Rudolf Steiner:
"Vacillating between the earthly and heavenly parts of our soul life, in contention with feelings, plagued by doubt, we often do not know where to turn, what our duty is; for every separate being has its own special duty, its dharma, that it must recognize. What did ancient India understand by the word dharma? Dharma has many meanings that support and complete each other; and each of these meanings is related to the others. Dharma is closely connected to karma; they relate to one another as fruit and seed. Dharma is what has already become, the result of past karma, past activities; dharma is the creative principle in us at present, and in turn creates the karma of the future. Dharma is the upright force in our own thinking and acting, our own personal truth. It characterizes our inner nature through the degree of evolution we have presently reached; it is the law that determines the growth for future stages of development, the ongoing threads of life. The sequence of incarnations is connected like the links of a continuous chain. Dharma is our past, present, and future at the same time, and works in us father, mother, and son. The father, as higher self, is above being, as his truth and his law; the mother, as the developing being; and the son as the future. An incarnation is worthless and lost if it does not become, through activity, a transitional step to higher development."
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Source: Concerning the Astral World and Devachan, p. 124