In the previous video I tried, on the basis of Rudolf Steiner’s Theosophy, to indicate how the soul, as the middle member between body and spirit, descends downward, to the body, as the sentient soul permeates, penetrates the astral body, and how from above the spiritual, in the form of the spirit-self, radiates through the consciousness soul with the true and the good, and the beautiful is then a consequence. Rudolf Steiner then continues the train of thought, and of course one question remains: when we stand in life in this way, and we have our own being-human and we also have the being-human of others — how then do we distinguish between certain dispositions that someone has, which come from hereditary disposition, and the purely spiritual dispositions? And in the next section of the text Rudolf Steiner elaborates on this.
We must try to see it in such a way that the spirit-self, that the true and good more or less gives to the soul, that this spirit-self also receives. It does not only give, but it also receives. The soul is not only true and good; it also has all sorts of personal characteristics, and these are not always good, but they are often good as well. The soul is thus radiated through by the consciousness soul from the spirit-self, and the true and the good intermingle more or less with the other part of the soul. We can imagine that well. And when certain experiences are then made, then the soul makes the experiences and gives them more or less to the spirit-self, which is thereby fertilized. The fruits of the experiences the soul gives to the spirit-self.
And these are then not the perceptions and thoughts themselves, but these are the dispositions that thereby arise — the talents. That which one acquires through learning. That is a marvelous image — that we as human beings have the possibility, in our life, by gathering experiences, to develop ourselves in such a way that this development is communicated to the spirit-self as a reality; the spirit-self then retains this disposition. And we must then imagine that, when we find ourselves in another situation and experience something of a similar kind, that then the spirit-self ensures that we know what we had previously learned. Thus, by perceiving or experiencing the similar, the former reappears. That is ultimately the process of learning. And we human beings thus have not only a kind of learning that is technical, but it is also the true and the good that work into the soul from the spirit-self and cooperate when we learn.
And these fruits the spirit-self receives more or less for eternity. And so we can learn to distinguish. When the human being then returns, he carries this disposition with him and then comes to Earth and has wonderful dispositions that were not learned in this incarnation. And there lies the difference. There one can distinguish. These are dispositions that resemble other dispositions that one acquires only through learning. But one did not acquire them in this incarnation. And yet one has them. Rudolf Steiner gives the example of Mozart, who already at the age of six, when he heard a complicated piece of music once, could then write it all down afterward. Of course, he could not have learned that. That is a disposition with which he came into the world, and this disposition is based on the fact that he can behold and comprehend something very complicated all at once.
That can also be learned in one incarnation, through practice. But when a child of six already has this disposition, that is something completely different. That is of course an extreme example. We will not often experience it that way. But in this way we can still learn to distinguish between dispositions that come from heredity — and those are much more preconditions for being able to learn certain things — and dispositions that one otherwise actually only acquires through learning, but that are already present without these learning processes. That is truly something marvelous, when one becomes aware again of this fine distinction, because on the one hand there arises thereby a kind of certainty that there must indeed be reincarnation and karma. Because how else could one explain these dispositions that one only acquires through learning and that one nevertheless has without having learned anything? Then one would at least have to believe in miracles. That is the one thing — so through this one has actually received a kind of proof that there are multiple earthly lives. But the other thing is that we also find a possibility in our earthly life to distinguish between dispositions that are there, through which learning becomes possible, and dispositions that are there because one has already learned them at some point. And then it is such that, when the spirit-self takes certain capacities into itself for eternity and these capacities are taken along as fruits, then it is the life-spirit that then ensures that, every time this disposition is called upon, it can also be exercised.
In physical existence, it is so that the etheric body, the life-body, ensures that the species remains the same — that as a human being one again brings forth a human being. That is what the etheric body does. Thus the life-spirit ensures that the human spiritual individuality again and again brings itself forth into a new incarnation. Is it not something marvelous to consider: the human individuality, to whom I say I, that this one brings itself forth again and again in subsequent incarnations, based on acquired dispositions, with those dispositions included. And so we grow from incarnation to incarnation ever further.
