Universe, Earth and Man
GA 105
13 Aug 1908, Stuttgart
Lecture IX
Our task today is to comprehend the spiritual horizon within which man stands by investigating his origin. We have seen that in the course of his development throughout the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs he has gradually acquired his present form; we will now extend our study of this second epoch, the Atlantean, on into our own age so far as is necessary to an understanding of our subject.
We know that previous to the middle of the Atlantean epoch the conditions of the consciousness of man were quite different to what they are today. While in his physical body during the day he then saw objects by no means with the same sharp outlines he does now, everything was more or less blurred; and when at night he left his physical body he did not sink into dreamless sleep, but was able to perceive Spiritual Beings in a spiritual world.
We will now deal further with the fact that these beings (who also sought embodiment in Atlantean bodies) entered into a certain companionship with man, but will only remind ourselves that at that time man had a conviction, based on direct experience, that above the human kingdom to which he himself belonged there were other kingdoms—that of the Angels and of the Archangels; and that he learned to recognize these higher beings face to face, just as we now learn to recognize each other in the physical world. Then came the time when objective day consciousness became ever clearer and clearer, and, on the other hand, when dimness and darkness enveloped man at night. This was the period when the first rudimentary germs of ego or “I am” were laid down in man. By learning to perceive the objects around him he at the same time gained that form of self-consciousness it was intended he should develop.
We must conceive of everything in the world as graded; that just as there are all possible grades of beings in the animal and human kingdoms so also there are many different grades among the beings above man. Some beings in the kingdom of the Angels are very close to man, and others are at a higher stage; many grades are met with when we direct our gaze to the higher worlds. We have in the first place to understand clearly that at the time when man rose at night through dim clairvoyant consciousness into higher worlds these beings (to put it trivially) gained something from man through their intercourse with him; their own being was enriched. For though these beings stood above man they were still inwardly connected with him; they inspired him and influenced his imaginative consciousness, which was, however, dim. So that we must think of man in that ancient period as being in such a condition that when he withdrew from his physical and etheric bodies it was as if a higher being, or, in a wider sense, a whole host of higher beings, took possession of him. Fundamentally this is also the case today, only man is not aware of it, whereas at that time he was, though in a dim clairvoyant way. It has already been explained in other lectures that sleep is by no means unnecessary for man; it serves a very great purpose.
During the day man is continually making use of his physical and etheric bodies. The life we lead from morning till evening exhausts these bodies, and what we feel as fatigue is nothing more than the expression of the fact that indirectly through the astral body all kinds of perceptions have been taking place in us as well as impulses of joy, of sorrow, and of pain; all these have been playing through us. This wears out our physical and etheric bodies, and in the evening we are tired because all day long we have been destroying them.
When at night we leave these bodies on the bed the astral body and ego are not inactive; all night long they send their forces into the physical and etheric bodies; they work at repairing the disorganized and exhausted forces of these bodies; this they could not do if, on their withdrawal, they were not taken up into a higher kingdom. Above the human kingdom a spiritual kingdom is outspread, the kingdom of the Angels, Archangels, and other beings. It is as if ozone streamed from the Spiritual Beings that then surround us, and from whom we are separated during the day, because with our perceptions we are enclosed within the shell of our bodies. At night we plunge into this spiritual ozone; from it our astral body absorbs forces which it then pours into the physical and etheric bodies to repair them. Today man is unconscious of this, but at the time when he still possessed dim clairvoyant consciousness he saw how his astral body and ego left the other members and was absorbed into the divine spiritual world.
Things seen in one way in the physical world have a very different appearance above. One might even say that the Gods profit by participating thus in humanity. In order rightly to understand the relationship of man to the universe we must try to form a conception, which is not so easy, but is, however, necessary, if we are to understand his true position. We have said that the earth is the planet of love, that love will be first rightly developed upon the earth. To put it crudely, it will be bred here, and through their participating in mankind the Gods will learn to know love, though in another sense it is they who bestow it. It is difficult to picture this.
It is entirely possible that one being may impart a gift to another, and only come to know his gift through the other. Picture to yourselves an exceedingly rich person who has never known anything but riches, nor ever experienced the deep satisfaction of soul which results from well-doing. Picture this person now as doing something good; he gives to the poor. The gift calls forth great thankfulness in the soul of the needy individual; this feeling of gratitude is at the same time a gift; it would never have existed if the rich person had not first given. He is the originator of the feeling of gratitude, although he does not himself feel it, and is only acquainted with it through its reflection, which streams back to him from the person in whom he roused it. It is approximately in this way that the gift of love is imparted to man by the Gods. They have progressed so far that they are able to kindle love in man so that he feels it, but they only learn to know it as a reality through man. From their heights the Gods reach down into the ozone of humanity and feel the warmth of love. We know that the Gods lack something when man does not live in love. The more human love there is on earth the more food for the Gods there is in heaven; the less love there is, the more the Gods hunger.
The sacrifice of man to the Gods is nothing else than the love which streams up to them, which man has produced. It is not difficult to picture that in ancient times, when man was still conscious of the Divine, this reciprocity—this mutual giving, from man and from the Gods—was quite different to what it became later. Indeed, there were some among divine Spiritual Beings who, because man could no longer rise by means of his dim clairvoyant consciousness, could no longer descend, or reach the sphere of humanity. Throughout the Atlantean epoch man lived with numerous divine beings, and the less capable he became of looking up to the Gods the less could a certain category of divine beings experience all they had formerly been able to experience through man. When Atlantis came to an end there were among the Atlantean gods some who suffered hunger, if we may so express it, because they could no longer find the way to man.
We must now picture the further development of man from this standpoint. We know that there was a realm in the neighbourhood of Ireland where dwelt the most advanced beings of the Atlantean epoch, those who were best prepared to pass through an advanced development. These now journeyed from the West to the East, populating Europe, where some remained at a particular stage of evolution, while others went further. The most advanced passed on to the neighbourhood of Central Asia, others into Africa. There were already in these parts some people left over from the older Lemurian and Atlantean epochs; these now mixed in diverse ways, and from them arose the people whom the Greeks represent in many artistic forms as the Satyr, the Hermes, and the Zeus types.
We must picture to ourselves that the condition of human consciousness changed from this time more and more. Those who had come over from Atlantis still possessed a remnant of ancient clairvoyant consciousness, but this continually decreased. At the time of the Atlantean catastrophe there were some even among those who had journeyed towards Asia, Europe, and Africa who had already lost every trace of clairvoyance, and, again, others who still had some remnants of it.
Everywhere under certain conditions there were some who (between sleeping and waking, for example) were able to obtain a clear view into the spiritual worlds. The spiritual being known as Wotan, for instance, was a “personality” well known to the Atlanteans; we might say that all the ancient Atlanteans were more or less in close touch with him, as some men today come in touch with a monarch, but the conscious connection was gradually lost. Among the peoples of Europe, especially the ancient Germans, there were many who in an intermediate condition between sleeping and waking could enter into relationship with Wotan, who actually existed in the spiritual world; but owing to the advance in evolution he was limited and could no longer make himself so generally known as before. There were people in Asia also who knew him, and this knowledge continued on into later times to which even history refers, a time when there was an original natural clairvoyance, and man could speak of the Gods from his own experience.
We must keep before us the fact that man was descending more and more into the material world; and because of this the Gods were less and less able to maintain their connection with him; many were able only to have companionship with certain outstanding beings. Certain of the Gods were unable to descend to ordinary humanity, but could only get in touch with personalities who rose to meet them, who developed themselves up to them. The varied dispositions of men, and the remnants of old clairvoyance, as well as the principle of initiation, mingled in a strange way, and this intermingling was preserved in the consciousness of the Germanic people.
During the Atlantean epoch men knew that during sleep, when outside the physical and etheric bodies, they rose into the kingdom of the Gods, the Gods were known to them, and they knew they would meet them there again. It was felt as a kind of punishment when, after death, man was for a time unable to behold the Gods and to be received into their company; when, after death, he had to pass through a period of probation owing to his having become too much entangled in material existence.
Among those who were in a position to value material life less than non-material life the conviction grew that they were not bound to the material world, but that immediately after death they could enter the kingdom of the spirit, which was well known to them. The opinion was held by the various peoples inhabiting Europe that those men who fought bravely and met death on the field of battle, who valued the honours of war more highly than material honours, were not dependent on material existence. They were convinced that in such a case the hero met with some deity or other immediately after death. Those who did not die on the battlefield, who had not learnt to value spiritual possessions more than material life, were said to have died ignobly, and not to be mature enough to be taken immediately into the realm of the spirit, but would first have to enter a kingdom in which they would have to undergo certain trials.
This idea is expressed in the meeting with the Valkyre, and is connected with an ancient clairvoyant memory. It was thought rightly that the man who met death on the field of battle was taken up by the Valkyre, and it is quite in harmony with such an idea that in its further development it should have been pictured in ancient Europe as symbolic of initiation. Among other peoples other ideas had developed, but in Europe personal bravery and personal excellence were considered to be most valuable.
It was always understood, and rightly so, that as regards initiation man might experience even during life that which normally he only experienced after death, namely, direct communication with the spiritual world. As the warrior experienced his first meeting with the Valkyre upon the battlefield, it was obvious that those who sought initiation had to experience this in physical life. In one part of Europe Siegfried was looked on as the last of the heroes of initiation. This fact is preserved in the legend of Siegfried, which tells how the hero united himself with the Valkyre during life, just as dying warriors did upon the battlefield.
Let us now try to enter into the mentality of those who migrated from the West towards the East. They had risen in a certain way up to the point where they were fitted to enter upon a further development. They had not become ossified, and had within them the germs of a more perfect development, but they had retained a comparatively strong clairvoyant capacity. Among all the people who had gone forth from Atlantis the Europeans were most gifted with clairvoyance; it was less strong among those who peopled Africa. Those who had emigrated earlier into Asia, and who were among the most advanced, came upon a still older people who were in possession of a still older clairvoyance, so that there was much clairvoyance in those parts.
Then there was a certain small colony consisting of the most advanced men of the Atlantean epoch who had settled near the Gobi desert. What kind of people were these, and what do we mean when we say they were the “most advanced?” It means those least able to see into the spiritual world, for advancement consisted in their having proceeded from the spiritual world and having entered into the physical world. They were the people who felt constrained to say: “Formerly we had connection with the spiritual world, but we have it no longer.” This loss filled their hearts with sorrow; they longed for the spiritual world from which they had come and which they valued more than that in which they now dwelt.
Conditions varied among the different European populations. Under certain conditions many could still see into the spiritual worlds. When the Mysteries still existed in Europe, and Initiates—who through occult development could rise in full consciousness to the spiritual world—spoke of those worlds and of the beings dwelling there, or of the varied parts men had to play after death; when the initiates brought all this in mighty pictures before the people by means of myth and legend, they found some who understood them, for some still had vision. The peculiar conditions of life and of environment in ancient Europe caused even uninitiated persons to experience the spiritual world. Though they could not come in contact with the higher Gods they believed in the spiritual worlds and trusted in them. These worlds were real to them, hence they felt their humanity in a quite different way from other peoples. Let us try to enter into the feelings of these ancient Europeans. They said: “I am indeed connected with the Gods.” Through consciousness of this a strong sense of personality developed in them, a special sense of the divine worth of the human personality, and, above all, a strong sense of freedom. We must picture this state of feeling vividly, for it was this consciousness of the personality which the people of Europe took with them when they went south and peopled the Grecian and Italian peninsulas. We can note stragglers from those who were possessed of this feeling, particularly among the ancient Etruscans. Even in their art we can observe this strong sense of freedom, for it had a spiritual foundation. Before the rise of the true Roman kingdom there was an Etruscan population in the Italian peninsula which had a high degree of freedom in its system of government; on one hand it was somewhat hierarchical, and, on the other, free in the highest sense. Each town made provision for its own freedom, and an ancient Etruscan would have felt any kind of confederacy, in our sense of the word, as unbearable. Everything which passed southwards in the peninsula as a sense of freedom, or a feeling for personality, sprang from the causes we have mentioned.
