The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] As I have repeatedly noted, it will only be possible to outline the major karmic principles in a few sketchy strokes, in order to provide some inspiration in this almost immeasurable field. If you consider everything we have discussed in recent days, you will no longer find it surprising that a person is, as it were, driven out of certain layers of consciousness to seek in the external world the balancing effects for karmic causes that he has taken upon himself. He can literally be driven to a place where, for example, he might contract an infection, in order to seek in it the balancing effects for a karmic cause he has taken upon himself; and a person can even be driven toward what might be called life accidents, in order to seek a balance through the onset of such a life accident.

[ 2 ] What, then, happens to the karmic process if, through some action or other, we find ourselves in a position to prevent people from seeking this balance?

[ 3 ] Let us assume that, through certain hygienic measures, we can ensure that certain causes—certain things toward which human beings may, by virtue of their karmic connections, have a predisposition—cannot exist at all. Let us imagine that, through hygienic measures, we succeed in combating certain pathogens in a specific area. Now we have already brought to the soul’s attention that it is by no means up to human beings to take such measures at will. We have seen how, in a particular age, for example, the inclination toward laws of cleanliness arises simply because this inclination—which had disappeared in the meantime—now reappears in the reverse repetition of the evolutionary process. From this we have seen that it is inherent in the great laws of human karma that, at a certain point in time, humanity comes to take these or those measures. But we will also easily understand that humanity did not come to take such measures in an earlier age because, during that earlier period, humanity needed the epidemics that are now to be eradicated through hygienic measures. With regard to major institutions in life, human development is indeed subject to very specific laws, and before something can be of significance and benefit to the development of humanity as a whole, the possibility of taking such measures does not even arise. For such measures do not arise from the fully conscious, rational, and sensible life that human beings can acquire between birth and death, but rather from the collective spirit of humanity. And you need only consider how this or that invention or discovery only comes about when humanity is truly ready for it. A brief overview of the history of humanity’s development on Earth can offer you many insights in this regard.

[ 4 ] Just think of the fact that our ancestors—that is, our own souls—lived on the ancient Atlantic continent in bodies of a completely different form than the human bodies of today, that this Atlantic continent then sank, and that the structures we encounter today only came into being within the boundaries of our present-day continents. It was only during a very specific era that the inhabitants of one half of the Earth that had emerged were brought together with the inhabitants of the other. Only recently, in a not-so-distant past, were the peoples of Europe able to reach once again the regions that had separated to the other side of the Atlantic continent. Truly great laws govern such matters. And whether this or that is discovered, or whether measures are taken that make it possible to intervene karmically in this or that direction, this does not depend on human opinion or whim; rather, it occurs when it is meant to occur. Nevertheless, if we remove certain causes that would otherwise have existed—and which, through their karmic entanglement, would have sought out certain people—we can thereby influence human karma. This influence, however, does not mean that we eliminate it, but rather that we redirect it.

[ 5 ] Let us imagine, then, a situation in which a number of people, due to karmic entanglements, feel compelled to seek out certain influences that would serve as karmic compensation. Through hygienic measures, these influences or circumstances have now been temporarily eliminated; people can no longer seek them out. However, this does not free these people from what is being brought to the surface within them as a karmic effect; rather, they are compelled to seek out other effects. A person cannot escape their karma. Such measures do not relieve them of what they would otherwise have sought out.

[ 6 ] From this you can see that for any karmic balance that we might be able to eliminate on one side, a counterbalance would have to arise in another direction. When we eliminate certain influences, we merely create the need to seek out other opportunities and influences. Let us now assume that many epidemics—common causes of disease—are simply attributable to the fact that people who seek out these causes of disease wish to remove what they have karmically acquired, such as, in the case of the smallpox epidemic, the organs of unkindness. If we were to succeed in eliminating these organs, the cause of the lack of love would nevertheless remain, and the souls in question would then have to seek the corresponding balance in another way, in this or another incarnation. We can understand what is taking place here if we point to something we must certainly take into account, and that is the following:

[ 7 ] Today, in fact, a great many external influences and causes are being eliminated that would otherwise have been sought out to compensate for certain karmic matters that humanity has incurred in earlier ages. In doing so, however, we are merely removing the possibility that human beings might fall prey to external influences. We make their external lives more pleasant or even healthier. But all we achieve by doing so is that what a person would have sought as karmic compensation through the corresponding illness must now be sought by other means. The souls who are thus spared health-related suffering today are therefore condemned to seek this karmic compensation in a different way. And they will have to seek it in numerous cases that fall precisely within the categories described. By providing them with greater physical comfort through a healthier life—by making their physical existence easier—the soul is influenced in the opposite way; it is influenced in such a way that it will gradually begin to feel a certain emptiness, a sense of dissatisfaction, a sense of unfulfillment. And if this were to continue—if external life were to become ever more pleasant and ever healthier, as is generally conceived in a purely materialistic life—then such souls would have ever less incentive to make progress within themselves. In a certain sense, this would be accompanied by a spiritual desolation of the souls.

