Karmic Relationships – Volume 5
7 lectures by Rudolf Steiner
Esoteric Studies

In these lectures on karma, given between March and May 1924 in Prague and in Paris, Rudolf Steiner describes from a karmic standpoint, the experiences undergone by the human soul during the centuries-long journey between one death and and the subsequent rebirth. He brings to view the different phases of experience and the different realms we enter into in this highly transformative period. We meet and collaborate with the Beings of the successive hierarchies in accordance with all that we have elaborated as human beings during our last incarnation. These different realms are related to what we experience sensorily as the substances of the earth, the moon and planets, and most significantly of all, the sun. These are described not in the way we experience them through the body’s senses, but as the initiate perceives them, and as the soul after death perceives them, as colonies of living Beings who are intimately related to the human being in every aspect of his being – from his spiritual core to the very form, structure and function of his body.

Steiner describes karma not as a simple linear cause and effect relationship, but as a tapestry of interweaving threads which act on various levels of human, cultural, world-historic and cosmic activity. The summation of these is what we see in the character and predispositions, the health or illness, and in the myriad events which characterise a single life between birth and death. The human being is thus described not as an insignificant organism moving semi-randomly on the surface of the earth for a short period of time, but a member of the evolving cosmos and something of supreme significance for the world as a whole.

To illustrate the character of some of the individual threads which contribute to the overall karmic weave, he traces the lives of representative individuals over a few lifetimes to show the transformation of soul characteristics. He examines the lives of Haroun al Raschid (Lord Bacon), Amos Comenius, Pope Gregory VII, Garibaldi, Lord Byron, Karl Marx, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Eliphas Lévi, and others.

This is a valuable read for those who are already well versed in the cosmology and evolutionary knowledge that Steiner has elaborated in such works as An Outline of Esoteric Science, Theosophy, Rosicrucian Wisdom, and similar works.