Those other people who had gone the farthest into Asia included a small company from whom the divine spiritual world had withdrawn the most. In its place they had acquired something else, something that had been saved from the world, which had withdrawn into profoundest darkness—this was the ego, or the “I am.” They felt that what was preserved within them as the “I am” was the eternal core of their being, and that it had sprung from the spiritual world; they felt all the forms they had previously seen were like a sacred memory, and that their strength depended upon this firm core which remained within them. As yet they did not perceive the ego in its complete form; this only came later, but those who were the most advanced, who had descended most deeply, developed a certain tendency which they might have expressed as follows: What we have to treasure above all else is the consciousness of our divinity, consciousness of that in which is to be found the deepest memories of our soul. Even if this soul has forgotten the divine beings which once it knew, we can find the way back to them by looking within our own being—by being conscious of our ego. In short, the consciousness of a formless God was now evolved, a God who does not appear in outward form, but who must be sought within man's innermost being. This conception, which is a very old one, was transformed in the course of man's further development into the commandment: Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image or likeness of thy God.
In primeval ages man experienced God by means of an image. Now the image had withdrawn into the invisible world, and man strove with all his strength to bring forth a conception of God from out his own ego. There, where God is formless, man strove to form an idea of Him and to realize His power. This was not immediately possible; during the first post-Atlantean civilization the memory of what had been lost was still too vivid. Man felt in his soul “The door is shut,” and the longing to enter again into the spiritual world was too strong. Hence in the first age of civilization the people were filled with longing for the hidden world of the spirit; they looked with great reverence up to the Initiates and besought them to allow them to become partakers of this lost world. The first great age of post-Atlantean culture was founded under the influence of Initiates by means of colonies. This was the wonderful awe-inspiring pre-Vedic culture, the last remnants of which are to be found in the Vedas; in it the longing for the spiritual world was so great that men strove by artificial means to regain contact with the Spirits and Gods which they had lost. The longing to fly from the physical world into which they had entered was overwhelmingly strong; we find this feeling in the souls of those who were instructed by the Initiates—the Holy Rishis.
We see the feeling developed in them which they might have expressed as follows: “The world of the physical plane into which we have now entered, which we see spread out around us, is merely illusion; it is worthless; it is Maya; but the world lying behind this illusory physical plane is valuable.” Thus a feeling of the worthlessness of the physical plane was developed, a feeling of the need to flee from it in order to attain that which was spiritual. A feeling evolved which was the basis of this ancient civilization, that man must lose his strong sense of personality if he was to be conscious of his divine origin. He strove for complete absorption in divinity, with extinction of his personality; this was of more value to him than life within that personality. We must try to understand the mood of this ancient civilization, we shall then understand this turning away from all that was material, and how, if man desired to seek the divine he had to free himself from the bonds of sense and get away from all illusion, from Maya.
Such was the nature of the first post-Atlantean age; but the mission of the whole epoch is that man should make the surroundings in which he lives more and more his own, that he should master them more and more.
In the Persian, that is, the pre-Zarathustra, civilization we see the first phase of the conquest of the external world. The ancient Persians (we refer here to the prehistoric Persians) had already a different consciousness from that of the ancient Indians; they regarded the physical plane as something real. It no longer appeared strange to them; they said: “We can bring spirit into the physical plane and can cultivate it here.” They paid attention to the physical plane; they did not study it as yet, but they considered it; the ancient Persians still perceived a hostile element in their surroundings, but thought that the enemy could be overcome. The Persian made a friend and companion of the God Ormuzd in order that he might redeem matter. He worked into the physical world gradually; he began to perceive that this is not only Maya, not merely soulless appearance, but a reality which must be taken into account.
In the great migration towards the East there was another group which moved more towards Asia Minor and Africa, where the Chaldean and Egyptian civilizations were founded. Through them a further step forward was made in the conquest of the physical plane. Here the condition of the people was such that they no longer regarded what is of the senses as merely hostile or illusory. When they looked up to the stars they said: “Those stars are not Maya, they are not mere appearances!” They thought much about the stars, and studied how one star approached another and what changes took place in the constellations. They felt the stars were an outward expression of the ruling Gods; they were a script which the Gods had written what they saw was not merely appearance but a revelation of the Gods.
A further advance had been made; sensible matter was now considered as an expression of Divinity; man began to look for wisdom in things of sense. In the Egyptian world man's gaze was turned from the heavens and directed to the earth; geometry was studied so that the earth might be measured. That to which the spirit could attain was thus joined to substance perceived by the senses—an essential advance in evolution. Thus, step by step, evolution progressed.
Now, there was formed within the third age of civilization a small company which separated off in a certain way and absorbed all that could be gained from ancient tradition as well as from recent knowledge. This small company, whose Initiates had preserved the ancient wisdom and the earlier companionship with the Gods, knew how to impart what they had gained as experience from the spiritual world, and they had also absorbed the wisdom of the Chaldeans—the writings of the Gods in space—as well as the wisdom of Egypt, which expressed the union of spirit with that which is physical. This group of people, who, in a certain sense, may be called the “chosen people,” had to make preparation for the greatest period in the world's history; they are the people of the Old Testament, who in their Testament possessed the greatest and most significant document regarding long-past events and also those that were to come. It is not only an error in learning, but a farce, when some historical work is thought even to approach the Old Testament in value; for it portrays in mighty pictures man's descent from divine heights, and shows at the same time how historical experiences are connected with cosmic events. All this is contained in the Old Testament, and, above all, its contents correspond exactly with the events of evolution.
We have now seen how the rudimentary germ of the human ego was prepared step by step in earthly evolution. We have seen that this rudimentary germ would never have been able to evolve if the sun, and afterwards the moon, had not separated from the earth. It was only possible for it to develop through man's horizon with regard to the spiritual world being gradually limited and then closed.
Let us consider how this rudimentary germ developed. What had man gradually learnt during the earth's development? We must first look back to those ancient times when he was as yet unable to see physically, when he lived in the spiritual world; then came the time when the external objects of the physical world appeared to him as if blurred, when he could still see in the spiritual world as well. Who was it prepared man so that in later times, when he was to behold the sun clearly, he should be ready for this change? It was the God we call Jehovah who brought man to full maturity; He who separated Himself from the Elohim in order, from the moon, to prepare for the most important moment in the earth's evolution. While man was still unable to see the outer world Jehovah instilled ego-consciousness into Him. It was He who in the time of the old dim clairvoyant consciousness entered into man at initiation, and it was He who appeared to man in dreams and prepared him slowly to receive the “I“ which he could obtain fully only through the coming of Christ.
Christ has not only come once, but only once in personal form; His last coming was in Jesus Christ. In ancient times He worked also through the Prophets. Christ Himself indicates this in the Gospel of John, where He says that those who did not believe Moses and the Prophets would not believe Him either, for Moses and the Prophets spoke of Him, not indeed as already on earth, but as one whom they foretold. In this sense Christ has a certain story in earthly evolution. If we go back to the ancient Mysteries we find everywhere the story of Christ and His descent. Let us for a few minutes consider the European Mysteries. We find in all of them a certain tragic feature. If one transports oneself into these ancient Mysteries one always finds that the teachers told their pupils: “You may raise yourselves to divine heights, and receive a high degree of initiation, but there is something you cannot yet know fully, something for which you must wait and which we can only indicate: this is the coming of Christ.”
They always spoke of Christ in the northern Mysteries as “He who would come”; they knew Him everywhere, but not as One already on the earth. The Initiates in Asia and Egypt also knew Him as the approaching Christ. “One day,” they said, “He will appear.” They knew also that the olden Mysteries could not lead men to the highest stage of development. This idea has been preserved symbolically, only too much stress must not be laid on such things; they must be accepted generally, partly as truth and partly as allegory, and not be outlined too sharply. Some echo of this tragic feature regarding the ancient Gods and the waiting for the Christ has survived. The glory of the old Gods was to disappear before the glory of Christ.
This is found even in the most recent legends of the Teutonic gods, where something remarkable is ascribed to Siegfried—he was invulnerable and had the strength of an Initiate according to the European Mysteries; he was, however, vulnerable in one spot. He was wounded in this spot, and thus met his death. In what place was he vulnerable? The place on which later the cross was laid on Him for Whom they were looking with such expectation. The place where Siegfried was vulnerable was covered by the cross in the journey to Golgotha. This legend contains a last memory of that tragic feature which passes through all the ancient European Mysteries. But in those other Mysteries into which Moses was initiated, from which the Old Testament has proceeded, and which Moses implanted in his people so far as seemed possible to him, this strange feature in human evolution is often referred to. It is more than a mere picture; there is something which imparts deep reality to it, which we might illustrate as follows. Let us think of a man as regards his astral body, his ego, his etheric and physical bodies; let us think of these four principles as shone upon by the sun.
Through Christ's coming to the earth man has become able to absorb both the physical and spiritual forces of the sun. Previously this was different. Then, during sleep, when at night the astral body and ego were outside the physical body and etheric body, the direct sunlight did not fall upon man, only sunlight that was reflected from the moon. Man absorbed this reflected light, not the direct sunlight. This is exactly the same (in an external, symbolic, yet true form) as in the case of the Christ, Who lived as the spiritual part of the sunlight, and with Jehovah, who reflected the true Christ-light until such time as men were sufficiently mature to receive it direct. Jehovah sent the Christ down to humanity as from a mirror.
Men spoke of Him when they spoke of Jehovah. Hence Jehovah says to Moses: “Say to thy people, I am the ‘I AM.”’ This was the name later applied to the Christ. He would not as yet turn His own countenance to men. Jehovah prepared humanity; he sent them the image of Christ before Christ Himself descended, for man had to learn to comprehend the complete descent of Christ into the physical world with His “I am” in the depths of his own being. Therefore this people, which had been prepared in the truest sense for the coming of Christ, held most firmly to the conception of a formless God. They had to attain to a new conception of God, not merely to remember an old form. This people with its Jehovah-religion became in fact those who prepared for the coming of the Christ.
Now, we must clearly understand that everything that has to be specially striven for in the world must proceed from strong impulses; hence the idea of the power of the formless God spread through all the Old Testament; an entirely abstract God, condensed within the centre of a mere I-principle, stands at the centre of the religion of the Old Testament—an image-less I-God.
How could this God first obtain a form that could be comprehended by a people living on the physical plane which they had to conquer? Through a wise dispensation something remarkable originated in Southern Europe.
Emigrations had taken place from Asia and Africa; these mingled with other streams coming from the North. Those that came from the East brought the firm conviction of the worthlessness of Maya, of the need to change the material kingdom of men into a kingdom of the spirit; these mingled with others who had gained a stronger feeling of personality. Those with the greatest spiritual force, who had remained longest behind in the emigration from West to East, met in Asia Minor and in the Grecian and Italian peninsulas; here the fourth age of civilization was built up, and the conquest of the physical world advanced another stage.
The mission of the third age, the Egypto-Chaldean, had been to perceive and comprehend the profundities of God; from it had to spring a people who were able to seek God in an abstract way, as a Spiritual Being with the least content of anything sensely. Meanwhile in Southern Europe another group was being formed. Certain men had come down from the north with their strong northern consciousness of personality in them; a union was formed between matter and the human soul. The result of this we see and admire in the art of Greece, in the temples of Greece, and in the tragedies of Greece, in which man began to represent his own destiny. In these tragedies he secreted his own spirit in matter, incorporating it with external objects. One might say that we have here a marriage between what is spiritual and what is physical, wherein each has an equal share. In all that the Greeks produced spirit and matter had an equal share, and this was also the case in a certain sense with the Romans; they knew that spirit dwelt in them, that spirit could become personality in them.
