The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eleventh Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday we began discussing the connection between human life here on Earth—from birth to death—and the other human life in the supersensible world—from death to a new birth—in relation to karma. We have seen that a person’s karma is shaped by what they have experienced, done, thought, and felt in their previous earthly life and in a series of successive earthly lives, and by what is then shaped and formed as the foundation for their experiences in a future earthly life through their interaction with other human souls with whom they are karmically connected, and subsequently with the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies. Through this, as we saw, the historical life of humanity becomes transparent. We see, as it were, every single human being—whether they accomplish something outstanding and world-shaping, or whether they work within small circles—against the backdrop of a comprehensive spiritual event. We have seen, in particular, how the contemplation of human destiny—once we begin to understand it—appears to us as the outer, earthly expression of a mighty, universal event lying behind it, even in the spiritual world. We have thus shown how it is the human being himself who carries into a later epoch of Earth history what took place in an earlier one and brings it to fruition. It is through the human being, then, that the interconnections of historical development come about, and I believe that such a historical perspective can have an uplifting effect on people. Indeed, the way in which we perceive our own karma—how we can immerse ourselves in this personal karma—is truly understood when we first—before delving into the experience of individual karma in the following lectures—examine, specifically through personalities whose lives are more or less widely known, how the effects of a single earthly life shape subsequent earthly lives.

[ 2 ] We have seen from examples how the entire spiritual nature and the spiritual beings belonging to a planetary sphere influence what a human being, upon passing through the gate of death and continuing to live in the spiritual world, brings with them into that spiritual world. We have made observations about how the sphere of Jupiter exerts its peculiar influence. Even more profound in its peculiarity is the sphere of Saturn; even more profound is the way in which Saturn exerts its influence. As you know—I have mentioned this—even with the insight gained through initiation, which enables one to survey all connections independently, one must look back from an age beyond sixty-three to the period of life from fifty-six to sixty-three in order to assess what can act upon the human being from the sphere of Saturn, can be assessed within the overall context of the spiritual life and weaving of the universe. For everything that acts in connection with the sphere of Saturn is such that, within the sphere of Saturn itself, there is actually a strong, penetrating consciousness among all beings regarding the past, while more or less unconsciousness prevails regarding the present. This makes a profound impression. In their present actions—including the work of the Seraphim—the Saturn beings actually act as if from a state of unconsciousness; they do not, so to speak, know immediately what is happening to them and through them at the present moment; but they know instantly—and with penetrating clarity—what they have done and thought, and what has happened to them, once it has happened.

[ 3 ] I would like to use an image to describe this peculiar way of being in the sphere of Saturn. Imagine you were walking around as a human being on Earth, never knowing in the present moment what you are doing, what you are thinking, or what is happening to you or through you at all, but you were walking—let’s take a simple example—somewhere. As you walk, you don’t see yourself, but you leave traces behind: let’s say a little snowman forms from your immediate position just a moment ago. You take another step: another little snowman; one more step: another little snowman, and so on. In this way, you are constantly captured in a three-dimensional form, and you can look back precisely at what you were. Even in the very moment when something happens through you, you see it as it is, as it remains, as it takes its place within the eternal. And you look back into a perspective, recorded as in an eternal chronicle within the universe, of everything that has happened through you. For such is the self-consciousness of the Saturn beings. But everything that is viewed in this way by the Saturn beings as past becoming is, in turn, connected with the past becoming of all individual beings of the entire planetary system, so that, so to speak, the consciousness of the Saturn beings consists in their looking back at every moment upon the entire memory—if I may put it that way—of the entire living planetary system, in all its beings, within their capacity for remembrance. Everything is recorded in this cosmic-universal capacity for remembrance of the Saturn beings.

[ 4 ] If the initiated observer is already profoundly shaken by the discovery of the weaving and nature of the Saturn sphere, this is even more so when he now sees how those beings carry the effects of their previous earthly lives into a new earthly life, after having had to work through their karma within the Saturn sphere through their specific experiences. And indeed, the contemplation of the universe gains immensely in majestic, awe-inspiring depth when one knows this from the perspective of a historical figure.

[ 5 ] If one considers the lives of such personalities here on Earth—viewing them spiritually, not merely taking them at face value but truly understanding them—one is led upward into the life and essence of the Saturn sphere. Our understanding of the spiritual gains immensely when we see the Saturn sphere at work. It sees itself working down upon the Earth, influencing what happens here; it sees here a reflection of what is taking place in the Saturn sphere. I would like to illustrate this with an example.

