The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eighth Lecture

[ 1 ] We have seen that the best way to approach the profound meaning of the Gospel of John is to try to gain access to it from different sides; and yesterday we were allowed to point to one of the most significant mysteries of the Gospel of John from a certain side. Now it will be necessary, so that we can gradually arrive at a full understanding of the mystery mentioned yesterday, that we consider the appearance of Christ Jesus in our post-Atlantean time as such. We have gathered together the most varied information in order to trace the development of man and within this the Christ principle. Today we will try to understand why Christ appeared as a human being at the very time of our development when he walked the earth. Here we will have to tie in with what we have already heard in part in the last lectures, and will have to consider in particular the development of our humanity in the post-Atlantean period.

[ 2 ] We have repeatedly mentioned that our ancestors lived in the far distant past over in the west on an area of the earth that is now occupied by the Atlantic Ocean. Our ancestors lived on ancient Atlantis. The day before yesterday we were able to point to the way in which the outer physicality of our Atlantean ancestors looked. We have seen that that which is perceived today by man with external senses, the physical body, has actually only slowly and gradually come to the carnal density that it has today.

[ 3 ] We could say that only in the last part of the Atlantean period did man resemble today's form to some extent. But even towards the last third of the Atlantean period man was still essentially different, even if he did not differ much in the external senses. We can best understand what progress man has made if we compare man today with any of the living higher animals. For various reasons it must already have become clear to us how man differs essentially from an animal that is still so highly developed today. With every animal we find that on the physical plane or in the physical world the being of this animal consists of the physical body, the etheric or life body and the astral body, but that these three components make up the being of the animal in the physical world. You must not now believe that only physical things occur in the physical world. It would be a great mistake if you were to look for everything etheric or especially everything astral in the supersensible world. Of course, with physical senses you can only see physical things in the physical world. But this is not because only the physical is present in the physical world. No, the animal has an etheric body and an astral body in the physical world, and the clairvoyantly gifted person sees this etheric body and this astral body of the animal. Only when he wants to come to the actual ego of the animal can he not remain in the physical world, he must ascend into the astral world. There is the group soul or the group ego of the animals. And the difference between man and animal is that in man the ego is also down here in the physical world. That is, man in the physical world consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, although the three higher members, from the etheric body on, are only recognizable to the clairvoyant consciousness.

[ 4 ] Now this difference of man from the animal also expresses itself clairvoyantly in a certain way. Suppose a clairvoyant observes a horse and a human being. He finds that outside the horse's head, which is extended to the muzzle, there is an etheric extension, and he says to himself: “The etheric head protrudes above the physical head of the horse and is powerfully organized. But these two do not coincide in the horse. In today's human being one finds clairvoyantly that which is the etheric head, corresponding approximately in form and size with the physical head. The elephant, which has a strangely large etheric head, looks particularly grotesque from a clairvoyant point of view, so that this elephant, seen clairvoyantly, becomes a very, very grotesque animal. But in modern man the physical head and the etheric head coincide, they are quite similar in shape and size. This was not always the case with humans. It only became so in the last third of the Atlantean period. The old Atlantean had an etheric head that was mightily superior to the physical head. Then these two grew together more and more, and it was in the last third of the Atlantean period that the physical and etheric heads came to coincide. There is a point in the brain - near the eyes - which today coincides with a very specific point in the etheric head. These points were separate in ancient times. The etheric point was outside the brain. These two important points have moved together. When these two points coincided, it was only then that man learned to say “I” to himself, that what we yesterday called the consciousness soul emerged. Through this covering of the etheric head and the physical head of man, his head changed in a very considerable way. For this human head looked considerably different in the ancient Atlanteans than it does in modern man. If we want to understand how today's development has become possible, we must also take a closer look at the physical conditions in ancient Atlantis.

