Karmic Relationships E-Book

Rudolf Steiner

• Herausgeber: Rudolf Steiner Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2002

Beschreibung

During 1924, before his last address in September, Rudolf Steiner gave over eighty lectures on the subject of karma to members of the Anthroposophical Society. These profoundly esoteric lectures examine the underlying laws inherent in reincarnation and karma, and explore in detail the incarnations of specific historical figures. In Rudolf Steiner's words, the study of karma is "... a matter of penetrating into the most profound mysteries of existence, for within the sphere of karma and the course it takes lie those processes which are the basis of the other phenomena of world existence..." A study of the karma of the anthroposophical movement and society, the spiritual gates of the sun and moon, and much more. (9 lectures, various cities 25 Jan to 20 Jul 1924, GA235, 236, 240)

Leseprobe

KARMIC RELATIONSHIPS

Esoteric Studies

Vol. VI

RUDOLF STEINER

Nine lectures given in Berne, Zürich, Stuttgart and Arnhem between 25th January and 20th July, 1924

Translated by D. S. Osmond, E. H. G. and M. K.

RUDOLF STEINER PRESS

Rudolf Steiner Press Hillside House, The Square Forest Row, East Sussex RH18 5ES

www.rudolfsteinerpress.com

First edition 1971 Reprinted 2009

Originally published in German within volumes I, II and VI of the series Esoterische Betrachtungen karmischer Zusammenhänge (volumes 235, 236 & 240 in the Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe or Collected Works) by Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach. This authorized translation published by permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach

Translation © Rudolf Steiner Press 1971

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eISBN 978 1 85584 630 2 ISBN 978 1 85584 217 5

EDITOR’S PREFACE

During the year 1924, before his illness in September, Rudolf Steiner gave over eighty lectures, published under the title Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies, to members of the Anthroposophical Society in the following places: Dornach, Berne, Zürich, Stuttgart, Prague, Paris, Breslau, Arnhem, Torquay and London. English translations of these lectures are contained in the following volumes of the series:

Vols. I to IV. Lectures given in Dornach (49). Vol. V. Lectures given in Prague (4) and Paris (3). Vol. VI. Lectures given in Berne (2) Zürich (1) Stuttgart (3) Arnhem (3). Vol. VII. Lectures given in Breslau (9). Vol. VIII. Lectures given in Torquay (3) and London (3).

All these lectures were given to members of the Anthroposophical Society only and were intended to be material for study by those already familiar with the fundamental principles of Anthroposophy. The following extract from the lecture of 22nd June, 1924 (see Vol. II) calls attention to the need for exactitude when passing on such contents:

“The study of problems connected with karma is by no means easy and the discussion of anything that has to do with the subject entails—or ought at any rate to entail—a sense of deep responsibility. Such study is in truth a matter of penetrating into the most profound mysteries of existence, for within the sphere of karma and the course it takes lie those processes which are the basis of the other phenomena of world-existence, even of the phenomena of nature. . . These difficult and weighty matters entail grave consideration of every word and every sentence spoken here, in order that the limits within which the statements are made shall be absolutely clear. . .”

The attention of readers is called to the fact that the fundamental explanations given by Rudolf Steiner of the laws and conditions of karma are contained in Vol. I of the series. Knowledge of the earlier lectures should therefore be regarded as an essential basis for study of those contained in the later volumes.

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

I. Berne, 25th January, 1924

Moon and Sun: the two gates through which the life of man in its totality reaches beyond the physical world. The Moon endows us with individuality: the Past. The Sun gives access to the universal-human: the Future. Necessity and Freedom. In the destiny of two individuals, Moon-existence and Sun-existence are at work: the connection before the meeting is determined by the Moon-existence, by Necessity; happenings after the meeting is determined by the Sun, by Freedom. After the karmic meeting of two human beings the thread of the karma reaching back into the Past is woven into the thread stretching into the Future. New faculties of perception bring knowledge of cosmic destiny. The esoteric conception of Necessity and Freedom. Impulses of the Christmas Foundation Meeting.

