I
We will now
continue our study of karma. I have pointed out to you how the
impulses in the souls of human beings work on and are transplanted,
as it were, from one earthly life into another, so that the fruits of
an earlier epoch are carried over to a later one by men
themselves.
An idea such as
this must not be received merely as a theory; it should take hold of
our very hearts and souls. We should feel that we who are now here
have been many times in earthly existence, and that in every life we
assimilated the culture and civilisation then around us; we took it
into our souls and carried it over into the next incarnation, after
working upon it spiritually between death and a new birth. Only when
we look back in this way do we really feel ourselves standing within
the community of mankind.
In order to be
able to feel this, in order that in the coming lectures we may pass
on to questions which concern us more intimately and will bring home
to us the actual effects of karmic connections, I have found it
necessary to give concrete examples. And I have tried to show you by
these examples how the effects of what a man experienced and achieved
in olden times, remain, and continue to work into the present,
inasmuch as his achievements and experiences form part of his
karma.
I spoke, for
example, of Haroun al Raschid, that illustrious follower of Mohammed
in the 8th and 9th centuries, who was the figure-head of a wonderful
life of culture far surpassing anything to be found in Europe in
those days.
[See
Volume 1, lecture X;
also
Cosmic Christianity
lecture II (given by Rudolf Steiner in Torquay, 14th August, 1924).]
Such culture as existed in Europe at
that time — it was during the reign of Charlemagne — was
extremely primitive; whereas over in the East at the Court of Haroun
al Raschid there came together everything that an Asiatic
civilisation fructified from Europe could produce — the fruits
of Greek culture and of ancient Oriental culture in practically every
domain of life and knowledge. Architecture, astronomy (in the form in
which it was pursued in those days), philosophy, mysticism, the arts,
geography, poetry — all these branches of culture flourished at
the Court of Haroun al Raschid.
Haroun al Raschid
gathered around him the best of those who were of real account in
Asia at that time. For the most part they were men who had been
trained and educated in the Initiate Schools. Let me tell you of one
of these personalities at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. The East,
too, had reached its own Middle Ages, and this personality had been
able to assimilate, in a rather more intellectual way, wonderful
treasures of the spirit that had been carried over from long past
ages into those later times. In a much earlier period he had himself
been an Initiate.
Now as I have told
you, it may easily happen that a personality who was an Initiate in a
former age does not appear as one when he reincarnates, because he is
obliged to adapt himself to the body at his disposal and to the
educational facilities available at the time. Nevertheless he bears
within him all that he acquired and experienced during his life as an
Initiate.
In the case of
Garibaldi, we have seen how in that he became a kind of seer in his
life of will, giving himself up to the circumstances of the immediate
present, he lived out all that he had been as an Irish Initiate.
[See Vol. I, lectures XI and XII.]
We can see that while participating in
the events of the day he bears within him impulses of quite a
different character from those which an ordinary man could have
gained from his education and environment. The impulse of
Garibaldi's Irish initiation was still active; it was merely
under the surface. And when some special experience or stroke of
destiny befell Garibaldi there may very probably have welled up in
him in the form of Imaginations, all that he bore within him from his
life as an Irish Initiate.
So it has always
been; and so it is to this day. A man may have been an Initiate in a
certain epoch, and because in a later epoch he must make use of a
body unable to contain all the impulses that are alive in his soul,
he does not appear as an Initiate; nevertheless the impulse of
initiation is at work in his deeds or relationships in life. So it
was in the case of the personality who lived at the Court of Haroun
al Raschid. He had once been an Initiate of a very high degree. He
was not able to carry over in outwardly perceptible form the whole
content of his earlier initiation, but nevertheless he was a shining
light in the Oriental culture of the 8th and 9th centuries. For he
was, so to speak, the organiser of all the sciences and arts studied
and practised at the Court of Haroun al Raschid.
