Karmic Relationships II
GA 236
Lecture IV
26 April 1924, Dornach
Studies that are concerned with the karma of human beings must be undertaken with deep earnestness and inwardly assimilated. For it is not the mere knowledge of some particular karmic connection that is important. What is really important is that such studies should quicken the whole of man's nature, enabling him to find his bearings in life.
Such studies will never be fruitful if they lead to greater indifference towards human beings than is otherwise the case; they will be fruitful only if they kindle deeper love and understanding than are possible when account is taken merely of the impressions of a single life.
Anyone who reviews the successive epochs in the evolution of mankind cannot fail to realise that in the course of history very much has changed in man's whole way of thinking and perception, in all his views of the world and of life. Generally speaking, man is less interested in the past than in the future, for which the foundations have yet to be laid. But anyone who has a sufficiently clear grasp of how the souls of men have changed in the course of the earth's evolution will not shrink from the necessity of having himself to undergo the change that will lead him to study, not merely the single earthly life of some individual, but the succession of earthly lives, in so far as these can be brought within the range of his vision.
I think that the examples given in the last lecture—Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Pestalozzi, and others—can show how understanding of a personality, love for this personality, can be enhanced when the latest earth-life is viewed against the background of other lives of which it is the outcome.
And now, in order that our studies may be really fruitful, I want to return to a question to which, as many of those present here will know, I have already alluded. Reference is often made in spiritual science to the existence in olden times of Initiates possessed of clairvoyant vision, personalities who were able to communicate the secrets of the spiritual world. And from this the question quite naturally arises: Where are these Initiates in our own time? Have they reincarnated?
To answer this question it is necessary to point out how greatly a later earth-life may differ from a preceding one in respect of knowledge and also in respect of other activities of the soul. For when in the time between death and a new birth the moment approaches for the human being to descend to the earth and unite with a physical-etheric organisation, a very great deal has to take place. The direction towards family, race and so forth, has indeed long been determined, but the resolve to undergo this tremendous change in the form of existence, the change involved in the transition from the world of soul-and-spirit into the physical world—this resolve is a stupendous matter. For as you can well imagine, circumstances are not as they are on earth, where the human being grows weaker as he approaches the end of his normal life; after all his experiences on earth he will actually have little to do with the decision to enter into a different form of existence when he passes through the gate of death. The change, in this case, comes upon him of itself, it breaks in upon him.
Here on earth, death is something that breaks in upon man. The descent from the spiritual world is completely different. It is a matter, then, of fully conscious action, a deliberate decision proceeding from the deepest foundations of the soul. We must realise what a stupendous transformation takes place in the human being when the time comes for him to exchange the forms of life in the pre-earthly existence of soul-and-spirit for those of earthly existence. The descent entails adaptation to the prevailing conditions of civilisation and culture and also to the bodily constitution which a particular epoch is able to provide. Our own epoch does not readily yield bodies—let alone conditions of culture and civilisation—in which Initiates can live again as they lived in the past. And when the time approaches for the soul of some former Initiate to use a physical body once again, it is a matter of accepting this body as it is, and of growing into the environment and the current form of education. But what once was present in this soul is not lost; it merely comes to expression in some other way. The basic configuration of the soul remains but assumes a different form.
Now in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. it was still possible for the soul to acquire a deep knowledge of Initiation truths, because at that time, especially in Southern Europe and Asia Minor, body followed soul, that is to say, the bodily functions were able to adapt themselves inwardly to the soul. One who may have lived in the early Christian centuries as an Initiate, with a soul wholly inward-turned and full of wisdom, is obliged to descend to-day into a kind of body which, owing to the intervening development, is directed pre-eminently to the external world, lives altogether in the external world. The result is that owing to the bodily constitution, the inner concentration of soul-forces that was still possible in the 3rd or 4th century of our era, is so no longer. And so the following could take place in the course of evolution.—I am telling you of things that reveal themselves to inner vision.
There was a certain Mystery-centre in Asia Minor, typical of all such institutions in that part of the world in the early Christian centuries. Traditions were everywhere alive in those olden days when men were deeply initiated into these Mysteries. But everywhere, too, men were more or less aware of the rules that must be imposed on the soul in order to acquire knowledge leading to its own deep foundations, as well as out into the cosmic All. And in the early Christian centuries these very Mysteries of Asia Minor were occupied with a momentous question.
Boundless wisdom had streamed through the sanctuaries of the Mysteries. If you will read what was described in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact—as far as description was possible in a printed publication at that time—you will see that the ultimate aim of all this wisdom was an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And in these Mysteries of Asia Minor the great question was: How will the sublime content of the Mystery of Golgotha, the reality of what has streamed into the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha—how will it evolve further in the hearts and minds of men? And how will the ancient, primeval wisdom—a wisdom that encompassed the Beings who have their habitations in the stars and the manifold orders of Divine-Spiritual Beings who guide the universe and the life of man—how will this primeval wisdom unite with what is concentrated in the Mystery of Golgotha? How will it unite with the Impulse which, proceeding from a sublime Sun-Being, from the Christ, is now to pour into mankind?—That was the burning question in these Mysteries of Asia Minor.
There was one personality who with his Mystery-wisdom and Mystery-experiences felt this question with overwhelming intensity. It is in truth a shattering experience when in the search for karmic connections one comes upon this man who was initiated in one of these Mysteries in Asia Minor in the early Christian centuries. It is a shattering experience, for with his Initiation-knowledge he was aware in every fibre of his being of the need to grasp the meaning and import of the Mystery of Golgotha, and he was faced with the problem: What will happen now? How will these weak human souls be able to receive it?
Weighed down in soul by this burning question concerning the destiny of Christianity, this Initiate was walking one day in the wider precincts of his Mystery-centre, when an experience came to him of an event that made an overwhelming impression—the treacherous murder of Julian the Apostate. With the vision and insight of Initiation he lived through this event.
It was known to him that Julian the Apostate had attained a certain degree of Initiation in the ancient Mysteries, that he wanted to preserve for the spiritual life of mankind, the impulses that had been cultivated in the ancient Mysteries, to ensure their continuance, in short to unite Christianity with the wisdom of the Mysteries. He knew that Julian the Apostate proclaimed, in the sense of the Mystery-wisdom, that as well as the physical Sun there is also a Spiritual Sun, and that whoever knows the Spiritual Sun, knows Christ. But this, teaching was regarded as evil in the days of Julian the Apostate and led to his treacherous murder on his journey to Persia. This most significant, symptomatic event in world-history was lived through by the Initiate of whom I am speaking.
Those of you who for many years have been listening to what has been said on the subject of karmic connections in world-history, will remember that in the lectures I once gave in Stuttgart on certain chapters of occult history—reference was also made to the same theme at the Christmas Foundations Meeting1Lecture-Course XVI. Occult History. Stuttgart, December 27th–31st, 1910 and January 1st, 1911. World-History in the Light of Anthroposophy. Dornach. December 24th–31st, 1923.—I spoke of the deep tragedy of Julian the Apostate's position in the history of humanity.
His death was felt and experienced by the Initiate to whom I am now referring, whose Initiate-knowledge, received in a Mystery-centre in Asia Minor, was shadowed by the question: What will become of Christianity? And through these symptomatic events there came to him the crystal-clear realisation: A time will come when Christianity will be misunderstood, will live only in traditions, when men will no longer know anything of the glory and sublimity of Christ, the Sun-Spirit Who dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth.
All this lay like a weight upon the soul of the Initiate. And for the rest of his life at that time he was heavy-hearted and sorrowful in regard to the evolution of Christianity. He experienced the consternation and dismay which a symptomatic event of the kind referred to must inevitably cause in an Initiate.—It made an overwhelming, shattering impression upon him.
And then we go further.—The impression received by this Initiate was bound to lead to a reincarnation comparatively soon afterwards—in point of fact at the time of the Thirty Years' War, when very many outstanding, interesting incarnations took place, incarnations that have played an important part in the historical evolution of mankind.
The Initiate was born again as a woman, at the beginning of the 17th century, before the actual outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. She lived on into the time of the conflict and was in contact with certain attempts that were made from the side of Rosicrucianism to correct the tendencies of the age and to make preparation in a spiritual way for the future. This work, however, was largely overshadowed and submerged by the savagery and brutality prevailing during the Thirty Years' War. Think only of the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz which appeared shortly before its outbreak. And many other significant impulses came into the life of mankind at that time, before being stamped out or brutalised by the War.
This personality, who as an Initiate had experienced the deeply symptomatic event connected with Julian the Apostate and had then passed through the incarnation as a woman in the 17th century, was born again in the 19th century. All that had become even more inward during the incarnation as a woman, all that had formerly been present in the soul—not the Initiation-wisdom but the horror caused by the terrible event—all this, in the last third of the 19th century, poured into a peculiarly characteristic view of the world which penetrated deeply into the prevailing incongruities of human existence.
The whole tenor and trend of the present age is such that it is difficult for one who has carried over ancient Initiation-wisdom from an earlier earth-life into the life of the 19th and 20th centuries, to work effectively through deeds. And so, in this case, what was brought over—deeply transformed and apparently externalised, though in reality still inward—pressed its way from the heart—the seat of the old Initiation-wisdom—towards the senses and sense-observation, striving to find expression in poetry, in literature.
That is the reason why recent times have produced so many really splendid examples of literature. Only they are incoherent, they are simply not intelligible as they stand. For they have been created not only by the personality who was present on earth at the end of the 19th or beginning of the 20th centuries, but an additional factor has been some experience in a past life such as I have related, an experience that had such a shattering effect upon an Initiate—albeit an Initiate in Mysteries already decadent. This shattering experience in the soul works on, streams into artistic, poetic qualities of soul—and what, in this case, comes over in so characteristic a way, lives itself out in the personality of Ibsen.
