The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today I would like to add a few points to our reflections that will enable us to trace the karmic connections within the anthroposophical movement itself more closely. What I wish to add today will be based on the fact that there are two groups of people within the anthroposophical movement. In general, I have described how the anthroposophical movement is composed of individual people. Of course, this is meant only in broad terms at first, but there are indeed two groups of people within the anthroposophical movement. However, the phenomena I am describing are not immediately obvious; they are not such that one can say, based on a superficial observation: “It’s like this with one person, and like that with another.” Much of what I will be describing today does not lie within the full, ordinary consciousness of the personality, but rather, like most karmic factors, lies in the instincts and the subconscious; yet it certainly manifests itself in character, temperament, behavior, and actual actions.

[ 2 ] We must distinguish one group whose relationship to Christianity is such that its members are particularly committed to belonging to the Christian faith, and that a longing lives within their souls to be able to call themselves Christians—in the true sense of the word, as they understand it—as anthroposophists. For this group, it is a true source of comfort that it can be said without reservation: The anthroposophical movement is a movement that recognizes and carries within itself the Christ impulse. And this group would feel a pang of conscience if that were not the case.

[ 3 ] The other group is, at first glance, no less sincerely Christian in its revelation or in the revelation of its members’ personalities, but the fact is that this group actually approaches Christianity from a different starting point. The fact is that this group initially finds fulfillment in anthroposophical cosmology—in the idea of the Earth’s development from other planetary forms— finds satisfaction in what anthroposophy has to say about human beings in general, and from there is then naturally led to Christianity, but does not feel the same inner, heartfelt need to place Christ at the center. As I said, these processes take place largely in the subconscious. Anyone who can practice soul observation will always know how to judge the personalities in question correctly in each individual case.

[ 4 ] The origins of this grouping date back to ancient times. As you know from my Outline of Esoteric Science, during a certain period of Earth’s evolution, souls, so to speak, took their leave of the ongoing evolution of the Earth; they went to inhabit other planets, and during a specific period—the Lemurian and Atlantean eras—they returned to Earth. And we also know that under the influence of the fact that souls came down from various planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and so on—as well as from the Sun to take on earthly form, the original mysteries, which I also called oracles in my Esoteric Science, came into being.

[ 5 ] Now, these souls were such that, naturally, many among them were inclined—due to very ancient karma—to join precisely that movement which later became Christianity. We must, after all, bear in mind that barely a third of the Earth’s population professes Christianity, and that therefore it can only be said that a certain portion of the human souls who descended developed the tendency—the impulse—to unfold along the lines of the Christian movement.

[ 6 ] Now, souls came down at various times, and there are some who came down relatively early, during the early stages of Atlantean development. But there are also those who descended relatively late, who, so to speak, had a long pre-earthly planetary sojourn. These are souls for whom, if one goes back from their present incarnation, one might arrive at an incarnation in the first half of the Middle Ages—a Christian incarnation—perhaps another Christian incarnation; then, if one goes back further, to pre-Christian incarnations, and so on—and that relatively soon after encountering the earliest incarnation, one must conclude: Now the path leads backward up into the planetary realm. Before that, these souls had not yet been present in earthly incarnations. With other souls who also entered Christianity, the situation is such that one can go back a long way, find many incarnations, and then—after many pre-Christian and even Atlantean incarnations—these souls have immersed themselves in the Christian current.

[ 7 ] Now, of course, for any intellectualistic perspective, a matter such as the one I have just mentioned is as misleading as possible; for one could easily come to believe that such personalities—who, by today’s standards of civilization, are regarded as particularly gifted minds—have in fact undergone many past incarnations. However, this need not be the case; rather, such personalities—who possess abilities that are effective in life according to today’s standards—may well be individuals for whom one does not have to look back to so many past incarnations. |

[ 8 ] Perhaps I may recall here what I presented—in inaugurating the anthroposophical current that we now have within the anthroposophical movement—at the Christmas Conference, where I spoke of those individualities to whom the Epic of Gilgamesh then refers. I did, after all, say quite a bit about such individualities at that time. In the case of one of these individualities, we are dealing with relatively few past incarnations. In contrast, with the other, we are dealing with many past incarnations.