We have already
spoken of the path taken by the individuality of Haroun al Raschid in
later times. When he passed through the gate of death there remained
with him the urge to carry further into the West the Arabism that was
already spreading in that direction. And, as you know, Haroun al
Raschid, whose field of vision embraced all the several arts and
sciences, reincarnated as Lord Bacon of Verulam, the famous reformer
of modern philosophy and science. All that had been within Haroun al
Raschid's field of vision came forth again, in a Western guise,
in Bacon.
The spiritual path
taken by Bacon led from Bagdad, his home in Asia, to England. And
from England, Bacon's work for the sciences spread over Europe
more widely and with greater force than is generally
realised.
After they had
passed through the gate of death, these two personalities, Haroun al
Raschid and his great counsellor — the outstanding personality
who had been a high Initiate in earlier times — separated, in
order to carry out a common work. As I have told you, Haroun al
Raschid himself, who had occupied a position of great power and
splendour, chose the path which led to England, where, as Lord Bacon
of Verulam, he accomplished what he did for science, for the sphere
of knowledge in general. The other soul, the soul of the man who had
been his counsellor chose the path leading to Middle Europe, in order
to meet there what was coming over from Bacon. The dates do not, it
is true, absolutely coincide; but that is not important in a matter
where actual time means little. Impulses separated by hundreds of
years may often work simultaneously in a later
civilisation.
The counsellor of
Haroun al Raschid chose the path through Eastern to Middle Europe
— chose it during his life between death and a new birth. And
he was born again in Middle Europe; he was born into the spiritual
life of Middle Europe as Amos Comenius.
These are
remarkable events, of profound significance in history. Haroun al
Raschid goes through his later evolution in such a way as to lead
over from West to East a stream of culture that is abstract and bound
up with the outer senses; whereas Amos Comenius unfolds his activity
from the East, from Siebenbürgen in what is now Czechoslovakia,
coming to Germany and afterwards undergoing exile in Holland,
bringing with him his profoundly significant impulses for the
development of thought and knowledge. If you follow his life you will
see how he comes forward as the champion of the new pedagogy and as
the author and originator of the so-called Pansophia. What he
had formerly brought from his initiation in very ancient times and developed
at the Court of Haroun al Raschid — all this he now brought to the
movements of the day. It was the time when the Order of the Moravian
Brothers had been founded, when Rosicrucianism had already been at
work for several centuries; it was the time, too, when the
Chymical Wedding
had appeared, and also the
Reformation of Science,
by Valentin Andreae. And into the
midst of all these movements which sprang from the selfsame source,
came Comenius, that significant figure of the l7th century, with his
message and his impulse.
You have there
three successive earthly lives of importance, and it is by studying
the more significant incarnations that one can learn how to study
those of less importance and finally begin to understand one's
own karma. — Three significant earthly lives follow one
another. First we see, far away in Asia, the very same individuality
who afterwards appears in Amos Comenius; we see him receiving in the
places of the ancient Mysteries all the wisdom possessed by Asia in
far distant ages; we see him carrying this over into his next
incarnation, living at the Court of Haroun al Raschid, becoming there
the great organiser and administrator of all that flourished under
the aegis and protection of Haroun al Raschid. And then he appears
again, this time going forth as it were to meet Bacon, who is the
reincarnated Haroun al Raschid; he meets him in European civilisation
where the impulses which both of them had caused to flow into this
European civilisation are at work.
What I am now
saying, my dear friends, has really great point and meaning. For if
you will study the letters that were written and that build, as it
were, a road from Bacon to Comenius — naturally they do so in a
roundabout way, as is also the case with letters to-day! — if
you will study the letters that were exchanged between Baconians, or
between people in very close connection with the Baconian culture and
the followers of the Comenius school, of the Comenius wisdom, you
will be able to discern in the writing and answering of these letters
the very same event that I have sketched diagrammatically on the
blackboard.
The letters that
were written from West to East and from East to West represent the
living confluence of the two souls who meet one another in this way,
having themselves laid the foundation for this meeting when they
worked together over in the East during the 8th and 9th centuries.