It was only at this stage of human evolution that that which had been foretold could assume actual form upon the physical plane. Christ could only descend to the physical plane when man had conquered it. A Christ would not have been possible in the old civilizations, when the physical plane was only seen as Maya, and a longing for the past filled the souls of men. At the time the union occurred which we have seen represented in Greek art man had turned more and more to the physical plane; this was expressed in the strong consciousness of the Roman citizen; it was also the time when the Christ-principle was able to appear in the flesh.
We have to consider all those who worked previously to the coming of Christ as being indeed acquainted with Him, but we must look on them as Prophets who could only foretell; they beheld in the coming of Christ the fulfillment of that for which they themselves had striven.
In the following lectures we shall see how Christianity is mingled with other elements in the era subsequent to the coming of Christ, and how this produced the conditions that now surround us. Today the period has been described when, through the conquest of the physical plane, man made himself sufficiently mature to understand the God-man—the Christ.
Neunter Vortrag
Es wird nunmehr unsere Aufgabe sein, den geistigen Horizont, innerhalb dessen der Mensch der Gegenwart steht, zu begreifen dadurch, daß wir seine Herkunft erforschen. Wir haben ja gesehen, wie der Mensch sozusagen immer ähnlicher und ähnlicher seiner gegenwärtigen Gestalt geworden ist, indem er sich durch das lemurische und atlantische Zeitalter hindurch entwickelte; und heute wollen wir unsere Betrachtung von diesem letzten Zeitalter, dem atlantischen, fortsetzen bis in unsere Zeit hinein, soweit wir sie zum Verständnis unseres Themas brauchen.
Wir wissen, vor der Mitte der atlantischen Zeit waren die Bewußtseinsverhältnisse des Menschen noch ganz andere. Während des Tages, während der Mensch in seinem physischen Leibe war — wenn wir so sprechen dürfen -, sah er die Gegenstände keineswegs in den scharfen Konturen wie heute, sondern alles war mehr oder weniger verschwommen. Dafür aber, wenn der Mensch nachts seinen physischen Leib verließ, breitete sich nicht ein traumloser Schlaf um ihn aus, sondern er konnte wahrnehmen geistige Wesenheiten einer geistigen Welt. Wir wollen nicht weiter berühren, daß jene geistigen Wesenheiten, die auch Verkörperungen suchten in atlantischen Leibern, eine gewisse Genossenschaft mit den Menschen eingingen; wir wollen nur darauf den Blick richten, daß der Mensch in jener Zeit aus dem unmittelbaren Erleben heraus die Überzeugung hatte, daß sich an das Menschenreich, dem er selbst angehörte, andere Reiche nach oben hinauf anreihten: das Reich der Engel, der Erzengel; und der Mensch lernte diese höheren Wesenheiten — wenn wir den Ausdruck gebrauchen dürfen — von geistigem Angesicht zu geistigem Angesicht kennen, so wie jetzt in der physischen Welt ein Mensch den anderen kennenlernt. Dann kam die Zeit, in welcher das Gegenstandsbewußtsein am Tage, vom Aufwachen an bis zum Einschlafen, immer deutlicher wurde, und wo demgegenüber sich in der Nacht immer mehr Dumpfheit und Dunkelheit ausbreitete. Das aber war derselbe Zeitpunkt, in dem die erste Keimanlage zu dem Ich oder «Ich bin» in den Menschen gelegt wurde. Dadurch, daß der Mensch die Gegenstände um sich herum wahrnehmen lernte, erlangte er zugleich die Form und Gestalt seines Selbstbewußtseins, die er nun immer mehr ausbilden sollte.
Nun müssen wir uns alles in der Welt gradweise vorstellen; wir müssen uns denken, daß genau so, wie es in dem Tier- und Menschenreiche alle möglichen Grade von Wesen gibt, auch in der Reihe von Wesenheiten über den Menschen hinaus die verschiedensten Grade vorhanden sind. Es gibt Wesenheiten in dem Reiche der Engel, die dem Menschen sehr nahe stehen; dann aber auch solche, die auf einer höheren, auf einer erhabenen Stufe sind - alle nur denkbaren Grade würden wir antreffen, wenn wir den Blick auf diese höheren Welten richten würden. Vor allen Dingen müssen wir uns darüber klar sein, daß diese höheren Wesenheiten damals, als der Mensch noch während der Nacht im dumpfen, hellseherischen Bewußtsein in die höheren Welten hinaufstieg, in einer gewissen Beziehung — ganz trivial gesprochen — auch etwas hatten von dieser Gabe des Menschen; daß sie durch den Verkehr mit den Menschen eine Bereicherung ihres eigenen Inneren erfuhren. Denn diese Wesenheiten waren damals auch noch innig mit dem Menschen verbunden; sie inspirierten ihn, sie nahmen Einfluß auf sein imaginatives Bewußtsein, das ja freilich nur ein dumpfes war. So daß wir uns den Menschen in jener alten Zeit so vorstellen müssen, daß, wenn er aus seinem physischen und Ätherleibe herausrückte, es so war, wie wenn ihn ein solches höheres Wesen, und im weiteren Sinne eine Schar von höheren Wesen, aufnehmen würde. Im Grunde genommen ist das auch noch heute der Fall, nur weiß der Mensch nichts davon, während er es damals, wenn auch nur dumpf-hellseherisch, gewußt hat. Wir haben schon in anderen Vorträgen erwähnt, daß auch heute der Schlaf keineswegs etwas Unnötiges für den Menschen ist; er hat seine gewaltige Aufgabe. Der Mensch nützt während des Tages seinen physischen Leib und seinen Ätherleib fortwährend ab. Das Leben, das wir vom Morgen bis zum Abend führen, ist ein Abnützen dieser beiden Leiber, und was Sie abends als Ermüdung spüren, ist nichts anderes als der Ausdruck davon, daß innerhalb Ihres physischen und Ätherleibes, auf dem Umwege durch den Astralleib, Wahrnehmungen der äußeren Welt stattgefunden haben, daß Gefühle, Impulse, Leid und Schmerz, daß alles mögliche sich in Ihnen abgespielt hat. Und das, was sich so abspielt, das nützt den ganzen Tag über unseren physischen und ÄAtherleib ab, und wir sind des Abends ermüdet, weil wir den ganzen Tag an der Zerstörung unseres physischen und Ätherleibes gearbeitet haben. Wenn Sie nun nachts Ihren physischen Leib und Ihren Ätherleib im Bette liegen haben, dann ist der Astralleib mit dem Ich nicht etwa untätig, sondern er schickt die ganze Nacht über seine Kraft in den physischen und Ätherleib hinein; er arbeitet, um die zerstörten und verbrauchten Kräfte wiederherzustellen. Aber das könnte er nicht, wenn er nicht beim Herausrücken aus dem physischen und Atherleibe in ein anderes Reich aufgenommen würde. Über dem menschlichen Reiche breitet sich in der Tat ein geistiges Reich aus, das Reich der Engel, Erzengel und anderer Wesenheiten. Es ist wie ein Ozean von geistigen Wesenheiten, die uns da umgeben, und von denen wir am Tage getrennt sind, weil wir innerhalb der Haut unseres Leibes, innerhalb unserer Wahrnehmungen eingeschlossen sind. In der Nacht aber tauchen wir in diesen Ozean der Geister unter, und der Astralleib saugt daraus die Kräfte, die er dann in den physischen und Ätherleib hineingießt, um diese wieder auszubessern. Davon weiß heute der Mensch nichts. Damals aber, als der Mensch noch das dumpfe, hellseherische Bewußtsein hatte, da sah er, wie das Ich und der Astralleib heraustraten und aufgenommen wurden von der göttlich-geistigen Welt.
Nun ist es so, daß die Dinge, die sich in unserer physischen Welt in einer gewissen Weise darstellen, sich da oben ganz anders ausnehmen. Man darf sagen, auch die Götter profitieren von jener Teilnahme an der Menschheit. Wir müssen uns da eine Vorstellung aneignen, die nicht so ganz leicht ist, die man aber notwendig hat, wenn man das Verhältnis des Menschen zu der Welt verstehen will. Wir haben gesagt, daß die Erde der Planet der Liebe ist; und richtig ausgebildet wird die Liebe erst auf der Erde. Sie wird, grob ausgedrückt, gezüchtet; und durch ihre Teilnahme an den Menschen lernen die Götter ebenso die Liebe kennen, wie sie in einer anderen Beziehung sie schenken. Das ist schwer sich vorzustellen. Es ist durchaus möglich, daß ein Wesen in ein anderes Wesen eine Gabe förmlich einträufelt, und diese Gabe durch das andere Wesen erst kennenlernt. Denken Sie sich eine ungeheuer reiche Persönlichkeit, die nie etwas anderes kennengelernt hat als Reichtum, ohne jene tiefe seelische Befriedigung, die Wohltun verursachen kann. Und nun tut diese Persönlichkeit wohl; sie schenkt einer armen Persönlichkeit etwas. In der Seele dieser armen Persönlichkeit wird durch die Geschenke der Dank bewirkt, und dies Dankesgefühl ist auch eine Gabe: es wäre nicht da, wenn die reiche Persönlichkeit nicht geschenkt hätte. Die reiche Persönlichkeit hat aber das Dankesgefühl nicht gefühlt, sondern sie hat es hervorgebracht. Sie ist die Geberin des Dankesgefühls, aber kennenlernen kann die reiche Persönlichkeit dieses Dankesgefühl erst in der Reflexion, wenn es zurückstrahlt von denen, in denen sie es entzündet hat. So ist es ungefähr mit der Gabe der Liebe, die von den Göttern den Menschen eingeträufelt wird. Die Götter sind so weit, daß sie im Menschen die Liebe entzünden können, so daß die Menschen imstande sind, die Liebe erleben zu lernen, aber die Götter lernen die Liebe als Realität erst durch die Menschen kennen. Sie tauchen von den Höhen herunter in den Ozean der Menschheit und fühlen die Wärme der Liebe. Ja, wir wissen, daß die Götter etwas entbehren, wenn die Menschen nicht in Liebe leben, daß sozusagen die Götter ihre Nahrung in der Liebe der Menschen haben. Je mehr Liebe der Menschen auf der Erde, desto mehr Nahrung der Götter im Himmel — je weniger Liebe, desto mehr Hunger der Götter. Das Opfer der Menschen ist im Grunde genommen nichts anderes als das, was zu den Göttern hinaufströmt als die in den Menschen erzeugte Liebe.
Nun können wir uns vorstellen, daß diese gegenseitige Mitteilung von den Menschen und Göttern in alten Zeiten, als die Menschen selbst noch ein Bewußtsein hatten von dem Göttlichen, etwas ganz anderes war als später. Ja, es gab gewisse Wesenheiten unter den göttlich-geistigen Wesen, die dadurch, daß der Mensch sozusagen nicht mehr hinauf konnte mit seinem dumpf-hellseherischen Bewußtsein, auch nicht mehr herunter konnten, die Sphäre der Menschheit nicht mehr erreichen konnten. Der Mensch hat während der atlantischen Zeit mit einer Anzahl von göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten gelebt, und je mehr er unfähig wurde, hinaufzuschauen zu den Göttern, um so weniger konnte eine gewisse Kategorie von göttlichen Wesenheiten das erleben, was sie sonst von den Menschen erleben konnte, Wir haben unter den atlantischen Göttern durchaus solche, die, als die Atlantis zugrunde ging, immer mehr und mehr entbehrten, die sozusagen immer mehr an Hunger litten dadurch, daß sie den Weg zu den Menschen nicht mehr fanden.
