The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] The best way to approach our topic, with the broad horizon we have set ourselves, is to first try to form a more intimate idea of the two opposites that initially come to mind when we relate the world and the earth to each other. These two opposites are: the spiritual-soul and the physical-material. We will try to discuss them in relation to a phenomenon that is more or less mysterious to people today and that we encounter in the ancient Egyptian worldview and way of life in the so-called temple sleep. Temple sleep is based on the other peculiar fact that among the Egyptian priest-wise men, and in the ancient culture of humanity in general, wisdom was thought to be intimately connected with the art of healing and with health. Modern man has only a very vague idea of the intimate relationship between wisdom and health, between science and healing arts, compared to those ancient conceptions; and it will be the task of spiritual science to point humanity once again to that concept of the spiritual through which wisdom, healing arts, and health are brought back into a closer connection. In doing so, we also recall something that echoes in all kinds of remarks we made yesterday. We recall that ancient figure we had to think of when we placed before our minds the image of the Madonna with her child, as painted by Raphael in the Sistine Madonna; we recall Isis with the infant Horus. She is the goddess whose temple bore the inscription: “I am she who was, who is, and who will be — no mortal can lift my veil.” This goddess was placed in a mysterious connection with all healing arts; she was regarded as the teacher of the Egyptian priests in relation to healing arts. And a strange speech was made in the last days of antiquity about this Isis; in this speech, we are made aware that Isis, even in the time when she was transferred to the immortals, was particularly interested in healing arts and the health of humans. All of this points to very mysterious connections.

[ 2 ] Now we must briefly consider the nature of temple sleep, which was one of the remedies used by Egyptian priests. In those days, anyone who had suffered damage to their health in any way was not usually treated with external remedies; there were very few of these, and they were only used in rare cases. Instead, in most cases, the person concerned was taken to the temple and put into a kind of sleep. However, this was no ordinary sleep, but a kind of somnambulistic sleep that was so intense that the person concerned was able not only to have chaotic dreams, but to see actual visions. During this temple sleep, he perceived ethereal figures in the spiritual world, and the priestly sages understood the art of influencing these ethereal images of human beings; they could direct and guide them. Let us assume that such a sick person was put into temple sleep. The healing priest was at his side. When somnambulistic sleep had set in, so that the sick person was living in a world of ethereal figures, the priest, through the power inherent in his initiation, which was only possible in those ancient times, when conditions of existence still prevailed that no longer exist today, or only very rarely, he guided the entire state of sleep through this power, through these forces. And he formed and shaped the ethereal images and beings in such a way that, as if by magic, the figures that the ancient Atlanteans had once seen as their gods appeared before the sleeping person. Such god-figures, of which the various peoples have only preserved a memory, for example in Germanic, Nordic, and also in Greek mythology, but especially certain figures associated with the healing principle, were now placed before the soul of the person who was in temple sleep. If the person had remained conscious as in his daytime consciousness, it would never have been possible for such forces to act upon him; this was only possible in such a somnambulistic sleep. The priestly sages guided the 'dream life' in such a way that powerful forces were unleashed in this etheric contemplation, and these forces had an ordering and harmonizing effect on the bodily forces that had been thrown into disorder and disharmony. This was possible because of the lowered ego consciousness. The temple sleep therefore had a very real meaning. But we now also see why this healing effect of the priestly wisdom was brought into connection with the wisdom that could only be imparted to human beings through their initiation. This connection is clear to us. It was the priestly sages who, by reviving the ancient practice of looking into the higher worlds, had the higher powers flowing from the spiritual realm, where the spiritual could act upon the spiritual. This gave them the ability to let the spiritual act upon the spiritual, and through this, wisdom came into its intimate connection with health.