II. Berne, 16th April, 1924

Concerning the new trend in the Anthroposophical Society. Understanding of the historical evolution of humanity. The working of karma through personalities. Natural Science and Arabism. The mysteries of the Father, the Son, the Spirit, in antiquity. The impulse of Freedom in the evolution of Christianity. The counter-stream in Mohammedanism. The Court of Haroun al Raschid. The Pan Sophia of Amos Comenius. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and Thomas Becket. Pestalozzi.

III. Zürich, 28th January, 1924

Beings in the heavenly bodies. The Moon Beings keep the records of the past of humanity and of every individual man. Such records determine karma. The function of the Angeloi. Differences in the meetings of individuals. The links between an Initiate and those with whom he comes into contact. Characteristics of the biographies of Initiates.

IV. Stuttgart, 6th February, 1924

Moon and Sun: the two portals into the spiritual world. The primordial wisdom on Earth imparted by lofty spiritual Beings who went to the Moon after it separated from the Earth. These Beings record the destinies which individuals have in common. Change and replacement of physical substance in heavenly bodies as well as in man. Element of Necessity and Moon influences. Freedom connected with Sun influences. The karmic aspect of illness. Experience of union with the Cosmos. Opposition to Anthroposophy. The Christmas Foundation Meeting.

V. Stuttgart, 9th April, 1924

Repeated earthly lives and Lessing’s treatise, The Education of the Human Race. Concrete reference to the truths of karma. Avoidance of sensationalism. Keynotes in certain domains of life are set by particular personalities; the threads of karma running through their different incarnations. Haroun al Raschid and the Counsellor at his Court. Lord Bacon of Verulam and Amos Comenius. Incarnations of earlier Initiates dependent upon prevailing civilisation. Garibaldi and his tie with Cavour, Mazzini and King Victor Emmanuel. Metamorphosis of forces from one incarnation to the next: forces of limb-system to forces of head-system. Lord Byron and Dr. Steiner’s geometry teacher. The Palladium. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Muawiyah. Woodrow Wilson. Earnestness essential in the study of destiny.

VI. Stuttgart, 1st June, 1924

Waking life and sleep. The Guardian of the Threshold. The backward journey after death lasts for about one third of the span of earthly life. Negative images of the life on Earth. Life in the Cosmos after death. Resolutions in the spiritual world between death and rebirth are potent realities. Passage through the planetary spheres. The Mercury Mysteries and the healing of illnesses. The life-epochs as sources of supersensible vision. Community with the souls of the dead and the spiritual Hierarchies. Karma and the different planetary spheres. Examples: Schiller, Goethe, Heine, Éliphas Lévi.

The Karma of the Anthroposophical Society and Content of the Anthroposophical Movement

VII. Arnhem, 18th June, 1924

Significance of the Christmas Foundation Meeting for the Anthroposophical Society. Karma and the predisposition for Anthroposophy. Souls now gathered in the Anthroposophical Movement were united in spiritual worlds before descending into the physical world. A supersensible cult presented in mighty Imaginations was a preparation in the early years of the nineteenth century for the Michael stream on Earth. The new Christianity. Two groups of souls in the Anthroposophical Society and their earlier incarnations. Heretical movements. Platonism and Aristotelianism. The School of Chartres and its great teachers. Brunetto Latini’s supersensible experience of the Goddess Natura. The Cistercian and Dominican Orders. Episodes in Dr. Steiner’s life in connection with members of the Cistercian Order. Members of the Anthroposophical Society must become conscious of their karma. The end of the century.