Von diesem Gesichtspunkte müssen wir uns einmal die Weiterentwickelung vorstellen. Wir wissen, daß in der Nähe des heutigen Irland sich ein Reich, ein Landstrich befand, wo die vorgeschrittensten Wesenheiten der atlantischen Zeit lebten, jene Menschen, welche am meisten reif waren, die fortschrittliche Entwickelung durchzumachen. Diese zogen nun vom Westen nach dem Osten, bevölkerten Europa, und dort blieben gewisse Menschen auf einer bestimmten Entwickelungsstufe zurück, während andere weiterzogen. Die Vorgeschrittensten zogen in die Gegend des heutigen mittleren Asien, andere nach Afrika. Dort aber waren schon Bevölkerungen aus der alten Zeit der Atlantis und der Lemuria; mit diesen nun vermischten sich die anderen in mannigfaltiger Weise und dadurch entstanden jene Mischungen, die die Griechen in den verschiedenen Kunstformen als Satyr-, Merkur- und Zeustypus wiedergaben. So war der Zug von Westen nach Osten, und wir müssen uns vorstellen, daß damit auch der Bewußtseinszustand des Menschen sich mehr und mehr änderte. Die Menschen, die herübergezogen waren, hatten noch mehr oder weniger Reste des alten hellseherischen Bewußtseins, aber das nahm nun immer mehr ab. Es gab solche, die schon bei dem Hereinbrechen der atlantischen Katastrophe jede Spur von hellseherischem Bewußtsein verloren hatten, aber auch solche gab es, die sich noch einen Rest davon erhalten hatten, auch unter den nach Asien, Europa und Afrika ausgewanderten. Überall gab es solche, die in gewissen Zuständen, zum Beispiel zwischen Schlafen und Wachen, einen genauen Einblick in die geistigen Welten gewinnen konnten. So war zum Beispiel jene geistige Wesenheit, die als Wotan bezeichnet wird, eine «Persönlichkeit», welche den alten Atlantiern wohl bekannt war; man kann sagen, alle Atlantier standen mit ihr in einer näheren oder entfernteren Verbindung, wie etwa heute die Menschen mit einem Monarchen. Aber immer mehr verlor sich der bewußte Zusammenhang. Nun gab es unter der europäischen Bevölkerung, bei den Vorgermanen, zahlreiche Menschen, die in einem Zwischenzustand zwischen Wachen und Schlafen in eine Beziehung oder Verbindung mit diesem Wotan treten konnten, der in der geistigen Welt wirklich existierte, durch seine Entwickelung aber gebunden war und sich nicht mehr in der alten Weise populär machen konnte. Auch in Asien gab es solche Menschen. Dies ging bis in späte Zeiten hinein, in die uns selbst die Geschichte noch zurückweist, wo ein ursprüngliches, natürliches Hellsehen sich bewahrt hatte, wo die Menschen aus eigenem Erleben heraus von den Göttern erzählen konnten.
Jetzt müssen wir uns aber wieder die Tatsache vor Augen halten, daß die Menschen immer mehr und mehr herunterzogen auf den physischen Plan, in die materielle Welt; dadurch waren die Götter immer weniger in der Lage, Verbindungen mit den Menschen aufrechtzuerhalten. Nach und nach war es manchen von ihnen nur noch möglich geworden, mit auserlesenen Wesenheiten Gemeinschaft zu haben. Gewisse Göttergestalten waren es, die nicht mehr zu dem gewöhnlichen Menschen hinabsteigen konnten, die nur noch mit solchen Persönlichkeiten in Verbindung treten konnten, die ihnen in einer gewissen Weise entgegenkamen, die sich zu ihnen hinaufentwickelten. Nun mischten sich in merkwürdiger Weise Gesinnung und übriggebliebenes Hellsehen und Einweihungsprinzip so, daß der Ausdruck dieser Mischung in dem germanischen Bewußtsein erhalten blieb. Während der atlantischen Zeit wußten die Menschen: Geradeso wie ich im Schlafe, wenn ich aus dem physischen und dem Ätherleibe heraus bin, in das Reich der Götter aufsteige, so steige ich nach dem Tode in das Reich der Götter hinauf; sie sind mir etwas Bekanntes, dort kann ich ihnen wieder begegnen. — Und als eine Art von Strafe lernte man es empfinden, wenn der Mensch nach dem Tode zeitweilig der Möglichkeit entzogen war, zu den Göttern aufzublicken, in ihre Gemeinschaft aufgenommen zu werden, wenn er eine gewisse Prüfungszeit nach dem "Tode durchzumachen hatte, weil er sich zu sehr in das materielle Leben verstrickt hatte. Diejenigen Menschen aber, die in der Lage waren, das materielle Leben nicht höher einzuschätzen als etwas anderes Nichtmaterielles, von denen war man überzeugt, daß sie nicht von der materiellen Welt zurückgehalten wurden, sondern daß sie gleich nach dem Tode in das Reich des Geistes eintreten konnten, das ihnen ja wohlbekannt war. Nach der Gesinnung derjenigen Völker, welche sich über Europa ausbreiteten, betrachtete man nun vor allen Dingen denjenigen Menschen als nicht am materiellen Leben hängend, der auf dem Schlachtfelde tapfer kämpfte, der den Tod als Krieger fand, der die Ehren des Krieges höher schätzte als das Materielle. Und von einem solchen war man überzeugt, daß er unmittelbar nach dem Tode irgendeiner Gottheit ansichtig wurde. Wer aber nicht als Krieger auf dem Schlachtfelde sterben konnte, wer nicht ein geistiges Gut höher schätzen gelernt hatte als das materielle Leben, von dem sagte man, daß er den Strohtod starb, daß er nicht reif war, unmittelbar aufgenommen zu werden in das Reich des Geistes, daß er vorher in ein Reich eintreten mußte, in dem er gewisse Prüfungen durchzumachen hatte. Und die Begegnung mit der Walküre ist der Ausdruck für diese Gesinnung in Verknüpfung mit der Erinnerung an das alte Hellsehen. Man stellte sich mit Recht vor, daß derjenige, der den Tod auf dem Schlachtfelde fand, aufgenommen wurde von der Walküre; und es liegt ganz im Stile einer solchen Vorstellungsart, wenn sich das, was sich so in Europa herausgebildet hatte, in dieser alten Zeit herausgestaltete als die Symbolik für die Einweihung. In anderen Völkern hatten sich andere Vorstellungen ausgebildet; innerhalb der europäischen Gegend aber galt persönliche Tapferkeit und Tüchtigkeit als das Wertvoliste.
Nun verstand man immer mit Recht unter der Einweihung, daß der Mensch schon während des Lebens erfahren kann, was er normalerweise erst nach dem Tode erfährt: die unmittelbar erlebte Gemeinschaft mit der geistigen Welt. Wie der Krieger die Begegnung mit der Walküre erst auf dem Schlachtfelde erlebte, so war es klar, daß derjenige, der die Einweihung suchte, diese Begegnung schon im physischen Leben erleben mußte. Und als der letzte der Einweihungshelden galt innerhalb eines Teiles von Europa Siegfried, der sich in der Siegfriedgestalt erhalten hat. Daher erzählt die Sage, daß er sich mit der Walküre während des Lebens verbindet, wie der Krieger es auf dem Schlachtfelde tut. So sehen wir, wie für den einzelnen Menschen im Kleinen alles zusammenstimmt, was im Großen für das Prinzip der Einweihung gilt.
Jetzt versuchen wir, uns in den Gemütszustand dieser von Westen nach Osten, nach Europa, gezogenen Bevölkerung zu versetzen. Sie waren in einer gewissen Weise durchaus bis zu der Höhe hinaufgekommen, wo sie in eine Weiterentwickelung eintreten konnten. Sie waren nicht verknöchert, sondern sie hatten den Keim zur vollen Weiterentwickelung. Aber gerade sie verblieben mit einer verhältnismäßig starken Gabe hellseherischen Vermögens. Unter fast allen Völkern, die von dem atlantischen Kontinent hinausgezogen waren, war es die europäische Bevölkerung, die mit der stärksten hellseherischen Anlage begabt war; weniger stark begabt war die afrikanische Bevölkerung. In Asien war die vorgeschrittenste Bevölkerung, die schon früh hinübergezogen war, mit einer noch älteren zusammengestoßen, und sie hatten diese Völker im Besitz eines noch älteren hellseherischen Bewußtseins angetroffen, so daß es auch dort viel Hellsehen in jener Zeit gab. Dann aber gab es eine gewisse kleine Kolonie, die gerade aus den am weitesten vorgeschrittenen Menschen der atlantischen Zeit bestand, die in der Nähe der Wüste Gobi war. Was waren das für Menschen? Was heißt das überhaupt: am weitesten vorgeschritten? Das bedeutete: am wenigsten hineinsehen können in die geistige Welt. Denn darin bestand ja der Fortschritt, daß sie herausgegangen waren aus dem Geistigen und hineinzogen in die physische Welt. Es waren Menschen, die empfinden mußten: Wir haben früher einmal einen Zusammenhang mit der geistigen Welt gehabt, jetzt aber haben wir ihn nicht mehr. - Wehmut über den Verlust der geistigen Welt war es, was in den Herzen dieser Menschen lebte, Sehnsucht nach dieser Welt, die die wertvollere war und aus der sie herausgedrängt waren.
Andere Verhältnisse waren in der europäischen Bevölkerung; da waren viele, die in gewissen Zuständen noch in die geistigen Welten hineinschauen konnten. Und in jener Zeit, als in Europa noch die Mysterien waren, war es so: Wenn die Eingeweihten, die durch ihre okkulte Entwickelung im vollen Bewußtsein hinaufsteigen konnten, davon sprachen, daß es geistige Welten gebe, wenn sie von dieser oder jener Gestalt erzählten oder von dieser oder jener Rolle, die der Mensch nach dem Tode zu spielen habe, und wenn sie das in Mythen und Sagen, in Legenden und in gewaltigen Bildern verkündeten, dann fanden sie Menschen, die sie verstanden, denn sie hatten es zum Teil selbst noch gesehen. Die eigenartigen Lebens- und Wohnverhältnisse des alten Europa gestatteten es durchaus, daß auch die Uneingeweihten, wenn auch nicht die hohen Götter, doch die geistigen Welten erleben konnten, und dadurch hatten sie den Glauben an diese geistigen Welten. Ihnen waren diese Welten wirklich noch mehr als halb vertraut, sie fühlten daher auch ihre Menschheit noch in einem ganz anderen Sinne als andere Bevölkerungen der Erde.
