The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] What matters most today is to bring into our lives, in a truly living way, what seeks to flow through spiritual science as insights and impulses of the soul. It must be emphasized time and again that, in the face of the great challenges of the present, it is not enough to simply acquire theoretical knowledge of the truths that underlie human life and existence in the world—truths that can be gained from anthroposophical spiritual science—but rather that the task is to see, in concrete life, how these connections work, and to understand life itself from the foundations of spiritual science. Over the centuries, humanity has become accustomed to seeing only a part of reality. And it is precisely this that has gradually prepared the human dispositions which have then led into the current catastrophic state of life. People are living their lives today without an understanding of life—without the very understanding of life that is required by humanity’s present stage of development.

[ 2 ] As adherents of anthroposophical spiritual science, we will certainly find it easy to come to the conviction that there are repeated earthly lives, and that what happens to a person—or what a person undertakes—in their present life is caused by actions in a previous life, even though free will remains fully intact. But when it comes to understanding concrete life, we all too easily succumb to the ideas that the last few centuries have produced—ideas that are actually quite insufficient for grasping human life, ideas that are perfectly suited to understanding certain facts of natural phenomena but are blunt in the face of the full complexity of human life. And one might say: Scientific life is actually the farthest behind in meeting today’s demands of life. Yet this scientific life, in turn, exerts a great influence on the thinking of the broadest masses of people. When I speak of the impact of this scientific life, I am not at all referring to those who are connected to science in any way. I have in mind the entire broad mass of humanity, which, in the most important questions of life, submits to the authoritative directives of those who, by virtue of external institutions, appear to be qualified to judge this or that matter. People then conform to such judgments. But such judgments contain nothing of a true understanding of human life. What can flow from anthroposophical spiritual science must be brought into human life. Above all, it must be brought into those branches of public education that provide the foundation for an understanding of life.

[ 3 ] When someone today approaches the spiritual sciences, they begin to grasp what underlies repeated earthly lives. But when they then seek to learn about what is happening in the present, and when they turn, among other things, to history—and by history I mean what is part of the education of the broadest masses—then it is precisely in what is called history that a way of thinking prevails which is suited only to explaining natural phenomena and facts. Humanity has increasingly come to strip everything spiritual out of history. And if someone today wants to explain the facts that emerge from historical life in any given field, they can hardly do so other than by learning about what was experienced by the previous generation, the generation before that, the generation before that, and so on, all the way back through the centuries. To take a concrete example, how does a German learn his history today? He focuses precisely on the people who lived in Central Europe, to whom he himself belongs. He has the events that took place involving these people recounted to him; he traces these events back to his fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and earlier generations. They then proceed backward, perhaps as far as the Middle Ages. One is always aware that one is dealing with a continuous flow of humanity, which can be traced back to the Migration Period and so on, and one seeks to explain what is happening to people today based on what happened in relation to these preceding generations. One comes to know the continuous flow of historical development as it unfolds through the succession of these generations. In fact, one has only the concept of inheritance as it relates to human beings; one imagines that sons have inherited certain things from their fathers—be it their characteristics, or the fact that they have inherited what their fathers bequeathed, and so on. So one moves back in time from the present generation to the preceding one, and so on.

[ 4 ] If we now consider the matter from a spiritual-scientific perspective, is it then a full reality? Is it not the case that the souls who constitute a generation in their present human bodies need not at all have been incarnated in this Central Europe during their previous earthly lives, that they may have been incarnated somewhere else entirely under completely different circumstances? — The forces they have brought with them from their previous incarnations, they carry into their present bodies. These forces truly act just as much as what has flowed down through the generations in the blood; they act together with these external, physically inherited characteristics. Can one really succumb to the illusion that one understands the present—in terms of its people, in terms of the events that occur—if one considers only a fragment of reality, not the full reality, if one does not say to oneself: That in the people of the present there live souls in which forces are at work that do not lead us back through the generations at all, but that perhaps lead us into entirely different regions where these souls were in a previous life? — One does not understand what is happening on Earth unless one takes seriously, in a concrete sense, what lies in the recognition of the fact of repeated earthly lives. One cannot honestly be, on the one hand, an abstract believer in repeated earthly lives and, on the other hand, view history as it is studied today. This simply splits one’s life right down the middle: on the one hand, the outer life in which one conforms entirely to tradition, and on the other, that which one actually recognizes as essential. There must be an ever-increasing need to truly see in life itself the things that one has recognized as truth from spiritual depths. Because this is the case, I do not hesitate to speak about certain lines of research that may be perceived by some people today as highly paradoxical, but which must certainly be proclaimed today, because humanity today demands an understanding of the whole of reality, and because everything that does not lead toward an understanding of the whole of reality simply belongs to a life in decline. Of course, it is still the case that most people today recoil when confronted with the full gravity of the truths of spiritual science. These ideas seem too bold to them. The path from what they are accustomed to thinking and feeling to what spiritual science teaches is too long for them. Therefore, they may dabble in spiritual science, but they do not grasp its full seriousness, for they lack the courage to truly incorporate these ideas into their lives—not even into their contemplation of concrete life.