VIII. Arnhem, 19th July, 1924

On the evolution of certain spiritual Beings connected with humanity. The Gabriel Age and the Michael Age. The seven successive Archangel rulerships. Michael’s rulership in the age of Alexander the Great and in our own time. Heavenly Intelligence and ‘self-made’ thinkers. Johannes Scotus Erigena. Arabism and Mohammedanism. Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor at the Court in Baghdad. Their subsequent incarnations. Lord Bacon of Verulam and Amos Comenius. The School of Chartres and Scholasticism. Preparations in the spiritual world for the spiritualisation of the Intelligence that had fallen from the Heavens upon Earth. Nominalism and Realism. Vincenz Knauer. Goethe’s Fairy Tale. Ahrimanic demonic powers striving to take possession of men. Maurice Maeterlinck’s comments on Dr. Steiner. Michael’s battle with the Dragon is waged in the hearts of men since the last third of the nineteenth century. At the end of the twentieth century mankind will either stand at the grave of civilisation or at the beginning of the Age when Michael’s battle will be fought out to victory.

IX. Arnhem, 20th July, 1924

The supersensible School of Michael from the fifteenth on into the eighteenth century. The outcome of this schooling is the urge that brings human beings to Anthroposophy. The opposing Ahrimanic School in the sub-earthly realm. Certain souls incarnated on Earth—often quite simple men—have been aware of the possible sinister situation of the abandonment of humanity by the Michael rulership and the advent of impulses rising from below like demonic vapours striving to conquer the Intelligence. Printing is a power placed by Ahriman in opposition to Michael. What the attitude of Anthroposophists to printing must be. Ahrimanic spirits are most potent in attacks against the Age of Michael when a diminution of consciousness takes place in human beings. This occurred in many of those who were entangled in events which led to the outbreak of the War in 1914. Each particular life-period enables the Initiate to have vision of the individual secrets of existence. “To behold the secrets of worlds in their interconnections one must have passed the age of sixty-three.” Ahriman can possess human beings and appear as an author. Necessity for alertness to such phenomena. The end of the century.

Notes

List of relevant publications

I

Berne, 25th January, 1924

For his present life on Earth man is beholden partly to the external world, including in the wider sense not only the several kingdoms of Nature immediately around him but also the influences coming from the stars and the cosmic expanse. But this is only one part of the world to which he is beholden for his present earthly life. He is beholden above all to his previous lives on Earth, the results and effects of which he brings with him inwardly. As you know from anthroposophical literature, man is a fourfold being. Every time he goes to sleep his astral body and ‘I’ separate from his physical and etheric bodies. Of these members only the physical and etheric bodies owe their character and composition to the external world lying visibly—or also, as etheric world, invisibly—around man. On the other hand, everything that he bears within him in his astral body and Ego in his present earthly existence, he owes entirely to what he experienced in the past, in earlier lives on Earth.

In the outer physical world there are two portals, two gates, through which the life of man, taken in its entirety, reaches out beyond this world. We will begin to-day by considering this cosmic aspect and conclude with a study very directly concerned with human life. For inhabitants of the Earth, these two gates are the Moon and the Sun.

The fact is that modern science knows very little indeed about the heavenly bodies—actually only what can be determined by calculation or observed by means of instruments. Just think what an inhabitant of Mars would know about the Earth if, from Mars or from some other star, he were to acquire his knowledge by employing the same methods as those employed by the inhabitants of the Earth! He would know no more than that the Earth is a luminous body radiating into cosmic space the light it reflects from the Sun. He might form all kinds of hypotheses, just as men do about Mars—as to whether beings do or do not exist on the Earth. But an inhabitant of the Earth knows that beings of his own rank and beings of other kingdoms share his dwelling-place; and those whose knowledge is derived from the inner, spiritual destinies of earthly humanity, will be able to reach a deeper understanding of the significance of the other heavenly bodies, for example, of the Sun and the Moon.

Let us think about what may be said of this physical, psychic and spiritual aspect of Moon existence. I must here remind you of many things to be found in the book Occult Science—an Outline, and in several of the printed lecture-courses. From this literature you know that the Moon was once united with the Earth. It is accepted by orthodox modern science, at any rate by its most important representatives, that the physical Moon once separated from the Earth and, if I may put it so, chose its own position in cosmic space.