Versetzen wir uns in die Gemütsart dieser alten Europäer. Sie alle sagten sich: Ich sehe ja, daß ich mit den Göttern zusammenhänge, ich reiche ja hinauf in das Reich der Götter. — Und dadurch entwickelte sich gerade auf dem Boden Europas ein starkes Persönlichkeitsbewußtsein, ein Bewußtsein von dem eigenen göttlichen Werte der menschlichen Persönlichkeit, ein starkes Freiheitsbewußtsein vor allen Dingen. Diese Gemütslage müssen wir uns denken, denn dieses Persönlichkeitsbewußtsein war es, das auch diejenigen europäischen Völkermassen mitbrachten, die dann hinunterzogen und die griechische und italische Halbinsel bevölkerten. Namentlich sehen wir die Nachzügler dieses Freiheitsgefühls in den alten Etruskern. Selbst in der eigentümlichen Kunst sehen wir dieses starke Freiheitsgefühl der Etrusker strömen, die sich dieses Gefühl auf spirituellem Grunde erhalten hatten. Bevor das eigentliche königlich-römische Reich sich aufgerichtet hatte auf der italischen Halbinsel, war die Etrusker-Bevölkerung da und hatte in ihrer Verfassung etwas in hohem Grade Freiheitliches; sie war auf der einen Seite freilich etwas hierarchisch aufgebaut, andererseits aber war sie auch im höchsten Sinne freiheitlich. Jede Stadt sorgte stark für ihre Freiheit, und irgendeinen Staatsverband im späteren Sinne würden die alten Etrusker als etwas Unerträgliches empfunden haben. Und alles, was da an Freiheit und Persönlichkeitsgefühl nach der südlichen Halbinsel hinunterzog, das kam aus den Ursachen heraus, die wir eben geschildert haben. Jene anderen Menschen aber, die fern hinübergezogen waren nach Asien, die enthielten ein Häuflein, von dem die göttlich-geistigen Welten sich am meisten zurückgezogen hatten. Aber sie hatten sich eines dafür erobert, eines hatten sie sich aus dieser in tiefstes Dämmerdunkel hinabgegangenen Welt gerettet: das «Ich», das «Ich bin» — dieses, daß sie fühlten, daß in dem «Ich bin» ein ewiger Mittelpunkt ihres Wesens war, der aus der geistigen Welt selber stammte; daß alle Gestalten, die man früher gesehen hatte, sozusagen eine heilige Erinnerung bildeten, und daß ihre Stärke auf diesem festen Mittelpunkt beruhte, der ihnen geblieben war. Sie empfanden ihn noch nicht in seiner vollen Gestalt — dazu war eine spätere Zeit notwendig -, aber eine gewisse Gesinnung bildete sich gerade bei denen heraus, die am weitesten fortgeschritten waren, die am tiefsten hinuntergestiegen waren, eine Gesinnung, die ungefähr so geschildert werden könnte: Das, was wir vor allen Dingen zu pflegen haben, ist, unserer Göttlichkeit uns bewußt zu sein in dem, was wir im tiefsten Inneren unserer Seele finden. Wenn auch diese Seele vergessen hat, was sie einst an göttlichen Gestalten schaute, so können wir doch den Weg wiederum zu dem Göttlichen dadurch finden, daß sie in ihr Inneres, in das Ich-Gefühl hineinschaut. — Kurz, es bildete sich die Vorstellung des gestaltlosen Gottes heraus, der nicht in äußeren Formen erscheint, den man in seinem innersten Wesen suchen soll; eine Vorstellung, die uralt ist in dieser Strömung, und die sich in der sich fortentwickelnden Menschheit umgebildet hat in das Gebot: Du sollst dir von deinem Gotte kein Abbild, kein Gleichnis machen.
In uralten Zeiten hatte man den Gott selbst als Bild erlebt. Jetzt hatte sich das Bild in die Verborgenheit zurückgezogen, und man suchte alle Stärke aufzubringen, um den Gott aus dem Ich, wo er gestaltlos ist, in Vorstellung und Denken herauszuholen, eine Idee, eine Kraft des Gottes zu fassen und zu fühlen. Das war aber nicht sofort möglich; in den ersten Zeiten der nachatlantischen Kulturen war die Erinnerung an das, was man verloren hatte, noch zu stark, zu groß; die Seele fühlte: das Tor hat sich geschlossen, und die Sehnsucht, wieder hinaufzukommen in diese geistige Welt, war zu gewaltig. Daher bildete sich als eine erste Kulturepoche diejenige aus, die vorzugsweise dieses Gefühl, die Sehnsucht nach der verlorenen, verborgenen geistigen Welt empfand; die in göttlicher Verehrung zu den Eingeweihten hinaufsah und flehte: Laßt uns teilhaft werden dieser verlorenen Welt. — Und unter dem Einflusse dieser Eingeweihten ward durch koloniale Strömung die uralte indische Kultur begründet, die vorvedische, wunderbare, Schauer der Ehrfurcht weckende Kultur, die in den Veden ihren letzten Niederschlag gefunden hat; die Kultur, in der die Sehnsucht nach der geistigen Welt so groß war, daß man danach strebte, auf künstlichem Wege einen Zusammenhang mit den alten Göttern und Geistern wiederzugewinnen. Die Sehnsucht, aus dieser Welt zu fliehen, in die man eingetreten war, die entstand als starkes Gefühl in dieser ersten nachatlantischen Kulturepoche, Und dieses Gefühl sehen wir auf dem Grunde der Seelen, die noch die Unterweisung der Eingeweihten, der heiligen Rishis, erfahren durften. Wir sehen, wie sich bei ihnen dies Gefühl entwickelt: Die Welt, die wir um uns herum sehen, die Welt, die wir uns jetzt errungen haben, die Welt des physischen Planes ist nur eine Illusion, sie ist wertlos, sie ist Maja; wertvoll aber ist die Welt, die hinter diesem täuschenden physischen Plane liegt. — Und so entwickelt sich das Gefühl von der Wertlosigkeit des physischen Planes, von der Notwendigkeit, ihn zu fliehen und zum Geistigen zu gelangen; es entwickelt sich dasjenige, was wir als die Basis dieser uralten Kultur kennen, was aber damit zusammenhängt, daß der Mensch sein starkes Persönlichkeitsgefühl verlieren muß, wenn er sich sozusagen ganz und gar herausgestellt sieht aus dem Göttlichen und in der Sehnsucht nach diesem Göttlichen lebt. Er strebt danach, ganz aufzugehen im Göttlichen, mit Auslöschung seiner Persönlichkeit; lieber ist ihm die Vernichtung des Eigenwertes der Persönlichkeit als das Leben innerhalb dieser Persönlichkeit. Wir müssen diese alte Kultur vorzugsweise als Stimmung begreifen, dann verstehen wir jenes Fliehen vor dem Materiellen: wie der Mensch, wenn er das Göttliche aufsuchen wollte, frei sein mußte von den Banden des Sinnlichen, wie er heraus sein mußte aus aller Illusion, aller Maja.
Das war die erste nachatlantische Kulturepoche. Die Mission der nachatlantischen Kultur aber besteht darin, daß der Mensch die Welt, in die er hineingestellt ist, sich immer mehr zu eigen macht, sich immer mehr erobert. So sehen wir, daß in der persischen, in der Vor-Zarathustrischen Kultur, die erste Phase dieses Eroberns der äußeren physischen Welt sich abspielt. Den alten Persern — und es sind hier die vorhistorischen Perser gemeint, denen eine Kolonie der hinübergewanderten letzten Atlantier zugrunde liegt — eignete schon ein anderes Bewußtsein; sie empfanden den physischen Plan schon als etwas Reales. Nicht mehr als etwas Fremdes erschien dem alten Perser der physische Plan; er sagte sich: In diesem physischen Plane sind auch Möglichkeiten, den Geist zu pflanzen und zu pflegen. — Er beachtete die physische Welt bereits; er studierte sie noch nicht, aber er beachtete sie. Der alte Perser empfindet in ihr noch ein Feindliches, aber so, daß er den Feind überwinden kann. Er macht sich zum Freunde, zum Genossen des Gottes Ormuzd, um die Materie zu erlösen. Er arbeitet in das Physische hinein; nach und nach beginnt er etwas davon zu ahnen, daß diese Welt nicht nur Maja, nicht bloß wesenloser Schein, sondern eine zu beachtende Wirklichkeit ist.
Und dann sehen wir, wie ein anderer Zug mehr nach Vorderasien und Afrika geht und dort die chaldäische und die ägyptische Kultur begründet, Da ist man schon wieder ein Stück weiter in der Eroberung des physischen Planes. Da sind die Menschen so, daß sie das Äußere, Sinnliche nicht mehr als bloß feindlich empfinden oder gar als nichtig. Da richtet der Mensch schon seinen Blick hinauf zu den Sternen und sagt sich; Nicht Maja sind diese Sterne, nicht bloß Schein! - Und er vertieft sich in den Gang der Sterne, er studiert, wie Stern an Stern sich nähert, welche Wandlungen die Sternbilder machen. Und er sagt sich: Das ist ein äußerer Ausdruck der waltenden Götter, eine Schrift, die die Götter geschrieben haben. Das Äußere, Sinnliche ist nicht nur Schein, es ist eine Offenbarung der Götter. — Ein weiterer Schritt ist getan: das Sinnlich-Materielle wird als ein Ausdruck des Göttlichen betrachtet, man fängt an, Weisheit im Sinnlichen zu suchen. Und man richtet den Blick hinunter vom Himmel auf die Erde in der ägyptischen Welt; man studiert Geometrie, um die Erde zu beherrschen; man vermählt das, was der Geist erreichen kann, mit der sinnlichen Materie ein wesentlicher Fortschritt in der Entwickelung. So geht es stufenweise weiter.
Und jetzt, innerhalb der dritten Kulturepoche, bildet sich wiederum ein kleines, abgesondertes Häuflein, das in gewisser Weise alles das aufnimmt, was an alten Traditionen und an neuen Errungenschaften hat gewonnen werden können; ein kleines Häuflein, dessen Eingeweihte die uralte Weisheit, die frühere Genossenschaft mit den Göttern bewahrt hatten; dessen Eingeweihte wiederzugeben wußten, was man als Erfahrung wissen konnte aus der geistigen Welt, und die zugleich chaldäische Weisheit — Gottesschrift im Weltenraum — und ägyptische Weisheit, die in der symbolischen Vermählung des Geistigen mit dem Physischen aufgeht, in sich aufgenommen hatten. Und diese Gruppe von Menschen ist es, die in diesem Sinne das auserwählte Volk zu nennen ist. Es ist dasjenige Volk, das den größten Zeitraum der Weltgeschichte vorzubereiten hatte, das alttestamentliche Volk, das in seinem Alten Testament, in bezug auf alle uralten Ereignisse und auch auf das Fortlebende, in der Tat das größte und bedeutsamste Dokument hatte. Und es ist nicht nur eine gelehrte Verirrung, sondern eine Farce, wenn irgendeine Schöpfungsgeschichte auch nur annähernd als von gleichem Werte mit der alttestamentlichen angesehen wird. Denn das Alte Testament enthält in gewaltigen Bildern das Herabsteigen des Menschen aus göttlichen Höhen und verknüpft zugleich die historischen Erlebnisse des Menschen mit diesen kosmischen Ereignissen. Alles das enthält die alttestamentliche Geschichte genau, und vor allen Dingen das, was dem Weltenzusammenhange voll entspricht.
Wir haben gesehen, wie des Menschen Keimanlage zu dem «Ich bin» sich Stufe für Stufe in der Erdentwickelung vorbereitet hat. Wir haben gesehen, daß diese Keimanlage sich niemals hätte ausbilden können, wenn die Sonne sich nicht von der Erde getrennt hätte; daß auch der Mond sich von der Erde hat trennen müssen, und daß dann diese Keimanlage sich erst allmählich dadurch weiter ausbilden konnte, daß der Horizont gegenüber der göttlich-geistigen Welt sich verschlossen hatte. Machen wir uns klar, wie diese Keimanlage sich ausgebildet hat. Was lernt denn der Mensch allmählich in seiner Erdentwickelung? Wir sehen zurück auf alte Zeiten, wo er noch nicht hat wahrnehmen können, wo er bloß in der geistigen Welt gelebt hat; dann kam die Zeit, wo die Dinge im Physischen ihm nur verschwommen erschienen, wo er immer noch die geistigen Reiche wahrnehmen konnte. Wer war es denn, der diesen Menschen so vorbereitete, daß er in späteren Zeiten, als er die volle Sonne hat sehen können, auch reif dazu war? Derjenige Gott war es, der den Menschen sozusagen aufpäppelte zu der vollen Reife, den wir Jehova genannt haben, der sich getrennt hat von den Elohim, um von dem Monde aus vorzubereiten den höchsten Augenblick des Erdendaseins. Während der Mensch noch nicht hat wahrnehmen können in der äußeren Welt, träufelte der Gott Jehova das Ich-Bewußtsein ein. Er war es, der sich einschlich in die alten Einweihungen, die bei dumpfem Bewußtsein stattfanden; der den Menschen im Traum erschien, der die Menschen langsam vorbereitet hat für die Ich-Reife, die sie erst durch den Herabstieg des Christus erlangen konnten. Nicht auf einmal ist er gekommen, der Christus, nicht auf einmal hinuntergestiegen, sondern das war nur die letzte, persönliche Erscheinung; gewirkt aber hat er schon in jenen alten Zeiten durch die Propheten. Weist doch der Christus im Johannes-Evangelium selbst darauf hin, daß diejenigen, die nicht an Moses und an die Propheten geglaubt haben, auch nicht an ihn glauben würden; denn er sagt, Moses und die Propheten haben von ihm gesprochen, zwar noch nicht von dem, der auf der Erde gestanden hat, aber der angekündigt worden ist. Der Christus hat in diesem Sinne eine gewisse Geschichte in der Erdentwickelung. Wenn wir zurückgehen in die alten Mysterien, können wir überall diese Geschichte des Christus und sein Herabsteigen finden.
