The Rudolf Steiner Archive

As our studies continue we shall, gradually come to understand what karma may signify in the individual life of man, although I shall constantly be drawing attention to certain karmic connections of personalities known in history. For if we observe the manifestations of karma across the wide perspective of history, light will also be shed upon details of our own karma which cannot fail to interest us. At the very outset let it be said that clairvoyant insight is not essential to the perception, the feeling, of the working of karma. It is quite true that in order to survey the whole range of karmic laws such insight is necessary; and much that I have been telling you during the last few days can, of course, be discovered only by means of clairvoyance. But the feeling, the clear and distinct feeling for karma is a preparation for clairvoyant insight. This feeling and perception can play a part in the life of every individual provided that he is not exclusively concerned with superficialities and outwardly sensational happenings, but unfolds a sensitive understanding of the more intimate experiences of existence and an inkling of certain connections of destiny which by their very nature show that they cannot possibly be rooted in the one earthly life between birth and death.

Let us think of how we meet and become acquainted with other human beings. By far the greatest part of our destiny depends upon these meetings. We meet one person or another and the experiences we share with him have an effect upon our life. And precisely the experiences we share with others in different circumstances of life will make it evident to attentive observation that karma is not irreconcilable with the ingrained feeling of the extent to which our actions are the outcome of free decision. After all, we are sent into existence in an epoch of life when as far as earthly impulses are concerned there can be no question of freedom. A very great deal depends upon how we are placed in existence as children. The faculties that are drawn out of us, the paths along which we are directed—all this is of infinite significance in the destiny of our whole life. Later on, as independent human beings, we can of course take a hand in directing our own existence but even then the place assigned to us in childhood is determinative. And so if we observe closely we shall certainly be able to perceive how destiny plays into our free actions, our free deeds and activities.

Think of the following.—We meet other human beings and there is clearly a difference between one kind of acquaintanceship and another. We may meet someone for the first time and feel at once that there is a bridge leading over from our soul to his. We may well be strongly drawn to him but not nearly as interested in the details of his outward appearance, whether he is handsome or ugly, whether he looks friendly or ill-disposed. What draws us to him is something that wells up from within us; we feel sympathy towards him. In the case of another person we may actually feel antipathy simply when we are near him and conscious of his presence. Our feeling for him does not depend upon the impression he makes through his actions or what he actually says to us. Such experiences stand in earthly existence like question-marks, like far-reaching problems set us by reality. With both these kinds of acquaintanceship we feel no urge at all to ask: what is the individual really like? What does he actually do? Everything that attracts us to him gathers into an aggregate of feelings arising from experiences and components of our soul-life, feelings which there is no need to justify by what he actually does.

But there are acquaintanceships of a different kind, where no such experiences occur. Although there is no feeling of deep-seated sympathy or antipathy, such individuals interest us. We feel an urge to discover whether their attitude is friendly or unfriendly, whether they are gifted or not gifted. Having made such an acquaintanceship it may happen that we meet someone who also knows the person in question and we feel we want to talk about him, to ask about his position in life, who he is, and so forth; we are interested in what he is outwardly. But in connection with an acquaintance of the other category we may find it extremely embarrassing to meet someone who knows him and begins to speak about him. We simply do not want to talk about this person. Now when Spiritual Science endeavours to get to the root of an occurrence of this nature, it turns out that if an inexplicable feeling of affection or dislike wells up in us when we meet a particular person, then we have had some karmic tie with him in the past and this has really guided our whole path in such a way that at a certain moment in life we come across him. Experiences shared in past ages shape and determine the feelings we have about him. And it is these feelings that count—not whether he is good-looking or ugly, kindly or ill-disposed. When such feelings are emphatic and distinct and it is possible for spiritual-scientific investigation to shed light upon them, their explanation is forthcoming from what such investigation has to say about karma that was formed in the past. Moreover we shall find this confirmed in many other ways.

During sleep, when we are outside our physical and etheric bodies, living a spiritual existence in the ‘I’ and astral body, dreams occur. But with rigorous self-observation let us ask ourselves whether it is not the case, when certain acquaintanceships are accompanied by these uprising feelings and experiences, that we at once begin to dream about these people. We dream so readily about certain acquaintances. This indicates that there is a connection between the person in question and our own soul-and-spirit which has shared experiences with him either in many lives or maybe in one life only; our ‘I’ and astral body in which we live during sleep, are connected in some way with this individual. Others whom we may encounter in our profession, business or the like, interest us in the different way I described. It may well happen that we have a great deal to do with them; life throws us together, but we simply cannot dream about them. In such cases the connection belongs only to the present earthly life and the link is made by what binds the soul-and-spiritual part of man to the physical and the etheric. Now it is paramountly the physical and etheric bodies which are involved in interests connected with external activities, outward appearances, and the reason why we cannot dream about these particular people is that the physical and etheric bodies lie there in the bed and the being of soul-and-spirit is not within them. Spiritual Science reveals that although karma is certainly at work here it is only now beginning to form and that not until we look back from spiritual existence upon this earthly life will it be possible to say that karmic connections began in that life. In this case, karma is in process of coming into being.

We have heard how karma takes shape, how all that we experience in communion with spiritual Beings between death and a new birth works for long ages at the weaving of karma. But if you reflect upon what has here been said about the laws of karma, you will say to yourselves: earthly life brings human beings together and a karmic link is formed between them; they pass together through the life between death and rebirth and in cooperation with higher Beings shape their karma for the next earthly life. What, then, is the consequence in the earthly life of man? Broadly speaking this: that individuals who have been together in an earthly life where karma begins to form, will endeavour in the next earthly life to find their way to one another again. Once again they will establish karmic links, will again pass through the life between death and rebirth where a still stronger link is forged between them, and again seek for a common earthly existence. And here the remarkable fact comes to light that as Earth-evolution runs its course, human beings live together in groups. Time flows on: a certain group of human beings living as contemporaries in a particular epoch and karmically connected with one another, appears again on the Earth after the life spent between death and rebirth. A different group of human beings linked together by karmic ties appears on the Earth in a common existence; a third group likewise. As the periods between death and rebirth are by far the longer, it follows that the majority of human beings only meet in the life after death and before birth and that those specially connected with one another by karma pass through evolution in groups, coming together again and again on the Earth. That is the general rule. As a rule it is the case that on Earth we do not encounter those who formerly were not incarnated at the same time as ourselves.

We learn that this is so when with spiritual insight we ponder upon the facts and consequences of human relationships. Provided we reflect without prejudices or preconceptions, spiritual observation will certainly confirm what has here been said.—As you know, for a considerable time in my early life I was engrossed in the study of Goethe. I had this spiritual preoccupation with Goethe so much at heart that I often asked myself: What if I had been a contemporary of Goethe? Outwardly, the prospect would have been entrancing! For when one is strongly drawn to Goethe, loves to steep oneself in his works and devotes part of one's life to elucidating and interpreting him, how could one fail to think of how delightful it would have been to have lived in Weimar at the same time, to have seen him, perhaps even to have been able to converse with him. But that, after all, is a superficial point of view which deeper insight immediately corrects. At all events I realised that the very thought of living as a contemporary of Goethe would be quite unbearable. For one treasured Goethe so highly just because the creations he bequeathed had worked in one for a time and it was then possible to draw it all forth again from spiritual depths of world-existence. To have lived as a contemporary of Goethe would have been unbearable! When it is clear that the relationship was the result of having been born at a later time, when the subtler connections of the life of soul are taken into account in a case like this where one is drawn to a personality with whom karma did not bring one into direct contact, where the karmic relationships are more complicated, it becomes clear to spiritual insight that had one lived at the same time as this personality, he would have acted like poison upon the soul. I know that this is a strong statement, but it is a fact, nevertheless. To have been a contemporary of Goethe would have made it impossible to keep one's own disposition and configuration of soul firmly knit.

From the wider point of view such circumstances sharpen our perception of the inner truths, the inner relationships, of human life. We no longer talk out of the blue nor shall we be tempted to come out with the hackneyed exclamation: ‘Oh, if only I had been alive then!’ When karma is interpreted rightly, it becomes a source of strength in the circumstances of our life, establishes us in earthly existence at the place where we truly belong. That karma is in truth destiny becomes plain when we begin to reflect upon why we were born at a particular time. We come into earthly existence just when we do, because together with other souls who are karmically connected with us we have prepared our karma for the time when we are to descend to physical existence on Earth.

What I have been telling you is the general rule—but in the spiritual world everything is individual. Rules have their significance but this must not be taken to imply that they are to be regarded as principles. A man who is a stickler for rules, who insists that they can have no exceptions, will never find his way into the spiritual world. For in the spiritual world nothing is the same as it is in the physical world. What could be more obvious to a man living in the physical world than the mathematical axiom: the whole is greater than any of its parts—or the straight way is the shortest distance between two points? Only a lunatic would contend that the whole is not greater than any of its parts. Such things are called ‘axioms’ because they are self-evident truths and, as it is said, cannot and need not be proved. The same applies to the formula: the straight way is the shortest distance between any two points. But neither formula holds good in the spiritual world. What actually holds good in the spiritual world is the formula: the whole is always smaller than any one of its parts. And we find confirmation of this in the very being of man. Observed in the spiritual world, the spiritual counterpart of your physical being is about the size—a trifle larger but approximately the same size as it is in the physical world. When, however, you see your lungs or your liver in the spiritual world, they are of gigantic magnitude, and yet they are parts of something small. We have to learn to change our thinking entirely. In the spiritual world the straight way is by no means the shortest but on the contrary the very longest, because in that world to move from one point to another is a different matter altogether. In the physical world it is pedantically correct to say: that way is long, this longer, this—the straight—the shortest. But in the spiritual world the straight way presents such enormous difficulties that any of the winding ways is the shorter. Hence there is no sense in saying: the straight way is the shortest between any two points—because in actual fact it is the longest of all.

We have to recognise that in the spiritual world nothing is the same as in the physical world. The reason why people find it so difficult to reach the spiritual world with the exercises they practise quite faithfully is that they cling to preconceptions such as: the whole is greater than any of its parts, or, the straight way is the shortest between two points. So much for the axioms.

But we must also give up clinging to all other truths which hold good in the physical world if we are to penetrate into the spiritual world. In the spiritual world there can be no all-embracing principles, for everything there is individual. Each fact must be approached as something entirely individual. In the spiritual world there is none of this dreadful, logical assembling of facts, this basing of everything upon general rules. And so the truth of which I have spoken, namely, that human beings pass through their earthly evolution in groups—although it is indeed a truth and holds good in the broad sense—is sometimes broken through. And precisely from those cases where it is broken through we can realise its significance. Let me give an example.

You must forgive these examples being taken from my own life. After all, how can there be closer knowledge of examples of these things than when they are drawn from one's own life? In recounting the story of my life I have mentioned a geometry teacher of mine. Not only had I great affection for this teacher while I was actually his pupil, but afterwards too, and it was interesting for me to investigate his karma and the whole setting of his life. I myself had a personal weakness, as the saying goes, for geometry. Even at the age of nine, a geometry book that fell into my hands brought me sheer delight; it was written by this teacher who thought me far too immature for anything of the kind. To learn that the three angles of a triangle total 180° was sheer joy to me when I was a boy of nine. But later on, when I was about twelve, and for some years after, this man was my geometry teacher. He was a most remarkable and interesting personality, for he was, so to say, the very embodiment of geometry—but of a particular kind: descriptive, constructive geometry. In the higher classes I was obliged to learn analytical geometry—as it is called—from others, because my former teacher simply did not understand it. He was a first-rate constructor and in that branch he was wonderfully impressive. I myself made remarkable progress in geometry just because I loved him so deeply. It was always a happy hour for me when this teacher came into the class and demonstrated geometry in his own characteristic way. Later on—because my interest in him never waned—I realised that it was only natural to investigate the karmic setting of his life. Now when it is a matter of investigating karma, one can get nowhere by focusing attention upon what, at first sight, makes the most striking impression. If I had paid attention only to his excellence as a teacher of geometry, I should certainly never have discovered the threads of his karma. But what made a deep impression upon me in connection with his life was the fact that he had a club-foot. One leg was shorter than the other. These are details which in the ordinary way are thought to have no bearing upon the actual life. The things of really deep interest, however, are those which lead to the karmic connections. They need not necessarily be very striking. One may actually be led to a man's karmic connection by some repeated habit. A trifling habit may form itself into a picture and lead one to the karmic connections in earlier lives of the person concerned. And so in the case of another teacher for whom I had great affection, I was guided to certain karmic connections—of which I do not now propose to speak—through the fact that whenever this teacher came to his class, the first thing he did was to take out his handkerchief and blow his nose! He never by any chance began a lesson without doing this, and the picture into which this habit shaped itself led me back to his earlier earthly lives. And it was the same with the other teacher, the one with the clubfoot. In point of fact it was this club-foot which gave me the first clue to his particular talent. It is usually thought that the ability to construct figures from geometrical lines comes from the head. But that is simply not the case. Man does not experience geometry through his head. You would never be able to think of an angle if you did not walk. It is because you experience the angle in your legs that you know something about it. The head merely looks on, perceives how the arms or the legs form angles. In geometry we actually experience our own will weaving through our limbs. Our limbs teach us geometry. It is only because we have become such creatures of abstraction that we are unaware of this and firmly believe that all geometrising goes on in the head. The head looks on. perceives how we walk, or dance, or whatever it may be. and then evolves the geometrical figures. And now the whole connection, the reason for this characteristic way of presenting geometry, was clear to me as I studied the inner constitution of this man who was obliged to walk about with a club-foot and who because of the deep effect it had upon him became such an excellent geometrician—but in one direction only. Such things belong to the more intimate concatenations of life.

But what led me to further insight? Coupled with this teacher there arose before me the picture of another man, also with a club-foot, namely, the English poet, Lord Byron. The two men with this physical similarity came in a picture before me, side by side, and many things that had played over from earlier karma into the moral and ethical connections of Byron's life but had also come to expression in his club-foot, became clear to me. When perception of karma has reached this point, its range widens and I was now able to discover that these two men had lived as companions in Eastern Europe at a certain time during the Middle Ages; they had shared a similar destiny and the content of their lives at that time was revealed to me.

Neither the earlier life of Byron nor that of my teacher resembled their lives in the nineteenth century. But the two had been associated in destiny of a very intimate kind. During their lives in Eastern Europe they came to know of the significant legend concerning the palladium—the treasure endowed with magical power upon which the might of Troy depended. The palladium had been buried in Troy and was an object of veneration there. Then it was taken across Africa to Rome where it remained for long ages. When he founded Constantinople, the Emperor Constantine caused this palladium—upon which the power, first of Troy and then of Rome was said to depend—to be removed at the cost of great hardships and with tremendous pomp, to Constantinople, where it was sunk in the ground, in order that the power of Constantinople should replace that of Rome. It is said—and with considerable truth—that the Emperor's arrogance had caused him to transfer the palladium from Rome to Constantinople where he erected a massive column over the spot at which it had been sunk and had a statue of Apollo placed upon this column. The task of bringing the column to Constantinople was one of enormous difficulty, entailing the construction of a special road. The column had originally been brought from Egypt to Rome and its weight was so enormous that every road to Constantinople subsided and became dangerous. The column was erected and the palladium safely protected. The Emperor ordered the statue of Apollo to be set in place but let it be known that this statue was a representation of himself. Then, having caused wood and nails from the Cross of Christ to be brought from the East, he had the wood inserted into the statue and the nails moulded into rays around the head of Apollo. Constantine pictured himself standing there aloft, surrounded by rays of glory fashioned from the wood and the nails of the Cross of Christ. Later on, another legend came to be associated with the palladium, a legend which still played a part in the Testament of Peter the Great, to the effect that the palladium would be carried off by men of the East to their capital, that in time to come the power of the Slavs would be founded on its magical power; through the palladium, so it was said, power would pass to the Slavs just as it had passed to Troy, to Rome, to Constantinople. Such things contain deep truths, even though they are presented in the form of legend.

But this much is certain: anyone who understands the history of the palladium will understand very much of the course taken by European history. This legend came to the knowledge of the two men of whom I have spoken—Byron and his contemporary in the early Middle Ages—and they resolved to seize the palladium and take it to the North, to Russia. They did not succeed; the project failed, as indeed it was bound to do. But something of it remained in the two men; in karmic connections, something remained in them in a strange and remarkable way. At a later time, Byron sought for the palladium in a different fashion; he allied himself with the movement for liberty in Greece—it was the search for a spiritual palladium. This was the urge that had remained in him from the time of which I spoke. And it was clear to anyone who observed my teacher closely, that in spite of his relatively unimportant position, in whatever situation he might be, he evinced an inflexible sense for freedom which was deeply connected in his inmost being with the bodily defect—just as in the case of the one who was his earlier contemporary.

What, then, had happened to these two men? Their paths had separated and they did not find one another again. One of them was Lord Byron, the famous poet; the other, who lived at a slightly later time, was the unknown geometry teacher. In that case the rule of which I have spoken was broken through. But in a curious way, life itself brought me confirmation of this. The teacher I loved so deeply, eagerly awaiting him whenever he came to give his geometry lesson, never once gave me an opportunity of a private conversation with him during the whole of the time he was my teacher. He was like a personality of whom I had only read in history. He did not really fit into the times; one got the impression that he was misplaced in his epoch. Later on, when for the purpose of an anthroposophical lecture I visited the town where he was living in retirement, I looked for his name in the directory. I felt that he must be there and now, after such a lapse of time—thirty years or so—I had a desire to talk to him personally, as a friend. By this time he was quite elderly and lived in Graz, the Austrian home of many University pensioners. I went to Graz for the lecture, found his name in the directory and made up my mind to call on him. But visits from others prevented me, even then, from any private talk with him. Although I loved him so dearly, he remained a shadow-personality in my life. When I went to Graz a second time, I again wanted to visit him, but he had since died. And so here I was confronted with a personality who although I felt so near to him, seemed to be like someone I had merely read about, someone who belonged to a quite different epoch. The circumstances were something like this: I was a contemporary of his but had no karmic connection with him. In none of his earlier incarnations had he been a contemporary of mine. This last life was plainly outside the sequence of the karmic groups to which he really belonged. This was also confirmed by the other case. There had been a departure from the sequence of incarnations to which my teacher belonged because in this earthly life he was not connected with the individual with whom he had formerly been associated. Byron and he did not meet. I am telling you these things in order to show you how karma works and how, by deeper observation, precisely through experiences which, to begin with, are bound to be riddles—and life, after all, is full of riddles—one can really perceive the mysterious weaving of karma. But just as certain contemporaries seem to be only pictures because they have moved out of their own karmic sequence, on the other hand one is fully aware that by far the greater majority of human beings are placed in their epoch by strong, inner necessity. This is often very clear in the case of historical personalities.

Here again, let me give an example. Garibaldi, the champion of liberty in Italy, is a well-known figure. His was in truth a remarkable life. As a personality, Garibaldi attracted me as little as the one I mentioned yesterday, whose karma I investigated. It was in the course of research, and not until then, that I began to be more drawn to Garibaldi. Before I had investigated his karmic connections a great deal about him had seemed to me to be unnatural, hollow—which he most certainly was not. This personality, in spite of being intensely active in politics and practical affairs, seems, when one observes him closely, to stand in a strange way outside life—as if he were living in a purely imagined world, as if he were hovering a little above the Earth. Practical as he was, Garibaldi was also an idealist, as is clear even from his external life. We need only think of a few characteristic episodes in Garibaldi's life and this is at once obvious.—I will speak briefly because time is getting on.—It was by no means an everyday occurrence for a young man to sail around the Adriatic Sea in the first half of the nineteenth century—Garibaldi was born in 1807—at a time when its waters were so fraught with danger. He fell more than once into the hands of pirates and freed himself again after perilous adventures. Occasionally, of course, something of the kind may also happen to others, but it certainly does not occur often, as it did to Garibaldi, that when a man has been for a time beyond the reach of newspapers and finally gets hold of one, he reads in it the announcement of his own death sentence! That was what happened to Garibaldi. He had returned from some maritime adventure and without knowing it had been accused of participating in certain political conspiracies. Sentence of death had been passed upon him in his absence and he read this in the newspaper. He seemed through his destiny to stand a little above actual life.

But other events in his life are even more unusual. Thus, for example, it happened that as the ship in which he had sailed to a foreign country in order to share in certain struggles for freedom, was nearing the coast, he looked through a telescope at the land. There he saw a young, attractive girl and forthwith fell in love with her—through the telescope! It is certainly not the normal way of falling in love. People who are firmly grounded in life do not fall in love through a telescope! But Garibaldi fell head over heels in love and brought his ship with all speed to the spot where he had caught sight of the girl. When he arrived she had vanished, but a man standing there took such a liking to him that he invited him to a meal—it turned out that he was the father of the very girl with whom Garibaldi had fallen in love through the telescope! Thus Garibaldi was able to partake of the meal in the girl's company. He could speak only Italian, she only Portuguese, but both of them understood the language of the heart and they became betrothed. Their life together demanded great valiance on the part of the woman. She accompanied him on his campaigns, acting throughout with great heroism. The circumstances are by no means usual! The first child is born while the husband is many leagues distant and while the wife searches for him on the battlefield she has to strap the child round her neck with a rope in order to keep it warm. She hears that her husband has been killed, faces every imaginable danger in search of him, but finally finds him alive. In spite of everything it was a marriage altogether to be admired. Those familiar with Garibaldi's biography will be aware that the wife predeceased him by a long time and a year after her death, as not infrequently happens, he again became betrothed and married another woman, just like any conventional citizen. This marriage, which was an accomplished fact, lasted only one day and the two separated. Quite obviously, Garibaldi's connection with earthly existence was different from that of other men, and it interested me to investigate a life such as this.

The research led me once again to the Irish Mysteries. Garibaldi too was an individuality who had passed through the Mysteries of Hibernia. Having reached a certain degree of Initiation, he journeyed eastwards, actually working together with others, in the Rhineland. But in respect of karma, what interested me particularly in the life of Garibaldi was that here was a personality whose activities are really difficult to explain. For in a certain sense Garibaldi was the very personification of sincerity. In the deepest fibres of his being, in his whole attitude of soul, he was a Republican—yet in spite of this it was actually through him that Victor Emanuel came to sit on the Throne of Italy. Garibaldi championed the Monarchy in the person of Victor Emanuel. To begin with it all seems incredible. What induced this Republican to make Victor Emanuel King of Italy? Look it up in history and you will find that without Garibaldi there would have been no Italian Monarchy. And then again, Garibaldi is associated with other personalities—Cavour, Mazzini—whose outlooks and leanings are poles apart from his own inner attitude. Cavour and Mazzini are men of utterly different mentality. Mazzini, the idealist who takes no part in practical affairs; Garibaldi, invariably the practical, militaristic statesman but for all that seeming to hover a little above the earthly; Cavour, the shrewd, astute politician—how do these men fit together? That was the problem. And precisely here something comes to light that I will put before you as a characteristic feature in karma. It turns out that these other three men had been followers of Garibaldi when he had been an Initiate in Hibernia; they were his pupils. Now it was an essential principle of the old Irish Mysteries that a vital link should be formed between pupil and teacher. They cannot separate from one another, at all events not in certain incarnations. A karmic tie is forged and there can be no separating. In this particular case we find very singular circumstances: about the year 1807, these four men are born again, one in Genoa, two in Turin, the fourth in Nice—that is to say in the same corner of the globe and also approximately at the same time. They are born together—in the same epoch and in the same region. This is a case where men who belong together are brought together again, in spite of their personal leanings. A fervent Republican such as Garibaldi is tied to Victor Emmanuel—a man with such different persuasions and convictions—and the human relationship counts for far more than all the rest. I give this example to show you what human relationships that are based on karma, really signify. The one may believe this, the other that—but the karmic connection is by far the stronger bond. It is these human relationships that take effect in life, not so much the abstract things mediated by the intellect. But it is only by examining karma in characteristic cases that we discover how human beings are connected with one another, and how, if they have shifted away from the stream to which their own karma really belongs, they may pass through life like shadows.

So much for to-day. We shall continue these studies tomorrow.

We will turn our attention to-day to manifestations of the life of soul able to lead us to a kind of self-observation in which a vista of our personal karma, our personal destiny, flashes into life like lightning. When we reflect upon the nature of the life of soul even with more or less superficial self-knowledge, we realise that sense-impressions and the thoughts we form about them are the only clear and definite experiences in the life of soul in which, with ordinary consciousness, we are completely awake. As well as these thoughts, sense-impressions, sense-perceptions, we also have, of course, the life of feeling. But just think how indeterminately our feelings surge through us, how little we can speak of inner, wide-awake clarity in connection with our life of feeling. Anyone who faces these facts with an open mind will certainly admit that as compared with thoughts, his feelings are indeterminate, lacking in definition. True, the life of feeling concerns us in a more intimate, personal way than does the life of thought, but for all that there is something undefined in it and also in the way it functions. We shall not so readily allow our thoughts to deviate from those of other people when it is a question of reflecting about something that is alleged to be true. We shall feel that our thoughts, our sense-impressions must somehow tally with those of others. With our feelings it is different. We allow ourselves the right to feel in a more intimate, more personal way. And if we compare feelings with dreams, we shall say: dreams arise from the night-life, feelings from the depths of soul into the light of day-consciousness. But again, in respect of their pictures, feelings are as indeterminate as dreams. Anyone who makes the comparison, even with such dreams as enter quite distinctly into his consciousness, will realise that their lack of definition is just as great as that of feelings. Therefore we can say: it is only in our sense-impressions and thoughts that we are really awake; in our feelings we dream—even during waking life. In ordinary waking life, too, our feelings make us into dreamers.

And still more so the will! When we say: ‘Now I am going to do this, or that’—how much of the subsequent process is actually in our consciousness? Suppose I want to take hold of something. The mental picture comes first, then this picture completely fades away and in my ordinary consciousness I know nothing of how the impulse contained in the ‘I want’ finds its way into my nerves, into my muscles, into my bones. When I conceive the idea, ‘I want to get hold of the clock,’ does my ordinary consciousness know anything at all of how this impulse penetrates into my arm which then reaches out for the clock? It is only through another sense-impression, another mental picture, that I perceive what has actually happened. With my ordinary consciousness I sleep through what has happened intermediately, just as in the night I sleep through what I experience in the spiritual world. I am as unconscious of the one as of the other. In waking life, therefore, there are three different and distinct states of consciousness. In the activity of thinking we are awake, completely awake; in the activity of feeling we dream; in the activity of willing we are asleep. We are in a state of perpetual sleep as far as the essential core of the will is concerned, for it lies deep, deep down in the region of the subconscious.

