The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Present and Future of World and Human Development

[ 1 ] It is not possible to recognize something of the present and future of human and world development in the sense of spiritual science without understanding the past of this development. For that which presents itself to the perception of the spiritual researcher when he observes the hidden facts of the past contains at the same time all that he can know of the present and the future. In this book we have spoken of the development of Saturn, the sun, the moon and the earth. One cannot understand the development of the earth in the spiritual scientific sense if one does not observe the facts of the preceding times of development. For the facts of lunar, solar and Saturnian development are to a certain extent contained in what man currently encounters within the earth world. The beings and things that were involved in the development of the moon have continued to develop. From them has emerged everything that currently belongs to the earth. But not everything that has developed from the moon to the earth is perceptible to the physical-sensory consciousness. Part of what has developed from this moon only becomes apparent at a certain level of supersensible consciousness. When this realization is attained, then our earth world is connected with a supersensible world. This contains that part of the moon's existence which has not condensed into physical-sensory perception. It initially contains it as it is at present, not as it was at the time of the moon's ancient development. The supersensible consciousness can, however, obtain an image of the state it was in at that time. For when this supersensible consciousness delves into the perception which it can have at present, it becomes apparent that this perception gradually splits itself into two images. The one image presents itself as the form that the earth had during its lunar development. The other picture, however, shows itself in such a way that one recognizes that it contains a form which is still in a germinal state and which will only become real in the future in the sense that the earth really is now. Further observation shows that into this future form there continually flows that which in a certain sense results as an effect of what is happening on earth. In this future form we therefore have before us that which is to become of our earth. The effects of earthly existence will unite with what happens in the characterized world, and from this the new world being will arise, into which the earth will transform itself in the same way as the moon has transformed itself into the earth. This future form can be called the Jupiter state. Whoever observes this Jupiter state in supersensible contemplation will see that certain processes must take place in the future, because in the supersensible part of the earth world, which originates from the moon, beings and things are present which will take on certain forms when this or that will have happened within the physical-sensible earth. There will therefore be something in the Jupiter state that is already predetermined by the moon's development; and there will be something new in it that only comes into the whole development through the earth processes. That is why the super-sensible consciousness can experience something about what will happen during the Jupiter state. The entities and facts that are observed in this field of consciousness do not have the character of the sensory-pictorial; they do not even appear as fine, airy formations from which effects reminiscent of impressions of the senses could emanate. They produce pure spiritual impressions of sound, light and warmth. These do not express themselves through any material embodiments. They can only be perceived by the supersensible consciousness. However, it can be said that these beings have a "body". However, this shows itself within their soul, which reveals itself as their present being, like a sum of condensed memories that they carry within their soul essence. A distinction can be made in their being between what they are experiencing now and what they have experienced and what they remember. The latter is contained within them like a physical being. They experience it as an earthling experiences his body. For a stage of supersensible vision which is higher than that just described as necessary for the knowledge of the moon and Jupiter, supersensible beings and things become perceptible which are further developed forms of that which was already present during the state of the sun, but which at present has such high stages of existence that they are not at all present for a consciousness which has only reached the perception of the lunar forms. The image of this world also splits into two again during inner contemplation. The one leads to the realization of the solar state of the past; the other represents a future form of the earth, namely that into which the earth will have transformed itself when the effects of the earth and Jupiter processes will have flowed into the forms of that world. What is observed of this future world in this way can be described as the Venusian state in the sense of spiritual science. In a similar way a future state of development arises for an even more developed supersensible consciousness, which can be described as the volcanic state and which stands in the same relationship to the Saturnian state as the Venusian state to the solar and the Jupiterian state to the lunar development. Therefore, if we consider the past, present and future of Earth's evolution, we can speak of Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan evolution. Like these comprehensive relationships of the earth's development, observations of a nearer future also arise for consciousness. Every picture of the past also corresponds to a picture of the future. However, when speaking of such things, something must be emphasized that must be considered as necessary as possible. If one wants to recognize such things, one must completely renounce the opinion that mere philosophical reflection based on sensory reality can fathom anything about them. These things can and should never be investigated through such reflection. Anyone who believes, for example, that if he has received information through spiritual science about the state of the moon, he can now find out through such reflection what it will look like on Jupiter if he holds the earth conditions and the moon conditions together, will indulge in enormous deceptions. These relationships should only be investigated by raising the supersensible consciousness to observation. Only when what has been researched is communicated can it be understood without supersensible consciousness.

