The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] The lectures I have just given—inspired by the fact that so many friends are present here from all sides—have essentially aimed to provide an exposition based on karma that, at least in some respects, is intended to lead to an understanding of contemporary spiritual life from a spiritual perspective. And I would like to conclude what, in a certain sense, forms a kind of unity in the final lecture of this series next Tuesday.

[ 2 ] Today I would like to use an example to show just how difficult it can actually be to bring into the present what is truly spiritual science suited to the present. I do not wish to answer this question today by referring to external circumstances, but rather by using a karmic example. The example will initially involve an individual who is not exactly typical, but who already represents a special individuality; but it can thereby demonstrate how difficult it is to bring into a present-day earthly life what every human being naturally brings with them from previous earthly lives—in such a way that, perhaps with the exception of their very last incarnation, they have nevertheless maintained certain original connections to the spiritual world, either in reality or at least according to tradition. It can show us how difficult it nevertheless is to bring something spiritual from the past—something absorbed in a spiritual way—into the present physicality of the human being, into the present conditions of education and civilization.

[ 3 ] And to that end, I would like to present to you here a series of successive earthly lives of a particular individual, which are intended to show you all the possible obstacles that may arise against such a transition into the present time, and which can demonstrate how these difficulties have, in fact, already been foreshadowed in the earlier earthly lives of some individuals.

[ 4 ] Let us first consider, my dear friends, a human individual in her incarnation during the sixth century B.C., specifically during that time and shortly thereafter, when the Jews were taken into Babylonian captivity. While reflecting on this period, I came across a soul—a woman incarnated at that time—who belonged to the Jewish tribe but who, during the deportation of the Jews into the Babylonian captivity, that is to say, actually before the Jews had arrived in the Babylonian captivity, and who then, in the following period in the Near East—she lived to a ripe old age in that incarnation—absorbed all manner of teachings that were to be found in the Near East at that time. In particular, she absorbed what was still alive in the Near East at that time with great intensity and force, and what shaped in various ways that worldview which can be called the Zarathustrian worldview, with its strong dualism—which is also described in a chapter of my Occult Science: that dualism which, on the one hand, recognized Ahura Mazdao, the great Spirit of Light, who sends his impulses into human evolution to be the source of the good, the great, and the beautiful; and who has his serving spirits, the Ameshaspands, who surround him, just as the sun is surrounded in the radiance of the revelation of the face of heaven by the twelve signs of the zodiac—so here we have the light side of that dualism that originated in ancient Persia— and then we have the Ahrimanic counterforce, which brings into the world’s development of humanity not only darkness but also evil, that which hinders everywhere and shapes everything into disharmony.

[ 5 ] This teaching was linked to a profound understanding of the constellations of the stars, in the same way that in ancient times there was astrosophy or astrology. That individual was able to absorb all of this at that time, in her incarnation as a woman, because she had a kind of teacher and friend in a male figure who was initiated into many of these Near Eastern teachings, particularly Chaldean astronomy.

[ 6 ] And so, first of all, we have a lively exchange of ideas between these two figures during the period after the Jews had been taken into Babylonian captivity, and we observe the remarkable phenomenon that the female figure, through the power of the impressions she received—through everything she absorbed in an extraordinarily receptive and interested manner—became inwardly contemplative and was able to survey the world in visions that fully reflected the cosmic order.

[ 7 ] We are truly dealing here with a remarkable individuality in which, so to speak, everything that was discussed and explored together with this friendly semi-initiate from the Near East comes to life. And a mood took hold of that female personality of which one might say: Oh, what were all the ideas I absorbed during my studies, after all, compared to the powerful tableau of imaginations that now stands before my soul! How rich and mighty the world is within! — This personality realized this through the visionary imaginations.

[ 8 ] And it was precisely this mood that created a certain tension between the two personalities. The male personality focused more on the intellectual pursuit of the worldview, while the female personality turned more and more toward the pictorial. And one could say that both personalities passed through the gate of death almost simultaneously, but with a certain discord between them.