[ 3 ] In ancient times, this elevation to the spiritual was a healing element, and it would be good if people learned to understand this again, for then they would also learn to understand the great mission of the anthroposophical movement. What else is this mission but to lead human beings up into the spiritual worlds so that they can look back into the worlds from which they descended! In future times, no somnambulistic sleep will be imposed on people; self-consciousness will remain fully intact. Nevertheless, the powerful spiritual force will become effective in human nature, and then the possession of wisdom and insight into the higher worlds will once again be something that can have an ordering and healing effect on human nature. Today, this connection between the spiritual and the healing is so hidden that people who are not initiated in any way into the deeper mysteries of wisdom do not know much about it; they are simply unable to observe the subtle facts that are present. But those who can look deeper know what deep inner conditions healing can depend on. Let us take, for example, a person who is afflicted by a certain illness, an illness that has inner causes, not a broken thigh or a stomach upset, for these are external causes. Anyone who wants to delve deeper into these things will very soon realize that a person who enjoys engaging in mathematical concepts has completely different conditions for healing than someone who does not. This is a fact that points to the remarkable connection between a person's spiritual life and the conditions of their external health. Of course, it is not as if mathematical thinking heals people. We need to understand this more precisely: different conditions for healing are necessary for a person who can absorb mathematical ideas than for someone who cannot. Let us assume that two people are afflicted with exactly the same illness. In reality, this does not happen, but we can pose it as a hypothesis. One wants nothing to do with mathematical ideas, the other is intensely preoccupied with them. It could then be the case that it would be completely impossible to cure the non-mathematician, while you could cure the other with the appropriate means. This is a very real case.

[ 4 ] Another example: Two people have completely different health conditions, one of whom is an atheist in the worst sense of the word and the other a deeply religious person. Again, it may happen that if both are afflicted with the same illness, you can cure the religious person with the same remedies and not the other. These are connections that seem downright absurd to today's thinking—at least to the majority of humanity. And yet this is how it is.

[ 5 ] Where does this come from? It is based on the fact that a completely different influence is exerted on human nature by so-called non-sensual ideas than by sensual ideas. Think of the difference between a person who hates mathematics and one who loves it. One says: “I am supposed to think all this? But I only want what I can see with my senses!” However, it is of great benefit to the innermost being of human beings to live in ideas that cannot be seen; and it is equally beneficial to live in religious ideas, for these too refer to things that cannot be grasped with the hands, that do not refer to the external, material world, that are, in a word, free of sensuality. These are things that will once have a great influence on educational principles when people begin to see more of the spiritual again. Take, for example, the simple idea that three times three is nine. Children form such ideas best when they are free from the senses. It is not good for them to lay three beans next to each other for too long, because then they will never get beyond the sensory idea. But if you get children used to counting on their fingers, perhaps at first, but not for too long, and then pursuing it mathematically with pure thinking, then this idea has a healthy and ordering effect on children. How little the present age understands such things can be seen from the fact that the opposite is happening in education. Hasn't the calculating machine found its way into our schools, where addition, subtraction, and so on are to be made clear to the sensory eye by means of all kinds of balls? What should be grasped purely in the mind is, as they say, to be illustrated sensually in this way. That may be convenient, but anyone who considers this to be educational knows nothing of the deeper curative education that is rooted in the power of the spirit. A person whom you have accustomed from childhood to living in sensory perceptions will not be as easy to heal as someone who has been accustomed to perceptions free of sensuality from their youth, because their nervous system is living under pathological conditions. The more you accustom people to thinking apart from things, the easier it will be to heal them. That is why it was always customary in the old traditions to give all kinds of symbolic figures, triangles, and combinations of numbers; the purpose of this, apart from the other value these things had, was to lift people up from merely looking at what was recorded. If I place a triangle in front of me and simply look at it, it has no particular value. If, on the other hand, I perceive in it the symbolization of the higher trinity of man, it is a concept that is healing for the spirit. And now think that spiritual science will lead people to the perception of the spiritual. We are led from what is happening on Earth to what happened on the ancient Sun, the Moon, and Saturn. With your physical, sensory eyes, you cannot see the events of that time today, nor can you reach up with your sensory hands to the old moon or the old sun. But if you lift yourself up to the things that once were without the aid of external sensory crutches, you will acquire ideas that have a balancing and harmonizing effect on your whole life, including your physical life. Therefore, spiritual science will once again become a great, comprehensive remedy, as it once was in the hands of the ancient Egyptian priests, who, however, needed a lowering of the ego, as practiced in temple sleep.