[ 2 ] The spiritual researcher is now in a different position with regard to information about the future than with regard to information about the past. At first, man cannot face future events as impartially as he can with regard to the past. What happens in the future excites human feeling and will; the past is endured in a completely different way. Anyone who observes life knows how this already applies to ordinary existence. But only those who know certain things of the supersensible worlds can know to what a tremendous degree it increases, what forms it assumes in relation to the hidden facts of life. And this is the reason why knowledge of these things is bound to very specific limits.

[ 3 ] Just as the great world development can be depicted in the sequence of its states from Saturn to the volcanic age, this is also possible for smaller periods of time, for example those of the earth's development. Since that tremendous upheaval which brought the old Atlantean life to an end, states have followed each other within the development of mankind which have been characterized in this book as the times of the old Indian, the Urperian, the Egyptian-Chaldean, the Greek-Latin. The fifth period is the one in which humanity now stands, the present. This period gradually began around the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries after Christ, after it had prepared itself from the fourth and fifth centuries. It emerged quite clearly from the fifteenth century onwards. The previous Greek-Latin one began around the eighth century BC. The Christ event took place at the end of its first third. The human state of mind, all human abilities changed during the transition from the Egyptian-Chaldean to the Greco-Latin period. In the former, that which is now known as logical thinking, as an intellectual understanding of the world, was not yet present. What man now appropriates as knowledge through his intellect, he received in the form in which it was suitable for that time: directly through an inner, in a certain sense supersensible knowledge. One perceived things; and by perceiving them, the concept, the image, which the soul needed of them, emerged in the soul. If the power of cognition is such, then not only images of the sensory-physical world emerge, but also a certain knowledge of non-sensory facts and entities comes up from the depths of the soul. This was the remnant of the old, dim supersensible consciousness that was once the common property of all mankind. In the Greco-Latin period more and more people arose who lacked such faculties. They were replaced by intellectual thinking about things. People became more and more distanced from an immediate dreamy perception of the spiritual world and more and more dependent on forming an image of it through their intellect and feelings. This condition continued in a certain respect throughout the entire fourth period of the post-Atlantean era. Only those people who had preserved the old constitution of the soul like hereditary material were still able to absorb the spiritual world directly into their consciousness. But these people are latecomers from an older time. The way they perceived things was no longer suitable for the new age. This is because the laws of development mean that an old soul ability loses its full significance when new abilities appear. Human life then adapts to these new abilities. And it can no longer do anything with the old ones. However, there were also people who, in a very conscious way, began to develop other higher powers of understanding and feeling in addition to the ones they had acquired, which made it possible for them to penetrate the spiritual world again. They had to begin to do this in a different way than the disciples of the old initiates. They did not yet have to take into account the soul abilities that had only developed in the fourth period. In the fourth period the first beginnings of the kind of spiritual training described in this book as the present one began. But at that time it was only in its infancy; it could only experience its actual development in the fifth period (since the twelfth, thirteenth, and especially the fifteenth century). People who sought to ascend to the supersensible beings in this way were able to experience something of the higher realms of existence through their own imagination, inspiration and intuition. Those people who remained with the developed faculties of understanding and feeling could only learn of what the older clairvoyance knew through tradition, which was passed on from generation to generation orally or in writing.

[ 4 ] Even those who were born later, if they did not rise into the supernatural worlds, could only know something of the essence of the Christ event through such tradition. However, there were also those initiates who still had the natural perceptive faculties for the supersensible world and yet, through their development, rose to a higher world, even though they did not take into account the new powers of intellect and mind. Through them a transition was made from the old mode of initiation to the new. Such personalities continued to exist in the following periods. This is precisely the essence of the fourth period, that through the seclusion of the soul from direct contact with the soul-spiritual world, man was strengthened and invigorated in the powers of understanding and feeling. The souls who embodied themselves at that time in such a way that they had developed intellectual and emotional powers to a high degree, then brought the result of this development over into their embodiments in the fifth period. As a substitute for this seclusion there were then the mighty traditions of the ancient wisdoms, but especially of the Christ event, which through the power of their content gave the souls a trusting knowledge of the higher worlds. But there were always people who developed the higher powers of knowledge in addition to the faculties of understanding and feeling. It was up to them to experience the facts of the higher world and in particular the mystery of the Christ event through direct supersensible knowledge. From them, as much flowed into the souls of other people as was comprehensible and good for these souls. The first spread of Christianity was to take place at a time when the supersensible powers of knowledge were not developed in a large part of humanity. That is why the power of tradition was so powerful at that time. It took the strongest power to lead people to trust in the supersensible world who could not see into this world themselves. There were almost always (apart from a brief exceptional period in the thirteenth century) people who were able to rise to the higher worlds through imagination, inspiration and intuition. These people are the post-Christian successors of the ancient initiates, the leaders and members of the Mystery Knowledge. They had the task of recognizing through their own abilities that which they had been able to grasp through the old mystery knowledge; and to this they had to add the knowledge of the nature of the Christ event.

