The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] As I have repeatedly noted, it will only be possible to sketch out the broad outlines of the great karmic laws in order to provide some guidance in this vast and seemingly immeasurable field. If you consider everything we have discussed in recent days, you will no longer find it surprising that human beings are, as it were, driven out of certain layers of consciousness to seek in the external world the balancing effects for karmic causes that they have themselves incorporated. He can be driven, as it were, to a place where, for example, he might contract an infection, in order to seek in it the balancing effects for a karmic cause he has taken upon himself; and even to what might be called life accidents, a person can be driven, in order to seek a balancing effect with the onset of such a life accident.

[ 2 ] What happens to the karmic process if, through certain actions, we find ourselves in a position to prevent people from seeking this balance?

[ 3 ] Let us suppose that, through certain hygienic measures, we can ensure that certain causes—certain things toward which human beings may have a predisposition due to their karmic connections—cannot exist at all. Let us imagine that, through hygienic measures, we succeed in combating certain pathogens in a specific area. Now we have already brought to mind that it is by no means up to human beings to take such measures. We have seen how, in a particular age, for example, the inclination toward laws of cleanliness arises simply because this inclination, which had disappeared in the meantime, now reappears with the reverse repetition in the course of development. From this we have seen that it is inherent in the great laws of human karma that, at a certain point in time, humanity comes to take these or those measures. But we will also easily understand that humanity did not come to take such measures in an earlier age because, in an earlier period, humanity needed the epidemics that are now to be eradicated through hygienic measures. With regard to major institutions in life, human development is indeed subject to very specific laws, and before something can be of significance and benefit to the development of humanity as a whole, the possibility of taking such measures does not even arise. For such measures do not arise from the fully conscious, rational, and sensible life that human beings can acquire between birth and death, but rather from the collective spirit of humanity. And you need only consider how this or that invention or discovery only comes about when humanity is truly ready for it. A brief overview of the history of humanity’s development on Earth can offer you many insights in this regard.

[ 4 ] Just think that our ancestors—that is, our own souls—lived on the ancient Atlantic continent in bodies of a completely different form than the human bodies of today, that this Atlantic continent then sank, and that the institutions we have today only took shape within the boundaries of our present-day continents. It was only during a very specific era that the inhabitants of one half of the emerged Earth were brought together with the inhabitants of the other. Only recently, in a not-so-distant past, were the peoples of Europe able to reach the regions that had separated to the other side of the Atlantic continent. There are truly great laws at work in such matters. And whether this or that is discovered, or whether measures are taken that make it possible to intervene karmically in this or that direction, does not depend on human opinion or caprice, but rather occurs when it is meant to occur. Nevertheless: If we remove certain causes that would otherwise have existed and that, through their karmic entanglement, would have sought out certain people, we can thereby influence human karma. This influencing, however, does not mean that we eliminate it, but rather that we direct it in a different direction.

[ 5 ] Let us imagine, then, a situation in which a number of people feel compelled by karmic entanglements to seek out certain influences that would serve as karmic compensation. Through hygienic measures, these influences or circumstances have now been temporarily eliminated, and people can no longer seek them out. However, this does not free these people from what is being brought forth within them as a karmic effect; rather, they are compelled to seek out other effects. A person cannot escape their karma. Such measures do not relieve them of what they would otherwise have sought out.

[ 6 ] From this you can see that for any karmic balance we might be able to eliminate on one side, a counterbalance would have to arise in another direction. When we remove certain influences, we merely create the need to seek out other opportunities and influences. Let us now assume that many epidemics, common causes of disease, are simply attributable to the fact that the people who seek out these causes of disease wish to remove what they have karmically acquired, such as, for example, in the case of the smallpox epidemic, organs of unkindness. If we were to succeed in eliminating these organs, the cause of lovelessness would nevertheless remain, and the souls in question would then have to seek the corresponding compensation in another way in this or another incarnation. We can understand what is taking place here if we point to something we must certainly count on, and that is the following:

[ 7 ] Today, in fact, a great many external influences and causes are being eliminated that would otherwise have been sought out to balance certain karmic matters that humanity has brought upon itself in earlier ages. In doing so, however, we merely eliminate the possibility that a person might succumb to external influences. We make their external life more pleasant or even healthier. But in doing so, we merely ensure that what the individual would have sought as karmic compensation through the corresponding illness must now be sought by other means. The souls who are thus saved in terms of health today are therefore condemned to seek this karmic compensation in a different way. And they will have to seek it in numerous cases that belong precisely to those described. By providing them with greater physical comfort through a healthier life, by making their physical life easier, the soul is thereby influenced in the opposite way; it is influenced in such a way that it will gradually feel a certain emptiness, a dissatisfaction, a lack of fulfillment. And if things were to continue in such a way that external life became ever more pleasant, ever healthier—as one might have it according to the general notions of a purely materialistic life—then such souls would have ever less incentive to progress within themselves. A desolation of the souls would, in a certain sense, proceed in parallel.