[ 5 ] Before I present the following discussions, I must once again emphasize something I have often pointed out. As I have said many times: Anyone who wishes to discover something in spiritual research from the spiritual worlds must be very wary of mere combinations of concepts or associations of ideas. For what one imagines is usually the opposite of the truth—or at least something that deviates greatly from the truth. It is precisely the deeper truths that appear paradoxical at first. They can only be discovered through genuine experience.

[ 6 ] So let us take the following question seriously: What is the situation when, from the perspective of true spiritual science, we consider the conditions of the present and the people of the present—the people of this civilization that has led us into such a catastrophe? — I would like to expressly note that what I have already hinted at here and there in detail regarding the matters I intend to discuss now is indeed exactly as I have indicated. But of course, one can only characterize what constitutes the realm of a far-reaching reality by constantly citing specific details.

[ 7 ] I have often pointed out how many souls living today were incarnated in earlier lives—during the first centuries of Christianity—primarily in southern Europe, and are now incarnated primarily in Central Europe. This is certainly true, but it applies only to a certain number of souls. Today I want to present to you what applies to large segments of the current population of Earth. This brings us to the question—and the answer I will give to this question is based precisely on genuine, intensive spiritual research: Where were the souls of a large portion—indeed, the vast majority—of the population of Western Europe, as well as a large portion of the Central European population extending far into Russia, in a previous earthly life? — If one examines this question conscientiously using the spiritual research methods available, it turns out that we are dealing with souls who have lived a relatively shorter life between their last death and this birth. One is led westward. One is led there along one’s path of inquiry, to the time after the discovery of America, when a large portion of the European population settled in the Americas and exterminated the indigenous peoples or at least drove them back to a great extent. One is led into the centuries of the conquest of America, to those souls who were in the bodies of the Native Americans upon whom the conquests were unleashed. What I have to say will only be understood if one judges these Native Americans—who were exterminated by the Europeans—in the proper way. Certainly, in the sense that we now understand education among ourselves, they were not educated people; but there was something in these souls that I would like to describe as a universal pantheistic religious sentiment. It was precisely among these Native Americans—not among the degenerate ones, but among those who formed the dominant element there—that one encountered a religious sentiment directed toward a spiritual entity, even monotheistic in nature, which perceived a unified spirit in the phenomena of nature and also in human actions, alive and intense. One must take this spiritual disposition into account and, pushing through various prejudices as if through thickets, come to understand that one must see something different in these souls than what one sees in Native Americans only when viewing them, so to speak, as half-animals according to an external, naturalistic method. And the souls of this exterminated, defeated Native American population live on today in the majority of Western and Central Europeans, extending far into Russia. We cannot grasp reality unless we bring this—which seems so paradoxical to us—into our understanding.