[ 9 ] Now, the results of these earthly lives were, in a peculiar way—I would say—fused together, so that an immensely intense experience was lived by both individualities after death, both in the retrospective, backward-looking life and also during the working out of karma between death and a new birth. An intense shared existence was the result of this peculiar earthly coexistence. We find, particularly in the case of the female personality after death, that the mood that had most recently been characterized by the preponderance of visionary imaginings is no longer present to such a strong degree. Rather, we find that in this female personality, after death and in preparation for the next earthly life, a kind of longing begins to sprout—a longing to now grasp things in this next earthly life in thoughtful form, whereas in this earthly life I have described, she had grasped things more in linguistic form, so that she had actually transitioned from linguistic experience to visionary imagination.

[ 10 ] Now, because these two personalities were so strongly connected karmically, they were both reborn during the early Christian centuries, when the spiritual essence of Christianity took shape in a certain kind of scholarly work. And I have mentioned here before how many of those very souls who later came to anthroposophy in an honest way experienced Christianity during those first Christian centuries—but experienced it in a much more vibrant form than it later took on. And so we now see a very remarkable phenomenon.

[ 11 ] We see a man emerge who, in terms of karma, has nothing to do with the two personalities I am speaking of—with their individualities—but who, in terms of contemporary history, is connected to them: We see a leading, influential figure emerge in the person of Martianus Capella.

[ 12 ] This is the figure who first wrote the authoritative, foundational book on the seven liberal arts, which went on to play a major role in all teaching and instruction throughout the Middle Ages: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music; the seven liberal arts, which, taken together, provided precisely what was known at the time as knowledge of nature and the world.

[ 13 ] Martianus Capella’s book may at first seem somewhat dry and matter-of-fact. However, my dear friends, one must realize that such books—especially in these early days of the Middle Ages—nevertheless sprang from spiritual sources; just as the later depictions that emerged from the School of Chartres also have a similarly sober, cataloging character. And so one must also regard what is found in Martianus Capella’s dry, sober presentation of the seven liberal arts and the nature at work behind them as the outflow of certain instinctive, higher insights. For what the seven liberal arts were was in fact conceived as “essential,” just as nature itself—as I have already explained in these lectures—was conceived as essential. And even if figures such as Martianus Capella and others who recorded these things are dry in their style, they were nonetheless fully aware of the fact that all of this can be viewed in such a way that dialectic and rhetoric are living beings, inspirers of human skill and human intellectual activity. And I have already explained here that the goddess Natura was depicted in much the same way as the ancient Proserpina.

[ 14 ] Within this current—within what humanity is becoming, or what it was at that time under the influence of the seven liberal arts and the view of nature that prevailed over them—within this entire current, the female personality of whom I have spoken was now reincarnated, but this time in a male incarnation; so much so that from the very beginning, within the male body and the male mind, she possessed the predisposition not to form the things that were to be her insights purely through thought, but rather to form them precisely through visionary perceptions.

[ 15 ] One might say: Perhaps among a few figures of that time—at the beginning of the sixth century A.D., at the end of the fifth century A.D.—among a few such figures who can be described as the disciples of Martianus Capella, what constituted spiritual content at that time lived in a very vivid and lively way. The individual, who was now in his male incarnation, could speak directly of his interaction with the inspiring powers, dialectic, rhetoric, and so on; he was completely imbued with the vision of spiritual activity.

[ 16 ] And once again, she was reunited with the other personality—who had been the male spirit in the previous incarnation and was now a female individual. And this female personality was endowed with great intelligence in that incarnation. And once again—one can imagine how this was karmically determined; we see karma at work here—once again there arose an intense spiritual—one cannot call it an exchange of ideas, but rather an exchange of perspectives, a very lively, spiritual, and intense collaboration.

[ 17 ] But something strange began to take shape in that personality, who had been a woman in the pre-Christian centuries but was now a man in this era. What emerged was this: because the visions were so vivid, this personality developed a profound understanding of how the visionary life—which this particular personality experienced—was fundamentally connected to the feminine nature. Not that one should say the visionary life is generally connected to the feminine personality; rather, the entire fundamental character of the visionary life had now come over from the earlier female incarnation. And through this, countless mysteries relating to the interaction between the Earth and the Moon were revealed to this personality—countless mysteries, for example, relating to the life of procreation. It was precisely in these areas that this now male personality became extraordinarily well-versed.