Now they unite again, to work once more in co-operation; this time
they work from opposite directions, yet no less
harmoniously.
This is the way in
which history should be studied in order to gain insight into the
working of human forces and the part they play in
history.
Again, let us take
another case. — It happened that peculiar circumstances drew my
attention to certain events that occurred in the region we should now
call the north-east of France. These events also took place in the
8th–9th century — a little later, however, than the time
of which we were just now speaking. It was before the formation of
large States, in the days when events took place more within smaller
circles of people.
In the region,
then, which to-day we should call the north-east of France, lived a
personality who was full of ambitions. He had a large estate and he
governed it remarkably well, quite unusually systematically for the
time in which he lived. He knew what he wanted; there was a strange
mixture of adventurousness and conscious purpose in him. And he made
expeditions, some of which were more and some less successful; he
would gather soldiers and make predatory expeditions, minor campaigns
carried out with a small troop of men with the object of
plunder.
With such a band
of men he once set out from north-east France. Now it happened that
during his absence another personality, somewhat less of an
adventurer than himself, but full of energy, took possession of all
his land and property. — It sounds fictitious to-day, but such
things actually happened in those days. — And when the owner
returned home — he was all alone — he found another man
in possession of his estate. In the situation that developed he was
no match for the man who had seized his property. The new possessor
was more powerful; he had more men, more soldiers. The rightful owner
was no match for him.
In those times it
did not happen that if anyone were unable to go on living in his own
home and estate he immediately went away into some foreign country.
The rightful owner was an adventurer, certainly, but emigration was
not such an easy matter then; he had neither the wherewithal nor the
facilities. And so he became a kind of serf, he with his followers
— a kind of serf attached to his own estate. His own property
had been wrested from him and he, together with a number of those who
once used to accompany him on adventures were forced to work as
serfs.
In all these
people who were now serfs where formerly they had been masters, a
certain attitude of mind began to assert itself, an attitude of mind
most derogatory to the principle of overlordship. On many a night in
those well wooded parts, fires were burning, and round the fires
these men came together and hatched all manner of plots against those
who had taken possession of their property.
In point of fact,
the dispossessed owner, who from being the master of a large estate
had become a serf, more or less a slave, filled all the rest of his
life — as much of it as he was not compelled to give to his
work — with making plans for regaining his property. He hated
the man who had seized it from him.
And then, when
these two personalities passed through the gate of death, they
experienced in the spiritual world between death and rebirth, all
that souls have been able to experience since that time, shared in it
all, and came again to earth in the 19th century. The man who had
lost home and property and had become a kind of slave, appeared
as Karl Marx, the
founder of modern socialism. And the man who had seized his estate
appeared as his friend Engels. The actions which had
brought them into conflict were metamorphosed in the course of the
long journey between death and a new birth into an impulse and urge
to balance out and set right what they had done to one
another.
Read what went on
between Marx and Engels, observe the peculiar configuration of
Marx's mind, and remember at the same time what I have told you
of the relationship between these two individuals in the
8th–9th century, and you will find a new light falling upon
every sentence written by Marx and Engels. You will not be in danger
of saying, in abstract fashion: This thing in history is due to this
cause, and the other to the other cause. Rather will you see the
human beings who carry over the past into another age, in such a way
that although admittedly it appears in a somewhat different form,
there is nevertheless a certain similarity.
And what else
could be expected? In the 8th–9th century, when men sat
together at night around a fire in the forest, they spoke in quite a
different style from that customary in the 19th century, when Hegel
had lived, when things were settled by dialectic. Try all the same to
picture to yourselves the forest in north-eastern France in the 9th
century. There sit the conspirators, cursing, railing in the language
of the period. Translate it into the mathematical-dialectical mode of
speech of the 19th century, and you have what comes to expression in
Marx and Engels.
