636. If, however, the being has not experienced anything at all like cancer or an illness of a similar kind, he has nothing which can help him bring alive in his own consciousness another person's present illness and therefore he cannot realistically grasp or understand it. And so he will appear "cold" or "unfeeling" to that person. In other words, he has no capacity for feeling "compassion". This again means that, having no such capacity, he is unable to feel or sense another person's suffering in his own consciousness.
      Thus we realize at this point what a very great advantage it is for the living being to have been through suffering. The more suffering he has experienced in earlier lives, the greater the store of memories he will be able to mobilize and make use of (although unconsciously) when meeting other beings who find themselves in a state of suffering; in other words, the greater is his understanding of what he witnesses or encounters. And to the same degree as he fully understands what he is witnessing, the stronger will be the sympathy aroused in his consciousness towards fellow beings who are suffering.
      But it is not only in the area of suffering that memories are carried over into future lives to the advantage of the ability for sensing. The same principle applies, of course, to all other areas of experience where it will also create understanding. And with that kind of realistic understanding, all rancour or bitterness will vanish. The individual will become "tolerant". And to the same degree that he gains experience through terrestrial lives in the terrestrial areas and phenomena which commonly occur in the zone of the killing principle, to the same degree he will collect memory-material in his consciousness. And in this way the greater the store of material that he has in his consciousness, the more he can mobilize help in order to revitalize his understanding in those same areas when he confronts them in the coming new terrestrial lives. And the more he can mobilize help in his consciousness for understanding the different phenomena he meets in daily life the nearer to perfection will be his conduct regarding them. While in former earthly lives he became desperate and helpless in his own suffering and quite unfeeling towards the suffering of others, he will now be quite composed about his own adversities and sympathetic towards those of other people. In former experiences of other people's adverse attitudes towards his own behaviour on account of their ignorance (i.e. lack of memory-material in the areas in question), he used to be quite uncomprehending and therefore became irritated by them, angry and full of hate; but now he has become full of genuine understanding for those people on account of his subsequent acquisition – although unconscious – of memory-material in these same areas. And thereby any reason for rancour or anger just falls away. This same individual shows tacit helpfulness and guidance wherever he can. And thus the old saying "the wise always remain silent" is shown here to have a certain logical basis. It is this kind of person who will "turn the right cheek when struck on the left". He knows that every person manifesting imperfection does not really know what he is doing, and that all indignation and intolerance towards such a person is therefore unjust, and so both unwarranted and foolish.
      One can understand from this the enormous importance previous experiences have in the working out of an individual's present life and again what importance this process has for that same individual's coming earthly lives. It is easy to understand that beings with abundant memory-material from areas of suffering in previous lives must be quite different in their consciousness and behaviour during their present earthly life from those beings who have relatively little memory-material from earlier lives. And the former beings could also be described as the earthly zone's "eldest", although their identity as such is, of course, quite unrelated to their present physical age. It is the most outstanding of these beings, rich in experience, which we call "wise men", true prophets, and "world redeemers". It is these latter which constitute the "salt" of the Earth's mentality and who liberate mankind from perdition or corruption, according to how terrestrial man is delivered from the zone of suffering and cries for the solution to life's mystery and for peace and harmony. It is the "world redeemers" who guide mankind towards the greatest heights of culture, increasingly based upon spirit and intellectuality.