[ 5 ] So there arose in these new initiates a knowledge which embraced all that was the object of the old initiation; but at the center of this knowledge shone the higher knowledge of the mysteries of the Christ-event. Such knowledge could only flow into the general life to a small extent, while the human souls were to consolidate their intellectual and emotional faculties in the fourth period. It was therefore a very "hidden knowledge" in this period. Then came the new period, which can be described as the fifth. Its essence lies in the fact that the development of the intellectual faculties progressed and unfolded to a tremendous degree and will unfold into the future via the present. Slowly it prepared itself from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries onwards, to become faster and faster in its progress from the sixteenth century up to the present time. Under these influences, the period of development of the fifth period became one in which the cultivation of the intellectual powers became more and more important, whereas the trusting knowledge of former times, the traditional knowledge, lost more and more of its power over the human soul. However, what can be called an ever-increasing flow of the insights of modern supersensible consciousness into human souls also developed during this time. The "hidden knowledge" flowed, albeit quite imperceptibly at first, into the perceptions of the people of this period. It is only natural that, right up to the present day, the powers of the intellect are opposed to this knowledge. However, what is to happen will happen, despite all temporary rejection. One can call the "hidden knowledge", which seizes and will increasingly seize humanity from this side, the knowledge of the "Grail" according to a symbol. Whoever learns to understand the deeper meaning of this symbol, as it is given in stories and legends, will find that it meaningfully illustrates the essence of what has been called above the knowledge of the new initiation, with the mystery of Christ at its center. The modern initiates can therefore also be called the "initiates of the Grail". The path into the supersensible worlds, which has been described in the first stages of this book, leads to the "Science of the Grail". This knowledge has the peculiarity that one can only investigate its facts if one acquires the means to do so, as they have been characterized in this book. Once they have been researched, however, they can be understood precisely through the soul forces that have developed in the fifth period. Indeed, it will become increasingly apparent that these forces will be satisfied to an ever greater degree by these insights. We are now living in a time in which these realizations are to be absorbed more abundantly into the general consciousness than was previously the case. And this book wishes to give its messages from this point of view. To the extent that the development of humanity absorbs the knowledge of the Grail, the impulse given by the Christ-event can become more and more significant. The outer side of Christian development will be followed more and more by the inner side. What can be recognized through imagination, inspiration and intuition about the higher worlds in connection with the mystery of Christ will increasingly permeate people's imaginative, emotional and volitional life. The "hidden knowledge of the Grail" will be revealed; as an inner force, it will increasingly permeate people's expressions of life.

[ 6 ] Throughout the fifth period the knowledge of the supersensible worlds will flow into human consciousness; and when the sixth will begin, mankind may have regained on a higher level that which it possessed in a still dim kind of non-sensuous vision in an earlier period. But the new possession will have a completely different form than the old one. What the soul knew of higher worlds in ancient times was not imbued in it by its own power of understanding and feeling. It knew it as an intuition. In the future it will not merely have intuitions, but will comprehend them and feel them as that which is the essence of its own being. When a realization comes to it about this or that being or thing, the intellect will also find this realization justified by its own being; when another realization about a moral commandment, about human conduct, will assert itself, the soul will say to itself: My feeling is only justified before itself if I also carry out what lies in the sense of this realization. Such a constitution of the soul should be developed in a sufficiently large number of people in the sixth period. In a certain way, the fifth period repeats what the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean, brought to the development of mankind. At that time the soul still perceived certain facts of the supersensible world. The perception of these was just then on the wane. For the powers of the intellect were preparing themselves for their development; and these were at first to exclude man from the higher world. In the fifth period the supersensible facts, which were seen in dim consciousness in the third, become apparent again, but now permeated with man's powers of intellect and personal feeling. They are also imbued with that which can come to the soul through the knowledge of the mystery of Christ. They therefore take on a completely different form than they once had. Whereas in ancient times the impressions from the supersensible worlds were felt as forces which drove man from a spiritual outer world in which he was not present, through the development of more recent times these impressions will be felt as those of a world into which man grows, in which he is more and more present. No one should believe that the repetition of the Egyptian-Chaldean culture can take place in such a way that the soul simply absorbs what was then present and has been handed down from that time. The correctly understood Christ impulse has the effect that the human soul which has absorbed it feels itself to be a member of a spiritual world and recognizes and behaves as such, outside of which it previously stood. While in such a way in the fifth period the third revives again in order to permeate itself with that in the human souls which the fourth has brought as a completely new thing, a similar thing will be the case with the sixth in relation to the second and with the seventh in relation to the first, the old Indian. All the wonderful wisdom of ancient Indianism, which the great teachers of that time were able to proclaim, will be able to be there again in the seventh period as the truth of life of the human souls.