Such things lead
us away from sensationalism — which creeps all too easily into
ideas relating to the concrete facts of reincarnation — towards
a true understanding of history. And the best way to steer clear of
sensationalism is, instead of giving way to a feverish desire to know
the details of reincarnation, instead of that, to try to understand
in the light of the repeated earthly lives of individual human
beings, those things in history that bring weal or woe, happiness or
grief to mankind.
It was this point
of view that while I was still living in Austria — although in
Austria one is really within the German world — I was
particularly interested in a certain personality who was a Polish
member of the Reichstag. Those of you who have been attending
lectures for a long time will remember that I have often spoken of
Otto Hausner, the Austrian-Polish member of the Reichstag who was so
active in the seventies of last century. Truth to tell, ever since I
heard and saw Otto Hausner in the Austrian Reichstag about the end of
the seventies and beginning of the eighties, the picture of this
remarkable man has been before my mind's eye. He wore a
monocle; he looked at you sharply with the other eye, but all the
time the eye behind the monocle was watching for the weak points in
his opponent. And while he spoke, he was looking to see whether the
dart had struck home.
Now Hausner had a
remarkable moustache — in my autobiography I did not want to go
into all these details — and he used to accompany what he said
with his moustache, so that the moustache made a kind of Eurythmy of
the speech he poured out against his opponents!
It is interesting
when you picture it all. — Extreme Left, Left, Middle Party,
Czech Club (as it was called) and then Extreme Right, Polish Club.
Here stood Hausner, and over on the extreme Left were his opponents.
That was where all of them were.
The curious thing
was that when, over the question of the occupation of Bosnia, Hausner
was on the side of Austria, he received tumultuous applause from
these people on the Left. When, later, he spoke about the building of
the Arlberg railway, the most vehement opposition came from the same
people on the extreme Left. And the situation remained so, in regard
to everything he said after that.
Very many warnings
and prophetic utterances made by Otto Hausner in the seventies and
eighties have, however, since proved true. One often has occasion
nowadays to look back in thought to what Otto Hausner used to
say.
Now there was one
feature that appeared in almost every speech Otto Hausner made, and
this, among other less significant details in his life, gave me the
impulse to investigate the course of his karma. Otto Hausner could
hardly make a speech without uttering a kind of panegyric, as it were
in parenthesis, on Switzerland. He was forever holding up Switzerland
to Austria as a pattern. Because in Switzerland three nationalities
get on well together, are indeed quite exemplary in this respect, he
wanted the thirteen nationalities of Austria to take example from
Switzerland and live together in the same federal unity as do the
three nationalities of Switzerland. Again and again he would come
back to this theme. It was quite remarkable.
In Hausner's
speeches there was irony, there was humour, there was logic —
not always, but very often — and there was the panegyric on
Switzerland. It was perfectly clear that this panegyric arose out of
a pure feeling of sympathy; this feeling gripped hold of him; he
wanted to say these things. And moreover he knew how to shape his
speech so that no one, except a group of German-Liberals on the Left,
was seriously provoked or offended by it.
It was most
interesting to see how, when some Left Liberal member had spoken,
Otto Hausner would get up to oppose him, and with his monocled eye
never turn his gaze aside for a moment but pour upon the Left Wing a
perfectly incredible torrent of abuse and scorn. There were men of
importance and standing among them, but he spared none. And there was
always breadth of view in what he said; he was one of the most
cultured members of the Austrian Reichstag.
The karma of such
a man may readily arouse interest. I took my start from this passion
of his for returning again and again to praise of Switzerland, and
further, from the fact that once in a speech subsequently published
as a brochure, German Culture and the German Empire,
he collected together in a spirit
of impishness and yet at the same time with nothing short of genius,
all there was to be said for German culture and the German
people and against
the German Empire. There was really something grandly prophetic
about this speech that was made in the early eighties, scuttling the
German Empire as it were, saying all manner of harsh things about it,
calling it the wrecker and destroyer of the true being and nature of
the Germans. That was the second thing — this singular
‘loving hatred’, if I may put it so, and ‘hating
love’ for all that is truly German, and for the German
Empire.