[ 8 ] These were souls who had no connection to Christianity in their previous incarnation. For the vast majority of the European population, therefore, Christianity is not something that was already present in their souls before their current birth or conception. It has been instilled in them—though largely through the sounds of language. It is something acquired from the outside. The way in which Christianity actually lives in the souls of Europeans today will be understood by those who know that in the vast majority of these souls, there were no Christian impulses at all in a previous earthly life, but rather impulses that, in accordance with the great, universal Spirit, were oriented toward a kind of pantheistic religious sentiment. However, much has indeed been mixed into this population from souls who came up more from the south—souls who were incarnated in the more southern regions of Europe during the first centuries of Christianity, who lived in North African regions, and who have since reincarnated into this majority I have just described. The population of Western and Central Europe—as I said, extending far into Russia—is composed primarily of these two types of souls. We must be clear that we need to study the way a soul expresses itself in the present, what its aspirations are, and what its mode of thinking is. To understand all this, we must realize that a large part of the present-day population can only be understood if we do not merely accept history as it is commonly understood in the flow of generations, but if we know that within those bodies—which, in terms of mere blood kinship, do indeed trace back to their fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and so on all the way back to the time of Charlemagne and beyond, there are souls at work, giving them their entire spiritual configuration—souls that once lived in distant America and were conquered by Europeans.

[ 9 ] There is yet another truth that can emerge from such spiritual research. We can look back at the population that existed in Europe during the Migration Period—somewhat earlier and somewhat later—that is, specifically at the European population that embraced Christianity from the south, received it in a form that was still different from today’s, since it was still thoroughly imbued with elemental, primordial inner soul forces; it was an imponderable power that worked within the whole of life. It was not yet permeated by abstract, intellectual theology; it was something that acted above all on the soul’s fundamental feelings. These souls, who were present in Europe at that time and who embraced Christianity in this way, have now, after a life between death and a new birth—which lasted somewhat longer than for others, precisely because of this particular kind of soul formation that entered into these people— this life between death and a new birth is prolonged; these souls are today, for the most part, incarnated over in Asia. In particular, many of these souls, who were specifically Christianized during the period described, are today incarnated in Japanese bodies. Anyone who wishes to understand this peculiar life in Asia—which, after all, presents many mysteries today— must realize that there are many souls living in Asia today who, in a certain form during their previous earthly life, absorbed Christian sentiments—sentiments they have carried into their present Eastern bodies, bodies that have been surrounded since childhood by the language of what remains, in a state of decadence, of the older Eastern culture. I would like to say that something of true Christianity lives on in the permeation of Christianity to which such souls were once subjected, in contrast to what reaches their ears and resonates in their hearts from the decadent Eastern religious and other cultural spheres. This can be traced even among the educated, right up to the most highly educated, and one can truly gain an understanding only by tracing it in this way. It only becomes clear what a personality such as Rabindranath Tagore actually signifies when one realizes: This, too, is likely a soul that was European and Christian in a previous earthly life, a soul that pours a certain warmth of feeling—derived from this European Christianity—into everything it produces. — In contrast, everything that confronts us in Tagore’s coquettish nature, in this cultural coquetry, flows from decadent Orientalism. It is indeed a curious hybrid formation in this very personality of Tagore’s. On the one hand, if one has a natural, healthy sensibility, one always becomes aware that all of today’s Oriental coquetry is present there; yet, on the other hand, one is drawn to the immense warmth of his soul.

[ 10 ] Today, it is simply not enough to merely skim the surface of what is theoretically presented as the concept of repeated earthly lives. Life in its very concrete form must be viewed in this way today, even if this is still uncomfortable for people. For deep down, people today shy away from getting to know themselves. They make no attempt to see in real life what they hold up to themselves in the abstract. In a sense, people feel embarrassed to look so deeply into their own nature. They do not want to present themselves to the world as they truly are. That is why they frown upon truly examining the realities in this area. The confusion and mysteries of present-day life become understandable when one considers the things I have just presented to you.