[ 8 ] Anyone who takes a closer look at life can already see this today. In hardly any other era have there been so many people living in such comfortable external circumstances, yet with souls that are barren and unengaged, as is the case today. These people therefore rush from one sensation to the next; when their financial means allow, they travel from city to city to see something, or if they must remain in the same city, they rush from one pleasure to the next every evening. Yet the soul remains barren, and ultimately no longer knows what to seek in the world to find meaning. In particular, a life spent in purely external, physically pleasant conditions fosters a tendency to think only about the physical. And if this tendency to concern oneself only with the physical had not long been present, the tendency toward theoretical materialism would not have become as strong as it is in our time. Thus, souls become more afflicted, while external life is made healthier.

[ 9 ] Theosophists have the least cause to complain about such a situation, because theosophy provides us with an understanding of things everywhere and thus an insight into where balance lies. Souls can remain empty only to a certain degree; then, as if by their own elasticity, they are propelled toward the other side. They then seek a content that is akin to the depths of their own soul, and they will then realize how necessary it is for them to arrive at a theosophical worldview.

[ 10 ] Thus we see how the views of life that stem from materialism may indeed make external life easier, but create difficulties in inner life that lead one to seek the substance of a spiritual worldview in the sufferings of the soul. The spiritual worldview, as it manifests itself today in the form of Theosophy, thus meets the needs of souls who, in their desolation, cannot find satisfaction in the impressions that external life—which can be quite comfortably arranged—is able to offer them. These souls will continue to seek to take in something new until the elasticity from the other side exerts such a strong influence that the souls will unite with what can be called spiritual life. Thus, there is a relationship between hygiene and the future hopes of the spiritual-scientific worldview.

[ 11 ] You can already see this happening on a small scale today. There are people today who add a new trend to other trends: taking an interest in the theosophical worldview, embracing it as the latest sensation. This is something that manifests itself in every current of human development: that which has deep, inner significance also functions as a fashion, as a sensation. But the souls truly prepared for Theosophy are those who either feel unsatisfied by external sensations or who also realize that external science, with all its explanations, cannot account for the facts. It is these souls who, through their collective karma, are so prepared that they can connect with Theosophy through the innermost aspects of their soul life. Spiritual science is also part of humanity’s collective karma, and as such it will find its place within it.

[ 12 ] In this way, we can steer people’s karma in one direction or another; but we cannot eliminate the repercussions for the individual. In one way or another, what a person has brought upon themselves in past lives will come back to them.

[ 13 ] The best way to understand how karma works meaningfully in the world is through a consideration of a situation where karma operates, so to speak, without any moral connotation—where it operates in the wider world itself, without having anything to do with the moral impulses that a person develops from within their soul and which then lead to moral or immoral actions. Let us place before our soul a realm of karma in which the moral still plays no role, but where something neutral presents itself as a karmic connection.

[ 14 ] Let us assume that a woman is living in a particular incarnation. Now, you will not deny that simply by virtue of being a woman, must have different experiences than a man, and that these experiences are not merely connected with inner soul processes, but that they are, to the greatest extent, connected with external events, with life situations into which the woman enters simply because she is a woman, and which in turn have a reciprocal effect on her entire soul constitution and mood. Therefore, we can say that a woman is led to certain actions that are most intimately connected with the female condition. The balance between man and woman is, after all, first established in the realm of spiritual coexistence. The deeper we now descend into the purely psychological and into the outer aspects of the human being, the greater the difference between man and woman becomes with regard to their lives. And so we can say that the woman is also different from the man in certain qualities of the soul, that she is more inclined toward those qualities of the soul that lead to impulses which must be described as emotional; and we find her predisposed to have more psychic experiences than the man. In contrast, intellectualism and materialism—that is, what has come through man—are more at home in the life of man, which has a great influence on the life of the soul. Psychic and emotional aspects in women, intellectual and materialistic aspects in men—this is precisely what their natures determine. Therefore, women also have certain nuances of the life of the soul by virtue of being women.