When this vista is open to one, the secrets of the evolution of humanity light up from writings which appeared at the end of the 19th century and which cannot be the work of a single man but of a man through whom and in whom earlier epochs are also coming to expression.
In approaching a theme like this, we shall certainly not lose respect either for the course taken by world-history or for the single personality who stands before us with greatness and distinction. In very truth, the experiences that come upon one in this domain are shattering—that is to say when such matters are pursued with the necessary earnestness.
Now you will often have heard tell of an alchemist who lived in a comparatively early period of the Middle Ages: Basilius Valentinus (Basil Valentine), a Benedictine monk. His achievements in the spheres of medicine and alchemy were of momentous significance and to study him in connection with karmic relationships in world-history leads to remarkable results, results which show very clearly how difficult it is to understand the age in which we ourselves are living.
Many things in our time are not only incomprehensible but often repellent, disagreeable, horrifying in a certain respect, and if we look at life merely as it is perceptible to the senses, it is impossible not to feel indignation and disgust.
It is different, however, for one who can perceive the human and historical connections. Things are by no means what they seem! Traits may show themselves in life to-day for which the onlookers have, quite understandably, nothing but censure and indignation. And yet all the time, even in the unpleasant elements themselves, there may be something that is intensely fascinating. This will be the case more and more frequently.
As I said, there in the early Middle Ages we find Basilius Valentinus, a Benedictine monk, engaged in the pursuit of medicine and alchemy in his cellars in the monastery and making a number of important investigations. There are others with him who are his pupils and they write down what Basilius Valentinus has said to them. Consequently there are hardly any original writings of Basilius Valentinus himself; but there are writings of pupils which contain a great deal that is genuinely his wisdom, his alchemical wisdom.
Now when, at a certain time of my life, one of the pupils of Basilius Valentinus who especially interested me came into my field of vision, I realised: This pupil is again in incarnation, but spiritually there has been a remarkable metamorphosis. He has come again in the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century.
But the alchemical activity, directed without co-ordination towards the senses, manifested outwardly as a view of life in which alchemical concepts are always, so to speak, being welded into sense-observations. In this later incarnation the man observes external facts—how people act, how things happen among them, how they talk to one another—and he groups it all together in a way that is often repellent. But the explanation lies in the fact that the personality in question had, in an earlier incarnation, worked at alchemy under Basilius Valentinus. And now he jumbles everything together—the relationships between people, how they behave to one another, what they say, what they do and so forth. He does not look at these things with the eyes of a modern philistine—far from it!—but with the eye of a soul in which impulses from his former alchemical pursuits are still alive. He jumbles up events that occur among men, makes dramas out of them, and becomes: Frank Wedekind.
These things must of course be studied in pursuance of a longing for a genuine understanding of man. When this is the case, life becomes, not poorer, but infinitely richer. Take Wedekind's ‘Hidalla’ or any other of his dramas which make the brain reel when one attempts to find the thread connecting what comes first with what comes later. Yet there is something fascinating about it for anyone who can look beyond the surface, and the commonplace judgments of the critics sitting in the stalls will leave him untouched. From their own standpoint, of course, these critics are justified—but that is of no account. The real point is that world-history has here produced a strange and remarkable phenomenon.—Alchemical thinking, flung as it were across centuries, is now applied to human life and human deeds; these, together with human rules and standards are all jumbled into a hotchpotch, just as once in alchemical kitchens—at a time when alchemy was already on the decline—substances and their forces were mixed in retorts and tests made of their effects.
Even in respect of the point of time at which they occur on earth, the lives of men are determined by connections of destiny and karma. Let me give you another example in corroboration of this.
We turn our gaze back to the time when the Platonic School flourishes in Greece. There was Plato, surrounded by a number of pupils. In their characters these pupils differed greatly from one another and what Plato himself depicts in the Dialogues, where characters of the most varied types appear and converse together, is in many respects a true picture of his School. Very different characters came together in this School.
In the School there were two personalities in particular who imbibed, each in a very different way, all that fell from Plato's lips, bringing such sublime illumination to his pupils, and that he also carried further in conversations with them.
One of these two pupils was a personality of rare sensitiveness and refinement. He was particularly receptive to everything that Plato did, through his teaching on the Ideas, to lift men's minds and hearts above the things of earth. Everywhere we find Plato affirming that over against the transitoriness of the single events in man's life and environment, stand the Eternal Ideas. The material world is transitory; but the material world is only a picture of the Idea which—itself eternal—passes in perpetual metamorphoses through the temporal and the transitory. Thus did Plato lift his pupils above the transitory things belonging to the external world of sense to contemplation of the eternal Ideas which hover over them as the heavens hover over the earth.
But in this Platonic treatment of the world, man in his true being fares rather badly. For the Platonic conceptions and mode of thinking cannot properly be applied to man, in whom the Idea itself becomes alive in objective reality. Man is too individual. The Ideas, according to Plato, hover above the things. This is true in respect of the minerals, crystals and the other phenomena of the lifeless sense-world; Goethe too, while on the track of the archetypal plant (the ‘Urpflanze’) was observing the varying types; and the same applies in the case of the animals. With man, however, it is a matter of seeking the living Idea within each single human individuality. It was Aristotle—not Plato—who taught that the Idea as entelechy has entered into the human being.
The first of the two pupils shared with whole-hearted fervour in this heavenward flight in Platonism. With his spiritual vision he could accompany Plato in this heavenward flight, in this soaring above the earth, and words of mellowed sweetness would fall from his lips in the Platonic School on the sublimity of the Ideas that hover over and above the things of earth. In his soul he soared to the Ideas. When he was not lingering in his world of vision but living again in his heart and mind, going about among the Greeks as he loved to do, he took the warmest interest in every human being with whom he came into contact. It was only when he had come down as it were to everyday life that his heart and feelings could be focused upon the many whom he loved so well, for his visions drew him away from the earth. And so in this pupil there was a kind of split between the life of heart when he was among living human beings and the life of soul when he was transported to the Eternal Ideas, when he was listening in the Academy to Plato's words or was himself formulating in words full of sweetness, the inspirations brought by Platonism. There was something wonderfully sensitive about this personality.
Now a close and intimate friendship existed between this man and another pupil in the Platonic School. But in the course of it, a different trend of character which I will now describe, was developing in the friend, with the result that the two grew apart. Not that their love for one another cooled, but in their whole way of thinking they grew apart; life separated them. They were able, at first, to understand one another well, but later on even this was no longer possible. And it led to the one I have described becoming irritable and ‘nervy’ as we should say to-day, whenever the other spoke in the way that came naturally to him.
The second pupil was no less ready than the first to look upwards to the Eternal Ideas which were the inspiration of so much living activity in the School of Plato. This pupil, too, could be completely transported from the earth. But the deep, warm-hearted interest in numbers of his fellow human beings—that he lacked. On the other hand he was intensely attracted by the myths and sagas of the ancient gods which were extant among the people and were well-known to him. He interested himself deeply in what we to-day call Greek Mythology, in the figures of Zeus, Athene and the rest. It was his tendency more or less to pass living human beings by, but he took a boundless interest in the gods whom he pictured as having lived on earth in a remote past and as being the progenitors of humanity.
And so he felt the urge and the strong desire to apply the inspiration experienced in his life of soul to an understanding of the profound wisdom contained in the sagas of the gods and heroes. Men's relation to such sagas was of course completely different in Greece from what it is to-day. In Greece it was all living reality, not merely the content of books or traditions.
This second personality who had been on terms of intimate friendship with the first, also grew out of the friendship—it was the same with them both. But as members of the Platonic School there was a link between them. Now the Platonic School had this characteristic.—Its pupils developed forces in themselves which tended to separate them from one another, to drive them apart after the School had for a time held them close together. As a result of this, individualities developed such as the two I have described, individualities who in spite of their different natures belonged together and who then grew apart.
These two individualities—they were born again as women in Italy in the days of the Renaissance—came again to the earth in modern times; the first too early and the second rather too late. This is connected with the strong resolution that is required before making the descent to incarnation.
Having passed through the gate of death, the one I described first, who had soared in spirit to super-earthly realms but without the fullness of human nature which expressed itself only in his heart and feelings, was able between death and rebirth to apprehend what pertains to the First Hierarchy, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; to some extent he could also apprehend the Second Hierarchy, but not the Hierarchy immediately above man, not, therefore, the Hierarchy, through which one learns how the human body is built up and organised here on earth.
He thus became a personality who in pre-earthly existence had developed little insight into the constitution and nature of the human body; hence, when he was born again, he did not take into himself the final impulse. He made a partial, not a full descent into the body, did not come right down into it, but always hovered a little above it.
His friend from the Platonic School waited before descending to incarnation. The reason for the waiting was that had the two of them met, had they been actual contemporaries, they would not have been able to tolerate one another. And yet, for all that, the one who had been wont to speak at such length about his intercourse with men, recounting it with such charm and sweetness to the other—who did not go among his fellows but was engrossed in the myths and sagas of the gods—this first personality was destined to make a deep impression upon the other, to precede him. The second followed later.
This second personality, having steeped himself in Imaginations of the gods, had now developed a high degree of understanding of all that has to do with man. Accordingly he wanted to extend his time in the spiritual world and gather impulses that would enable him to take deep hold of the body. And what actually happened was that he took hold of the body too forcefully, he sank too deeply into it.