[ 8 ] Anyone who takes a closer look at life can already see this today. In hardly any other era have there been so many people living in such comfortable external circumstances, yet with souls that are barren and idle, as is the case today. These people therefore rush from one sensation to the next; when their financial means allow, they travel from city to city to see something, or if they must remain in the same city, they rush from one pleasure to the next every evening. Yet the soul remains barren; in the end, it no longer knows what to seek in the world to find meaning. In particular, a life spent in purely external, physically comfortable circumstances fosters a tendency to think only about the physical. And if this tendency to concern oneself solely with the physical had not existed for a long time, the tendency toward theoretical materialism would not have become as strong as it is in our time. Thus, souls become more afflicted, while external life is made healthier.

[ 9 ] Theosophists have the least cause to complain about such a fact, because theosophy gives us an understanding of things everywhere and thus an insight into where balance lies. Souls can remain empty only to a certain degree; then, as if by their own elasticity, they are propelled toward the other side. They then seek a content that is akin to the depths of their own soul, and they will come to realize how necessary it is for them to arrive at a Theosophical worldview.

[ 10 ] Thus we see how what arises from materialistic views of life may well make external life easier, but creates difficulties in inner life that lead one to seek the substance of a spiritual worldview out of the sufferings of the soul. The spiritual worldview, as it is expressed today in theosophy, thus meets the needs of souls who, in their desolation, cannot find satisfaction in the impressions that external life—which can be quite comfortably arranged—is able to provide them. These souls will continue to seek new experiences until the elasticity from the other side exerts such a strong influence that they unite with what can be called spiritual life. Thus, there is a connection between hygiene and the hopes for the future inherent in the Spiritual Science worldview.

[ 11 ] You can already see this on a small scale today. There are souls today who add a new outward manifestation to other outward manifestations: taking an interest in the theosophical worldview, embracing it as a new sensation. This is something that manifests itself in every current of human development: that which has deep, inner significance also functions as a fad, as a sensation. But the souls who are truly prepared for theosophy are those who either feel unsatisfied by external sensations or who realize that external science, with all its explanations, cannot account for the facts. It is these souls who, through their overall karma, are so prepared that they can connect with Theosophy through the innermost aspects of their soul life. Spiritual Science is also part of humanity’s overall karma, and as such it will find its place within it.

[ 12 ] In this way, we can steer people’s karma in one direction or another; but we cannot eliminate the repercussions for the individual. In one way or another, what a person has brought upon themselves in past lives will come back to them.

[ 13 ] The best way to understand how karma operates meaningfully in the world is through an examination of a situation where karma, so to speak, still operates without moral connotations—where it operates in the world at large, without having anything to do with the moral impulses that a person develops from within their soul and that then lead to moral or immoral actions. Let us bring to mind a realm of karma in which morality does not yet play a role, but where something neutral manifests as a karmic interconnection.

[ 14 ] Let us assume that a woman is living in a particular incarnation. Now, you will not deny that, simply by virtue of being a woman, must have different experiences than a man, and that these experiences are not merely related to inner soul processes, but are, to the greatest extent, connected to external events and life situations into which the woman enters simply because she is a woman—situations that, in turn, have a reciprocal effect on her entire state of mind and emotional disposition. Therefore, we can say that a woman is led to certain actions that are most intimately connected with her existence as a woman. The balance between man and woman is, after all, achieved first and foremost in the realm of spiritual coexistence. The deeper we descend into the purely psychological and the external aspects of the human being, the greater the difference becomes between man and woman with regard to their lives. And so we can say that a woman also differs from a man in certain qualities of the soul, that she is more inclined toward those qualities of the soul that lead to impulses which must be described as emotional; and we find her predisposed to have more psychic experiences than a man. In contrast, intellectualism and materialism—that is, what has come through man—are more at home in a man’s life, which has a great influence on his soul life. Psychic and emotional aspects in women, intellectual and materialistic aspects in men—this is precisely what their natures determine. Therefore, women also possess certain nuances of soul life simply by virtue of being women.