Now there is something that in waking life too, is always rising up from the depths of the soul, namely, remembrance, memory. When we contact immediate reality, we have thoughts. This immediate reality makes a definite impression upon us. But the past of this earthly life plays all the time into present reality in the form of thoughts and memories, of recollected thoughts. As you know, these recollected thoughts are much dimmer, much less distinct than the impressions of present reality. Nevertheless they do well up and make their way into ordinary waking life. And when we give memory free play, letting it recall all that we have passed through in life, we realise: here is our own life of soul, rising up once again. We feel that in this earthly life we are that which we can remember. Think only what becomes of a man who cannot remember some period of his life, whose memory of that period is completely obliterated. We may come across such cases and I will give just one example.—There was a man in a respectable position who while his life was pursuing its normal course, remembered his past, what he had done in childhood and during his education, what he had experienced as a student, and then in his profession. But one day his memory was suddenly blotted out. He no longer knew who he was.—I am telling you of an actual case.—Strangely enough it was not the reasoning faculty, not the mental grasp of immediate reality that failed; the memory was completely blotted out. The man no longer knew who he was as a boy, as a youth, as a grown-up; his mind could grasp only what was making an impression upon him at the moment. And because he no longer knew who he was in boyhood, youth or maturity, he could not link his present with his past life; this was impossible from the moment his memory faded.

A case like this makes it easy for us to realise just why we do one thing or another at a particular time; it is not because of the pressure of immediate circumstances but because of certain experiences we have had in the past—primarily in the past of our earthly life. Just think of all that you might do or leave undone if memory played no part in your actions! Man is dependent upon memory to a far greater extent than he imagines. The misfortune that befell the man of whom I told you, was that after the sudden obliteration of his memory he was guided only by the impulses of the present moment, not by any promptings of memory. He put on his outdoor clothes and left his home and family. He was tied to them only through memory—and now this memory was blotted out. Impulses worked in him that had nothing whatever to do with memories of his family. His reason and intelligence remained; and so—because it would have been senseless to do these things while other people were there—he waited until they happened to be absent. He had lived with his family as a sensible, rational individual, but his memory had gone. He went to the railway station and took a ticket for a place a long way off. His mind was absolutely clear in a matter where reason came into play. He got into the train and went off; but the memory of what had happened, even the memory of having taken the ticket was blotted out. He was aware only of the immediate present. The extinction of memory was a pathological condition. But he was so intensely engrossed with the present that he knew when he had arrived at his destination; he could compare this with the timetable. The ability to read—something that had already become habit and was therefore no longer a matter of memory—that too had remained. He alighted and took another ticket to a distant destination. And so he went on, travelling about the world without knowing who he was. One day his memory returned, but he knew nothing of what he had been doing since buying the first railway ticket. When his memory returned and he was himself again, he found himself in a Casual Ward in Berlin. It was only the things that had happened in the trains and the places where he had been that were blotted out, for they did not belong to the present. Just think what a state of confusion! How utterly uncertain of himself such a man must be! You will realise from this how closely our ‘I,’ our Ego, is bound up with our store of memories. We know nothing of the self within us if we are bereft of the store of memories.

What is the nature of these memories? Memories are of the nature of soul. But in the whole range of man's life and being they are present in another form as well. They work purely as soul-forces only in a human being who has reached the age of twenty one or twenty two, and continues living. Before then the memories do not work purely as forces of soul. We must be very conscious of what I have said in these lectures, namely that during the first seven years of earthly existence our physical corporality is an inheritance from our parents. At the change of teeth it is not only the first, milk teeth that are expelled—that is only the final act; the whole of the first body is discarded. We build up the second body—the body we bear until the onset of puberty—out of the soul-and-spirit we brought with us when we came down from the spiritual world to physical existence on the Earth. But from birth until the change of teeth we have received a host of impressions from the environment; Our being was absorbed in what flowed into us through having learnt to speak. Think of all the wonders that stream into us together with the power of speech! Any unprejudiced observer will agree in this respect with the statement made by Jean Paul to the effect that he had learnt more in the first three years of his life than in the three academic years. The meaning of this is clear. For even if the academic years are extended to five or six—not, presumably, because one learns too much but because one learns too little—even if this period is considerably extended we learn only the merest trifle in comparison with what we assimilate during the first three years of life, and thereafter through the years following the first three until the change of teeth. After a certain time all this remains in the form of hazy, indefinite memory. But just think how pale and indistinct are these memories of our first seven years compared with the events of later life. Just try to make the comparison. The memories often seem to loom up like erratic boulders without any obvious connection. And why? What we take in during the first seven years of life and what we take in later on have entirely different tasks to fulfil. What we take in during the first seven years works with intense activity at the plastic moulding of the brain, passes into the very organism. There is a great difference between the relatively undeveloped brain we possess when we come into earthly existence and the beautifully developed brain that is ours by the time of the change of teeth. And the result of this work penetrates from the brain into the whole of the rest of the body. This inner artist we bring with us from pre-earthly existence works in a most wonderful way upon our physical body during the first seven years of life. It is miraculous to see the facial expression, the look, the mobility of the features, the purposeful movements of arms and limbs beginning to appear in a child after the lack of definition characterising early babyhood. We see how spirit begins to permeate the child's being and the impressions he absorbs. The way in which spirit permeates the child during the first seven years of life is one of the most wonderful sights imaginable. When we observe how the physiognomy and gestures of the child develop from birth until the change of teeth, when we read and decipher it all just as we decipher something in a book from the single letters, when we know how to connect the forms of the gestures and the facial expressions appearing in succession just as we can connect the letters of a word and so read the word—then we are gazing at the workings of the brain which has been kindled into activity by the impressions received; these can form themselves only into sparse and scattered memories, because the plastic development of the brain and therewith of the physiognomy has primarily to be provided for.

As life continues its course from the time of the change of teeth to the onset of puberty, the forces working in this way are more or less lost to sight. As I said, until the beginning of the twenty-first year, work continues upon the shaping and elaboration of the organism; but from the seventh year onwards this work is less concerned with the bodily nature—and still less from puberty until the beginning of the twenties. But something else comes to our help. If we have any aptitude for this kind of observation and mellow it by contemplating the marvellous phenomenon of the child's physiognomy which reveals itself month by month, year by year in greater clarity, above all if we can perceive what the child's gestures reveal, how the awkward, unskilful movements of the limbs turn in a most wonderful way into movements filled with intelligence and purpose—this sensitive perception can be deepened and finer organs of sense will develop. Then, when we have before us a child between the ages of seven and fourteen, that is to say between the second dentition and puberty, when the changes in the physiognomy and the gestures are less marked and the development less obvious, it is possible through inner feeling which has all the certainty of an eye of soul to perceive how the child's development is proceeding in a more hidden way. And from this delicate, intimate observation of the bodily development of a child between the seventh and fourteenth years, there can arise the faculty to gaze into the life preceding the descent to earthly existence, the life between death and a new birth.

These things must again be within our reach, enabling us to affirm of a child between the ages of seven and fourteen: around you there is not only the sense-world of nature; in everything that is revealed in sense-perceptions, in colours, in forms, lives the spirit! It is truly wonderful to see the spirit becoming articulate in all things and then, as it were in a mirror-image, to perceive a reflection of this in the way in which spirituality reveals itself more and more distinctly in the physiognomy of a child. If we feel this deeply and inwardly and with a certain reverence make the experience a living power in the soul, then, as we observe the child between the ages of seven and fourteen, this reverence will lead to an understanding of how the pre-earthly existence of a human being between death and a new birth works into him here on Earth. And we shall feel that this bodily development is governed, not by the forces of the earthly environment but by the second physical organism which we ourselves mould according to the model provided by the first.

This can be of great importance in life. Humanity will have to learn to perceive the essential nature of Man. Life will then undergo the deepening without which the further progress of civilisation is simply no longer possible. Our civilisation has become totally abstract! In our ordinary consciousness we are no longer able to think in the real sense; we can only think what has been inculcated into us. We are no longer capable of perceptions as delicate as those of which I have been speaking. Hence men to-day pass each other by in ignorance. They learn a great deal about animals, plants, minerals, but nothing whatever about the subtle, impalpable processes of the development of the human being. The whole life of soul must become more intimate, more delicate, purer, and then we shall again perceive something of the real nature of human development itself; and this will lead us eventually to a vista of pre-earthly existence.

Next comes the period immediately following puberty, the period between the onset of puberty and the twenty-first or twenty-second year. Just think of all that a human being reveals to us in this phase of his life! Even with our ordinary consciousness we see evidence of a complete change in his life, but it takes a crude form. We speak of the hobbledehoy years, of the ‘awkward’ years and this in itself indicates our awareness that a change is taking place. What is actually happening is that the inner being is now emerging more clearly. But if we can acquire sensitive perception of the first two life-periods, what emerges after puberty will appear as a ‘second man,’ actually as a second man, who becomes visible through the physical man standing there before us. And what expresses itself in the awkwardness, but also in very much that is admirable, appears like a second, cloudlike man within the physical man. It is important to detect this second, shadowy being, for questions on the subject are being asked on all sides to-day. But our civilisation gives no answer.

The turn of the nineteenth/twentieth century was accompanied by momentous changes in the spiritual and physical evolution of the Earth. Men of the ancient East had divined this and said that Kali Yuga, the Age of Darkness, would come to an end at the close of the nineteenth century when an Age of Light would begin. This Age of Light has begun in very truth but men are still unaware of it because in their minds they are still living in the nineteenth century and their ideas flow on lethargically. Nevertheless around us there is clear, radiant light and if we pay heed to what will reveal itself from the spiritual world, we can become aware of this light. And because youth is peculiarly sensitive, with the turn of the century an undefined longing arose in the hearts of the young for a more intimate knowledge, a much more intimate perception of Man. Human beings born about this time—at the turn of the nineteenth century—have the instinctive feeling: we need to know a great deal more about Man than people are able to tell us. Nobody tells us what we long to know! There was this striving, this urgent, insistent striving for an understanding of Man. Children and young people were ill at ease with their elders for they longed to hear from them something about Man, and these elders knew nothing. Modern civilisation can say nothing, knows nothing about the spirit of Man. But in earlier epochs people were able, speaking with real warmth of heart, to tell the young very much about Man. When thoughts were still quick with life, the old had a very great deal to say—but now they knew nothing. And so there came an urge to run, run no matter where, in order to learn something about Man. The young became wanderers, path-finders; they ran away from people who had nothing to tell them, seeking here, there and everywhere for something that could tell them something about Man.

There you have the real origin of the Youth Movement of the twentieth century. What is this Youth Movement really seeking? It is seeking to find the reality of this second, cloudlike man who comes into evidence after puberty and who is actually there within the human being. The Youth Movement wants to be educated in a way that will enable it to apprehend this second man.—But who is this second man? What does he actually represent? What is it that emerges as it were from this human body in which one has observed the gradual maturing of physiognomy and gesture, in connection with which one is also able to feel how in the second period of life from the change of teeth to puberty, pre-earthly existence is coming to definite expression? What is making its appearance here, like a stranger? What is it that now comes forth when, after puberty, the human being begins to be conscious of his own freedom, when he turns to other individuals, seeking to form bonds with them out of an inner impulse which neither he nor the others can explain but which underlies this very definite urge. Who is this ‘second man?’ He is the being who lived in the earlier incarnation and is now making his way like a shadow, into this present earthly life. From what breaks in upon human life so mysteriously at about the age of puberty, mankind will gradually learn to take account of karma. At the time of life when a human being becomes capable of propagating his kind, impulses to which he gave expression in earlier earthly lives also make their appearance in him. But a great deal must happen in human hearts and feelings before there can be any clear recognition, any clear perception of what I have just been describing to you.

Think of the great difference there is in the ordinary consciousness between self-love and love of others. People know well what self-love is, for every individual holds himself in high esteem—of that there is no doubt! Self-love is present even in those who imagine that they are entirely free from it. There are very few indeed—and a close investigation of karma would be called for in such cases—who would dream of saying that they have no self-love in them. Love of others is rather more difficult to fathom. Such love may of course be absolutely genuine, but it is very often coloured by an element of self-love. We may love another human being because he does something for us, because he is by our side; we love him for many reasons closely connected with self-love. Nevertheless there is such a thing as selfless love and it is within our reach. We can learn little by little to expel from love every vestige of self-interest, and then we come to know what it means to give ourselves to others in the true and real sense. It is from this self-giving, this giving of ourselves to others, this selfless love, that we can kindle the feeling that must arise if we are to glimpse earlier earthly lives. Suppose you are a person who was born, let us say, in the year 1881; you are alive now; once upon a time, in an earlier earthly life, you were born, say, in the year 737 and died in 799. The man, personality B, is living, now, in the nineteenth/twentieth century; formerly this personality—you yourself—lived in the eighth century. The two personalities are linked by the life stretching between death and the new birth. But before even so much as an inkling can come to you of the personality who lived in the eighth century, you must be capable of loving your own self exactly as if you were loving another human being. For although the being who lived in the eighth century is there within you, he is really a stranger, exactly as another person may be a stranger to you now. You must be able to relate yourself to your preceding incarnation in the way you relate yourself now to some other human being; otherwise no inkling of the earlier incarnation is possible. Neither will you be able to form an objective conception of what appears in a human being after puberty as a second, shadowy man. But love that is truly selfless becomes a power of knowledge, and when love of self becomes so completely objective that a man can observe himself exactly as he observes other human beings, this is the means whereby a vista of earlier earthly lives will disclose itself—at first as a kind of dim inkling. This experience must be combined with the kind of observation I have been describing, whereby we become aware of the essential, fundamental nature of man. The urge to apprehend the truth of repeated earthly lives has been present in humanity since the end of Kali Yuga and is already unmistakably evident. The only reason why people do not speak about it is because it is not sufficiently clear or defined. But let us suppose that a thoroughly sincere member of the modern Youth Movement were to wake up one morning and for a quarter of an hour be vividly conscious of what he had experienced during sleep—and suppose one were to ask him during this quarter of an hour: what is it that you are really seeking?—he would answer: ‘I am striving to apprehend the whole man, the being who has passed through many earthly lives. I am striving to know what it is within me that has come from earlier stages of existence. But you know nothing about it; you have nothing to tell me!’

In human hearts to-day there is a longing to understand karma. Therefore this is the time when the impulse must be given to study history in the way I have illustrated by certain examples; it is this kind of study which, if earnestly and actively pursued, will lead human beings to an understanding of their own lives in the light of reincarnation and karma. That is why in these lectures I am combining studies of historical personages with indications that will gradually lead to perception of man's own individual karma. By the time we come to the last lecture we shall have gained a clear idea of how man can begin to glimpse his own karma. But the only way to achieve this is to observe things first of all in the great setting and structure of world-history. The primary aim of this lecture was to shed light on the inner nature and being of man and it has also been possible to elucidate the inner aspect of the strivings of a promising Movement of the times.—And now let me conclude with a picture drawn from world-history.

Study of history in the future must be concerned with the whole man, must realise that man himself carries over from one epoch into the next the impulses that work in history, in the development of world-history. Let us think of the days when Charlemagne was reigning in Europe—it was from 768 to 814 A.D.. Just recall for a moment everything you know about Charlemagne and what he accomplished. As so much about him is taught in school, I am sure that countless details will come into the minds of my listeners! At the same time as Charlemagne, a very important personage was living in the East, namely, Haroun al Raschid. He was a product of the scholarship associated in those days with Mohammedanism and he was fired with the will to foster and promote this oriental scholarship at a centre of learning and culture. Extraordinary results were achieved at his Court, for the highest attainments of the physical sciences, of astronomy, alchemy, chemistry, geography, as they were in those days, converged, so to speak, in him. Art, literature, history, pedagogy—all these branches of culture flourished at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. When one can perceive what was actually accomplished at this Court, the spectacle is far grander, far more impressive than that of the achievements of Charlemagne's Court, above all in respect of spiritual culture. Moreover there is a great deal in the campaigns of Charlemagne that the modern mind will not exactly admire! Living at the Court of Haroun al Raschid was another personality, one who in those days was simply a very wise man, but who in a much earlier incarnation, a long time previously, had been an Initiate. I have told you that the results of Initiation in an earlier incarnation may recede into the background in a later epoch. A most wonderful academy was established over in the East at that time and this other personality of whom I am speaking possessed real genius as an organiser. Scholarship, art, poetry, architecture, sculpture, the sciences—all were organised and brought together by this man at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. Both Haroun al Raschid and his wise Counsellor passed in due course through the gate of death and their evolution proceeded. This was the time when Arabism was spreading over Europe. The spread of Arabism came to a halt, but Haroun al Raschid himself, as well as his Counsellor, continued to be associated with its influence. Whereas the gaze of Haroun al Raschid in his life between death and rebirth was directed to Arabism as it swept through the North of Africa, across to Spain and further upwards to Western Europe, the attention of the other, the wise Counsellor, was directed from the East across the regions North of the Black Sea and from thence towards Middle Europe. It is strange that in following the life of a man between death and a new birth, one can also follow those things upon which his gaze is directed as he looks downwards. As I have told you, what he is actually beholding are the deeds of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones whose workings are connected with what is happening on the Earth. In the life between death and a new birth we look downwards to the Earth, just as on the Earth we look upwards to the Heavens. The work of these two souls continued long after the close of their physical lives. Outwardly, they were reborn as men of very different characters. Haroun al Raschid appeared again as Lord Bacon of Verulam, the originator of the modern scientific mentality. Those who are capable of unprejudiced observation can see in everything that was forced upon the world by Bacon, a new edition of what was once cultivated over in the East. In the East men had turned away from Christianity. Bacon was outwardly a Christian, but inwardly, in his real aims, unchristian. The other man, the one who had once been the wise Counsellor, followed the path which led across to Middle Europe via the regions North of the Black Sea. It was he who as Amos Comenius brought Arabism over in a quite different form—a much deeper, more inward form than that in which it was introduced by Bacon—but who did, nevertheless, bear Arabism into the modern age.

And so at the dawn of modern spiritual life, two streams intermingled. We can perceive this development of history quite clearly—it is a phase when Christianity is temporarily forgotten, when on the one side scientific culture is externalised, but on the other becomes all the more inward. In his incarnation which had its roots in the East and then ran its course amid the deeper spiritual life of Middle Europe, much of the Eastern element persisted. It is not by casually opening some book ... in a certain dialect there is an expression ‘ochsen’ (to ‘swot’) and I can think of no other word at the moment ... and then swotting up Bacon and Amos Comenius, that we can discern the inner evolution of the human race; we must rather begin to perceive how the development of the several epochs is brought about by men themselves, how the impulses are carried over from earlier into later times. Try for a moment to picture quite clearly what happened here. Christianity has spread, has taken a certain hold in the regions of Middle and Northern Europe. But through men like Bacon of Verulam, the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid, and Amos Comenius, the reincarnated Counsellor, something creeps in that is not genuine Christianity, but merges nevertheless with all that is working like so many spiritual streams in world-evolution. Only in this way is it possible to grasp what is really happening and to understand the great world-processes in which man is rooted.

If we go back to the time preceding Haroun al Raschid, to a man who was an immediate disciple of Mohammed, we must be quite clear about what it was that had been indoctrinated into oriental spiritual life through Mohammedanism. Study of original Christianity reveals the deep significance of the fact that it has the Trinity. When we think of the Spiritual in nature, the Spiritual Power which places us in the world as physical human beings and operates in the laws of nature, namely, the Father Being, we may ask ourselves: What should we be if the Father Being alone worked in us? Through the whole of life from birth till death, we should be under the same sway of necessity as prevails in the world around us. But in point of fact, at a certain age in life we become free beings, not in any way losing our manhood but awakening to a higher form of it. The principle that is working in us when we attain our freedom, when we release ourselves altogether from the sway of nature, this principle is the Son Being, the Christ—the Second Form of the Godhead. But it is the Power of the Holy Spirit that quickens within us the recognition that we live not in the body alone but having been associated with the body through its phases of development, we awaken, we are awakened as beings of Spirit. Man in the fullness of his being can be understood only through the Trinity; it is there that we perceive the concrete reality. But over against the Trinity, Mohammedanism proclaims an abstraction: There is no other Divine Being save the Father God, the one and only God. The Father is all; it is not lawful to speak of a threefold Godhead. In Mohammed himself, and in his followers, this doctrine of the one Father God was personified.

In an epoch when the highest human faculty capable of development was that of thinking in cold, barren abstractions, when men knew only the one, abstract God, they began more and more to identify this God with thinking, to deify the life of thought and the human intellect—forgetting that real thinking has an essentially altruistic tendency. In Mohammed's followers, this talent for thinking about the world in pure abstractions was expressed with a certain originality and grandeur. One of these followers was Muawija. I wish you could look him up in history. You would find there a strange mental configuration, the prototype, as it were, of men who think in pure abstractions, who want to shape the world according to tenets contained in a few simple paragraphs. Muawija, one of Mohammed's followers, appeared again in our time as Woodrow Wilson. A revival of the abstract thinking of Mohammedanism gave rise to the view that it is possible to shape a whole world by applying the principles set forth in fourteen prosaic, abstract paragraphs, void of any real substance. Truth to tell, there has been no greater illusion than this in all world-history; no other illusion has proved such a pitfall for well-nigh the whole of mankind. Before the war, when I spoke in the Helsingfors Lecture Course¹ of Woodrow Wilson's shortcomings—his fame was then just beginning—people were unwilling to understand when over and over again, wherever I had the opportunity of speaking, I indicated that the calamity looming ahead was by no means unconnected with the idolisation of Woodrow Wilson then going on in the world. Now, since the impulse of our Christmas Foundation, the time has come when such things will be spoken of openly and without reserve, when our studies of history will also be connected with matters that are potent impulses at this very time. Esotericism must permeate the whole Anthroposophical Movement in order that what lies hidden beneath the shroud of external history may be brought into the light of day. Men will not be equal to the task of coping with world-events nor of doing what needs to be done until they begin to study karma and until individuals learn to observe their own being, as well as world-history, in the light of karma.

• 1. The Occult Foundations of the Bhagavad Gita. 28th May–5th June, 1913.

We are all the time coming nearer to an understanding of those elements in the lives of individuals that can give us an inkling of the place of karma in their personal existence. In order to reach this goal in the course of these lectures it will be my task to-day to indicate how karma can be investigated by Initiation-science, to begin with through actual experience of karma, and how man—at first without Initiation-science but with a certain intimate capacity for observing life—can develop insight into the potency of karma. Let us remember here what I have said about memory and thoughts which stream up in their multitudes from the depths of the world of soul, some summoned by our own activity, some rising up freely. They are thoughts which give us a picture, shadowy and more or less abstract it is true, but for all that a picture of our earthly life since birth. Attention has recently been drawn to what a man loses if he loses his memory. He is then still able to act quite sensibly and reasonably, but he does not act out of the context of his whole life; he acts as if at the point of time when his action begins he remembers nothing of his life hitherto; he acts, in fact, as if he had come into the world as a skilful, intelligent, rational individual but as if his life hitherto had simply not been spent on this Earth. From this we see how for the ordinary-level consciousness of to-day, the Ego is anchored, grounded, in the memory but in the case referred to can no longer find its bearings along the path of memory leading through this earthly life.

But what does this memory amount to? Let us compare it with the actual experience of the reality from which the memory comes to us. We have our place in life, we go through life with its joys and sorrows, find ourselves interwoven in our experiences with the whole of our being. But just compare the intensity of feeling that accompanies an actual experience with the shadowy remembrance preserved in the soul. We need only take an especially significant event in life, for instance, the death of a friend who was particularly dear to us, or the death of father or mother, at a time when such a happening would be an exceptionally deep experience. Let us compare the full intensity of the event and the moment when it was experienced, with the shadowy memories that come to us ten years later! And yet we must have these shadowy memories in order to be aware of the continuity, the intrinsic value and reality of our Ego in earthly life. But is it not evident from this how the Ego, which can find no bearings in earthly life without memory, really experiences itself in a shadowy way, how it is anchored in what actually sinks down every night into unconsciousness? As a matter of fact we do not experience our ‘I,’ our Ego, with very great intensity in ordinary-level consciousness on Earth. The real Ego of life that is not immediately present grows more and more akin to thought, although we know that it is connected with the Ego of to-day. Experience of the present has intensity but this intensity is absent from experiences that have become remembrance. So that we can say: (a drawing was made) if this is our perceptive soul, our spirit, which are in living intercourse with all that streams in upon us from the outside world, behind this Ego we experience in shadowy recollection what remains to us of it. The characteristic feature of this memory is that feeling and also impulses of will are more and more sifted out of it. However intense our feelings may have been on the occasions referred to, the death of someone extraordinarily dear to us, for instance, yet the memory picture which remains has become dim, more and more devoid of feeling. And even less is there any continuance of what we then undertook out of our will-impulses under the impression of the moment! Feeling and will fade away; the calm memory-picture, a mere shadow of what we actually experience, is all that remains as a rule. And we can exist in the land of Earth only if this shadow of an experience remains with us. Our relation to memory is one thing, to present experience quite another.

But we can approach direct experience in another way, not as we usually do; we can ask new questions about our experiences. It must be admitted that if we look back on life it assumes a remarkable aspect. Let us ask ourselves what we really are at the present moment with our knowledge, with the quality of our feeling, the energy of our will. And if we return to our experiences with these newly asked questions, we shall discover how poor we should be, after having reached a certain age in life, if our previous experiences had not been there! If we look back, more particularly to many experiences of youth and relate the remembrance of them to the present day—how happy they were! If we often look back over our life we can say to ourselves something highly significant for the present moment. We can say: we owe the facility with which we adapt our soul, perhaps even our physical constitution with more or less dexterity to life, to the circumstances that in youth we were able to live happily, not suffering from depression, that we were led to much that gave us joy. These impressions of joy in the soul endow us in later life with a certain happiness, although it is drawn down into deeper regions of our being. Let us now ask how much of what life brings us in the way of inner deepening, how much of this is to be attributed to our sorrows, our sufferings? And let us also ask: what can arise in the soul if we look at our life with these questions in mind? We must give the answer to these questions not with the intellect, but with feeling. And feeling answers: I must be thankful to all that has come into my life because only thereby have I become the being I am and with whom I more or less identify myself. I cannot know whether otherwise I might have been of even less account. I can only be thankful to life, because I have become what I am through its joys and sorrows.

This question must be answered with a feeling of thankfulness to life. And it means a great deal if this thankfulness for earthly existence finds its way into the human soul. If certain deepenings of the soul are achieved and life is judged not out of emotion but out of the soul in its purity, then this thankfulness always arises. Though much of what life has brought us may be deplored, yet in many respects the regret is the expression of a complete error. For if what is regretted had not taken place we should not be what we actually are. The feeling that we can have about life amounts ultimately to this thankfulness. Thankfulness may also be felt even when we are not entirely in agreement with life, when we would like to have had more from our existence. We can also be thankful if we are given a small cake by someone from whom we might have expected the present of a large one. The fact that we had expected a large cake must certainly not weaken our thankfulness. And so it can truly be said that whatever, in our opinion, life has denied us—and this opinion may after all be erroneous—it has at all events brought us something. For what it has brought us we must develop the feeling of thankfulness. But when in all earnestness we develop the feeling of thankfulness—we need only reflect on this and it will be readily understood—there must be thankfulness for something else. Anyone who has developed thankfulness to life will be led, through this thankfulness itself, to recognition of the invisible spiritual Bestowers of life and to the transformation of memory in loving devotion to them.