Thus we have here two differing configurations of destiny. Of two members of the Platonic School, one takes too slight a hold of the body in the second incarnation afterwards and the other takes too strong a hold. The one cannot completely enter his body; he is impelled into it in his youth but out of it again soon afterwards and is obliged to remain outside. This is Hölderlin.
The other is carried so deeply into his body that he enters with too much force into his organs and suffers almost lifelong illness. This is Hamerling.
Thus we have before us great human destinies stretching through the ages of time, and the impulses which gave rise to these destinies; and we are now able to divine how the spiritual impulses work. For we must place this fact in all clarity before our souls: an individuality like Hölderlin, who has come from the Platonic School and who cannot enter fully into his body but has to remain outside it, such an individuality experiences in the dimness of insanity, impulses that work in preparation for coming earthly lives, impulses that destine him for greatness. And it is the same with the other, Robert Hamerling.
Illness and health appear in quite a different light when considered in the setting of destiny than when they are observed within the bounds of the single earthly life.
I think it can surely be said that reverence will arise in men's hearts and minds when life is treated in this way—reverence and awe for the mysterious happenings brought about by the spiritual world. Again and again I must emphasise that these things are not being told in order to satisfy cravings for sensation, but to lead us more and more deeply into a knowledge and understanding of the spiritual life. And it is only through this deeper penetration into the spiritual life that the external, sense-life of man can be explained and illumined.
Vierter Vortrag
Betrachtungen, welche in das menschliche Karma eingreifen - natürlich betrachtend eben eingreifen -, müssen mit ernster Stimmung aufgenommen und seelisch verarbeitet werden. Denn im Grunde genommen ist es doch so, daß nicht etwa bloß das Wissen um irgendwelche karmische Zusammenhänge von Bedeutung ist, sondern dasjenige, was für die Belebung des menschlichen Wesens, für das ganze Sich-Hineinstellen in das Leben aus solchen Betrachtungen hervorgeht. Solche Betrachtungen können nur dann fruchtbar sein, wenn sie nicht zur größeren Gleichgültigkeit gegenüber dem Menschen werden, als das sonst der Fall ist, sondern im Gegenteil, wenn sie das, was Menschenliebe und Menschenverständnis ist, in einem höheren Grade anfachen, als es der Fall ist, wenn man, auf den Menschen hinsehend, bloß sich überläßt den Eindrücken des einen Erdenlebens.
Wer den Blick auf die aufeinanderfolgenden Epochen der Menschheitsentwickelung richtet, der wird ja einen hinreichenden Eindruck davon bekommen, daß sich in der Denkweise, in der Empfindungsweise, in allen Lebensanschauungen und Lebensauffassungen im Laufe der Menschheitsgeschichte viel geändert hat. Gewiß, das Vergangene macht auf den Menschen nicht jenen tiefgehenden Eindruck wie das, was da kommen soll, was im Grunde genommen erst begründet werden soll. Aber wer mit der nötigen Tiefe erfaßt, wie sich die Menschenseelen im Laufe der Entwickelung der Erde verändert haben, der wird auch nicht davor zurückschrecken, jene Änderung in sein Gemüt als etwas Notwendiges aufzunehmen, die dahin geht, daß nun wirklich nicht bloß das eine Erdenleben für die Betrachtung des einen oder des anderen Menschen genommen werde, sondern die Aufeinanderfolge der Erdenleben, soweit sie durchschaubar sind.
Und ich denke, an solchen Beispielen, wie diejenigen sind, die wir das letzte Mal ins Auge gefaßt haben, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Pestalozzi und so fort, kann sich zeigen, wie das rein menschliche Verständnis einer Persönlichkeit und die Liebe zu dieser Persönlichkeit wachsen können, wenn man das letzte Erdenleben auf dem Hintergrunde dessen betrachtet, aus dem sich dieses letzte Erdenleben eben ergeben hat.
Nun möchte ich noch einmal, um auf die eigentliche Fruchtbarkeit dieser Dinge zu kommen, zurückgehen zu der Frage, die ich für viele derjenigen, die hier sitzen, schon berührt habe. Es ist die Frage, die daraus entsteht, daß ja gerade bei geisteswissenschaftlichen Betrachtungen oftmals davon gesprochen werden muß, wie in alten Zeiten hellsichtige, eingeweihte Persönlichkeiten da waren, Persönlichkeiten, die die Geheimnisse der geistigen Welt mitteilen konnten, Initiierte also. Es ist naheliegend, daß daraus die Frage entsteht: Wo leben in unserem Zeitalter diese Eingeweihten? Wie steht es mit ihrer Wiederverkörperung?
Um diese Frage zu beantworten, ist es durchaus notwendig, darauf hinzuweisen, wie verschieden ein folgendes Erdenleben von einem vorangehenden in bezug auf Wissen, in bezug auf Erkenntnis sein kann, auch in bezug auf andere aus der Seele des Menschen hervorgehende Betätigungen; wie verschieden also aufeinanderfolgende Erdenleben in dieser Beziehung sein können. Denn wenn sich in der Zeit, die der Mensch zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt durchlebt, derjenige Zeitpunkt naht, in dem der Mensch auf die Erde heruntersteigen soll, sich vereinigen soll mit der physisch-ätherischen Organisation, da geht ja eigentlich recht viel im Menschen vor. Da ist zwar die Richtung nach Familie, Volk und so weiter lange bestimmt; aber der Entschluß, diese ungeheure Änderung des Daseins zu vollziehen, die da besteht in dem Übergange aus der geistig-seelischen Welt in die physische Welt, dieser Entschluß, er macht Ungeheures notwendig. Denn Sie müssen nur bedenken, meine lieben Freunde: Es ist ja nicht so, wie es hier auf Erden ist, wo der Mensch eigentlich, wenn er sein normales Leben absolviert, nach und nach schwach wird, wenig mehr, nach den Erfahrungen, die auf Erden gemacht werden, selbst zu dem Entschluß beiträgt, beim Durchgang durch die Todespforte eine andere Lebensform anzunehmen. Das kommt sozusagen über den Menschen, das bricht herein über ihn.
Hier auf dieser Erde ist der Tod etwas Hereinbrechendes. Das ist ganz anders beim Heruntersteigen aus der geistigen Welt. Da handelt es sich um ein hell-vollbewußtes Tun, um ein durchaus aus allen möglichen Untergründen der Seele hervorgehendes Überlegen. Da handelt es sich darum, darauf hinzuschauen, welche ungeheure Veränderung mit dem Menschen eintritt, wenn er die geistig-seelischen Lebensformen des vorirdischen Daseins mit dem irdischen Dasein vertauschen soll. Und da sieht ja der Mensch bei diesem Heruntersteigen, wie er einfach den Kultur- und Zivilisationsverhältnissen sich anbequemen muß, aber auch den Leibesverhältnissen, die ihm geboten werden können in einem bestimmten Zeitalter. Unser Zeitalter gibt, abgesehen von den Kultur- und Zivilisationsverhältnissen, nicht leicht Körper her, in denen auf die alte Art, wie Initiierte gelebt haben, das Leben wieder absolviert werden kann. Und wenn die Zeit heranrückt, wo die Menschenseele, auch die eines alten Initiierten, einen Menschenleib benützen muß, da handelt es sich dann darum, diesen Menschenleib zu nehmen, wie er ist, und hineinzuwachsen in diejenige Erziehungsform, in dasjenige umgebende Leben, das eben da sein kann. Dann geht aber für das Seelische nicht etwa verloren, was einmal da war in diesem Seelischen. Es drückt sich nur auf eine andere Weise aus. Die Grundkonfiguration des Seelischen bleibt, aber es kommt auf eine andere Weise heraus.
Sehen Sie, es war noch im 3., 4. nachchristlichen Jahrhundert so, daß die Seele des Menschen durch das Wissen um die Initiationswahrheiten sich sehr vertiefen konnte, weil die Leiber im 3., 4. nachchristlichen Jahrhundert, namentlich in südlicheren europäischen und in vorderasiatischen Gegenden, der Seele folgten, weil die Leiber innerlich so ihre organischen Funktionen vollzogen, daß sie der Seele folgen konnten. Heute muß derjenige, der mit sehr verinnerlichter, sehr weiser Seele vielleicht noch als ein Eingeweihter in den ersten christlichen Jahrhunderten gelebt hat, in menschliche Leiber untertauchten, die vor allen Dingen durch die seitherige Entwickelung auf die Außenwelt gerichtet sind, in der Außenwelt leben. Körperlich wird es bewirkt, daß nicht jene große Sammlung, jene große innere Konzentration der Seelenkräfte möglich ist, die noch im 3., 4. Jahrhundert nach der Entstehung des Christentums möglich war. Und so konnte sich folgendes in der Entwickelung der Erde vollziehen. Ich erzähle eben Dinge, die sich dem Schauen ergeben.
Denken Sie sich, meine lieben Freunde, ein vorderasiatisches Mysterium, eine Mysterienstätte mit all den Eigenschaften, die eine vorderasiatische Mysterienstätte eben in den ersten Jahrhunderten nach der Begründung des Christentums hatte. Überall waren da noch Traditionen vorhanden in jenen alten Zeiten, wo die Teilnehmer tief in diese Mysterien eingeweiht wurden. Überall war aber auch noch mehr oder weniger Bewußtsein von den Regeln vorhanden, die man anwenden mußte auf die Seele, um gewisse Erkenntnisse zu gewinnen, die namentlich tief in den Grund der Menschenseele hineinführten und hinausführten in das Weltenall. Und gerade in diesen vorderasiatischen Mysterien war es in den ersten Jahrhunderten nach der Entstehung des Christentums so, daß eine große Frage diese Mysterien beschäftigte.