[ 15 ] We have now described how what we experience as qualities of the soul between death and rebirth finds its way into our next physical constitution. Whatever is more psychological, whatever is more emotional, and whatever, in the life between birth and death, is more attuned to the inner life of the soul, has a greater tendency to penetrate more deeply into the physical constitution and to permeate it much more intensely. And because a woman absorbs such impressions—which are connected with the psychological and the emotional—she also takes in the experiences of life into the deeper recesses of her soul. A man may have richer experiences, including more scientific ones; yet his experiences do not penetrate as deeply into his soul life as they do in the case of a woman. In a woman, the entire realm of experience is deeply imprinted on the soul. As a result, these experiences have a stronger tendency to influence the organism and to bind it more tightly in the future. And so a woman’s life takes on the tendency, through her experiences in one incarnation, to penetrate deeply into the organism and thereby to shape the organism itself in the next incarnation. However, this deep working into and thorough shaping of the organism means bringing forth a male organism. A male organism is brought forth when the forces of the soul seek to imprint themselves more deeply into the material world. From this you can see that the experiences of a woman in one incarnation have the effect of bringing forth a male organism in the next incarnation. Here you have a connection derived from the nature of occultism that lies beyond the realm of morality. That is why it is said in occultism: “The man is the woman’s karma.” — Indeed, the male organism in a later incarnation is the result of the experiences and events in a previous female incarnation. Even at the risk of arousing perhaps unwelcome thoughts in some of those gathered here—it is, after all, always the case that men of the present day have a deep-seated aversion to the idea of incarnating as a woman—I must once again shed light on these matters as facts in a completely objective manner.

[ 16 ] What, then, about the experiences of men? The situation with men’s experiences is such that we understand them best if we start right from what we have just described. In the male constitution, the inner human being has become more deeply immersed in the material world and has clung to it more tightly than in the case of women. Women retain more of the spiritual in the non-physical realm; they do not immerse themselves as deeply in the material world, and their physicality remains more supple. They do not separate themselves as far from the spiritual. This is the defining characteristic of female nature: that women retain more of their free spirituality and therefore become less deeply involved in the material world, and above all, their brains remain more supple. It is therefore not surprising that women have a particular inclination toward new things, especially in the spiritual realm, because they have retained their spiritual nature more freely and because there is less resistance there. And it is no coincidence, but rather corresponds to a deep law of nature, that in a movement which, by its very nature, has to do with the spiritual, a greater number of women participate than men. And anyone who is a man knows what a difficult instrument the male brain often is. It creates terrible obstacles when one wants to use it for more flexible trains of thought. It refuses to go along with it. It must first be trained by every possible means to free itself from its rigidity. This can certainly be a personal experience in a man’s life.

[ 17 ] Male nature is thus more condensed, more contracted; it has been compressed, made stiffer and harder by what constitutes the inner human being within the man; it has been made more material. Now, a stiffer brain is primarily an instrument for the intellectual, less so for the psychological. For the intellectual is something that relates much more to the physical plane. What can be described as a man’s intellectualism stems from his stiffer, solidified brain. One could speak here of a certain degree of “freezing” of the brain. It must first thaw if it is to engage in more subtle trains of thought. As a result, however, man is led to focus more on external appearances and to absorb less of those experiences connected with the depths of the soul life. And what he does take in does not penetrate deeply. An outward proof of this is how superficially external science proceeds and how little it grasps the inner reality—how it always thinks in broad terms, yet how superficially the facts are synthesized. Anyone who, through their own discipline in thinking, is compelled to piece the facts together might sometimes feel quite sickened by what external science does not hesitate to present as coexisting side by side. There one can see how superficially things are understood.

[ 18 ] Here’s an example of just how superficial modern science can be: Suppose a young person is attending a lecture at some college where an ardent Darwinist is speaking. And from this proponent of the theory of natural selection, the student might hear him say things like this: How is it that the rooster, for example, has such beautiful, iridescent blue feathers? This is due to sexual selection; for through his colors he attracts the hens, and the hens then select among the roosters those with the iridescent blue feathers. In the process, the others are left out, and as a result, this particular variety develops. This is a higher form of development—this is “sexual selection”! —And the student is glad to know how upward development can come about. Now he goes to the next lecture, where, let’s say, the field of sensory physiology is being covered. And here it may happen that the same student hears something like the following in the second lecture: Experiments have been conducted that show how differently the colors of the spectrum affect various organisms. It can be demonstrated, for example, that chickens do not perceive the blue and violet parts of the spectrum, but only perceive the colors ranging from green to orange, red, and ultra-red!

[ 19 ] Now, if the student wants to bring these two facts—which he can actually hear today—together in his mind, he is forced to take things at face value. The entire theory of selection is based on the idea that hens are supposed to see something in the rooster’s bright colors that is meant to give them special pleasure—but which, in reality, they do not see at all, and which appears to them as pitch black.