The most beautiful way for one's personality to be led to the super-sensible is when the path leads through thankfulness to life. Thankfulness is also a way into the super-sensible and finally it becomes veneration and love for the life-bestowing spirit of man. Thankfulness gives birth to love and when love is born from thankfulness to life it opens the heart to the spiritual Powers permeating all existence. And as life began with our birth and we cannot possibly begin to be thankful to life merely from our birth as we then already obviously possessed certain qualities, it is therefore quite certain that thankfulness to life leads out of this life into pre-natal existence. In order to be fully aware of what I am now saying it must in any case be proved in actual life. If thankfulness develops out of unprejudiced observation of life, let us test whether love that quickens insight into the spirit is not actually born from this thankfulness, and we shall find that it is so. The question arising here can indeed only be answered through life itself, but life answers as I have indicated. When, however, through actual experiences we develop thankfulness and love to the life-bestowing spiritual Powers our feeling is quite different from anything associated with memory. We experience vividly, with intensity; in memory our experiences become pale shadows. Memory owes its existence to our experiences; but we now come to something that is mightier than our ordinary Ego.

When we consider the experiences that have come to us we are not concerned merely with our shadowy memories; we are concerned with something mighty, not with the shadow of our Ego flowing through time, but with the creator of this earthly Ego. Outside on every hand are the events to which we owe our existence, and when we consider these events we must acknowledge them to be powerful creators of our earthly Ego. We stand in the middle of them with our momentary, present Ego; behind us, if we look into our soul, are shadowy after-images of our experiences; before us, there is weaving destiny, the successive experiences of destiny which have formed and moulded our Ego. The transition from thinking to feeling belongs in fact to this vivid feeling of the shaping of destiny, for thankfulness and love can be experienced only in the realm of feeling. It is to this thankfulness and love that there comes a presentiment of an irrevocable destiny. When we have divined the existence of this ruling destiny, having experienced thankfulness and love, we begin to feel the power of the events that have made us what we are. Think of someone of forty years of age: he has made his mark. In order to take an extreme example, let us say that he has become a great poet—after all there have been such people! ... I might also say, not to go far afield, a noted physiologist, or physicist, but I will take an imaginary example. This man looks back to his eighteenth year; he goes through the events from his fortieth back to his eighteenth year and finds that at the age of eighteen he failed in his leaving examination. At that time it had been a great grief to him. But he had been obliged to arrange his life differently, for he had not enough money to repeat the year, or to go through the wide world as a student who had failed in his examination. Everything was already prepared! Had he passed the examination he would have become an excellent financial inspector, have done an immense amount of work, but have had no time to develop the facilities and powers lying in the underground of his soul. Of course it can be said that if these powers of phantasy exist they are so strong that in any case they would break through the financial activities! This can be said in the abstract, and is invariably said, but it is not true. Many a poet owes his special temperament and what he has become to the circumstance that something of the nature I have indicated happened to him. He will be grateful—if he sets any value on having become a famous poet—to the examiners who ‘failed’ him and did not hinder the course of his life by giving him ‘excellent’ in each subject. Whatever life has been, when we take it in its reality and not sentimentally we can certainly develop this thankfulness and acknowledge that we have been forged by the destiny that goes with us or against us. But at all events we must undergo this feeling in order to see destiny as it were weaving as living reality before us.

Here I should like to interpolate how the same experiences come to one who possesses Initiation-knowledge, one who can therefore see into the spiritual world. He directs his gaze—which has already been sharpened by the Imaginative and Inspired knowledge he possesses and about which you can read in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—he directs his gaze to some particular experience. One who has intensified and strengthened his knowledge can direct his gaze with particular intensity to any experience he is undergoing at the present moment. If a man has Initiation-knowledge he is affected by the experience not less but more strongly than if he has no such knowledge. From the fact that he apparently undergoes experiences with much greater composure than a man who has not this knowledge it must not be concluded that he is less deeply moved by them. He is much more strongly affected than the other. It is only that he has acquired the power to look with composure and objectively at the hard experiences of life; deep down in his being he feels them more significantly than does the other. So when a man endowed with Imagination and Inspiration has experiences they are intense and strong; and because he has practised the relevant exercises in this and in the preceding life he can transform the experiences into pictures full of content, into actual Imaginations.

In what does this transformation consist? It consists in the fact that not only does what the eyes see of the events and experiences, stand there, but that the deeper spiritual connections become evident and a picture which is also carried about with one when the experience has passed, arises; the experience has passed but the picture is immediately present. The experience is intense and through Imagination the spiritual connections play into it. The soul is strongly stirred and it is then possible to look into the spiritual reality and to retain the experience. If a night goes by, the experience, which has become more intense because the astral body and the Ego go out of the physical body, is carried into the spiritual world. What has been experienced in the physical world with the physical and etheric bodies together can be experienced in the spiritual world only with the Ego and astral body; but then, on waking, it is driven back again into the physical body. But it is not brought back as if by the ordinary consciousness which is restricted to memory which gradually fades away. It is carried back in such a way that one's whole being is permeated as with a phantom; it is carried with one in full objectivity, in all intensity, and it resounds with the reality of another human being standing bodily before one.

And then again two or three days or nights pass. Then, after these two or three days or nights the following happens: what was first carried into the spiritual world by the Ego and astral body and has been brought back so that it is quickened and vibrates in the physical body, yes, even becomes articulate and stands behind the experiences as the ruling destiny. The experiences are not alone; they are now coloured by what produced them in former earthly lives, by the forecast of how they will go on working in the earthly lives to come. Just as we put memory as a shadowy image behind us, one who has Initiation-knowledge puts experiences in front of him so that they are clearly there before him. But they become as transparent as glass and behind them, like a mighty cosmic memory, stands the evolving karma, the objectivised memory. And one becomes aware that man not only has within him the shadowy memories of earthly life but that his karma is engraved around him in the cosmic ether, the Akashic Chronicle. Within is shadowy memory, without is the cosmic memory of our destiny through the lives on Earth even although it remains unknown to the ordinary-level consciousness.

Our passage through the world may be sketched like this (a sketch was made). We walk over the ground of the Earth bearing within us shadowy memories. If we were to picture to ourselves a human being with these shadowy memories in him we should have to picture them as a little cloud in the region of his head—where the head passes over into the body—gradually becoming more and more shadowy towards the body. As a human being moves through the world he is surrounded by an etheric aura in which all his experiences are inscribed but also everything that is inscribed in him from the previous earthly life. We have an inner memory and we have the world's memory outside us. Every human being is surrounded by this aura. Not only is the present life engraved in us by way of memory, but round about us the earthly lives of man are engraved. It is not always easy to decipher this memory, but it is there. The deciphering is difficult and in the instances of which I have spoken to you during the last few days, the deciphering was not easy to convert into knowledge. But everything is there. Man has not only a memory within him but an auric memory around him. It is not possible in a single moment to call up a remembrance of what one has passed through in life. The remembering always requires several days. Here, waking up and going to sleep must also come into play, as I have described. It can never be said that as some experience has been undergone one should necessarily remember how it was affected by earlier lives on Earth. It must be fixed in the mind clearly and imaginatively, permeated with inspiration; and then one must wait until it reveals itself. One must never speculate about the spiritual world in research, never invent anything, but only make the preparations for enabling something to reveal itself from the spiritual world. Anyone who believes he can force the spiritual world to reveal this or that to him will be very greatly mistaken; nothing but errors will come of it. Preparation must be made for what one may hope to receive out of the spiritual world more or less by grace.

Such is the path of knowledge which with Initiation-science can reveal karma. It reveals that each human being bears karma as a kind of aura around him. But through the path of thankfulness in life I have described it is possible to have an inkling of the karma a man carries around him in this way. This inkling of being enclosed in a karmic-auric mantle can come to one. It will take more than a period of a few days as would be possible with Initiation-knowledge, but it will come about gradually in the course of more intimate self-observation—often with respect to experiences lying in the far past, to which we turn our gaze. But if a certain event of our past life is mature enough for us to recognise that the forces of preparation in earlier earthly lives are playing into it, then we certainly have an inkling of the truth. Unfortunately, however, it is rare to-day for a man to penetrate so deeply into his own soul that he achieves this grasp of his own experiences or even comes near to developing the feeling of thankfulness. People to-day take life far too externally. They rush through life without pausing quietly to realise the nature of their various experiences. If one has grown up with a certain perception of the cosmic significance of human life, it may sometimes seem quite remarkable how far individuals are from being what they imagine themselves to be, how often they are simply borne along by life without making any strong individual impression.

Here too I should like to speak of concrete cases. I once came across a history teacher, who was a very clever man and also gave his pupils this impression. It might be said that when he chose to do so he lectured with a certain inner enthusiasm which lent emphasis to his words and when the right moment came, enthusiasm for him as a teacher was aroused in his pupils. There was something remarkable about him. I saw him at the time when he could arouse real enthusiasm among his pupils. But then life got the better of him; he became slack, and the enthusiasm that formerly permeated his lectures was no longer there. He read aloud from books, supposing that the pupils did not know them and would not come across them. But one day a pupil went up to the rostrum and saw the book from which he had been reading, whereupon all the pupils bought it, learnt its contents thoroughly and became excellent scholars. At last he became so superficial that he no longer knew what he was telling the pupils in his class. This transformation came about in a relatively short time, and one could not help being amazed to see how ineffectual he was after having quite recently been able to generate such enthusiasm. A few more years went by and the same teacher of whom I once heard a number of pupils say with the characteristic enthusiasm of youth: ‘There's a man for you! He is really enthusiastic about history ... one can learn something from him!’—this man ended quite remarkably, in a life of stagnation and triviality. In a few years he had degenerated to such an extent that he was obliged to live outside the town where he had been a teacher; he was so little respected that it was impossible for him to live in the town.

Such a change for the worse in destiny seems a great riddle and if life is taken earnestly enough it is through such cases that one begins to ask questions about karma. For very many other human beings seem to jog along in the same old groove, undergoing no such radical changes. To genuine spiritual knowledge such destinies as the one of which I have told you become great problems. Through spiritual knowledge we are led on the one hand to the great problems which in the lecture yesterday, at the end of a series of incarnations, brought us to Woodrow Wilson, but on the other hand, in the life immediately surrounding us we are led in thought to the great questions of human destiny. If we observe an example of this kind quite without prejudice we make the discovery that surely it cannot have its origin in the present life! And there will be countless other, quite different cases, where no such twists of destiny take place. We must therefore set to work with the strong desire to understand such questions of destiny. And other cases arise. I will give another example. These examples always seem to me to have been placed in my own path in order to give my conception of karma the right colouring.

I also came to know another man personally—also a teacher. He was even more revered than the one of whom I have spoken, quite extraordinarily revered by his pupils. They believed him to be the greatest sage at present existing in the world. This was the impression made upon his numerous pupils—not upon all, not, for instance, upon myself, but that is a personal matter and is not characteristic. And now a most remarkable thing happened. One could have believed from the relation of this man to his pupils—he had thrown himself into his teaching with all enthusiasm, with every fibre of his soul—that it apparently satisfied him. Yet one suddenly discovered that he was extremely glad not to be obliged to teach any longer; he had been appointed Director of a much less important school than the one in which he had formerly taught. He was delighted to be able to carry out the business of Director which was much more trivial work than actual teaching. And the most striking and surprising thing of all was that this same man, who could speak inspiringly about Homer and Aeschylus, who presented geography in a wonderful way to his pupils, that this same man ended in trivial party-political circles. It was absolutely incomprehensible!

I am bringing this forward only as an example for I could add any number more to the two cases of which I have spoken. They would be personalities about whom one has the feeling that their Ego has been little affected by life. They stand there as personalities upon whom life has little effect; it has touched them externally only. If it touched them when they were still near their training-college examination or during their University training when they listened with enthusiasm, then they were full of zest. If life has led them to trivialities, then they accommodate themselves to the trivial, and are contented too; nothing touches their souls at all deeply. If it were a matter of cleverness, of intelligence ... well, how many people would be Anthroposophists to-day! Millions of individuals to-day are clever enough to grasp Anthroposophy. What hinders them in our time from coming to Anthroposophy is that in their souls they take life superficially, letting life flow past in its depths, its superficialities, its banalities. They can be unimportant school-reformers for a time and after that sit all day in cafes and play billiards, without a single pause from morning until night. Such things do indeed go on in our modern life.

Here the great question arises as to why this happens. In the case of many souls it becomes apparent in what a remarkable way such circumstances have come about. A whole number of personalities such as those described through the two examples, lead one back into the early Christian centuries, when they had their most important previous incarnations. One is led to those centuries when in the South and also already to some extent in Middle Europe, Christianity had assumed the form which later on it has still in many ways retained. It was a time when, as I have shown in the book Christianity as Mystical Fact, the Mystery-wisdom out of which Christianity had grown, had faded away. The Mystery-wisdom had contained the experience of the Cosmic Christ, the knowledge that the Christ had proceeded from the Sun, which is a spiritual reality in the Cosmos, and had come to the Earth in order to be for the Earth that which He has indeed become. This knowledge which extends from the Earth into realms of cosmic spirituality existed among influential Christians in the first century and faded away in the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh centuries A.D. Then it faded away so thoroughly that to-day it has come to the point—but it began at that time—when the strongest rebuke levelled against the conception of Christ held by Anthroposophy is that Anthroposophy regards Christ as a Cosmic Being, as a Sun Being. Everywhere among our opponents it is accounted to be Anthroposophy's greatest crime that it has a cosmological conception of Christ. It is said that this is a warming-up of what once existed as Gnostic Christianity.—Now people have no idea whatever of what Gnostic Christianity is. For with the exception of a few fragments such as the Pistis Sophia, from which little can be learnt, the Gnosis has become known to posterity only through the writings of its opponents. Hence nothing is really known about it. And now think about this question: if nothing were to remain known of Anthroposophy except the writings of my present opponents, if everything were destroyed except their writings—what would be said about Anthroposophy in times to come? Many critics endeavour to treat the numerous anthroposophical books in existence as the Gnostic writings were treated. If these critics were to succeed, nothing would remain except the writings of opponents. It would be to them that people would turn in the first place—to purely antagonistic literature! That would be extremely interesting! External research into the Gnosis had nothing to go on except the writings of opponents! So it is simply nonsense to talk about the ancient Gnosis having been raked up, for nobody could do such a thing without knowledge of the Gnosis derived from its authentic writings, but these have been lost! It cannot be understood from works mostly written by opponents and nothing else has come down to posterity. But even so, to connect the Christ with the Spirit of the Cosmos is accounted to be the greatest sin. In any real conception of the Gospels, every page, every sentence points to the cosmic nature of Christ. But that conception has gradually been rooted out. And it was at the time when the Gnosis had been most thoroughly exterminated that those individuals who when they come again to-day do not get to grips with life, were for the most part incarnated. In that previous incarnation, when they were already clever and intelligent, the culture of the age prevented them from knowing anything about the Earth's connection with the spiritual life in the Cosmos. It was because they stumbled, as it were, through life, thinking of the Earth as enclosed in itself with nothing but physical stars to be seen outside, that in the next incarnation they can only turn to meet the impacts of real life with stumbling steps.

And so we look into the destiny of men. We discover that the culture of the age exercised this influence upon a very large number of human beings, that it made them superficial and they come to the present incarnation already with the tendency to superficiality as I have described to you. For that is how you experience these men, who once, in an earlier incarnation lost connection with the spirit-powers in the Cosmos; in the incarnation following the decisive one referred to, they cannot find the connection with earthly life. But thoughts about karma must do more than introduce mere reflections into our life, they must bring will, activity. We must therefore bear constantly in mind: How will it be in the future, if to the inability to grasp the Spirit in the Cosmos is added the inability to grasp earthly life, if men's attitude to the trivialities of life is no different from their attitude to the deep realities of life? Then indeed the study of karma becomes a serious matter. It can thrive among us only if pursued with the greatest earnestness.

My wish to-day was to consider karma more from the aspect of feeling.

From many studies on the subject of the forming of human destiny or karma you will have realised that human life is not viewed in its entirety if sleep is left out of consideration. When a man reflects about himself with the ordinary consciousness of to-day, he looks back only upon the days because the nights are passed in unconsciousness. In the case of normal sleepers, therefore—as nowadays there are no Seven Sleepers—a third of life is disregarded. But for experience of the super-sensible and of man's participation in the spiritual world, it is this very third of life that is of essential importance. When a person has reached a definite age he looks back over the days he remembers, as far back as his memory goes. The nights are between the days but in his recollection the nights are left entirely out of consideration. A true retrospect is really not possible for a man of modern times because his observation of life is far too superficial. But if he were capable of carrying out such a retrospect, then precisely through what he does not see in the ordinary way he would have an indication of karma. Observation of the life of sleep gives significant hints of individual karma. Attention must above all be paid to the essential difference between the two moments of waking and going to sleep.

Ordinary consciousness can feel this difference instinctively, but Initiation-Science alone can throw light upon it. The difference between the moment of waking and the moment of going to sleep is particularly evident to people who are sick or ailing. They notice more readily than do those in good health that the moment of going to sleep is often accompanied by at least a slight feeling of pleasure. The moment of waking, on the other hand, has something slightly unpleasant about it; waking is accompanied by happiness only if the attention of the person concerned is at once turned to the outer world and when his consciousness of the outer world drowns what is rising up from within him. For many people the moments both of waking and of going to sleep are shrouded in a certain dimness. At the moment of going to sleep a man has the feeling that he is somehow dragging the past day's experiences along with him, that these become more and more nebulous and that he then abandons them. The moment of waking is accompanied by a slight feeling of oppression, a feeling of lifting oneself out of certain depths, bringing from them something that is carried over into the day and is got rid of only during the course of it. The result is that a certain feeling of unpleasantness may be associated with the experience of waking. An unpleasant sensation of taste may intensify into an equally unpleasant sensation of a stupefied head. People do not as a rule distinguish between these delicate experiences but they are unmistakeable indications of a great deal in human life. For what is really taking place? We describe quite correctly and from a certain standpoint very exactly what is taking place if we say: during sleep the physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed and the ego and astral body pass out into the spiritual world, returning into the physical and etheric bodies in the morning on waking. But how does this process take place? In order to make progress in our study of karma we will envisage the whole process which, to begin with, it is justifiable to describe in a rather abstract way.

This emergence of the ego and astral body from the physical and etheric bodies can be sketched like this. Let us suppose this figure to be the human being and here are the physical body and the etheric body. In the evening, when sleep begins, the ego and astral body move outwards. We will draw quite diagrammatically how the two members widen out, expand, but describe a kind of circle. In the morning, on waking, the ego and the astral body pass into the physical body again through the limbs, actually by way of the fingers and toes. The fact is that a circle is described and this statement must be taken more literally than is usually imagined. In reality, when a normal human being wakes in the morning, the picture seen by clairvoyance is not of the whole astral body and the whole ego being immediately within the physical and etheric bodies; on the contrary, ego and astral body pass only slowly and by degrees into the physical body from morning onwards until towards midday and afternoon. You will say that if this were really the case we should feel our ego and astral body moving only gradually from the tips of the fingers and toes towards the head. To very exact clairvoyant observation this is actually the case, only the person concerned does not inwardly feel it to be so, for the reason that the way in which these higher principles work is different from any kind of physical activity. You see, if a locomotive is propelling a carriage, it pushes forwards from the spot where it is at the moment. And if a railway line is, say 30 metres long and the engine is pushing forward, as long is needed for the first metre, then so long for the second, and so on, at a certain point there may be no effect from the engine if it has not yet reached thus far. But with spiritual conditions it is different; spiritual conditions are effective at other places as well as where they happen to be centred. So the waking hours of the day are used for the purpose of bringing our ego and astral body slowly into our physical and etheric bodies from the tips of our fingers and toes. But the ego and astral body begin to be active from the very beginning, from the moment of waking, so that one has the feeling of being completely filled by them. To clairvoyant sight, however, it is clear that an actual revolution takes place through the day; the complementary revolution takes place during the night. But a revolution also takes place—one that is less dependent upon time—when you have an afternoon nap. Here again the ego and astral body leave the physical and etheric bodies and the process adapts itself to your need of sleep. Sleep is a prophet and knows when you will wake although you yourself do not; your astral body under all circumstances knows it. It knows when you will wake even if as the result of some disturbance you sleep for a shorter time than you intend, even if before going to sleep you say that you want to sleep for only half-an-hour but you lie asleep for three hours instead. The astral body knows exactly how long you will sleep. It is an accurate prophet because the inner, spiritual circumstances are, in fact, different from the external circumstances experienced at the time.

You will certainly have realised that there is a very great difference between the process of going to sleep and that of waking. When we wake we have just been in the spiritual world and when we go to sleep we pass out of the physical world and into the spiritual world. A stream bears us along in the spiritual world between sleeping and waking and we also have experiences then—experiences which are, however, wrapt in unconsciousness. We have experiences during sleep which are, in fact, similar to those of the daytime, only they are of much greater intensity.

If you observe the soul's waking life you will find there, in the first place, the thought-experiences evoked by the various impressions made by life. But memories of the earthly life already past are always intermingled with these experiences. Try for once to consider how in every situation memories mingle with the momentary impressions made by life. In fact, if close attention is paid, one can get a picture of how, at different moments, life is a veritable hodge-podge, a mingling of memories and instantaneous impressions. There are two quite different factors: the thoughts which rise up from within and the thoughts which enter via the senses. These are quite different currents of the inner life and during sleep they are also in evidence. The stream of what is present (impressions of the daily life) on going to sleep continues during the night and perpetually flowing towards this is what we experience on waking.

These two currents stream towards each other: the one stream, experienced particularly on going to sleep, is the one already mentioned, the one that is experienced consciously, vividly and powerfully during the first decades after death when life is lived through again in reverse order. As I put it to you rather drastically: if you give someone a box on the ear, then, in living through the event after death you do not experience the anger which you consciously felt on Earth when giving the blow, or maybe the satisfaction at being able to express the anger. Instead, you undergo what the other person experienced, his physical pain and also his moral suffering. This is what you would experience, but in a picture, not yet in reality, if you could consciously continue your life when it is already becoming dim at the approach of sleep. If you were to pass into sleep with full, clear consciousness, you would live through the day's experiences in reverse, but in pictures. Whereas during the first decades after death it is all experienced as reality.

What I have described applies, approximately, to life by day in the waking state, when we are given up to outer life merely with our thoughts. But there is also the other current and this has something stupendous in it. We experience it on waking, as I have explained, but there is an element of heaviness in it which is carried into the day and is only gradually overcome; later in the day we become free of it. When this second stream is fully perceptible to Initiation vision it is seen to be a repository of the whole karmic past which passes before the human being every time he sleeps. Whereas a person can experience something of the karma that is taking shape for the future, when he wakes from sleep he has in the feeling I have described a faint, admittedly a very faint, glimpse of his present karma. The moment of waking brings a faint indication of what an individual bears within him from his past earthly lives. This is of course taken into what the astral body and the ego radiate when from the tips of the fingers and toes they spread through the body. A very burdensome karma, a karma that is difficult to bear, radiates unhealthy material deposits into the head, whereas a good karma radiates health-bringing deposits. And it is here that the spiritual and the natural make contact. The good in a man's karma radiates the healthy states of the organism into the head in the morning and clarifies it; healthy elements radiate upwards from good karma. From bad karma, from the residue of whatever guilt has been incurred, unhealthy deposits in the human organism are reduced to a kind of vapour which rises up into the head. The head then feels dull and heavy. The weaving of karma right into the physical can be perceived from the condition prevailing on waking in the morning. Karma takes shape through the alternating effects of sleeping and waking life. Now just as the karma that takes shape from what we have done every day of our life until its end, signifies in sleep during the night what the momentarily formed thoughts signify during the day, so does that mighty spectacle encountered when we have slept from evening to morning signify the cosmic memories of our past karma. Just as we have personal memories when we wake, from going to sleep until waking we have our karmic memories, if our consciousness extends so far. Memories of the different lives through which we have passed on Earth come to meet us. Soon after going to sleep there can be revealed to one who is able to understand such experiences through Initiation wisdom and Initiation insight, the last Earth-life, the last Earth-life but one and so on, right back to lives which become indefinite because the individual himself was then still living in the universal All, with a dreamlike, plant-like consciousness. Thus sleep is actually the window through which man looks at his karma. He becomes familiar with his karma and works at its further shaping during sleep through the deeds and thoughts which fill his waking life. This is the first weaving of karma: it takes place during sleep. We have already considered a second weaving that takes place during the first decades after death.

We shall acquire a more serious conception of life when the significance of sleep has been grasped in this way, when we realise that we sink into sleep every night because it is then that we work at the formation of our karma, and because it is during sleep that our karma from previous earthly lives finds the way whereby it can play a part in our daily life. From the night, karma gradually enters into our daily life and we bring something quite definite with us into the day. An individual who can recollect clearly how at one point in his life a particularly significant event occurred to him, will, if he has a more intimate, finely developed faculty of introspection, easily perceive that if, let us say, this event took place in the afternoon, ever since morning an inner restlessness was impelling him towards it. Most people who can perceive something of the sort will have had the feeling that from the morning onwards they had been moving towards an event that was to be significant in their life. Such an event—if it was a really fateful although entirely unexpected event—affected all the preceding hours of the day. On days when something important is to happen to us we do not wake up exactly as we do on days that take their usual course—only we do not notice it. Those who used to lead the life of peasants on the land—such people knew about these things and did not like to be torn suddenly out of sleep, because when there is no gradual transition into the waking life of day one is wrested away from such intimate experiences. Peasants say that on waking one should never look at the window at once but away from it, so that while the light is still dim one can become aware of what is emerging from sleep. The peasant will not at once look at the window nor does he like to be startled into waking suddenly; he likes to be wakened naturally, at the same time every morning by the church bell, so that he can prepare himself for this through the whole period of sleep. Then the day dawns, the church bell sounds into his life and then, in the early morning he has inklings of his destiny, of events of destiny, not those resulting from acts of free will. This is what he likes to happen and unlike people claiming to be highly civilised he would hate to be wakened by an alarum clock, for that drives one with dead certainty away from everything spiritual—much more forcibly, of course, than the window looked at immediately on waking. But our modern culture has introduced materialism into all the circumstances of life and will continue to do so. There is a great deal in modern life which makes it impossible for men to perceive the spirit living and weaving in the world. The more aware they become of that indefinite, half mystical influence which can radiate from sleep, the more clearly is their attention directed to their karma.

And now you will understand why I was able to say that we readily dream of individuals whom we meet in life and to whom we at once feel drawn or the reverse, quite independently of whatever outer impression they make. What is happening in such cases? These are individuals with whom we were together in earlier lives on Earth. Let us say that in the afternoon of 14th June, 1924, we have had the experience of meeting someone we perhaps dislike. We now carry into sleep the experience that gave rise to the feeling of dislike. But there, in sleep, the karma is revealed; this person stands before us as he was in the last earthly life or in the last but one, and so on; we meet him as he was in his earlier life. We encounter everything we experienced in connection with this individual who has now appeared and who simply reminded us of something—we meet him as a bodily figure, but in a spiritual way. No wonder that we begin to dream of him; with ordinary consciousness we cannot do otherwise. But if we come across an individual for the first time, however beautiful or ugly his features may be or however strongly he interests us, in our sleep we never meet him, for he was never with us in earlier lives on Earth. No wonder we cannot dream of him! You see how transparent such things become when he facts are examined spiritually.

