Review: Karmic Relationships V.1

Karmic Relationships V.1 by Rudolf Steiner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Reading this book gave me this thought:

As per Anthroposophy, the will projects itself forward and thought looks backward. That is, the will incarnates in the future; thought grasps what embodies itself now from the past. That makes a lot of sense to me: it implies that my body and my physical life is the embodiment of something spiritual from the past; to quote the Book of Mormon, it is as if my body was "a treasure laid up from the foundation of the world." And as for the will aspect, to quote the Book of Mormon again, "that which you send out will come back to you again."

I am a Mormon, if you can't tell, but I'm very sympathetic to Steiner. And the similarities above are very palpable to me: in both, my life is willed by something ancient and spiritual, and in both, the actions I make in this life build a future body. The question is whether that ancient and spiritual thing is a past life/lives or merely a pre-existence, and also whether the future body is a future life or a resurrection.

In truth: resurrection AND reincarnation happen at every moment. Every moment repeats the moment before, albeit with a difference. The same is true with ideas and thoughts: every thought reincarnates in any thought with which it comes into contact, again with a difference. And with people in one's life: we repeat in each other. This is all reincarnation. If you want to deny the existence of reincarnation, try explaining how you are the same person you are now as you were a year ago or even a moment ago. Or how your arm is the same person as your head. That moment and this one, that organ and this one, are different; and yet there is a sameness. That sameness in difference *is* reincarnation.

I have no doubt that there are threads of continuity between my life and others in the past. I also strongly suspect that some are much more significant than others. They are those who repeat themselves in me. I am them...with a difference. To ask whether or not to call that reincarnation is splitting hairs.

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