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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:
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:
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 conscious of it. In the life after death, in kamaloka, we actually awaken in the perception of the world of the other person. Social processes are thus “death processes,” that render possible the kamaloka experience before death; hence, they are processes that we normally resist.
To overcome our natural anti-social tendencies in the encounter with others, we must move away from our natural inclination to form concepts about the being of the other, and move toward developing images. (3) Through imaginations, we will acquire a deeper faculty of empathy. Developing imaginations is in fact the way to carry “that which continues to work out of sleeping into waking conditions.” When we meet another person, a picture should arise from the other person. “But this requires of course the heightened interest that I have often described to you as the foundation of social life, in which each person should take in the other person.” (4) It is here that we must find the social impulses.
As to how this could be done, an answer appears in the same lecture, where he spoke of what is now known as the “after-image.” To let the after-image reach us “it is most important of all that the instinct shall be implanted in people to look back more frequently during this life; but in the right way. To do that, we need to immerse ourselves with real love in the other person. This has such a germinating power over us that we really acquire the imaginative forces necessary to confront the contemporary human being in such a way that in him, something is manifest that appears to us only after many years in our backward survey of those figures with whom we have lived together.” (5)
This intention to look back and immerse ourselves with deep interest in the other person, gaining new imaginative forces, acquires full dimension in a series of exercises that Steiner devised, that I am calling “karma exercises.” These exercises pave the way for the awakening of a perception of ourselves, and of other human beings, allowing us gradually to pierce through the veil of karma that hides the true nature of human relationships.
Steiner’s Karma Exercises
In the last twenty-three years of his life, Steiner struggled to bring a living understanding of the ideas of karma and reincarnation. In line with his intention, and central to this attempt, were the exercises that can awaken a sense for individual recognition of the forces of destiny in our biography, and ultimately the reawakening of memories of previous lives. Steiner’s effort never received the consecration or ultimate form that the path of thinking finds in "Philosophy of Freedom". The reason for this could be that Steiner barely managed to complete laying out important building blocks of this edifice in the last year of his life. Nevertheless, a whole coherent direction emerges once we look at some of these exercises, arranging them from the most immediate to the most demanding. They form in fact a phenomenological approach to the microcosm, to the world of the soul, parallel to all that we know in the anthroposophical study of the macrocosm, e.g., when we rise from a Goethean to a spiritual-scientific understanding of mineral, plant, animal, and outer phenomena. It was through the following exercises and similar ones that Steiner pierced through the veil of karma and delivered the fruits of his karmic research. This path is open to all of us, at least potentially. It is the quintessential social path.
The following review is far from exhaustive; it is merely indicative of the breadth of Steiner’s work in the matter. A fuller review, including additional exercises and variations, can be found in the book "Karl Julius Schröer and Rudolf Steiner: Anthroposophy and the Teachings of Karma and Reincarnation." (6) Some of the names given to the exercises are the author’s choice.
Karma Exercise I: Rückschau
The most basic, but quintessential, activity of Spirit Recollection is illustrated in the practice of looking back [German Rückschau] on our day in reverse order, and possibly, even in reverse motion. This is the perfect equivalent and polar opposite to the pencil exercise [Steiner’s suggested concentration exercise]. Whereas in observing an object belonging to the macrocosm—the pencil—we have to exclude everything of an inner nature (personal events, feelings, impulses of will) in doing the Rückschau we focus on the reflection in our lives of everything that lived in personal events, with their feelings and impulses of will—the external result of these inner activities. We bring to awareness everything that would otherwise remain under the surface of our awareness, and allow for more consciousness of what lives in feelings and impulses of will. The practice of the exercise is the very basis of the activity of recollection that will extend its breadth in the following exercises.
Karma Exercise II: Gratitude Recollection
A first exercise that forms a prelude to the series that we will examine is designed to awaken gratitude and a sense of perspective concerning our personal achievements. (7) In it Steiner asks us to turn back to an overview of our life and see what part other people have played in it, by detecting how much we owe to our parents, relatives, friends, teachers, colleagues, and so forth. To be effective with this exercise we need to devote successive attempts to every single individual. The exercise should lead to the realization of how much in our life we owe to others. Repeated over time, it allows us to develop an imagination for those people who play an important part in our life, an imagination that points to their deeper being. We should be able to develop an objective sense of our indebtedness. This sense of perspective and gratitude will develop further in the ability to “relate ourselves imaginatively to those we meet in the present.”
Karma Exercise III: Phase of Life Recollection
An exercise that anticipates the so-called Lesser Karma Exercise is the one Steiner described in the same lecture quoted above as a complement to the first. Whereas in the exercise above we are seeking to develop an objective and imaginative perception of others, here the same is true about ourselves. In this instance, we will refer to a particular stage of our lives, and immerse ourselves objectively into that time, as if we were spectators to ourselves. In so doing, we are freeing the perception of ourselves in the present from the images that bind us to the past, and that lead us to identify our ego with our life experiences, rather than with the intimations of our higher self. We thus develop an imaginative picture of ourselves, and lessen the effects of the egoism that naturally develops in our age of the consciousness soul. None of this can be achieved without repeated effort.