[ 6 ] The spiritual worldview is a healing worldview. Of course, some will object: Are anthroposophists all healthy people? Are there not also sick people among them? We must realize that the individual human being can do very little for his or her health and illness. A large part of the causes of illness lie outside the individual personality. You may have the healthiest ideas today, which, if you lived under completely healthy conditions, would never allow you to become ill from within; but there are other causes that are beyond the power of the individual human being today, for example, the secret causes of heredity, the influence of one person on another, the influence of an unnatural environment, and so on. These are all things that are mysterious external causes of illness; they can only be eliminated over time through a healthy anthroposophical way of thinking. But even if we see that today even the healthiest people can become ill, even seriously ill, we must not see this as proof that spiritual science will not have a healing effect on humanity over the centuries — and I say centuries, not millennia. Oh, the spiritually perceptive person sees a future in which there will be no inner causes of illness for those who bring about the inner and outer conditions of spiritual wisdom. There will always be external causes, but they can only be eliminated by the increasing prevalence of a healing art based on spiritual science. We see that if we understand the effect of the spiritual correctly, then temple sleep is no mystery to us.

[ 7 ] So what was conjured up in the etheric visions as a healing power before the temple sleepers? The images of the Atlantean gods, whom we ourselves knew as etheric beings, among whom people once lived when they were outside their physical bodies and in etheric clairvoyance.

[ 8 ] And if we go back even further in human evolution, far beyond the Atlantean era, we arrive at a time when humans first became what they are today, when humans first entered into the individual personalities they have today. We call this time the Lemurian period. The Atlantean continent, from which the peoples spread to Africa, Europe, and Asia, was destroyed by enormous water catastrophes. Lemuria, the continent on which humanity lived before the Atlantean period, was destroyed by forces of fire, by volcanic catastrophes. However, it was during the Lemurian period that human beings first acquired their sense of self-awareness. This was a tremendous turning point in human evolution. How did human beings acquire their sense of self-awareness? It is generally difficult for today's materialistic thinking to imagine this ancient state of humanity. If you were to imagine the people of that time as they are today, that is, with flesh and blood, bones and muscles, you would have a completely false idea. The human beings of that time had a much more fleeting, softer form; everything was almost liquid. What later became muscles and bones only hardened in the course of time. We are going back to a time when there was a completely different way of human reproduction. People back then lived more in the environment of the Earth, which was not pure air as it is today, but filled with all kinds of vapors. Humans lived there as true air beings, and external currents flowed in and out. It was actually almost as if we were looking at a cloud today that is constantly changing its shape, only the shape of the former human beings was somewhat more solid and definite. At that time, what we now call the sexes first appeared; in those days, an ancient asexual form of reproduction was replaced by a sexual one within the human race. However, this was millions and millions of years ago.

[ 9 ] With sexual reproduction, the incorporation of the I into humanity first entered the first germ. In earlier times, human beings were stimulated to produce their own kind by completely different influences; they were prompted to do so by external influences, by influences that lay in the sphere around them. That was the reproduction of that time, when humans did not yet have their ego, when they were still endowed with a dull, clairvoyant consciousness, when they were, so to speak, still resting entirely in the bosom of the deity. They could not say, “I am.” What he felt was something like this: he saw that when he did something, it made an impression on his surroundings, and he felt his existence in his surroundings. They could not say, “I am here,” but rather, “My surroundings allow me to be here.” They lay in the bosom of the living earth, and the living forces of the earth flowed in and out. At that time, there were no unhealthy forces, there was no illness, not even death as we understand it today. It was only when human beings were subjected to sexual reproduction that illness and death entered the human race. If we imagine all this correctly, we must say that in those days human beings were not fertilized by their own kind, but just as they breathe today, they absorbed substances from their environment, and this environment contained the forces of fertilization. What entered him fertilized him and caused him to produce his own kind. And these were healthy forces in man himself and in what he produced as his own kind. The ancient Egyptian priests knew this, and they said to themselves: The further back you trace the observation of human beings to earlier states, the more you bring them into conditions where there is no disease. Just looking at the ancient Atlantean god figures could have a healing effect, but this was even more so when the priests directed the vision so that the temple sleeper saw before him those ancient human figures who had not yet been fertilized by their own kind, who received their fertilization from their surroundings. Standing before the sick person lying in the temple sleep was the figure of the woman who gave birth to her own kind without being fertilized by her own kind. Standing before him was the woman who gave birth, the woman with the child, who is a virgin, the goddess who was a companion of humans in that Lemurian time and who has since disappeared from the sight of humanity. She was called the holy Isis in ancient Egypt. Humanity could normally only see this Isis back then, when death had not yet entered the world; at that time, people in a normal state of consciousness were companions of such beings who surrounded them and brought forth their own kind in a virginal manner. And when Isis was no longer the visible companion of humanity, when she was taken up into the circle of the gods, she was still interested in the health of humans from the spiritual world, according to the priests. And when people were brought in an abnormal way, as in temple sleep, to a vision of those ancient figures, of that sacred image of Isis, then the goddess still had a healing effect, for she is the principle in human beings that was there before the mortal shell surrounded them. No mortal has lifted her veil, for she is the figure who was there when death had not yet come into the world. She is rooted in eternity; she is the great healing being whom humanity will regain when it once again immerses itself in spiritual wisdom.