Now what transpires between sleeping and waking in the forming of karma may follow a normal, perfectly normal course. Then a man will experience how his destiny takes shape as the fulfilment of what he brought upon himself in earlier earthly fives. Or he will experience the ultimate karmic value of what he thinks or does in this present fife. It will as a rule live itself out in what he thinks or does. But something quite different may come about.

Suppose a man who is living on the Earth today achieved in deed or thought something of real importance in an earlier life. The karmic result of this does not lie in the physical body or in the etheric body which are inherited from the parents, but it lies in the astral body and ego—the members which are outside the physical and etheric bodies during sleep at night. But suppose that this karmic load has such strength that it cannot wait until the age of life when the astral body may be weak, for in old age muscles and bones have already become brittle. Let us take seventy years—the patriarchal age—to be the normal length of a man's life on Earth. In these seventy years man's astral body and ego also undergo development. The astral body of a child can work strongly and forcefully upon the whole physical and etheric organism; it can hammer, as it were, upon muscles and bones. In old age this is no longer possible, for the astral body then becomes relatively weak. The strength of the ego increases but it withdraws into the weaker astral body and hence works with less power. The astral body, however, is particularly responsible here, for in old age it is no longer able to hammer effectively upon muscles and bones. Now imagine that someone is living at the present time, in the twentieth century, having lived before in the fourteenth or eleventh century. During his life in the eleventh century he performed a really significant act, one that made very strong impressions on the astral body. The ensuing result remains in the astral body and when the man comes again in the twentieth century it wants to be finally fulfilled and from this astral body to give the necessary stimulus. When the result of the experience in the eleventh century is of such significance that it cannot make use of a feeble, aged astral body hardly capable of performing important deeds, then it must use an astral body in the early years of life. And if the event has been so important as to eclipse all other events of life, a great deal must be compressed into the period while the astral body is still youthful. What does this mean? It means that the individual concerned will have a short life in the twentieth-century incarnation. Here you see how the length of life is determined by the consequences of former earthly thoughts and deeds being anchored in the astral body.

We now go further. Think, for instance, of an astral body that is positively inflated as the result of important deeds—particularly evil deeds—in an earlier incarnation; such deeds inflate the astral body and it makes a strong impact upon the physical and etheric bodies. This strong impact is not healthy; only a certain normal relation of the astral body to the physical and etheric bodies is healthy. The strong impact which can, for instance, be caused by bad karma, batters the organs, softens them and causes disease. Now comes the second incarnation. Such action or thinking in the eleventh century can inflate the astral body, thereby condemning the individual to death at an early age. But he may fall ill in any case, apart from this violent impact; he may have a severe illness and die from it. That is the physical aspect. For when we see what is going on in the person's physical body, we say: he is ill and the illness ends in death; he falls ill at the age of twenty-five and dies at thirty in consequence of the illness.

Is this also the spiritual aspect? Is this also what would be said by Initiation Science? No! Initiation Science would say the opposite. For it is precisely the earlier significant action or thought that brings about the death in the next earthly life; the deed in the eleventh century brings about the death in the twentieth century. And the death sends the illness on in advance ... a man becomes ill so that he may die at the right moment. The consequence of the later death, which is a karmic necessity, is, as you now realise, the illness which is sent in advance. That is the spiritual aspect. When one rises from the physical world to the spiritual world everything is in fact reversed; it takes the opposite course and we see how the illness is karmically brought into man. That is the karmic aspect of illness. This karmic aspect of illness can be an extremely important factor for diagnosis. It need not immediately be discussed with the patient but it may certainly be important. If you bear in mind that what is contained in karma has its own definite place, you will certainly discover it.

Now if the significant incident, action or thought affecting another human being or some particular matter occurred in an immediately preceding incarnation, let us say in the eleventh century, when we are asleep we encounter what took place in that century before anything dating from a still earlier incarnation, let us say in the second century B.C. Thus we gradually encounter what has happened to us in earlier earthly lives. But if one begins here (pointing to the sketch) then what is encountered first is what has made the way from here to here. The karma comes to meet us; but this means that what is above here has come from what is below, perhaps from the heart; something that is low down in the organism and was affected in the previous incarnation comes, however, from the head. In the case of illness, therefore, when we see how far back the influential events lie, karma can indicate to us that an affection, let us say, of the legs, comes from incarnations in the relatively near past, whereas a symptom of illness in the head comes from incarnations in the relatively far distant past. Thus the transition from the spiritual into the physical can also be indicated by karma.

What results from this is extremely important for therapy. For where must we seek the remedy for illness affecting the head and for illness affecting the legs? The remedy for illness affecting the head will be found in what existed far, far back in the evolutionary process of Nature, in what is reminiscent of very early Nature-processes, for instance, mushrooms, which in their present imperfect form recapitulate an earlier plant formation, or in algae and lichens, or, in the case of the fully developed plant, in the root, since that is the part that has remained at the earliest stage. Illness in the lower body and more towards its periphery will have to be healed with what appeared at a later stage in the evolution of Nature, namely, blossoms, flowering plants or also with later formations in the mineral kingdom. Whatever is a late development in man must be healed with what is also a late development in Nature. In the head, too, there are, of course, organs which are comparatively late formations. When the Earth was still recapitulating the Moon-evolution and Sun-evolution, man existed without his present eyes, in general without sense-organs, although the first rudiments of them were already present during the Saturn-evolution. As they are today, mirroring the outer world inwardly, they are a relatively late product of evolution, appearing at the same time, for instance, as siliceous substance in its present form on the Earth. Silica as it is today is a late product in the evolution of the world of Nature, although its rudiments were laid in the far, far past.

Hence when silicic acid is correctly administered as a remedy it acts upon everything belonging to the nerves-and-senses system, especially the senses, through the whole organism. In their present form the senses developed in an age when rocks containing silica also appeared in their present form. In the first incarnation which can still be called an incarnation, when with our whole bodily make-up we were a more integral part of Nature, we lived, simply in accordance with our karma, an existence shared with different forms of plant and animal life, the successors of which are here to-day. The mushrooms and the roots of plants are unlike what they were in that early epoch but in a certain way what is present to-day in the mushrooms, lichens, algae and roots of plants is reminiscent of the conditions prevailing in our first definite incarnation. In the blossoms and flowering plants of today and in minerals at a corresponding stage ... (a gap in the transcript here). I bring this before you only to show how a true observation of karma leads to stages in the evolution of Nature. And from the relation of Nature to Man we can recognise how to heal. Every branch of life must ultimately be widened in such a way that it gradually becomes spiritual knowledge. Everything else is so much groping and fumbling, an existence in spiritual darkness, and it is this that has brought mankind into the present situation. If men are to emerge from it again they must grasp the reason for it in clear consciousness, that is to say, knowledge of the physical must be widened to knowledge of the spiritual. And nothing can lead more positively to realisation of the spiritual than the study of karma.

When we picture how the forming of karma proceeds from sleep, how again it passes into and through sleep, how the normal forming of karma impels a man to action, makes his action again subject to karma and how he thus lives out the ordinary karma of life—from all this we see how karma works. When again we see how the life of an individual is shortened and he dies at an early age, indicating that karma has inflated his astral body and must make strong demands upon it as the result of past deeds, thus contributing to illness—everywhere the working of karma is in evidence. Or let us suppose a man has an accident and is ill as a result; then, under certain circumstances, such an accident—which is possibly, but not necessarily, determined by karma—can continue to be a factor in the further course of karma through the following lives on Earth. Illness may also be the beginning of karma and then it will be found that such illnesses make going to sleep an unwelcome and difficult process. But when illnesses are the beginning of karma they have something consoling about them.

In the case of many illnesses the following must be said: illnesses that are a fulfilment of karma, that make waking unpleasant, point to previous experiences; illnesses that are an augury of future karma and make going to sleep an unwelcome and difficult process are the beginning of good karma. For there will be compensation for what is suffered in such an illness. We have the pain now and afterwards the compensation for the pain, the uplifting, joyous experience. A great deal in life looks different when viewed from the spiritual and not from the physical standpoint. It is sometimes a thoroughly painful physical experience not to be able to sleep, but true observation of the spiritual aspect can be comforting. And if we do not value the momentary physical effect above the spiritual life we can actually say: Thank goodness that I so often have difficulty in going to sleep, for that is a sign that I shall experience much that will be uplifting in my future earthly life; a great deal from my present life will pass into the next one.

Sleeplessness can sometimes be a good comforter and if it were not karmically beneficial in its spiritual aspect, it would be much more harmful than it actually is. Many people tell one such legends about their long bouts of sleeplessness that from the medical point of view one might well ask how comes it that they are still alive! Normal sleep is essential for normal life. People tell one for how long they have not slept; one can only wonder that they are still alive for they really ought to be dead and yet they are not! But in such circumstances the vivifying spiritual element contained in the ego penetrates into life as compensation. To a brief survey of life it is obvious that really restful sleep after hard struggles and hard work is also at times desirable. But to lie in complete restfulness without sleeping and to pass the night quietly and fully awake is nevertheless the more desirable because when it is done of set purpose a person then becomes more and more aware of the Eternal. But the will must be in operation; the condition must not, in essentials at least, be due to physiological causes. Nevertheless there is karmic consolation for difficulty in going to sleep and in sleeplessness, for this really points to future karma, points to the future in certain respects.

Let us compare what we learn through direct experiences about our relation to life between birth and death with what we must feel inwardly about the connection between our moral behaviour, thoughts and acts and the consequences of this behaviour. We began these evening lectures with just such studies and we will conclude with the same theme.

When on the one hand we consider how our moral deeds proceed from our purposes, from our whole attitude of soul, we realise that if we observe ourselves without prejudice, one category of our actions must be described as morally good, fit to become part of the world-order; the other category is of actions that must be described as morally bad, morally imperfect, unworthy to become part of the world-order. But whatever comes to pass through men cannot have a momentary significance only—this is admitted by everybody. And the same applies to the world of Nature. Everything has its effects, its consequences, becomes the cause of something or is itself the effect of something. Human life would certainly not be in keeping with the course of world events if what it embraces were not also cause and effect. But whereas we can be completely satisfied when we observe Nature and clearly perceive cause and effect, we certainly cannot be satisfied about the connection between our moral experiences and the course taken by the world-order. There appears to be no direct connection in the physical happenings between what ought to be the result of the moral disposition of our soul and what actually comes to pass in the course of physical life. And if we consider happenings in wider circles of people we see that a man who in respect of his soul-life seems to be morally good, encounters misfortune and evil in the world, while a man who seems inwardly weak and immoral may encounter external events that are in no way a requital for what is harboured in his soul. In short, we find no connection between what a man experiences as his destiny and the essential quality of his will. It could be called an irresponsible illusion if anyone were to deceive himself that in the one life on Earth the destiny he encounters is in any way the effect of his moral will. The bad can be fortunate, the good unfortunate. These two statements really summarise that characteristic of earthly life which makes it incomprehensible, to begin with, to human faculties. And we shall see from this that man, as he is now placed in the world, is himself not in a position to bring about the consequences answering to his deeds. In the single life on Earth morality remains an inner disposition, an inner attunement of the soul; it cannot become directly manifest in outer physical reality. Admittedly, the inner disposition of the soul can be a direct result of the moral attitude. We can be inwardly contented with our good conduct, in spite of being hit by misfortune that is in crass contrast to what we have actually done; but the experience brought about in this way remains in the realm of the soul. Man must acknowledge that in physical life he is not in a position to bring to outward manifestation in the world the inner, moral content of his soul.

When we study karma as we have been doing during the last few days, seeing how earlier lives work over into later incarnations, we realise that in the moral sphere of the life of soul the earlier is inwardly connected with the later. Put briefly, however, this means that here, in physical life on Earth, man has a constitution which forces back his moral conduct into the realm of soul, does not allow it to take effect in one earthly life. In a single earthly life man is powerless to give effect to the moral content he bears in his soul. His physical corporality, his etheric substantiality, make him powerless. In the life between death and a new birth, however, he becomes as powerful as here in physical life he is powerless. But if in his physical life the physical and etheric bodies render him powerless, there must be something in the life between death and a new birth that enables him to give effect to this soul-content, to make it a reality there, and physical reality too in later lives on Earth. On Earth we live in our physical and etheric bodies amid the kingdoms of Nature and it is what we have to take from Nature for these bodies that renders us powerless. With our own being of soul-and-spirit which passes through the gate of death we become powerful after death because we are then united with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, just as on Earth we are united with the kingdoms of Nature. The Beings of the Hierarchies belong, as we know, to three realms: to the lowest realm belong the Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi; to the middle realm belong Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes; to the highest realm belong Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim. In the course of these lectures we have learnt how man lives between death and a new birth with the inmost essence of the stars and hence with these higher Hierarchies. But in order that the moral content of the soul may come to expression in life on Earth, the following must take place.

It is true that, to begin with, we have to retain in our soul the effects of our moral attitude of thought, feeling and will; we have to wait until in the life between death and a new birth we are vouchsafed the help of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. What lies in our soul is first carried through the spiritual world, emerges again in a new earthly life and appears then in the form in which it is right to appear. For what should we be if in earthly life we could bring to direct fulfilment the moral content of our soul? We should not be typical men of terrestrial life! Just imagine that you bore within your soul a moral content that quite justifiably you considered could be capable of creating a favourable world-situation and that you could actually bring it about. What would you be then? You would be magicians, not typical men of the Earth! For when a power of spirit-and-soul is brought to direct expression, that is an essentially magical achievement. In our present cycle of existence man is no magician in the single life between birth and death. But he is a magician when, together with the Beings of the Hierarchies, he is active between death and a new birth and is able to continue these activities when he again descends into life on Earth. The karmic development through these two entirely different modes of existence is in fact the process where the human being works magically. The physical human being standing before us in external life is membered—as I have shown at the end of the book Von Seelenratseln (Riddles of the Soul)¹—into the nerves-senses man, the rhythmic man and the metabolic-limb man. Metabolism and limbs are connected; when we use our limbs, metabolism is activated and must continue; forces in man must be used up. Metabolism must continue in inner experience too. But both are related. When we observe the human metabolic system as it operates in the physical body, we may be tempted at first to regard it as man's lowest system. There are people who claim to be idealists because they have accustomed themselves to look down with a certain superciliousness upon the metabolic-limb system. It is the lowest system, the system that the respectable idealist would prefer to be without. But without it earthly life would be impossible; it is the system that represents man in his imperfection in earthly life.

Now the facts of the matter are these. In the physical human form the metabolic-limb system is the lowest and therefore has little to do for what is essentially human in earthly life, but it is connected in this earthly life with the Beings of the highest Hierarchy, the Thrones, the Cherubim, the Seraphim. As we move about the world or work with our hands, in this mysterious activity the activity of the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim is present. These Beings remain helpers when man's life continues between death and a new birth. They remain helpers. Now it is quite erroneous to believe that the moral content of the soul proceeds from the head. In reality, regarded from a higher point of view, man's head is by no means such a tremendously important organ. The head is really more or less a mirror of the external world, and if we had the head alone we should know about nothing except the external world. The head simply reflects the external world. The experiences of the head are mirrorings, reflections of the external world. Our inner, moral impulses do not proceed from the head but from the region of the metabolic-limb system, not, however, from the physical system but from its constitution of soul-and spirit wherein Thrones and Cherubim and Seraphim are living.

And so to acquire a right view of man we must picture the following.—(a drawing was made). This third member of man's constitution, the metabolic-limb system, seems at first to be imperfect, indeed it might be said that in respect of its physical and etheric organisation it is unworthy of the human being. But something else lies within it, or rather this system lies within something else; the Thrones live within it, the Cherubim weave within it, the Seraphim flame within it. When man passes through the gate of death, everything that underlies the physical metabolic-limb system falls away from him and with his ego he remains in the realm wherein he previously existed, namely in the realm of the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. He then separates from them but they continue to develop the moral quality of the soul. Here on Earth man looks upwards, to the Heavens, in order to divine a higher reality, a spiritual-super-sensible reality. He does this as long as he is on the Earth. If he is living between death and a new birth he looks downwards and beholds what the moral content of his soul becomes as a result of the deeds of the Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones. There below, when he descends again to the Earth, the consequences are fulfilled; there the Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones are working to bring about the fulfilment of the spiritual reality.

And so, after we have become attentive to it, we see how in a magical way man sends the consequences of his deeds of the present into the next earthly life.

Now that we have considered the metabolic-limb system, let us turn our attention to its polar opposite, the nerves-and-senses system. This, of course, extends through the whole organism but is established primarily in the head. We will therefore consider the human head. It is a fact that through the head man experiences only a reflection of the existing external world. His thoughts, his mental conceptions in which alone, as I have said, he is really awake, are actually only reflections from outside by way of the head. But when a man masters Initiation Science, at first through Imaginative knowledge, then, as you know, through its metamorphosis into knowledge through Inspiration and then through Intuition, he is able to look into his earlier lives on Earth—but he sees them then in their spiritual form. In the spiritual world, knowledge itself is reality. And the experience of a man who with genuine Initiation-knowledge is able to look into earlier earthly lives is that he is living not only, say, on June 15th, 1924, but is himself present through the course of the earlier lives; he not only looks into those earlier lives but he looks back upon his whole being. It is not abstract, theoretical observation but direct identification with his own former existence. His inner life is greatly stirred when he begins to experience his earlier earthly lives. But this experience makes it possible to change the focus of his world-outlook. What is the usual focus of a world-outlook? The usual focus is the head. This head with its physical organisation as the foundation, this head which was yours in previous earthly lives and in the immediately preceding life, cannot be made the focus of your world-outlook when you have once experienced earlier incarnations, for it has long since passed away. Only the spiritual principle that was present in the head can be made the focal starting-point of a world-outlook. Initiation therefore consists in this: through going back into his former existence on Earth, man spiritualises himself. All clairvoyance in the best sense of the word actually means going back into earlier earthly lives. To be initiated means not to remain within the limits of the present life but to look at the things of the world with the faculties that were ours in earlier earthly existence. Whereas in the ordinary course we are such imperfect beings in earthly life that we see only the external physical world, the beings we were in earlier existences had already become clairvoyant. And as a rule when we experience the immediately preceding incarnation we make the discovery that the person we were then was already much nearer perfection.

How does it come about that what we could have become after the earlier life has not been achieved? Why is this? You see, if as human beings having nothing but a head we were to pass from one earthly life to another, we should be as perfect in the later life as in the former, but we have the other systems as well as the head. And since the magical principle in man lies in the metabolic-limb system which in turn works in karma, karma brings the head across from one earthly life to another. Thus karma is directly active in the formation of the head. And if we begin to develop an unprejudiced view of man in this field, we shall gradually learn to read a great deal about his karma from the physiognomy of his head. To look at the human head with the ordinary consciousness of today is just the same as taking Goethe's Faust and beginning “I—h-a-v-e—s-t-u-d-i-e-d—a-l-a-s...” because then one knows only the letters and cannot read. When we have learnt to read we shall understand what these strange signs mean. As I said once before, this trivial fact brings it about that whereas we should otherwise see only about thirty different shapes of letters in books, we have Goethe's Faust, Hegel's Logic, the Bible, and so on, simply because we have learnt to read. In the same way we can learn to read the living things around us. The progress from merely spelling the form of the human head and reading it leads into the secrets of the karma of that particular person. As regards the outwardly perceptible form of the head we may say that every human being has his own particular head; no single individual has exactly the same shaped head as another. Although individuals often look alike, they are not alike in respect of their karma. In the head-formation the karma of a man's past is revealed to physical sense-perception. In the metabolic-limb system lies future karma; spiritually concealed, invisibly it is there. So that if we speak of man in the spiritual sense we can say: Man is so constituted that on the one hand he makes his past karma visible and on the other hand he bears his future karma invisibly within him.

In this way we can eventually acquire an inwardly spiritual view of the human being. Man's metabolic-limb system is inferior in respect of its physical and etheric nature only, for in that system live the Beings of the highest Hierarchy. When we consider the physical-material aspect of the head it is undoubtedly the most perfect system because it bears within it, externally and visibly, what works over spiritually from earlier earthly lives. The head is generally the most highly valued, but it is not the most perfect in a spiritual respect. For whereas Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim live in the metabolic-limb system, in the head-system live Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi. It is they who stand behind everything we experience with our head in the physical world of sense. They live in us, in our head-system, and are active behind our consciousness; they encounter the effects of the physical world and mirror them back, and we become conscious only of the reflections. What we are aware of in our head-system is only the semblance of the activities of the Archai, Archangeloi and Angeloi. (A drawing was made). If I am to continue this diagram I must say: the Archai, Archangeloi and Angeloi are working, at the other pole, in the head-system.—I always use the nomenclature of the earlier Christian world-conception in which the spiritual connection was still intact, although the spiritual Beings may just as well be given other names.

Between the nerves-and-senses system which is based primarily in the head and the metabolic-limb system, man has the rhythmic system in which everything that is active between the lungs and the heart is contained. In all this activity live the Beings of the Hierarchy of the Exousiai. Dynamis, Kyriotetes.

In concluding our studies of karma we are led again to the realisation that while man faces the three kingdoms of Nature here on Earth, behind him are the spiritual kingdoms of the Hierarchies, one above the other. And as here on the Earth his physical body encompasses him and prevents him from bringing to fulfilment by magic the moral forces of his soul, after death the world of the Hierarchies receives him and enables him to make effective magically for the next incarnation what he cannot achieve in one earthly life. When a man passes over from one earthly life to the next he would in all circumstances, if his further evolution were to proceed consistently, develop clairvoyance with the head-system yielded by the former life; Archai, Archangeloi and Angeloi would lead him to clairvoyance. Hence if a man is to have insight into spiritual reality—insight that without an iota of superstition or charlatanry can be called clairvoyance—he must be able to project himself with a certain cosmic consciousness into his previous life on Earth, although in the external world he has progressed to his present incarnation.

Thus, if someone is living, let us say, in the twentieth century, he uses the body which this century can provide and for knowledge he must avail himself of the head. He cannot be clairvoyant. But let us suppose he were transported into a previous earthly life, say in the tenth or eleventh century, as the result of his meditative exercises now, in this twentieth century. He is not the same person as he was at that earlier time, but through his own forces he has brought it about spiritually that now, in the twentieth century, he is the man he was in that earlier epoch—a clairvoyant personality. Clairvoyance can reveal this clearly to Initiation-knowledge during life in the physical world. When we look closely into human life, however, it is revealed to clairvoyant consciousness that in the deeper impulses of a man's nature, in the deeper foundations of his soul, what was present in a former incarnation rises up again in a different form. It is therefore essential, if we wish to approach in earnest such matters as the working of karma, that earthly experience must be of a more spiritual character than is usual.

I will elaborate what I have been saying by means of an example. You know from the way in which I have given such examples that they are the findings of spiritual investigation undertaken with a deep sense of responsibility.

A certain individual lived in the European-Asiatic Orient, somewhat earlier than the founding of Christianity, with a task that was far from his liking. It was in an epoch when slavery was still prevalent and his task was to supervise a number of slaves belonging to a certain owner. Supersensible vision leads us to a situation where a human soul, incarnated at that time in the body of a slave-overseer, was obliged to carry out whatever the cruel owner of these slaves decreed. The slaves were in the care of the overseer and relationships of an ethical nature developed between them. But there was deep conflict in the soul of this overseer. It went against the grain to carry out the often cruel, disciplinary punishments ordered by his master. Nevertheless he obeyed, because he was accustomed to these circumstances and because it was natural at that time to act in such a way. Now just consider for a moment: are people to-day always what they would like to be? They do not often think about this; they deceive themselves about the disharmony between what they are and what they would like to be. This individual too was not what he would have liked to be, but intrinsically he had deep sympathy, deep love, for all the unhappy slaves upon whom he was obliged to inflict these cruelties. Social customs, so to say, caused him to hurt the slaves in many ways. He therefore shared the responsibility, although the master and owner of the slaves was primarily the culprit.

Both individualities were born again in the middle of the Middle Ages, and now as a married couple. The former slave-owner came again in a male incarnation, the overseer came as a woman. In the middle of the Middle Ages the reincarnated slave-owner held a position in a certain village commune, a position that was by no means pleasant, for he was a kind of police jailer and was held responsible for whatever happened in the commune; he felt that life was full of hardships. If we look for an explanation we find that these villagers were for the most part reincarnations of the slaves whom he had formerly owned and whom he had caused to be ill-treated by his overseer. The karmic result turned out to be that the former slave-owner, although he had become a fairly high official, was nevertheless the village jailer, who together with his wife was held responsible for whatever happened in the commune. But at the same time, because the wife shared in all the suffering that the one-time slaves caused her husband, the karma was fulfilled between her—the former overseer—and the slave-owner. The bond between these two was dissolved but not the tie between the one-time overseer, now incarnated as a woman, and the members of the commune. They came together again in the nineteenth century. The earlier overseer, who in a certain way had adjusted his relation to the former master, came again as the great educational reformer Pestalozzi, and those who had been the slaves under him were the children who received such infinite benefit from his educational principles.

These things must be viewed not merely with the prosaic intellect, but with soul, with feeling and with love which must become as clear and brilliant as the intellect and be able to develop genuine knowledge. The intellect can develop only pictures of outer Nature, and anyone who thinks that he gets something more than pictures deceives himself. It is possible to get more only if soul, feeling and love become forces of knowledge, and it is only by going back to earlier karma that we are gradually able to realise how karma works. But the whole soul must participate, and the content of these explanations of karma must be grasped by the whole being of man.

It really amounts to this: the soul must penetrate into the very essence of the Anthroposophical Movement. A short time ago I was deeply moved by a certain incident. What I have told you about Pestalozzi I had also said in a lecture in Dornach, and later on had occasion to visit an official in Basle, accompanied by another member of the Dornach Executive. The well-known picture of Pestalozzi among the children was hanging on the wall in the waiting-room. It was known to the member of the Vorstand who was with me. He was deeply moved by it and he said: When one looks at this faithful portrayal of Pestalozzi, one realises that such a situation can only have come about in the way that is revealed through Anthroposophy. This kind of thing is just what ought to occur more often, this realisation in direct experience of what has been discovered by anthroposophical investigations.

These indications of karma which I have now been able, to my great satisfaction, to give you, cannot make demands merely upon your intellect. What has been presented during these eight days calls not merely upon intellect but upon heart, upon the whole soul. And only when you have gathered together all that I have said about the reincarnation of historical personalities, about observation of individual karma, about the influences of sleeping and waking life in the development of karma and let it all work in your hearts and souls, will a comprehensive grasp of the working of karma in individual personalities result from these studies.