Karma Exercise IV: Lesser Karma Exercise
The next exercise, the “Lesser Karma Exercise,” consists of looking back to one single event in our life, one that we wish would not have happened. Steiner spoke of this exercise in more than one place. (8)
The example that Steiner offers is that of a shingle falling from a roof onto our head. He asks us to imagine the deed of the “second person in us” who loosens the shingle from the roof just in time for it to fall on our heads when we pass under it. In other words, he wants us to picture that we have planned our lives before our birth in such a way as to come to certain critical turning points on earth. When we enter the exercise for the first few times, this second person is clearly seen as an invention, something artificially conjured up. However, he grows and evolves in us to the point that we cannot escape the feeling that he really is within us, accompanied with the growing realization that we have really wanted these events to come to pass. The memory of the fact that we have wanted these events has been all but erased from our consciousness; and the exercise, repeated over many life events, serves to awaken it. We can thus deepen an inner conviction and feeling for our karmic biography. Cultivating this feeling bestows deep inner strength, and modifies our attitude toward events we may have previously confronted with fear. We acquire a certain peacefulness and acceptance, together with the feeling that everything in our life has a purpose. Something else becomes apparent: we start taking responsibility for our destiny, and stop blaming parents, friends, enemies, or random events for those things that cause us unhappiness.
Karma Exercise V: Greater Karma Exercise
A final exercise is the so-called four days/three nights exercise or the “Greater Karma Exercise.” (9) Here it is a matter of bringing back to memory an event from daily life that may or may not involve another person. It is a matter of depicting it inwardly, or “painting it spiritually,” as Steiner puts it, by recreating in greatest detail all the impressions received by our senses. If the memory includes a person, one re-creates inwardly the way in which she moved; the quality, pitch, and tone of her voice; words used, gestures, and so forth. This experience is taken into the night and repeated the following two days. The image is first given shape by the astral body in the external ether. From there, the next morning the image is impressed into the etheric body. One awakens with definite feelings and the impression that the image wants something from us. It grows real in us. The etheric body continues to work on the image. On the third day, the image is impressed into the physical body. There it is spiritualized. Steiner describes the experience of the day as a cloud in which the person moves. It gives rise to the feeling of being part of an emerging picture. At first we feel part of the picture, but with our will paralyzed, frozen, so to speak. This experience then evolves and becomes sight, an objective image. This will be the image of the event of the previous life that is related to the event in the present incarnation. An experience of this kind will most likely not arise until the exercise is carried out a great number of times.
Reviewing the Exercises
All of these imply a strengthening of our powers of observation, and of our memory. The quintessential exercise that forms the foundation and prelude for all of them is the Rückschau. The activity of the Rückschau is one of pure review, deprived of evaluation. As we move towards the other exercises, review is mixed with as objective as possible an evaluation element (e. g. in looking back at a phase in our life we may recall our predominant moods). At the second stage, we educate ourselves to an overcoming of the element of sympathy and antipathy when we approach another human being. True interest, overcoming likes and dislikes, offers the possibility of creating imaginations of others and of ourselves, rather than limiting concepts. The pivotal stage reached through the Lesser Karma Exercise leads us to realize that we are, in greater measure than we usually realize, the architects of our lives. We learn to take responsibility for our biography. And finally, the Greater Karma Exercise offers us the possibility of getting to know our deeper karmic being as it has developed over many incarnations.
Exertion of the will, through repeated practice of the karma exercises, forms the foundation for this path up to the Lesser Karma exercise. Deeper spiritual knowledge, however, acquires greater importance once we want to move to the root causes of events in our biography in previous lives, as in the Greater Karma exercise. All of these exercises ask us to look back in time, whether they apply to ourselves or another person. They ask us to render objective that which lives unconscious in our will. It is the path that we will recognize in the second part of the article as the path of Spirit Recollection, in accordance with the terminology used in the Foundation Stone Meditation.
In the next issue we will explore how the path into the soul—microcosm—stands in relation to the more familiar path into the macrocosm. In terms of the Foundation Stone Meditation we will contrast the Path of Spirit Recollection (also called Spirit Remembering) with the path of Spirit Beholding (also called Spirit Vision)—the first and the third panels of the Foundation Stone Meditation respectively.
Luigi Morelli has a passion for social change from a cultural perspective, and has extensive experience working with the social therapeutic impulse in Camphill, in L’Arche communities, and presently within Ecovillage Ithaca where he lives, with an emphasis on Nonviolent Communication and participatory facilitation. Luigi has written books including "Karl Julius Schröer and Rudolf Steiner: Anthroposophy and the Teachings of Karma and Reincarnation" and "Aristotelians and Platonists: A Convergence of the Michaelic Streams in Our Time." To see these writings (available for donation or for free) and explore more see www.millenniumculmination.net
Notes:
2 Ibid.
1 Social and Anti-Social Forces in the Human Being (lecture of December 12, 1918, GA 186).
3 Ibid. 4 Steiner, The Challenge of the Times, December 7, 1918 lecture. 5 Ibid.
6 See chapter 4, heading “Steiner’s Karma exercises” available at http://millenniumculmination.net/Steiners-Karma-Exercises.pdf
7 Steiner, Inner Aspect of the Social Question, February 4, 1919 lecture.
8 Steiner, Karma and Reincarnation, January 30, 1912 lecture. See also: January 29, 1912 and February 8, 1912 lectures in Esoteric Christianity and the Mission of Christian Rosenkreutz.
9 Steiner, Karmic Relationships, Volume 2, May 9, 1924 lecture.