[ 10 ] Thus we see what has remained in that wonderful symbol of the virgin mother with the child, which has been preserved in the image of the Madonna. On the basis of spiritual science, we can say with all conviction that it has been preserved in the healing image of the Madonna. For the image of the Madonna is — within the limits that have been discussed — a remedy. If it is treated in such a way that the human soul still has an after-effect when it lies asleep and can dream of this image of the Madonna, then it still has a healing power today.

[ 11 ] And now we ask ourselves: where did these fertilizing forces lie at that time, when human beings were not yet fertilized by their own kind?

[ 12 ] Imagine our Earth as a solid core surrounded by all kinds of viscous, bubbling substances, water vapors, and within them semi-watery formations, within which the Lemurian humans lived. This earth body is irradiated by the sun, which at that time could not yet be perceived by the human eye because the sense organs were not yet developed. But this sun works through the veil of mist and clouds, and with the power of the sun's rays, the earth also absorbs the fertilizing forces. So what human beings absorb flows to the earth from invisible spiritual sun beings. Thus we have an earth that is illuminated from outside by the sun, which human beings cannot yet see, but this earth is not only irradiated by the forces of heat, but at the same time by the same force that today lives in the fertilizing power. Thus we have the sun and the earth in relationship with each other. This force, which acts upon those asexually reproducing human forms, was perceived as a male force, poured out as a product of the sun over the whole earth. Such were the conditions in the very earliest Lemurian period.

[ 13 ] And then we go back to a time when completely different conditions prevailed, to a distant past when the sun, which is now separated from our Earth, was still connected to it. For once upon a time, our Earth and the Sun were one body. Everything subtle and ethereal is still connected in a certain way in this common body. We consider the moment when the Sun and Earth were still connected like a biscuit mold, in such a way that one part, a smaller sphere, namely the Earth and the Moon, hung from the Sun. So we imagine the sun as a large ethereal body, with the earth and moon hanging together from it. At that time, the rays of energy still flowed from the sun to the earth and from the earth to the sun, because both were, in a certain sense, one body.

[ 14 ] We can best understand the meaning of this development if we ask ourselves what would have happened if the sun had simply turned away from the earth after it had split off, if it had no longer sent its rays and currents to the earth, if, so to speak, the earth had remained completely alone immediately after the split. All life on Earth would have dried up, ossified, and frozen. The fertilizing influence of the sun had to remain. One must perceive this interaction between the sun and the Earth as an interaction between two principles: one leading to condensation and solidification, the other inspiring and giving progressive life. And so it was later on. From the sun always flowed that which is progressive life.

[ 15 ] And now we go back to an even earlier time, to a time when both bodies were still one, when the forces of the sun and the earth still flowed together completely.

[ 16 ] You see, we have gone through different stages of development on our Earth. We have an ancient past when the Earth was still inside the Sun, when it was still one with the Sun; then a second period when the Earth was only loosely connected to the Sun, then a third when both bodies separated completely from each other. It was in this third period that the I actually entered into human beings, and it was then that sexual reproduction began. Then came the fourth period, the Atlantean period, and finally the post-Atlantean period in which we live.

[ 17 ] For those who look more deeply into the fabric of the world, everything that happens outwardly is under the influence of spiritual beings. Once upon a time, the sun and the earth were one. We will discuss the development of the moon later. At that time, this common body was also permeated by uniformly acting spiritual-divine beings. High spiritual beings were necessary to exercise control over the forces, which at that time were still undivided.