[ 20 ] This is just one example. But the reality is that anyone who truly wants to conduct scientific research encounters such situations at every turn. From this you can see that intellectualism does not penetrate very deeply into life; it remains on the surface. I am deliberately choosing extreme examples.

[ 21 ] It is, of course, hard to believe that intellectuality is something that takes place more on the surface, that does not deeply penetrate the life of the soul, and that has little effect on a person’s inner being. And a materialistic mindset certainly does not penetrate the life of the soul at all. The consequence of this, however, is that a person emerging from such an incarnation—in which they have had little effect on the soul—develops a tendency between birth and death to penetrate less deeply into the physical body in the next incarnation. After all, the power to do so has been absorbed to a lesser degree; therefore, it now works in such a way that the person permeates their physical body to a lesser extent. From this, however, arises the tendency to take on a female body in the next incarnation. Once again, it is true, as is said in occultism: “Woman is man’s karma!”

[ 22 ] In this morally neutral realm, we see how what a person prepares for in one incarnation shapes the physical form of their next incarnation. And because these things not only have a profound impact on our inner life but also on our external experiences and actions, we must say: When a person has experiences as a man or a woman in one incarnation, their external actions in the next incarnation are determined in one way or another, because the experiences as a woman give rise to a tendency to form a male organization, and conversely, the experiences as a man give rise to a tendency to form a female organization. Only in rare cases does the same gender incarnation repeat itself; it can repeat itself at most seven times. The rule, however, is that every male organization strives to become female in the next incarnation, and vice versa. Any aversion is of no use here, for what matters is not what one desires in the physical world, but rather the inclinations one has in the period between death and rebirth—and these are determined by more rational reasons than, for example, a male incarnation’s horror at the prospect of being reborn as a woman in the next incarnation. Here you can see how later life is karmically determined by earlier life, and how the actions of later life can also be determined.

[ 23 ] Now the point is that we must learn to recognize yet another karmic connection, one that we will also need if we are to shed light on the important considerations of the coming days.

[ 24 ] Let us look back once more to a time quite far removed in human evolution: to the time when human incarnations first began on Earth. This took place in the ancient Lemurian era. The point is that back then, the Luciferic influence first acted upon human beings in a profound way, and that this influence then provoked the Ahrimanic influence. Let us try to form in our minds a mental image of how the Luciferic influence worked outwardly in human life. — Because human beings had come to be in a position, in those ancient times, to take in the Luciferic influence—that is, to allow their astral body to be permeated by it— his astral body was inclined to intervene much more deeply into the organism, to descend much further into the materiality of the physical body, and above all in a completely different way than he would have descended without the Luciferic influence. Human beings became more material through the Luciferic influence. Had the Luciferic influence not been at work, human beings would have had a lesser inclination to descend into the material world; as such, they would have remained in higher regions of existence. Thus, a much stronger interpenetration of the outer and inner human being took place than would have been the case without the Luciferic influence. This interpenetration was, at first, the reason why human beings, through their stronger connection to the material aspect of the physical body, lost the ability to look back on the events that preceded their incarnation. Human beings now entered existence through a birth of such a nature that they became deeply connected to the material world, thereby erasing all recollection of their earlier experiences. Otherwise, human beings would have retained the memory of what they had experienced in the spiritual world before birth. Through the Luciferic influence, birth now became an act through which human beings establish such intense connections between the outer and inner self that what they had previously experienced in the spiritual world was erased. Through the Luciferic influence, human beings were robbed of their memories of their previous spiritual experiences. The connection with the outer physical body prevents human beings from looking back on the past. As a result, however, human beings are dependent throughout their lives on drawing their experiences and perceptions solely from the external world.

[ 25 ] However, you would be completely mistaken if you believed that only the coarse, external substances that a person takes into themselves have an effect on them. It is not only food and the forces of nutrition that affect a person, but also the other experiences they have, as well as the things that flow into them through their senses. But because of this coarser connection to matter, even food has a different effect. Imagine if the Luciferic influence had not existed; then everything—from food to sensory impressions—would have a far more subtle effect on human beings. They would imbue everything they experience as an interaction with the outside world with what they have experienced between death and rebirth. Because human beings have made materiality denser, they are inclined to take in much denser things as well.

[ 26 ] The Luciferic influence thus works in such a way that, through the densification of matter, the human being draws in much denser elements from the external world than he otherwise would have. However, the denser elements that they now draw in from the outside are quite different from the less dense ones they would otherwise have drawn in. The less dense elements would have sustained the memories of their former life; they would also have given them the assurance that everything a human being experiences between birth and death extends its effects into a never-ending period of time. A person would know: although death occurs externally, everything that happens continues to have an effect. Because a person has had to absorb more poetic elements, he creates, from birth onward, a strong interaction between his own physical nature and the outside world.