[ 15 ] We have now described how what we experience as qualities of the soul between death and rebirth finds its way into our next physical constitution. Whatever is more psychological, whatever is more emotional, and whatever in life between birth and death is more attuned to the inner life of the soul, has a greater tendency to penetrate more deeply into the physical constitution, to permeate it much more intensely. And because the woman absorbs such impressions that are connected with the psychological and the emotional, she also takes in the experiences of life into the deeper recesses of her soul. A man may have richer experiences, even more scientific ones: yet his experiences do not penetrate as deeply into his soul life as is the case with a woman. In a woman, the entire environment of experience is deeply imprinted on the soul. Consequently, these experiences have a stronger tendency to influence the organism, to grip the organism more firmly in the future. And so a woman’s life takes on the tendency, through her experiences in one incarnation, to penetrate deeply into the organism and thereby to shape the organism itself in the next incarnation. But a deep working into, a deep working through of the organism now means: bringing forth a male organism. A male organism is brought forth by the fact that the forces of the soul seek to imprint themselves more deeply into the material. From this you can see that the effect of a woman’s experiences in one incarnation is to bring forth a male organism in the next incarnation. Here you have a connection derived from the nature of occultism that lies beyond the moral realm. That is why it is said in occultism: The man is the woman’s karma. — Indeed, the male organism in a later incarnation is the result of the experiences and events in a previous female incarnation. Even at the risk of arousing perhaps unsympathetic thoughts in some of those gathered here—it does, after all, often happen that men of the present day have a hopeless aversion to the idea of being incarnated as a woman—I must once again shed light on these matters as facts in a completely objective manner.

[ 16 ] What, then, about the male experience? The male experience is such that we understand it best if we start directly from what we have just described. In the male constitution, the inner human being has become more deeply immersed in the material world, has clung to it more tightly than in the case of the woman. The woman retains more of the spiritual in the non-physical; she does not immerse herself as deeply in the material, and her physicality remains more supple. She does not separate herself as far from the spiritual. This is the characteristic of the female nature: that she retains more of free spirituality and therefore works herself less into the material world, and above all, her brain remains more supple. It is therefore not surprising that women have a particular inclination toward the new, especially in the spiritual realm, because they have retained the spiritual more freely and because there is less resistance there. And it is no coincidence, but rather corresponds to a deep law of nature, that in a movement which, by its very nature, has to do with the spiritual, a greater number of women gather than men. And anyone who is a man knows what a difficult instrument the male brain often is. It creates terrible obstacles when one wants to use it for more flexible trains of thought. It refuses to go along with that. It must first be trained by every possible means to free itself from its rigidity. This can certainly be a personal experience of manhood.

[ 17 ] Male nature is thus more condensed, more contracted; it has been compressed, made stiffer and harder by what constitutes the inner man; it has been made more material. Now, a stiffer brain is primarily an instrument for the intellectual, less so for the psychic. For the intellectual is something that relates much more to the physical plane. What can be described as a man’s intellectualism stems from his stiffer, solidified brain. One could speak here of a certain degree of “frozenness” in the brain. It must first thaw if it is to find its way into finer trains of thought. This, however, causes the man to grasp more of the external aspects and to take in less of those experiences connected with the depths of the soul life. And what he does take in does not penetrate deeply. An outward proof of this is how superficially external science proceeds and how little it grasps the inner reality—how, although it always thinks in broad terms, the facts are synthesized with such superficiality. Anyone who, through their own self-discipline in thinking, is compelled to piece the facts together might sometimes feel quite sickened by what external science does not hesitate to present as coexisting side by side. There one can see how shallowly things go.

[ 18 ] Here is an example of just how superficial modern science can be: Imagine a young person attending a lecture at some college where an ardent Darwinist is speaking. From this proponent of the theory of natural selection, the student might hear statements such as: How is it that the rooster, for example, has such beautiful, iridescent blue feathers? This is due to sexual selection; for through his colors he attracts the hens, and the hens then choose among the roosters those that have the iridescent blue feathers. In the process, the others are left out, and as a result, this particular variety develops. This is a higher development; this is “sexual selection”! — And the student is glad to know how upward development can come about. Now he goes to the next lecture, where, let’s say, the field of sensory physiology is covered. And here it may now happen that the same student hears something like the following in the second lecture: Experiments have been conducted that show how differently the colors of the spectrum affect various beings. It can be demonstrated, for example, that chickens do not perceive the blue and violet portions of the spectrum, but only those ranging from green to orange, red, and ultraviolet!

[ 19 ] Now, if the student wants to bring these two facts—which he can actually hear today—together, he is forced to take things at face value. The entire theory of selection is based on the idea that hens are supposed to see something in the rooster’s bright colors that is meant to give them special pleasure, but which they do not actually see at all—something that appears to them as pitch black.