[ 5 ] If you had gone through the old Atlantis over in the west, you would not have experienced such a distribution of rain, fog, air and sunshine as you now have in our present-day territories. The northern regions west of Scandinavia in particular were covered in fog at that time. The people who lived where Ireland is today - and further west of it - never saw rain and sunshine distributed in the old Atlantis in the same way as is the case today. They were always embedded in fog, and it was only with the Atlantic flood that the time came when the fog masses also separated from the air and settled. You could have searched the whole of ancient Atlantis and you would not have found a phenomenon that you are all familiar with today as a wonderful natural phenomenon - it would be impossible to find the rainbow! It is only possible with such a distribution of rain and sunshine as can be found in the atmosphere today. In the Atlantis, before the Atlantic flood, you won't find a rainbow. Only gradually, after the Atlantean flood, did the rainbow appear, that is, it became physically possible. If you now learn this from the secret science and remember that the Atlantean flood is preserved in the various legends and myths as the Flood, that Noah comes forth and first sees the rainbow after the Flood, then you will get an idea of how deeply true, literally true the religious documents are. It is true that it was only after the Atlantean Flood that people saw the rainbow for the first time. - These are the experiences that can be had by those who live through occultism and only then gradually learn to understand how literally one may take the religious documents, of course: how one must first learn to understand this letter.

[ 6 ] Towards the end of the Atlantean period, it turns out that the external and internal conditions were most favorable for man on a certain part of our earth's surface, which was located near present-day Ireland. Today this area of land is covered with water. At that time the conditions there were particularly favorable; and it was there that the most gifted people among the Atlantean peoples developed, the people most predisposed to rise to free human self-consciousness. And the leader of this people, who in theosophical literature has been accustomed to be called the “Ursemites”, was a great initiate who, if one may speak trivially, selected the most advanced individuals of this part of the people and went with them to the East, through Europe as far as Asia, over into the region of present-day Tibet. A relatively small, but especially mentally and spiritually very advanced fraction of the Atlantean population moved there.

[ 7 ] In the last Atlantean period, the western regions of Atlantis gradually disappeared and were covered by the sea. Europe emerged more and more in its present form. Asia was still such that the great Siberian mass of land was still covered with vast masses of water; but the southern regions of Asia, in particular, were already present in a different form. The less advanced masses of the people partly joined this core of the people, which moved from west to east; some went further, some less far. But the old European population also came into being to a large extent as a result of masses of people moving over from Atlantis, settling there and populating old Europe. Previously displaced peoples, some of whom had come to Asia from other areas of Atlantis, including ancient Lemuria, came together in this migration. Thus masses of people of the most diverse talents and spiritual abilities settled in Europe and Asia. The small fraction that was led by that great spiritual individuality settled over there in Asia in order to cultivate the highest spirituality possible at that time. From this cultural area, the cultural currents went to the most diverse areas of the earth and to the various peoples.

[ 8 ] The first cultural current went down to India, and there, through the impact that the spiritual envoy of the great individuality gave it, what we call the ancient Indian culture was formed. We are not speaking of that Indian culture of which we have remnants in the wonderful books of the Vedas, nor of that which later came down to posterity through tradition. All that can be known of this outer culture was preceded by a much more glorious older culture, the culture of the ancient sacred Rishis, those great teachers who in far-off times gave mankind the first post-Atlantean culture.

[ 9 ] Let's take a look into the soul of this first cultural current of the post-Atlantean era. This first culture of post-Atlantean mankind was the first truly religious culture of mankind. The preceding Atlantean cultures were not religious cultures in the true sense of the word. “Religion” is basically a peculiarity of the post-Atlantean period. Why? Well, how did the Atlanteans live? Because the etheric head was still outside the physical head, the old dim clairvoyance had not yet been completely lost. To the greatest extent man saw into the spiritual world when he was out of the physical body at night. While during the day, when he was submerged in his physical body, he saw physical things here in the physical world, he still saw the realms of the spiritual world to a certain extent at night. - Take yourself back to the middle or first third of the Atlantean period. What was it like for man then? He woke up in the morning. His astral body was drawn into his physical body and etheric body. The objects of the physical world were not yet as clearly and sharply defined as they are today. When a city is shrouded in fog and you see the lanterns in the evening as if surrounded by auras of color, so indistinct with fringes and rays of color - that gives you a picture of what it looked like in Atlantis at that time - not with clear outlines, but as if you were to see the lanterns outside in the fog today. On the other hand, there was not such a sharp distinction between bright daytime consciousness and nocturnal unconsciousness, as occurred only after the Atlantean period. It is true that during the night the astral body slipped out of the etheric body and the physical body; but while the etheric body still remained partly connected with the astral body, there were always reflexes of the spiritual world. Man could always have a dim clairvoyance, lived into the spiritual world, saw around him spiritual beings, spiritual processes.