Diese Mysterien hatten ja eine unendliche Weisheit durch ihre Opferstätten strömen sehen. Und Sie brauchen nur nachzulesen, was in meinem Buche «Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache» geschildert ist, soweit das dazumal charakterisiert werden konnte in einem öffentlichen Buche, so werden Sie sehen, daß all diese Mysterienweisheiten doch schließlich dahin tendierten, das Mysterium von Golgatha zu verstehen. Und da war denn die große Frage in diesen vorderasiatischen Mysterien: Wie wird sich die ungeheure Größe des Inhaltes, des Wirklichkeitsinhaltes, der durch das Mysterium von Golgatha der Erde zugeströmt ist, durch die Menschengemüter weiterentwickeln? Wie wird man die alte, die uralte Weisheit, die hinaufging zu den Bewohnern der Sterne, die in sich schloß die Erkenntnis göttlich-geistiger Wesenheiten der verschiedensten Art, welche das Weltenall und das Menschenleben lenken, wie wird sich diese uralte Weisheit vereinigen mit dem, was sich da konzentriert hat, zusammengezogen hat in dem Mysterium von Golgatha, und was als Impulse, die von einem hohen Sonnenwesen ausgehen, von dem Christus, nun in die Menschheit einströmen soll? — Das war die brennende Frage dieser vorderasiatischen Mysterien.
Da gab es einen Eingeweihten, auf dessen Mysterienweisheit und auf dessen Mysterienempfindungen diese Frage ganz besonders tiefen Eindruck machte. Ich darf sagen, daß es einen ungeheuer erschütternden Eindruck macht, wenn man im Suchen nach karmischen Zusammenhängen an diesen einen, wirklich in ein solches vorderasiatisches Mysterium in den ersten christlichen Jahrhunderten Eingeweihten herankommt. Es hat etwas Erschütterndes, weil er ganz erfüllt war davon, mir allem, was er in seiner Initiationswissenschaft damals hatte, nun zu begreifen den ganzen Einschlag des Mysteriums von Golgatha: Was wird nun? Wie werden diese schwachen Menschenseelen das aufnehmen können?
Und sehen Sie, dieser Eingeweihte, mit der brennenden Frage nach dem Schicksal des Christentums in seiner Seele behaftet, er erging sich eines Tages im weiteren Umkreise von seiner Mysterienstätte, und er erlebte etwas mit, was einen ungeheuer erschütternden Eindruck auf ihn machte. Er erlebt mit, als Eingeweihter sozusagen sehend, wie Julian Apostata von einem Menschen meuchlings ermordet wurde, Mit Eingeweihtenwissen machte er es mit.
Er wußte, daß Julian Apostata bis zu einem gewissen Grade in die alten Mysterien eingeweiht war, daß er dasjenige, was man in alten Mysterien pflegte und was dort lebte, auf geistige Art der Menschheit forterhalten wollte, fortpflanzen wollte, daß er das Christentum vereinigen wollte mit der alten Mysterienweisheit, daß er verkündete im Sinne der alten Mysterienweisheit: Es gibt neben der physischen Sonne eine geistige Sonne, und wer die geistige Sonne kennt, kennt Christus. Aber das war etwas, was nun schon als etwas sehr Schlimmes betrachtet wurde in der Zeit, als Julian Apostata lebte, und was dazu führte, daß eben bei seinem Perserzug Julian Apostata meuchlings ermordet wurde. Das machte jener Eingeweihte mit: dieses bedeutungsvolle Symptom der Weltgeschichte.
Diejenigen, die seit längeren Jahren verschiedenes von dem mitmachen, was sich auf karmische Zusammenhänge in der Weltgeschichte bezieht, werden sich erinnern, daß ich in Stuttgart einmal vorgetragen habe - ich habe es auch bei der Weihnachtstagung hier erwähnt über einige Kapitel okkulter Geschichte und daß ich da die ganze Tragik, das ganze tragische Eingreifen Julian Apostatas in die Menschheitsgeschichte erwähnt habe.
Das erlebte nun dieser Eingeweihte, bei dem, ich möchte sagen, die ganze Einweihungswissenschaft, die er in sich aufgenommen hatte in einer vorderasiatischen Mysterienstätte, überstrahlt und übertönt war von der Frage: Was wird aus dem Christentum? — Und durch dieses Symptom stand nun vor seiner Seele ganz hell und klar: Es wird eine Zeit kommen, da wird das Christentum zunächst mißverstanden werden, da wird das Christentum nur in Traditionen leben, man wird nichts wissen von der Erhabenheit des Sonnengeistes Christus, der in dem Jesus von Nazareth gelebt hat.
Das alles lud sich ab auf die Seele dieses Menschen. Und er bekam für den Rest seines damaligen Lebens etwas wie eine Gemütslage, die traurig und elegisch wurde mit Hinsicht auf die Entwickelung des Christentums. Mit jener Bestürzung, mit der so etwas auf einen Eingeweihten wirkt, wirkte dieses Symptom bestürzend auf ihn. Es ist schon etwas ungeheuer Erschütterndes, dies gewahr zu werden. Und dann geht man weiter. Es war ein Eindruck, den der betreffende Initiierte bekam, der durchaus nur zuließ, daß er bald wiederum inkarniert wurde, auch zur Zeit des Dreißigjährigen Krieges; wie ja denn viele außerordentliche, viele interessante Inkarnationen, die in der historischen Menschheitsentwickelung eine große Rolle spielen, in dieser Zeit liegen.
Er wurde als Frau wiederum verkörpert, eigentlich noch vor der Zeit des Dreißigjährigen Krieges, im Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts, lebte dann nur hinein in die Zeit des Dreißigjährigen Krieges, erlebte mit einiges von dem, was von seiten des Rosenkreuzertums das Zeitalter des Dreißigjährigen Krieges korrigieren wollte, ich möchte sagen, auf geistige, spirituelle Art vorbereiten wollte, was aber dann übertönt worden ist von alldem, was roh und brutal im Dreißigjährigen Kriege lebte. Sie brauchen ja nur zu bedenken, wie kurze Zeit vor dem Ausbruch des Dreißigjährigen Krieges die «Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosenkreuz» entstanden ist. Neben diesem bestanden noch viel bedeutsamere Impulse, die dazumal, bevor der Dreißigjährige Krieg alles ausgelöscht und brutalisiert hat, in die Menschheit hineingekommen sind.
Und dann kam das 19. Jahrhundert. Diese Persönlichkeit, die einmal mit Initiation dieses bedeutsame Julian Apostata-Symptom aufgenommen hatte, diese Persönlichkeit, die dann durch die weibliche Inkarnation im 17. Jahrhundert gegangen war, wurde wiedergeboren. Und jetzt ergoß sie alles das, was auch noch verinnerlicht war durch die weibliche Inkarnation, ergoß alles das, was sie dazumal, nicht an Initiationsweisheit, aber an erschütterndem Gemütsinhalt in sich hatte, über dieses Symptom, das auf die initiierte Seele gewirkt hatte. Das alles ergoß sie nun im letzten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts in eine eigentümliche Art der Weltenbetrachtung, in eine tief in die Diskrepanzen des Menschendaseins hineingehende Weltenbetrachtung.
Nun neigt gerade dieses Zeitalter der unmittelbaren Gegenwart dazu, daß nicht auf solche wirksame Art, durch Taten derjenige wirken kann, der alte Initiationsweisheit aus früheren Erdenleben in das Leben des 19., des 20. Jahrhunderts trägt. Daher drängt, ich möchte sagen, alles das, was sich stark metamorphosiert, scheinbar veräußerlicht, aber doch innerlich wird, was sich von dem Herzen des Menschen, wo die alte Initiationsweisheit gelebt hat, nach den Sinnen und ihrer Beobachtung hin schiebt, stark metamorphosiert dahin schiebt, das alles drängt nun dazu, dichterisch, schriftstellerisch sich zu äußern.
Daher haben wir doch immerhin in der letzten Zeit wirklich großartige Proben — die nur inkohärent sind, die in dem, wie sie sind, gar nicht von der Zeit verstanden werden —, an denen nicht bloß gearbeitet hat dasjenige von der Persönlichkeit, was da am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts oder Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts da war, sondern an dem gerade mitgearbeitet hat so etwas wie ein Erschütterung, die über einen Initiierten kommt, einen Initiierten allerdings in schon degenerierten Mysterien, in Mysterien, die schon in der Dekadenz sind. Diese Gemütserschütterung wirkt weiter, strömt sich aus in dichterisch-künstlerischem Schaffen, und dasjenige, was da herüberwirkt in einer solch eigentümlichen Weise, das lebt sich aus in der Persönlichkeit Ibsens.
Und wenn man nun diese Schauung hat, dann lebt eigentlich die Menschheitsentwickelung in ihren Geheimnissen selber auf in dem, was ganz besonders am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts nicht das Werk eines Menschen sein kann, sondern wo der Mensch so dasteht, daß durch ihn frühere Erdenzeitalter mitwirken.
Man braucht ein solches Thema nur anzuschlagen und man wird tatsächlich den Respekt nicht verlieren, weder vor der weltgeschichtlichen Entwickelung noch von der einzelnen Persönlichkeit, die mit Größe vor der Menschheit dasteht. Man erlebt eben schon Erschütterndes auf diesem Gebiete, wenn die Dinge mit dem nötigen Ernst getrieben werden.