[ 9 ] Now, above all else—regardless of whether there are other incarnations in between or not—for human souls entering anthroposophy today, the one incarnation that is important—which is generally spread out over a long period of time, spanning two to three centuries—is the one that falls roughly in the 3rd, 4th, 5th centuries A.D., and for some, even into later periods. We must therefore, above all, look at the experiences of the souls during this period—for some, this extends as far as the 7th or 8th century, and then they come to consolidate their experience through a later incarnation. But today I want to link this matter as precisely as possible to the first, so to speak, Christian incarnation.

[ 10 ] For these souls, it is very important to consider how they were able to relate to Christianity based on their preconditions and their previous earthly lives. You see, my dear friends, this question is therefore an important karmic question—at least for now; we will, of course, have to discuss more peripheral karmic questions later, but this is a fundamental karmic question—because people come to the Anthroposophical Society, setting aside for the time being many other, more secondary matters, precisely through these innermost experiences of earlier incarnations, precisely through what their souls have experienced in terms of worldview, religious affiliation, and so on. Therefore, with regard to the karma of the Anthroposophical Society, we must first and foremost consider what these souls have experienced in terms of knowledge, worldview, and religion.

[ 11 ] Now, during these first centuries of Christian development, it was certainly still possible to build upon traditional insights that had existed since the founding of Christianity regarding the nature of Christ—insights that held that the one who lived as Christ in the personality of Jesus was regarded as a solar inhabitant, a solar being, before entering earthly life. One must not assume that the Christian world was always as ignorant about these matters as it is today. In the early centuries of Christianity, people already understood certain passages of the Gospel that speak very clearly to the effect that the being designated as Christ descended from the sun into a human body. How exactly this was conceived in detail is of lesser importance; but this conception, which went as far as I have just described, was indeed held.

[ 12 ] Yet at the same time, during the epoch I have just been discussing, there was already a slight possibility of understanding that a being originating from the sun could descend to Earth. And in particular, it was those souls who had flowed into Christianity and had undergone many earthly incarnations, stretching far back into the Atlantean era—and there were many such souls—who could no longer really understand how one could call the Christ a solar being. Precisely those souls who, in their ancient beliefs, felt connected to the solar oracles—who had in fact already worshiped the Christ during the Atlantean era, but who, in worshiping the Christ, looked up to the sun—these souls, who, as St. Augustine himself remarked, even before Christianity was established on earth, were, in a sense, “sun Christians”—these souls could not, out of their entire spiritual nature, find a proper understanding of the idea that Christ was a solar hero. Therefore, they preferred to hold fast to that which, without this interpretation—without this Christological cosmology—did indeed regard Christ as a god, but as a god of unknown origin who had united himself with the body of Jesus. And so they simply accepted what is recounted in the Gospels on the very premises I have outlined. They could no longer turn their gaze upward toward the cosmic worlds to understand the nature of Christ, precisely because they had come to know Christ only in extraterrestrial realms. Since the earthly mysteries—the solar oracles, which always spoke of Christ as a solar being—were also familiar to them, they could not bring themselves to accept the idea that this Christ, this extraterrestrial Christ, had become a real earthly being.

[ 13 ] And so, when these souls passed through the gate of death, they found themselves in a strange situation. They found themselves in a situation that I, if I were to characterize it somewhat trivially, could describe by saying: These Christians, in the postmortem state, were in the same situation as a person who knows another person’s name well, perhaps has even heard much about him, but has never actually come to know him in his true essence. It can happen, then, that when that support—which served him as long as he knew only the name—is missing, his spiritual life fails him in the face of this phenomenon whenever a situation arises in which he is supposed to recognize the essence.

[ 14 ] And so these souls, of whom I have just spoken—who in ancient times felt they belonged specifically to the solar oracles—found themselves, in the postmortem state, asking: “Yes, where, then, is the Christ?” We are now among the beings of the Sun; that is where we have always found him; now we cannot find him! — The idea that he might be on Earth had not occurred to them in the thoughts and feelings that remained with them when they passed through the gate of death. After death, they found themselves in a state of great uncertainty regarding the Christ, and they lived in this uncertainty; they remained in this uncertainty in many respects and were thus—if another incarnation occurred in the meantime—easily inclined to join those groups of people who are described in the history of European religion as belonging to various heretical sects.

