The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Karmic Reflections on the Historical Development of Humanity I

[ 1 ] The truth of repeated earthly lives has been expressed in an extraordinarily compelling way within German intellectual life. And indeed, within the anthroposophical movement, attention has been drawn to this radical affirmation of repeated earthly lives by Lessing. From Lessing, at the very height of his development, we have the significant treatise On the Education of the Human Race, and at the end of this treatise we find this affirmation of repeated earthly lives. In sentences that sound monumental, he points out how the historical development of humanity can only be understood by recognizing that the individual human personality passes through repeated earthly lives, thereby carrying over into the next epoch what can be experienced and accomplished in a given epoch of human development. One need only consider two facts in this regard. Consider that one can bring to bear all manner of conceptual influences, material effects, and so on, to explain in the course of history how the later arises from the earlier. In doing so, one dabbles, so to speak, quite heavily in abstractions. The real fact is this: that the same human individualities who, let us say, at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, also lived in earlier epochs; they absorbed in those earlier epochs what was taking place in their surroundings, what they experienced with the people around them; they then carried this through the gateway of death into the spiritual world, where one lives between death and a new birth, have brought it back down into a new earthly life, and are thus themselves the bearers of what takes place from one epoch to another in the development of humanity.

[ 2 ] Human individualities constantly carry the past into the future. This is a fact that, when taken in all seriousness, can fill the soul with a certain religious devotion. And the other fact is this: all of us sitting here need only, so to speak, turn our gaze inward and say to ourselves: We ourselves have been here on Earth many times, and who we are today is the result of our previous earthly lives. Thus, when one casts one’s gaze upon the whole of history and then turns it back to one’s own experience, the fact of repeated earthly lives can truly instill a profound sense of religious insight into the soul. Lessing must have felt something like this when he said: “Is this truth of repeated earthly lives to be considered foolish simply because people arrived at it in those primeval times when their souls were not yet distorted or misled?” — Lessing then concludes with the monumental sentence that expresses what dawned on him from the awareness of the two facts I have mentioned: “Is not all eternity mine?!”

[ 3 ] The thread of intellectual development that could have been introduced into German intellectual history at that time, building on Lessing’s The Education of the Human Race, was not continued; it was severed. And the 19th century would likely have regarded the continuation of this thread as something not entirely sensible.

[ 4 ] My dear friends, when we set out in Berlin more than two decades ago to begin the anthroposophical work within the Theosophical Society—when the first meeting was held to establish what was then called the German Section of the Theosophical Society—one of the first lectures announced on the program by me was: “On Practical Karma Exercises.” At that time, the aim had been to introduce the idea of karma into the anthroposophical movement immediately and with such inner impetus that it could, so to speak, have become one of the great guiding themes from which the anthroposophical movement developed. But when I spoke to a few people—the “celebrities” of the time who had come over from the old Theosophical Society—about what I actually meant by this title, I was generally attacked. They declared that such a thing could not be possible at all. And in fact—not that I mean to say these people were right—but in general, the time had simply not yet come to speak to a wider circle about esoteric truths in a truly compelling way. And if one begins to speak—not in general abstractions, but in concrete terms—about development in karma and its significance for the historical life of humanity, then one cannot do so without delving deeply into the esoteric, without truly addressing concrete esoteric concepts. Therefore, in a certain sense, everything that had been developed in the field of anthroposophy within the Anthroposophical Society was a preparation that had become necessary because, at that time, the necessary maturity was not yet present within that society.

[ 5 ] But the time must eventually come when we can begin to speak concretely and esoterically about karmic truths and their connection to the historical development of humanity. To wait any longer today would be a dereliction of duty within the anthroposophical movement. That is why it was also part of the intentions of the Goetheanum Christmas Conference to no longer hold back on what can indeed be investigated in genuine spiritual research—even regarding these more intimate questions of humanity’s historical development. And in the future of the anthroposophical movement, attention will now be directed toward what the spirits will, rather than toward what people, out of a certain fearful caution, consider to be untimely or inopportune. Precisely in this regard, the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum signifies not merely something that is, so to speak, only qualitatively significant for the Anthroposophical Society, but also something that is intended to be a beginning with regard to the intensification of anthroposophical work. From this perspective—which must become a perspective of the anthroposophical movement—I would like to address today’s anthroposophical reflection to you.

