Illustration From 1913 Showing Pythagoras Teaching A Class Of Women. Many Prominent Members Of His School

Illustration from 1913 showing Pythagoras teaching a class of women. Many prominent members of his school were women and some modern scholars think that he may have believed that women should be taught philosophy as well as men. (Source)

Many of his associates were reminded by Pythagoras, by most clear and evident indications, of the former life which their soul had lived before it was bound to their present body, and he demonstrated, by indubitable arguments that he had been Euphorbus, the son of Panthus, who conquered Patroclus. He frequently sang the Homeric verses pertaining to himself, to the music of his lyre.

—Iamblichus, The Life of Pythagoras

It will frequently happen that little characteristic actions of a person, such as the way he moves his fingers, will lead the way to karmic connections far sooner than any outstanding activities he may have undertaken and that are from every other aspect of more consequence.

—Rudolf Steiner, Cosmic Christianity and the Impulse of Michael: Lecture V

“Only that man is ripe for understanding the truth concerning immortality, who could also endure it if the opposite were true; if he could bear that the question regarding immortality was answered with a ‘no.’ If a man is himself to bring down (selber ausmachen will) anything from the spiritual world regarding immortality,“ so said the Pythagoreans, "he must not long for immortality; for while there is longing, what he says regarding it is not objective. Opinions regarding the life beyond birth and death if they are to have any value can only come from those who could lie down peacefully in the grave even if there was no immortality.” This was taught in the olden times in the Pythagorean schools when the teacher wished to make his pupils realize how difficult it was to be sufficiently ripe to accept any truth. To be ripe enough to receive a truth and to state it from oneself requires a very special preparation, and must consist in the person being entirely without interest in the said truth.

—Rudolf Steiner, Excursus on the Gospel According to St. Mark

[Zarathustra] was reborn as Zarathas or Nazarathos, and he became the teacher of Pythagoras, who himself was reincarnated as one of the three Wise Men of the East and became one of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.

—Rudolf Steiner, The Principle of Spiritual Economy