[
Tabublog]: We are all deeply convinced of the great truth of
reincarnation, of repeated earthly lives, and we must realise that this
repetition has its own good purpose in the Earth’s evolution. To the
question, ‘Why do we reincarnate?’ — occult research gives the answer
that our experiences differ in each of the epochs during which we are
reborn on the Earth. In incarnations immediately following the Atlantean
catastrophe the experiences of the human soul were entirely different
from those undergone in later pre-Christian epochs and in our own age.
I need only briefly mention that in the times
directly after the Atlantean catastrophe, souls were endowed with a
certain elementary clairvoyance in the bodies they then inhabited. This
clairvoyance, once a natural faculty in man, was gradually lost, mainly
as a result of the conditions prevailing during the Græco-Roman epoch of
culture. Since then, man has developed in such a way that great
progress has been achieved on the physical plane and during the course
of the present post-Atlantean epoch clairvoyance will gradually be
reacquired.
We are living in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of
culture, the ancient Indian being the first, the ancient Persian the
second, the Babylonian-Chaldean the third, the Græco-Roman the fourth;
the sixth and seventh epochs will follow our own. And then another great
catastrophe will befall the Earth and humanity, as was the case at the
end of the Atlantean epoch.
Occult research is able to indicate the
characteristic trend of human evolution in each of these post-Atlantean
epochs of civilisation — including the fifth, sixth and seventh. The
essential characteristic of our present fifth epoch is the development
of intellect, of reason. The main characteristic of the sixth epoch will
be that very definite feelings regarding what is moral and what is
immoral will arise in the souls of men. Delicate feelings of sympathy
will be aroused by compassionate, kindly deeds and feelings of antipathy
by malicious actions. Nobody living at the present time can have the
faintest conception of the intensity of these feelings.
The sixth epoch will be followed by the seventh, when
the moral life will be still further deepened. Whereas in the sixth
epoch man will take pleasure in good and noble actions, in the seventh
epoch the natural outcome of such pleasure will be a moral impulse,
that is to say there will be a firm resolve to do what is moral. There
is a great difference between taking pleasure in a moral action and the doing
of it. We can therefore say: our own epoch is the epoch of
intellectualism; the essential characteristic of the following epoch
will be aesthetic pleasure in the good, aesthetic displeasure in the
evil; and the seventh will be characterised by an active moral life.
At the present time only the seeds of what will
become part of mankind in future epochs are contained in the human soul
and it can be said that all these aptitudes or predispositions in man —
intellectual aptitudes, predispositions leading to feelings of sympathy
or antipathy aroused by certain actions, to moral impulses — all these
are related to the higher worlds. Every moral action has a definite
connection with the higher worlds. Our intellectual aptitudes have a
super-sensible connection with the astral plane. Our sympathies and
antipathies for the good or the evil are connected with the sphere of
Lower Devachan; and the domain of moral impulses in the soul is
connected with Higher Devachan. Hence we can also say: In our present
age it is mainly the forces of the astral world that penetrate into and
take effect in the human soul; in the sixth epoch it will be the forces
of Lower Devachan that penetrate more deeply into the soul; and in the
seventh, the forces of Higher Devachan will work with special strength
into humanity....<<<Read More>>>...