And the third
thing was the extraordinary interest which made itself manifest when
Hausner spoke of the Arlberg Tunnel, of the plan to build the Arlberg
railway from Austria to Switzerland and thus unite Middle Europe with
the West. Needless to say, here too he introduced his song of praise
for Switzerland, for the railway was to run into Switzerland. But
when he spoke of this railway — and his speech was
well-seasoned, though delivered with perfect delicacy — one
really had the feeling: the man is basing it all on tendencies and
proclivities he must have acquired in some remarkable way in a former
earthly life.
Everyone was
talking in those days of the enormous advantages that would accrue to
European civilisation from the alliance of Germany with Austria. At
that very time Hausner was developing in the Austrian Parliament his
idea of the Arlberg railway; he was saying, and naturally all the
others were going for him hammer and tongs about it, that the Arlberg
railway must be built, because a State as he pictured Austria,
uniting thirteen nations after the pattern of Switzerland, must have
a choice of allies; when it suits her, Austria has Germany, and when
it suits her she must also have a strategic route from Middle Europe
to the West, so that she may be able to have France for an ally when
she wishes. Naturally, when such an opinion was expressed in the
Austria of those times, it received short answer! It was reported
that Hausner was ironed out flat! In truth, however, it was a
marvellous speech, highly spiced and full of poignancy. And this
speech, I would have you note, pointed in the direction of the
West.
Holding these
three things together in mind, I discovered that the individuality of
Otto Hausner had wandered across Europe from West to East at the time
when Gallus and Columbanus
[Not St. Columba, but a slightly younger Irish monk
— St. Columbanus (sometimes called Columba the Younger).]
were journeying
in the same direction. He set out with men who had been inspired by
the Irish initiation, for the purpose of bringing Christianity to
those regions. In company with them, his aim was to carry
Christianity to the East. On the way, somewhere in the neighbourhood
of the Alsace of to-day, he found himself extraordinarily attracted
by the relics of ancient Germanic paganism, by the old memories of
the gods, the old forms of worship, the figures and statues of the
gods that he found in Alsace, and also in Germany and Switzerland. He
received all this into his heart and mind in a deeply significant
way.
Afterwards there
developed in him, on the one hand, a liking for the Germanic nature
and, on the other hand a counterforce which came from the feeling
that he had gone too far in that past life. He underwent a drastic
inner change, an inner metamorphosis, and this showed itself in the
wide and comprehensive outlook he possessed in this later
incarnation. He could speak of the German people and culture and of
the German Empire like one who has once had close and intimate
contact with these things, and yet who feels all the time that he
ought not to have been influenced by them. He should have been
spreading Christianity. He had come into these parts while his duty
lay elsewhere. — One could hear it in the very tone of his
speeches. — And he wanted to go back and make good again! Hence
his passion for Switzerland; hence his passion for the building of
the Arlberg railway. Even in outward appearance, he did not really
look Polish. Hausner himself used often and often to say that he was
not a Pole at all by physical descent but only by civilisation and
education, and that ‘Raetian-German’ blood flowed in his
veins. He had brought over from an earlier incarnation the tendency
to look towards the region where once he had been, whither he had
accompanied St. Columbanus and St. Gallus with the resolve to spread
Christianity, but where, instead, the old Germanic religion and
culture had captured him and held him fast. And so it came about that
he did his best, as it were, to be born again in a family as little
Polish as possible, far away from the land in which he had lived in
his earlier life, far removed from it and yet so that he could look
longingly towards it.
These are examples
which I wanted to unfold before you to-day in order to show you how
strange and remarkable is the path of karmic evolution. — In
the next lecture we shall consider the question of how good and evil
develop through successive incarnations of human beings, and through
the course of history. By studying in this way the more important and
significant examples that meet us in history, we shall be able to
throw light on relationships belonging more to everyday
life.
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