[ 11 ] But let’s consider another population. Precisely when the spiritual researcher has conducted the kinds of investigations whose results I have just described to you, he is driven to ask: What actually happened to that population, which lived somewhat further back in time, over in Asia? — The thing about spiritual research is that, driven by life itself—by some mysterious question that presents itself and challenges you—you end up tackling whatever you can investigate. First, it is life that leads you to begin your research at a certain point; then, your insight is sparked by it. One question leads you into another field, and then you can only say: In the end, it turns out to make sense why you are driven in this way by a question, from one result to the next. You become, so to speak, attentive: If you want to investigate what has become of the souls of the Native Americans, what has become of other souls from the earlier European population, then you must ask the question, and it will answer itself: What has become of those souls who were in the Near East, in Asia in general, and in Africa—with the particular cultural background of that time—when Christianity arose, that is, during the period when the Mystery of Golgotha took place? — I do not mean those souls who took in the teachings of the Mystery of Golgotha, but rather the souls who did not take them in, who carried on the ancient Oriental-Asian culture. One does not always have a precise understanding of the nature of this ancient Oriental-Asian culture—which is now in decline—at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. For very many people, it was a spiritualized—a deeply spiritualized—culture. For very many people, this culture encompassed the ability to form very clear mental images of certain connections within the spiritual worlds. What becomes of a person when they allow themselves to be permeated by Christianity was, of course, absent in those of whom I am now speaking. But there was an understanding of spiritual connections that was very strongly interwoven with imagery. These people belonged to a highly spiritual worldview—a worldview that led them, in many respects, to regard only the spiritual world as the true one, the one worth striving for, and in a certain sense to flee from the world of outer sensory reality. These were people who engaged in much speculation—speculation that was, in part, still nourished by ancient, instinctive clairvoyant powers—speculation about the emergence of the world from the various spiritual stages of development in earlier, primeval times long past. These were people who spoke of eons that followed one another and became coarser and coarser, more material and more material, until finally what emerged was the present structure of the outer, physical, real world. In short, these were people who looked up earnestly and deeply into the spiritual realm. Precisely because of this particular soul structure, this disposition of the soul, these souls prepared themselves for a longer life between death and rebirth; it took them a long time before the impulse to descend into a new physical body awoke within them once more. And a number of these souls—very many of them—are incarnated in today’s American population. This American population, which in many respects tends toward a view of practical, material life, owes its entire constitution to the fact that these souls once lived with such a spiritual perception of the world as I have described, but then plunged into a very, very dense physical existence and are now, in essence, seeking to live out through a refined engagement with this material world what they once possessed in a subtle spiritual realm. One can understand the distinctive nature of the American spirit—its truly practical and scientific approach to the things of the world—when one realizes how this stems from a former orientation toward the spiritual world, which is now being carried over into material life without people being aware that they are seeking to grasp the spiritual within the material. It is the material counterpart of the spiritual that these souls experienced in their previous earthly lives.

[ 12 ] You will see how fruitful it is when you try to make sense of what confronts you in this or that fact, in this or that behavior of people of the present generation, by taking such things into account, and when you develop the awareness in the process: Only now do I grasp the full reality, whereas, when I listen to the history of the generations, I am essentially—even if it is an externally perceptible abstraction—facing nothing more than an abstraction.

[ 13 ] It is indeed necessary for you to realize how little the vast majority of humanity today is inclined to truly strive toward self-knowledge in this way, and how little courage people find to step beyond what, even in history, is merely external, physical-sensory observation. It is precisely in the realm of what flows into our young souls through education that it is so clearly evident how people today are torn away from the full reality of life by the fact that, virtually everywhere, they are taught only a fragment of reality. Of course, for people today, it is something they recoil from—as if they would burn themselves—when they are expected to take seriously the spiritual life that manifests itself for the soul through repeated earthly lives, and to truly look beyond the merely external. In this regard, one experiences the most incredible things today in what is presented by the scientific leaders of modern humanity. Of course, the time has not yet come to speak openly about such matters—as I have just explained—in public lectures. But one must already go quite far in public lectures today. For example, I recently expounded in Zurich on roughly the same points I presented here on Tuesday in the public lecture, and in order to make it clear in what sphere the spiritual researcher undergoes special inner soul exercises to develop his methods, I said: This flows into a sphere that must be permeated by the human being’s inner will and inner clarity, as is otherwise only the case when following mathematical derivations or the truths of mathematics. — A Zurich scientist listened to this lecture—truly not the least capable, but one who even ranks among the more gifted. But among many other, truly rather dull points he subsequently raised against this lecture in a detailed feature article in the *Neue Zürcher Zeitung*, it is stated that I had claimed that the inner methods of investigation in anthroposophical knowledge must be developed through a clear mental process, modeled on the clear mental process involved in the training of mathematical judgment. — In response to this, the scholar—who is, in fact, a young scholar, and thus a “promising beacon” for the future—says something that leaves one truly at a loss for words when reading such a statement from someone who wishes to be taken seriously: The certainty of mathematics actually relates only to the fact that one connects mathematical constructs with one another. If one has a point, a line, and an angle, one can connect the point, the line, and the angle, and then one arrives at truths and certainties. But the point and the line are themselves uncertain, just as the atom and the molecule are uncertain.