[ 6 ] One can look at a human individuality that lived out its life in southern Europe during the first and second centuries of the Christian era, when Greek culture still exerted a strong influence on the course of Christian development; which at that time possessed a strong, refined, and somewhat intellectually tinged receptivity of the soul toward Greek-influenced Christianity, and which, having been transplanted into the Roman Empire, endured everything that one could possibly endure during the early centuries of Christianity’s spread throughout the Roman Empire: the persecutions of Christians with their injustice, the acts of violence by the Roman Empire, everything inherent in the way the Roman Empire generally behaved toward more refined people; a soul that had endured, in the deepest sense, what could be witnessed there with indignation, and who had actually passed through death at that time with a resigned disposition, asking herself: Can a world in which such things are possible truly make any progress? — From its contemplation of the Roman Empire, this soul arrived at a certain doubt as to whether there is any balance at all between good and evil in the world; and before its spiritual, before its soulful gaze stood, on the one hand, the evil of the Caesars and, on the other, the essence of individual Christian martyrs cast into martyrdom. In stark, jarring contrast, this soul saw the good on one side and the evil on the other. With this impression, it passed through the gate of death and then went on to live through less significant earthly lives. For what had been heaped upon this soul during that earthly life in the Greco-Roman era had carved deep furrows in its soul life. It was this that, as the eighteenth century approached, was further elaborated within the sphere of Saturn to become further karma for this individuality.

[ 7 ] The sphere of Saturn works earnestly and intensely to shape karma. And precisely when it comes to grasping the very depths of the human soul and developing powerful, radical forces from the very depths of the human soul, it imparts these powerful forces—because everything that happens within the sphere of Saturn is deeply spiritual, intensely spiritual, but so spiritual that it also intervenes much more deeply when the human being descends into an earthly form; it penetrates deeply, deeply into the physical organization. A physical organization comes into being that is driven by a desire to balance what the soul has experienced in a previous earthly life. There is a strong looking back. For when karma is worked out within the Saturn sphere, one looks back on memories, on the past—this is how the being takes shape in the Saturn sphere; one looks back there. Then, when the human being descends into the earthly sphere, the negative reflection of what was experienced there manifests itself in a certain sense. This intense looking back transforms into an energetic striving toward ideals that look forward, toward the future, so that precisely those who bring the working out of their karma down from the Saturn sphere are people enthusiastic about the future—that is, they want to work toward ideals that strive toward the future—because in the Saturn sphere, in a purely spiritual life, they looked primarily into the past.

[ 8 ] This individuality of which I speak here emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century in the person of Friedrich Schiller. And now take Schiller’s entire life—take it as it appeared, with the immensely powerful, though artistically perhaps very weak, style of Schiller’s early dramas, with all that fiery passion—but add to that the immense seriousness, one might say the immense melancholy that rests upon Schiller’s soul, and see, in particular, how the poignancy of his youthful fate emerges precisely from his underlying melancholic state of mind; see, in turn, his gradual working toward a kind of enthusiastic conception of Greek culture as he became acquainted with Goethe; see all of this as the foreground, and behind it, see the man who acquired the foundation for this worldview in the first and second centuries of Christianity—on the one hand through the experience of Greek Christianity, and on the other hand through his indignation at Roman Caesarism—and how everything is then deepened into a new karma within the seemingly so serious sphere of Saturn. Schiller is truly a Saturnian being by virtue of his karma.

[ 9 ] These things are not experienced properly by the soul if it is content to listen to them merely in a theoretical way. They are only truly grasped by the soul when they are taken in with the whole mind, when one first immerses the mind in this entire spiritual being and life in the world of the stars—here in the sphere of Saturn—and when, after having deepened the mind to comprehend an earthly working of destiny, one then looks upon such an earthly working of destiny.