[ 7 ] Now the changes in the things of the earth, which lie outside man, take place in a way that is in a certain relationship to mankind's own development. After the end of the seventh period, the earth will be afflicted by an upheaval which can be compared to that which happened between the Atlantean and the post-Atlantean period. And the subsequently transformed states of the earth will again develop further in seven periods of time. At a higher level, the human souls who will then incarnate will experience the communion with a higher world that the Atlanteans experienced at a lower level. However, only those human beings who have embodied such souls in themselves, as they can become through the influences of the Greco-Latin, the subsequent fifth, sixth and seventh periods of post-Atlantean development, will show themselves to be equal to the newly formed conditions of the earth. The interior of such souls will correspond to what the earth has become by then. The other souls will then have to stay behind, whereas before it would have been their choice to create the conditions to come along. Those souls will be ready for the corresponding conditions after the next great upheaval who will have created for themselves the possibility of penetrating the supersensible knowledge with the powers of understanding and feeling during the transition from the fifth to the sixth post-Atlantean period. The fifth and sixth periods are to a certain extent the decisive ones. In the seventh, the souls who have reached the goal of the sixth will develop accordingly, but the others will find little opportunity to make up for what they have missed under the changed conditions of their environment. Only in a later future will conditions arise again that allow this. This is how development progresses from period to period. Supersensible knowledge not only observes those changes in the future in which the earth alone is involved, but also those which take place in interaction with the celestial bodies in its surroundings. There will come a time when the development of the earth and humanity will have progressed so far that the forces and beings which had to detach themselves from the earth during the Lemurian period in order to make the further progress of the earth beings possible will be able to unite with the earth again. The moon will then reconnect with the earth. This will happen because a sufficiently large number of human souls will then have so much inner strength that they will make these lunar forces fruitful for further development. This will be at a time when, in addition to the high development that a corresponding number of human souls will have achieved, there will be another that has taken the direction of evil. The souls left behind will have accumulated so much error, ugliness and evil in their karma that they will initially form a special union of the wicked and the erring, which will strive sharply against the good community of people.

[ 8 ] Through its development, good humanity will acquire the use of the lunar forces and thereby also transform the evil part in such a way that it can go along with the further development as a special earth realm. Through this work of good humanity, the earth, then united with the moon, will be able to be reunited with the sun (also with the other planets) after a certain period of development. And after an intermediate state, which is like a stay in a higher world, the earth will transform itself into the Jupiter state. Within this state there will not be what is now called the mineral kingdom; the forces of this mineral kingdom will have been transformed into vegetable ones. The plant kingdom, however, which will have a completely new form compared to the present one, will appear as the lowest of the kingdoms during the Jupiter state. Higher up is the animal kingdom, which has also been transformed; then comes a human kingdom, which proves to be the offspring of the evil community that arose on earth. And then the descendants of the good earth-human community, as a human kingdom on a higher level. A large part of the work of this latter human kingdom consists of refining the souls that have fallen into the evil community so that they can still find access to the actual human kingdom. The state of Venus will be such that the plant kingdom will also have disappeared; the lowest kingdom will be the animal kingdom, transformed once again; three human kingdoms of different degrees of perfection will be found, going upwards.

[ 9 ] During this Venusian state the earth remains connected with the sun; the development during the Jupiter period, however, proceeds in such a way that at a certain moment the sun once again detaches itself from Jupiter and the latter receives its influence from outside. Then the Sun and Jupiter join again, and the transformation gradually passes over into the Venusian state. During this a special world body splits out of Venus, which contains all the beings that have resisted development, as it were an "incorrigible moon", which now approaches a development with a character for which an expression is not possible, because it is too dissimilar to anything that man can experience on earth. Developed humanity, however, is progressing in a completely spiritualized existence towards volcanic development, the description of which lies outside the scope of this book.

[ 10 ] You see that from the "knowledge of the Grail" arises the highest ideal of human development, which is conceivable for man the spiritualization which man attains through his own work For this spiritualization ultimately appears as a result of the harmony which he establishes in the fifth and sixth period of the present development between the acquired powers of understanding and feeling and the knowledge of the supersensible worlds. What he works out within his soul is ultimately to become the outer world itself. Man's spirit rises to the powerful impressions of his outer world and first senses, then recognizes spiritual entities behind these impressions; man's heart feels the infinite sublimity of this spiritual. But man can also recognize that the intellectual, emotional and character experiences of his inner being are the germs of the spiritual world to come.