[ 14 ] The man believes he is saying something terribly clever, but it merely illustrates just how twisted the thinking of today’s scientists actually is. For if someone with sound, clear judgment claims that there is mathematical clarity in the process of spiritual exercises in anthroposophical research, then all the discussions about the certainty of line relationships and the uncertainty of a single point are of no concern to him. It is, after all, entirely irrelevant what such a private scholar of philosophy thinks about the certainty of points and lines and so on. Let whatever such a person wishes to imagine be certain or uncertain. But one lives in a certain state of mind when one grasps the Pythagorean theorem. What one experiences there is reflected in the anthroposophical method, regardless of what one might argue about—whether the triangle in the Pythagorean theorem is certain in and of itself or whether one of its squares is certain in and of itself.

[ 15 ] So one must be clear about the fact that, in most cases, it is indeed impossible to build a bridge to such a scholar, because these “minds” are completely distorted by what has been cultivated by the present. But on the other hand, it is urgently necessary for a sense of reality to enter into our entire lives. Without this sense of reality, we cannot move forward. Therefore, anyone who is sincere about the truths and insights of anthroposophically oriented spiritual science must not shy away from bringing into concrete life those things that they may understand quite well in the abstract, such as the doctrine of repeated earthly lives. At the same time, it remains entirely true that one should actually develop dogmas—that is, the abstract, dogmatic form of truth—as late as possible. It remains entirely true, for example, that an institution such as our Waldorf school should not be a school based on a particular worldview. The focus there is therefore much less on ensuring that the young souls somehow already grasp the abstract concept of repeated earthly lives. But without even touching upon this abstract idea—simply by having insights like those I have outlined today in the background—it is possible to shed light on historical life in the classroom and help students understand it. Then something quite different will take root in the minds of these young souls, who—perhaps entirely without the theory and dogma of repeated earthly lives—will be presented with such a historical account, simply by finding the methods to describe present-day life as one understands it oneself, by discovering the convergence of a completely foreign soul life with what has flowed down in a direct stream from ancient times through the blood across generations.

[ 16 ] What matters today is not merely to speak of the spirit, but to truly advance our understanding of the spirit to the point where we can discern the workings of this spirit in concrete, material existence. Our sciences have taken on an abstract form everywhere, even where they merely splash about in external manipulation. What is developed in this external tinkering, even if it is a vivid abstraction, is still an abstraction if it lacks the underlying spiritual element. And anyone who objects, saying, “Well, one must believe those who perceive spiritual life; after all, one cannot attain the science of initiation as easily as one might something else!” — is, in essence, taking the same position as Pastor and Professor Traub, who says that I do not need to have personally experienced things that, in the end, affect me little—such as the birth of Alexander the Great—but that I must have personally experienced, or be able to experience myself, whatever I am to recognize as directly concerning me, for I do not wish to merely accept it as someone else’s experience. — I would simply recommend to people who think this way that they take a moment to check when they wrote down the date of their own birth—a date that is surely very close to their hearts—in their diary, to see if there isn’t, after all, a fact that is very close to their personal lives and that they cannot bring to their consciousness in any other way than through the good faith of others! — That, for now, on the rejection of the so-called principle of authority. But one should simply try to find the path that, through common sense alone, leads to an understanding of what spiritual science offers. One need only take these matters thoroughly and earnestly to heart, and then one will see that even such seemingly paradoxical and remote truths as I have presented today are already accessible to unimpeded, uninhibited common sense. However, if one blocks one’s common sense with those walls that are erected by viewing history solely as a system—be it a physical one, based on human characteristics inherited through blood, or a continuous stream of events unfolding in a given field— as long as one blocks one’s understanding of reality with such prejudices, one will simply be unable to approach that reality. But the moment one surrenders to common sense in the right way—the moment one merely begins to want to understand—one will see what lives in the souls of the present. One does not perceive it as merely originating from the blood through heredity or from the stream flowing through the generations—if one is only willing to understand it. Of course, it is a matter of finding the courage to approach these things. But if one finds this courage, then one will move beyond mere abstractions to a concrete grasp of the truths.