[ 18 ] Now we see how the two personalities once again pass through the gate of death, undergo the life between death and a new birth, and how they initially await the dawn of the Age of Consciousness in the supersensible realm, experiencing the dawn of the Age of Consciousness while still in the supersensible worlds. Then the personality whom I had to describe first as a female incarnation and then as a male incarnation is born again as a male incarnation. It is very interesting that both personalities are reborn together. But the other personality, who was a woman in the earlier incarnation—that is, in the second one—is now born again as a man, so that both are now born simultaneously in male incarnations. The one who is of particular interest to us—who was a female personality in ancient times, then a male personality in the early Christian centuries, who was of entirely Jewish descent the first time, and who, the second time, possessed an extraordinarily mixed bloodline according to physical ancestry—this personality was then born in the sixteenth century as the Italian utopian Thomas Campanella. A truly remarkable personality.

[ 19 ] Let us take a close look at the life of Thomas Campanella, to the extent necessary for understanding karma. He was born with an extraordinarily strong receptivity to his Christian upbringing, so that he began studying Thomas Aquinas’s Summa at an early age. And drawing on the dispositions he had acquired through his earlier visionary life—dispositions that increasingly transformed, here and there, into the opposite dispositions needed to grasp things intellectually—he immersed himself in the highly intellectual element found in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa, studied it earnestly, and became a Dominican friar in the sixteenth century.

[ 20 ] A certain unease, stemming from the spiritual, atavistic, and visionary life that once existed within him, continually intrudes upon his thinking—which he wishes to keep, in the strictest sense, aligned with the direction in which thought is guided in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa.

[ 21 ] And so it is curious that he, Campanella, is actively seeking a foundation and a point of reference in order to bring internal coherence to that which he once mastered as a visionary in his contemplation of the world. And while, on the one hand, he becomes a Dominican with full inner enthusiasm, it is precisely in the monastery of Cosenza —and this is the curious part—he becomes acquainted with a highly respected Jewish Kabbalist and now combines the study of Jewish Kabbalah with what emerges as an aftereffect of his former visionary life, and in turn combines this with what Thomism has become within the Dominican Order. All of this lives within him in what one might call a visionary longing; it all comes together in a single visionary longing. He wants to do something that could bring this entire luminous inner spiritual life into outward manifestation. For it is constantly the case in his soul—one will not find this in the biographies, but it presents itself to spiritual contemplation—that something within him says: Yes, there is indeed Spirit behind all things; surely the Spirit that is in the universe must also be present within human life!

[ 22 ] All of this also affects his emotional state. He lives in Southern Italy. Southern Italy is under Spanish rule. He takes part in a conspiracy to liberate Southern Italy, then languishes in prison from 1599 to 1626 because he is captured by the Spaniards for his involvement in the conspiracy; thus, he spends his life cut off from the world—a life that effectively erases his existence on earth for twenty-seven years.

[ 23 ] Now let’s put these two facts together: When Thomas Campanella was imprisoned, he was in his early thirties—right at the very beginning of his thirties. He spent the following period in prison. That is one point.

[ 24 ] But what kind of spirit is he, anyway? What kind of personality does he have? He is based on the idea of the City of the Sun. Everything astrological from his earlier incarnations, everything he perceived of the spiritual world, seems to have flowed into the soul of this Thomas Campanella. In his work on the City of the Sun, he conceives and describes a social utopia in which he believes that, through a rational social structure and organization, all people can become happy. What he describes there as the City of the Sun has, in a certain sense, a monastic rigor; there is something in it that he absorbed from the Dominican Order. There is a certain monastic rigor in the way he conceives of the structure of the state, and at the same time, an immense amount of his earlier spirituality shines through. At the head of this state—which is meant to be the ideal state—there is to stand a supreme leader, who is a kind of chief metaphysician and so on, and who is to derive from the spirit the guidelines for the configuration and administration of the state. He is assisted by other officials, such as the highest minister, who are to carry out, down to the very last detail, all the rules as they were still understood at that time, when they arose from the soul as reminiscences through the karma of earlier earthly lives. All of this arose within him. And so he wanted this “Sun State” to be administered according to astrological principles. The constellations of the stars were to be carefully observed. Marriages were to be arranged according to these constellations; conceptions were to take place in such a way that births would coincide with specific constellations that had been calculated, so that, in accordance with the constellations in the heavens, the human race on earth would, so to speak, be born with its destiny. Certainly, a person of the nineteenth or twentieth century—a neurologist or psychiatrist of the nineteenth or twentieth century—would, upon encountering such a work, say that it should be shelved in the library of an insane asylum. We will see shortly that a twentieth-century psychiatrist has even passed a similar judgment in a certain respect.