[ 10 ] That which you read, for example, as Germanic myths and legends of the gods, of which the scholars of the green table tell you: People of the people once composed this out of popular imagination! Wotan and Thor and all the gods are personifications of natural forces and so on. There are whole mythological theories that speak of the people's imagination creating the gods. When you hear this, you can easily get the impression that such a scholar, like the homunculus of Goethe's Faust, was born out of a retort and had never seen a real person. For anyone who has really seen the people truly loses the ability to speak of the creative popular imagination in this way. These legends of the gods are nothing more than the remnants of real events that people in earlier times have actually seen. This Wotan did exist! At night, man walked among gods in the spiritual world and knew Wotan and Thor there just as well as he knows his flesh-and-blood counterparts today. What primitive natures at that time still saw dimly and clairvoyantly is the content of myths and legends, especially the Germanic ones.

[ 11 ] Those people who at that time moved from the West to the East into the regions that were later called Germania were people who to a certain degree - one more, the other less - had still retained a certain clairvoyance, so that at least at certain times they could still see into the spiritual world. And while the highest initiate went over to Tibet with his disciples and from there sent the first cultural colony down to India, everywhere among the peoples of Europe initiates remained behind who cultivated the spiritual in the Mysteries. Mysteries among these peoples were, for example, the Druid Mysteries, the Drotten Mysteries, of which mankind today knows nothing more to report - for what it knows to report is fantastic stuff. What is important, however, is that when people spoke of higher worlds at that time among the Druids or among the people of the western Russian region and Scandinavia, where the Drotten Mysteries were, there were always a number of people who knew about spiritual worlds. When people spoke of Wotan or of the event that took place between Baldur and Hödur, they were not talking about something that was completely unknown to them. Many had still experienced such events themselves in particular states of consciousness, and those who had not experienced it heard it from their neighbor, who was credible enough for them.

[ 12 ] And wherever you may go in Europe, there was still a living memory of what was present in the Atlantis. What was there? Something that can be called a coexistence of man, a natural coexistence of man with the spiritual world, with what we call heaven today. Man continually entered the spiritual world and lived in it. In other words, he did not need to be made aware of the existence of a spiritual world through any particular religion. What does religion mean? Religion means “connection”, connection of the physical with the spiritual world. At that time he did not need any special connection with the spiritual world, because it was a world of experience. Just as no human being needs to teach you to believe in the flowers of the meadow, in the animals of the forest, because you see them, so the Atlantean believed in the gods and spirits - not out of religion, but because he experienced them.

[ 13 ] With the advancement of mankind, things now developed in such a way that man had attained the bright consciousness of day. The post-Atlantean period is therefore that during which man attains the light of day consciousness. And he attained it by having to surrender the old clairvoyant consciousness. In the future this will be added to his present bright day consciousness. - With our ancestors here in Europe it was often the case that in the legends and myths images of the old times were given. But what was the nature of the most advanced? Strange as it may sound, the most advanced, whom the leader led over to the East as far as Tibet, were the most advanced in that they had lost the old dreamy, clairvoyant consciousness. What does it mean to progress from the fourth race into the fifth? It means to become day-seeing, to lose the old clairvoyance. The great initiate and leader led away the members of his cluster so that they would not have to live among those who still stood on the steps of the old Atlantean people; and among the former only those could be led up into the higher worlds who trained themselves artificially, who underwent an occult training artificially.