[ 15 ] And regardless of whether they underwent such an incarnation again or not, they then found themselves, I might say, in that great supernatural assembly that I described here last Sunday, and which I have set in the first half of the 19th century. There, in the context of a kind of supersensible cult—which consisted of powerful imaginations—these very souls also found themselves, and it was precisely in this supersensible cult that the mystery of Christ as the Sun was presented to their spiritual eye through powerful imaginations. The purpose of this was to lead these souls—who, in a certain sense, had reached a dead end with their Christianity in the manner described—at least through images, before they descended once more into earthly life, to Christ, whom they had not entirely lost, but had lost to such an extent that He had become caught up in the currents of doubt and uncertainty within their souls.

[ 16 ] These souls then behaved in a peculiar way. Although they did not fall into even greater uncertainty as a result of this being presented to them—there was already a kind of satisfaction for them in the life between death and a new birth, as well as a kind of deliverance from certain doubts— but there was also a kind of memory within them of what they had now absorbed about the Christ—though not yet truly, in the cosmic sense, imbued with the Mystery of Golgotha. And so, deep within their being, there remained an immense warmth and devotion to the spirit of Christianity, along with a subconscious dawning of those powerful imaginings. And all of this coalesced into a longing to now be able to be Christians in the true sense. When they then descended, became young again, and came to Earth at the end of the 19th century or around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, they were those souls who could not help but feel drawn to Christ—because they had actually taken in the Christ in the early Christian incarnation in an emotional way, without cosmic understanding. But the impressions they had received in the powerful imaginations toward which they had been drawn in their pre-earthly lives remained as vague longings for them. And so they found it difficult to find their way into the anthroposophical worldview, insofar as this anthroposophical worldview first considers the cosmos and still sets aside the contemplation of Christ. Why did they find it difficult? They found it difficult for the simple reason that they had a very special relationship to the question: “What is anthroposophy?”

[ 17 ] Let us pose the question: What is anthroposophy in its true essence? Yes, my dear friends, if you look beyond all the wonderful, majestic visions that existed as a supersensory cult in the first half of the 19th century and translate them into human terms, then you have anthroposophy.

[ 18 ] Anthroposophy existed in the first half of the 19th century for the next higher level of experience, for the next spiritual world from which human beings descend into earthly existence. It was not on Earth, but it was there. And when one looks at anthroposophy today, one looks at it in the context of the first half of the 19th century; quite naturally, one looks at it there. One can even see it as early as the end of the 18th century.

[ 19 ] And you see, people can have the following experience. There is a person who once found himself in a very special situation. A friend raised the great mystery of human existence on Earth. But this friend was somewhat entangled in Kantian thought, and so the matter came across in an abstract, philosophical way. The other person could not find his way into Kant’s “angular” way of thinking, and everything stirred up this question in his soul: How are reason and sensibility connected in human beings? — Then, in a sense, not gates but sluices opened, allowing a momentary glimpse into this soul of those regions of the world where those powerful imaginings were unfolding. And what came in—not through gates, not through windows, but through sluices—emerged, translated, I might say, into miniature images, as the “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.” For the person I am referring to is Goethe.

[ 20 ] These are miniature images, small reflections—sometimes even rendered in a charming way—of what was conveyed in the “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.” It should therefore come as no great surprise that, when it came to expressing anthroposophical ideas through artistic images—which necessarily required a return to the realm of the imagination—my Gateway to Initiation came to resemble, in structure—though differing entirely in content—the “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.”

[ 21 ] You see, the way things stand is that one can already gain insight into the bigger picture simply by looking at what has happened so far. Anyone who has even moderately studied occult phenomena knows that what happens on Earth is, in essence, a reflection of something that took place long before in the spiritual world—albeit in a slightly varied form, so that certain spirits of obstacles and hindrances are not mixed in—but it did indeed take place beforehand in the spiritual realm.