But Spiritual Science discloses that not only did the physical Moon separate from the Earth but that certain Beings went with it, Beings who had once inhabited the Earth together with men. They were of a much higher spiritual rank than man in his physical embodiment; but they were in close intercourse with men, although this intercourse was altogether different from the relationships between human beings to-day.

Anyone who devotes even cursory study to the early history of the Earth and its spiritual achievements will feel deep reverence for the different civilisations. Certainly, our forefathers—that is to say, we ourselves in earlier incarnations—were not as ‘clever’ in the modern sense as we imagine ourselves to be to-day, but in point of fact they knew a great deal more. Knowledge, after all, is not acquired through cleverness only. Cleverness comes from intellect, and intellect is only one of the human faculties, although nowadays it is prized, especially by science, more highly than all the others. Yet when we see how the world has developed in a moral and social respect in this enlightened twentieth century, there is really no cause to be so very proud of our intellectual culture—which has come into being only in the course of time. Even if with no other aid than external history we go back and consider, for example, what originates from the ancient East, we cannot but feel great reverence. The same may apply even to certain achievements of so-called ‘uncivilised’ peoples, but we will think now only of ancient India and Persia, of the wonderful wisdom contained in the Vedas, in Vedanta or Yoga philosophy. If we let these things work upon us, not superficially but with all their deep intensity we shall feel an ever-increasing reverence for what past ages created—not through cleverness as we know it, but in a quite different way.

Spiritual Science makes it clear that what has been preserved in documentary records is only the residue of a wonderful, primeval wisdom of mankind. It was expressed in a much more poetic, artistic language than is used for our modern knowledge, but it was nevertheless wonderful wisdom, imparted to men by Beings at a stage of evolution far higher than that of humanity on Earth. Intellectual thinking takes place, after all, through the instrumentality of the physical body, and these Beings had no physical body. This accounts for the fact that they conveyed their primordial wisdom to mankind in an essentially poetic, artistic form.

These Beings did not remain with the Earth; the majority of them to-day actually inhabit the Moon in the heavens. What modern science can discover has to do only with the external properties of the Moon. The Moon is in truth the home of lofty spiritual Beings whose task once was to inspire earthly humanity with the primeval wisdom. They then withdrew to establish this Moon colony in the Cosmos. It is clear from what I have said about these Beings who now inhabit the Moon that our own human past is connected with them. In earlier lives we were their terrestrial companions. And our connection with them is immediately evident if we look beyond what external knowledge and external life can give to man. When we contemplate all the factors by which our existence is determined, which are not, however, dependent upon our intellect but transcend the intellect and are related to our deeper nature, we realise that these Moon Beings, although they no longer have their habitation on the Earth, are still deeply and inwardly connected with our very existence. For before descending to the Earth and receiving a physical body from our forefathers, we were in the spiritual world, in pre-earthly life; and there, even to-day, we are in close contact with these Beings who were our companions in Earth existence long ages ago. When we come down from the spiritual worlds into earthly existence, we pass through the Moon sphere, through the Moon existence. Once upon a time, when these Moon Beings were on the Earth, they had a profound effect upon mankind, and it is still so to-day, inasmuch as they impress into the descending Ego and astral body what is then carried over into the physical body on Earth.

Nobody can himself decide to be a man of talent, or a genius, or even a good man. Yet there are men of talent and genius and some who are innately good. These are qualities which the intellect cannot produce; they are connected with man’s inmost nature, a great part of which comes with him when he passes from pre-earthly existence through birth into earthly life. To impress into his Ego and astral body what then makes its way into his nerves and blood as genius or talent or the will to do good or evil—this is the task of the Moon Beings during the time when in a man’s pre-earthly existence he is passing through the Moon sphere. It is not only when, in poetic mood, lovers go walking in the moonlight that the Moon has an effect upon what is living and weaving in the deeper part of man’s nature below the level of consciousness; this Moon influence is active in everything that rises from a level below that of the conscious intellect and makes man what he really is in earthly life. And so to-day these Moon Beings are still connected with our past, inasmuch as it is they who after our earlier incarnations give us in pre-earthly existence the stamp of individuality.

