Lecture XII

It is necessary to say such a thing, paradoxical though it may sound, for it is the truth. There is no help for it—it is a fact. Hence it is that a highly evolved individual can be recognised in his reincarnation only if one looks at manifestations of human nature which are not directly apparent in a man, if he has gone through a modern education, but reveal themselves, so to speak, behind him. We have in Garibaldi a most striking example of this. What did civilised men, including Cavour, or at all events the followers of Cavour, think of Garibaldi? They regarded him as a madcap with whom it was useless to discuss anything in a sensible manner. That is a point of which we must take note; for there was much in his arguments and in his whole way of speaking that was bound to appear illogical, to say the least, to people enamoured of modern civilisation. Very often the things he says simply do not hold together. But when we are able to see behind a personality, and can look at that which in an earlier earth-life was able to enter into the body, but in this earth-life, because modern civilisation makes the bodies unfit, was not able to enter into the body—then we can begin to have an idea of what such a personality really is. Otherwise we are right off the track, for what is of most importance in such a personality lies right behind the things he can reveal externally. A good conventional man of the world, who simply expresses himself in the way he has learned to do, and in whom we see merely a reflection of the teaching and education he has received at school and elsewhere—such a man you can “photograph” in his moral and spiritual nature. He is there. A man, however, who comes over from other times bearing a soul filled with great and far-reaching wisdom, so that the soul cannot express itself in the body, can never be estimated with the means afforded by modern civilisation by what he does in the body. Above all, Garibaldi cannot be judged in that way. In his case it is rather like having to do—I am speaking metaphorically—with spiritualistic pictures, where a phantom becomes visible behind. With a personality like Garibaldi, you see him first as he is according to conventional standards, and behind you see something spiritual, a spirit-portrait, as it were, of that which in this incarnation cannot enter fully into the body.