initiative!
Capesius: Inner Development, Healing, and Gentleness David Andrew Schwartz This report is based on my lecture given at the Mystery Drama Conference held at the Threefold Educational Center in Chestnut Ridge, New York. Lecturers were directed to present a karmic biography of one of the major characters in the plays that would spur questions of inner development from the conference participants and lead them to an alignment of soul with the struggles of the characters. I was asked to speak about Professor Capesius. Capesius’ story involves inner development and also is a healing journey. Something I learned from Capesius is that with him you need to be gentle. Born in the mid-nineteenth century, Professor Capesius is about 60 at the beginning of the first play, The Portal of Initiation, when he joins the circle around the spiritual teacher, Benedictus. He is in his late 70s by end of the fourth drama, The Soul’s Awakening. He appears to be a confirmed bachelor living alone in his house in an urban setting. He is a professor of history: a scholar and teacher. As a thinker, he searches for a deeper meaning in history and seeks to awaken ideals in his students. He is solitary and lonely, but companionable in conversation, seemingly the bearer of the pain of inner conflict. In the course of the plays he enters a state of mental illness, perhaps a dementia-like state. He becomes a troubled older person, seemingly not-all-there by the end of the second drama, The Soul’s Probation, and into the third drama, The Guardian of the Threshold. His illness lasts for several
years, from his late sixties to his mid-seventies. He eventually emerges from this illness. He becomes a conscious pupil of Benedictus and recognizes his connection to the karmic community of Benedictus’ pupils. His is a Grail story in the sense that he is able to realize his own connection to the saga of the renewal of the mysteries. Rudolf Steiner speaks about Capesius on several occasions between 1911-1924. When he talks about Capesius it is not as a character in a play, but rather as a real person. For example, he recites experiences and conversations that Capesius has that are not in the plays. These lectures provide opportunities to observe Rudolf Steiner modeling his deeply loving, non-judgmental relation to Capesius. The last time that Rudolf Steiner speaks about Capesius is in Karmic Relationships Volume IV, the last set of karma lectures.1 In the final lecture of this series he speaks about Karl Julius Schroer and the relation of Capesius to this intimate friend and teacher of Rudolf Steiner. Rudolf Steiner explains that the Spiritual Soul is the source of the intellect that articulates the materialistic, cold, hard, utilitarian principles that constitute our modern life of cognition. He reminds us that many of us experienced spirituality in our past lives but that these experiences cannot arise to consciousness in and integrate with our present life of intellect because of the materialistic and utilitarian nature of the intellect. At most an idealistic sense for beauty and truth may appear in a person with spirituality in their past life experience. He says that strength, perseverance, and enthusiasm are necessary to transform intellectualism so that the spiritual legacy of a past life can integrate with the intellect. As a matter of fact, he says that intellectualism is the greatest hindrance to the revelation of the spiritual content in the soul. Rudolf Steiner goes on to say that the process to rise from intellectualism to spirituality was most difficult during the last third of the nineteenth century. As an example he offers Karl Julius Schroer, who bore within himself the spirit-soul of Plato, a being possessing treasures of spirituality. Schroer, who was steeped in the work of Goethe and introduced Rudolf Steiner to Goethe, recoils from materialistic intellectualism rather than going through the process of transforming it. Steiner explains that in Schroer the transformation of in-
Historian Capesius finds healing in the gentle company of storyteller Felicia and her nature-mystic husband Felix.
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being human
1 Steiner, Rudolf, Karmic Relationships Volume IV, Dornach, lecture 10, September 23, 1924; five days later Rudolf Steiner gave his last lecture on September 28, 1924.