[ 14 ] What then was left to man of the first post-Atlantean time of the old coexistence with the spiritual-divine world? The longing for it! For the gate to the spiritual world had been closed to him, but the longing had remained. That man felt it something like this - he heard from the legends and traditions -: There was a time when our ancestors looked into the spiritual world, where they lived with spirits and gods, where they were in the deeper spiritual reality. Oh, if we could go there too, they said to themselves. And out of this longing the ancient Indian method of initiation was created, which arose from the longing for the lost and is based on the fact that man leaves the bright day consciousness he has attained for a time in order to screw back his consciousness to the former state. Yoga is the method of ancient Indian initiation which, through its technique, its practice, achieved that which man had naturally lost. - Think of such an old Atlantean who still had his etheric head protruding far above the physical head. When the astral body went out, a large part of the etheric head was still connected with the astral body, and what the astral body experienced could be pressed into the etheric body; thus one could bring one's experiences to consciousness. When, in the last Atlantean period, the etheric part of the head withdrew completely into the physical head, the astral body came out of the etheric body every night. So in the old initiation one had to try to bring the etheric body out artificially, that is, one had to bring the human being into a kind of lethargic state, into a kind of sleep of death, which lasted three and a half days, during which the etheric body protruded from the physical body, was loosened, so that what the astral body experienced was imprinted in the etheric body. And when the etheric body was then led back into the physical body, the human being knew what he had experienced in the spiritual world.

[ 15 ] This was the old initiation method, the yoga initiation, whereby the human being lifted himself out of the world into which he was now placed in order to place himself back into the spiritual world. And the cultural mood that emerged from this initiation is the one that found its echoes in later Indian culture. It was the mood in which man said to himself: Truth, reality, actuality, essence is only in the spiritual world, in that spiritual world into which man enters when he withdraws from the physical-sensual world. Now man is in the realms of the physical world, surrounded by the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom. But this is not the truth, what surrounds man in this way, this is only outer appearance; he has lost the truth since ancient times and now lives in a world of appearance, of illusion, of maja. -- And so the world of the physical became the world of the maja for the ancient Indian culture. This must be grasped according to the cultural mood as it was felt at that time, and not as a gray theory. To the ancient Indian, if he wants to be especially holy, the world of the maja is worthless. This physical world is an illusion to him; the true world exists for him when he withdraws from this physical world, when he is allowed - through yoga - to live again in the world in which his ancestors still lived in the Atlantean period.

[ 16 ] The purpose of further development, however, is that man gradually becomes accustomed to appreciate the physical world, which is given to him in the post-Atlantean culture, according to its value, according to its significance. One step further than ancient Indian culture is the second cultural epoch, also a prehistoric culture, but which we name after the peoples who later lived in these regions; we call it the ancient Persian culture. Again, we do not have the later Persian culture in mind, but a prehistoric culture.

[ 17 ] The second period already differs quite substantially from the ancient Indian period in its mood, in its emotional content. It became increasingly difficult to detach the etheric body, but it was still possible, and in a certain way it was still carried out up to the time of Christ Jesus. But these people of the ancient Persian culture had achieved one thing: they had begun to value maja or illusion, to regard it as something valuable. The Indian felt at ease when he could escape the illusion; for the Persian it had become a field of work. It still appeared to him as something opposing, but as something that had to be conquered, from which later emerged the battle between Ormuzd and Ahriman, where man unites with the good gods against the powers of the evil gods in matter. This formed the mood of the time. The Persian was still not fond of this reality, but he no longer fled from it, as the old Indian did, he worked on it, regarded it as an arena on which one could work, where there was something to be overcome. One step in the conquest of the physical world had been taken in this second stage of culture.