[ 10 ] I would like to give another example, one that, in turn, had an entirely different effect. Here we can look at an individual who, in a previous earthly life not long ago, even counted to a certain degree among the Initiates. But before I speak of this human karma, I must raise a question that everyone who reflects on matters such as those we are now discussing must ask themselves—and which many of you have certainly already asked yourselves. It is the question that arises when you listen to what is said in anthroposophical reflections: that in the earthly evolution of humanity there have been initiates into the great mysteries of existence, those initiated into earthly wisdom. We do, after all, look upon these ancient initiates in the development of humanity with immense respect and deep reverence. When we speak of reincarnation—of repeated earthly lives—the question naturally arises: What about the reincarnation of these initiates? — And the question can go further and be posed as follows: Are there not, in fact, reincarnated initiates living in the present? Should the initiates have withdrawn completely from the world in which we now live—between birth and death—precisely for the present time?

[ 11 ] That is by no means the case. But we must not forget that when a human being descends as an individual from the spiritual-soul existence prior to earthly life into an earthly existence, they are bound to whatever a given age can offer them even within our physical body, and then to upbringing and similar factors. These things must be accepted by the one who reincarnates within the earthly realm. We can certainly look at any initiated individual—say, in ancient times—whose karma is to return later, in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. But in the eighteenth century, nowhere within earthly civilization are there bodies such as existed in those ancient, distant times—bodies that are so malleable and adaptable to the human-spiritual individuality. It is, after all, merely a prejudice of a degenerate science that the human body has remained the same since time immemorial. In fact, in the age of materialism, it has become hard, inflexible, and unplastic; it is not easy to work with. The hereditary conditions—which, after all, are connected to the mindset, the entire inner state of the human soul—are such that—the individual is not to blame for this; the entire civilization is at fault—one cannot immerse oneself into the physical organism with a part of what one carries in the soul from the time of initiation, and therefore cannot bring it into one’s own immediate consciousness, for one can only bring into immediate external temporal consciousness that which allows one to immerse oneself completely in the physical body.

[ 12 ] Yes, I must say something quite paradoxical here, but you’ll have to accept this paradox because it is, after all, the truth. You see, the initiates in ancient, bygone times were spared something that is regarded today as a great blessing for the human race, but which, had it happened to them back then, would have been regarded by those initiates not at all as a blessing, but as a major obstacle to initiation. Today, we would not allow a person—just like an initiate of the ancient times—to be spared from learning to read and write in the way that we learn today. Much is lost in the way we learn to read and write today: this being forced into letter forms with which we have absolutely no human connection. Just as the Europeans—these “superior people” compared to the “savages,” the American Indians—showed their letter forms to the Indians when they, these superior people, came over to the “savage” Indians, so too did those Indians feel a quiet fear and dread of them, and they regarded the letters as little goblins and demons. So, something that contains little goblins—which is completely unnatural—is what a person is led to in the sixth or seventh year of life: something as alien as all these letter forms of our writing. What on earth does an A or a B, in the form we are forced to accept as children, have to do with human life? Nothing at all, not the slightest bit! In ancient Egypt, at least, they had a pictographic script in which the image that was drawn bore a resemblance to reality, and children were also made aware that what was drawn there had a connection to reality. Today, we learn A, B, C as something completely alien to life. At the Waldorf School, we want to correct these major mistakes; that is why this different way of learning to read and write has been introduced in our school, among other things. But one cannot assess all that is driven out of a person, all that is killed within them, when one learns to read and write in this way—not if one has only the desire to judge everything materialistically, to live in the world solely with ordinary consciousness.

[ 13 ] You see, I wasn’t offended by it, but many other people were: In my “Life Story,” I’ve made it clear enough that at fifteen I still couldn’t spell correctly. I owe an extraordinary amount to that. I was spared from many things from which one is not spared if one can already write with proper spelling at the age of fifteen. One is, in fact, virtually cut off from spiritual life by many things that stem directly from the materialistic education of the time. It is a much more serious matter than one might think. I mention this so that you may see that the initiate of old can only make use of the education offered to him. What else can he do but adapt himself to the body and soul of his age? In doing so, he must leave behind much of what is inherent in his soul. Nevertheless, the karmic connection to the former initiation will be perfectly transparent in the manifestations of life that can emerge in a particular age—even in a person who outwardly appears to be an ordinary earthly citizen, and not at all like an initiate. In karma, after all, it is not really what one initially believes to be the most influential factor in human life that is at work. For example, when one is faced with a person of a certain mental disposition, if one judges karma purely intellectually, one is very easily inclined to attribute it to a similar mental constitution in a previous earthly life. But that is not the case. The factors that become karmically active and carry over from one earthly life into the next lie in much deeper regions of the soul than the configuration of the intellect. I need only give you one example, and you will see that what influences karma comes from regions of the soul other than those related merely to the intellect.