Our civilisation will be rescued from the grip of its present decline only if what is so readily taken to-day merely in an intellectualistic sense penetrates into the whole being of man. What does an Oriental say nowadays about Western man? The spirituality of an Oriental at the present time is not of a kind that we can adopt forthwith, but it is a spirituality which in the ancient past was able to gaze deeply into the super-sensible worlds. To-day only traces have remained but in his soul an Oriental still has the feeling of what was once experienced in the East, namely, living communion with the spirit inherent in all things. Such is the experience of those who are not entirely steeped in materialism. One Oriental who had a feeling for the spirituality in Eastern wisdom said the following as he contemplated Western civilisation: ‘Its essential characteristic is that it is only façade and has no foundations. The façade stands on the ground without any solid foundations.’—And this Oriental went on to say: ‘Yes, in nearly everything that belongs to his civilisation, Western man actually starts from the standpoint of his ego, the ego that is enclosed within a single life and therefore has no reality. It has reality only when it emerges from its bounds and leads into the successive earthly lives.’ Realisation of existence in successive earthly lives is regarded by the Oriental as the foundation-structure and remaining with the ego that is enclosed between birth and death he regards as the façade. Have we not heard to-day that when a man looks into spiritual reality he will look back into the past? If he contemplates karmic development with its magical processes he must have accepted the principle of successive incarnations. Then the ego widens out and will no longer be egotistic. The Oriental says that the European can recognise the ego only within the limits of birth and death and this he calls the egotism of the European. So he says that European, indeed Western civilisation as a whole, is only façade and has no foundation-structure; moreover that if this state of things continues and Western civilisation persists in recognising only the ego living between birth and death, the separate stones of the façade might one day fall apart as the façade has no foundation. This picture of the single stones crumbling away from the façade has actually arisen in many oriental souls, living as they do, largely in Imaginations. It is insight into such matters as have been studied here during these last few days that can add the foundation-structure and supplement the mere façade. Contemplation of the karma which reaches from earthly life to earthly life leads man beyond the restricted activity that is limited to a single life on Earth.

In what must be our final lecture, I should now like to place before your souls a vista into the cultural task of Anthroposophy. If it works on within you, revealing many things, you will become co-workers in the task of creating the foundation-structure for a true and genuine façade of Western civilisation. I have nothing to add to what has often been said by men of the East. What they really mean is this: the West has departed too far from the spirit, it can no longer find the foundation-structure; the East must contribute what it still possesses from ancient times in order that civilisation on Earth may not perish.

Whether this terrible fate that is prophesied for Western civilisation by all clear-sighted Orientals can be avoided, depends upon endeavours such as those of Anthroposophy. Resolute will is needed to penetrate into the spiritual world, in order that its forces may again be received into the hearts of men. Hence a community of human beings who have come together, as you have done, for spiritual activity, has grasped what this truly means only if the resolution is taken to apply all the forces of the will to the task of furthering, for the sake of humanity, experience of the spirit. My purpose in these lectures was to point the way to experience of spiritual reality and thus to the moral principle that is everywhere implicit in it. For this reason I wanted in these hours when we could be together again, to give you just what I have given. But in Anthroposophy spiritual things should be taken in earnest at all times, during every moment, not only during every lecture-hour. In Anthroposophy, therefore, it is true to say that when we are beside one another in space, we are together physically, but because we recognise spiritual reality we know that we are also together even when physically apart. And as I know that some of you here must travel back after the lecture, I will add this.—As we make our farewells let us say to ourselves that we will be true anthroposophists by remaining together in our souls through the spirit which becomes alive in us through our view of life. Let those of us who are now going away again say to our friends of the Breslau Group: we too will think about what we have been able to acquire for our own souls and those of others while working together with you. We will feel that we are with you even when we have gone away from this room and we hope that the Breslau friends too will think of those who were so glad to have been among them at this time.

• 1. See The Case for Anthroposophy. Steiner/Barfield, (Rudolf Steiner Press).

This is the first opportunity I have had of addressing you since the Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum and before beginning the lectures themselves I want to speak of certain matters connected with the impulse which came into the Anthroposophical Movement through that Christmas Meeting. We were glad on that occasion to welcome a number of Members from England, above all Mr. Collison, a friend of many years and the President here, and I should like now to renew the greeting I gave him in Dornach then as the representative of the English Society.

The deep significance of the impulse brought into the Anthroposophical Society through the Christmas Foundation Meeting must be realised to the full and many things that were said by way of characterisation before that Meeting will now have to be expressed in opposite terms. The Society had passed through difficult times both outwardly and in an occult sense too, because in the post-war period a number of different enterprises were set on foot from within the Society itself and this made it necessary that the Society should be imbued with a new impulse.

So far as I myself am concerned—and I may be permitted to say it here—this was connected with something of very great significance.

Some time before Christmas I was faced with a question—although the intention to give a new foundation to the Society had taken shape long before then.

It became necessary for me to decide on taking the very step I had for good reasons refused to take at the time when the Anthroposophical Society separated from the Theosophical Society. I had started then from the supposition that if I abstained from all administrative work and from the official leadership of the Society, merely occupying the position of a teacher, certain things connected with the inner life would present less difficulties than is the case when the teacher also holds an administrative office.

But what was to be expected in the years 1912 and 1913 did not come about; things have not worked out within the Anthroposophical Society as one assumed they would. And so I was obliged to give most earnest consideration to the question of whether I should or should not take over the Presidency. I came to the conclusion that it was necessary to do so. But among our English friends too I want to emphasise something that was inevitably associated with the decision to assume the Presidency of the Anthroposophical Society. Vis-à-vis the Movement as a whole such a step was hazardous for it placed one before a very definite eventuality.

The whole basis of the Anthroposophical Movement is that revelations of the substance of spiritual knowledge flow down from the spiritual world. If one wishes to carry out the work of the Anthroposophical Movement, it is not possible to devote oneself exclusively to human affairs and activities. One must be open to receive what may flow from the spiritual worlds. The laws of the spiritual world are definite and inviolable; they must be strictly obeyed. And it is difficult to combine the demands of an external office to-day—even though it be the Presidency of the Anthroposophical Society—with the occult duties connected with the revelations coming from the spiritual world. And so one was obliged to face the question: Will the Spiritual Powers who have showered their blessings upon the Anthroposophical Society hitherto, continue to do so?

You will certainly be able to realise what such an eventuality meant. The answer of the Spiritual Powers might well have been that this must not be, that there must be no assumption of any external, official position.

But to-day it can truly be said, before all the Spiritual Powers connected with the Anthroposophical Movement, that the links between the spiritual worlds and the revelations which should flow through the Anthroposophical Movement have become more intimate still and the revelations have been vouchsafed in even greater abundance than before; so of the two eventualities, the fortunate one for the progress of the Movement has actually come about. It may now be said that ever since the new Foundation of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum last Christmas, those Spiritual Powers from whom our revelations are received have showered upon us even greater grace than before. Therefore in this respect too, a heavy care has been removed from the Society.

Before the Christmas Meeting it was often necessary to emphasise the distinction between the Anthroposophical Movement which is the reflection on earth of a stream of spiritual life, and the Anthroposophical Society which had an external form of administration in that its functionaries were elected or formally appointed.

Since Christmas, the opposite holds good. The Anthroposophical Movement is now one with the Anthroposophical Society; the two are no longer to be distinguished from each other. For since I myself have become the President of the Society, the Anthroposophical Movement has become identical with the Anthroposophical Society.

This made it necessary in Dornach last Christmas to institute an Executive Council—which is not a Council in the exoteric sense but is to be regarded as an esoteric Executive Council, responsible for its actions to the Spiritual Powers alone, and which has not been elected, but just formed. The whole procedure at Christmas differed from that usually adopted at foundation gatherings. This Executive Council may be called a Council of initiative seeing its tasks in what it actually carries out. Hence the Statutes adopted at the Christmas Meeting are not worded in terms of ordinary Statutes but are a simple statement of the relationship that should exist between man and man, between the Council and the Members, between the individual Members themselves, and so forth. The intentions of the Council are set forth as a statement of what we intend and wish to do; they are “Statutes” in respect of form only. The whole procedure was quite different from that usually adopted by Societies.

The fact of salient importance is that an esoteric trend has now been brought into the Anthroposophical Society. The whole Movement, flowing through the Society as it now does, must have an esoteric character.

This must be taken in all earnestness. Only those impulses for human action which come from the spiritual world will be determinative so far as the Executive is concerned. It will not be a matter of giving effect to certain paragraphs or the like, but of promoting the true spiritual life unreservedly and with no other intent.

Reference may here be made to a matter that may seem of secondary importance. New Membership Cards have been or are in course of being issued. As we now have about 12,000 Members all over the world, the same number of Membership Cards have had to be prepared. All these Cards will now bear my own signature. Many people considered that a stamp could be used for this purpose. But in the Anthroposophical Movement from now onwards, everything must have a directly individual, human character and I must obey this even in a detail like the above. Every Membership Card must lie before my eyes, I must read each name and sign my own below it with my own hand. In this way a relationship is established with every individual Member—slight though such a relationship may be to begin with, it is nevertheless real in the human sense. It would of course be much easier to let somebody else stamp the 12,000 Membership Cards, but this will not be done. This is a symbolic indication that in the future the human element prevailing in the Society is all-important.

If the Executive Council at the Goetheanum is met with understanding from the Members, you will see that as time goes on every one of the intentions implicit in the Christmas Meeting will be carried into effect—although things can only be done by degrees and patience will be necessary. The Council must be met with understanding for it cannot take the fifth step before the second or the second before the first and if up to the present it has taken only half a step, the time will come when it is ready to take the fifth. If things are to be conducted in a really human way, one cannot live in the realm of abstraction; one must always enter into the concrete.

And so a new trend will become apparent in the Anthroposophical Movement. The Movement will be esoteric in spirit; it will no longer seek for the esoteric in external things. Certain truths that it will be possible to communicate will be esoteric for the reason that only those who participate in a living way in what goes on in the Society will be capable of really working upon and assimilating them. But the Lecture-Courses will no longer be withheld from the outside world as hitherto; they will not be sold through the trade but they will be available for those who wish to obtain them. We shall, however, make a certain spiritual reservation by stating that we can recognise only such objections or criticisms as may come from those who are qualified by knowledge to pass judgment upon the contents of the Lecture-Courses. Whatever people may choose to say in the future, in the domain of the occult one's actions must be positive, not negative.

All these things must be understood as time goes on. If the understanding is really there, the Anthroposophical Movement will take on an entirely new character. It will be realised that the Executive Council at the Goetheanum feels itself responsible only to the spiritual world and every individual in the Society will feel united with this Executive.

It may then be possible to achieve what must be achieved by the Anthroposophical Movement if it is to fulfil the aim which in the course of these lectures I shall set before you from the depths of the spiritual life.

For centuries now men have become less and less accustomed to turn their minds to the spiritual world. We say, and rightly say, that the last few centuries have inaugurated an age of materialism which has set its stamp not only upon man's thinking but also upon his will, his actions, indeed upon his whole life. And we in the Anthroposophical Society realise that the purpose of this Society is to awaken forces whereby men will be released from their bondage to matter, from influences which make them deny the reality of the Spiritual.

But if the Anthroposophical Movement is to provide the impulse that is needed in the evolution of humanity, all the teachings, all the treasures of wisdom which have for many years been flowing through it must be applied with real earnestness. We must ponder deeply on the realities of man's life to-day. He comes into the world through birth with traits inherited from parents and ancestors, he is influenced and guided by current views and opinions and at a certain age he becomes alert and awake to the life that surrounds him in the outer world. He pays attention to the ideas, the thoughts, the deeds, the impulses to be found in his environment; he tries to understand his place as a member of a particular nation, as a member of humanity in general, and so forth.

In the Anthroposophical Movement we accept the enlightening truth that all of us who are present here have passed through earlier lives on the earth. We have carried into this present life the fruits of those earlier lives. And we are mindful not only of what we are within our present nation, within modern humanity, but we realise that we have already passed through a number of incarnations on the earth and that in other conditions of existence between death and rebirth we have so worked at the development of the Self, the Ego, that we have made ourselves what we are to-day.

But in his everyday consciousness man does not realise that these previous earthly lives must also be taken into account. Nor will any progress be possible unless he studies the whole of life in the light of karma, of destiny taking shape from one earthly life to another. The historical life of humanity must, above all, be studied from this point of view. We say to ourselves that here or there an outstanding personality appeared, one who accomplished great things for mankind. Do we really understand such a personality if we merely consider that he was born at a certain time and then follow the experiences and events of that single life? If the teachings available in the Anthroposophical Movement are taken seriously, our attitude must rather be this: There we see a personality who in his incarnation now or in the past, represents the fruits of earlier earthly lives, and we cannot really understand him without taking those earlier lives into account.

If this point of view is seriously adopted, however, our conception of history will be radically different from that prevailing to-day. It is customary nowadays to recount the facts and events of the various epochs of human history—in connection, let us say, with a statesman, a painter or some other outstanding figure. Accounts are given of his life and deeds on earth, but the idea that earlier earthly lives play over into a given incarnation is never seriously considered. Yet there can be no real understanding of history without the knowledge that what happens in a later time is the fruit carried over by the human being himself from earlier into later epochs. The human beings who are living to-day or who lived centuries ago were also on the earth in past ages and have carried over into this later epoch the results of what they thought and experienced in those bygones times.

How, for example, are we to understand a phenomenon of the present age as disturbing as the following?—For well nigh two thousand years, all that was inaugurated through the Mystery of Golgotha has been with us; ever since then the Christ Impulse has been working in European and Western civilisation. But in the very same world through which the Christ Impulse has passed, warming the hearts and enlightening the minds of men, a different element has taken root. In that same world are to be found the results of all that is inculcated even into our children through the introduction of modern science into the schools, all the ideas and views presented to us by the newspapers every morning at breakfast. Then again, think of the prevailing conceptions of the nature and being of man, think of all that science has introduced into public life, all that art and other branches of culture have produced .. . it cannot be said that these things are permeated by the Christ Impulse. They are there side-by-side with the Christ Impulse. Indeed many men are at pains to prevent the influence of the Christ Impulse finding its way into the domains of anatomy, physiology, biology or history, and to keep all such fields of knowledge separate and apart.

Why is it so? As long as we merely speak of some personality who was, let us say, a scientist, who received this or that kind of education, who engaged in some form of research, or again, if we merely speak of a statesman as having been a Liberal or a Conservative, we shall not understand how the Christ Impulse can flow through modern civilisation simultaneously with elements that need have nothing whatever in common with Christianity. How can this be? We shall, however, be able to understand if we study the different earthly lives of outstanding personalities, for we shall realise then that human beings carry over into later epochs the thoughts, the impulses of will they unfolded in their earlier incarnations.

We observe personalities in history who have had great influence upon our own epoch. Think, for example, of one whose influence upon external life, especially in domains where science plays a part, has been deep and far-reaching—I am referring to Bacon, Lord Bacon of Verulam. He appears in the world and details of his life are well known. We see him working in the sphere of Christian civilisation. Yet there is no trace whatever of the Christian Impulse in his writings. Bacon of Verulam might equally have arisen from some non-Christian civilisation. What he actually says about Christianity is extremely superficial compared with the real impulse that was within him. The same characteristic is to be perceived in Bacon the scientist, Bacon the philosopher, Bacon the statesman.

Again, think of a personality like Darwin. Darwin was a good and sincere Christian, but there was no connection whatever between his Christianity and his ideas about the evolution of animals and man. The trend of thought in both cases is altogether different from that of the Christian Impulse.

We shall make no headway unless we ask ourselves: What can there have been in the earlier earthly lives, let us say of Bacon, or of Darwin? What had they carried over from their earlier incarnations?

If the Anthroposophical Society is to fulfil its purpose, such questions must no longer remain abstract. The mere knowledge that man lives many times on the earth, that one thing or another is carried over from an earlier into a later life will not lead us far. There is of course nothing against reflections of this kind; they amount to no more than a general belief and are innocuous. But what we must do is to study the concrete realities of man's being and understand his life in some later epoch in the light of what he was in earlier incarnations.

We shall now proceed to study these matters, beginning with an example taken from history, in order to tackle the subject of karma in all earnestness. Observing the progress of evolution revealed by civilisation, by the deeds of humanity, we shall be able to perceive how individuals carry over into a later epoch what they acquired and made their own in an earlier one.

For example: Bacon of Verulam appears in a certain age; Darwin appears in a later epoch. We discern a certain similarity between them. Superficial study merely sets out to discover how Bacon, how Darwin, evolved their particular views and ideas. But if we go more deeply into the matter we find that both of them introduce into Christian civilisation an element which, to begin with, is altogether inexplicable as a product of that civilisation.

As we look back, the question arises: Had not Bacon and Darwin passed through earlier lives on earth? They carried over from those earlier incarnations the traits and characteristics revealed in their later lives. When we understand them as individuals, then and only then do we understand their real place in history. For when the reality of karma is taken seriously, history resolves itself into deeds of men, into streams of human lives flowing from remote ages of the past into the present and thence into the future.

From now onwards these things will be spoken of without reserve; we shall speak of facts of the spiritual life in such a way that external history and the external world of nature will themselves reveal to us the spiritual realities lying behind.

It is certain that these questions, bearing as they do upon the spiritual and physical worlds alike, will, to begin with, be taken less seriously than is their due. For judgments about such matters cannot be formed as judgments are formed about the things of ordinary life. And in order to indicate the many underlying factors which have to be taken into consideration, I should like to make a certain personal reference—although it is meant to be quite objective—before we come to answer the questions: Who was Bacon in his previous life? Who was Darwin in his previous life?¹

In the Goetheanum Weekly, as you know, I am writing the story of my life. But in a periodical intended for the outside world as well, it is not possible to speak of everything and certain additions must be made for the sake of those within our Movement who earnestly desire to find their way into the spiritual world. And so to-day, before I proceed in the next lectures to answer such questions as have here been raised, I should like to make this brief personal reference.

Those who like myself were born in the sixties of last century have lived through the epoch when the Gabriel Rulership of the preceding three and a half centuries was superseded by the Michael Rulership. The Michael Rulership, that is to say the entry of the Sun-Impulse belonging to Michael into the civilisation of humanity, began at the end of the seventies of last century. In the time immediately after the entry of the Michael influence, in the eighties and nineties, when the Michael Rulership was beginning to take effect behind the scenes of external happenings, those who were passing through the period of the development of the Intellectual or Mind Soul—that is to say between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five—were really living in a kind of aloofness from the physical world. For when a human being is consciously active and alert in the Mind Soul he is aloof in a very real sense from the material world.

We speak of man as a being composed of physical body, etheric body, sentient body. With his physical body he stands clearly within the physical world. With his etheric body, sentient body and sentient soul too, he is strongly involved in the external world. But he can live aloof and apart from the external, material world when he is fully conscious in the Mind Soul, before the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul awakens in the thirty-fifth year of life. Full consciousness within the Mind Soul can transport a man altogether into the world of soul. And so in the eighties and nineties of last century there was opportunity for those possessed of the corresponding faculties to live in the Mind Soul, aloof to a greater or less extent from the physical world.

What does this mean? It means that in the Mind Soul, aloof from the material world, one was able to live in the very world into which Michael was entering on his way down towards the earth. The eighties and nineties produced many things that evoked wonder and admiration, there were many fields in which men became expert and many ways by which culture was enriched. Modern literature has words of high praise for this period. Think only of what was achieved by newspapers and in the world of art from the years 1879, 1880–1890 onwards. But in these very years there were happenings of an altogether different character.—Behind a thin veil, a very thin veil at that time, was a world adjoining our physical world. Peculiar conditions prevailed shortly before the close of Kali Yuga at the end of the 19th century. In a neighbouring world, separated from the physical world by a veil so thin that it was impenetrable only to the everyday consciousness of men, things were taking place which must come to clearer and clearer evidence in the physical world and their influences brought to effect.

In very truth something mysterious was at work in the closing decades of the 19th century. There were momentous happenings, grouped around the Spirit we name Michael. Participating in these happenings were strong and forceful followers of Michael, human souls living at that time in their existence between death and rebirth, not yet incarnate in the physical body; but there were also mighty demonic Powers who under the sway of Ahrimanic influences set themselves in rebellion against what was thus to come into the world.

If I may now be allowed to make a personal reference, it is this: Conceptions of the reality of the spiritual world presented no difficulty to me at any age. What the spiritual world revealed penetrated into my soul, formed itself into ideas, into thoughts. On the other hand, things that came easily to others were difficult for me. I was always able quickly to grasp the arguments of natural scientific thinking, but concrete facts would not remain in my memory, simply would not register there. I could without effort understand the wave-theory, the arguments of the mathematicians, physicists and chemists; on the other hand, unlike most others, I could not recognise a particular mineral if I had seen it only once or twice; I was obliged to look at it perhaps thirty or forty times before I could recognise it again. I found it difficult to retain concrete pictures of the things of the external, material world. It was not easy for me to come fully into the physical world of sense.

For this reason I lived with all the forces of the Mind Soul through what was taking place in this world behind the veil, in this sphere of Michael's activity. And it was there that the great challenge arose once and for all to deal earnestly with the reality of the spiritual world, to bring these momentous questions to the light of day. External life offered no incentive, for all that was done there was to hash up once again the old, well-worn biographies of men like Darwin and Bacon. But there behind the scenes, behind this thin veil, in the region where Michael was at work, the great questions were brought to an issue. And this above all was borne in upon one: What a vast difference there is between asking these questions inwardly and putting them into actual words!

At the present time people think that once something is known it can immediately be spoken about. Indeed everything that enters people's ken to-day is at once put into words and announced. But when the questions at issue in Michael's sphere in the eighties and nineties took hold of a man, they worked on into the 20th century. And even after having lived with these questions for decades, every time one wanted to utter them, it was as though the opponents of Michael gathered round and sealed one's lips—for about certain matters silence was to be maintained.

Much that remained a Michael secret had therefore to be carried onward in the heart of the Anthroposophical Movement itself—above all the truths relating to historical connections of the kind to which reference has been made. But for a certain time now—actually for months—it has been possible for me to speak of these things without reserve. That is why I have been able to speak freely of the connections between earthly lives, and shall also do so here. For this is part of the unveiling of those Michael Mysteries which took the course I have described to you.

This is one of the subjects which, up till now, has been dealt with in a more abstract way. At the beginning of the lecture I spoke of an eventuality, namely that the spiritual world might have withheld consent. It has not been so. What has actually happened is that since the Christmas Foundation Meeting and above all because of the opportunities vouchsafed to me for occult work, the demons who hitherto prevented these things from being voiced have been compelled to remain silent. The things to which I refer are not, of course, entirely new, for they were experienced a long time ago in the way I have indicated to you. But it must be remembered that in occultism things that are discovered one day cannot be communicated the next.

I have now spoken of a certain change in circumstances and am telling you these things in order that when, in the future, reference is made to concrete realities in the repeated earthly lives of conspicuous or inconspicuous personalities, you may understand them with the necessary earnestness. Such things must not be lightly taken but with the respect that is their due.

In the forthcoming lectures such indications will be multiplied and elaborated. But before speaking about earlier incarnations of men like Darwin and others I wanted first to emphasise by what kind of spiritual atmosphere these things must be pervaded and the nature of the enlightenment that needs to be shed upon them.

• 1. Dr. Steiner did not speak further of Darwin in these lectures. Readers are referred to his lecture in Dornach, 16th March, 1924. Karmic Relationships, Vol. I.

I have raised the question: How can we find in earlier earthly lives the explanation of a later incarnation, in the case not only of historical personages but also in that of many a personality unnoticed by history whose influence nevertheless arouses our interest? And to-day, as a foundation for further studies, I shall indicate connections in the incarnations of certain individuals. What I shall put before you is the outcome of a particular kind of spiritual investigation, and with this foundation—which will be given in narrative form to-day—we shall begin to understand how the successive earthly lives of individuals can be discovered.

We will take characteristic personalities whose names I gave as examples in the last lecture. Such personalities make us alive to the fact that spiritual impulses of very different kinds are working in our present civilisation. For well nigh two thousand years Christianity has been spreading in the West and in many colonial territories, influencing civilisation to a greater extent than is imagined. It is true, of course, that really close study may reveal the working of the Christ Impulse in many things where there is at first no evidence of it. But for all that, it cannot be denied that there are elements in our civilisation which seem to have no connection whatever with Christianity. Certain views and customs of life which seem to be utterly at variance with Christianity take root in our civilisation.

The attention of one who calls super-sensible research to his aid in order to discover the deeper reasons for the course taken by the spiritual life of mankind, is drawn to a phenomenon insufficiently studied in connection with the growth of Western civilisation. His attention is drawn to the work of an institution which flourished in the East in the days of Charlemagne in the West. I am referring to that Court in the East whose ruler, surrounded by oriental splendour and magnificence, was Haroun al Raschid, the contemporary of Charlemagne whose achievements in the West fade into insignificance as compared with the brilliance of what was going forth, at the very same time, from the Court of Haroun al Raschid.

All branches of spiritual life had been brought together at this Court in Western Asia. It must be remembered that through the expeditions of Alexander, Greek culture had been carried over to Asia in a form of which only a faint inkling remains to-day. The finest fruits of Greek culture had found their way to Asia, brought thither by the genius of Alexander the Great. And as a result, many centres of learning in the East had adopted conceptions of the world which faithfully preserved the old, while rejecting many elements that in the West were threatening to submerge the old.

Through the expeditions of Alexander the Great, a certain rational and healthy form of mysticism had been carried over to Asia, with the result that men who were more adapted for the kind of philosophical thinking thus introduced, regarded the world as pervaded by the Cosmic Intelligence. Over in Asia in those times a man did not say: “I think this or that out for myself, I have my own, personal intelligence”—but he said: “Everything that is thought is thought by Gods, primarily by the supreme Godhead—the Godhead as conceived by Aristotelianism.” The intelligence in a human being was a drop of the Universal Intelligence manifesting in the individual, so that in head and heart man felt himself to be an integral part of the Universal Intelligence.

Such was the mood-of-soul in those times and it prevailed, still, at the Court of Haroun al Raschid in the 8th and 9th centuries after the founding of Christianity. Nor must it be forgotten that many learned sages had taken refuge in Asia when the Schools of Greek philosophy were exterminated in Europe. Astronomy with a strongly mystical trend, architecture and other forms of art revealing truly creative power, poetry, sciences, directives for practical life—all these things flourished at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. He was a splendour-loving but at the same time a highly gifted organiser and he gathered at his Court the most learned men of his day, men who although they were no longer working as Initiates, still preserved and cultivated in a living way much of the ancient wisdom of the Mysteries.

We will consider more closely one such personality. He was a very wise Counsellor of Haroun al Raschid. His name is of no consequence and has not come down to posterity, but he was a man of great wisdom and in order to understand him we must pay attention to something that may surprise even those who are to some extent conversant with Spiritual Science.

There is a question which may occur to all of you. You may say: Anthroposophy tells us that there were once Initiates, living here or there, possessing far-reaching knowledge and profound wisdom. But since men live again in new earthly lives, why is it that to-day, for example, we do not recognise reincarnated sages of old? This would be an entirely reasonable question.