[ 6 ] My dear friends, we are looking into the broader events unfolding in history. We observe how individual figures in this or that field set the tone. We must realize that a historical figure—one who, in the most immediate, not-too-distant past, inaugurated that which influences our lives today—can only be understood—and that history itself can only be properly understood from this perspective—if anthroposophical research sets out to look into the earlier earthly lives of such historical figures. But something else follows from this as well. It follows that, by observing the figures history tells us about, we become aware of the processes of human destiny as they unfold through various earthly lives, and we can use the light this sheds on karma to illuminate our own personal destiny. And this is extraordinarily important. For reflections on karma must not be undertaken for the sake of sensationalism, but only to shed deeper light on human interrelationships and the experiences of individual human souls. We see, for example, how—especially in the last two-thirds of the 19th century—a very specific general state of mind, one with a materialistic hue, emerged; how this state of mind continued in a certain way into the 20th century; and how this state of mind is the very one that ultimately contributed to all that is chaotic and and confusing in human culture and civilization today. And since we see how what emerged—particularly within German spiritual life—after the first third of the 19th century had passed differs radically from what had previously been the fundamental tone and character of that spiritual life, we ask about its origin. In these last two-thirds of the 19th century, we see personalities emerge whose individualities must interest us, whose individualities we are compelled to trace back to their earlier earthly lives.

[ 7 ] The perspective of someone capable of conducting such research is initially drawn away from the general character of our age—not so much toward the Christian past lives of the personalities appearing in it, but rather toward non-Christian past lives. Since this roughly corresponds to what we can record as the time intervals between successive earthly lives, it stands to reason to go back to the very comprehensive spiritual movement that arose half a millennium after the founding of Christianity—to go back to Islam, to Arab culture. Christianity initially spread from Asia—a little, I might say, taking hold of North African civilization, across Spain to Western Europe, and continued to spread through Eastern Europe and Central Europe; but this spread was, so to speak, flanked by Arabism, which advanced on the one hand through Asia Minor—with Islam serving as its driving force—and on the other hand across Africa to Italy and Spain. And you can see from external history the clash between European civilization and Arabism in the various wars that have taken place between Europe and Arabism. Here, too, the question is: Yes, what are the real, concrete facts; what actually underlies this in terms of the development of the human soul?

[ 8 ] Now let us take a closer look at such concrete facts. We see, for example, that at the very same time when—one might say—Charlemagne was at the forefront of events in Western Europe, under what were quite primitive civilizational conditions, the court of Harun al-Rashid was flourishing brilliantly over in Asia. And gathered at the court of Harun al-Rashid were indeed the greatest minds of that era—those who had deeply absorbed into their souls all that could emerge from Eastern wisdom, yet who had also synthesized with that Eastern wisdom the contributions that had come from the Greek world. At his court, Harun al-Rashid fostered an intellectual life that encompassed architecture, astronomy as understood in that era, geography as vibrantly practiced at that time, mathematics, poetry, chemistry, and medicine—and for all these fields, he had indeed gathered the most outstanding representatives of his age at his court. He was an energetic patron to these scholars, a figure who provided a solid foundation for what I would call a truly admirable cultural center that existed during the 8th and 9th centuries A.D. And we see, for example, when we consider the court of Harun al-Rashid, how a remarkable individual lived there—a person of whom one might not have sensed, during the earthly life they spent at Harun al-Rashid’s court, that they were an initiate. But the initiates knew, along with this individual, that this person who lived at Harun al-Rashid’s court had been among the most highly initiated people in a previous earthly life. Thus, in a later earthly life—appearing outwardly not as an initiate—a former initiate, that is, one who had been initiated in a previous earthly life, lived at Harun al-Rashid’s court. The others were at least familiar with the initiatory life of antiquity. The individual in question was a magnificent—we would today use a derogatory term to describe her as an “organizer”—of all this scientific and artistic life at the court of Harun al-Rashid.

