they would be found at the beginning of a line of descent,(7) and starting from that point be transmitted to the descendants. As, however, they stand at the end, it is evident that they are _not_ transmitted.

Now it is not to be denied that those who speak of a spiritual causality in life have contributed no less to bringing about confusion of thought. Far too much generalizing and vague discussion comes from this quarter. To say that a man’s personality is a combination of inherited characteristics may certainly be compared with the assertion that the metal parts of a watch have fitted themselves together. It must also be admitted that, with regard to many assertions about a spiritual world, it is as though some one said that the metal parts of a watch cannot put themselves together in such a way as to enable the hands to move forward; some intelligence must therefore be present to effect this forward movement. In face of such an assertion, _he_ certainly builds on a far better foundation who says: “Oh! I care nothing for your ‘mystical’ beings who move the hands forward. What I want to know is the mechanical construction by means of which the forward movement of the hands is achieved.” It is by no means a question of merely knowing that behind a mechanism, a watch for instance, there is an intelligence (the watchmaker); it can only be of importance to know the ideas in the watchmaker’s mind which preceded the construction of the watch. These thoughts may be rediscovered in the mechanism.

Mere dreaming and imagining about the supersensual only result in confusion, for they are not calculated to satisfy opponents. The latter are right in saying that such general allusions to super-physical beings are not at all conducive to an understanding of facts. Of course, such opponents might also say the same of the _exact_ statements of occult science. But, in that case, it may be pointed out that the effects of hidden spiritual causes are seen in manifested life. Let us assume for the moment that what occult science asserts, proven by observation, is correct:—that a man has gone through a time of purification after death, and that during this period he has experienced in his soul how a certain deed, performed by him in a former life, was a hindrance to his progressive evolution. While he was undergoing this experience, the impulse arose in him to make amends for that deed. He brings this impulse with him into a new life and its presence produces a tendency in his nature which draws him into conditions rendering the amendment possible.—Taking into consideration a number of such impulses, we have the cause for a man’s being born into an environment corresponding to his destiny.

We may deal in the same way with another assumption. Let us again accept as correct the assertion of occult science that the fruits of a past life are incorporated in man’s spiritual germ, and that the spirit-land in which man finds himself, between death and a new life, is the region in which these fruits ripen, and are transformed into talents and capabilities which will appear in a new life and will form the personality so that it appears as the effect of what was gained in a former life. It will become evident to any one who accepts these hypotheses and, bearing them in mind, surveys life impartially, that while, by their means, all material facts may be appreciated in their full truth and significance, at the same time everything becomes intelligible which, if only material facts were relied upon, must forever remain incomprehensible to one whose attention is turned toward the spiritual world. And more important still, that illogical reasoning of the kind indicated above will disappear, namely,—that because the most distinguished name in a line of descent stands at the end of it, its bearer must have inherited his gifts. Life becomes logically comprehensible through the supersensual facts ascertained by occult science.

Yet another weighty objection may be raised by the conscientious seeker after truth who desires to find his way to facts and has no experience of his own in the supersensual world. It may be urged that it is inadmissible to accept the existence of facts, of any kind, simply because by means of them something may be explained which is otherwise unintelligible. Such an objection is meaningless to one who knows the corresponding facts from supersensual experience, and in later chapters of this book the path will be indicated that may be followed in order to gain knowledge not only of the spiritual facts herein described, but also of the law of spiritual causation as a personal experience. Any one, however, who is not willing to enter upon this path may find the above objection important; and what can be said against it is also of value to one who is resolved to follow the path indicated. For if it is received in the right spirit, it is the very best preliminary step that can be taken on this path. It is perfectly true that one ought not to accept a statement about which one is otherwise ignorant merely because, by means of it, something otherwise inexplicable can be explained, but in the case of alleged spiritual facts the matter is different. If such statements are accepted, the intellectual consequence is not only that, by their means, life becomes intelligible, but that through admitting these hypotheses into the thought-world, experiences of quite a new kind are induced.

Take the following case. Something befalls a man which causes him extremely painful sensations. He may meet the situation in one of two ways. He may submit to the occurrence as something affecting him painfully, and abandon himself to the painful sensation, even becoming absorbed in his grief; or he may meet it in another way. He may say: “It is really I myself who in a former life set the force in motion which has brought me into contact with this thing. I have really brought it on myself.” He may then awaken in himself all the feelings which such a thought brings in its train. It goes without saying that the thought must be entertained with perfect seriousness, and with the utmost possible force, if it is to have such consequences in the life of sensation and feeling. One who succeeds in this will meet with an experience which may be best illustrated by a comparison. Let us suppose that two men have each a stick of sealing wax in his hand. One begins reflecting upon its inner nature. These reflections may perhaps be very wise, but if the “inner nature” did not show itself in any way, some one might easily retort: “That is all imagination.” The other, however, rubs the sealing wax with a woolen rag, and then shows that it attracts small particles. There is an important difference between the thoughts which have passed through the first man’s head and his reflections, and those of the second. The thoughts of the first man had no actual result; those of the second have called out a hidden force, consequently something real.

The same thing happens with regard to the thoughts of a man in whose mind the idea arises that in a former life he has set going within himself the force which causes him to experience a certain event. The mere conception of this stirs up strength within him which enables him to face the event in quite a different manner from that in which he would have met it without entertaining such an idea. It dawns upon him that an event which he would otherwise have looked upon as an accident was really a necessity and he will immediately see that he had the right thought, because this thought had the power to reveal the facts to him. If such inner processes are repeated they will grow into a source of inner power and thus prove their truth by their fruitfulness; and little by little, this truth is found to be powerfully effective. Such processes have a salutary effect on body, soul, and spirit,—nay, they help life forward in every way. Man becomes aware that in this manner he takes the right position with regard to life’s continuity; whereas, by taking into consideration only the one life between birth and death, he is the victim of a delusion.