[ 18 ] Then came the third stage of culture, and we come closer and closer to the historical. In secret science we call it the Chaldean-Babylonian-Assyrian-Egyptian civilization. All these civilizations were founded by colonies that were sent out under the leadership of great leaders. The first colony founded the culture of ancient India, the second founded what we have just described as the ancient Persian cultural center, and a third cultural current went even further west and founded there what was the basis of the Babylonian-Chaldean-Assyrian-Egyptian culture. This was an important step in the conquest of the physical world. To the Persians it still seemed like an unstructured mass that had to be worked on if one wanted to work in it with what one thought of as the good spirits of true spiritual reality. Now one had become more familiar, more intimate with physical reality. - Look at the old Chaldean astronomy, which is one of the most curious and magnificent products of the post-Atlantean human spirit! There you will see how the orbits of the stars are studied, how the laws of the heavens are investigated. The old Indian had still looked up at this sky and said: However the stars may go and whatever laws may be expressed in them, it is not worth the effort to investigate these laws! - It was very important for a member of the third cultural epoch to penetrate these laws. It was even very important for a member of the Egyptian culture to study the conditions of the earth and to develop geometry. Maja was researched, the external science came into being. Man studies the thoughts of the gods, and he feels that he must create a connection between his own work and that which he finds inscribed within matter as the writing of the gods. You would get a different concept of a state system if you studied the earlier conditions of Egyptian-Chaldean state life than people can have today. For the individuals who directed and led such states were wise men who at the same time knew the laws of the orbits of the stars, according to which the bodies of the world move, and were aware that everything in the universe must correspond to each other. They had studied the orbits of the stars and knew that there must be a harmony between what happened in the sky and what happened on earth. According to events in the sky, they prescribed what was to take place on earth in the course of time. Even in the oldest Roman period, the fourth cultural epoch, there was still an awareness that what happens on earth must correspond to what happens in the heavens.

[ 19 ] In the ancient mysteries, at the starting point of a new epoch, people knew for a long time what events would happen in the coming time. It was known from the wisdom of the Mysteries - for example, at the starting point of Roman history - that a time would come upon us when the most varied destinies would occur, which would be brought about in the region of Alba longa. - For those who can read, it is clear that a deeply symbolic expression is alluded to here, that priestly wisdom, so to speak, marked out the culture of ancient Rome. “Alba longa” is the long priestly garment. In these ancient regions, the future of history - to use a technical term, if I may - was marked out in this way. They said to themselves: seven epochs must follow one another; they divided the future according to the number seven, and they gave the outline of history beforehand. And I could easily show you how the seven Roman kings, which were already inscribed in the “Sibylline Books” at the beginning of the Roman era, contain secret prophetic tables of history. At that time, however, people also knew that we had to live out what was written there. - And when important events occurred, people looked in the holy books; hence the sacredness and secrecy of the Sibylline books.

[ 20 ] Thus man of the third cultural epoch worked the spirit into matter, permeating the outer world with the spirit. Countless historical testimonies to this are concealed in the development of the epoch of this third cultural current, the Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian culture.

[ 21 ] Our time can only be understood if we know what important relationships exist between our time and that time. I would now like to point out one relationship between these two epochs so that you can see how wonderfully things are connected for those who can see deeper, who know that what is called egoism and the principle of utility has reached its peak today. Culture has never been so purely egoistic, so unidealistic as it is today, and it will become even more so in the near future. For today the spirit has completely descended into material culture. Mankind has had to expend tremendous spiritual power in the great inventions and discoveries of recent times, especially in the nineteenth century. How much spiritual power lies in telephones, telegraphs, railroads and so on! How much spiritual power is materialized, crystallized in the trade relations of the earth! How much spiritual power was required to have a sum of money paid out, for example in Tokyo, on the basis of a piece of paper written here, a check. And so one asks oneself: Is this intellectual power used in the sense of spiritual progress? - Whoever looks at the matter properly says to himself: You build railroads, but you only travel to what you need for your stomach; and if you travel yourself, you only travel to what is related to your needs. - Does it make any difference to spiritual science whether a man grinds his grain with a few stones or whether he gets his grain from far away by telegraph, steamship, etc.? Enormous spiritual power has been expended, but in a thoroughly personal sense. What will be the whole meaning of what people convey to each other? Probably not anthroposophy, that is, spiritual truths! When they use 'telegraphs and steamships, it will be primarily a question of how much cotton they want to transport from America to Europe, etc., that is, what belongs to personal need. Men have even descended to the deepest depths of personal need, of the most material personality. But such an egoistic principle of usefulness had to come one day, because through it the ascent will be all the better in the course of the whole development of mankind.