[ 25 ] But imagine these two things: There is a person who has this background, these preconditions for life stemming from previous earthly lives, as I have described to you. Here is someone who, so to speak, seeks to derive the principles of state administration on Earth from the power of the sun and the stars—a person who wants to bring the sun into earthly life and who languishes for more than twenty years in the darkness of a dungeon, able to gaze out at the natural sunlight only through narrow slits; in whose soul, through agonizing feelings and sensations, everything that had previously entered this soul in earlier earthly lives played itself out. — Then Thomas Campanella is freed from prison by Pope Urban, goes to Paris, finds favor with Richelieu there, receives a pension, and lives out his final earthly days in Paris.

[ 26 ] This is what is peculiar: that Jewish rabbi whom he met in Cosenza—and through whom his thinking was colored in a Kabbalistic way, so that much more lived within him than would otherwise have been possible—that Jewish Kabbalist is the reincarnated man from the first incarnation and the woman from the second incarnation that I have described.

[ 27 ] Thus we see an interplay, and when both have once again passed through the gate of death—Thomas Campanella and his friend, the Jewish rabbi—we see that within the individuality that was ultimately Thomas Campanella, a remarkable opposition develops against what he had absorbed in earlier earthly lives. And he now feels so strongly that he says to himself: What might have become of all this if I had not languished for years in the dungeon in darkness, where I could only look out through hatches into the natural sunlight! — But he gradually begins to feel a kind of rejection, an antipathy toward what he had previously held as a spiritual worldview in pre-Christian times, in the first centuries. And so we see here the remarkable phenomenon that, as the age of the conscious soul approaches, an individuality continues to develop in the supersensible realm that actually becomes hostile to what was earlier spirituality.

[ 28 ] You see, my dear friends, this is actually what has happened to many souls. Even before their earthly life, while living the supersensible life in the Age of the Consciousness Soul, they became hostile toward their earlier spiritual experiences, because it is truly difficult to carry into a present earthly body what was previously experienced spiritually. The present earthly body and the present earthly education simply lead people toward rationalism and intellectualism.

[ 29 ] And now this individuality—who had been Thomas Campanella in his last incarnation—saw, in the life that followed the Campanella life, the only possibility of achieving balance in a relatively premature new earthly life. But this did not come about so easily given the circumstances at hand. For on the one hand, this personality was still developing extraordinarily strongly in the supersensible realm, delving into the element of consciousness of the first stage of the soul’s development—into rationalism and intellectualism. And precisely during the retrospective reliving of the time of captivity, the former visionary nature, the spiritual insight, kept asserting itself again and again.

[ 30 ] She had, so to speak, imbued her soul with every inclination toward intellectual acumen—this individuality that rejected the past and in which, strangely enough, this aversion to the past gradually took shape in a very personal way, in a very individual way. An antipathy developed toward that pre-Christian incarnation of womanhood and, with it, an aversion to women themselves. Here, the aversion to women actually permeated the personal and individual sphere. And as is the nature of karma, rather than something remaining theoretical, it becomes a personal matter, a matter of personal temperament, personal sympathy or antipathy—in this case, antipathy.

[ 31 ] Now the opportunity arose for this soul to live out its earthly life once more in free interaction with the world—a life it had spent in captivity during its last incarnation as Campanella.

[ 32 ] So please, understand this correctly. Now the other personality did not come along, because there was no reason for her to do so. So now this individuality—who had gone through three earthly lives, in which the other personality had always been something that supported and guided her life—was given the opportunity to experience in an earthly life what she had missed out on in the Campanella life due to her twenty-seven years of captivity. What she had missed in the darkness of captivity presented itself as an opportunity to be lived through in a new earthly life.

