VI
We have considered
a series of karmic relationships in the historical development of
mankind, and have observed how one or other relationship flows over
from one earthly life into another. We will now pass on to the
consideration of karmic relationships from a fresh point of view, and
you will find that it is one which leads still more directly into
life. For the study of karma has real value only when it flows into
the moral character of our life, into the whole mood and tenor of our
life and soul; so that in taking our place in the world as human
beings we can experience through the study of karma an invigoration
as well as a deepening of our life. Life has many riddles, and it is
wrong to regard them all as insoluble. If that were so, man would
gradually be torn right out of his true being. Were the riddles of
the nature of man to remain quite unknown to him, he would have to
pass through existence like an unconscious being. But it is the task
of man to grow ever more and more conscious. And this he can do only
when he learns to penetrate with some degree of insight into all that
is connected with him, all that is connected with his soul and his
spirit.
As karma is a
component part of our whole life and existence, it goes without
saying that the study of karma is a study that has directly to do
with the very foundations of human life. Nevertheless, it is very
difficult for us in our present-day consciousness to undertake a
study of karma in its direct application to life. For any at all
adequate study of the working of karma in actual life, the life in
which we ourselves are immersed, calls for a far more objective
outlook than is possible for the kind of consciousness which arises
from present-day conditions of living and education. In these
conditions there is much that hides karmic connections, makes
them invisible; for this reason, the very things that would make life
comprehensible from the point of view of karma and destiny are
extraordinarily difficult to observe.
Present-day man is
very little inclined to detach himself from his own being and to give
himself wholly to some other being or object. Modern man lives very
strongly within himself. And the strange thing is that when he
strives towards the spirit, when he receives into himself the
spiritual, he runs great danger of living all the more within
himself! For what do we find when someone begins to enter more deeply
into anthroposophical life? Many a person who in the course of his
life has come into the Anthroposophical Movement will be able to say
to himself: As long as I lived in the outside world I had these or
those relations with life: they absorbed me and I accepted them as
belonging intimately to me. I prized this or that; I believed that
this or that was necessary for living. Moreover, I had friends with
whom I was on terms of intimacy by virtue of the habits and
circumstances of daily life. Then came the time when I found
Anthroposophy. Since that moment, much in my life has come to a stop.
I have moved right away from many of the old connections; or at least
they no longer have the same value for me. Many things that I enjoyed
doing have become repulsive to me; I can no longer regard them as
things with which I want to remain connected.
And if, having
embarked on these reflections, he carries his thought a little
farther, and tries to find what it is that has taken the place of
these things, he will very quickly discover that his egoism has not
decreased. I do not say this reproachfully, no, not even with the
faintest shadow of reproach; I merely wish to state it as a fact
which anyone is quite well able to observe in himself. His egoism
has, in fact, increased; he pays far more heed now to the special way
in which he himself is constituted. He asks more than he ever did
before: “What sort of impression does my neighbour make on
me?” Previously he had been accustomed to take the actions of
another person more or less for granted. Now he enquires about the
impression they have made on himself. Or, again, he may have been
placed within some connection of life which used to seem quite
satisfactory. He fulfilled his duties, and so forth. Now his
duties become repulsive to him; he would like to quit them because he
feels they are not sufficiently spiritual, and so forth.
Thus it is that
spiritual endeavour within Anthroposophy may very easily lead into a
kind of egoism; a man tends to attach far greater importance to
himself than he did before.
But it all rests
on the fact that, in such a case, there has been no expansion of
interest towards the outside world; on the contrary, interest has
been thrust back within. I have often pointed out that one who grows
in a true and right way into anthroposophical life, does not take
less interest in external life; rather does he, by reason of
his Anthroposophy, take far more interest. Everything outside himself
begins to be far more interesting to him than before; it has far more
value for him. For this, however, it is necessary that he should not
withdraw from external life, but perceive, rather, the spirituality
in it.