[ 22 ] But what has happened that man gives so much to his personality, what makes him feel so much as an individual personality, and what has prepared the fact that man today feels so strongly towards the spiritual world in his existence, which is enclosed between birth and death?

[ 23 ] The most important thing for this was prepared in the third cultural epoch, when people wanted to preserve the form of the one physical body in the mummy beyond death, and did not want to allow the form to melt away in an embalmed body. There the adherence to the individual personality is imprinted in such a way that today it emerges again as the feeling of personality in the re-embodiment. The fact that this sense of personality is so strong today is a consequence of the fact that bodies were mummified in Egyptian times. This is how everything in human development is connected. The Egyptians embalmed the bodies of the deceased so that people in the fifth epoch would have as great a sense of personality as possible. There are deep mysteries within the development of mankind!

[ 24 ] So you see how people descend more and more into the Maja and penetrate matter with what man can attain. In the fourth cultural epoch, the Greco-Latin one, man first puts his inner being out into the outer world. First you see how in Greece man objectifies himself in matter, in forms. Man secretes his own form into the figures of the Greek gods. In Aeschylus, the drama still echoes how man wants to utilize his own individuality artistically. He himself steps out into the physical plan and creates an image of himself. And in Roman culture, man creates an image of himself in the state institutions. It is the worst kind of dilettantism if what is called jurisprudence today is traced back further than Roman times. What comes before is conceptually something quite different from “jus”, from law. For the concept of man as an external personality, the legal concept of man, did not exist in earlier times. In ancient Greece it was the “polis”, the small city-state, and man felt himself to be a member of the small city-state. It would be difficult for a person today to find their way into this consciousness of the Greek era. In Roman culture the physical world is entered to such an extent that the individual human personality - as a Roman citizen - also appears legally. Thus everything progresses step by step, and we shall have to follow how the personality emerges more and more and thus the physical world is conquered more and more. Man submerges deeper and deeper into matter.

[ 25 ] Our culture is the first culture after the Greco-Latin epoch, i.e. the fifth of the post-Atlantean period; then follows a sixth and then a seventh cultural epoch. The fourth culture, the Greco-Latin, is the middle one - and it is within the time of this middle one of the post-Atlantean cultures that Christ Jesus appears on earth. This event is prepared within the third cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean period, because everything in the world has to be prepared. Within the third epoch that was prepared which was to occur as the greatest event of the earth during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, where men had advanced so far in personality that they put themselves out, that they made their gods similar to men. In Greek times man created a world of gods in his art after his own mirror image. In the state he then creates a repetition. Man has come down to the comprehension of matter, to the marriage between the maja and the spirit. This is the point in time when man has also reached the comprehension of personality. You will understand that this was also the time when he was able to comprehend God as a personal manifestation, when the spirit belonging to the earth also progressed to personality. Thus we see how, in the middle of the post-Atlantean culture, God himself appears as a human being, as an individual personality. One might say that what happened at that time seems like a picture when we see how man creates an image of himself in Greek works of art. Is it not actually the case when we come from Greek culture to Roman culture and see the types of the great Romans, as if the Greek images of the gods had descended from their pedestals and were walking around in their togas! You can literally see them!

[ 26 ] So man had progressed from the time when he felt himself to be a member of the deity to feeling himself as a personality. Then he himself was able to comprehend the Deity as a personality who had descended and dwelt among men embodied in the flesh.

[ 27 ] Let us visualize why Christ Jesus appeared precisely at this time in the development of mankind. How this mystery continued to develop, how it prophetically shone forth in the times of the earlier development and how it prophetically foreshadows distant times to come, we shall see next time.