[ 9 ] Now we know, of course, that outwardly, under the impetus of Islam, Arab culture spread across Africa, Southern Europe, and into Europe via Spain. We are familiar with what took place in terms of external wars and cultural conflicts. But at some point, the whole process came to an end. People usually speak of Charles Martel’s battles at Tours and Poitiers as if Arabism had thereby been driven out of Europe. But there was an immense spiritual driving force within Arabism. And the remarkable thing is that, when Arabism had been, so to speak, repelled from Europe as an external political and military power, the souls of those who had played a leading role within Arabism—after they had passed through the gate of death—intensively engaged in the spiritual world with the question of how they could continue to shape the influence of Arabism for Europe. What takes place in the spiritual world, my dear friends, is not a matter of things being shaped in an outward way. The outward appearance may differ little from what appears when an individual appears in two successive earthly lives. What matters far more is the innermost essence. This is difficult to grasp in our time. For in our time, when one can already be reproached for failing to write condemningly about Haeckel, and then does not continue to write about Haeckel as before, but in a way that narrow-minded people regard as the opposite of what came before—where such a lack of understanding is already evident—people will also have little grasp of how outwardly different human individualities can be in successive earthly lives, and yet how the same inner impulse is at work. Thus, these great souls of Arabism continue to develop between death and a new birth in such a way that they remain connected to the impulse that had traveled from the East to the West, remaining linked in the spiritual world to their deeds. In the outer world, as they say, civilization continues to develop. Forms appear there that are quite different from those of Arabism. But the souls who had been great in Arabism reappeared, and—without carrying over its outer forms—they carried Arabism, in its inner impulses, into a much later era. They appeared as bearers of culture in a later era, in the language, in the habits of thought, in the habits of feeling, and in the impulses of the will of such a later era. But Arabism continued to work within their souls. And so we see that the very spiritual current that emerged as the dominant one in the last two-thirds of the 19th century was deeply influenced by such spirits who had emerged from Arabism.

[ 10 ] Thus we turn our gaze to the soul of Harun al-Rashid. It passes through the gate of death in the life of Harun al-Rashid. It continues to evolve between death and a new birth. It reappears in entirely different forms of civilization in more recent times. For this individuality of Harun al-Rashid is, after all, the very same individuality that later appears within Western English intellectual life as Lord Bacon of Verulam. And we must regard this comprehensive spirit of Lord Bacon of Verulam as the resurrection of what Harun al-Rashid accomplished at his court in an Eastern manner during the 8th and 9th centuries. And we know that Bacon of Verulam has influenced European intellectual life in the deepest and most intense way right up to the present day. In fact, ever since Lord Bacon, people have thought in the same way he did with regard to scientific research and the scientific mindset. This is certainly not correct in every detail, but it is correct in the broad sweep of history. If one looks at the splendor of Harun al-Rashid—and at what, in a certain sense, had an outward impact— and if one looks—after having discovered through inner research how Harun al-Rashid reappeared in Lord Bacon of Verulam—at the outward course of Lord Bacon of Verulam’s life, then one will find, not in the outward forms but in the inner meaning of these two lives, a clear correspondence and similarity.

[ 11 ] I was speaking of a person who lived at the court of Harun al-Rashid, who, in a previous earthly life preceding this one at the court of Harun al-Rashid, was an initiate. I must note here, in parentheses, that it is entirely possible, my dear friends, that an initiate from ancient times may not outwardly appear to be an initiate in a later life. Must you not ask yourselves, my dear friends, when I have told you time and again that there were quite a large number of ancient initiates—mystery teachers and mystery priests—where have they gone? Why do they not live among us in the present? Yes, you see, my dear friends, an individual who, in a previous earthly life, possessed a spiritual-soul nature however highly enlightened, can in a later earthly life express themselves only through the body that this earthly life can provide at a later time, and through the upbringing that can be imparted to them. Now, the state of human education has been such for quite some time that, in the way a person can express themselves today—or has been able to do so for a long time—what once lived within those souls who were initiated cannot break through. They must assume entirely different forms of life, and only those who can closely observe human life can discern how people—who, in their later earthly lives, do not appear to be initiates—have nevertheless undergone such initiatory lives.