This of course
means that certain things begin to show themselves in other human
beings which had not been noticed before. But then we must also have
the courage to notice these things, and not to overlook them. For
consideration of life from the point of view of karma, it is
absolutely necessary that we acquire in some measure the power to go
out of ourselves and into the other man.
Naturally, this is
peculiarly difficult when the other person becomes a means for karmic
adjustments in life which are unpleasant, and possibly even painful
to us! But unless we are able to go out of ourselves, even in matters
which are disagreeable and painful to us, no true and valid study of
karma is possible. For let us remind ourselves: — what are the
conditions that have to exist in the world for karma to be brought
into being?
We are each placed
within a certain human life. In the course of it we act, think, and
feel in one way or another. We enter into certain relationships with
other human beings and within these relationships things happen. We
think, feel, will and do things that call for a karmic adjustment. We
enter into relationships with other men, and again things happen
which demand a karmic adjustment. Try to survey from this point of
view one human earthly life and then observe how at the end of it a
man passes through the portal of death into the spiritual world. He
now lives within the spiritual world. In the spiritual world it is
not as in the physical world. In the physical world you stand outside
the other man. You stand outside even those people with whom you come
in close contact. Between you and the other man there is at least
air, and each one has his own skin! So that when you approach another
ever so closely, you can always in a certain measure keep yourself to
yourself. This, however, is no longer possible when you have gone
through the portal of death and dwell in the spiritual world. Let us
take a typical case. You have done something to another man which
calls for a karmic compensation. You go on living with him, after you
have both passed through the portal of death. You live then
within the other man; and this not by virtue of your
good will or your inner perfection, but compulsorily, if I may put it
so.
| Diagram 1 Click image for large view | |
Suppose A and B go
through the portal of death. Afterwards they are in the spiritual
world. They confront one another in the spiritual world. Yet, whereas
here B lived within himself and A lived within himself, after death A
lives in B as well as in himself, and B lives in A as well as in
himself. In the spiritual world, men live entirely within one
another; and in so doing they are maintained by the forces which they
have stored up in their lives on earth. After death we do not enter
into relation with just any kind of men; we enter into relation with
those with whom we have already established a connection for good or
for ill. And it is these connections which bring it about that we
live not merely within ourselves but within the other. Now imagine,
you have done something to another man, — or, let us say, B has
acted towards A in a way which demands karmic compensation. When B
passes through the portal of death, then after death, in the passage
through the world between death and a new birth, he lives in A. He
experiences, within A, what he did to A. And while he is thus living
outside himself, he provides for the karmic compensation to be
brought about. Thus all that is to be brought to pass as karmic
compensation during the next earthly life, you yourself cause by
living in the other man. It is only on descending again to the
physical world that A makes what you have put into him into his
own deed. In the next earthly life he comes to meet you with what
you really have willed to inflict upon yourself through
him.
When, therefore,
in the next earthly life, something is inflicted on me by another man
as a karmic compensation, this happens because I laid it into him
during the time I lived within him between death and a new birth. At
that time it was not his deed at all; it becomes his deed only as he
descends again into earth-life. Thus the conditions for the working
of karma in the course of evolution arise from the fact that
karmically-connected human beings dwell within one another in the
time between death and rebirth.
Now when we
consider ordinary life on earth, we do not really penetrate very
deeply into it. As far as the other man is concerned, we are
extraordinarily little aware of him, consciously. For instance, how
little we notice any slight difference in the behaviour of another
man in relation to ourselves! Suppose we meet a man in life, and he
behaves towards us in a certain way. We are aware of it, but we use
very little discrimination. We do not observe what entirely different
motives and impulses may account for his behaviour. A man, let us
say, is antagonistically disposed towards me. This antagonism may be
caused by the mere fact that my existence irritates him, because he
is attuned to something quite different in life. Therefore he treats
me in a certain way. This treatment can be of such a nature that only
in the next life is it karmically balanced. In such a case the
antagonism can be quite original, not in the least conditioned by
preceding earthly lives.