[ 14 ] Ernst Haeckel was certainly an interesting figure of the nineteenth century. What struck people most about Ernst Haeckel was his materialistically nuanced worldview and his struggle against ultramontanism, the Roman papacy, and the Roman Catholic Church. He developed such enthusiasm for this struggle that the language he used in it was sometimes quite delightful, but at other times also in poor taste. But if one looks back into his karma, one finds that his most significant previous earthly incarnation was Pope Gregory—the great, powerful pope who sought to establish the external, secular dominion of the papacy in opposition to the external imperial authority; Pope Gregory, who emerged as Hildebrand from the Cluniac Reform, which—albeit in its own way—waged this struggle against the imperial authority from the tenth to the eleventh century, until one of their own became Pope, who at first also rebelled in his own way against secular rule, against the imperial authority of that time. The enthusiasm for pushing through a worldview, the enthusiasm for realizing impulses arising from a worldview—that was what worked its way from the Hildebrand incarnation into the Haeckel incarnation. This is just one example of why one must by no means believe that a past earthly life—which is decisive—can be deduced from an external assessment of any soul configuration. One must be cautious in this regard and focus on those things which, in reality, are sometimes perceived as minute details observable in a person but must be grasped through spiritual insight—and which then gradually reveal, behind the person, what was present in his or her previous earthly life.

[ 15 ] Well, you see, Saturn karma has a particularly profound effect. I would like to draw your attention to an individual who was truly an initiate in a previous incarnation. I am speaking truly objectively in this case, and it took me some effort to uncover the truth I am now about to present, because I actually did not find this individual at all likable in their new incarnation—and still do not find them likable to this day. After all, this is simply a matter of stating objective facts, and—even though it takes effort—one can actually gain a clearer understanding of the karma of individuals with whom one has no personal affinity, with a greater likelihood of accuracy. Here I would like to direct your attention to an individual who was truly an initiate in a previous earthly life—specifically, an initiate in a type of mystery that was something great and mighty in the history of human development: an initiate in the Irish mysteries, in the mysteries of Hybernia, to which I alluded in my mystery drama. In these mysteries, one had to undergo many trials before being initiated into that form of wisdom which was to be received specifically in these Irish mysteries. The one who wished to be initiated first had to experience, on the one hand, all the doubts that can accumulate in the human soul regarding the great truths; the student was, so to speak, trained to doubt everything as strongly as one possibly can—to doubt even the highest truths. And only after one had gone through all of that in one’s soul—the pain, the inner tragedy, the despondency, I would say the inner crushing—everything one can experience in doubting the highest truths—only then was one led, first figuratively and imaginatively and then in spiritual reality, to a true grasp of the truth. Thus, everyone who had been initiated into the Hyrberian Mysteries had learned not only to believe in the truth, but also not to believe in the truth. Only through this could the unshakable nature of their adherence to the truth prove itself to be life-affirming.

[ 16 ] Yet another feeling was evoked in those who sought the initiatory wisdom of Hybernia. They were led to the realization that, in fact, all existence could be like earthly existence: an illusion, not true existence. Human beings were led not only to doubt the truth, but to sense the nothingness in human existence, the non-being in human existence. And then, in the face of the ever-renewing etheric forces and the physical forces that are in the process of destruction, but are constantly reshaped by the spiritual, from the spiritual side—confronted with all the destructive and reconstructive forces that permeate life—after his mind had been put into the right frame of mind to fully engage with imagination in this matter, he was led before two mighty, colossal statues. And he was prompted to press one of the statues: time and again the statue returned to its original form, for this statue was designed to be completely elastic; whatever he had pressed into it always returned to its original state. The statue repeatedly retained its shape, yet to him it seemed as if it were alive. And because of the solemn atmosphere into which he had first been immersed upon experiencing this immediate sensation through touch, he was made aware of the distinctive nature of the living. The other statue was constructed in such a way that, if one tried to press on it, whatever was pressed into it remained there, causing it to become deformed; only when one was led back to it the next day was it restored. The inner constitution of the physical and the etheric—that is, something of the truth of self-perception—unfolded before the students.