[ 27 ] What, then, is the consequence of this transitional state? The spiritual world has been extinguished since birth. And in order for human beings to live in the spiritual realm—to awaken to the spiritual world—that state must first return in which everything that enters us from the outside as denser materiality is once again taken from us. Because we have acquired a denser materiality, in order to re-enter the spiritual realm, we must wait for the moment when our outer material physicality is taken from us. Whatever now penetrates us as denser materiality gradually destroys, from the moment of our birth, our human physicality. What flows in is something that destroys physicality more and more, until it has finally destroyed it completely, so that it can no longer exist. Beginning at our birth, we absorb a denser materiality than we would have without the Luciferic influence, so that we slowly destroy our physicality until it has become completely unusable with the onset of death.

[ 28 ] Here we see how the Luciferic influence is the karmic cause of human death. If this form of birth did not exist, this form of death would not exist for human beings. Otherwise, human beings would face death in such a way that they would have a certain prospect of what lies ahead. Death is the karmic consequence of birth; birth and death are karmically linked. Without birth, as human beings experience it today, there would be no death as human beings experience it.

[ 29 ] I mentioned earlier that we cannot speak of karma in the same sense for animals as we do for humans. If someone were to say that birth and death are karmically connected in animals as well, that person would simply not realize that birth and death mean something entirely different for humans than they do for animals. What appears the same on the outside is not the same on the inside; birth and death are not about outward formation, but about inner experience. In animals, only the species soul—the group soul—experiences this. For the group soul, the death of an animal means roughly the same thing as what you experience when, as summer approaches, you have your hair cut shorter and it then slowly grows back. The group soul of an animal species perceives the death of an animal as the loss of a limb that is gradually replaced. Thus, the species soul is what we may compare to the human “I.” It knows neither birth nor death; it constantly looks toward what precedes birth, and it also constantly looks toward what follows death. To speak of birth and death in animals in the same way one speaks of them in humans is nonsense, because entirely different causes precede them. And one denies the inner activity of the spirit if one believes that what appears outwardly the same is also brought about by internally identical causes. The similarity of external processes never points with certainty to identical causes. The birth of a human being is based on entirely different causes than that of an animal, and likewise, a human being dies from entirely different causes than an animal.

[ 30 ] If one were to reflect a little on how the external appearance can look exactly the same without the inner experience being even remotely the same, then one would already arrive at the conclusion—from a methodological standpoint—that this is indeed the case. You can even arrive at the conclusion in a very simple way that external appearances are no proof of inner life. Imagine two people; you arrive at a certain place at nine o’clock and see the two people standing side by side there. At three o’clock, you return to that same place, having not been there in the meantime. There, “the two people are standing in the same spot again.” Now you might conclude: A is still in the same place, B is still in the same place where he had been standing at nine o’clock. But if you examine what these two people have been doing in the meantime, you may find that one has been standing still there, while the other has walked a long distance and has grown tired in the meantime. In that case, entirely different processes underlie the situation. And just as it would be nonsensical—if the two people were standing in the same spot again at three o’clock—to say that the same thing had taken place within them, so too is it nonsensical to find two cells of the same shape and, based on their identical structure, to conclude that they have the same internal significance. The point is to understand the entire context of the facts that led a cell to the location in question. Therefore, modern cell physiology, which is based on the study of the internal structure of cells, is on entirely the wrong track. What presents itself to the external senses can never be decisive for the inner nature of a thing.

[ 31 ] One must think these matters through if one wishes to understand such things as those revealed to the occultist through occult observations—such as the fact that birth and death are entirely different for humans than for mammals or even birds. Studying these things will only be possible when people once again pay some attention to what spiritual research has to say. Until this is done, external science—which remains confined to appearances and external facts—will indeed bring very beautiful facts to light; but whatever people may think about such facts under these conditions will never be decisive for reality. Therefore, everything that constitutes theoretical science today is a fanciful construct that has arisen from combining external facts based on outward appearances. In some fields, the external facts practically demand to be interpreted correctly; but current opinions prevent this from happening.

[ 32 ] Today, we have thus allowed two neutral areas in the field of karmic laws to influence us, and you will see that they will serve as a foundation for our further considerations. We have seen how the female organization is the karmic consequence of male experiences and the male organization a karmic consequence of female experiences; and we have finally come to understand that death is a karmic effect of birth in human life. This is something that, if we try to understand it step by step, can lead us deep into the karmic interrelationships of human life.