But I may also
receive a similar, perhaps even identical, treatment from another
man, into whom I myself implanted bit by bit all that comes to me
with this treatment, in the time between death and
rebirth.
The feeling which
can differentiate between two such kinds of treatment, externally
similar, is very little developed to-day; it must show itself again,
in order that the moral tenor of life may become purer, and
man's moral perception stronger. In earlier epochs — in
epochs not even very remote from us — such a distinction lay
within human comprehension. One felt, e.g. towards one man: He hates
me and does this or that out of hate for me; while with another man
one had the feeling; he must do something against me, he simply
cannot help it, he is inwardly predestined to act in this
way.
This feeling,
which can be subtly discerned in the facts of life, must again become
more general. It will give to life many fine nuances which are of
great importance.
There is another
difference we must learn to observe. You will readily admit that when
a man comes into relation with other men, all manner of things are
connected with this relationship, things which do not interest him as
much as the relationship itself. Again, I will take a characteristic
instance. Suppose you enter a society — I am not thinking now
of the Anthroposophical Society; I exclude it for reasons that will
emerge in the course of these lectures. The reason why you enter this
society may be that you have a karmic link with one or two persons,
perhaps with only one person in the society; but you have to
participate in everything connected with the society in order to
approach this one person as closely as your karmic relations with him
demand. While from the point of view of karma the relation to this
one man only is important, you share in everything that you come up
against in this society, through the people you meet there, etc. So
we have to recognise that life confronts us in such a way that the
relations into which it brings us are of the most varied shades;
quite indifferent relationships may stand side by side with the most
significant, in the deepest sense of the word.
But note in this
connection, how true it is that external life is frequently only
Maya, is in many respects the Great Illusion. Thus it can happen
— I will again construct a hypothetical case — that you
enter a society, and the relation to the one person, which is well
determined karmically, has difficulty in establishing itself. You
have to link on to all sorts of people in order to approach that one
man. With these other men you make connections which — let us
say — appear extremely important to a more rough-and-ready
consideration of life; yes, it may be, they make themselves very
strongly felt, whereas perhaps the connection which you approach last
of all, and which is of real karmic importance, takes its course
gently, softly, unobtrusively.
Thus it can really
be that the karmically important element in some connection of life
appears like a little mount beside giant mountains, which are in
reality of lesser importance. To a spiritualised consideration,
however, the little hillock reveals itself in its right significance.
The events which occur in life cause us many illusions. As a rule we
do not know how to judge them if we take only one earthly life into
consideration. It is only when we perceive other earthly lives in the
background that we can estimate correctly the one earthly life in all
its events.
I should like to
illustrate this by an example. Strange personalities have appeared in
our time. Apart from those of whom I have spoken to you in our
studies on karma, a number of quite remarkable personalities have
appeared here and there. External study often does not lead at all
into karmic connections; we need a study which is able to take note
of incisive moments in life. Then we come to see, in all clarity,
just those facts which make us realise how illusory external life is
unless it is considered on the basis of the spiritual. Recently I
mentioned here an example which may have appeared to you very
strange, the example of an alchemist of the school of Basil
Valentine, who reappeared again as Frank Wedekind.
My starting-point
for the observation of this strange karma — the starting-point
is not always significant in itself; if afterwards the starting-point
has led on to inner clarity, then naturally the whole thing changes
— the starting-point in this case was the circumstance that I
had hardly ever before seen such hands as Frank Wedekind's, and
I saw Frank Wedekind gesticulate with those hands of his when he
acted in his own “Hidalla”. The whole apparent chaos of
this play (which, as I recently mentioned, is a perfect horror from
the ordinary, conventional point of view) connected itself with the
impression of his hands that I had had before, and conjured up before
my vision the chemical manipulations on which, in a former life, he
had been engaged. On the basis of his “Hidalla”, in
connection with these strange hands, appeared the earlier incarnation
which one could then follow further.