[ 12 ] One of the most brilliant examples in this regard is that of Garibaldi, the hero of freedom. Garibaldi’s life is a remarkable one; one need only trace its momentum to see how this personality transcends the conditions of immediate earthly life. Garibaldi evolved from a former initiate—which he was in a previous earthly life—into a political visionary, for that is what he must be called. He was an initiate who, in a previous earthly life, absorbed impulses of the will, which he then carried out in his life as Garibaldi, as was possible for a person born in 1807. But let us look into the peculiarities of his earthly life. For me, the starting point was that I saw how Garibaldi had walked his path of destiny together with three other people in the 19th century—with regard to whom his association, the particular way in which he interacted with them, is actually not entirely understandable. Garibaldi was, in his deepest convictions, the most sincere of republicans, yet he rejected everything that would have established the unity of Italy under a republican banner. Despite his sincere republican convictions, he pressed for the establishment of the monarchy—and under Victor Emmanuel, no less. And lo and behold, if one now approaches this enigmatic question through occult research—how could Garibaldi have made this Victor Emmanuel the King of Italy—for he did indeed make him the King of Italy—then one looks to the other two figures, one looks to Cavour and to Mazzini. Curious: Garibaldi was born in 1807; the others were born just a few years apart from him. Garibaldi was born in Nice, Mazzini, as is well known, in Genoa, Cavour in Turin, and Victor Emmanuel not far from there. They were all born, so to speak, within a small circle on the globe.

[ 13 ] When conducting karmic research, one needs—I would say—something concrete to build upon. It doesn’t matter how intelligent one is or how well-educated one is in the sciences; that doesn’t get you very far. Even if someone has written thirty novels in their lifetime, one cannot use that novel-writing as a starting point to look into past earthly lives. What is far more important for the study of past earthly lives is whether someone limps or blinks their eyes. It is precisely the seemingly trivial details of life that lead the occultist onto the paths necessary to shed light on past earthly lives from the perspective of a present one. Thus, it was crucial for occult research in this field to understand how Garibaldi, together with the other three, immersed himself in the 19th century. There was something else as well, my dear friends, that was decisive in this regard. Viewed from the outside, Garibaldi appears to be a man of practical reality, someone who always stands firmly on his own two feet, who follows only the practicalities of life, and so on. But interspersed within this are more intimate phases of Garibaldi’s life that already reveal how he actually rises somewhat above the level of what is experienceable on Earth. One could point out, for instance, how as a young man he repeatedly sailed the Adriatic in the dangerous sea conditions of the time, was captured time and again, but always managed to free himself in the most adventurous ways. One can further point out that not everyone’s life unfolds as Garibaldi’s did—first seeing his name in print, then one day finding it in a newspaper alongside the news of his death sentence. He first read his name by reading his death sentence. This death sentence had been imposed because of his participation in a conspiracy. But this death sentence was not carried out, for they have never hanged anyone they did not catch, and they did not catch Garibaldi. He fled to America and led an adventurous life there, one that was, however, always marked by inner intensity and strength.