[ 33 ] “What was the result, after everything else had happened, my dear friends, what was the result?” Now imagine this: When Campanella was about thirty years old, this captivity befell him. Imagine the state of maturity of a person in the Renaissance era in his thirties. Imagine this: what was neglected back then is now having an effect, while everything else—the spiritual and the rational—shines in, radiating from the outside. All around there is light, and only these years of imprisonment are darkness. Everything shines in, everything radiates in a jumble. Amidst this jumble, clairvoyance and misogyny—arising from what I have described to you—shine through, but so does a very keen intelligence. All of this intertwines, intertwines in the way that can occur as a result of the maturation process of a Renaissance person in their thirties.

[ 34 ] This is reborn in the second-to-last decade of the nineteenth century, toward the end of that decade. What is actually intended for a later stage of life is born into the child’s body. Now he is born again in a male incarnation. It is, after all, merely a repetition of the period of captivity: such is the workings of karma in this case. No wonder the boy is reborn extraordinarily precocious. Of course, these are merely the child’s natural growth forces, but combined with what was missed during captivity—the maturity of one’s thirties—he is precocious! Such are the workings of karma.

[ 35 ] A curious inclination emerges in this—a “catching up” on life, I would say. The old astrological views are dawning once more, the old spiritual views of nature as a whole, which were indeed so magnificent in this individuality during the early Christian centuries. Admittedly, it emerges in a childlike way, but it lives so strongly within him that he has a veritable aversion to the mathematically structured natural sciences. And when he then enters high school in the 1890s, he excels in the humanities—everything that is not natural science or mathematics. But what is curious for those who are able to assess karmic connections, I would say that what is truly both delightful and disconcerting in this perspective is that, in the blink of an eye, in addition to the modern languages—French and Italian—he quickly learns Spanish in order to bring into his mindset—if I may use the expression—what had previously filled him with indignation against Spanish rule, to refresh that memory.

[ 36 ] See how karma works here, how it influences this individual! It is striking that this boy, outside of school—simply because his father happens to have a fondness for it (which, in turn, is a result of karma)—is quickly learning Spanish, mastering such a distant language at such a young age. This means a complete influence on his entire soul. So that this underlying tone of his imprisonment—even though it was filled with indignation against the Spaniards—resurfaces in his soul as the Spanish language comes alive within him and permeates his ideas and thoughts. Precisely what was most bitter for him during this captivity enters that subconscious realm where language reigns supreme. It is only when he enters university that he engages somewhat with the natural sciences, because the times demand it. If one wishes to be an educated person in our time, one must know at least something about the natural sciences.

[ 37 ] Now I must tell you who it is, because I have to continue the story: It is the unfortunate Otzo Weininger.

[ 38 ] And now, after Otto Weininger has caught up on the natural sciences at the university, he brings forth everything that is seething within him—and seething as intensely as only an earthly life can, one that is a repetition of a gap in the previous one— he now channels all of that—while earning his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Vienna—into his doctoral dissertation, which he then, after receiving his degree, expands into a substantial book: Sex and Character.

[ 39 ] In this book, Sex and Character, everything that was there before is now simmering beneath the surface. At times, one catches glimpses of Campanella’s utopianism intertwined with ancient views that manifest themselves in a wondrous way. What is morality? Weininger answers this question by saying: The light that appears in nature is the outward manifestation of morality. Whoever knows the light knows morality. Therefore, the source of immorality on earth must be sought in the deep-sea fauna and flora, which live without light. — And you’ll find wonderful intuitions in his work, such as this one: one should look at the dog with its peculiar physiognomy. What does it reveal? That something is missing from it, that it has lost something: it has lost its freedom.

[ 40 ] And so, in this Weininger, you can indeed find something of the mystical, mixed with extreme rationalism, and you can also find hatred for that which was his in an earlier incarnation—hatred that now finds expression not in hatred for what he knew, but in hatred for his female incarnation, which is given free rein in his misogyny—which borders on the absurd—in the work Sex and Character. All of this shows you how much spirituality can exist within a soul, how all of this could have come together in the supersensible world in the era leading up to the Age of the Conscious Soul, alongside intellectualism; yet how it cannot find expression in the present age, even though it longs to do so—even if the life lived in this way is, so to speak, merely a repetition of lost time from the past.

