Piercing Through the Veil of Karma
Rudolf Steiner’s Path to the Microcosm, Pt. 1 by Luigi Morelli The following article addresses what could be called the anthroposophical path to the microcosm, which corresponds to what Steiner calls “spirit recollection” in the Foundation Stone Meditation. The article will be divided and presented over two issues of being human. In the first part, we will look at the archetypal social phenomenon and what are its implications for the modern human being’s understanding of the forces of karma. We will then look at exercises that Steiner gave us towards the later part of his lecturing activity, which allow us to create imaginations of self and others and enable us to understand the forces at work in our biographies. Finally, we will look at what can be characterized as the path to the microcosm that allows us to pierce through the veil of karma. In the second part of this article, in the next issue of being human, we will contrast the path to the microcosm, which pierces through the veil of karma, with the better-known path to the macrocosm, which pierces through the veil of the senses. It is through deepening the path to the microcosm of the soul that we can have an overall view, understanding of, and ability to recognize our incarnational journey in the present, and backwards in time. In the present this means acquiring familiarity with the forces of destiny as they manifest in our biography and therefore being able to take fuller responsibility for our life. Another threshold lies in a further level of objectivity, which means recognizing parts of our incarnational history, our karmic past. This is the path that Steiner mapped out in his karmic exercises (of which more below), the path that he himself followed in order to offer us the karmic biographies in the last two years of his life. The path that Steiner inaugurated has been made available to all of humanity. We will first explore in depth this path of the journey into the soul—the microcosm—in four stages. We will then contrast this path with the more familiar path into the macrocosm, the path of study of outer phenomena as it can be pursued in the study of biology, geology, physics, anthropology, social sciences, etc. The first one leads us past the veil of karma; the second one pierces through the veil of the senses.
The Archetypal Social Phenomenon Toward the last years of his life, particularly from 1918 to 1924, Steiner repeatedly called the attention of members of the Anthroposophical Society to the importance of coming to know oneself in the encounter. In 1918, he introduced the idea of the archetypal social phenomenon, which is central to our exploration. This states: A perpetual struggle and opposition to falling asleep in social relationships is also present. If you meet a person you are continuously standing in a conflict situation in the following way: because you meet him, the tendency to sleep always develops in you so that you may experience your relationship to him in sleep. But, at the same time, there is aroused in you the counterforce to keep yourself awake. This always happens in the meeting between people – a tendency to fall asleep, a tendency to keep awake. In this situation a tendency to keep awake has an anti-social character, the assertion of one’s individuality, of one’s personality, in opposition to the social structure of society.1
Let us approach this central phenomenon of the social path more closely. We sleep into the other person in listening, and awaken to ourselves in speaking. This means that our social impulses are strongest in our sleep, when we are least conscious. In the same lecture Steiner adds: Only that which continues to work out of sleeping into waking conditions is active as a social impulse in ordinary waking consciousness . . . Thus there exists a permanent disposition to fall asleep precisely in order to build up the social structure of humanity”2 (emphasis added).
We will be concerned precisely about that which continues to work out of sleeping into waking conditions in what comes next. In sleep, in our astral body we find ourselves together with all the other people in our lives, but we are not con1 Social and Anti-Social Forces in the Human Being (lecture of December 12, 1918, GA 186). 2 Ibid. summer-fall issue 2018 • 47