If we look back over our life to the point where it runs out beyond the earthly realm into the spiritual, whence our particular faculties, our temperament, our inmost, essential character, are derived, we find in the Moon the one gate which leads from the physical into the spiritual world. It is the gate through which the past makes its way into our life and gives us individuality.

The other gate is the Sun. We do not owe our individuality to the Sun. The Sun shines alike on the good and on the evil, on men of genius and on fools. As far as earthly life is concerned the Sun has no direct connection with our individuality. In one instance only has the Sun established connection with earthly individuality and this was possible because at a certain point of time in the Earth’s evolution, a sublime Sun Being, the Christ, did not remain on the Sun but came down from the Sun to the Earth and became a Being of the Earth in the body of a man, thus uniting His own cosmic destiny with the destiny of earthly humanity. The other Sun Beings who remained in the Sun sphere have no access to the single human individuality but only to what is common to all mankind. Something of this remained in the Christ and is an infinite blessing for earthly humanity: what had remained in Him was and is that His power knows no differentiation among men. Christ is not the Christ of this or that nation, of this or that rank or class. He is the Christ for all men, without distinction of class, race or nation. Nor is He the Christ of particular individualities, inasmuch as His help is available alike to the genius and the fool. The Christ Impulse has access to the individuality of man, but to become effective it must take effect in the inmost depths of human nature. It is not the forces of the intellect but the deepest forces of the heart and soul which can receive the Christ Impulse; but once received this Impulse works not for the benefit of the individual-human but of the universal-human. This is because Christ is a Sun Being.

Looking back into the past we feel ourselves connected with the Moon existence and realise that we bear within us something not derived from the present but from the cosmic past—not merely from the earthly past. In our present Earth existence we unite this fragment of the past with the present. We do not, in the ordinary way, pay much attention to what is contained in this fragment of the past; but in point of fact we should not be of much account as human beings if it were not there within us. What we acquire at the time of descending from pre-earthly into earthly existence has something automatic about it—the automatic element in our physical and etheric bodies. What makes us into particular human individuals is inwardly connected with our past and thus with the Moon existence. But just as we are connected with the past through our Moon existence, so are we connected with our future through the Sun existence. We were ready for the Moon forces, especially in relation to the Beings who have withdrawn to the Moon, even in earlier times; for the Sun which works to-day as an impulse in the sphere of the universal-human only, we shall not be ready until a very distant future, when evolution has reached a much more advanced stage. The Sun to-day can reach only to our external being; not until distant future ages will it be able to reach our individuality, the inmost core of our being. When the Earth is no longer Earth, when it has passed into quite another metamorphosis, then and then only shall we be ready for the Sun existence. Man is so proud of his intellect—but the intellect in present humanity is purely a product of the Earth, since it is tied to the brain, and the brain—despite current belief—is the most physical structure in the human organism.

The Sun is perpetually wresting us away from this bondage to the earthly, for the Sun does not in reality work upon our brain . . . if it did, we should produce much cleverer thoughts! From the physical aspect the Sun’s influence is exerted on the heart, and what streams out from the heart is Sun-activity. Through the brain men are essentially egotistic, through the heart they become free from egoism and rise to the level of the universal-human. Thus through the Sun we are more than we should be if we were left to our own resources in our present Earth existence. Let me put it like this: if we can really find our way to the Christ, He enables us, because He is a Sun Being, to be more than we could otherwise be.