But one who is aware of the conditions by which earthly life is determined, knows that an individuality whose karma leads him from pre-earthly existence to birth in a particular epoch, must accept the educational facilities which that epoch affords. And so it may well be that although some individual was an Initiate in bygone times, the knowledge he possessed as an Initiate remains in the subconscious realm of the soul; his day-consciousness gives indications of powers of some significance but does not directly reveal what was once in his soul in an earlier incarnation as an Initiate.

This is true of that wise Counsellor of Haroun al Raschid. In very ancient Mysteries he had been an Initiate. He had reincarnated and he lived as a reincarnated Initiate at the Court of Haroun al Raschid; the fruits of his earlier Initiation revealed themselves in a genius for organisation and he was able to administer in a truly masterly way the work of the other learned men at that Court. But he did not make the direct impression of an Initiate. Through his own being and qualities, not merely through the fact of earlier Initiation, he preserved the ancient Initiation-Science—but as I said, he did not actually give the impression of having attained Initiation.

Haroun al Raschid held this wise man in high esteem, entrusting him with the organisation of all the sciences and arts flourishing at the Court. Haroun al Raschid was happy to have this man at his side, feeling tied to him by a deep and sincere friendship.

We will now turn our attention to these two individuals, Haroun al Raschid and his wise Counsellor—remembering that in the 8th and 9th centuries at the Court of Charlemagne in Europe, men of the highest social rank (including Charlemagne himself) were only just beginning to make their first attempts at writing; at the same Court, Eginhart was endeavouring to formulate the early rudiments of grammar. In days when everything in Europe was extremely primitive, over in Asia much brilliant spiritual culture was personified in Haroun al Raschid whom Charlemagne held in great veneration. But this was a kind of culture which knew nothing of Christ nor wished to have anything to do with Christianity; it preserved and cultivated the best elements of Arabism and also kept alive ancient forms of Aristotelian thought—those forms which had not made their way to Europe, for it was chiefly Aristotelian logic and dialectic which had spread so widely in the West and were the principles upon which the work of the Church Fathers and later on that of the Schoolmen was based.

As a result of the achievements of Alexander the Great, it was the more mystical and scientific knowledge imparted by Aristotle that had been cultivated in Asia where it had all come under the influence of the tremendously powerful intelligence of Arabism—which was, however, held to be a revealed, an inspired intelligence.

The existence of Christianity was known to the learned men at the Court of Haroun al Raschid but they regarded it as primitive and elementary in comparison with their own intellectual achievements.

We will now follow the subsequent destinies of these two personalities; Haroun al Raschid and his wise Counsellor. Having worked in the way I have described, they bore with them through the gate of death the impulse to ensure that the kind of thinking, the world-conception cultivated at this Court, should spread in the world.

Let us consider soberly and in all earnestness, what then ensued. Two individualities start out from Asia: the wise Counsellor and his overlord, Haroun al Raschid. For a time after death they remained together. It was to Alexandrianism, to Aristotelianism, that they owed the knowledge they had acquired. But they also absorbed all that in later times had been done to re-cast, to re-model these teachings. Unless it is possible to grasp what is happening in the spiritual world while the events of the physical world take their course on the earth below, we can understand only a tiny fraction of the world.

History gives a picture of what transpired after the epoch of Charlemagne and Haroun al Raschid. But while all that history relates about Asia and Europe was proceeding in the 8th and 9th centuries and on into the late Middle Ages, other most significant happenings were taking place in the spiritual world above. It must not be forgotten that while the physical life below and the spiritual life above flow on, influences from souls passing through their existence between death and rebirth stream down perpetually upon earthly life. Therefore we do right to attach importance to what the discarnate souls yonder in the spiritual world are experiencing and how they are acting in any particular epoch. Human life, above all in its course through history, can never be really comprehensible unless we turn our attention to what is happening behind the scenes of external history, in the spiritual world.

Now it must be remembered that the impressions which men carry with them through the gate of death often differ in a very marked degree from the impressions people have of them during earthly life. And those who cannot throw off preconceptions when they are observing the spiritual life may find it difficult to recognise some particular individuality who in his existence after death is revealed to the eye of the seer. Nevertheless there are means whereby one can learn to perceive phases of spiritual life other than the one immediately following earthly existence. I have spoken of this in the Lecture-Course that is being given here¹ and I shall have still more to say about the later phases of the life stretching from death to a new birth. We shall then understand more clearly the nature of the paths which enable us to make contact with the so-called Dead.

It is by these same paths that we are able to follow the further destinies of individuals such as Haroun al Raschid and his wise Counsellor. In order to understand later developments in European civilisation it is of the greatest importance to take account of these two individuals, above all of the bond between them in their thought and principles of action. Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor also bore with them through the gate of death a deep and strong affinity with the individualities of Alexander and Aristotle—who had, of course, preceded them in earthly existence by many centuries—and an intense longing to come into direct contact with them again. Moreover a meeting actually took place, with consequences of far-reaching significance.

For a while, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor journeyed onwards together in the super-sensible world, looking down from thence upon happenings in the civilised world further to the West, in Greece, in certain regions North of the Black Sea, and so forth. They looked down upon it all and among the events upon which their gaze fell was one of which much has been said in anthroposophical lectures, namely the 8th General Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in the year 869 A.D.

The effect of this 8th Ecumenical Council upon the development of Western civilisation was incisive and profound, for Trichotomy, the definition of man as body, soul and Spirit, was then declared heretical. It was decreed that true Christians must speak of man as a twofold being, consisting of body and soul only, the soul possessing certain spiritual qualities and forces. The reason why so little inclination to spirituality is to be discerned in Christian civilisation is that acknowledgment of the Spirit was declared heretical by the 8th Ecumenical Council in the year 869.

It was a momentous event, the effects of which have been far too little heeded. The Spirit was done away with: man was to be regarded as consisting only of body and soul. But the shattering experience for one who can observe the spiritual life and above all for one who truly participates in it is that precisely when here on earth in the year 869 A.D. the Spirit was done away with, there took place in the spiritual world above the meeting between the souls of Haroun al Raschid and his wise Counsellor and the souls of Alexander the Great and Aristotle.

In thinking about what follows, you must accustom yourselves to the fact that super-sensible happenings will now be spoken of in Anthroposophy as naturally as we speak of happenings in the physical world. The lives of Alexander the Great and of Aristotle in those particular incarnations marked the culmination of a certain epoch. The impulse which had been given by ancient cultures and had come to expression in Greece was formulated by Aristotle into concepts which in the form of ideas dominated the West and human civilisation in general for long ages of time.

Alexander the Great, the pupil and friend of Aristotle, had with stupendous forcefulness spread the impulses given by Aristotle over wide areas of the then known world. This impulse was still working in Asia in the days of Haroun al Raschid. It had long possessed a centre of brilliant and illustrious learning in Alexandria but at the same time, working through many hidden channels, it had a profound effect upon the whole of oriental culture.

All this had reached a certain culmination. The impulses of ancient spirituality in their manifold forms had converged in Alexandrianism and Aristotelianism. Christianity was born. The Mystery of Golgotha took place—in an age when the individualities of Alexander and Aristotle were not incarnated on the earth but were in the spiritual world, in intimate communion with what we call the dominion of Michael whose earthly rule had also come to its close, for Oriphiel had then succeeded Michael as the ruling Time-Spirit. Centuries had passed since the Mystery of Golgotha. What Alexander and Aristotle had established on earth, the aims to which they had dedicated all their powers, the one in the field of thought, the other giving effect to a great genius for rulership—all this had been at work on the earth below. And from the spiritual world these two souls beheld it flowing on through the centuries, during one of which the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place. They turned their gaze upon all that was being done to spread a knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha. They saw their work spreading abroad on the earth beneath, spreading too through the activities of individuals like Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor.

But in the souls of Alexander and Aristotle themselves there was an urge for something completely new, for a new beginning—not a mere continuation of what was already on the earth, but veritably a new beginning. In a certain respect, of course, there would be continuation, for it was not a question of sweeping away the old. But a new and mighty impulse whereby a particular form of Christianity would be instilled into earthly civilisation—it was to the inauguration of this impulse that Alexander and Aristotle dedicated themselves.

When their karma led them down again to incarnation on the earth (—it was before the meeting had taken place with Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor—) they lived, unknown and unheeded, in a corner of Europe not without importance for Anthroposophy, dying at an early age, but gazing for a brief moment as it were through a window into the civilisation of the West, receiving impressions and impulses but giving none of any significance themselves. That was to come later.

They had returned again into the spiritual world and were in the spiritual world when in the year 869 the 8th Ecumenical Council was held at Constantinople. It was then that the meeting took place in the spiritual world between Aristotle and Alexander on the one side and Haroun al Raschid and his wise Counsellor on the other. It was an exchange of thought and ideas in the super-sensible world, of immense, far-reaching significance. We must realise that exchanges or conferences of this nature in the super-sensible world are of infinitely greater moment than mere discussions in words. When people on the earth sit together in discussion, when words shoot hither and thither without having much effect one way or the other, this is not even a shadowy image of what transpires when great decisions affecting the spiritual life as well, are taken in super-sensible worlds.

Alexander and Aristotle affirmed at that time that what had been established in earlier days must now be guided undeviatingly into the dominion of Michael. For it was known that Michael would again assume his Regency in the 19th century.

At this point we must understand one another. As the evolution of mankind flows onwards, one of the Archangels becomes Regent and exercises earthly rule for a period of three to three-and-a-half centuries. At the time when Aristotelianism was carried by Alexander the Great to Asia and Africa, at the time when the spread of this culture was pervaded by a cosmopolitan, international spirit, Michael was the Ruling Archangel; the spiritual life was under his dominion. The Regency of Michael was followed by that of Oriphiel. Then, until the 14th century A.D., there follow the Rulerships of Anael, Zachariel, Raphael, Samael—each lasting for three to four centuries. Gabriel is Regent from the 15th until the last third of the 19th century, when Michael again assumes dominion. Seven Archangels follow one another. Thus the earthly Rulerships of six other Archangels follow that of Michael, which was in force at the time of Alexander, and Michael assumes dominion again at the end of the 19th century. We ourselves, do we but rightly understand the spiritual life, live under the direct influence of the Michael Rulership.

And so in the century when the meeting with Haroun al Raschid took place, Alexander and Aristotle turned their gaze to the earlier Rulership of Michael under which their work had been carried forward, they turned their gaze to the Mystery of Golgotha which as members of the Michael-community they had experienced from the sphere of the Sun, not from the earth—for at that time Michael's rule on earth was over. Michael and his own, among them Alexander and Aristotle, did not experience the Mystery of Golgotha from the vantage-point of the earth; they did not witness the arrival of Christ on the earth, they witnessed His departure from the Sun. But all that they experienced formed itself into the impulse which remained alive in them—the impulse to ensure that the new Michael Rulership, to which with every fibre of their souls Alexander and Aristotle had pledged their troth, would bring a Christianity not only firmly established but more inward, more profound. The new dominion of Michael was to begin in the year 1879 and last for three to four centuries. This is our own epoch and it behoves Anthroposophists to understand what it means to be living under the Michael Rulership.

Neither Haroun al Raschid nor his Counsellor were willing to accept this—the Counsellor with less emphasis, but fundamentally it was so in his case too. They desired, first and foremost, that the world should be dominated by the impulse that had taken such firm root in Mohammedanism. The participants in this spiritual struggle in the 9th century A.D. confronted each other in resolute, intense opposition—Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor on the one side and, on the other, the individualities who had lived as Aristotle and Alexander.

The aftermaths of this spiritual struggle worked on in the civilisation of Europe, are indeed working to this day. For what happens in the spiritual world above works down upon and into the affairs of the earth. And the very opposition with which Haroun al Raschid and his wise Counsellor confronted Aristotle and Alexander at that time added strength to the impulse, so that from this meeting two streams went forth—one taking its course in Arabism and one whereby, through the impulses of the Michael Rulership, Aristotelianism was to be led over into Christianity.

After this encounter in the super-sensible world, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor continued along a path leading towards the West, watching and observing what was happening below on the earth. From this super-sensible existence, the one (he who had lived as Haroun al Raschid) concerned himself deeply with civilisation in Northern Africa, in Southern. Europe, in Spain, in France. During approximately the same period, the other (he who had been the wise Counsellor) concerned himself with the happenings of the spiritual life more towards the East, in the neighbourhood of the Black Sea, and thence through Europe as far as Holland and even England. And at roughly the same time, both were born again in European civilisation.

Now there need not necessarily be external similarity between such reincarnations. It is as a rule quite erroneous to believe that a man who has in him a particular kind of spirituality will be born again with that same spirituality. We must look more deeply into the roots of the human soul if we are to speak truly about repeated earthly lives. So, for example, we may take the famous Pope Gregory VII, the former Abbot Hildebrand—a Pope who worked fervidly for the cause of Catholicism and to whom is due much of the power wielded by the Papacy in the Middle Ages. He was born again in the 19th century as Ernst Haeckel, a bitter opponent of the Papacy. Haeckel is the reborn Abbot Hildebrand, Gregory VII, Gregory the Great. In giving this example my only object is to show that it is the inner, deep-rooted impulses of the soul and not external similarity of thought and outlook that are carried over from one earthly life into another.

And so while the Arabians were still surging across Africa into Spain, it was the natural tendency of Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor to watch and exercise a protective influence over these campaigns. Outwardly, of course, the spread of Mohammedanism was checked, but its inner characteristics and trends were carried through the spiritual life by both these individualities on their journey between death and rebirth—carried over from the past into the future.

Haroun al Raschid was born again as Bacon of Verulam. His wise Counsellor too was born again, almost at the same time, as Amos Comenius, the educational reformer.

Think of what was brought into the world through Bacon of Verulam who was only outwardly a Christian and who introduced the abstract trend of Arabism into European science; and then think of what Amos Comenius instilled into education—his advocacy of material, concrete realism, his principles of the form in which all teaching matter should be imparted. It is a trend that has no direct connection with Christianity. Although Amos Comenius worked among the Moravian Brothers, what he actually brought into being is to be explained by the fact that in a previous incarnation he stood in the same relationship to the development of the spiritual life of mankind as did the culture flourishing at the Court of Haroun al Raschid.

Think of every line of Bacon's writings, of what lies inherent in the sense-realism, as it is called, of Amos Comenius—it is all a riddle, perplexing, inexplicable. Lord Bacon is a violent opponent of Aristotelianism. His passionate antagonism is so clearly in evidence that one can perceive how deeply this impulse is rooted in his soul. The spiritual investigator who is able to discern and penetrate these things, not only studies Bacon of Verulam and Amos Comenius but also follows their life in the super-sensible world between death and rebirth. In the writings of Bacon of Verulam and Amos Comenius, in the very tone of their writings, in everything about them there is evidence of rebellion against Aristotelianism. How is this to be explained?

The following must be remembered. When Bacon and Amos Comenius returned to earthly life, Alexander and Aristotle had already again been in incarnation during the Middle Ages, at a time when they, for their part, had accomplished- what it was then possible to accomplish for Aristotelianism, moreover when Aristotelianism itself was present in a form very different from that in which it had been cultivated by Haroun al Raschid—who, as I said, is the same individuality as Bacon of Verulam.

Picture to yourselves the whole situation. Think of the meeting—if I may express it so—in the year 869 A.D. and of how under this influence there had taken shape in Haroun al Raschid impulses of soul which now encountered something that had already been partially accomplished on the earth—for Alexander and Aristotle had already been in incarnation and their lives as men on earth in the pre-Christian era had played no part in giving effect to their aim. Realising this, you will understand the nature of the impulses resulting from that meeting in the spiritual world. And from the fact that Bacon and Amos Comenius could now perceive what Alexandrianism and Aristotelianism had become in the world, you will be able to understand the tone pervading their writings—the writings of Bacon especially, but also those of Amos Comenius.

Studied in the true and real way, history, as you see, leads us from the earth to the heavens. Account must be taken of happenings that can only be revealed in the super-sensible world. To understand Bacon of Verulam and Amos Comenius we must follow them backwards, first through the epoch when Aristotelianism was being promulgated by Scholasticism, backwards again to the encounter in the year 869 at the time of the 8th Ecumenical Council and then still further back, to the epoch when Alexandrianism and Aristotelianism were being promoted and cultivated by Haroun al Raschid and his wise Counsellor in the form that was possible in those days. The happenings of life on the earth can only be really comprehensible when account is taken of how the super-sensible world works into the physical world.

This much I wanted to say, in order to show you that the work and influence of certain personalities on earth can only be understood by following and observing their several incarnations.

There is no time to say more about these things to-day and I will therefore bring the lecture to a brief conclusion.

As we study the progress of human civilisation it becomes apparent that through such individualities as Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor who was subsequently reborn as Amos Comenius, there creeps into the development of Christianity an element that will not merge with Christianity but inclines strongly towards Arabism. Thus in our own time we have on the one side the direct, unbroken line of Christian development and on the other, the penetration of Arabism, first and foremost in abstract science.

What I want particularly to lay on your hearts is the following: Spiritual contemplation of these two streams leads our gaze to many things which have taken place in the super-sensible world, for example to an event like that of the meeting between Alexander, Aristotle, Haroun al Raschid and his wise Counsellor. Impulses kindled by many such events furthered the spread of true Christianity, while other events were the causes of hindrances along its path. But because in the spiritual world the Michael Impulse has taken the course I have indicated to you, there is good hope that in time to come Christianity will receive its real and true form under the sign of the Michael Impulse. For under the sign of the Michael Impulse other exchanges of thought have also taken place in the super-sensible world.

Let me add only this. Many personalities have come together in the Anthroposophical Society. They too have their karma which leads back to earlier times and appears in many different forms as we go backwards to the pre-earthly existence and then to earlier incarnations. Among those who come to the Anthroposophical Movement with real sincerity, there are only a few who were not led by their karma to participate in such happenings as I have now been describing to you. In one way or another, those who with deep sincerity feel the urge to enter the Anthroposophical Society are connected with events like the meeting of Alexander and Aristotle with Haroun al Raschid and his wise Counsellor. Something of the kind has determined the karma which then, in the present earthly life, takes the form of a longing to receive the spiritual knowledge that is cultivated in the Anthroposophical Movement.

But something else must here be added. Because of the particular form which the Michael Rulership assumes, there will be many deviations from the laws determining reincarnation in the case of those persons whose karma and connection with the Michael dominion leads them into the Anthroposophical Movement. For they will appear again at the turn of the 20th/21st century—therefore in less than a hundred years—in order to carry to full and culminating effect what as Anthroposophists they are able to do now in the service of Michael's dominion. The urge to be a true Anthroposophist expresses itself in the interest taken in matters of the kind of which we have been speaking—provided the interest is deep and sincere. The very understanding of these things gives rise to the impulse to return to the earth in less than a century in order to give effect to the intent and purpose of Anthroposophy.

I should like you to think deeply about the indications that have been given. In these brief words much may be found that will help you to find your true place in the Anthroposophical Movement and to feel that your membership of this Movement is deeply connected with your karma.

• 1. True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation. Rudolf Steiner Press, 1969.

During the hour that has become available today I want to speak about certain things which will be easier to understand now that preparation has been made both in the general lecture-course and in the last two lectures to Members. I shall speak this evening about the karma of the Anthroposophical Society and continue this same theme in London during the next few days.

The lectures here have made it clear that in our own epoch the Impulse of the Being known in Christian terminology as the Archangel Michael is responsible for the spiritual guidance of civilised mankind. This particular Rulership—if so it may be called—of the spiritual life began in the seventies of last century and was preceded, as I said, by that of Gabriel. I shall now have something to say about certain aspects of the present Rulership of Michael.

Whenever Michael sends his impulses through the evolution of humanity in the sphere of earthly life, he is the bringer of the Sun-forces, the spiritual forces of the Sun. With this is connected the fact that during their waking consciousness men receive these Sun-forces into their physical and etheric bodies.

The present Rulership of Michael—which began not very long ago and will last from three to four centuries—signifies that the cosmic forces of the Sun penetrate right into the physical and etheric bodies of men. And here we must ask: What kind of forces, what kind of impulses are these cosmic Sun-forces?

Michael is essentially a Sun-Spirit. He is therefore the Spirit whose task in our epoch is to bring about a deeper, more esoteric understanding of the truths of Christianity. Christ came from the Sun. Christ, the Sun-Being, dwelt on the earth in the body of Jesus and has lived since then in super-sensible communion with the world of men. But before the whole Mystery connected with Christ can reveal itself to the soul, mankind must become sufficiently mature and the necessary deepening will to a great extent have to be achieved during the present Age of Michael.

Now whenever the Sun-forces work in upon the earth they are always connected with an impulse which streams into earthly civilisation as an inpouring wave of intellectuality, for in our sphere of existence everything possessed by man and by the world in general in the way of intellectuality, intelligence, derives from the Sun. The Sun is the source of all intellectual life operating in the service of the Spirit.

Utterance of this truth may evoke a certain inner resistance today, for men do right not to place too high a value upon intellect in its present form. Those who have any real understanding of the spiritual life will not set much store by the intellectuality prevailing in the modern age. It is abstract and formal, it crowds the human mind with ideas and concepts which are utterly remote from living reality, it is cold, dry and barren as compared with the warm, radiant life pulsing alike through the world and through man.

In respect of intelligence, however, this holds good only for the present time, since we are living in a very early period of the Michael Age and what we now possess as intelligence is still only just beginning to unfold in the general consciousness of mankind. In time to come this intelligence will have an altogether different character. In order to realise how the nature of intelligence changes during the course of human evolution, let us recall that in medieval Christian philosophy Thomas Aquinas still speaks of Beings, of “Intelligences” inhabiting the stars. As opposed to the materialistic views prevailing today, we ourselves regard the stars as colonies of spiritual Beings

This seems strange and far-fetched to the ears of a modern man who has not the remotest inkling that when he gazes at the stars he is gazing at Beings related in certain respects with his own life and inhabiting the stars just as we ourselves inhabit the earth.

In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas speaks of Beings in the stars although he assigns to each star a single Being in the sense that earthly humanity would be regarded as a single unit if the earth were being observed from some distant heavenly body. We ourselves know that the stars are to be conceived as colonies of Beings in the cosmos. Thomas Aquinas does not speak of specific Beings or numbers of Beings inhabiting the stars, but when he refers to the “Intelligences” of the stars this authority of medieval Christian doctrine is continuing a tradition which at that time was already dying away. This is an indication that what is comprised to-day in the term “Intelligence” was once something altogether different.

In very ancient times a man did not produce his thoughts from out of himself; when he thought about the things of the world his thoughts were not the product of his own inner activity. The faculty of thinking, man's own activity in the forming of thoughts, has only fully unfolded since the 15th century, since the entry of the Consciousness or Spiritual Soul into the evolution of humanity. In olden, pre-Christian times it would never have occurred to men to believe that they were producing their own thoughts out of themselves; they did not feel that they themselves were forming their thoughts but rather that the thoughts were revealed to them from the things of the world. They felt: Intelligence is universal, cosmic; Intelligence is contained within the things of the world; the Intelligence-content, the Thought-content of things is perceived just as colours are perceived; the world is full of Intelligence, pervaded everywhere by Intelligence. In the course of his evolution man has acquired a drop of the Intelligence that is spread over the wide universe. Such was the conception in days of old.

And so man was conscious all the time that his thoughts were revealed to him, inspired into him. He ascribed Intelligence only to the universe, not to himself.

Now throughout the ages, the Regent of this Cosmic Intelligence which, like the light, streams over the whole world, has been the Spirit known by the name of Michael. Michael is the Ruler of the Cosmic Intelligence. But after the Mystery of Golgotha something of deep significance took place in that Michael's dominion over the Cosmic Intelligence gradually fell away from him, fell from his grasp. Since the earth began, Michael has administered the Cosmic Intelligence. And in the age of Alexander, of Aristotle, when a man was aware of thoughts, that is to say of the content of Intelligence within him, he did not regard these thoughts as his own, self-made thoughts; he felt that the thoughts were revealed to him through the Michael-Power, although in that pagan epoch this Being was known by a different name. This Thought-content gradually fell away from Michael. And if we look into the spiritual world we see that the descent of the Intelligence from the Sun to the earth is accomplished by about the 8th century A.D. In the 9th century men are already beginning, as the forerunners of those who came later, to unfold their own, personal intelligence; intelligence begins to take footing within the souls of individual men. And looking down from the Sun to the earth, Michael and his hosts could say: What we have administered through aeons of time has fallen away from us, has streamed downwards and is now to be found within the souls of men on earth.

Such was the mood and feeling prevailing in the Michael-community on the Sun. It was in the age of Alexander and for a few centuries previously that Michael had exercised his former earthly dominion. But at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, Michael and his own were in the sphere of the Sun and from there they witnessed the departure of Christ from the Sun; they did not, as those who were below, witness His arrival among them on earth. Michael and his hosts witnessed the departure of Christ from the Sun and at the same time they saw that their dominion over the Intelligence was gradually falling from their grasp.

Thus in the periods of evolution after the Mystery of Golgotha, the course of development is as follows. Here we have the stream of spiritual, heavenly life (red) and here the stream of earthly life (yellow). Christ comes to the earth and lives henceforward in union with the earth. Until the 8th or 9th century the Intelligence is gradually sinking down to the earth (green). Men begin to ascribe what they call knowledge, what they unfold in thoughts, to their

own, personal intelligence. Michael sees that what he has administered through aeons is now to be found within the souls of men on earth. And in the Michael-community it was realised: During our next rulership (—it was to begin in the last third of the 19th century—) when our impulses are again to pour through earthly civilisation, it is on the earth that we shall have to seek for the Intelligence which has descended from the heavens in order that in the hearts and in the souls of men it may be possible for us again to administer what through aeons we have administered from the Sun, from the cosmos.

And so at this time the Michael-community prepared itself to find again in the hearts of men that which had fallen from its grasp that which under the influence of the Mystery of Golgotha had also been taking the path, albeit a more gradual path, from the heavens to the earth. I will now indicate briefly how Michael and his hosts have striven in order that from this present Michael Age onwards they may once again take hold of the Intelligence that fell away from them in the heavens. Michael who has been striving from the Sun for those on earth who perceive the Spiritual in the cosmos, desires henceforward to establish his citadel in the hearts and in the souls of men on earth. This is to begin in our present age. Christianity is to be guided into a realm of deeper truths inasmuch as understanding of Christ as a Sun Being is to arise within humanity through Michael, the Sun Spirit who has always ruled over the Intelligence, who can now no longer administer it in the cosmos but desires in future time to administer it in and through the hearts of men.

In seeking to discover the origin and source of Intelligence in whatever form it may be revealed, men turn today to the human head, because having descended from the heavens to the earth, the Intelligence weaves within the soul and is made manifest inwardly through the head. It was not always so in times when men strove for Intelligence for the essence of the Intelligence revealing itself from the Cosmos. In those earlier epochs men strove for Intelligence not by developing the faculties of the head but by seeking for the Inspirations conveyed to them by the cosmic forces.