Und sehen Sie, da haben Sie öfter doch schon gehört, daß es in einer ziemlichen Frühzeit des Mittelalters eine Art Alchimisten gegeben hat, Basilius Valentinus. Bei der auf die weltgeschichtlichen karmischen Zusammenhänge hingehenden Betrachtung, die sich anschließen kann an Basilius Valentinus, den Benediktinermönch, der ungeheuer beteutende medizinisch-alchimistische Arbeiten machte, ergibt sich nun etwas ganz Merkwürdiges, was so recht zeigt, wie schwierig eigentlich das Verständnis unserer Zeit ist.
Man erlebt ja in unserer Zeit so vieles, was oftmals nicht nur unverständlich, was abstoßend, häßlich, in gewisser Beziehung greulich ist, und worüber derjenige, der nur das unmittelbar sinnlich-gegenwärtige Leben betrachtet, nicht anders als meinetwillen entrüstet, ekelhaft und so weiter berührt sein kann.
Aber so stehen die Dinge nicht für denjenigen, der die menschlichgeschichtlichen Zusammenhänge sieht. Sie stehen einmal nicht so, die Dinge! Und manchmal tritt heute auf irgendeinem Gebiete des Lebens etwas auf, über das die Menschen, die es sehen, in vollständig begreiflicher Weise nur schimpfen, es nur ekelhaft, greulich finden, und trotzdem hat das Ekelhafte, Greuliche etwas an sich, daß man doch furchtbar fasziniert davor stehenbleiben muß. Das wird immer mehr und mehr der Fall sein.
Nun, da gibt es also im frühen Mittelalter diesen medizinischen, alchimistischen Basilius Valentinus, den Benediktinermönch, der sehr viel arbeitet in seinen Klosterkellern in Laboratorien, der eine Reihe von wichtigen Untersuchungen macht. Dann sind gewisse Menschen da, die sind seine Schüler, die schreiben bald nach ihm dasjenige nieder, was Basilius Valentinus ihnen gesagt hat. Und so gibt es eigentlich kaum echte Schriften von Basilius Valentinus; aber es gibt Schriften von Schülern, die sehr viel des Echten von seiner Weisheit, von seiner alchimistischen Weisheit bringen.
Als ich einen der Schüler des Basilius Valentinus, der mir besonders auffiel, in einer bestimmten Zeit meines Lebens sah, da ergab sich mir: Der ist — auf eine merkwürdige Weise metamorphosiert in bezug auf sein Geistiges —- ja wieder da! — Auch der ist im 19. Jahrhundert, Anfang des 20. Jahrhundert wieder gekommen.
Aber das, was in alchimistischen Elementen gelebt hat, trat eben ungeordnet, auf die Sinne hingelenkt, äußerlich hervor in einer Weltbetrachtung, die sozusagen alchimistische Begriffe fortwährend hineinschmilzt in die Sinnesbeobachtung, so daß die Sinnesbeobachtung dieser Persönlichkeit eine Gruppierung der äußeren Tatsachen dessen gibt, was die Menschen tun, wie es unter den Menschen zugeht, wie die Menschen miteinander reden, die in vieler Beziehung abstoßend ist. Aber sie ist eben abstoßend, weil der Betreffende in einer früheren Inkarnation alchimistisch gearbeitet hat in Anlehnung an Basilius Valentinus und das nun in das Leben hineinschmeißt. Wie die Menschen sich zueinander verhalten im Leben, was sie sich sagen, was sie tun, das sieht er nun nicht an wie ein gewöhnlicher Philister heute - er ist weit entfernt, das wie ein gewöhnlicher Philister anzuschauen -, sondern er schaut es an mit dem, was sein seelisches Auge geworden ist dadurch, daß es die Impulse aus seiner alchimistischen Zeit in sich hatte. Und da schmeißt er die Ereignisse, die sich unter den Menschen abspielen, untereinander, macht Dramen daraus und wird Frank Wedekind.
Nicht wahr, diese Dinge dürfen durchaus nur vom Standpunkt einer Sehnsucht nach echter Menschenerkenntnis genommen werden, dann wird das Leben dadurch nicht ärmer, sondern es wird das Leben wahrhaftig reicher. Nehmen Sie sein «Hidalla» oder irgendein anderes Frank Wedekindsches Drama, bei dem man ein sich drehendes Gehirn kriegt, wenn man das Frühere mit dem Späteren verbinden will. Man kann aber auch in einer eigentümlichen Weise davon fasziniert sein, so daß man ganz sicher ist: Da handelt es sich nicht darum, daß die Philister im Parterre sitzen und ihre Urteile abgeben. Die sind ja ganz berechtigt, vom philiströsen Standpunkt aus selbstverständlich, aber um das handelt es sich gar nicht. Sondern darum handelt es sich, daß die Weltgeschichte etwas Merkwürdiges bewirkt hat: daß alchimistische Denkweise, herübergeworfen durch Jahrhunderte, auf das Menschenleben angewendet wird und die menschlichen Taten und die menschlichen Reden zusammengebraut werden, wie man einstmals in alchimistischen Küchen, in einem Zeitalter, in dem die Alchimie schon im Untergange war, in Retorten probierend, die Stoffe und Kräfte mischte und auf ihre Wirkungen prüfte.
Und es sind ja eigentlich auch die Menschenleben bestimmt, sogar in bezug auf den Zeitpunkt, in dem sie hier auf der Erde erscheinen, durch schicksalsmäßige, karmische Zusammenhänge. Um Ihnen dafür auch ein erhärtendes Beispiel zu zeigen, möchte ich auf das Folgende hinweisen.
Wenden wir unseren Blick zurück in die Zeit, in der es in Griechenland die Platonische Schule gegeben hat: Plato, umgeben von einer Anzahl von Schülern. Diese Schüler Platos waren wahrhaftig von den verschiedensten Charakteren, und das, was Plato selber schildert in den Dialogen, wo ja die verschiedensten Charaktere auftreten als die sich miteinander besprechenden Persönlichkeiten, das ist schon vielfach ein Bild der Platonischen Schule. Es waren die mannigfaltigsten Charaktere in dieser Schule zu verschiedensten Zeiten.
Nun waren zwei Persönlichkeiten da in dieser Platonischen Schule, die in sehr voneinander verschiedener Art aufnahmen, was in einer so grandiosen Weise weltdurchleuchtend vom Munde Platos zu seinen Schülern kam und sich auch in Gesprächen mit den Schülern entwickelte.
Die eine dieser zwei Persönlichkeiten, die eben dem Schülerkreise angehörten, war eine, ich möchte sagen, fein ziselierte Persönlichkeit damals im Griechenzeitalter, eine Persönlichkeit, die insbesondere für alles zugänglich war, was Plato durch seine Lehre von den Ideen dazu veranlaßte, das Menschengemüt von der Erde wegzuheben. Wir brauchen uns nur vorzustellen, wie ja Plato überall sagte: Gegenüber dem Vergänglichen, das uns in den einzelnen Ereignissen, die in der menschlichen Umgebung sind, entgegentritt, stehen die ewigen Ideen. Das Stoffliche ist vergänglich, es ist nur ein Bild der ewigen Idee, die in immer aufeinanderfolgenden Metamorphosen als Ewiges durch die zeitlich vergänglichen Erscheinungen durchgeht. So hob Plato seine Schüler hinauf von der Betrachtung der vergänglichen äußeren sinnlichen Dinge zu den ewigen Ideen, die gewissermaßen als das Himmlische über dem Irdischen schwebten.
Zu kurz kam bei dieser platonischen Betrachtung der Mensch selber. Denn im Menschen, in dem die Idee unmittelbar lebendig und gegenständlich wird, kann man die platonische Denkweise nicht recht anwenden: er ist zu individuell. Bei Plato sind die Ideen sozusagen etwas über den Dingen Schwebendes. Die Mineralien, Kristalle, Quarzkristalle entsprechen ja dieser Idee, auch die anderen äußeren Dinge der leblosen Sinneswelt. Bei Goethe ist es auch so, daß er die Urpflanze verfolgt, die Typen betrachtet. Bei den Tieren kann man auch so verfahren. Aber bei dem Menschen ist es so, daß in jeder einzelnen Menschenindividualität die lebendige Ideenindividualität auch verfolgt werden muß. Das hat erst Aristoteles bewirkt, nicht Plato, daß die Idee als «Entelechie» im Menschen wirksam gesehen wurde.
Aber da war nun einer der Schüler, der mit ganzer Inbrunst und Hingabe eigentlich immer diesem Himmelsfluge im Platonismus folgte, der in bezug auf seine geistigen Anschauungen eigentlich nur mitkonnte in diesem Himmelsfluge, in diesem Hinaufgehen, in diesem SichErheben über die Erde, und der wirklich, ich möchte sagen, in süßreifen Worten in der Platonischen Schule sprach von der Erhabenheit der über den einzelnen Dingen lebenden und schwebenden Idee. Dieser Schüler, der eigentlich mit seiner Seele immer heraufstieg zu diesen Ideen, hatte nun aber doch, wenn er nicht im Schauen lebte, sondern mit dem Herzen, mit dem Gemüte wiederum, wie er es unendlich gerne tat, unter Griechen herumging, er hatte für jeden einzelnen Menschen, der ihm begegnete, das wärmste Interesse. Er konnte den Menschen, die er so gerne hatte, nur sein Gefühl zuwenden. Wenn er wiederum im Leben war, so konzentrierte sich sein Gefühl auf die Menschen, von denen er zahlreiche liebte; denn sein Schauen riß ihn immer wieder hinweg von der Erde, Viele hatte er, die er liebte. Und so war bei dieser einen Persönlichkeit unter den Schülern des Plato ein gewisser Zwiespalt vorhanden zwischen dem Gemütsleben den lebendigen Menschen gegenüber und dem Aufschauen der Seele zu den ewigen Ideen im platonischen Sinne, wenn dieser Schüler in der Akademie den Worten Platos lauschte, oder wenn er mit seinen süß-reifen Worten selber formulierte, was der Platonismus ihm im Aufschauen gab. Es war etwas merkwürdig Sensitives in diese Persönlichkeit hereingekommen.