Such an entirely inner proof of spiritual causation can of course be acquired only by each one for himself, in his own inner life. But it is in every one’s power to have it. Those who have not acquired it certainly cannot judge of its convincing force; but those who have acquired it can scarcely entertain any further doubt in the matter. And there is no reason for surprise that this should be so. It is only natural that what is so wholly bound up with the constitution of man’s inmost being and personality can be adequately proven only by inner experience. On the other hand, it cannot be alleged that because such a matter corresponds to inner experience it must therefore be settled by every one for himself, and that it is no subject for occult science. It is certain that every one must undergo the experience for himself, just as each must see for himself the proof of a mathematical problem. But the path by which such an experience may be gained is open to all, just as the method of proving a mathematical problem is available to every one.

It ought not to be denied—apart from clairvoyant observation of course—that by means of the force producing power of the corresponding thoughts, the just cited proof is the only one which stands firm before all unprejudiced logic. All other considerations are no doubt very important, but in all of them there will be something on which an opponent might seize as a point of attack. Surely one who has acquired a fairly impartial way of looking at things will find something in the possibility and actual fact of man’s education, which has the power of logical proof that a spiritual being is struggling for existence within the sheath of the body. He will compare animals with man and say to himself that at the birth of the former there appears certain definite qualities and capacities as something, decisive in itself, which plainly shows how it has been designed by heredity and how it will unfold itself in the outer world. We see how a young chicken carries out life’s functions in the appointed way from its birth; but by means of education something comes into touch with man’s inner life which is independent of any connection with his heredity, and he may be in a position to assimilate the effects of such external influences. The educator knows that such influences are met by forces coming from man’s inner nature. If this is not the case, all instruction and training are meaningless. The unprejudiced educator finds the boundary line between inherited talents and those inner forces of the man himself which shine through them and originate in former lives, to be very sharply marked. It is true, we cannot bring forward such weighty proofs for things of this kind as we can for certain physical facts, by means of scales; but then these are just the intimate things of life, and one who has the power to appreciate such impalpable proofs will find them convincing—even more convincing than palpable reality.

That animals may be trained, and thus, to a certain extent, acquire qualities and capacities by education, is no objection to one who is able to see reality, for apart from the fact that transitional stages are met with all over the world, the results of training an animal by no means fade away with its individual existence, as is the case with a man. What is more, the fact has been emphasized that faculties acquired by domestic animals through intercourse with man are transmitted, that is to say, continue in the species, not in the individual. Darwin describes how dogs fetch and carry without having been taught to do so, or without having seen it done. Who would make such an assertion with regard to human education?

Now there are thinkers whose observations have led them beyond the opinion that a man is built by purely inherited forces from without. They rise to the thought that a spiritual being, an individuality, exists before life in the body, and fashions it; but many of them find it impossible to conceive that there are repeated earthly lives, and that the fruits of former lives are moulding forces during the intermediate state between two lives. Let us take one instance from among the ranks of these thinkers. Immanuel Hermann Fichte, son of the great Fichte, in his _Anthropology_ (p. 528) gives the observations which led him to the following conclusion:

“Parents are _not_ generators in the full sense of the word. They supply organic substance, and not alone this, but also that intermediate element of mental and sense nature which appears in temperament, colouring of character, definite tendencies, and so on, the common source of which proves to be ‘imagination’ in the wider sense indicated by us. In all these elements of personality, the mingling and particular combination of the souls of the parents is unmistakable; it is therefore a perfectly well-grounded assertion that this combination is simply the result of procreation, even if we regard procreation, as we must do, as really a soul-process. But the real ultimate centre of the personality is just what is lacking here; for a deeper and more searching observation reveals the fact that even those peculiarities of disposition are but a covering and an instrument for the containing of the individual’s really spiritual and ideal capabilities, and are qualified to aid these in their development or to hinder them, but in no wise able to originate them.” It is further stated in the same work (p. 532): “Every individual pre-exists as regards the fundamental form of his spirit, for no individual, from a spiritual point of view, resembles another, just as no species of animal resembles another species.”

These thoughts reach only far enough to allow a spiritual being to come into the human body; but as the forces shaping such a being are not derived from causes existing in former lives, it would be necessary that, each time a fresh personality appears, a spiritual being should come forth from a Divine First Cause. With this hypothesis there would be no possibility of explaining the relationship which certainly exists between the potentialities struggling out of man’s innermost being, and that which is forcing its way thither from his external earthly environment during life. Man’s innermost being, issuing in the case of each single person from a Divine First Cause, would find what confronts him in earthly life quite strange and foreign. Only then would this not be the case—as, in fact, it is not—if there had already been a connection between the inner man and the outer world, and if the inner man were not living in it for the first time.

The unprejudiced educator may undoubtedly observe clearly that he impresses the consciousness of his pupil with something taken from life’s experiences which in itself is foreign to his merely inherited qualities, but which, however, appears to him as if the work out of which these experiences arise, had been done by him in the past. Only repeated lives on earth, in conjunction with the facts set forth by occult science as taking place in spiritual regions between two earthly lives,—only this view can afford a satisfactory explanation of present human life looked at from every side. I say expressly “present” human life, for occult investigation shows that the cycle of earthly life certainly had a beginning, and at that time man’s spiritual being, which later entered a bodily frame, existed under different conditions. In the following chapter we shall go back to this primeval condition of human existence. When it has been shown, from the reports of occult science how human beings received their present form in connection with the evolution of the earth, it will also be possible to indicate more precisely how the spiritual germ of man’s being descends from superphysical worlds into a bodily form, and how the spiritual law of causation, or “human destiny,” is developed.