It seems that I have to explain every time why I, as a Dutch woman, speak German. Yes, of course I can’t do that every time. And I know all too well that I am a Dutch woman who tries to speak German. But I continue doing it this way, because I have many German-speaking friends who, over the course of years, have more or less walked the path with me. And when I really speak about anthroposophy, as I do in these videos, then I speak German. And my German, of course, is not completely bad either. We continue with the explanations of Rudolf Steiner in his book Theosophy about reincarnation and karma. And a big question always is: for example, if one wants to distinguish whether certain dispositions come from heredity or from individuality, then a big question is: how do I do that? And in the next section, Rudolf Steiner gives some explanations for this. And he begins from that which we call the soul, which is the link between spirit and body. Now, it is of course so that the soul has, so to speak, a connection downward with the body. So it is not like a ball or something or a sphere inserted between spirit and body, but it also extends into the bodily. Downwards it stretches into that which we call the astral body. Let us imagine: the human being, who has a body, also has an etheric body. This etheric body permeates the physical body. But we also still have an astral body, and that is not the soul. The astral body is – Rudolf Steiner calls it here – the most fleeting part of the body, is thus related to the soul, but the soul extends with its lowest – one should not interpret that morally – its lowest parts, that is the sentient soul, into the astral body.

And one can really only make that effective within oneself if one truly tries to imagine it in an image. Body, etheric body, astral body – and this astral body is then permeated, interwoven with the soul element, the sentient soul. Now, the astral body is more or less still hereditary and family-conditioned. So, we are dealing here with something soul-like, which – even though it is soul-like – nevertheless comes forth out of heredity. From heredity, but also from the environment into which one is born. Nation, people, school, and so on. Goethe says the well-known words: from father I have the stature, the serious way of conducting life; from mother dear, the cheerful nature, the art of storytelling. It is clearly evident that these are soul characteristics – the serious way of conducting life and the art of storytelling, the cheerful nature – these are etheric-astral characteristics that have come from the family, and that is of course not his true genius, but it is a foundation for it.

And if one then looks all the way up, we have as the highest member of the soul the consciousness soul, and we have now arrived in the time in which we are really developing this consciousness soul. And this consciousness soul has within it the longing to develop the thinking, feeling and willing of the soul in such a way that these three forces, these three activities, act in the realm of truth, beauty, and goodness. That is consciousness soul. The consciousness soul can also completely fall downward and be only occupied with itself. But actually, the consciousness soul wants to develop beyond egoity and wants to live in an objective world of thinking, feeling and willing – namely, in truth, in beauty and in goodness. And where this is the case and also is developed, there shines the spirit-self, which is a spiritual member of the human being, into the soul element.

So, one could also say: there, the consciousness soul shines into the spirit-self. An interaction arises, through which the spirit-self can already reveal itself somewhat during earthly life, although that is actually not yet the time for it in our present age, for we are developing the consciousness soul, and in a next cultural epoch we will then much more develop the spirit-self, but we are preparing for that. And so we have the soul, which is connected upward with the spirit-self and downward with the astral body. So downward we have these soul qualities of the human being, which are rooted in earthly conditions. And those are the most noticeable. Our gaze is primarily directed toward that, always. And there we can find the individuality, which goes through the incarnations, the least, because there the hereditary disposition is the main thing.

And that already says something, of course, about the individuality – that it chooses such a hereditary disposition in which it wants to incarnate. But it is of course not at all clear what in this choice actually is the individuality. So, if one wants to find the individuality more or less purely, then one cannot remain in the realm where the stature and the conduct of life and the temperament and the hereditary soul characteristics live – there one cannot find it. For these are expressions of individuality, to be sure, but it is not the individuality itself that one sees there. One must therefore learn to seek in a completely different realm in order to find oneself as an eternal being, or others as eternal beings. And that is therefore in the realm where the development of thinking becomes a tool for truth, where art is found in the realm of beauty. And then one must really grasp beauty as the manifestation of the true being – that is thus still something else than what is also understood under art. Beauty, and then goodness – and for that, yes, one of course enters a realm where the secret of individuality lives, because one feels immediately: one can indeed determine for oneself what the good is in actions, but it is very, very difficult and actually only seldom good if one tries to judge the good in the actions of fellow human beings. One could only do that if one could really enter into the impulses of the action. And yes, that is the great secret of human individuality – that the will is a secret. It also remains a secret. And so, one must seek the good within oneself.

But this realm – the true, the beautiful and the good – these are the three realms that reveal themselves, in which individuality can truly become visible. And at the same time, it is also clear how difficult that is, for most people do not show themselves there at all. They show themselves through their hereditary dispositions. So here is a bit of concept formation that Rudolf Steiner gives, through which we can comprehend what it is when we look at the soul qualities of a human being in the hereditary disposition, and what it is when we look at the individual dispositions in the spiritual realm.

For the understanding of reincarnation and karma it is of great importance that we learn more and more to view this structure of the human being in an image,

so that we really imagine as strongly as possible that the soul is the mediator between body, etheric body, astral body on the one side and spirit-self, life spirit, spirit man on the other side. The higher members are still so in the beginning of their development that we can only perceive them with difficulty. But there lives the true eternal individuality. Next time we will continue.