s 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 a