[ 11 ] Those who think that human freedom is incompatible with the foreknowledge and predetermination of the future organization of things should consider that man's free action in the future depends just as little on how the predetermined things will be as this freedom depends on the fact that he intends to live after a year in a house whose plan he is currently determining. He will be free to the extent that he can be free according to his inner being, precisely in the house he has built for himself; and he will be as free on Jupiter and Venus as corresponds to his inner being, precisely within the conditions that will arise there. Freedom will not depend on what is predetermined by the preceding conditions, but on what the soul has made of itself.

[ 12 ] The earthly state contains that which has developed within the preceding states of Saturn, Sun and Moon. The earth person finds "wisdom" in the processes that take place around him. This wisdom is within as the result of what had happened before. The earth is the descendant of the 'old moon'. And this formed itself into the 'cosmos of wisdom' with what belonged to it. The earth is now the beginning of a development through which a new force is inserted into this wisdom. It makes the human being feel like an independent member of a spiritual world. This stems from the fact that his "I" is formed in him by the "spirits of form" within earth time in the same way as his physical body was formed on Saturn by the "spirits of will", his life body was formed on the sun by the "spirits of wisdom", and his astral body was formed on the moon by the "spirits of movement". Through the interaction of the "spirits of will, wisdom and movement", what is revealed as wisdom comes into being. Through the work of these three classes of spirits, earth beings and earth processes can harmonize in wisdom with the other beings of their world. Through the "spirits of form" man receives his independent "I". This will now in the future harmonize with the beings of the earth, Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan through the power that is inserted through the earth state of wisdom. This is the power of love. This power of love must begin in the human being of the earth. And the "cosmos of wisdom" develops into a "cosmos of love". Love is to emerge from everything that the "I" can develop within itself. In his revelation, the high solar being, which could be characterized in the description of the development of Christ, presents itself as the comprehensive "model of love". The seed of love is thus sunk into the innermost core of the human being. And from there it is to flow into the entire development. Just as the previously formed wisdom reveals itself in the forces of the sensual outer world of the earth, in the present "forces of nature", so in the future love itself will reveal itself in all phenomena as a new force of nature. This is the secret of all development into the future: that the realization that everything man accomplishes out of the true understanding of development is a seed that must ripen as love. And as much is created as the power of love, so much creative work is done for the future. In what will have become of love will lie the strong forces that lead to the final result of spiritualization described above. And as much spiritual knowledge flows into the development of humanity and the earth, so many viable seeds for the future will be present. Spiritual knowledge transforms itself into love through what it is. The whole process which has been described, from the Greco-Latin period through the present time, shows how this transformation is to take place and what the beginning of the development into the future is made for. What has prepared itself as wisdom through Saturn, Sun and Moon works in the physical, etheric, astral body of man; and it presents itself as the "wisdom of the world"; but in the "I" it internalizes itself. The "wisdom of the outer world" becomes, from the earthly state onwards, inner wisdom in the human being. And when it is internalized there, it becomes the seed of love. Wisdom is the precondition of love; love is the result of wisdom reborn in the "I".

[ 13 ] Anyone who might be misled by the preceding remarks into thinking that the development described has a fatalistic character has misunderstood it. Anyone who believed that in such a development a certain number of people were condemned to belong to the realm of "evil humanity" did not see how the mutual relationship between the sensual and the spiritual is shaped in this development. Both, the sensual and the spiritual, form separate currents of development within certain limits. The forces inherent in the sensual current give rise to the forms of "evil humanity". There will only be a necessity for a human soul to embody itself in such a form if this human soul itself has created the conditions for this. It could also be the case that the forms created out of the forces of the sensible would not find any human souls from the earlier time because these would be too good for such bodies. Then these forms would have to be animated from the universe other than by earlier human souls. The characterized forms will only be animated by human souls if they have prepared themselves for such an embodiment. In this field, supersensible knowledge has to say what it sees. This is that in the future indicated there will be two human kingdoms, one good and one evil; but it does not have to infer intellectually from the state of the present human souls to a future one that will occur as if by natural necessity. The development of human forms and the development of soul destinies must seek supersensible knowledge on two quite separate paths; and to confuse the two in the world view would be a remnant of materialistic sentiment which, if it existed, would project into the science of the supersensible in an alarming way.