The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Now that we have seen what theosophy has to say today about the history of human development, let us first look at what the Apocalypse tells us about it.

[ 2 ] To recognize this, we must go back beyond our culture to the Greek-Latin cultural epoch, the fourth in our great post-Atlantean age. In spiritual science, we date this epoch back to the 8th or 9th century BC. Going further back, we come to the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural epoch, then to the ancient Persian period, of which our modern historical research has only experienced the last echoes. Then we move on to the ancient sacred Indian culture, and thus we finally arrive at the great Atlantean culture, which is mentioned in all religious documents. Before the great Atlantean water catastrophe, the ancient Atlantean continent lay between Europe and America. There lived the ancestors of mankind, whom we call the ancient Atlanteans.

[ 3 ] Let us now first consider the spiritual life of the Atlanteans, for the same souls that are here today lived there, but with different spiritual abilities or states of consciousness, and these are of primary interest to the spiritual researcher.

[ 4 ] During the heyday of the Atlantean culture, we find that today's powers of perception were only present in humans in a rudimentary form. The ancient Atlanteans did not see external objects as we do today with sharp contours, but as if surrounded by an aura. When they fell asleep in the evening, the external image disappeared for them, but they were consciously in the spiritual world. They had a dim clairvoyance. However, they did not yet possess what we today call arithmetic and counting, judgment, and logical thinking. They did not yet have all the mental abilities that have built today's culture; for example, they did not yet know the power that lies in coal. But they did have magical powers with which they could awaken the powers lying dormant in seeds and put them to work. Thus, he possessed clairvoyant and magical powers. Those in Atlantis were the best technicians, who knew how to use their magical powers to best effect. What our scholars and natural scientists are today can be compared to the most clairvoyantly gifted people of that time.

[ 5 ] At that time, there were great mystery centers. Our mystery and secret schools today work much more secretly than those did. Those of that time were generally known as something that was both a school and a church. Piety and wisdom were cultivated there at the same time. Those who were leaders at that time can be called the great teachers of the mysteries. They taught in these Atlantean oracle centers. There were seven of them. There, students who were ready were initiated into the mastery of magical powers and conscious clairvoyance in the spiritual world. Atlantean wisdom extended far beyond the physical earth to spiritual realities, not just to the three lower realms as in our culture. Today's science sets a limit that does not go beyond the earth. Through clairvoyant development, however, the Atlantean initiate also attained the ability to see and experience the high spiritual beings that work beyond the earth's sphere, up to the stars and their orbits.

[ 6 ] Thus, there were mystery centers at that time that were particularly concerned with the various stars of our planetary system and the spiritual powers behind them. Therefore, there were oracles of Mars, Venus, the Sun, Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, and the Moon. But the greatest and most sublime was the ancient oracle of the Sun. The initiates of this sun oracle could overlook all the other oracle sites and watch over them. At the top stood the great sun initiate of the sun oracle, who foresaw the water catastrophe in Atlantis. He therefore had to ensure that the culture was guided through the catastrophe.

[ 7 ] Now, those people who were most predisposed to clairvoyance were not at all suited to the post-Atlantean culture. For this new culture, it was necessary to select those who had nothing left of the old magic, but who, like a dawn of the great post-Atlantean culture in its first primitive forms, developed individual spirituality, thinking, and judgment. The simplest were precisely those most suited to the future.

[ 8 ] They were now brought together by the great initiate of the Sun in a colony near present-day Ireland; from there they were later led to the center of Asia. These were the ones who were closest to our present state of consciousness at that time. In addition, the images of the etheric bodies of the greatest initiates of the Atlantean oracles and the most gifted individuals from the various oracles for today's culture were brought over and incorporated into the most advanced ones, as this was necessary for the future.

[ 9 ] There is a law of spiritual economy so that what humanity has once acquired is not lost. If we looked around the various oracle sites, we would find everywhere what can be achieved through secret schooling when one transforms the etheric body from the ego so that it is fully formed and organized. Otherwise, the etheric body of the ordinary human being dissolves into the world ether at death, but this is not the case with the highly initiated. Such a transformed etheric body is preserved for the blessing and salvation of humanity. The great sun initiate preserved the etheric bodies of the seven great Atlantean initiates as spiritual assets and took them with him to Asia. These were now imprinted on seven of the very best people, so that they grew up endowed with the etheric bodies of the greatest initiates of ancient Atlantis. Through many generations, he also practiced his art of education for health and spiritual discipline, so that he developed, so to speak, the very best human material.

[ 10 ] These seven people were simple in their outer lives; they had their own egos, their own astral bodies, but in certain states of consciousness they spoke as if inspired by higher powers. They were then sent by the great sun initiate to ancient India to those who still longed for the true original homeland of humankind and regarded everything external as maya or illusion. This was the choir of the seven holy Rishis. What brought this choir together like a spiritual symphony was the ancient wisdom of the pre-Vedic age. Thus we see into a time much older than that of the Vedas. What has been written down in the Vedas is only an echo; it reaches us only in broken rays through the wisdom of the holy Rishis.