Studieren wir einmal die europäischen Mysterien. Da herrscht überall ein gewisser tragischer Zug. Wenn Sie sich hineinversetzen in diese alten Mysterien, dann können Sie sehen, daß die Lehrer überall zu ihren Schülern sagen: Ihr könnt euch erheben zu hohem Göttlichem, in hohem Sinne eingeweiht könnt ihr werden; aber es gibt etwas, was ihr jetzt noch nicht voll erkennen könnt, auf das ihr warten müßt, auf das wir auch nur hinweisen können: das ist der kommende Christus. — Überall in den nordischen Mysterien hat man von dem Christus als von einem Kommenden gesprochen; gekannt haben sie ihn überall, nur nicht als einen, der schon auf Erden war. Gekannt haben ihn die Eingeweihten drüben in Asien, in Ägypten, überall haben sie gewußt, es ist der Christus im Anzuge, er wird einst da sein. Und überall haben sie gewußt, daß die alten Mysterien nicht zur höchsten Stufe hinaufführen können. Das ist symbolisch erhalten geblieben. Wir dürfen nur nicht die Dinge pressen, nicht in scharfen Konturen, sondern ganz subtil sind sie zu nehmen, teils als Wahrheit und teils nur vergleichsweise. Es ist etwas von jenem tragischen Zuge geblieben gegenüber den alten Göttern und dem Warten auf den Christus, da der Glanz der Götter verschwinden wird vor dem Glanze des Christus. Wir finden es bis in die spätesten Sagen der germanischen Götter. Etwas Merkwürdiges hat die Sage dem Siegfried zugeschrieben: Er war unverwundbar; er hatte die Stärke des Eingeweihten im Sinne der europäischen Mysterien. Aber eine Stelle war verwundbar geblieben, da wurde auch er verwundet, und das hat ihm auch den 'Tod gebracht. Welche Stelle war das? Jene Stelle, wo später bei dem, den man erwartet hat, das Kreuz gelegen hat. Die Stelle, an der Siegfried noch verwundbar war, sie ist zugedeckt worden bei dem Gange nach Golgatha durch das Kreuz. Das ist die letzte Erinnerung an jenen tragischen Zug, der durch die alten europäischen Mysterien gegangen ist. Aber oft hat man auch in jenen Mysterien, aus denen das Alte Testament hervorgegangen ist und in die Moses eingeweiht war, und die Moses dann innerhalb seines Volkes so weit verpflanzt hat, als es ihm möglich erschien, — oft hat man auch da hingewiesen auf diesen eigentümlichen Entwickelungsgang der Menschheit. Und es ist mehr als ein bloßes Bild, es ist etwas, was dem Bilde eine tiefe Wirklichkeit gibt, was wir etwa so aufzeichnen können.
Nehmen wir an, wir haben den Menschen vor uns in seiner Viergliedrigkeit, und sein Ich, sein Astral-, Äther- und physischer Leib werden von der Sonne beschienen. Dadurch, daß der Christus auf die Erde gekommen ist, ist der Mensch fähig geworden, die physischen und geistigen Kräfte der Sonne aufzunehmen. Vorher war das anders. Da fiel während des Schlafes, wenn der Astralleib mit dem Ich außerhalb des physischen und Atherleibes war, während der Nachtzeit sozusagen nicht das direkte, sondern das reflektierte Sonnenlicht vom Monde auf den Menschen herab; er nahm dies reflektierte Licht auf, nicht das direkte Sonnenlicht. Das ist als äußerlicher symbolischer Tatbestand genau so, wie es mit dem Christus war, der als geistiger Sonnenstrahl lebte, und mit Jehova, der so lange das reflektierte Christus-Licht zurückstrahlte, bis der Mensch reif wurde, das direkte Sonnen-ChristusLicht zu empfangen. Wie aus einem Spiegel sandte Jehova den Christus zur Menschheit nieder. Wie sprach man also von dem Christus, wenn man vor seinem Erscheinen sprach? Man sprach von ihm, indem man von Jehova’sprach, und deshalb sagt Jehova zu Moses: Sage deinem Volke: Ich bin der Ich-bin. - Das ist derselbe Name, der später dem Christus beigelegt wird. Er will gar nicht sein eigenes Antlitz schon der Menschheit zuwenden, er bereitet den Christus vor, das Bild des Christus gibt er der Menschheit, bevor der Christus selbst zu ihr heruntersteigt. Und weil die Menschen in ihrem tiefsten Inneren, mit ihrem «Ich bin» diesen Christus erfassen sollen, weil sie in ihm den ganzen Herunterstieg in diese physische Welt erfassen sollen, deshalb bewahrte sich diese Menschengruppe, die den Christus am echtesten vorbereiten sollte, am festesten die Idee des gestaltlosen Gottes. Eine neue Vorstellung des Gottes mußte sie sich erringen, nicht nur sich erinnern der alten Gestalt. Und so wird dieses Volk in seiner Jehovareligion in der Tat das auf den Christus vorbereitende Volk. Nun aber muß man sich klar sein, daß alles das, was in der Welt besonders stark angestrebt werden soll, sozusagen auch von starken Impulsen ausgehen muß. Daher mußten auch die Kräfte des bildlosen Gottes gewissermaßen überspannt werden innerhalb des Alten Testamentes: Ein ganz abstrakter bildloser Gott, der in den Mittelpunkt einer bloßen Ich-Wesenheit zusammengedrängt ist, steht im Mittelpunkt der alttestamentlichen Religion, ein Ich-Gott, ein bildloser Gott.
Wo konnte nun dieser Gott zuerst eine solche Gestalt gewinnen, daß er von den Menschen, die nunmehr auf dem physischen Plan lebten und ihn sich erobern sollten, begriffen werden konnte? Da ist durch eine weise Fügung im Süden Europas etwas Merkwürdiges entstanden. Es haben Züge von Asien und von Afrika stattgefunden; sie haben sich vermischt mit denen, die vom Norden heruntergezogen waren. Diejenigen, die vom Orient herüber die starke Überzeugung brachten von der Wertlosigkeit der Maja, von der Notwendigkeit, daß dieses materielle Reich der Menschen in das Reich des Geistes verwandelt werden müsse, sie vermengten sich mit denen, die sich das starke Persönlichkeitsgefühl errungen hatten. Und die stärksten spirituellen Kräfte, die auf der Wanderung vom Westen nach dem Osten am meisten zurückgeblieben waren, sie haben sich getroffen in Kleinasien, auf der griechischen, auf der italischen Halbinsel, und da hat sich die vierte Stufe herausgebildet, und wieder ist die Eroberung der physischen Welt einen Schritt vorwärts gegangen. Den Gott in der Tiefe zu erfassen und zu ahnen, das war die Mission der dritten Kulturepoche, der chaldäisch-ägyptischen Kultur; aus ihr mußte hervorgehen diejenige Volksgruppe, welche den Gott in abstrakter Weise suchen konnte, als geistige Wesenheit, mit dem geringsten sinnlichen Inhalt. Aber im Süden Europas bildete sich eine andere Gruppe. Indem die Menschen mit dem starken nordischen Persönlichkeitsbewußtsein da heruntergezogen sind, bildete sich die Vermählung der menschlichen Seele mit der Materie, die wir in dem griechischen Tempel, in den griechischen Kunstwerken, in der griechischen Tragödie bewundern, wo der Mensch anfängt, sein eigenes Schicksal zur Darstellung zu bringen, wo er seinen eigenen Geist in die Materie hineingeheimnißt, ihn den äußeren Tatsachen einverleibt. Man möchte sagen: eine Ehe zwischen Geistigem und Physischem wird geschlossen, wo beide gleichen Anteil haben. An dem griechischen Kunstwerk, an allem, was der Grieche schafft, haben gleichen Anteil das Geistige und das Physische. Und in gewisser Beziehung ist das beim Römer ebenso; er weiß: In mir lebt der Geist, in mir kann das Geistige Persönlichkeit werden.
Nur auf dieser Stufe der Menschheitsentwickelung kann das, was sich angekündigt hat, auch seine äußere wirkliche Gestalt auf dem physischen Plan annehmen. Erst da konnte der Christus auf den physischen Plan heruntersteigen, als der Mensch sich diesen physischen Plan erobert hatte. Ein Christus wäre nicht möglich gewesen in der alten Kultur, als nur die Maja der physischen Welt empfunden wurde, als nur die Sehnsucht nach der Vergangenheit in den Menschen lebte. Immer mehr wandte sich der Mensch zum physischen Plane hin in jener Zeit, als diese Ehe sich vollzog, die wir in der griechischen Kunst sehen, die in dem starken römischen bürgerlichen Bewußtsein ihren Ausdruck fand. Und das war auch die Zeit, wo das Christus-Prinzip im Fleische erscheinen konnte.
Daher müssen wir alle diejenigen, die vorher gewirkt haben, als wohl vertraut mit dem Christus ansehen; wir müssen sie ansehen als Propheten, die nur hinweisen konnten; die in dem Herabsteigen des Christus die Erfüllung dessen sahen, was sie selbst anstrebten.
Nunmehr werden wir in den nächsten Vorträgen sehen, wie das Christentum und andere Elemente zusammen einfließen in unsere nachchristliche Zeit und unsere Gegenwart bewirken. Heute sollte hingewiesen werden auf den Zeitpunkt, wo der Mensch durch die Eroberung des physischen Planes sich reif gemacht hat, um den Gottmenschen, den Christus zu verstehen.
Ninth Lecture
It will now be our task to understand the spiritual horizon within which the human being of the present stands by investigating his origin. We have seen how human beings have become, so to speak, more and more similar to their present form as they developed through the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs; and today we want to continue our consideration of this last epoch, the Atlantean, up to our own time, as far as we need it to understand our subject.
We know that before the middle of the Atlantean epoch, human consciousness was quite different. During the day, while humans were in their physical bodies — if we may put it that way — they did not see objects with sharp contours as we do today, but everything was more or less blurred. But when human beings left their physical bodies at night, they did not fall into a dreamless sleep; instead, they were able to perceive spiritual beings from a spiritual world. We will not go into the fact that those spiritual beings, who also sought embodiment in Atlantean bodies, entered into a certain partnership with human beings; we will only point out that human beings at that time were convinced, based on their immediate experience, that other realms were arranged above the human realm to which they themselves belonged: the realm of the angels, the archangels; and human beings came to know these higher beings — if we may use the expression — from spiritual face to spiritual face, just as human beings now come to know one another in the physical world. Then came the time when object consciousness became clearer and clearer during the day, from waking up to falling asleep, and when, in contrast, more and more dullness and darkness spread during the night. But this was the same time when the first seed of the I or “I am” was planted in human beings. By learning to perceive the objects around them, human beings simultaneously acquired the form and shape of their self-consciousness, which they were now to develop more and more.