[ 14 ] Just how little Garibaldi fit into the ordinary course of life is shown, for example, by the way he entered into his first marriage, which was an extraordinarily happy one that lasted for decades. But how did he come to meet the woman he married? It happened in a very strange way. He was on a ship, still quite far from land, when he pointed his telescope toward the shore and saw a woman through it—and immediately fell in love with her through the telescope. Well, it’s not every day that people fall in love through a telescope; that really takes one beyond the ordinary circumstances of life. But what happens next? He immediately heads for shore, meets a man who takes such a liking to Garibaldi that he takes him along. He goes to lunch with the man—who turns out to be the father of the woman he had seen through the telescope! A small obstacle arises: he can speak only Italian, and she only Portuguese. He doesn’t know her language, but he manages to make her understand that they must commit to each other for life, and she understands this, even though she speaks only Portuguese and not Italian. It becomes one of the happiest, but also most interesting, marriages. She stood by him through everything he experienced in America, and one need only point out how the news once spread that Garibaldi had fallen on the battlefields there during the struggles for freedom. Mrs. Garibaldi searched every battlefield, just as is told of many legendary women. She lifted every corpse to look into its face until, during her journey, she discovered that Garibaldi was still alive. But during this undertaking, she had given birth to her first child, who would have perished from the cold had she not tied the baby around her neck with a rope and kept it warm against her own breast as she continued her journey. None of this reflects ordinary middle-class circumstances, and this relationship was not middle-class in the conventional sense either. But when Garibaldi’s wife died, it so happened that, after some time, Garibaldi did indeed marry another woman—this time in a manner entirely in keeping with ordinary middle-class customs, just as people tend to come together in life. But lo and behold, this marriage—which had not been arranged through a telescope—lasted only one day. One can recount this and similar episodes from Garibaldi’s life, which show that there was indeed something very peculiar about his life.

[ 15 ] It now became clear to me that this individual had, in a previous earthly life—already in the post-Christian era—been an Irish initiate who had come from Ireland on a mission to Alsace, where he had taught at a mystery school and had as his students those individuals who were later born together with him at the same time and in the same region. Now, in the various initiation mysteries, there was a law according to which certain disciples had to be so attached to the teacher that the teacher was not permitted to abandon his disciples if they encountered one another under very specific circumstances in a later life. Above all, there was the individuality of Victor Emmanuel, to whom Garibaldi had to feel bound because this individuality had been his disciple in a previous life of initiation. Theories no longer apply here. In a later life, it is not a matter of adopting something externally in any way, but rather—even if unconsciously—of obeying that inner law that brings people together according to impulses taking place in the inner life of historical development.

[ 16 ] One can see precisely in this entire life—as in the case of a former initiate—that because of the human physicality that exists in a given century, and because of the education that prevails there, it is not possible for him to appear as an initiate; thus, what he absorbed in a previous earthly life comes to the fore, and such a personality outwardly does not appear to present himself as an initiate. This was also the case with that personality who lived at the court of Harun al-Rashid and who, after passing through the gate of death, had to take a different path than Harun al-Rashid himself. This individual was deeply and intimately connected to all that she had absorbed as the mysteries of initiation from Eastern wisdom. She could not follow the path taken by Harun al-Rashid, who was more focused on outward splendor; she had to take a different path. This different path led her to reincarnate at a later time, so that the two individualities, as it were, encountered one another within the currents of civilization that were under their influence—that of Harun al-Rashid and his court advisor—and which they had inspired in Europe. And the soul of this advisor reappeared as Amos Comenius, who, while he too could not live out the principle of initiation in an outward manner, nevertheless demonstrated—through the very way he energetically immersed himself in the pedagogical and educational life of his time, which was also the time of Bacon of Verulam—that something profound and significant lived within him. And so we see how, through a more inner calling, Amos Comenius is once again embodied after having lived at the court of Harun al-Rashid; how Harun al-Rashid himself is embodied anew; we look at personalities and see in these personalities the convergence of civilizations and cultures. If one looks at this European intellectual life, as it developed particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries, one will find Arabism everywhere in the newer forms. In everything that influenced Bacon, Arabism is present in a more resplendent manner. In everything that influenced Amos Comenius, one can still discern the deep Oriental inwardness.

[ 17 ] What I am telling you is not a mere construct. For these things are truly not discovered through speculation, but can only be discovered by connecting oneself deeply within to the corresponding spiritual entities and seeking the path from one earthly life to the next through inspired research. And so, my dear friends, much of this Arabism has been carried over into the modern era through the reincarnation of souls in repeated earthly lives. The only thing that matters is that one never misunderstands the purpose of such research.