Und nun war diese Persönlichkeit mit einer anderen aus dem Schülerkreise der Platonischen Schule befreundet, innig befreundet. Zunächst aber, indem sich das immer mehr und mehr entwickelte, und eine andere Eigenschaft, die ich gleich charakterisieren werde, sich bei jenem Freunde entwickelte, kamen die beiden auseinander. Nicht etwa, weil die Liebe erkaltete, sondern weil sie mit ihrer ganzen Geistesart auseinanderwuchsen, brachte sie das Leben auseinander. Sie konnten sich anfangs gut verstehen, nachher nicht mehr verstehen. So daß der eine, den ich eben beschrieben habe, wir würden heute sagen, nervös wurde, schon wenn der andere in seiner Art sprach.
Und bei jenem war es ebenso. Er war nicht weniger geneigt, zu den ewigen Ideen aufzuschauen, von denen aus so lebendig in der Platonischen Schule gehandelt worden ist. Er konnte sich auch ganz erheben, aber jenes intensive Gemütsinteresse an zahlreichen Menschen, das der eine hatte, das hatte der andere nicht. Dagegen interessierte sich der andere in der allerintensivsten Weise für die alten Göttermythen, Göttersagen, die im Volke lebten, die ihm bekannt wurden. Für das, was wir heute die griechische Mythologie nennen, für die Gestalten von Zeus, Athene und so weiter interessierte er sich tief. Er ging sozusagen an den lebenden Menschen mehr oder weniger vorbei, aber interessierte sich tief, unendlich tief für die Götter, die ehemals auf der Erde gelebt hatten nach seiner Anschauung und die man als die Stammeltern der jetzt lebenden Menschen ansehen mußte. So wollte er das, was er in seiner Seele im Aufschwung erlebte, anwenden namentlich auf das Begreifen der tiefsinnigen Götter- und Heldensagen. Das Verhältnis zu den Götter- und Heldensagen war in Griechenland, wo das noch alles lebte, wo es nicht bloß in Büchern und durch Tradition vorhanden war, natürlich ein ganz anderes, als es heute ist.
Diese Persönlichkeit, die mit der anderen innig befreundet war, sie entwuchs auch dieser Freundschaft. Beide entwuchsen dieser Freundschaft. Aber nun gehörten sie schon zusammen als Mitglieder der Platonischen Schule. Und diese Platonische Schule hatte ein Eigentümliches. Ihre Schüler bildeten in sich solche, sie etwas voneinander wegschiebende Kräfte aus, Kräfte, die sie, nachdem sie in der Platonischen Schule in einem Zeitraume zusammengedrängt gewesen waren, dann etwas auseinanderdrängen wollten. Und dadurch bildeten sich auch solche verschiedene Individualitäten, die gemüthaft-innig zusammenhingen, die aber dann sich auseinanderentwickelten.
Diese beiden Persönlichkeiten, sie wurden in der Zeit der Renaissance in Italien als Frauen geboren und kamen in der jetzigen Zeit so wieder, daß der eine, der erste, den ich beschrieben habe, eigentlich zu früh, und der zweite, den ich beschrieben habe, etwas zu spät auf die Erde herunterkam. Es hängt das eben mit dem starken Entschluß zusammen, den man dazu braucht.
Bei dem einen, nämlich bei dem ersten, den ich beschrieben habe, war es so, daß er, als er durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen war weil er mit seinem Geiste immer ins Überirdische hinaufging, aber ohne den ganzen, vollen Menschen, den er nur im Gemüte erfaßte -, deshalb zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt wohl alles das erfassen konnte, was da lebte, sagen wir, in der ersten Hierarchie: Seraphim, Cherubim und Throne -, auch noch einiges von der zweiten Hierarchie, aber nicht die dem Menschen nächste Hierarchie, durch die man begreift, wie der menschliche Körper hier auf der Erde organisiert wird.
Eine Persönlichkeit entwickelte sich, die wenig Einsicht, vorirdische Einsicht in den menschlichen Körper entwickelte, die daher, als sie wieder geboren wurde, sogar die letzten Impulse nicht mehr aufnahm, unvollständig herunterstieg in den menschlichen Körper, nicht vollständig untertauchte, sondern eigentlich immer etwas heraußen schweben blieb.
Der Freund aus der Platonischen Schule wartete mit der Inkarnation. Das Warten geschah aus dem Grunde, weil beide eigentlich, wenn sie zusammengekommen wären, wenn sie unmittelbare Zeitgenossen geworden wären, sich nicht ertragen hätten. Aber dennoch, es mußte derjenige, der unendlich viel von seinen Zusammenkünften mit Menschen dem anderen erzählt hatte, welcher nicht unter Menschen gegangen war, sondern sich nur mit Mythen und Göttersagen beschäftigt hatte, der, der so lebendig mit reifsüßer Stimme dem anderen erzählte, der mußte dennoch einen bedeutenden Eindruck auf den anderen machen, mußte ihm vorangehen, der andere ihm nachfolgen.
Der andere nun, weil er schon auf Erden in Imaginationen, in den Götterimaginationen lebte, hatte es zu einem zu starken Erfassen, ich möchte sagen dessen, was am Menschen und im Menschen ist, gebracht. Deshalb wollte er, über seine Zeit hinausgehend, Impulse sammeln, um den menschlichen Leib ganz tief zu ergreifen. Da passierte es ihm, daß er ihn zu tief ergriff, zu tief hinein sich versenkte.
Und so sehen wir, daß bei zwei verschiedenen Schicksalsgestaltungen von zwei Angehörigen der Platonischen Schule der eine zu wenig seinen Körper ergreift bei der zweiten Wiederverkörperung, der andere ihn zu stark ergreift. Der eine kann nicht in seinen Körper vollständig hinein, wird nur in seiner Jugend hineingetrieben, wird dann bald hinausgetrieben und muß draußen bleiben: Hölderlin.
Der andere wird so tief in seinen Körper hineingetragen, hineingetaucht durch die besondere Art, wie er damals war, daß er zu stark untertauchte in seine Organe und fast lebenslänglich krank wird: Hamerling.
Und so haben wir große menschliche Schicksale aus der Zeitenwende heraus und ihre Impulse vor uns und können eine Ahnung bekommen, wie nun eigentlich die geistigen Impulse wirken. Denn das müssen wir uns ja klar vor die Seele stellen: Eine solche Individualität wie Hölderlin, der, aus der Platonischen Schule hervorgehend, nicht in seinen Leib hinein kann, sich draußen halten muß, er erlebt in der Dumpfheit seines Wahnsinns vorbereitende Impulse für kommende Erdenleben, die ihn zu Großem bestimmen. Ebenso der andere, Robert Hamerling, durch die Krankheit seines Körpers.
Krankheit und Gesundheit nehmen sich ja natürlich, wenn sie im schicksalsmäßigen Zusammenhang betrachtet werden, noch ganz anders aus, als sie sich ausnehmen, wenn man sie nur in den Grenzen des einen Erdenlebens betrachtet.
Ich denke, meine lieben Freunde, es kann schon so sein, daß eine heilige Scheu vor dem geheimnisvollen Geschehen, das durch die geistige Welt bewirkt wird, durch die Menschengemüter hindurch gerade durch eine solche Betrachtungsweise entsteht. Wahrhaftig, ich muß es immer wieder sagen: Nicht um ein Sensationsbedürfnis zu befriedigen, sondern um immer tiefer und tiefer hineinzuführen in die Erkenntnis des geistigen Lebens, werden jetzt diese Betrachtungen angestellt. Und nur durch dieses tiefere Hineindringen in das geistige Leben kann das äußere sinnliche Leben, das Leben der Menschen erklärt werden.
Diese Betrachtungen werde ich morgen fortsetzen.
Fourth Lecture
Considerations that intervene in human karma - naturally intervene in a contemplative way - must be taken seriously and processed in the soul. For basically it is not merely the knowledge of any karmic connections that is of importance, but that which emerges from such contemplations for the enlivenment of the human being, for the whole of his involvement in life. Such contemplations can only be fruitful if they do not become a greater indifference towards man than is otherwise the case, but on the contrary, if they kindle that which is love of man and understanding of man to a higher degree than is the case when, looking at man, one merely abandons oneself to the impressions of one life on earth.
Whoever looks at the successive epochs of human development will get a sufficient impression of the fact that much has changed in the way of thinking, in the way of feeling, in all views of life and views of life in the course of human history. Certainly, the past does not make the same profound impression on man as that which is to come, which is basically first to be established. But he who grasps with the necessary depth how the human souls have changed in the course of the development of the earth will also not shrink back from taking that change into his mind as something necessary, which is that now really not only one earth life is taken for the consideration of one or the other human being, but the succession of earth lives, as far as they are transparent.
And I think that such examples as the ones we looked at last time, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Pestalozzi and so on, can show how the purely human understanding of a personality and the love for this personality can grow if one looks at the last life on earth on the background of that from which this last life on earth has just arisen.