Now we must imagine everything in the world in degrees; we must think that just as there are all possible degrees of beings in the animal and human kingdoms, so too are there the most diverse degrees in the series of beings above man. There are beings in the realm of angels who are very close to humans; but then there are also those who are on a higher, more exalted level—we would encounter every conceivable degree if we were to turn our gaze to these higher worlds. Above all, we must be clear that these higher beings, at the time when human beings were still ascending into the higher worlds during the night in a dull, clairvoyant consciousness, also had something of this human gift in a certain sense — to put it very simply — in that they experienced an enrichment of their own inner life through their contact with human beings. For these beings were still intimately connected with human beings at that time; they inspired them and influenced their imaginative consciousness, which was, of course, only dim. So we must imagine human beings in those ancient times as if, when they stepped out of their physical and etheric bodies, they were taken up by such a higher being, or in a broader sense, by a host of higher beings. Basically, this is still the case today, only human beings are unaware of it, whereas in those days they knew it, albeit only dimly through clairvoyance. We have already mentioned in other lectures that even today sleep is by no means unnecessary for human beings; it has a tremendous task to fulfill. During the day, human beings are constantly wearing out their physical body and their etheric body. The life we lead from morning to evening is a wearing out of these two bodies, and what you feel as fatigue in the evening is nothing more than the expression of the fact that perceptions of the outer world have taken place within your physical and etheric bodies, via the astral body, that feelings, impulses, suffering, and pain, that all kinds of things have taken place within you. And what happens in this way wears down our physical and etheric bodies throughout the day, and we are tired in the evening because we have been working all day to destroy our physical and etheric bodies. When you lie in bed at night with your physical body and etheric body, the astral body with the I is not idle, but sends its power into the physical and etheric bodies throughout the night; it works to restore the destroyed and exhausted forces. But it could not do this if it were not taken up into another realm when it leaves the physical and etheric bodies. Above the human realm there is indeed a spiritual realm, the realm of angels, archangels, and other beings. It is like an ocean of spiritual beings that surround us and from which we are separated during the day because we are enclosed within the skin of our bodies, within our perceptions. At night, however, we dive into this ocean of spirits, and the astral body draws from it the forces that it then pours into the physical and etheric bodies in order to repair them. People today know nothing of this. But in those days, when people still had a dull, clairvoyant consciousness, they saw how the I and the astral body emerged and were taken up by the divine-spiritual world.
Now it is so that things that appear in a certain way in our physical world look completely different up there. One might say that the gods also benefit from their participation in humanity. We must acquire an understanding of this that is not entirely easy, but which is necessary if we want to understand the relationship between human beings and the world. We have said that the earth is the planet of love, and love is only properly developed on earth. Roughly speaking, it is cultivated, and through their participation in human beings, the gods also learn about love, just as they give it in another relationship. This is difficult to imagine. It is quite possible that one being instills a gift into another being and only learns about this gift through the other being. Imagine an immensely rich personality who has never known anything but wealth, without the deep spiritual satisfaction that doing good can bring. And now this personality does something good; it gives something to a poor personality. In the soul of this poor personality, the gifts give rise to gratitude, and this feeling of gratitude is also a gift: it would not be there if the rich personality had not given. However, the rich personality has not felt the feeling of gratitude, but has brought it forth. It is the giver of the feeling of gratitude, but the rich personality can only become aware of this feeling of gratitude in reflection, when it shines back from those in whom it has been kindled. This is roughly how it is with the gift of love, which is instilled in human beings by the gods. The gods are so advanced that they can kindle love in human beings so that they are able to learn to experience love, but the gods only learn to know love as reality through human beings. They descend from the heights into the ocean of humanity and feel the warmth of love. Yes, we know that the gods lack something when people do not live in love, that the gods, so to speak, have their nourishment in the love of human beings. The more love there is among people on earth, the more nourishment the gods have in heaven—the less love there is, the more hungry the gods are. The sacrifice of human beings is basically nothing other than what flows up to the gods as the love generated in human beings.
Now we can imagine that this mutual communication between human beings and gods in ancient times, when human beings themselves still had an awareness of the divine, was something quite different from what it was later. Yes, there were certain beings among the divine-spiritual beings who, because humans could no longer ascend with their dull clairvoyant consciousness, could no longer descend, could no longer reach the sphere of humanity. During the Atlantean period, humans lived with a number of divine-spiritual beings, and the more he became incapable of looking up to the gods, the less a certain category of divine beings could experience what they could otherwise experience from humans. Among the Atlantean gods, there were certainly those who, when Atlantis perished, became more and more deprived, who suffered more and more from hunger, so to speak, because they could no longer find their way to humans.
From this point of view, we must imagine the further development. We know that near present-day Ireland there was a kingdom, a region where the most advanced beings of the Atlantean era lived, those human beings who were most mature to undergo progressive development. These now moved from the west to the east, populated Europe, and there certain people remained at a certain stage of development, while others moved on. The most advanced moved to the region of present-day Central Asia, others to Africa. There, however, there were already populations from the ancient times of Atlantis and Lemuria; the others mixed with them in various ways, and this gave rise to those mixtures that the Greeks reproduced in various art forms as the satyr, Mercury, and Zeus types. Thus, the migration was from west to east, and we must imagine that the state of consciousness of human beings also changed more and more as a result. The people who had migrated still had more or less remnants of the old clairvoyant consciousness, but this gradually diminished. There were those who had lost all traces of clairvoyant consciousness at the onset of the Atlantean catastrophe, but there were also those who had retained some remnants of it, even among those who had emigrated to Asia, Europe, and Africa. Everywhere there were those who, in certain states, for example between sleeping and waking, were able to gain precise insight into the spiritual worlds. For example, the spiritual being known as Wotan was a “personality” well known to the ancient Atlanteans; one could say that all Atlanteans were connected to him in a closer or more distant way, much as people today are connected to a monarch. But the conscious connection was increasingly lost. Now, among the European population, among the pre-Germans, there were numerous people who, in an intermediate state between waking and sleeping, were able to enter into a relationship or connection with this Wotan, who really existed in the spiritual world but was bound by his development and could no longer make himself popular in the old way. There were also such people in Asia. This continued into late times, which even history rejects, when a primitive, natural clairvoyance had been preserved and people could speak of the gods from their own experience.
Now, however, we must again bear in mind the fact that human beings drew themselves down more and more onto the physical plane, into the material world; as a result, the gods were less and less able to maintain connections with human beings. Gradually, it became possible for some of them to commune only with select beings. Certain god figures were no longer able to descend to ordinary human beings and could only connect with personalities who in a certain way came to meet them, who developed themselves upward toward them. Now, in a strange way, attitudes and remnants of clairvoyance and the principle of initiation mixed together in such a way that the expression of this mixture was preserved in the Germanic consciousness. During the Atlantean period, people knew that just as they ascend into the realm of the gods when they are asleep and have left their physical and etheric bodies, so too do they ascend into the realm of the gods after death; the gods are familiar to them, and there they can meet them again. And as a kind of punishment, people came to feel that when, after death, they were temporarily deprived of the possibility of looking up to the gods and being accepted into their community, they had to go through a certain period of trial after death because they had become too entangled in material life. However, those people who were able to value material life no higher than something else that was not material were believed to be held back by the material world, but to be able to enter the realm of the spirit immediately after death, which was well known to them. According to the beliefs of the peoples who spread across Europe, those who fought bravely on the battlefield, who died as warriors, who valued the honors of war more highly than material things, were considered above all not to be attached to material life. And it was believed that such people would immediately after death be seen by some deity. But those who could not die as warriors on the battlefield, those who had not learned to value spiritual goods more highly than material life, were said to die a straw death, to be unripe for immediate admission into the realm of the spirit, and to have to enter a realm where they had to undergo certain trials. And the encounter with the Valkyrie is the expression of this attitude in connection with the memory of ancient clairvoyance. It was rightly imagined that those who died on the battlefield were taken up by the Valkyries, and it is entirely in keeping with this kind of thinking that what had developed in Europe in this way took shape in ancient times as the symbolism of initiation. Other peoples had developed other ideas; but within the European region, personal bravery and ability were considered the most valuable qualities.
Now, initiation was always rightly understood to mean that a person could experience during their lifetime what they would normally only experience after death: direct communion with the spiritual world. Just as the warrior only experienced his encounter with the Valkyrie on the battlefield, it was clear that those who sought initiation had to experience this encounter during their physical life. And within a part of Europe, Siegfried, who has been preserved in the form of Siegfried, was considered the last of the heroes of initiation. Hence the legend tells that he unites himself with the Valkyrie during his life, as the warrior does on the battlefield. Thus we see how, in the small, everything that applies to the principle of initiation in the large is consistent for the individual human being.
Now let us try to put ourselves in the state of mind of this population that was drawn from the West to the East, to Europe. In a certain sense, they had risen to the height where they could enter into a further development. They were not ossified, but had the germ of full further development within them. But it was precisely they who retained a relatively strong gift of clairvoyance. Among almost all the peoples who had migrated from the Atlantic continent, it was the European population that was most gifted with clairvoyance; the African population was less gifted. In Asia, the most advanced population, which had migrated there early on, encountered an even older population, and they found these peoples in possession of an even older clairvoyant consciousness, so that there was also much clairvoyance there at that time. But then there was a small colony consisting of the most advanced people of the Atlantean era, who lived near the Gobi Desert. What kind of people were they? What does it mean to be the most advanced? It meant that they were least able to see into the spiritual world. For their advancement consisted in the fact that they had left the spiritual world and entered the physical world. These were people who felt that they had once had a connection with the spiritual world, but now they no longer had it. It was melancholy over the loss of the spiritual world that lived in the hearts of these people, a longing for this world, which was the more valuable one and from which they had been forced out.
Conditions were different among the European population; there were many who, in certain states, could still look into the spiritual worlds. And in those days, when the mysteries still existed in Europe, it was like this: when the initiates, who through their occult development were able to ascend in full consciousness, spoke of the existence of spiritual worlds, when they spoke of this or that form or of this or that role that human beings had to play after death, and when they proclaimed this in myths and legends, in legends and in powerful images, they found people who understood them, for they had in part seen it themselves. The peculiar living conditions and dwellings of ancient Europe made it possible for even the uninitiated to experience, if not the high gods, then at least the spiritual worlds, and thus they had faith in these spiritual worlds. These worlds were really more than half familiar to them, and they therefore felt their humanity in a completely different sense than other peoples of the earth.
Let us put ourselves in the mindset of these ancient Europeans. They all said to themselves: I see that I am connected to the gods, I reach up into the realm of the gods. — And this is precisely how a strong sense of individuality developed in Europe, an awareness of the divine value of the human personality, and above all a strong sense of freedom. We must imagine this state of mind, for it was this sense of individuality that was also brought by those European masses who then migrated and populated the Greek and Italian peninsulas. We see the latecomers of this feeling of freedom in the ancient Etruscans. Even in their peculiar art, we see this strong feeling of freedom flowing from the Etruscans, who had preserved this feeling on a spiritual basis. Before the actual Roman Empire was established on the Italian peninsula, the Etruscan population was there and had something highly liberal in its constitution; on the one hand, it was admittedly somewhat hierarchical, but on the other hand, it was also liberal in the highest sense. Each city strongly protected its freedom, and the ancient Etruscans would have found any form of state union in the later sense intolerable. And everything that spread down to the southern peninsula in the way of freedom and sense of individuality came from the causes we have just described. But those other people who had migrated far away to Asia included a small group from whom the divine-spiritual worlds had withdrawn the most. But they had conquered one thing, they had saved one thing from this world that had descended into deepest twilight: the “I,” the “I am.” — that they felt that in the “I am” there was an eternal center of their being that came from the spiritual world itself; that all the forms they had seen before formed, so to speak, a sacred memory, and that their strength rested on this firm center that had remained with them. They did not yet perceive it in its full form—a later time was necessary for that—but a certain attitude was developing, especially among those who were most advanced, who had descended deepest, an attitude that could be described as follows: What we must cultivate above all else is to be conscious of our divinity in what we find in the deepest depths of our soul. Even if this soul has forgotten what it once saw in divine forms, we can still find the way back to the divine by looking into its innermost depths, into the sense of self. In short, the idea of a formless God emerged, who does not appear in external forms, but who must be sought in one's innermost being; an idea that is ancient in this tradition and which, in the course of human evolution, has been transformed into the commandment: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything.