[ 22 ] And those souls who were just preparing, at the end of the 19th century, at the beginning of the 20th century—or, in fact, around the turn of the century—to descend into earthly existence brought with them a certain longing, albeit in their subconscious, to know something of cosmology and the like, to view the world in the anthroposophical sense. But their spiritual fervor for Christ was particularly strong, and therefore they would have felt pangs of conscience if what had drawn them in their pre-earthly existence—the vision of anthroposophy—had not been permeated by the Christ impulse. That is one group, broadly speaking, of course.

[ 23 ] The other group lived differently. When they appeared in their present incarnation, I would say they had not yet reached that state of weariness with paganism that the souls I have described had reached. Compared to the others, they had, after all, been on Earth for a relatively short time and had undergone fewer incarnations. In these few incarnations, they had been filled with those powerful impulses that one can experience precisely when one has still been in a very vivid connection with the many pagan gods in earlier earthly lives, and when this connection continues to have a strong effect in later incarnations. These are therefore also the souls who, in the early Christian centuries, were not yet weary of the old paganism—in whom the old pagan impulses continued to exert a strong influence, even though they were more or less inclined toward Christianity, which was, after all, only slowly emerging from paganism. At that time, these souls absorbed Christianity primarily through the intellect—albeit an intellect imbued with emotion—but nonetheless through the intellect, and they thought deeply about Christianity. You need not think of scholarly thought here; they may have been relatively simple people living in modest circumstances, but they thought deeply.

[ 24 ] Again, it does not matter whether a later incarnation followed, for that may well have changed a few things, but the essential point is that, as these souls passed through the gate of death, they looked back upon the earth in such a way that Christianity actually appeared to them as something into which they first had to grow. Precisely because they were less weary of the old paganism, and because they still carried strong impulses from that paganism within their souls, they were, in a sense, still waiting to become true Christians.

[ 25 ] Precisely those figures whom I spoke of eight days ago—who fought against paganism on the side of Christianity—belonged themselves to those souls who actually still carried within them a great deal of paganism and pagan impulses, and who were in fact still waiting to become true Christians. When these souls passed through the gate of death, arrived in the spiritual world, went through the life between death and a new birth, and then, in the period I have indicated—the first half of the 19th century or somewhat earlier— when they encountered those mighty, glorious imaginations, they saw in them nothing but impulses to drive their work and their activity. They absorbed these impulses primarily into their will. And one might say: If one then looks with the occult gaze at what such souls carry, particularly in their will, then precisely today the imprint of those mighty imaginations is evident in many ways within that will.

[ 26 ] But such souls, who enter earthly life in this state, initially feel the need to experience here once again—in the way that it can be experienced on Earth—what they had experienced in their pre-earthly existence as decisive in their karmic work. And so, for the first type of souls—the first group of souls—spiritual life in the first half of the 19th century unfolded in such a way that, driven by a deep longing, they felt compelled to become participants in that supersensible cult. But in doing so, they entered, I might say, a certain kind of nebulous state of mind, so that when they descended to Earth, only dark memories remained—memories to which, however, Anthroposophy, now transformed into an earthly form, was able to relate with understanding. In contrast, for the second group it was like a reunion in the aftermath of a resolution that had been made precisely by these souls, who were still not entirely weary of paganism but who were awaiting the opportunity to become Christians through an appropriate process of development. It was as if they were to recall a decision they had made back then in the first half of the 19th century: to bring down to Earth all that which stood there in powerful images, and to transform it into an earthly form. Precisely when we look at certain anthroposophists who, above all, carried within themselves the impulse to actively collaborate with anthroposophy, it is among such anthroposophists that we find souls of the type just described. The two types can be very clearly distinguished from one another.

[ 27 ] Well, my dear friends, you will say: Yes, everything you’re telling us here sheds light on many aspects of the karma of the Anthroposophical Society; but one might well feel anxious and fearful about what is yet to come when one sees how one is being enlightened about certain things—things from which one might not wish to be torn away from a certain state of ignorance. For should we now begin to wonder whether we belong to one type or the other?