You will see from
this how one must develop an eye for what is of real significance in
a human being. There are men in whom the countenance is the most
characteristic element. But there are also men in whom the most
important characteristic is not the face at all, but, for instance,
the hands; from the face of such a man one can infer nothing, only
from the hands. When you pass on from the individual to the general,
precisely in the example which I have just brought forward, you can
realise quite clearly how it stands. For these medieval alchemists
were of course obliged to acquire extraordinary dexterity with their
hands.
In earlier
lectures I have spoken of how nothing is suffered to remain of all
that man has developed in his head. But that which he bears in the
rest of his organism is subsequently brought to expression in the
(next) head. Now in childhood the whole forming of the body takes its
start from the head. Above all, such expressive organs as the hands
are shaped in accordance with the most intimate impulses of the head.
We may therefore expect that something very characteristic will
appear in the hands or feet of one who has worked in the manner of
alchemists.
I say all this to
show you how important it is to take one particular thing in its full
significance, and to regard as insignificant what frequently presents
itself in the sense-world as the most evident, the most essential,
the greatest, etc. In our time, as I said, there have appeared many
strange and remarkable personalities who stand before us without our
being able to arrive at any complete survey of the karmic
connections. Just in the case of such personalities it is a question
of observing in them what is striking and significant. The fact that
somebody was a great artist, for example, is something which may
possibly be determined only in the very smallest measure by his
karma. But what exactly he does in his art, how he conducts
himself in it, these are things that are specially determined in
karma. Thus, the very things which, one may say, make life really
poetic, reveal themselves to a study of karma.
Let us suppose we
can look back on a man's previous incarnations. In respect of
the present incarnation they are remarkably illuminating in certain
points. But we can never understand how to find our way intelligently
in these investigations as long as we make use of the ordinary
criteria for understanding and interpreting life. Life becomes a
reality in quite a different sense when one resolves to pursue a
study of karma in all earnestness.
Let me give you an
example. I will in the first place relate quite simply what happened.
I was walking one day along a street and I had a picture before me. I
see a ship-wrecked man. His ship is far away, and sinking. The man is
in a lifeboat, hurrying towards a fairly large island. His gaze is
directed strangely, considering that he is still in doubt whether his
boat will reach land and his life be safe! He is looking at the
bubbling, foaming billows. I am impressed by the fact that he can
still gaze at the waves, even though he is liable at any moment to be
drowned. A disturbed and shaken soul, but in the shock — and so
in a body-free manner — deeply united with
Nature.
While still on the
same walk — the picture had of course no connection whatever
with my surroundings — my way led me to an Art Exhibition where
I saw for the first time Boecklin's “Toteninsel”
(Island of the Dead). I mention this only that you may see how in
approaching these things we must take a wider outlook. It is not
simply a matter of meditating upon all one can think and feel about
Boecklin from the starting point of his picture, “Island of the
Dead”. It need not be so at all; it is quite possible that
under certain circumstances one has to revert to something one has
seen prophetically, and link that on to one's experience of the
picture.
And so, too, when
we meet a man in real life. Then, in order to find karmic
connections, it is not only important to consider what we experience
just in the moment of meeting him; it is often most illuminating to
recall some intimate previous experience, for we may find that we
understand it only when we see how it connects with what we
afterwards perceive in him or through him.
The very things
that prove so illuminating for karma are often things that throw
their shadows in advance — or, we may also say, their
light. We need a fine sense for the intimacies of life, which
sometimes means that we not only connect the future with the past,
but regard the past as something that elucidates the future. Unless
we can learn to look at life in this intimate way, we shall not
easily develop that inner mobility of soul which is necessary for a
deeper penetration into karmic connections.