[ 41 ] Weininger exhibited peculiar inclinations, which are, once again, extraordinarily significant for those capable of grasping karmic connections. His biographer describes how, toward the end of his life, he developed the habit of peering through very thin holes he made himself from a dark room out into a lit area, and that this gave him particular pleasure. There, one sees his innermost, most immediate habits of life—the entire life of the dungeon—shining through once more.

[ 42 ] Now consider how southern Italy was connected to this life. That is where the events took place that led him into this earthly life.

[ 43 ] There is just one more small thing I must mention, which is, in turn, extraordinarily important for those who study karma. Of course, Weininger was also among Nietzsche’s readers. And just imagine the whole atmosphere that lived within Weininger’s soul as he read Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil! Nietzsche’s assertion and elaboration that “truth is a woman” struck his soul like a bomb. What I have already described to you was thus completely colored by misogyny.

[ 44 ] He is now twenty-two years old, in his twenty-third year. All of this has had an effect on him. Strange habits are taking root in his soul. Is it any wonder that a life lived as if in captivity is painfully moved by the sunset, which reminds him of the approaching darkness? That is why Weininger always finds sunsets unbearable. But, my dear friends, he possesses, within his youthful body, the maturity of a man in his thirties. Certainly, when less gifted people are haughty and vain, it is not a pleasant thing; but here, considering his entire karma, one understands why he considered himself something special.

[ 45 ] Of course, he also exhibited a wide variety of abnormalities, for this life was a repetition of a life spent in prison. In such circumstances, one does not always engage in entirely ordinary, normal activities. When these are karmically fulfilled, one can easily give an ordinary psychiatrist the impression of being an epileptic. Weininger did just that. But this “epilepsy” was the repetition of life in a dungeon; it consisted of defense mechanisms that now made no sense in a life of freedom, but were simply the karmic repetitions of that dungeon life. He was not an ordinary epileptic. And let us not be surprised that, in the early 1920s, he suddenly felt the urge to set off on a headlong journey to Italy all by himself, spurred solely by something entirely indefinable. During this trip, he wrote a truly wonderful little book, On the Last Things, which contains descriptions of an elemental nature that seem as if someone were trying to caricature the accounts of Atlantis—absolutely magnificent, but of course, from a psychiatric standpoint, completely insane. But one must view this from a karmic perspective. He travels to Italy on a whim and returns, spending some time near Vienna in Brunn am Gebirge. Upon returning from Italy, he jots down a few more thoughts that had occurred to him during his Italian journey—brilliant ideas about the harmony between the moral and the natural—then rents a room in the house where Beethoven died, lives there for a few days in Beethoven’s death chamber, and—having now lived through the captivity of his past—shoots himself. His karma was fulfilled. He shot himself out of an inner compulsion, because he believed he would become a very bad person if he were to continue living. He simply no longer had the option to continue living, because his karma had been fulfilled.

[ 46 ] My dear friends, look at Otto Weininger’s works from this perspective. See all the obstacles faced by a soul that has been transplanted—even in such an abnormal way—from the Renaissance era into the present; see the obstacles it faces in finding the spiritual, even though it possesses so much of the spiritual at its core, in the unconscious of its soul, and draw from this the conclusion as to what obstacles exist in the Michael Age that prevent one from fully meeting the demands of this Michael Age.

[ 47 ] For, of course, it would also have been conceivable that, had the Weininger soul been able to embrace spiritual worldviews, it could have continued its development nonetheless, rather than having to end the repetition of a life of captivity through suicide.

[ 48 ] But it is indeed significant to trace how ancient spirituality developed within the human soul right up to modern times and then came to a halt; and it is indeed significant to see, precisely through such interesting phenomena, how this halt occurred.

[ 49 ] I believe it was possible to gain a deep insight into karmic connections—including those that shed light on certain karmic aspects of contemporary spiritual life—by examining these four successive incarnations of a truly extraordinary individual, whose life spans from the sixth century before the Mystery of Golgotha to the present day. This spans the period of time that encompasses everything we must consider if we are to understand life in the present.

[ 50 ] Today we have examined a case that teaches us just what a soul can go through in this age. I much prefer to describe such things based on the soul’s actual experiences rather than through abstract discussions.

[ 51 ] With that, I have concluded this part of the series for now, and I will wrap up this lecture series on Tuesday during the evening lecture, which will be the last of these member lectures.