[ 28 ] This question demands a very specific answer. The answer that must be given is this: If the Anthroposophical Society were merely something that embodied a theoretical doctrine—perhaps even a commitment to this or that idea in cosmology, Christology, and so on—if that were its very essence, then it would truly not be what it is meant to be in the eyes of those who founded it. Anthroposophy is indeed meant to be something that can transform the lives of true anthroposophists, something that can carry over into the spiritual realm that which today can only be experienced in its non-spiritual manifestations.

[ 29 ] Now I ask you: Does it have a particularly negative effect on a child if they are taught about certain things at a specific age? Up to a certain age, children don’t know whether they are French, German, Norwegian, Belgian, or Italian; at least, the whole question of whether they are one thing or another is of little importance to them. They know nothing about it, so to speak. You probably haven’t encountered many chauvinistic infants yet, nor have you encountered three-year-old chauvinists or the like. It’s only at a certain stage in life that one becomes aware: you’re German, you’re French, you’re English, you’re Dutch, and so on. Doesn’t one naturally come to terms with these things by simply accepting them? Does one say, for example, that it is something one could not bear: to learn at a certain age in childhood that one is Polish, or French, or German, or Russian, or Dutch? One is simply used to it; one regards it as a matter of course. But that, my dear friends, pertains to the external, sensory realm. Anthroposophy, however, is meant to elevate the whole of human life to a higher level. One should learn to endure things other than those that merely shock one in sensory life when misunderstood. And among the things one is to learn to recognize is precisely this: that one should naturally grow into the self-knowledge that one belongs to one type or another.

[ 30 ] This, I would say, lays the foundation for a person to properly integrate other karmic influences into their life. And that is why, in a sense, the first guiding principle had to be how one relates—according to the specific nature of one’s predestination—to anthroposophy, to this entire Christology, and to whether one takes a more passive or active role in the anthroposophical movement.

[ 31 ] Of course, there are certainly transitional cases between the two types. But these transitions stem from the fact that what carries over from the previous incarnation influences the present one and is illuminated by the even earlier incarnation. This is particularly often the case with the souls of the second group. Much still shines through in them from their truly pagan incarnations. Therefore, they have a very specific predisposition to immediately accept Christ as he must actually be accepted: as a cosmic being.

[ 32 ] What I’m saying here isn’t really so much a matter of abstract speculation as it is a practical view of life. One can get to know these two types much better by observing their actions—since abstract thoughts are of little significance to human beings—than by their ideas; one can get to know a person much better by the way they handle the details of life. And there one will find, for example, that transitional types from one to the other are often found among those — personal matters are, of course, always excluded here — who actually have no choice but to carry the habits of non-anthroposophical life into the anthroposophical movement, who are not even particularly inclined to take the anthroposophical movement seriously, and who are characterized, in particular, by the fact that they spend a great deal of time within the anthroposophical movement complaining about anthroposophists. Precisely among those who complain a great deal about the conditions within the anthroposophical movement itself—particularly about individuals, and do so in a petty manner—there are transitional types who shift back and forth between the two. In such cases, neither of the two impulses is of particularly strong intensity.

[ 33 ] And so, under all circumstances—even if it sometimes involves a kind of examination of conscience, an examination of our character—we must find a way in life to deepen the anthroposophical movement by approaching such matters and giving them some thought: How do we, in our supersensible nature, belong to this anthroposophical movement? Through this, a spiritualized understanding of the anthroposophical movement—one that gradually grows ever stronger—will come to light. What one advocates as theories—and which need not go particularly deep if one advocates them merely as theories—one then applies to life. It is a profound application to life when one positions oneself within life in accordance with these things. The fact that someone talks a lot about karma—that this is rewarded in such a way, that is punished in such a way, carried over from one life to the next—need not cause one any particular pain. But when it hits close to home, so to speak—when it comes to imbuing the present incarnation with a very specific supersensible quality that underlies it—then it does come closer to one’s own being. And it is precisely this deepening of the human being that we aim to bring into earthly life and into earthly civilization through anthroposophy.

[ 34 ] Well, my dear friends, that was a brief interlude, which will continue next Friday.