An example of how in olden time men sought the Cosmic Intelligence in a way in which it is no longer sought today is to be found when one stands, as we were able to do last Sunday, at that place in Tintagel which was once the site of King Arthur's Castle and where he with his twelve companions exercised a power of far-reaching significance for Europe.

From the accounts contained in historical documents it will not be easy to form a true conception of the tasks and the mission of King Arthur and his Round Table as it is called. But this becomes possible when one stands on the actual site of the castle and gazes with the eye of spirit over the stretch of sea which an intervening cliff seems to divide into two. There, in a comparatively short time, one can perceive a wonderful interplay between the light and the air, but also between the elemental spirits living in light and air. One can see spirit-beings streaming to the earth in the rays of the Sun, one can see them mirrored in the glittering raindrops, one can see that which comes under the sway of earthly gravity appearing in the air as the denser spirit-beings of the air. Again, when the rain ceases and the rays of the Sun stream through the clear air, one perceives the elemental spirits intermingling in quite a different way. There one witnesses how the Sun works in earthly substance—and seeing it all from a place such as this, one is filled with a kind of pagan “piety”—not Christian but pagan piety, which is something altogether different. Pagan piety is a surrender of heart and feeling to the manifold spiritual beings working in the processes of nature.

Amid the conditions of modern social life it is not, generally speaking, possible for men to give effect to the processes coming to expression in the play of nature-forces. These things can be penetrated only by Initiation-knowledge. But you must understand that every spiritual attainment is dependent upon some essential and fundamental condition.

In the example I gave this morning¹ to illustrate how the knowledge of material phenomena must be furthered and extended, I spoke of the interweaving, self-harmonising karma of two human beings as a necessary factor. And in the days of King Arthur and those around him, special conditions were required in order that the spirituality so wondrously revealed and borne in by the sea might flow into their mission and their tasks.

This interplay between the sunlit air and the rippling, foam-crested waves continues to this day; over the sea and the rocky cliffs at this place, nature is still quick with spirit. But to take hold of the spirit-forces working there in nature would have been beyond the power of one individual alone. A group of men was necessary, one of whom felt himself as the representative of the Sun at the centre, and whose twelve companions were trained in such a way that in temperament, disposition and manner of acting, all of them together formed a twelve-fold whole—twelve individual men grouped as the Zodiacal constellations are grouped around the Sun. Such was the Round Table: King Arthur at the centre, surrounded by the Twelve, above each of whom a Zodiacal symbol was displayed, indicating the particular cosmic influence with which he was associated. Civilising forces went out from this place to Europe. It was here that King Arthur and his Twelve Knights drew into themselves from the Sun the strength wherewith to set forth on their mighty expeditions through Europe in order to battle with the wild, demonic powers of old still dominating large masses of the population, and drive them out of men. Under the guidance and direction of King Arthur, these Twelve were battling for outer civilisation.

To understand what the Twelve felt about themselves and their mission, it must be remembered that in olden time men did not claim a personal intelligence of their own. They did not say: I form my thoughts, my Intelligence-filled thoughts, myself. They experienced Intelligence as revealed Intelligence, and they sought for the revelations by forming themselves into a group like the one I have described, a group of twelve or thirteen. There they imbibed the Intelligence which enabled them to give direction and definition to the impulses needed for civilisation. And they too felt that their deeds were performed in the service of the Power known in Christian-Hebraic terminology as Michael. The whole configuration of this castle at Tintagel indicates that the Twelve under the direction of King Arthur were essentially a Michael-community, belonging to the age when Michael still administered the Cosmic Intelligence.

This was actually the community which worked longer than any other to ensure that Michael should retain his dominion over the Cosmic Intelligence. At the ruins of King Arthur's Castle today, the Akasha Chronicle still preserves the picture of the stones falling from those once mighty gates, and these falling stones become an image of the Cosmic Intelligence falling, sinking away from the hands of Michael into the minds and hearts of men.

At another place this Arthur-Michael stream has its polaric contrast: the Grail stream of which the Parsifal Legend tells.² This other stream comes into being at a place where a more inward form of Christianity had taken refuge. In the Grail stream too we have the Twelve around the One but account is everywhere taken of the fact that the Intelligence, the Intelligence-filled thoughts, no longer flow as Revelations from the heavens to the earth; what has now streamed downward seems, in face of earthly thoughts, to be like the “pure fool”—Parsifal. It is realised here that the Intelligence must now be sought within the earthly sphere alone.

There in the North stands King Arthur's castle where men still turn to the Cosmic Intelligence and where they strive to instil the Intelligence belonging to the universe into civilisation on earth. And further to the South stands that other castle, the Grail castle, where the Intelligence is no longer drawn from the heavens but where it is realised that what is wisdom before men is foolishness before God and what is wisdom before God is foolishness before men. The impulse proceeding from this other castle in the South strives to penetrate the Intelligence that is now no longer the Cosmic Intelligence.

And so in olden times, lasting on into the age when the Mystery of Golgotha takes place over in Asia, we find in the Arthur stream the intense striving to ensure Michael's dominion over the Intelligence, and in the Grail stream going out from Spain, the striving in which account is taken of the fact that the Intelligence must in future be found on earth, since it no longer flows down from the heavens. The import of what I have just described to you breathes through the whole legend of the Grail.

Study of these two streams brings to light the great problem arising from the historical situation at that time. Men are confronted with the after-workings of the Arthur-principle and the after-workings of the Grail principle. The problem is: How does Michael himself, not a human being like Parsifal, but Michael himself, find the path leading from his Arthurian knights who strive to ensure his cosmic sovereignty, to his Grail knights who strive to prepare the way for him into the hearts and minds of men in order that therein he may again take hold of the Intelligence? And now the great problem of our own age takes definition: How shall the Michael Rulership bring about a deeper understanding of Christianity? Overwhelmingly this problem confronts us, marked by the contrast of the two castles: the one of which the ruins are to be seen to this day at Tintagel, and that other castle which will not easily be seen by human eyes, since in the spiritual realm it is surrounded, as it were, by a trackless forest, sixty leagues deep on every hand. Between these two castles looms the great question: How can Michael become the giver of the impulse which will lead to a deeper understanding of the truths of Christianity?

Now it would not be correct to say that the Knights of King Arthur were not battling for Christ and the real Christ Impulse. It was simply that they bore within them the urge to seek for Christ in the Sun and they would not abandon their conviction that the Sun is the fount of Christianity.

Hence their feeling that they were bringing the heavens down to the earth, that their Michael-battles were being waged for Christ Who works from the rays of the Sun. Within the Grail stream the Christ Impulse takes expression in a different way. Men are conscious that the Christ Impulse, having come down to the earth, must hence-forward be carried into effect through the hearts of men. The spiritual Essence of the Sun is now united with earthly evolution—such was their conviction.

I have told you in these lectures³ of individuals who in the 12th century taught and worked in the School of Chartres, where teachings still inspired by a lofty and sublime spirituality were given forth. I spoke of particular Teachers in the School of Chartres, among them Bernardus Sylvestris, Bernard of Chartres, Alanus ab Insulis—and there were others too, surrounded by a great company of pupils. Remembering what was especially characteristic of these Teachers of Chartres, we may say: In some measure they still preserved within them the old traditions of nature teeming with life and being as opposed to an abstract, material nature. And this was why there still hovered over the School of Chartres elements of that Sun-Christianity which the heroes of Arthur's Round Table, as Knights of Michael, had striven to implant as an impulse in the world.

In a remarkable way this School of Chartres stands midway between the Arthur-principle in the North and the Grail-principle in the South. And like shadows cast by the castle of King Arthur and the castle of the Grail, the super-sensible, invisible impulses made their way, not so much into the actual content of the teachings, as into the whole attitude and mood-of-soul of the pupils who gathered with glowing enthusiasm in the “lecture halls”—as we should say nowadays—of Chartres. These were times when in the Christianity presented by these Teachers of Chartres, Christ was conceived as the sublime Sun-Spirit Who had appeared in Jesus of Nazareth. So that when these men spoke of the Christ they saw His Impulse working on in earthly evolution in the sense of the Grail-conception, and at the same time they saw in Him the down-pouring Impulse of the Sun.

What is revealed to spiritual observation as the essence, the keynote of the teachings given forth at Chartres cannot be discovered today from surviving literary texts emanating from individual Teachers in the School of Chartres. To the modern student these writings seem scarcely more than glossaries of names. But in the brief sentences interspersed between the countless designations, names, definitions, those who read with spiritual penetration will discern the deep spirituality, the profound insight still possessed by these Teachers of Chartres.

Towards the end of the 12th century they passed through the gate of death into the spiritual world. And there they came together with that other stream which was also linked with the Michael Age of ancient time but in which full account was taken of the central truth of Christianity, namely that the Christ Impulse had come down from the heavens to the earth. In the spiritual world the Teachers of Chartres came into contact with all that the Aristotelians of old had been able, as a result of the expeditions of Alexander to Asia, to achieve in preparation for Christianity. But they also came together with Aristotle and Alexander themselves who were then in the spiritual world. The impulse of which these two individualities were the bearers could not take effect on the earth at that time because it counted upon an abandonment of the old, nature-inspired Christianity that had still been reflected in the teachings of Chartres where, as in Arthur's Round Table, a pagan Christianity, a pre-Christian Christianity prevailed. In the days of the Teachers of Chartres it was not possible for the Aristotelians, for those who had established and promoted Alexandrianism, to be on the earth. Their time came a little later, from the 13th century onwards.

But in the intervening period something of great significance took place. When the Teachers of Chartres and those who were associated with them had passed through the gate of death into the spiritual world, they came together with souls who were preparing to descend to the physical world and who were eventually led by their karma to the Order paramountly connected with the cultivation of knowledge in the Aristotelian form: the Order of the Dominicans. The men of Chartres came together with these other souls who were preparing to descend.

Using trivial words of modern speech, I will now describe what then transpired. At the turning-point of the 12th and 13th centuries, at the beginning of the 13th century, a kind of conference took place between the souls who had just arrived in the spiritual world and the souls who were about to descend. And the momentous agreement was reached, that Sun-Christianity as expressed, for example, in the Grail-principle and also in the teachings of Chartres, should now be united with Aristotelianism. Those who descended to earth became the founders of Scholasticism, the spiritual significance of which has never been truly assessed and in which, to begin with, men could only hope to win the day for their view of personal immortality in the Christian sense by advocating it in the most radical, extreme way. The Teachers of Chartres had laid less emphasis upon this principle of the personal immortality of man. They still inclined to the view that having passed through the gate of death the soul returns to the bosom of the Divinity. They spoke far less of personal, individual immortality than did the Dominican Schoolmen.

Many significant happenings were connected with what was here taking place. For example: When one of the Schoolmen had come down from the spiritual world to work for the spread of Christianity in an Aristotelian form, he had not, to begin with, been able fully to grasp the essential import of the Grail-principle. Karma had willed it so. And here lies the reason for the comparatively late appearance of Wolfram von Eschenbach's version of the Grail story. Another soul, who came down to the earth somewhat later than the first, brought with him the impulse that was necessary, and within the Dominican Order deliberations took place between an older and a younger Dominican as to how Aristotelianism might be united with the Christianity which, inspired more by nature and the workings of nature, had prevailed in King Arthur's Round Table.

Then the time came for those individualities who had been teachers in the Dominican Order also to return to the spiritual world. And now the great agreement was reached under the leadership of Michael himself who looking down to the Intelligence that was now on the earth gathered his own around him: spiritual beings belonging to the super-sensible worlds, a great host of elemental spirits, and many, many discarnate human souls who were longing for a renewal of Christianity. It was too early, yet, for this to take effect in the physical world. But a great and mighty super-sensible School was instituted under the leadership of Michael, embracing all those souls in whom the impulses of paganism still echoed on but who were nevertheless longing for Christianity, and those souls who had already lived on the earth during the early centuries of Christendom and who bore Christianity within them in the form it had then assumed. A Michael host gathered together in super-sensible realms, receiving in the spiritual world the teachings which had been imparted by the Michael Teachers in the old Alexander time, in the time of the Grail tradition and which had also taken effect in impulses like that going out from Arthur's Round Table.

Christian souls of every type and quality felt drawn to this Michael-community where, on the one side, deeply significant teaching was imparted concerning the ancient Mysteries and the spiritual impulses at work in olden days, while, on the other, a vista was opened into the future when in the last third of the 19th century, Michael would again be working on earth and when all the teachings given forth in this heavenly School under Michael's own leadership in the 15th and 16th centuries, were to be carried down to the earth.

If you seek for the souls who gathered around this School of Michael at that time, preparing for the later period on earth, you will find among them very many who now feel the urge to come to the Anthroposophical Movement. Karma has so guided these souls that in the life between death and a new birth at that time they thronged around Michael, preparing to carry down a Cosmic Christianity again to the earth.

The fact that the karma of very many of the souls who have come into the Anthroposophical Movement with real sincerity is connected with these preliminary conditions and antecedents, makes the Anthroposophical Movement into the true Michael Movement, the Movement that is predestined to bring about the renewal of Christianity. This lies in the karma of the Anthroposophical Movement. It lies, too, in the karma of many individuals who have come with sincerity into that Movement. To carry into the world the Michael Impulse which in this way can be pictured in all its concrete reality, which is betokened by many a sign on the earth today and also comes strikingly to expression in the wonderful play of nature-forces around the ruins of Arthur's castle—this is the task of the Anthroposophical Movement in a very special sense. For in the course of the centuries the Michael Impulse must find its way into the world of men if civilisation is not to perish from the earth.

This was what I wanted to inscribe in your hearts in the lecture for which time was fortunately available today.

• 1. Lecture X. True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation.
• 2. See Rudolf Steiner, Christ and the Spiritual World, Leipzig, 28th December, 1913–2nd January, 1914. Rudolf Steiner Press, 1963.
• 3. See Lecture 4. True and False Paths in Spiritual Investigation.

We shall best understand how karma is anchored in the individual and in the evolution of humanity, and how the single facts of karma lend themselves to description, if we begin by considering how human consciousness has evolved since the time when, even in his ordinary life, man had a direct, elementary perception of his karma. To-day it is a fact that in his waking consciousness man knows nothing of his karma. The world in which he lives from awaking to falling asleep prevents him from having any direct knowledge of his karma. But humanity has not always lived in the state of consciousness that is considered normal to-day. In olden times, moreover during the earlier Post-Atlantean periods of evolution, quite different states of consciousness prevailed, even in the everyday life of man. There are three states or conditions of normal consciousness to-day—I have often described them to you. Firstly, there is waking consciousness; secondly, dream-consciousness into which scattered reminiscences of the day's experiences make their way but mingled, too, with influences from the spiritual world; and lastly, sleep-consciousness proper, in which dimness and darkness surround the human soul and consciousness sinks away, so to speak, into unconsciousness.

1. Waking consciousness.
2. Dream consciousness.
3. Sleep consciousness.

It was not always thus. There was a time in man's evolution when the experiences of his everyday consciousness took quite different forms. Let us look back some eight or ten thousand years to the epoch immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe whereby many widespread forms of civilisation and culture were wiped out of existence.

It was an epoch when land began to arise where formerly there had been sea, and sea to cover tracts that had once been land, a time moreover when the earth was destined to pass through a period of intense cold. We discover there a humanity which had survived the Atlantean catastrophe and was also endowed with three distinct kinds of consciousness but of an essentially different character from those of to-day. The prosaic, everyday consciousness of modern man in his waking hours, by which he sees other human beings and the creatures and happenings of nature in sharp outlines—this the men of those ancient times did not possess. They saw the human being without sharp contours, extending in all directions into the Spiritual, spreading out into the aura; and in this aura they saw his soul. Animals too were seen in great and mighty auras; in their case it was the inner processes—digestion, breathing and so forth—that became visible in the aura. Plants reached up with their blossoms into a sort of cloud which permanently surrounded the Earth. Everything was bathed in a dying astral light. The day-consciousness of men who lived directly after the Atlantean Flood was a gradually fading astral vision of the physical world. I say “fading,” for in its power of giving light it was gradually waning away; before the Atlantean catastrophe this power of vision in astral light had been much stronger and more intense.

The awakening to this condition of consciousness—for the entering into it may be compared to an awakening—was very different from the awakening of normal man to-day, where the soul is confronted with chaotic dreams before passing into the waking consciousness of day. When these people of antiquity awakened it was no mere world of dreams that invaded their consciousness; they were within a world of reality of which they knew also that therein they had been among spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies and elementary spirit-beings. “Waking up” was for them as it might be with a man of to-day who leaves a place in which he has had many experiences and goes somewhere else where in a sphere of new experiences he remembers the others. When in those ancient times a man entered waking life, he had the new experiences of day; but the remembrances remained with him of how he had been in another world, with other beings, not with the physical human beings who together with the plants and animals are generally around him, but with disembodied human souls living between death and a new birth, and with other beings, too, who never incarnate on the earth.

Man felt that he had departed from beings dwelling in the cosmos and was now placed into another world, into the world of physical experience between birth and death, Nevertheless he still preserved a memory of the spiritual world, the world through which human beings pass between death and a new birth. Vision of the spiritual world still streamed into his already fading astral vision. The condition of consciousness in which man to-day lives among purely physical beings did not then exist at all. In those times men had the following experience—it was not a dream but a picture that was graphic and real: when they passed into the day-consciousness and looked at trees, animals, mountains, rocks and clouds, they felt that this was the same world in which were living those spirit-beings and human souls who were not incarnate on the earth but living in the spiritual world that is man's habitation between death and a new birth. And then there came to these men a concretely real picture of how these beings pass into the trees and rocks while man is in his waking consciousness, how they disappear into the depths of the mountains or rise up to the heights of the clouds, steal away into all the created things of outer physical nature.

On going into a forest, a man would, for example, notice a tree and know that it was the hiding place of a being with whom he had been together in the night. Men then saw clearly, as an Initiate can still see to-day, how spirit-beings made their way into physical habitations as though into their homes. No wonder that all these things passed over into the myths and that men talked of tree-spirits, water-spirits, spirits of clouds and mountains, for they saw their companions of the night disappearing into the mountains, into the waves, into the clouds, into the plants and the trees.

Such was early dawn in the experience of the soul: men saw the spirit-world disappearing into the physical world of sense. They spoke reverently of the great and lofty Spirits as taking rest by day in these physical habitations; they spoke of the lesser, elementary beings who live among men and often among animals, as lurking in the things of nature. They expressed it even roguishly. But whether expressed in sublime and reverent language or in pleasantries, it was exactly what they felt about this condition of early dawn in the soul's experience.

Picture it to yourselves. A human being had been in a spiritual world during the last phase of his sleep; it was when he awoke, and only then, that he clearly remembered having been in this spiritual world. How was this? Why did he only see this spiritual, super-sensible world as he awoke, when the spirits were already disappearing? Why did he only then see this spiritual, super-sensible world in which he lived between death and birth? It was because in those days, when during the last phase of his sleep man was able to see the spirit-world, he experienced yet a third condition of consciousness which conjured up another, an entirely different world before his soul. For it was so that during the time he was “asleep” in his earthly existence and present with power of vision in the spiritual world, he looked back on the evolution of his own karma.

This third state of consciousness experienced by men during the epoch immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe, consisted in a vision of karma. This vision of their own karma was an absolute reality to them.

1. Waking consciousness .... Fading astral vision.
2. Dream consciousness ..... Vision of the spiritual world.
3. Sleep consciousness ....... Vision of karma.

As the three states of consciousness alternate in the life of man to-day, so did ancient man experience successively the three conditions of a darkening astral vision, a vision of spiritual worlds and a vision of karma.

It is a fact that in olden times a vision of karma was a reality of consciousness for man; we can truly say that man once had a consciousness by means of which he beheld the reality of karma.

Evolution then took the following course. First of all this vision of karma ceased in the sleep that was of course no sleep as we understand it. The vision of karma began to grow dim. Of the facts of karma there only remained the knowledge possessed by the Initiates in the Mysteries. That which had once been vision and actual experience became a matter of learning and erudition. The ancient consciousness darkened and there only remained—so it was in the old Chaldean-Babylonian-Egyptian period—the power to look up into the spiritual world. Thus, in the centuries which preceded the Christian epoch, a vision of the super-sensible world still came about quite naturally, but the facts about karma were only taught, they were no longer seen. In the times immediately preceding the Christian era there was still an intense consciousness of the spiritual world, of the world in which man lives between death and a new birth, although the consciousness of karma had faded and was simply not there for humanity in general when the Christian era began. It is therefore understandable that special emphasis was laid upon man's connection with the spiritual world while he is in the disembodied state. Especially in the ancient Egyptian conception we can discern this intensely strong consciousness of the spiritual world, a purified, and clear-sighted consciousness of the world which man enters through the gate of death, when he becomes Osiris. But there is no consciousness any longer of repeated earthly lives.

Then came the gradual approach of the time which has now reached its apex and properly belongs to the humanity of our day. Astral vision has sunk into the prosaic, matter-of-fact consciousness we have in ordinary life between awaking and falling asleep, when we only perceive, for example, that insignificant part of man which is enclosed by his skin and consists in flesh and bones and different vessels; that is all we see in our day-consciousness. One can well understand that people want to array it in all kinds of so-called beautiful clothes in an attempt to give it some importance, since deep down in the sub-consciousness there is a feeling that in itself it is of no significance and belongs, rightly, in the radiant, glowing garment of the aura, of the astral and Ego nature. And when men became aware of the change from the vision that sees the human being in his aura to the vision that sees only the unimportant, bodily part of him, they endeavoured to imitate in the clothing what had once been seen as the aura; so that the fashions of old—if I may put it so—were in a certain sense copies of the aura. As for modern fashions, well, I can assure you they are no such thing!

The consciousness of the super-sensible world has taken on the form of chaotic dreaming. Man dreams it away! And in respect of the karma-consciousness, man is fast asleep. He would have the consciousness of karma if that part of his consciousness which is dreamless between falling asleep and awakening were suddenly to awake. Then he would have the consciousness of karma. Thus in the course of ten thousand years or thereabouts, the great change has taken place. Man “wakes” away—not only “sleeps” away—the spiritual reality in the physical world. He “wakes” away the Spiritual in nature, he “dreams” away the true spiritual world, he “sleeps” away his karma.

This development was necessary, as I have often told you, in order that the consciousness of freedom might arise. But humanity must now again emerge from its present condition of consciousness.

We have heard that what was a natural, albeit a dreamlike state of consciousness in olden times, namely knowledge of the super-sensible world and of karma, gradually grew dim and then became Mystery-teaching, while in the modern age of materialism it has been entirely lost. But in this age the possibility must again be found of building a bridge to consciousness both of the super-sensible world and of karma.

This means, in other words: When we picture to ourselves how in olden times at early dawn, the spirit-beings with whom man lived from falling asleep to awakening hid themselves in trees and clouds, in mountains and rocks, so that in the day man could say to himself when he saw a tree or a rock or a spring: “A spirit has been enchanted into it, a spirit with whom I was together during my sleep-consciousness”—so now, by accepting the new Initiation-Science, we must learn in our present day-consciousness to recognise the spirit and as we look at every rock or tree or cloud or star, or sun or moon, to recognise the spiritual beings in all their diversity.

We must set out on the path that leads to this. We must prepare for the time when it shall be even so. As truly as a man of olden time, on awakening, saw the spirit-beings with whom he had lived during the night steal into the trees and rocks, so truly for modern man shall the spirit-beings steal forth again from tree and rock and spring!

It can really happen, and in this way. A man can lay aside the standpoint of ordinary prejudice in which he has been living, into which even children in the kindergarten are led to-day; he can put aside the prejudices that make him imagine he cannot with healthy human understanding see into the spiritual world. And when the Initiate comes and tells of things of the spiritual world and of events that happen there, then, although he cannot yet himself see, nevertheless by making use of his unprejudiced human understanding, he can be enlightened by the communications that are given concerning the spiritual worlds. This is indeed, and under all circumstances, the right first step for each one to-day.

But difficulties are always cropping up ... Last year, after one of my lectures on how to attain knowledge of the spiritual worlds, a well-meaning paragraph appeared in a newspaper of some standing. We can really call it “well-meaning” and even “respectable” as compared with many vehement expressions of opposition to Anthroposophy to-day! In this lecture I had pointed out that there is no need to become clairvoyant in order to have knowledge of the spiritual world, but that when the seer imparts the knowledge it can be received and understood by the healthy human intellect. I had emphasised this very strongly. The man who wrote the paragraph said in all good faith: “Steiner wants to apply the healthy human intellect to knowledge of the super-sensible world. But so long as the human intellect remains healthy it can certainly know nothing of a super-sensible world; as soon as it does, it is no longer healthy.” I think I have never heard it put so honestly before! For it is after all what everyone is bound to say if he denies to the healthy human intellect a knowledge of the super-sensible world, and if he speaks in the usual way of the boundaries of knowledge. Either he must give up the present point of view, or he must agree with this assertion; no other way is really honest.

A modern Initiate can speak from clear and conscious knowledge of how from every star a spirit-being is released, of how other spirit-beings are released from plants. They come forward to meet us as soon as we pass beyond external sense-observation. Every time we go out into nature we may see all around where nature begins to be a little elemental, kobold-like elementary beings coming out of their stony shelters; if we become friendly with them, especially with the elementary beings of the mineral world, we can see behind them higher Beings who finally lead up to the First Hierarchy, to the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

It is a fact that if the exercises given in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment are practised regularly with strong inner energy, selflessness and devotion, they will lead—provided we have the necessary courage—to a new power of perception. We become able to see, for instance, in certain strata of the mountains, whole worlds of elemental beings lying hidden in rock and stone. They come forth on every side, they steal out, they grow big—and we discover that they have only been as it were rolled up and packed tight into these fragments of the elementary world. Beings are present in the mineral kingdom of nature, especially where the earth begins to grow green, and feels so fresh that we can scent its aroma and the aroma of the plants that cover it. But when we enter this sphere of elemental beings, we find that they can indeed inspire us with fear. For the beings we thus encounter are incredibly clever. We must be humble enough to say to ourselves, when we see these little dwarf-like beings emerging from the objects of nature: “How stupid man is! and how clever is this elemental world!” And because many do not like to say this in earnest, do not like even to admit that judged by spiritual perception a little new-born child is much wiser than a learned scholar, therefore these elementary beings withdraw from man's vision. If however we can discern them, the horizon is widened and the foreground opened up to us by these clever, playful little sprites leads away into a background that reaches right up to the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

Thus by means of the exercises to which I referred, a man whose consciousness has been made clear and quick by the study of what humanity has learned through modern natural science, can enter this world of elemental beings, and thence a higher world. If by a loving surrender to nature we thus acquire a consciousness that is not “sicklied o'er” by the authority-ridden knowledge that holds the ground to-day, we may gradually rise through Initiation-knowledge to that knowledge which humanity has lost.

And he who eventually attains the faculty to see the tree-spirits come forth from the trees—the same that the ancients saw stealing away in the dawn, and darting out again in the evening twilight—he will also be able, as he approaches a human being, to see emerge from him the figures of his earlier lives together with the evolution of his karma. For this kind of vision leads on to a vision of karma.