[ 18 ] I told you that it is not a matter of pursuing what is usually considered important in materialistic life. There isn’t much to be gained from that. Let me give you an example. I had a teacher—I’ve also spoken of him in my autobiography—who was an excellent geometry teacher. At a certain stage in my life, he began to fascinate me deeply. He had something peculiar about him—a brilliant single-mindedness—as well as other peculiarities, and because of the nature of his soul in relation to geometry, it was impossible to trace the path to his previous incarnation. But this geometer, so outstanding in construction, had one outward peculiarity: he had a clubfoot. Now, it very often becomes apparent when one conducts such investigations that bridge one earthly life to another that, in fact, everything connected with the development of the legs in one earthly life is connected with the development of the head in another. A remarkable metamorphosis takes place with the inner forces, such that at one time they constitute the limb system, and at another time the head system.

[ 19 ] I began with this leg ailment, this clubfoot of the geometry professor. And lo and behold, what happened in my occult research? It was precisely my focus on this infirmity that brought me into contact with another figure who also had a clubfoot—namely, Lord Byron. And now I knew: this had something to do with repeated earthly lives. And there was something in both of their minds from a previous earthly life that had led them to work together, even though—in terms of their earthly activities in their last incarnation—they were not contemporaries, but were nearly so. I expressly note that, because in past epochs it has been primarily the male life that has had a historical impact, I will not go into detail about female incarnations. The female life is only now beginning to have an impact. In the future, it will be of particular interest to take female incarnations into account. But for many historical figures, the situation is such that, for certain matters, the intervening female incarnations—which do exist—are omitted. You must not conclude from this that no female incarnations occurred in between; however, I am focusing on those aspects that initially lead one back to the preceding male earthly lives. Through these two personalities, who presented themselves to me together, I was led back to a time when they—though I have not been able to determine this precisely—lived either in the 10th or 11th century A.D. in Eastern Europe, in what is now Russian territory. They were comrades. And even back then, the legend of the Palladium’s journey through the world had already reached certain individuals. You may know of this Palladium, a treasure upon which much of human civilization is said to depend: that this Palladium was first in Troy, then in Rome; that Constantine the Great had it brought to Constantinople with great pomp; that he erected a column in its honor for his own glorification, and at the top of which he even placed a statue of Apollo. He adorned the column with a wreath of stars, and within this wreath were pieces of wood that he had brought from the Cross of Christ. In short: all for his own glorification. The legend goes that this Palladium would one day be carried north, and that the civilization brought to Constantinople would then spread northward. The two men heard this. They were seized with enthusiasm to capture the Palladium in Constantinople. They were unable to do so. But they went to great lengths to bring this cultural treasure northward. Now one can see, especially in the one who was later reincarnated in the West, how he carried within himself—as a karmic consequence of his former striving for the Palladium—the very enthusiasm for freedom that Byron possessed in the 19th century. You can trace this particular spiritual configuration in everything that my geometry teacher, in particular, revealed in such an intimate way: a sense of freedom in the realm of science—for those who were able to experience it.

[ 20 ] Thus, the path begins with something seemingly trivial—a clubfoot—and from there, based on such characteristics that can be traced in this way, leads back to the earlier earthly lives of the individuals in question. In general, one must have a sense of inner life configuration if one wishes to speak of historical karmas.

[ 21 ] I would like to give another example. In the region that today would be called northeastern France, there lived a man in the 8th and 9th centuries who, by the standards of the time, was a sort of wealthy landowner. He was, however, an adventurer and undertook military campaigns in neighboring regions. As hard as it may be to believe today, this was indeed the case back then: he left his home and estate and undertook military campaigns in neighboring regions, with varying degrees of success. One day he returned to find that his estate had been seized by another; a different man now sat there as the owner, having amassed enough power in terms of men and weapons to keep the former owner at bay. And since he could not stay away, he became a serf of this new owner—or rather, what would later be called a serf. Thus, a peculiar relationship developed among these people. The former owner was forced to turn his life completely upside down. Another man now sat on the estate where he had once lived, and he himself now found himself in the position that the other man had once occupied. He then held all sorts of nocturnal gatherings—as we would call them today—in the neighboring forests with like-minded people, driven by a deep inner resentment toward the usurper of his property and toward the circumstances that allowed such a thing to happen. It is interesting to look into what was spoken at that time out of deep human resentment.