[ 17 ] That was the first stage. Then they were led before other images, being guided ever deeper into an active understanding of their inner constitution. These disciples of Hybernia did, in fact, embody within their soul’s constitution that which is called spiritual reality. Once they had reached certain degrees of initiation, they no longer paid much attention to external physical reality, but the Hybernian initiates knew how to live within spiritual reality. For in a sacred site in Hybernia, while the Mystery of Golgotha was unfolding in our physical reality in the physical world over in Asia, the high priesthood of Hybernia brought the ritual acts to such a climax that at the very same time the Mystery of Golgotha was taking place in Palestine in outer physical reality, over in the sacred site of Ireland, the Mystery of Golgotha was simultaneously celebrated as a ritual act. That is to say, in Hybernia, a physical fact occurring across the Earth was experienced as a spiritual one at another location on Earth. This is meant to give you an idea of the depth to which these Hybernian Mysteries actually led.

[ 18 ] Now there is an individual who, to a certain degree, was initiated into these Hybernian mysteries at a very early time and later underwent a female incarnation; but that one incarnation in Hybernia had a profound, profound effect on the soul. Then, in a life between death and rebirth, this individuality underwent what one experiences when passing through a Saturn-based processing of karma. There, the full significance of the soul’s achievements—which could be attained in a Hybernian initiation (not the highest, but an initiation to a certain degree)—was viewed retrospectively from a perspective aligned with universal events. The full significance of what could be learned in Hybernia was seen in relation to the entire past activity of the human being. How this Hybernia had gradually developed out of human longings spanning centuries and millennia was worked out there in a magnificent cosmic retrospective. But it was precisely this individuality that, as the modern era approached, was destined to have just such a human body and to receive just such a human education—in which the most important aspects of this heritage are concealed, yet which, at the same time, lived out its life in harmony with nineteenth-century civilization. And once again, what the soul had brought with it in this retrospective view—upon descending into a physical body that was truly not very suitable, and into an upbringing that was entirely unsuited to what had been experienced in Irish initiation and shaped by Saturn—was transformed into ideals that worked their way into the future. But because it had to immerse itself in a body that was not like the very remarkable bodies of the ancient Irish initiates, but rather like the body of a nineteenth-century Frenchman, much of it receded into the background, yet transformed into vivid but fantastical images that nevertheless possess something compelling and magnificent. This individuality then became the personality of Victor Hugo.

[ 19 ] Once again, you can see that even when two successive earthly lives are as dissimilar as those of the Irish initiate and Victor Hugo, karma continues to exert its influence. For one must not seek the effects of karma in outward similarities, but must look to that which is carried over from one earthly life to the next through karma in the depths of the human being. To look even at the karma of the individual human being—indeed, at one’s own karma—requires, even today, the right mood and the right state of mind. In fact, any consideration of karma is profaned when it is received in the mood that arises from today’s cultural context, civilization, modern education, and so on. Taking views on karma into the soul should actually take place on the foundation of a sacred mood, a thoroughly devout mood. In fact, every time one approaches a karmic truth, one should feel something in the soul as if one were lifting a corner of the veil of Isis. For, fundamentally speaking, it is precisely karma that reveals, in a way most accessible to human beings, what Isis was—she whose motto, characterizing her outwardly, was: “I am what was, what is, and what will be.” But this comes to meet us in a way that must now speak to the human soul when we contemplate human karma. And it is only when we look at karma—as we have just done—as it unfolds in the course of world history, and thereby acquire the necessary sacred mood for contemplating karma, only then can one look in the right way, with the right spiritual disposition, at what may be one’s own destiny, and at how this destiny, as one’s own karma, has taken shape and been formed from earlier earthly lives in conjunction with what the human being has experienced between death and a new birth in the spiritual stellar spheres. One is gazing with one’s entire human being toward the supersensible worlds when one reads karma in the right frame of mind. For karmic contemplations acquaint us with a lawfulness that is entirely opposite to the lawfulness in outer nature. In external nature, natural interrelationships are at work, but one must transcend these natural interrelationships entirely and be able to look up toward spiritual interrelationships if one wishes to grasp the laws of karmic action with the eye of the soul. The best way to prepare for this, of course, is to contemplate karma that shines brightly throughout world history, so that from there we may receive the light for what must be significant to us in the experience of our own karma—for the contemplation of our own karma. And it was precisely by showing you the effects of karma in world history as manifested in characteristic personalities that I wished to prepare your mindset for other reflections on karma in the coming days.