Now, in order to come back to the actual fruitfulness of these things, I would like to go back to the question that I have already touched on for many of those sitting here. It is the question that arises from the fact that in spiritual-scientific considerations we often have to speak of how in ancient times there were clairvoyant, initiated personalities, personalities who could communicate the secrets of the spiritual world, initiates in other words. It is obvious that the question arises from this: Where do these initiates live in our age? What about their re-embodiment?
In order to answer this question, it is absolutely necessary to point out how different a subsequent earth life can be from a previous one in terms of knowledge, in terms of insight, also in terms of other activities emerging from the soul of man; how different, therefore, successive earth lives can be in this respect. For when, in the time that man lives through between death and a new birth, the time approaches when man is to descend to earth, to unite with the physical-etheric organization, there is actually quite a lot going on in man. The direction towards family, nation and so on has long been determined; but the decision to carry out this tremendous change of existence, which consists in the transition from the spiritual-soul world to the physical world, this decision, it makes tremendous things necessary. For you only have to consider, my dear friends: it is not as it is here on earth, where the human being actually, when he completes his normal life, gradually becomes weak, little more, after the experiences that are made on earth, contributes himself to the decision to take on another form of life when passing through the gate of death. This comes over the human being, so to speak, it breaks over him.
Here on this earth, death is something that breaks in. It is quite different when descending from the spiritual world. There it is a matter of a bright, fully conscious activity, of a deliberation that emerges from all possible undergrounds of the soul. There it is a matter of looking at the tremendous change that happens to the human being when he exchanges the spiritual-soul life forms of the pre-earthly existence with the earthly existence. And in this descent man sees how he simply has to make himself comfortable with the conditions of culture and civilization, but also with the physical conditions that can be offered to him in a certain age. Apart from the conditions of culture and civilization, our age does not easily provide bodies in which life can be lived again in the old way in which initiates used to live. And when the time approaches when the human soul, even that of an old initiate, has to use a human body, then it is a matter of taking this human body as it is and growing into the form of education, into the surrounding life that can be there. But then the soul does not lose what was once there in this soul. It just expresses itself in a different way. The basic configuration of the soul remains, but it emerges in a different way.
You see, it was still the case in the 3rd, 4th century AD that the soul of man was able to deepen greatly through the knowledge of the initiatory truths, because the bodies in the 3rd, 4th century AD, especially in southern European and Near Eastern regions, followed the soul, because the bodies carried out their organic functions inwardly in such a way that they could follow the soul. Today, those who have lived as initiates in the first Christian centuries, perhaps with a very internalized, very wise soul, must live in the outside world, immersed in human bodies which, above all, are directed towards the outside world through the development that has taken place since then. The physical effect is that the great concentration, the great inner concentration of the soul's powers, which was still possible in the 3rd and 4th centuries after the emergence of Christianity, is not possible. And so the following could take place in the development of the earth. I am just telling you things that arise from observation.
Imagine, my dear friends, a Near Eastern mystery, a mystery site with all the characteristics that a Near Eastern mystery site had in the first centuries after the foundation of Christianity. Traditions were still present everywhere in those ancient times, where the participants were deeply initiated into these mysteries. Everywhere, however, there was still a greater or lesser awareness of the rules that had to be applied to the soul in order to gain certain insights that led deep into the foundation of the human soul and out into the universe. And it was precisely in these Near Eastern mysteries in the first centuries after the emergence of Christianity that a great question preoccupied these mysteries.
These mysteries had seen an infinite wisdom flowing through their places of sacrifice. And you need only read what is described in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”, as far as it could be characterized in a public book at that time, and you will see that all this mystery wisdom ultimately tended towards understanding the Mystery of Golgotha. And there was the great question in these Near Eastern mysteries: How will the tremendous greatness of the content, the content of reality, which flowed to the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha, be further developed by human minds? How will the old, the ancient wisdom, which went up to the inhabitants of the stars, which included in itself the knowledge of divine-spiritual entities of the most varied kind, which govern the universe and human life, how will this ancient wisdom be united with that which was concentrated there, drawn together in the Mystery of Golgotha, and which is now to flow into humanity as impulses emanating from a high solar being, from the Christ? - That was the burning question of these Near Eastern mysteries.
There was an initiate on whose mystery wisdom and on whose mystery feelings this question made a particularly deep impression. I may say that it makes a tremendously shattering impression when, in the search for karmic connections, one approaches this one person who was really initiated into such a Near Eastern mystery in the first Christian centuries. There is something shattering about it, because he was completely filled with the desire to grasp the whole impact of the Mystery of Golgotha with everything he had in his initiation science at that time: What will happen now? How will these weak human souls be able to absorb it?
And you see, this initiate, afflicted in his soul with the burning question of the fate of Christianity, went one day into the wider surroundings of his place of Mystery, and he experienced something that made a tremendously shattering impression on him. He witnessed, as an initiate so to speak, how Julian Apostata was murdered by a human being, with the knowledge of an initiate he witnessed it.
He knew that Julian Apostata was to a certain degree initiated into the ancient Mysteries, that he wanted to perpetuate and propagate in a spiritual way what was cultivated in the ancient Mysteries and what lived there, that he wanted to unite Christianity with the ancient Mystery wisdom, that he proclaimed in the sense of the ancient Mystery wisdom: There is a spiritual sun next to the physical sun, and whoever knows the spiritual sun knows Christ. But this was something that was already regarded as something very bad at the time when Julian Apostata lived, and which led to Julian Apostata being assassinated during his Persian campaign. This is what that initiate witnessed: this significant symptom of world history.
Those who have been involved for many years in various things relating to karmic connections in world history will remember that I once gave a lecture in Stuttgart - I also mentioned it at the Christmas conference here - on some chapters of occult history and that I mentioned there the whole tragedy, the whole tragic intervention of Julian Apostata in human history.
This is what this initiate experienced, for whom, I would like to say, the whole science of initiation, which he had absorbed in a Near Eastern mystery site, was overshadowed and drowned out by the question: What will become of Christianity? - And through this symptom it now stood before his soul quite brightly and clearly: A time will come when Christianity will be misunderstood at first, when Christianity will only live in traditions, when people will know nothing of the sublimity of the Sun-Spirit Christ, who lived in Jesus of Nazareth.
All of this weighed on the soul of this man. And for the rest of his life at that time, he developed something like a state of mind that became sad and elegiac with regard to the development of Christianity. With the consternation with which such a thing affects an initiate, this symptom had a dismaying effect on him. It is something tremendously shocking to become aware of this. And then you move on. It was an impression that the initiate in question received, which certainly only allowed him to be incarnated again soon, also at the time of the Thirty Years' War; as many extraordinary, many interesting incarnations, which play a great role in the historical development of mankind, lie in this period.
He was embodied as a woman again, actually before the time of the Thirty Years' War, at the beginning of the 17th century, then only lived into the time of the Thirty Years' War, experienced some of the things that on the part of Rosicrucianism wanted to correct the age of the Thirty Years' War, I would like to say wanted to prepare it in a spiritual way, but which were then drowned out by everything that lived raw and brutal in the Thirty Years' War. You need only consider how shortly before the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War the “Chymical Wedding of Christiani Rosenkreuz” came into being. In addition to this, there were much more significant impulses that entered humanity before the Thirty Years' War wiped out and brutalized everything.
And then came the 19th century. This personality, which had once taken up this significant Julian Apostata symptom with initiation, this personality, which had then gone through the female incarnation in the 17th century, was reborn. And now she poured out everything that was still internalized through the female incarnation, poured out everything that she had in her at that time, not in terms of initiatory wisdom, but in terms of shattering emotional content, over this symptom that had had an effect on the initiated soul. In the last third of the 19th century, all of this poured out into a peculiar way of looking at the world, a way of looking at the world that went deep into the discrepancies of human existence.
Now it is precisely this age of the immediate present that tends to prevent those who carry old initiatory wisdom from earlier earthly lives into the life of the 19th and 20th centuries from working in such an effective way, through deeds. Therefore, I would like to say, everything that is strongly metamorphosed, seemingly externalized, but nevertheless becomes inner, everything that pushes itself from the heart of man, where the old initiatory wisdom lived, towards the senses and their observation, pushes itself there strongly metamorphosed, all this now urges to express itself in poetry, in writing.
Therefore we have, after all, in recent times, really great samples - which are only incoherent, which, as they are, are not at all understood by the time - in which not only the personality that was there at the end of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century has worked, but in which something like a shock has just worked, which comes over an initiate, an initiate, however, in already degenerated mysteries, in mysteries that are already in decadence. This shaking of the mind continues to have an effect, flows out in poetic-artistic creation, and that which works across in such a peculiar way lives itself out in the personality of Ibsen.
And if one now has this insight, then the development of mankind itself actually comes to life in its mysteries in that which, especially at the end of the 19th century, cannot be the work of one man, but where man stands in such a way that earlier ages of the earth work through him.
One need only broach such a subject and one will indeed not lose respect, neither for the development of world history nor for the individual personality who stands before humanity with greatness. You can experience shocking things in this field if things are taken with the necessary seriousness.
And you see, you have often heard that there was a kind of alchemist in the early Middle Ages, Basilius Valentinus. In the consideration of the world-historical karmic connections, which can be linked to Basilius Valentinus, the Benedictine monk who did tremendously significant medical-alchemical work, something quite strange now arises, which really shows how difficult the understanding of our time actually is.
We experience so much in our time that is often not only incomprehensible, but also repulsive, ugly and in certain respects hideous, and about which those who only observe the immediate sensual, present life cannot help but be indignant, disgusted and so on.