[ 11 ] Now we come to the ancient Persian culture, where the seven Indian teachers were replaced by the original Zarathustra. He himself was the initiated disciple of the great sun initiate who stood behind the Rishis. This enabled him to proclaim the great teaching of the spiritual nature of the sun, of Ahura Mazdao. And here we see how the great teachers of humanity guide our development in wisdom.

[ 12 ] The Indians were protected from the outset from falling into materialism; their longing to see, to experience the spiritual, to feel connected with the deity was still too great. The Persians, on the other hand, were farmers and warriors; in order not to fall into materialism, they had to accept the teaching of the great Ahura Mazdao, the spirit of the sun, the highest being.

[ 13 ] The great Zarathustra initiated one of his disciples in such a way that he brought his astral body to a high level of development; in another, however, he developed the etheric body to the highest level of clairvoyant consciousness, so that through this etheric body, which is always the carrier of memory, he became able to read the Akashic Records.

[ 14 ] Now the first of the disciples was reborn as Hermes, the great inspirer of Egyptian culture, trained especially in relation to his astral body. When he was reborn, he was now able to carry within himself the astral body of the great Zarathustra. As the Egyptian Hermes, he therefore carried the astral body of the great Zarathustra within himself and was thus able to work in the spirit of Zarathustra.

[ 15 ] The other disciple who was reborn is also one of the most important personalities of post-Atlantean culture, namely Moses. For this reason, Moses had to be brought up as a child in such a way that his etheric body and ego could be completely influenced by the etheric body of Zarathustra. Thus, he had to be placed in a box and sunk into water at a tender age; this is a symbol of his calling. And so he became the great Akashic seer who was able to record the images he perceived in the Akashic Records: the great images of Genesis. In this way, behind the scenes of physical human evolution, the past is transferred to the future.

[ 16 ] Zarathustra was also able to become the greatest teacher of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period. As Zarathas or Nazarathos, living in the 6th century BC in the Near East, he was the teacher of the most important Greek teachers and initiates, for example, the teacher of Pythagoras.

[ 17 ] These four post-Atlantean cultures were inspired by the great solar oracle of ancient Atlantis, and parallel to them developed the continuous culture of the ancient Hebrew people, of whom one ethnic group lived in each of these cultural epochs. The ancient Indian culture was initiated into the mystery of the spiritual worlds and planetary conditions; the ancient Hebrews... [Gap in the transcript.] Then, living at the same time as the Persian culture of Zarathustra, the Hebrew ancestors also developed a teaching such as that described to us in Persia as that of Ormuzd and Ahriman as the teaching of good and evil; then followed the third, the Egyptian-Chaldean culture; at the same time, the exodus from Egypt under the leadership of Moses; then the Greek-Latin culture, at the same time as the great Hebrew prophets Elijah, Jeremiah, and so on. In ancient times, they had already received the concept of the greatest being, Ahura Mazdao, proclaimed by Melchizedek. Thus, in their culture, they had the same nuances at the same time as the other peoples.

[ 18 ] Now, such a culture always has its after-effects. That of Hermes very soon fell into decay. It had revealed deep secrets to the ancient Egyptian culture, but it had degenerated in the worst possible way and had fallen into the most terrible decadence as black magic. The ancient Indian culture had fallen least into decadence.

[ 19 ] Thus we see how everything that has appeared in succession has been preserved in the ancient Hebrew people in the various groups that have preserved the feelings and states of consciousness of the different cultures. These groups could be addressed by the names of the ancient cultures, depending on how well they had preserved the feelings of those cultures.

[ 20 ] When the apocalyptic writer speaks of the “church of Ephesus,” he means the representatives of the first, the Indian culture; the Persian culture finds its representatives in the “church of Smyrna”; the Egyptian-Chaldean culture in the name of the “church of Pergamum”; and finally, the fourth, the Greek-Latin culture, in the “church of Thyatira.” In this way, he was able to address the representatives of the four ancient cultural epochs in groups standing side by side.

[ 21 ] Now he looks further into the future and sees our cultural flowering in the “church of Sardis.” He designates the “church” that will follow us, which we are consciously preparing through the theosophical movement, with the name “Philadelphia,” after which people will finally come to the “church of Laodicea,” where no new impulses can be generated. We usher in the age of Philadelphia, or brotherhood, when we work and act as conscious representatives of theosophical spiritual life in the fifth age.

[ 22 ] The seven spirits of God, the seven stars, are the theosophical teachings about the development of the earth through planetary states, which are meant to lead us to an understanding of the mystery of the stars and their spirits. Thus, we consciously enter the church of Philadelphia when we take up the teachings of spiritual science.