In ancient times, people had experienced God himself as an image. Now the image had withdrawn into obscurity, and people sought to summon all their strength to bring God out of the self, where he is formless, into imagination and thought, to grasp and feel an idea, a power of God. However, this was not immediately possible; in the early days of post-Atlantean cultures, the memory of what had been lost was still too strong, too great; the soul felt that the gate had closed, and the longing to return to this spiritual world was too powerful. Therefore, the first cultural epoch was formed by those who felt this longing for the lost, hidden spiritual world; who looked up to the initiates in divine worship and pleaded: Let us share in this lost world. — And under the influence of these initiates, colonial currents established the ancient Indian culture, the pre-Vedic, wonderful, awe-inspiring culture that found its final expression in the Vedas; the culture in which the longing for the spiritual world was so great that people strove artificially regain a connection with the ancient gods and spirits. The longing to flee from this world into which one had entered arose as a strong feeling in this first post-Atlantean cultural epoch, and we see this feeling at the bottom of the souls who were still able to experience the teaching of the initiates, the holy rishis. We see how this feeling develops in them: the world we see around us, the world we have now achieved, the world of the physical plane, is only an illusion, it is worthless, it is Maya; but the world that lies behind this deceptive physical plane is valuable. — And so the feeling develops of the worthlessness of the physical plane, of the necessity of fleeing it and reaching the spiritual; what develops is what we know as the basis of this ancient culture, but which is connected with the fact that human beings must lose their strong sense of personality when they see themselves, so to speak, completely separated from the divine and living in longing for this divine. He strives to merge completely with the divine, with the extinction of his personality; he prefers the destruction of the intrinsic value of his personality to life within that personality. We must understand this ancient culture primarily as a mood, then we will understand this flight from the material: how man, if he wanted to seek the divine, had to be free from the bonds of the sensual, how he had to be free from all illusion, all Maya.
That was the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch. The mission of the post-Atlantean culture, however, consists in man increasingly making the world in which he is placed his own, increasingly conquering it. Thus we see that in the Persian, pre-Zoroastrian culture, the first phase of this conquest of the outer physical world takes place. The ancient Persians — and here we mean the prehistoric Persians, who were descended from a colony of the last Atlanteans who had migrated there — already possessed a different consciousness; they perceived the physical plane as something real. The physical plane no longer appeared to the ancient Persians as something foreign; they said to themselves: In this physical plane there are also possibilities for planting and nurturing the spirit. They already paid attention to the physical world; they did not yet study it, but they paid attention to it. The ancient Persians still sensed something hostile in it, but in such a way that they could overcome the enemy. They made themselves friends, comrades of the god Ormuzd, in order to redeem matter. He works his way into the physical; little by little he begins to suspect that this world is not only Maya, not merely an insubstantial appearance, but a reality to be reckoned with.
And then we see how another trend moves more toward the Near East and Africa, where it establishes the Chaldean and Egyptian cultures. Here we are already a step further in the conquest of the physical plane. People are such that they no longer perceive the external, the sensual, as merely hostile or even as nothing. Man already turns his gaze upward to the stars and says to himself: These stars are not Maya, they are not mere appearances! And he immerses himself in the course of the stars, he studies how star approaches star, what changes the constellations undergo. And he says to himself: This is an outward expression of the ruling gods, a script written by the gods. The external, the sensual is not just appearance, it is a revelation of the gods. — Another step is taken: the sensual-material is regarded as an expression of the divine, and one begins to seek wisdom in the sensual. And one directs one's gaze down from heaven to earth in the Egyptian world; one studies geometry in order to master the earth; one marries what the spirit can achieve with sensual matter — an essential step forward in development. And so it continues step by step.
And now, within the third cultural epoch, a small, separate group is forming again, which in a certain sense takes up everything that has been gained from old traditions and new achievements; a small group whose initiates have preserved the ancient wisdom, the former cooperation with the gods; whose initiates knew how to reproduce what could be known as experience from the spiritual world, and who had absorbed both Chaldean wisdom — the scriptures of God in the universe — and Egyptian wisdom, which is expressed in the symbolic marriage of the spiritual and the physical. And it is this group of people who, in this sense, can be called the chosen people. It is the people who had to prepare the greatest period of world history, the Old Testament people, who in their Old Testament had the greatest and most significant document in relation to all ancient events and also to what lives on. And it is not only a scholarly aberration, but a farce, if any creation story is even remotely regarded as having the same value as the Old Testament. For the Old Testament contains, in powerful images, the descent of man from divine heights and at the same time links the historical experiences of man with these cosmic events. All this is contained in the Old Testament story, and above all that which fully corresponds to the world order.
We have seen how man's germ of the “I am” prepared itself step by step in the evolution of the earth. We have seen that this germ could never have developed if the sun had not separated from the earth; that the moon also had to separate from the earth, and that this germ could then only gradually develop further as a result of the horizon closing off the divine-spiritual world. Let us consider how this germ developed. What does man gradually learn in his earthly development? We look back to ancient times when he was not yet able to perceive, when he lived only in the spiritual world; then came the time when things in the physical world appeared only blurred to him, when he could still perceive the spiritual realms. Who was it who prepared these people so that they were ready in later times, when they were able to see the full sun? It was God who, so to speak, nursed them to full maturity, whom we have called Jehovah, who separated himself from the Elohim in order to prepare the highest moment of earthly existence from the moon. While man was not yet able to perceive in the outer world, the God Jehovah instilled the consciousness of the I. It was he who crept into the ancient initiations that took place in a dull state of consciousness; who appeared to people in dreams, who slowly prepared them for the maturity of the I, which they could only attain through the descent of Christ. Christ did not come all at once, did not descend all at once, but that was only his last, personal appearance; he had already been working in those ancient times through the prophets. Christ himself points out in the Gospel of John that those who did not believe in Moses and the prophets would not believe in him either, for he says that Moses and the prophets spoke of him, though not yet of the one who stood on earth, but of the one who had been announced. In this sense, Christ has a certain history in the development of the earth. If we go back to the ancient mysteries, we can find this history of Christ and his descent everywhere.
Let us study the European mysteries. There is a certain tragic element everywhere. If you immerse yourself in these ancient mysteries, you will see that the teachers everywhere say to their disciples: You can rise to a higher divine level, you can become initiated in a higher sense; but there is something that you cannot yet fully recognize, something that you must wait for, something that we can only hint at: that is the coming Christ. — Everywhere in the Nordic mysteries, people spoke of Christ as one who was to come; they knew him everywhere, but not as one who was already on earth. The initiates over in Asia, in Egypt, knew him; everywhere they knew that it was Christ who was coming, that he would one day be there. And everywhere they knew that the old mysteries could not lead to the highest stage. This has been preserved symbolically. We must not press things, not in sharp contours, but take them very subtly, partly as truth and partly only comparatively. Something of that tragic aspect has remained in relation to the old gods and the waiting for Christ, since the glory of the gods will disappear before the glory of Christ. We find this even in the latest legends of the Germanic gods. The legend attributes something strange to Siegfried: he was invulnerable; he had the strength of the initiate in the sense of the European mysteries. But one spot remained vulnerable, and there he was wounded, and that also brought him death. Which spot was that? The spot where later, in the one who was expected, the cross was placed. The spot where Siegfried was still vulnerable was covered by the cross on the way to Golgotha. This is the last remnant of that tragic process that ran through the ancient European mysteries. But often, in those mysteries from which the Old Testament emerged and into which Moses was initiated, and which Moses then transplanted into his people as far as he thought possible, reference was also made to this peculiar course of human development. And it is more than just an image; it is something that gives the image a deep reality, which we can record something like this.
Let us assume that we have before us the human being in his fourfold nature, and his ego, his astral, etheric, and physical bodies are illuminated by the sun. Through the coming of Christ to earth, human beings have become capable of absorbing the physical and spiritual forces of the sun. Before that, it was different. During sleep, when the astral body was outside the physical and etheric bodies, during the night, so to speak, it was not direct sunlight but reflected sunlight from the moon that fell upon human beings; they absorbed this reflected light, not the direct sunlight. This is exactly the same in outward symbolic terms as it was with Christ, who lived as a spiritual ray of sunlight, and with Jehovah, who reflected back the reflected light of Christ until human beings became mature enough to receive the direct sunlight of Christ. Jehovah sent Christ down to humanity as if from a mirror. So how did people speak of Christ before his appearance? They spoke of him by speaking of Jehovah, and that is why Jehovah says to Moses: Tell your people: I am who I am. This is the same name that was later given to Christ. He does not want to reveal his own face to humanity yet; he is preparing Christ, giving humanity the image of Christ before Christ himself descends to them. And because human beings are to grasp this Christ in their deepest inner being, with their “I am,” because they are to grasp in him the entire descent into this physical world, this group of people, who were to prepare for Christ in the most genuine way, held most firmly to the idea of a formless God. They had to gain a new conception of God, not just remember the old form. And so this people, in its Jehovah religion, actually became the people who prepared for Christ. But now we must be clear that everything that is to be strived for particularly strongly in the world must also, so to speak, come from strong impulses. Therefore, the forces of the formless God had to be exaggerated, so to speak, within the Old Testament: a completely abstract, formless God, compressed into the center of a mere ego-being, stands at the center of the Old Testament religion, an ego-God, a formless God.
Where could this God first take on a form that could be understood by human beings, who now lived on the physical plane and were to conquer it? Through a wise providence, something remarkable arose in southern Europe. Traits from Asia and Africa appeared and mixed with those that had come down from the north. Those who came over from the Orient with the strong conviction of the worthlessness of Maya, of the necessity that this material realm of human beings must be transformed into the realm of the spirit, mingled with those who had acquired a strong sense of personality. And the strongest spiritual forces, which had been left behind during the migration from the West to the East, met in Asia Minor, on the Greek and Italian peninsulas, and there the fourth stage emerged, and once again the conquest of the physical world took a step forward. To grasp and sense God in the depths was the mission of the third cultural epoch, the Chaldean-Egyptian culture; from it had to emerge the ethnic group that could seek God in an abstract way, as a spiritual entity with the least sensual content. But in southern Europe, another group formed. As people with a strong Nordic sense of personality moved down there, the marriage of the human soul with matter took shape, which we admire in Greek temples, in Greek works of art, in Greek tragedy, where man begins to represent his own destiny, where he mystifies his own spirit in matter, incorporating it into external facts. One might say that a marriage between the spiritual and the physical is concluded, in which both have an equal share. In Greek art, in everything the Greeks create, the spiritual and the physical have an equal share. And in a certain sense, this is also true of the Romans; they know that the spirit lives within them, that the spiritual can become personality within them.
Only at this stage of human development can what has been announced take on its outer, real form on the physical plane. Only then could Christ descend to the physical plane, when man had conquered this physical plane. A Christ would not have been possible in the ancient culture, when only the Maya of the physical world was perceived, when only the longing for the past lived in people. Human beings turned more and more toward the physical plane at the time when the marriage we see in Greek art took place, which found its expression in the strong Roman bourgeois consciousness. And that was also the time when the Christ principle could appear in the flesh.
Therefore, we must regard all those who worked before as well acquainted with Christ; we must regard them as prophets who could only point the way, who saw in the descent of Christ the fulfillment of what they themselves were striving for.
In the next lectures, we will see how Christianity and other elements flow together into our post-Christian era and shape our present. Today, we should point out the moment when human beings, through their conquest of the physical plane, became ready to understand the God-man, the Christ.