The Sun stands in the heavens personifying the future, whereas the Moon personifies the past. The Sun is the other gate into the spiritual world, the gate leading to the future. Just as we are impelled into earthly existence by the Moon Beings and Moon forces, so, through death, we are impelled out of it by the Sun forces. These Sun forces are connected with that part of our nature of which we are not yet master, which the gods have given us so that we may not wilt in earthly life but reach out beyond our own limitations. And so Moon and Sun are in truth the two gates in the universe into the spiritual life. The Moon is inhabited by Beings with whom we were once connected in the way I have indicated. The Sun is inhabited by Beings with whom—with the exception of the Christ—we shall be united only in our future cosmic existence. The Christ will lead us to those who were once His companions on the Sun. But this, as far as man is concerned, belongs to the future.

We have said that the influences of the Moon work upon us from the spiritual world; the same is true of the influences working from the Sun upon our physical and etheric bodies. Think, for example, of the temperaments. There are forces in the temperaments which play into the physical body, but more particularly into the etheric body. This is regulated by the interplay of Sun and Moon. A man with a strong vein of melancholy in his temperament is strongly influenced by the Moon. Similarly, a man with a markedly sanguine vein in his temperament is strongly influenced by the Sun. A man in whom the quality of Sun and Moon are in balance and neutralised, will be a phlegmatic type. When the physical element as such plays into a man and comes to expression in the life of soul, as in the temperaments, the Sun and Moon forces are in play in the whole of his being. But to begin with, man is aware of these forces only when they confront him in their external, physical manifestation, when the Moon—and similarly the Sun—announces its presence through the orb that is outwardly visible. Yet forces far transcending the physical are taking effect; we must always speak of the Sun and Moon as spiritual realities. And that is easy enough to realise.

Think of a human body. This body to-day no longer has within it the same substances as it had ten years ago. You are perpetually casting off these physical substances and replacing them by new. What endures is the spiritual form of man, the configuration of inner forces. Suppose you had been sitting in this room ten years ago; you do not bring with you now the flesh and blood that were within you then as material substance. The physical is involved in a perpetual stream from within outwards; it is being cast off all the time. Although this is a known fact it is not always remembered. It is a fact in the Cosmos too. People think that the Moon which shines down upon the Earth to-day is the same Moon which shone upon Caesar or Alcibiades or Buddha. Spiritually, yes, it is the same Moon, but not in respect of physical substance. As for the Sun, the physicists and astro-physicists calculate how long it will be before it disintegrates in cosmic space. They know that it will disintegrate but they reckon in terms of millions of years. The same kind of results would be obtained if such calculations were applied to the human being. The calculations are absolutely correct and cannot be faulted—only they are not true! They are dead correct, but just think of this—if you examined a human heart today, then five days later and then again after a further five days, you could calculate from the minute changes what it was like three hundred years ago and what it will be like three hundred years hence. In the same way geology can calculate what the Earth looked like twenty million years ago and what it will look like twenty million years hence. The calculations may be perfectly correct, but the Earth was not in existence twenty million years ago and will not be in existence twenty million years from now. The calculations themselves are correct but they are not true! Not even for the shortest periods does the Cosmos differ from man in this respect. Although mineral substances last essentially longer in that form than the configuration of substance in living bodies, yet even the purely physical part of mineral substances is transient. As I have said, the Moon in the sky to-day is in its physical composition no longer the same Moon which shone upon Caesar or Alcibiades or the Emperor Augustus, for its substance has changed, just as the substance of a man’s physical body has changed. What endures out there in the Cosmos is the spiritual element, just as in the case of a human being what endures from birth to death is the spiritual entity, not the physical substance.

We shall therefore only be viewing the world rightly when we say of man that what endures between birth and death is his soul; what endures out yonder in the celestial bodies is a multiplicity of Beings. And when speaking of Moon and Sun we ought to be conscious that if we are to speak truly we must speak of Beings of the Moon and Beings of the Sun. The Beings of the Moon are connected with our past; the Beings of the Sun will be connected with our future, but even now they work into our present existence.

A sound basis for the study of human karma and destiny can be established only when man is given his real place within the Cosmos.