This is one of a series of posts discussing Rudolf Steiner’s Founding a Science of the Spirit: Fourteen Lectures Given in Stuttgart Between 22 August and 4 September 1906. Visit the tag Science of Spirit for all posts on this topic.
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It has been quite a while since we last visited Steiner, and I recommend reviewing my post SOS: A note about Notes as I am hopeful that helps provide some context.
Lecture 7 is short, and starts off with Steiner stating he limit himself to describing things he has observed, and from “real experiences,” before diving into considering karmic relationships, and how causes and effects are connected with different bodies — the physical and etheric.
In the physical body, actions take place in the physical world, and impact our physical environment and everything connected to it. External destiny depends on what we do in the physical life. Bad deeds, bad environment, former bad deeds impact future environmental chances.
People can learn and grow, and this will impact temperament, etc. in next karmic cycles, and etheric body. Good karmic habits will impact physical health. Steiner’s note takers and translators write “Infectious diseases, strangely enough, can be traced back to a highly developed selfish acquisitiveness in a previous life.” (p. 57)
Things then get racist, as Steiner discusses the Huns and Mongols who were “the last stragglers from Atlantean times — while the Indians, the German and other peoples were progressing, the Mongols had remained behind.”
It does not get better from there, and Steiner goes on to invoke the Biblical notion of “God visiting the sins of the fathers on the children, even to the third and fourth generations.” Karma affecting whole generations, I disagree with his reasoning, but also have seen through out history, how one generations’ decisions have impacted future ones.
Steiner’s note takers remind us that we must first learn to read the religious sources properly, and indicates that he is part of the fourth stage — that of occultists, who has spiritual knowledge to see the inter connectivity of things. For example, clearly karma is responsible for the rise in neurosis, which was uncommon 100 years ago, was obviously due to the materialistic outlook of the 18th century.
Steiner concludes that you “have to be very careful in your choice of parents! The fact is not that the child resembles his parents, but that he is born into a family where the parents where the parents most resemble him.” I think we will have to agree to disagree on this.
This lecture marks the half-way point in the lecture series, and it left me wondering why I picked them back up in the first place.
If you are curious, and would like to read the Lecture, I came across a different variation/translation of this lecture in the Rudolf Steiner Archives, https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/GateSpiSci/19060828p01.html
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