okay... so here's a can of worms... ;>



--| The Karma of Women and Men |----- 

Let us suppose that a woman lives in a certain incarnation. It cannot be
denied that this woman, by reason of her sex, will undergo experiences
which differ from those of a man, and that these are not merely dependent
on her inner soul life, but for the most part they are connected with
external happenings, with circumstances in which she will find herself
simply because she is a woman, and which will again react upon the whole
of the condition and disposition of her soul. We see, therefore, that
certain deeds of woman are most intimately connected with the fact of her
womanhood. Only in the realm of spiritual companionship is there any
equality between man and woman. The further we penetrate into the purely
spiritual and into the outer aspect of the human being, the more is
accentuated the difference between man and woman in relation to their
lives. We can say that woman differs from man also in certain qualities of
the soul, and that she inclines more towards those impulses which must be
termed emotional. For this reason we find that psychic experiences come to
her more easily than to man. Intellectuality and materialism are, on the
contrary, more natural to man's life, and these strongly influence the
soul life. So the psychic and emotional predominate in woman and the
intellectual and materialistic in man. Thus it is that there are certain
shadings in woman's soul life by virtue of her womanhood. It has already
been described how the qualities we experience in our souls force their
way between death and a new birth into our next bodily organism. That
which is psychically and emotionally the strongest and that which in the
life between birth and death penetrates most deeply into the soul, will
have a greater tendency to enter more profoundly into the organism, and to
impregnate it far more intensively. And because woman absorbs psychical
and emotional impressions, she also receives the experiences of life into
the profounder depths of the soul. Man may have richer and also more
scientific experiences, but they do not penetrate his soul life as deeply
as do those of woman. The whole of the world of her experiences is deeply
graven into a woman's soul. Therefore those experiences will have a
stronger tendency to affect the organism, to modify the organism more
closely in the future. Thus woman's life absorbs the tendency towards
deeper intervention in the organism by means of the experiences of one
incarnation, and thereby towards the formation of the organism itself in
the next incarnation. A deep working into and working through the organism
will bring forth a male organism. A male organism appears when the forces
of the soul desire to be more deeply graven into matter. From this we see
that the effect of woman's experiences in one incarnation results in a
male organism in the next incarnation. Occult teaching here shows that
there is a connection which lies outside the bounds of morality. For this
reason occultism states 'Man is woman's karma.' The male organism of a
later incarnation is the result of the experiences and events of a
preceding female incarnation. At the risk of arousing in some of those
present reflections which may possibly be uncongenial (it always happens
that modern man is terrified of incarnating as woman), since these matters
are facts, I must illuminate them objectively. What happens in the case of
man's experiences?

We shall best understand them if we base them on what has been said
before. In man's organism the inner man has penetrated thoroughly into
matter, and has embraced it more closely than has woman. Woman retains
more spirituality. She does not so deeply into matter, but keeps her
materiality more flexible. It is characteristic of woman's nature that she
retains a greater degree of free spirituality, and for that reason does
not penetrate so profoundly into matter, and especially keeps her brain
more flexible. Therefore it is not surprising that women have a special
inclination for what is new, especially in the spiritual realm. And it is
not by accident, but in accordance with a profound law, that in a movement
whose very nature deals with spirituality, there should be found a greater
number of women than of men. Any man knows that the male brain is
frequently an intractable instrument. On account of its rigidity it offers
terrible resistance when one would use it for more flexible lines of
thought. It refuses to follow and must be educated by all sorts of means
before it can lose its rigidity. With all men this can be a personal
experience.

Man's nature is more condensed, more concentrated; it has been compressed
more, rendered more rigid and hard by his inner being of a man; it has
been made more material. A more rigid brain is first and foremost an
instrument for the intellectual, rather than for the psychic. For
intellectuality deals mainly with the physical plane. In this respect we
might speak of a brain being frozen to a certain degree and if it is to
deal with the finer channels of thought, it must first be thawed.
Therefore a man will be inclined to absorb less of those experiences that
are connected with the depths of his own soul life, and what he does
absorb does not so deeply. We have an external proof of this in the
shallowness of external science, and its comparative failure to comprehend
the inner being. Although much thought is expended in a wide
circumference, facts are concentrated with but little thoroughness. Let us
quote an example of the superficiality of modern science:

Let us suppose a young man is in a college where a rabid Darwinian is
lecturing. This is how the advocate of the theory of selection will
characterise certain facts: Whence does a cock derive his beautiful
iridescent feathers of bluish tints? This is to be traced back to sexual,
natural selection; for the cock attracts the hens by his colours, and the
hens will choose those from among the cocks who possess these bluish
iridescent feathers. In this way the other cocks are ignored, and the
consequence is that one particular species is developed. This is progress;
this is 'natural selection'! And the student is glad to know how
progressive development is brought about.

Now he goes to the next hall, where physiology of the senses is dealt
with. It may well happen that the student in this second hall will hear
the following: Experiments have been made which show how the various
colours of the spectrum affect various beings. It can be proved that of
the whole colour spectrum, hens, for instance, can only see the colours
ranging from green to orange, and red to ultra-red, but not those ranging
from blue to violet.

Now a student, if he wants to combine these two statements which really
are taught to-day, is forced to regard things superficially. The whole of
the theory of natural selection is based on the fact that hens perceive
the variegated colours of cocks and that these colours afford them special
pleasure. This is not the case, for the colours to them appear raven
black.

This is merely an example, but anyone willing to investigate really
scientifically will encounter instances of this kind at every step. This
will demonstrate that intellectuality does not penetrate very deeply into
life but that it remains on the surface. I intentionally chose the more
marked examples.

It is not so easy to believe that intellectuality remains external and
affects the inner being of man but slightly. And a materialistic mind
affects the soul life even less. The consequence of this is that the being
on quitting an incarnation in which he has lived but little in the soul,
carries with him the tendency between birth and death to penetrate less
deeply into the organism in the next incarnation. He has but little power
to do this, and that is why in the next incarnation the organism is less
impregnated. So comes the inclination to build up a female body in the
next incarnation, and it is therefore correct when occultism says that
'Woman is man's karma.'


Reference:

- Rudolf Steiner, Manifestation of Karma,
  Lecture 9, Hamburg, 26th May, 1910, GA 120.
- http://wn.elib.com/Steiner/Lectures/ManfKarma/ManKar_index.html

--