But this is not how things are for those who see the human-historical connections. For once, things are not like that! And sometimes something occurs today in some area of life that the people who see it, in a completely understandable way, only scold, only find it disgusting, atrocious, and yet there is something about the disgusting, atrocious, that one must remain terribly fascinated by it. That will become more and more the case.
Well, in the early Middle Ages there is this medical, alchemist Basilius Valentinus, the Benedictine monk who works a lot in his monastery cellars in laboratories, who carries out a series of important investigations. Then there are certain people who are his students, who soon after him write down what Basil Valentinus has told them. And so there are actually hardly any genuine writings by Basilius Valentinus; but there are writings by disciples that contain a great deal of his genuine wisdom, his alchemical wisdom.
When I saw one of Basil Valentinus' pupils, who particularly caught my eye, at a certain time in my life, it occurred to me that he was back - metamorphosed in a strange way with regard to his spirituality! - It also came back in the 19th century, at the beginning of the 20th century.
But that which had lived in alchemical elements emerged disorderly, directed towards the senses, externally in a view of the world which, so to speak, continually melts alchemical concepts into sense observation, so that the sense observation of this personality gives a grouping of the external facts of what people do, how things are among people, how people talk to each other, which is repulsive in many respects. But it is repulsive precisely because the person concerned has worked alchemically in a previous incarnation in the style of Basilius Valentinus and is now throwing this into life. How people behave towards each other in life, what they say to each other, what they do, he does not now look at this like an ordinary philistine today - he is far from looking at it like an ordinary philistine - but he looks at it with what his soul's eye has become through the fact that it had the impulses from his alchemical time in it. And then he throws the events that take place among people together, turns them into dramas and becomes Frank Wedekind.
Not true, these things can only be taken from the point of view of a longing for genuine human knowledge, then life does not become poorer as a result, but life becomes truly richer. Take his “Hidalla” or any other Frank Wedekind drama that makes your brain spin when you try to connect the earlier with the later. But you can also be fascinated by it in a peculiar way, so that you are quite sure: it's not about the philistines sitting on the first floor and passing judgment. They are quite justified, of course, from a philistine point of view, but that is not the point at all. Rather, it is about the fact that world history has brought about something strange: that alchemical ways of thinking, carried over through the centuries, are applied to human life and human deeds and human speeches are brewed together, just as people once mixed substances and forces in alchemical kitchens, in an age when alchemy was already in decline, tasting them in retorts and testing their effects.
And human lives are actually also determined, even with regard to the time in which they appear here on earth, by fateful, karmic connections. To show you a corroborating example of this, I would like to point out the following.
Let us turn our gaze back to the time when the Platonic school existed in Greece: Plato, surrounded by a number of disciples. These students of Plato were truly of the most diverse characters, and what Plato himself describes in the dialogues, where the most diverse characters appear as the personalities discussing with each other, is already in many ways a picture of the Platonic school. There were the most diverse characters in this school at the most diverse times.
Now there were two personalities in this Platonic school who took up in very different ways what came from the mouth of Plato to his students in such a grandiose way, illuminating the world, and also developed in conversations with the students.
One of these two personalities, who belonged to the circle of students, was, I would like to say, a finely chiseled personality at that time in the Greek age, a personality who was particularly accessible to everything that caused Plato, through his teaching of ideas, to lift the human mind away from the earth. We need only imagine, as Plato said everywhere, that the eternal Ideas stand opposite the transient, which confronts us in the individual events that are in the human environment. The material is transient, it is only an image of the eternal idea, which passes through the temporally transient phenomena in ever successive metamorphoses as the eternal. In this way, Plato lifted his students up from the contemplation of transient external sensual things to the eternal ideas, which hovered above the earthly, as it were, as the heavenly.
Human beings themselves came up short in this Platonic contemplation. For in man, in whom the idea becomes directly alive and tangible, the Platonic way of thinking cannot be properly applied: he is too individual. For Plato, ideas are, so to speak, something floating above things. Minerals, crystals, quartz crystals correspond to this idea, as do the other external things of the lifeless sensory world. With Goethe it is also the case that he follows the primordial plant, observes the types. One can proceed in the same way with animals. But with man it is the case that in every single human individuality the living individuality of ideas must also be pursued. It was Aristotle, not Plato, who first brought about the idea being seen as “entelechy” in man.
But there was now one of the pupils who actually always followed this heavenly flight in Platonism with complete fervor and devotion, who in relation to his spiritual views could actually only join in this heavenly flight, in this going up, in this rising above the earth, and who really, I would like to say, spoke in sweetly ripe words in the Platonic school of the sublimity of the idea living and hovering above the individual things. This disciple, who actually always ascended with his soul to these ideas, had the warmest interest in every single person he met, even if he did not live in contemplation, but walked around among the Greeks with his heart, with his mind, as he loved to do. He could only turn his feelings to the people he loved so much. When he was in life again, his feelings were concentrated on the people, many of whom he loved, for his gaze kept tearing him away from the earth, many of whom he loved. And so in this one personality among Plato's pupils there was a certain dichotomy between the emotional life towards living people and the soul's contemplation of the eternal ideas in the Platonic sense, when this pupil listened to Plato's words in the Academy, or when he himself formulated in his sweetly mature words what Platonism gave him in contemplation. Something strangely sensitive had entered this personality.
And now this personality was friends, intimate friends, with another student from the Platonic school. At first, however, as this developed more and more, and another quality, which I will characterize shortly, developed in this friend, the two grew apart. It was not because their love grew cold, but because their whole way of thinking grew apart. At first they understood each other well, but later they could no longer understand each other. So that the one I have just described, we would say today, became nervous even when the other spoke in his way.
And it was the same with him. He was no less inclined to look up to the eternal ideas from which the Platonic school had dealt so vividly. He was also able to elevate himself completely, but the intense emotional interest in numerous people that the one had, the other did not have. On the other hand, the other was most intensely interested in the old myths of the gods, the legends of the gods that lived among the people, which became known to him. He was deeply interested in what we now call Greek mythology, in the figures of Zeus, Athena and so on. He more or less passed by the living people, so to speak, but was deeply, infinitely deeply interested in the gods who had once lived on earth according to his view and who had to be regarded as the progenitors of the people now living. Thus he wanted to apply what he experienced in his soul in the upswing, especially to the comprehension of the profound sagas of the gods and heroes. The relationship to the legends of the gods and heroes in Greece, where all this was still alive, where it was not merely available in books and through tradition, was of course very different from what it is today.
This personality, who was an intimate friend of the other, also grew out of this friendship. Both grew out of this friendship. But now they already belonged together as members of the Platonic school. And this Platonic school had a peculiarity. Its disciples developed forces within themselves that pushed them somewhat away from each other, forces that, after they had been pressed together in the Platonic school for a period of time, then wanted to push them somewhat apart. And this also led to the formation of such different individualities, which were emotionally and internally connected, but which then developed apart.
These two personalities were born as women in Italy during the Renaissance and came back in the present time in such a way that one of them, the first one I have described, actually came down to earth too early, and the second one I have described came down a little too late. This has to do with the strong resolve that is needed for this.
With the one, namely the first one I described, it was so that when he had passed through the gate of death, because he always went up with his spirit into the supernatural, but without the whole, full human being, which he only grasped in his mind, he was therefore able to grasp everything that lived there between death and a new birth, let us say, in the first hierarchy: Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones -, also still some of the second hierarchy, but not the hierarchy nearest to man, through which one comprehends how the human body is organized here on earth.
A personality developed which developed little insight, pre-earthly insight into the human body, which therefore, when it was born again, no longer absorbed even the last impulses, descended incompletely into the human body, did not completely submerge, but actually always remained floating a little outside.
The friend from the Platonic school waited with the incarnation. The reason for this waiting was that if they had come together, if they had become immediate contemporaries, they would not have been able to bear each other. But nevertheless, the one who had told the other so much about his meetings with people, the one who had not gone among people but had only occupied himself with myths and legends of the gods, the one who had told the other so vividly with a mature, sweet voice, still had to make a significant impression on the other, had to precede him, the other had to follow him.
Now the other, because he had already lived on earth in imaginations, in the imaginations of the gods, had come to grasp too strongly, I might say, what was in man and in man. Therefore he wanted to gather impulses beyond his time in order to grasp the human body very deeply. It happened to him that he grasped it too deeply, immersed himself in it too deeply.
And so we see that in two different destinies of two members of the Platonic school, one grasps his body too little in the second re-embodiment, the other grasps it too strongly. The one cannot fully enter his body, is only driven into it in his youth, is then soon driven out and must remain outside: Hölderlin.
The other is carried so deeply into his body, plunged into it by the particular way he was at that time, that he is too strongly submerged in his organs and becomes ill almost for life: Hamerling.
And so we have before us great human destinies from the turn of time and their impulses and can get an idea of how the spiritual impulses actually work. For we must place this clearly before our souls: Such an individuality as Hölderlin, who, emerging from the Platonic school, cannot enter his body and must keep himself outside, experiences in the dullness of his madness preparatory impulses for future earthly lives, which determine him to great things. Likewise the other, Robert Hamerling, through the illness of his body.
Of course, illness and health look quite different when they are viewed in the context of destiny than they do when they are only considered within the boundaries of one earthly life.
I think, my dear friends, that a holy fear of the mysterious events that are brought about by the spiritual world can arise in human minds precisely through such a way of looking at things. Truly, I must say it again and again: these observations are not made to satisfy a need for sensation, but to lead deeper and deeper into the knowledge of spiritual life. And only through this deeper penetration into the spiritual life can the outer sensual life, the life of human beings, be explained.
I will continue these reflections tomorrow.