It is indeed a
fact that when specially significant karmic events enter a
man's life, they are connected with inner events in his life
which may date from several years previously. We have to acquire in
this way an expanded view of life.
For think of the
following: — When you look at the thinking element in man, as
it exists in ordinary consciousness, you find it related only to the
past. When, however, you look at human feeling, with the many shades
and nuances it receives from emotional and temperamental depths, then
you come upon very strange secrets of life. The course of a
man's life can be very little gauged by the way he thinks; but
very much by the way he feels. And when you observe such a life, let
us say, as Goethe's, and ask yourself: How did Goethe feel in
the year 1790? — then, through the peculiar stamp and character
of Goethe's feeling in the year 1790 you get the entire later
colouring of his life; it is all present as a nucleus in the feeling
of 1790. As soon as we descend into the depths of the human soul we
really perceive the peculiar colouring — not of course the
details — of the subsequent life. A man might gain a great deal
of illumination on his own life if he paid more attention to the
inexplicable shades of feeling which are not caused from without but
from the depths within.
Men will accustom
themselves to taking this kind of thing specially into account if
they pay attention to the points I have mentioned to-day. I shall
have more to say about them: they are important for a consideration
of life that intends to take note of karmic connections. And this
holds good, whether one is dealing with karmic connections in
one's own life, or with karmic connections of those who are
dear to one. For you must understand that if one desires to consider
karma, it is a question really of looking through a human
being in a certain way. When no more than the ordinary physical human
being stands in your field of vision, he stands there before you
non-transparent. You look at his face, at the way he moves about and
behaves, at the way he speaks, or perhaps even also at the way he
thinks, — the latter being, on the whole, generally only a
conventional reflection of his upbringing and experience. But so long
as you look no further than this, the karma of this human being does
not stand objectively before you.
When, however, a
man becomes transparent for you, then at first you really have the
feeling that he is hovering in the air. Gradually it comes about that
you no longer think of him as walking or moving his arms and hands.
You lose all sense of this. Understand me aright, my dear friends. In
ordinary life what a man does with his arms and legs is extremely
important. But this loses its importance when one wishes to observe
the deeper elements in man. You must take what I am saying in its
fullest meaning. Can you look right away from what a man achieves by
means of his arms and hands, and see him hovering, as it were, not so
much in respect of space as in respect of life? I mean, take no
account of journeys he has made, of all his goings and comings, in
short, of all he does with his legs; and attach equally little
importance to the work he does with his hands. Watch rather his mood,
his temperament; watch everything in him in which arms and legs take
no part. Then you have, so to speak, the first transparency to which
you can attain. And what will this first transparency show? Picture
to yourselves, you have here an object. At first you see nothing but
the object. Well and good. But then something is drawn upon the
object. And now it is again erased. This is how it is with man when
you arrive at the first transparency, when you look away from the man
of ordinary life and completely disregard his arms and legs. You have
to tear him right out of the connections into which he has come
through the activity of his arms and legs. If you now observe him,
something in him becomes transparent, and you look through to what
was previously covered up by the activity of arms and
legs.
And what is it you
see? You begin to understand that behind the man the Moon appears. I
will draw here diagrammatically the threefold man. Now suppose, this
(i.e. the lower part) first becomes transparent; we disregard the
arms and legs. Then the man no longer appears to us detached from the
universe as he otherwise does; he begins to reveal behind him the
Moon, with all the impulses which work in man from the Moon. We begin
to say: “Yes, man has a certain power of phantasy, —
whether it be developed or no, he has this power in him. He cannot
help it. Moon forces are behind this. They are hidden from us only by
the activity of arms and legs. But now all that has vanished, and in
the background appears before us the creative Moon.”
| Diagram 2 Click image for large view | |
We go on. We try
to make man still more transparent. By a kind of suggestion, we think
away all that makes man emotional, all that endows him with a certain
temperament — in short, those features — of his every-day
life in which his soul-nature is chiefly expressed. Still more
disappears; he becomes still more transparent. And we can go farther.