[ 20 ] This is just one example. But the reality is that anyone who truly wants to conduct scientific research encounters such situations at every turn. From this you can see that intellectuality does not really penetrate very deeply into life; it remains on the surface. I am deliberately choosing extreme examples.

[ 21 ] It is not easy to believe that intellectuality is something that takes place more on the surface, that does not deeply affect the life of the soul, and that has little impact on a person’s inner being. And a materialistic mindset certainly does not affect the life of the soul at all. The consequence of this, however, is that a person emerging from such an incarnation—in which they have had little impact on the soul—tends, between birth and death, to penetrate less deeply into the physical body in the next incarnation. After all, the power to do so has been absorbed to a lesser degree; therefore, it now works in such a way that the human being permeates their physical body less. From this, however, arises the tendency to build up a female body in the next incarnation. Once again, it is correct when occultism says: The woman is the man’s karma!

[ 22 ] In this morally neutral realm, we see how what a person prepares for in one incarnation shapes the physicality of their next incarnation. And because these things profoundly influence not only our inner life but also our external experiences and actions, we must say: As a human being has male or female experiences in one incarnation, their external actions in the next incarnation are determined in one way or another, because through female experiences they have a tendency to form a male organization, and conversely, through male experiences, a female organization. Only in rare cases does the same gender incarnation repeat itself; it can repeat itself at most seven times. The rule, however, is that every male organization strives to become female in the next incarnation, and vice versa. All aversion is of no use here, for it does not matter what one desires in the physical world, but rather the inclinations one has in the time between death and rebirth, and these are determined by more rational reasons than, for example, the fact that in a male incarnation one might have a horror of incarnating as a woman in the next. Here you can see how later life is karmically determined by the earlier one, and how the actions of later life can also be determined.

[ 23 ] The point now is that we must learn to recognize another karmic connection, one that we will also need if we are to shed light on the important considerations of the coming days.

[ 24 ] Let us look back once more to a time quite far removed in human evolution: to the time when human incarnations first began on Earth. This took place in the ancient Lemurian era. The point is that back then, the Luciferic influence first acted upon humanity in a pervasive way, and that this then provoked the Ahrimanic influence. Let us try to picture in our minds how the Luciferic influence worked outwardly in human life. — Because human beings were able, in those ancient times, to take the Luciferic influence into themselves—that is, to allow the Luciferic influence to permeate their astral body— this caused his astral body to be inclined to intervene much more deeply in the organism, to descend much deeper into the materiality of the physical body, and above all in a very different way than he would have descended without the Luciferic influence. Human beings became more material through the Luciferic influence. Had the Luciferic influence not been at work, a lesser inclination would have arisen in human beings to descend into the material world; human beings would have remained, as such, in higher regions of existence. Thus, a much stronger interpenetration of the outer and inner human being took place than would have been the case without the Luciferic influence. This interpenetration was initially the reason why, through the stronger connection with the materiality of the outer body, human beings lost the ability to look back on the events that preceded their incarnation. Human beings now entered existence through a birth of such a nature that they became deeply connected with the material world, thereby erasing all recollection of their earlier experiences. Otherwise, human beings would have retained the memory of what they had experienced in the spiritual world before birth. Through the Luciferic influence, birth now became an act through which human beings establish such intense connections between the outer and inner human being that what they had previously experienced in the spiritual world was erased. Through the Luciferic influence, human beings were robbed of their memories of previous spiritual experiences. The connection with the outer physical body prevents human beings from looking back on the past. Consequently, however, human beings are dependent throughout their lives on deriving their experiences and perceptions solely from the external world.

[ 25 ] However, you would be quite mistaken if you believed that only the coarse, external substances that a person takes into themselves have an effect on them. It is not only food and its forces that affect human beings, but also the other experiences they have, as well as the things that flow into them through their senses. But because of this coarser connection to matter, food also has a different effect. Imagine if the Luciferic influence had not existed; then everything, from food to sensory impressions, would have a far more subtle effect on human beings. They would imbue everything they experience as an interaction with the external world with what they have experienced between death and rebirth. Because human beings have made materiality denser, they are inclined to take in much denser things as well.

[ 26 ] The Luciferic influence thus works in such a way that, through the densification of matter, the human being draws in much denser matter from the external world than he otherwise would have. However, the denser elements that he now draws in from the outside are quite different from the less dense ones. The less dense elements would have sustained the memories of his former life; they would also have given him the assurance that everything a human being experiences between birth and death extends its effects into a never-ending period of time. The human being would know: although death occurs outwardly, everything that happens continues to have an effect. Because the human being had to take in more poetic elements, he creates from birth a strong interaction between his own physical nature and the outside world.