In the mineral world, where at first we perceive the clever, mischievous little dwarfs, the vision leads us to the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones.

In the plant world, the vision leads us to the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes.

In the animal world (when we see emerge from the animals their own spiritual beings) we are led to a vision of the Archai, Archangels and Angels.

And in the human kingdom the vision leads to karma.

Behind the manifestations of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones, behind all the other Beings of the higher Hierarchies, behind all the elemental nature-spirits who startle us by their cleverness when they dart forth from the minerals, or who come to meet us with their gentle importunities from the plant world, behind all that comes from the animals—fierce, passionate and violent as that may be at times, and also icy cold—behind all that stands here so to speak as a foreground, we face the overwhelming, the sublime manifestations of karma. For behind all the mysteries of the world there lies, in truth, the great mystery of human karma.

Having thus prepared our hearts and minds in the right way, we shall pass on in the remaining lectures to speak of particular facts of karma.

When we look back over the historical evolution of mankind and see how event follows event in the course of the ages, we are accustomed to regard these events as though we might find in more recent times the effects and results of earlier ages, as though we could speak of cause and effect in history in the same way as we do in connection with the external physical world.

We are however bound to admit that when we do look at history in this way, nearly all of it remains unexplained. We shall not, for example, succeed in explaining the Great War simply as an effect of the events that took place from the beginning of the century until the year 1914. Neither shall we succeed in explaining the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century out of the events that preceded it. Many theories of history are put forward but they do not carry us very far, and in the last resort we cannot but deem them artificial.

The truth is that the events in human history only become capable of explanation when we look at the personalities who play a decisive part in these events, in respect of their repeated lives on earth. And it is also true that when we have given attention to this study for a considerable time, when we have observed the karma of historical personages as it shows itself in the course of their lives on earth, then and only then shall we acquire the right mood of soul to go into the matter of our own karma. Let us then to-day study karma as it shows itself in history. We will take a few historical personages who have done something or other that is known to us, and see how this deed or course of action may be traced from that which was written into their karma from their earlier incarnations.

It will in this way become clear to us that the things that happen in one epoch of history have really been brought over by human beings from earlier epochs. And as we learn to take quite seriously—it is too often considered as mere theory—all that is said about karma and repeated earth-lives, as we come to place it before us in precise and concrete detail, we shall be able to say: All of us who are sitting here have been on the earth many times before and we have brought with us into this present earth-life the fruits of earlier earth-lives.

It is only when we have learned to be quite earnest about this that we have any right to speak of the perception of karma as something that we know. But the only way to learn to perceive karma is to take the ideas of karma and put them as great questions to the history of man. Then we shall no longer say: What happened in 1914 is the result of what happened in 1910, and what happened in 1910 is the result of what happened in 1900, and so on. Then we shall try instead to understand how the personalities who make their appearance in life themselves bring over from earlier epochs that which shows itself in a later one. It is only on this path that we shall arrive at a true and genuine study of history, beholding the external events against the background of human destinies.

History sets us such a number of riddles! But many a riddle is cleared up if we set about studying it in the way I have described. People appear sometimes quite suddenly in history, shooting in as it were like meteors. You examine their education and upbringing—it affords no explanation whatever. You examine the age to which they belong—again you can find no clue to the problem of their appearance in this particular time. Karmic connections alone will afford the true explanation.

I will speak of one or two such personalities who have lived in times not very far distant from our own, and whose lives readily suggest the double question: What were their circumstances in an earlier earth-life, and what have they brought over from that earlier life that has made them as they are now?

Or again, let us take the case of personalities of an earlier age, who lived a long time ago in the history of evolution. Here we are anxious to know when they came again to earth, and what sort of people they were in a later incarnation. If in an earlier life they attained to fame and renown, we ask ourselves: What did they become when they returned? We would like to be able to add other lives to the one of which we read in history; perhaps they were historical characters a second time, or perhaps renowned in some other way: in any case we would like to know the connections.

Now connections of this kind are exceedingly difficult to investigate. Let me begin by giving you an idea of how, when we want to research into karmic connections, we have to look at the whole human being and not merely at what often strikes us at first sight as being particularly characteristic.

I should like here to give an example which may seem rather personal. I once had a Geometry teacher whom I loved dearly. It was not difficult for me to love him because during my boyhood I was exceedingly fond of Geometry. But this teacher was really quite unusual. He had a peculiar talent for Geometry that fascinated me, although people who are never deeply impressed by other human beings might have thought him dry and uninteresting. Notwithstanding this somewhat prosaic nature, however, he was a man whose influence could have a strongly artistic effect upon one. I always had an intense desire to unravel the secret of this personality and I tried to apply the methods of occult research by which this end can be attained.

I spoke in Torquay, and will only now repeat in brief, of how, if one progresses in the development of the occult forces of the soul in the way I described in the lecture here a year ago¹ and reaches the stage of empty consciousness, and if then this empty consciousness becomes filled with what resounds from the spiritual world, it is possible—if one adds to this experience such things as I spoke of in this morning's lecture—to have impressions, intuitions that are as exact as a mathematical truth and point from certain phenomena in the present life of an individual to an earlier life.

Now the wonderful way in which this teacher of mine worked in Geometry, his whole method of handling the subject, made me deeply interested in him. And this interest remained, even after his death at an advanced age. Destiny never brought me into actual contact with him again after I left the school in which he taught, but his personality stood before me in the spirit as a reality, until the day of his death and after his death; he stood there before me in particular clarity in all the detail of his bearing and actions.

Now what made it possible for me to receive out of his present life an intuition of his previous earth-life, or at any rate the previous earth-life of importance for him, was the fact that he had a club foot! One leg was shorter than the other.

When we remember that in the transition from one earth-life to another, what was head-organisation in the previous life becomes foot- or limb-organisation, and what was foot- or limb-organisation becomes head-organisation, then we shall readily understand that a bodily trait of this kind may have a certain significance, inasmuch as the life of the individual stretches across repeated earthly existences. This club foot enabled me to trace the individuality of my Geometry teacher back into the past. He was not a man of any renown but he was a person who made upon me at any rate and upon others too, a deep and lasting impression; he had an extraordinarily strong influence upon many lives. And I was able to discover, starting from the fact of his club foot, that a study of his personality led one back to the very same place in history where one has to look for Lord Byron.

Now Lord Byron too had a club foot. This is an external physical characteristic, but what is external and bodily in one life is, in another, a quality of soul-and-spirit; and this characteristic led me to recognise that the two personalities who were not now contemporaries (for my Geometry teacher lived later than Byron) had, in an earlier earth-life, been together. In the modern age they had lived as poet and geometrician, each a genius in his own line, the one becoming widely famous, the other making only upon a few individuals an intimate impression which influenced the shaping of their destinies. In an earlier life, however, in medieval times, they had been side by side; together they had listened to the legend of the Palladium, the holy treasure that had once been in Troy, had then come over with Aeneas and was regarded by Rome as the talisman upon which her fortunes depended. The Emperor Constantine afterwards took it across to Constantinople and the success and happiness of Constantinople in its history depended on this Palladium. The legend, looking prophetically into the future, went on to say that whoever acquires the Palladium, his shall be the rulership of the world.

This is not the time for me to enlarge upon the merits and content of the legend. I will only say that these two individuals who were at that time incarnated in what is to-day called Russia, undertook together, with warm enthusiasm, the journey to Constantinople in search of the Palladium. They were not able to obtain possession of it but they kept the enthusiasm alive in their hearts.

And now we can actually see how Lord Byron resolved to go in search of the Palladium in another guise when he took part in the Greek struggle for freedom. If you study carefully the life of Lord Byron, you will find that a great deal in this gifted poet is due to the fact that in an earlier earth-life he had been spurred on by enthusiasm for such an enterprise.

And again, as I look back upon my Geometry teacher with his modest, unassuming character, I can see how he owed his charm and endearing qualities in this life to the enterprise of that earlier time, although his part, then, had been a secondary one. Had he taken an equal share in it with the individuality who became Lord Byron, he would have been a contemporary of his again in the later life.

I bring this example before you in order that you may realise that we have to look at the whole human being if we want to investigate karmic connections; we have even, for example, to note bodily defects or deformities. If we find that a person has some distinguishing talent of a spiritual kind in one earth-life, let us say has been a great painter, we must not draw the abstract conclusion that he was a great painter in his former earth-life. What we see on the surface are only the waves thrown up by karma which flows in deeper waters below and has to do with body, soul and spirit. We must take the whole life into the horizon of our vision.

It will frequently happen that little characteristic actions of a person, such as the way he moves his fingers, will lead the way to karmic connections far sooner than any outstanding activities he may have undertaken and that are from every other aspect of more consequence. I once had the experience of being able to arrive at deep and intimate karmic connections in the case of a certain person by giving attention to quite an incidental peculiarity that made a strong impression upon me. He used to give lessons in a school, and on every occasion, before beginning his lesson, he took out his pocket handkerchief and blew his nose. He never by any chance began to teach without doing this. It was a deeply-rooted characteristic in him. The impression it made upon me was significant and I was able to read in it a pointer to important features of his former earth-life. It is in these signs that we have to find some significant trait in the person that will often take us back to the earlier incarnation.

And now I would like to show you how interesting from a historical point of view the question of karma becomes. Let us take a few concrete cases, for example, the case of Swedenborg, who appears in such a striking way in the 18th century. Last year I spoke of him in Penmaenmawr² from quite a different standpoint. I spoke then of his spiritual qualities but I did not touch upon his karma.

Swedenborg is a very remarkable figure. Until he was more than 40 years old he was a great and notable scholar, of such repute that the Swedish Academy of Science is even now still occupied in bringing out the numerous scientific works he left behind—purely scientific works. When we know that Arrhenius, for example, has concerned himself with their publication, we shall conclude that they must be un-spiritual in the very highest degree. Otherwise Arrhenius would scarcely interest himself in them! Nobody could say that up to his fortieth year Swedenborg had anything whatever to do with spiritual matters in his knowledge and learning. Then, all of a sudden, he began—as the scientists put it—to go crazy, to give out imposing and magnificent descriptions of the spiritual world as he had seen it. It was something entirely new in Swedenborg's life, shooting in like a comet.

We ask ourselves: What can there have been in an earlier earth-life to produce such a result?

Or again, take a personality like Voltaire. I am choosing a few great personalities whose lives leave us with unanswered questions. Voltaire is one who may be called an absolutely incommensurable person. We are puzzled to know how this strange character, now scornful and contemptuous, now pious not to say unctuous, could grow up as a product of his age, or again how he could have the tremendous influence he did have upon it.

With what irony does destiny work! Voltaire had a deep influence upon the King of Prussia; and this connection between Voltaire and the King of Prussia was a most significant factor in the destiny of the spiritual life of Europe. One cannot help asking: What really lies behind all this in the deeper background of history?

We may take still a third case, and One not without meaning for our own day, when many things are thrusting themselves upon our notice from the background of existence. Take the case of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, who died in the 16th century. When we follow the remarkable destiny of the Jesuit Order that he founded, we are compelled to ask the question: What kind of life had Ignatius Loyola after he passed through the gate of death? And if he has come again, what part has he played in the more recent history of mankind? There you have questions which, if they can be answered, may well throw a light upon the background of very much that has happened in history.

Intuitive vision led one back, for example, to a soul who lived in the 5th century A.D., not long after St. Augustine, and who was educated in the schools of Northern Africa, as was St. Augustine himself. In these schools, the personality of whom I am speaking became acquainted with all that proceeded from the Manichean wisdom and from the wisdom of the East which had, of course, undergone such great changes in a later age. In subsequent wanderings he came across to Spain and there absorbed what may be called early Kabbalistic doctrine, teachings which open out a vista of great cosmic relationships. Education and experience thus equipped him with an extraordinary wide outlook, and at the same time with knowledge that sprang from two main sources—one already in decadence and the other just beginning to flourish. The result was to give him in one respect a deepened life of soul, but at the same time to leave him in uncertainty and doubt.

After many travels on earth, this personality passed at length through the gate of death; and at a definite point between death and rebirth his karma brought him in touch with a particular Genius, a particular spiritual Being belonging to the world of Mars.

You know that in the period between death and a new birth a human being builds up spiritually the karma he has afterwards to bring into physical embodiment in later earth-lives. Now not only do other human souls with whom he is karmically connected share in this work with him, but the Beings, too, of the various spiritual Hierarchies. These Beings have tasks to fulfil as the result of what a human soul brings over from earlier earth-lives. And so this soul of whom I am speaking was engaged in building up his karma for the next life on earth. Now it happened that through all he had received and done, through all he had thought and felt in earlier lives, especially in the life that was particularly significant and of which I have just given you a brief sketch, he was brought very near to a spiritual Being belonging to the world of Mars. He acquired thereby a strongly aggressive nature, but on the other hand also a wonderful gift of speech; for Mars Beings prepare from out of the cosmos all that belongs to speech and language and place it into the karma of human beings. Wherever artistic skill and fluency in speech show themselves in the karma of a human being, these are to be traced to the fact that his karmic experiences have brought him into the vicinity of Mars Beings.

The individuality of whom I am speaking had been in the company of one particular Mars Being—a Being who now began to interest me intensely when I had recognised him in connection with this soul. The individuality himself appeared again on earth in the 18th century, as Voltaire. Thus Voltaire bore within him from his earlier earth-life the learning of the schools of Northern Africa and of Spain, elaborated and transformed through the fact that the shaping of his karma had taken place with the help of this particular Mars Being.

When you consider Voltaire's great gift of language and on the other hand his instability in many things, when you consider his writings, not so much their content as his manner and habit of working, you will come to understand how it all follows quite naturally from the karmic influences I have described. And when we observe how Voltaire comes over from his earlier earth-life with his aggressiveness, his fluency of language, his power of satire, his only partially concealed lack of integrity, yet at the same time his genuine and ardent enthusiasm for truth—when we study all this in connection, first, with his former incarnation and then with his association with the Mars Being, the personality of Voltaire and still more from an occult point of view this. Mars Being, will begin to be of great interest to us.

It was my task at one time to follow this Mars Being and through this Being certain events on earth received great illumination. We meet in history with the remarkable figure of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus. Ignatius Loyola was, to begin with, a soldier. He was stricken with a severe illness and in the course of it was inwardly impelled to carry out all kinds of soul-exercises which were the means of filling him with such spiritual strength that he became able to set himself the task of rescuing the old Catholic Christianity from the spread of Evangelicalism. And thanks to the forces he had acquired through having a wounded leg—that is the interesting point—he succeeded in founding the Order of the Jesuits, which introduces occult exercises of the will in a most powerful manner into practical religious life. What we may think of this from other points of view is not here our concern. Ignatius Loyola, in establishing the Jesuit Order, sought to represent the cause of Jesus on earth on a grand scale, in a purely material way, through the training of the will.

Anyone who studies the remarkable life of Ignatius Loyola cannot fail to conceive a certain admiration for it. And now if we pursue the matter further with the occult insight of Intuition, we come to something very significant.

Ignatius Loyola was the means of starting the Jesuit Order which has done more than anything else to bring Christianity right down into the earthly, material life, accompanied, however, with a strong spiritual power. The Jesuit Order has one rule which goes altogether against the grain in men of the present age but which, notwithstanding, has contributed more to its effectiveness than any other factor. Besides the usual monastic vows, besides the exercises, besides everything else that a candidate has to undergo before he can become a priest, the Order of the Jesuits has in addition this rule, namely that there shall be unconditional subjection to the command of the Pope of Rome. Whatever the Pope orders to be done, it is never asked in the Jesuit Order what opinions there may be about it. It is simply carried out because the Jesuits are convinced that higher things of the Spirit make themselves known through the Pope and that it behoves them, in unconditional obedience to Rome, to carry out the commands of this higher authority. A doubtful and precarious rule: nevertheless it implies a great selflessness that is present in Jesuitism and again signifies a tremendous increase of strength, for everything a man does with intense energy, putting forth all his force and acting not on his own authority nor out of emotion—everything a man does in this way gives him extraordinary strength. It is a strength that moves, so to speak, in the lower clouds of material existence, but it is none the less a spiritual force. It is in truth a remarkable phenomenon.

And now, if we follow up these extraordinarily strange and imposing facts, we come to discover that the same Mars Genius who plays a part in the life of Voltaire, accompanied the life of Ignatius Loyola from the moment when he passed through the gate of death. The soul of Ignatius Loyola was perpetually under the super-sensible influence of this Mars Genius.

As soon as Ignatius Loyola had passed through death, things were immediately quite different for him than they are for other men. Other men do not at once lay aside the etheric body at death but only a few days later and have a brief retrospective vision of the past earth-life before entering upon the journey through the soul-world. In the case of Ignatius Loyola this retrospective vision lasted for a very long time. And by reason of the special kind of exercises that had been working in his soul, a close and intimate connection was able to be established between the soul of Ignatius Loyola and the Mars Genius. For a strong and active affinity, an elective affinity so to speak, existed between this Mars Genius and all that had gone on in the soul of the sick soldier, who through the injury to his foot had been forced to take to his bed and from being a soldier had become a man who could not use his leg. All these circumstances had had a deep and powerful effect upon Loyola and when we look at the whole man it becomes clear. These circumstances led Ignatius Loyola into connection with the Mars Genius whom I had learned to know on another path of investigation. And what took shape through this connection made it possible for Ignatius Loyola to have this significant retrospect of his life which continued on and on for a long time, whereas in the ordinary way it lasts for only a few days after death. Loyola was able thereby to establish a retrospective connection as it were with those who came after him in the Jesuit Order. He remained united with his Order in the retrospect of his own life.

To this connection with its founder are due the forces that held the Order together, the forces that determined its strange and abnormal destiny and can be seen in its subjection in unquestioning obedience to the Pope—in spite of the repeal of this rule by the Pope himself—and in spite of the persecutions that went on! But on the other hand all the things that the Jesuits themselves accomplished in the world are to be traced to the singular connection of which I have spoken.

Now this example, if we follow it further, can shed a wonderful light over certain historical events and connections. After Ignatius Loyola's death, his soul remained always in the vicinity of the earth—for one is near the earth so long as this retrospect lasts. Even if the retrospect is extended it cannot last many centuries for when it extends at all over any long period it is quite abnormal—but abnormal things do constantly occur in the great world-connections. And comparatively soon after his earth-life was over, Ignatius Loyola appeared again in the soul of Emanuel Swedenborg.

We have here arrived at a very astounding fact, but it is also extremely illuminating. Think of the light it sheds upon history! The Order of the Jesuits continues in existence ... but the one who held it together up to a certain moment of time has become an entirely different person ... he appears in the individuality of Emanuel Swedenborg. He became the spirit of Emanuel Swedenborg, and since that time the Jesuit Order has been guided by altogether different impulses from those of its founder. We may frequently see in history how in the course of karma the founder of some undertaking or movement, or the persons who are deeply united with it, become separated from the movement they have founded and the movement passes over to quite other forces. So we learn how little meaning there is from a historical point of view to trace back the Jesuit Order to Ignatius Loyola. External history does so. Inner knowledge can never do so, for it sees how the individualities separate themselves from their movements.

In its external course, many a phenomenon in history is traced back to this or that founder. If, however, we come to know the later earth-life of the founder of some undertaking we may find that he has long ago separated himself from it. A great deal of what is set down as history simply loses all meaning when we are able and ready to face the occult facts that stand behind the evolution of karma.

That is one thing that emerges. The other is as follows.

The soul of Ignatius Loyola, now the soul of Swedenborg, entered an organism that had acquired its quite unusual soundness of head through the fact of the injury to the leg from which Loyola had suffered in the former life. And this soul that had remained all the time in the vicinity of the earth, was not able, to begin with, to come down fully and completely into the new earthly incarnation. The body remained, up till the fortieth year, a remarkably healthy body with a sound and healthy brain, a healthy etheric body and a healthy astral body. With these sound and healthy organisations Swedenborg grew to be one of the greatest scholars of his time; but it was not until his early forties, when he had been through the period of the Ego-development and was entering on the development of the Spirit-Self, that he came under the influence of the Mars Genius of whom I have spoken. During the first forty years of Swedenborg's life this influence had been somewhat suppressed; but now he came directly under it and from this time on it is the Mars Genius that speaks through Emanuel Swedenborg, in all the spiritual knowledge he has of the universe.

And so in Swedenborg we have a man of genius, who gives us brilliant and magnificent description of the lands of the Spirits, albeit in pictures that are somewhat questionable. Thus has the mighty spiritual will of Ignatius Loyola found transformation.

It is always the case that if we follow up the real and actual karmic connections, we discover, as a rule, something that startles and astounds us. The ingenious speculations one so often hears about repeated earth-lives are ingenious speculations and nothing more. When investigation is really exact, the result is usually very startling, for the evolution of karma that moves forward from earth-life to earth-life is hidden deep, deep down below all that is experienced and lived out by man between birth and death.

I wanted to give you this example in order that you may see how deeply may be hidden that which flows in karma from earth-life to earth-life. You have seen it in a personality who is well known to us all. Only by investigating these hidden factors shall we arrive at the true explanations. And if you now study the life of Emanuel Swedenborg, knowing the connections of which I have told you, you will find how things become clear to you, one after another.

In the early years of this century I was several times in London. On the occasion of one of these visits I was prompted to make myself acquainted with an extraordinarily significant personality—to begin with, simply in his writings. And as in those days there were rather longer intervals between the journeys than there are now, I obtained from the Theosophical Library the books he had written—the books that is to say, of Laurence Oliphant.

Laurence Oliphant is a remarkably interesting and significant personality: he strikes you in this way directly you begin to study his writings. These books deal with the similarities to be found in different religions, with spiritual religions, and so forth; and all of them bear evidence of a deep understanding of how in the various processes of his body and soul, man is connected with the secrets of the universe. When you read Oliphant's writings you have the impression: Here is a picture of man in his earth-life that owes its inspiration to deep cosmic instincts. The processes of the earthly life of man that are connected with birth, embryonic life, descent and so forth, are described in such a way as to show how man, as microcosm, is wondrously rooted in the macrocosm.

Now I was very soon led in this study to a point where the figure of the dead Laurence Oliphant stood before me, but not in a form which suggested that I had here to do with the individuality as he was then living after death; it was rather that what was contained in these writings (which may be described as setting forth a kind of cosmic physiology, a cosmic anatomy) began to come alive, began to spiritualise; and a figure appeared, not all at once entirely clear, but unquestionably there before me on many different occasions. I was able to make occult investigations into the matter and I could never do otherwise than bring the figure into connection with what came to me from reading Oliphant. It was very often there before me. At first I was often unable to satisfy myself as to what this figure wanted, what its manifestations meant. The whole manner of its appearance however, left me in no doubt whatever that it was none other than the individuality of Laurence Oliphant; and it was likewise clear to me that this figure had had a long life in the time between death and a new birth—that is to say, the birth as Laurence Oliphant—probably only broken by one earth-life that was not very significant for the rest of the world. What might not then be hidden in the personality of Laurence Oliphant! In short, this appearance of the figure of Laurence Oliphant suggested significant questions of karma.

When I entered on an investigation of the karma, a spiritual Being became manifest who is engaged in the elaboration of human karma, in the same way as the Mars Being of whom I told you in connection with Voltaire and with Ignatius Loyola.

Now one may get to know such Genii in the most varied ways. They are especially present when it is a question of undertaking spiritual investigation into that which appears, primarily, in physical manifestation among men on earth. I was always drawn to this kind of research. My Philosophy of Spiritual Activity leads, as you know, to a treatment of the life of will from a cosmic standpoint. Such matters always interested me deeply. Then, again, the questions that now arise out of the tasks of the Anthroposophical Movement lead to investigations of karma—I do not say our task is exhausted in the investigation of karma for this can always only be a part of it—and the investigations of karma lead once more to Genii such as the Mars Genius of whom I have told you. These Genii are, however, also to be met with on the path of another kind of research to which I have alluded and the results of which appear in the book that Dr. Ita Wegman and myself have worked out together in the sphere of medicine.³ When one seeks in this way for an Initiate-knowledge of nature, one comes in a similar way to Mercury Genii; these Mercury Genii approach one because they play a special part in the karma of human beings. When man is passing through the life between death and a new birth, he is first of all purged in respect of his moral qualities; this takes place under the influence of the Moon Beings. Through the Mercury Beings his illnesses are transformed into spiritual qualities. In the Mercury sphere the illnesses a man undergoes in life are transformed by the Mercury Genii into spiritual energies, spiritual qualities. That is an exceedingly important fact and one which leads further, namely to the investigation of questions of karma in matters that are in any way connected with disease.

Now the investigations which I described in Torquay led me into close contact with the spirit of Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante. When one penetrates into these spiritual worlds in the manner described, it also becomes possible to stand before individualities in the form in which they lived in a particular epoch. Thus one can stand face to face with Brunetto Latini, the great teacher of Dante in the 13th century. Brunetto Latini still possessed a knowledge whereby nature was seen, not in the abstraction of natural laws, but as under the influence of living spiritual Beings. On the way back to his native town of Florence from his post as Ambassador in Spain, Brunetto Latini heard all kinds of reports that troubled and disturbed him, and in addition he had a slight sunstroke. In this condition and under the influence, too, of the pathological disturbances, glimpses came to him of nature in her creative work, of cosmic creation, and of the connection of man with the planetary world. What he was able to see was wonderful and sublime and no more than a shadow-picture of it subsequently found its way into the great work of Dante—the Divine Comedy.

But now if we follow this Brunetto Latini, we find that in a critical moment, when the knowledge was like to suffocate him, when it seemed to him that he might go astray from true knowledge and fall into error—in this critical moment, Ovid became his guide, Ovid, the Roman author of the Metamorphoses which contain such wonderful visions of the old Greek age, though expressed in the prosaic, characteristically Roman style.

And so we meet the individuality of Ovid together with Brunetto Latini. If we have a true grasp of the connection we can see Brunetto Latini, in the pre-Dante time, actually together with Ovid. Ovid is with him. And now, precisely in connection with the scientific, medical researches of which I was speaking, Ovid revealed himself as Laurence Oliphant. The long life since the Ovid time, passing but once to earth again in the interval and then as a woman in an incarnation that had little significance for the world outside, came at length to this fulfilment. The content of the soul is transplanted into modern times, and Ovid appears again as Laurence Oliphant.

Nor is it Brunetto Latini alone but other personalities too of the Middle Ages who assert that Ovid was their guide. At first it sounds like a tradition that simply gets carried on. In reality, Ovid was the guide in the spiritual world for many Initiates, appearing again as Laurence Oliphant with his sublime treatment of physiology and pathology. This connection between Laurence Oliphant and Ovid is of most far-reaching import and is one of the most illuminating examples one could possibly find.

• 1. Man as a Picture of the Living Spirit. Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972.
• 2. See: Lecture 7, The Evolution of Consciousness. Rudolf Steiner Press, 1966.
• 3. Fundamentals of Therapy: an Extension of the Art of Healing through Spiritual Knowledge. Rudolf Steiner Press, 1967.