We can disregard all that exists in man, because he has senses.
First, you disregard everything that is in man by virtue of his
having arms and legs. Now you ask yourself: what remains over from
man, when I ignore the fact that he has ever perceived anything by
means of his senses? There remains a certain direction of thought, a
certain impulsive force of his thought, a tendency of life. At this
point, however, the whole rhythmic system, the breast of man, becomes
transparent. It vanishes, and in the background appears before you
all that exists there as Sun-impulse (see diagram). You look through
man and behold in reality the Sun, when you ignore all that man has
perceived by means of his senses. You can try this on yourself. You
can ask yourself: what do I owe to my senses? And then, when you look
away from all this, you see through yourself and behold yourself as a
Sun-being.
And when further
you disregard man's thoughts, the direction of his thinking,
then the head too disappears. Now the whole man is gone. You look
through, and finally behold Saturn in the background. But in this
moment, the man's karma, or your own karma, lies open before
you. For in the moment when you observe the working of Saturn in a
man, when a man has become entirely transparent to you, and you
observe him so extensively that you behold him on the background of
the whole planetary system — on the background of Moon, Sun and
Saturn — in that moment the karma of the man lies open before
you. And if one is going to speak of practical karma-exercises
— I told you already that I wanted to do it at the beginning of
the foundation of the Anthroposophical Society, but did not succeed
at that time — then one must really begin in this way. One must
say: It is a matter first of all of disregarding — in ourselves
or in others — all that we are in life, inasmuch as we are
beings endowed with arms and legs. Cut this right out of your
thought. All you have ever attained through the fact that you are a
being endowed with arms and legs — this you must
ignore.
Then you will say:
“Yes, but we fulfil our karma just because we have arms and
legs!” So you do. So long, however, as you look at your arms
and legs, you are not aware of what it is you fulfil through having
arms and legs. This you see only when you no longer look at your arms
and legs any more, but find in the activity of arms and legs the
impulses of the Moon. Then it is a matter of going a step further,
and disregarding all that man absorbs by means of his senses, what he
has in his soul by means of his senses — whether you are
practising the exercise with yourself or with others. You behold man
then as Sun-being, you see the Sun-impulse in him. And again, you
must disregard the fact that he has a certain tendency of thought, a
certain tendency of soul — then you realise him to be a
Saturn-being.
Should you arrive
thus far, then you have man once more before you, but now — as
a spirit. Now the legs move and the arms work, but spiritually, and
they show us what they do. But they show us this according to the
forces which work and rule in them. This is what we have to
learn and experience.
When I do the most
trifling thing, when I pick up the chalk here — as long as I
merely see this fact, the picking-up of the chalk, then I know
nothing of karma. I must do away with all this. I must bring it about
that all this can reproduce itself in a picture, can appear again in
a picture. Not in the strength that is contained in my muscles
— this can explain nothing at all — but in the picture
that takes the place of the act, appears the force that induces the
hand to move, in order to pick up the chalk. And it appears as
something coming from previous incarnations.
This is how it is,
when I gradually do away with visible man in the above manner and see
behind him his Moon-impulses, his Sun-impulses, and his
Saturn-impulses. Then the image or picture of the man comes to meet
me again from the cosmos. But it is not the man in his present
incarnation; it is the man in one of his preceding incarnations or in
several previous incarnations. I must first bring it about that the
man who is walking here at my side, becomes transparent for me, ever
more and more transparent, in that I put away from my vision his
whole life. Then there comes to the same spot, but now proceeding
from cosmic distances, the man as he was in his previous earthly
lives.
Perhaps what has
been placed before you to-day about these connections is not at once
altogether clear and comprehensible. But I wanted to point the way
prospectively, as it were, and in the coming lectures we shall enter
into more and more detailed considerations of the nature of karma as
it flows in human life from one incarnation to
another.
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