[ 27 ] What, then, is the consequence of this transitional state? The spiritual world has been extinguished since birth. And in order for human beings to live in the spiritual realm, to awaken in the spiritual world, that state must first return in which everything that enters us from the outside as denser materiality is once again taken from us. Because we have acquired a denser materiality, in order to re-enter the spiritual realm, we must wait for the moment when the outer material physicality is taken from us. What now penetrates us as denser materiality gradually destroys, from the moment of our birth, our human physicality. What flows in there is something that destroys physicality more and more, until it has finally destroyed it completely, so that it can no longer exist. Beginning at our birth, we take in a denser materiality than we would have taken in without the Luciferic influence, so that we slowly destroy our physicality until it has become completely useless with the onset of death.

[ 28 ] Here we see how the Luciferic influence is the karmic cause of human death. If this form of birth did not exist, this form of death would not exist for human beings. Otherwise, human beings would face death in such a way that they would have a certain prospect of what lies ahead. Death is the karmic consequence of birth; birth and death are karmically linked. Without birth as human beings experience it today, there would be no death as human beings experience it.

[ 29 ] I mentioned earlier that one cannot speak of karma in the same sense with regard to animals as one does with regard to humans. If someone were to say that birth and death are karmically connected in animals as well, that person would simply not realize that birth and death are something entirely different for humans than they are for animals. What appears outwardly the same is not the same inwardly; birth and death are not about outward formation, but about inner experience. In animals, only the species soul, the group soul, experiences this. The death of an animal means roughly the same thing to the group soul as what you experience when, as summer approaches, you have your hair cut shorter, only for it to grow back slowly. The group soul of an animal species perceives the death of an animal as the loss of a limb that is gradually replaced. Thus, the species soul is what we may compare to the human ego. It knows neither birth nor death; it looks continually at what precedes birth, and it also looks continually at what follows death. To speak of birth and death in animals as one speaks of them in humans is nonsense, because entirely different causes precede them. And one denies the inner efficacy of the spirit if one believes that what appears outwardly the same is also brought about by inwardly the same causes. The similarity of outward processes never points with certainty to the same causes. The birth of a human being is based on entirely different causes than that of an animal, and likewise, a human being dies from entirely different causes than an animal.

[ 30 ] If one were to reflect a little on how the external appearance can remain exactly the same without the inner experience being even remotely similar, one would already arrive at the methodological conclusion that this is indeed the case. You can even arrive at the conclusion in a very simple way that external appearances are no proof of inner life. Imagine two people; you arrive at a certain place at nine o’clock and see the two people standing side by side there. At three o’clock you return to that same place, having not been there in the meantime. There, “the two people are standing in the same spot again.” Now you might conclude: A is still in the same place, B is still in the same place where he was standing at nine o’clock. But if you examine what these two people have done in the meantime, you may find that one has stood there motionless, while the other has walked a long distance in the meantime and has grown tired. Then entirely different processes underlie the situation. And just as it would be nonsensical, if the two people were standing in the same spot again at three o’clock, to say that the same thing had taken place within them, so too is it nonsensical, when one finds two cells of the same shape, to conclude from their identical structure that they have the same inner significance. The point is to understand the entire context of the facts that led a cell to the location in question. Therefore, modern cell physiology, which is based on the study of the internal structure of cells, is on entirely the wrong track. What presents itself to the external senses can never be decisive for the inner nature of a thing.

[ 31 ] One must think these things through if one wishes to understand the insights that occultists gain from their occult observations—such as the fact that birth and death are quite different for humans than they are for mammals or even birds. Studying these things will only be possible when people once again pay some attention to what spiritual research has to say. Until this is done, external science, which remains stuck at the level of sensory appearances and external facts, will indeed bring very beautiful facts to light; but whatever people may think about such facts under such conditions will never be decisive for reality. Therefore, everything that constitutes theoretical science today is a fantastical construct that has arisen from combining external facts according to their outward appearance. In some fields, the external facts practically demand to be interpreted correctly; but current opinions prevent this from happening.

[ 32 ] Thus, today we have examined two neutral areas within the realm of karmic law, and you will see that they will serve as a foundation for our further considerations. We have seen how the female organization is the karmic consequence of male experiences and the male organization a karmic consequence of female experiences; and we have finally seen that death is a karmic effect of birth in human life. This is something that, if one tries to understand it step by step, can lead us deep into the karmic interrelationships of human life.