[ 22 ] I was then able to trace the paths of these two individuals, who passed through the gates of death in the 9th century and reappeared in the 19th century. One of them, who was first a landowner and then stripped of his estate, is Karl Marx, the founder of 19th-century socialism. No matter how different the external circumstances may be, speculation and the like lead nowhere. But if one traces certain underlying currents, one encounters in that devious 9th-century landowner the soul of Karl Marx in the 19th century. The one who drove him out, who inflicted so much harm upon him, is his friend Friedrich Engels. This is not about sensationalism; it is about understanding life and history through the interconnections of earthly lives.

[ 23 ] Such matters must also be taken with a deeper sense of seriousness, not with any sensationalist ambitions. In this example, we see a living embodiment of spiritual Europeanism, but this Europeanism has also incorporated elements that have clearly emerged from Arabism. There is a great deal of Arabism present in a completely different form in more recent times.

[ 24 ] Well, one of Harun al-Rashid’s predecessors—one of the earliest successors to the Prophet Muhammad—was Muawiya in the 7th century CE. A remarkable figure who yearned deeply for conquest toward the West but achieved little; one who had embraced an inner longing for the West, yet could not fulfill it, but felt that pull toward the West as he passed through the gates of death. Everything was present in this personality: the pull toward the West, the living out of Arabism—until, after life, between death and a new birth, the pull toward the West was fulfilled. This individuality of one of the Prophet’s earliest successors also appeared, in turn, to set the tone in the circumstances of the 20th century. At a time when people were not yet speaking under the influence of the Goetheanum [Christmas] Conference, I mentioned various things that are grounded in what can be said about the repeated earthly lives of a certain personality. Little was understood of what I said there. For ultimately, the persuasive power with which it was expressed lay in the observation of precisely these karmic relationships across earthly lives. For Muawiya has reappeared in our time and, as Woodrow Wilson, has brought abstract Arabism to its utmost expression in the outer life of civilization. And we see how, in Woodrow Wilson, an individual emerged who, to the greatest degree—especially in the famous Fourteen Points—embodies Arabism in our time. The misfortune that has come into our time through Woodrow Wilson can best be studied by comparing these points—right down to the phrasing—with certain passages in the Qur’an. Then you will find many things understandable; then you will see what strange things you come across once you understand the connection between these matters.

[ 25 ] Today, my dear friends, it is certainly the case that a historical perspective that brings human fulfillment is possible only if we take seriously the concrete manifestations of repeated earthly lives, the consideration of karma, and the inner connections within the individual earthly lives of human beings. Now that the Anthroposophical Society has spent two decades preparing for what is to take place under the influence of the Christmas Conference, we may well now increasingly carry out what was first announced back in 1902 at the founding of the German Section of the Theosophical Society: “Practical Karma Exercises.” These practical exercises in karma are to form a part of our anthroposophical life, not in a sensational way, but in such a way that they become the foundation for truly greater, stronger impulses that must live within the Anthroposophical Society. Consider also the fact that we must now speak in this way as a manifestation of the need for esoteric teachings to flow through the anthroposophical movement, which is embodied in the Anthroposophical Society. But let us also be clear about the profound seriousness with which such matters must be regarded. If they are regarded with this seriousness, then we will continue to weave at what was begun when Lessing, at the end of his Education of the Human Race, referred to repeated earthly lives. For human beings must learn once again, through a deeper, more intimate contemplation of the human being and the destiny of humanity, that it is absolutely true: Through spiritual science, one looks into the true essence of the human being and, whenever one recognizes oneself, can utter the words: “Is not eternity mine?!” But one must recognize the structure of this eternity in concrete facts, in considerations of karma, and in the patterns of destiny within human, historical life.