[ 18 ] Now let us imagine the development a little further along, with the sun body withdrawing. What happens then? The highest beings and the finest substances depart with the sun; they then act on the earth from outside. Those beings that represent the actual living, the ever-inspiring life, dwell on the sun; and on the earth dwell those beings which, if they were left alone, would bring about condensation, solidification, and darkness. In this second stage, light and darkness work together.

[ 19 ] In the third stage of Earth's development, humans are endowed with the ego. For them, the time begins when their self-conscious ego dwells within them. They perceive this self-conscious I especially in its opposite: human beings fall more and more into a state where they have one consciousness that is lighter and another that is darker; one comes to them from the sun, the other mainly from the earth. The I, the eternal core, must alternate between a form where it is eternal and one that can be born and die. But those beings that always have what humans can only have alternately leave the earthly body. First, the being that has a fertilizing effect leaves; it prefers to dwell on the sun. And the being that maintains the form in permanence, in duration, leaves with the moon. The sun and moon gradually separate from the earth. With the sun depart all those entities which would have brought the earth into a turbulent life if they had remained united with it; with the moon depart those forces which would have caused hardening and solidification, which remain permanently in their form. The earth is as if in the middle between the two. The human being on earth thus alternates between activities that are influenced on the one hand by the sun and on the other by the forces of the moon. These forms, which were formerly companions of human beings, are now, so to speak, removed to the sun and the moon.

[ 20 ] In the fourth period, there are those companions who have themselves already condensed into an ethereal-divine body and who are subject to human weaknesses in a certain sense. These are etheric gods, and man lived together with them during the Atlantean period. In the post-Atlantean period, he loses his connection with these etheric gods and is completely brought out into the physical world; the gate leading to the higher spiritual world is closed.

[ 21 ] But something remains from these ancient times that acts as a memory of the spiritual worlds, and through the law of repetition, everything that humans once experienced in life appears in their consciousness one after the other. In life, he had once gone through a number of periods in which he had stood in ever-changing relationships with the gods. Now he goes through the same periods again, but in knowledge. The great Atlantic flood was followed by a time of ancient Indian culture, when people relived in their souls, in their spirits, that time with their high gods, when the earth and the sun were still united. The high, exalted deity who at that time guided and directed everything that was, was experienced by human beings in the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch, and they gave this deity a name that remained a tradition for later times: Brahman, the All-One. The deity that truly once existed among human beings—for in the first period of Earth's development, human beings had been companions of Brahman—was worshipped in ancient Indian culture; human beings experienced it cognitively, in a highly abstract form.

[ 22 ] Then a culture followed in which human beings cognitively experienced the second epoch, when the sun with its life-giving forces was separated from the forces of darkness. Therefore, in their cognition, human beings of this second cultural epoch perceived a duality of God. They repeated what had once been in life in their religious knowledge, and this duality was preserved when the opposition between Ormuzd and Ahriman, the good and the negative deity, developed as Persian culture. It was nothing other than a repetition — but now in knowledge — of what human beings had once really experienced.

[ 23 ] And then we come to the time when the sun and moon emerged, the sun with its fertilizing forces, the moon with its forces that gave form: for humans, however, a transitory form, but for the gods a lasting form. And humans again perceived this difference in the contrast between those earlier solar forces and those that were now at work, and working differently than before. And they perceived these solar forces as the forces of Osiris in Egypt. Osiris is the power of the sun as it worked in the third epoch of Earth's development, and we see the Osiris religion emerging in the third cultural epoch. And Isis is the power of the moon before its complete separation from the earth, before the separation of the sexes, when it still worked as a virginal reproductive power. Isis fled to the moon, where she became frozen.

[ 24 ] And in the fourth epoch, in the Greek-Latin culture, humanity experienced in its polytheism a remnant memory of the Atlantean era with its many ethereal god figures.

[ 25 ] And now, in the fifth cultural epoch, we have nothing to repeat. Let us keep this thought in mind: we have nothing to repeat, no old memories. For we have given birth to a fifth epoch that will have an effect on the future, while the four previous epochs were repetitions. Our time must not give birth to ancient wisdom, but to a new wisdom that can not only point to the past, but must also have a prophetic, apocalyptic effect on the future. We see an ancient wisdom preserved in the mysteries of past cultural epochs; an apocalyptic wisdom, the seeds of which we must sow, must be our wisdom. We need a principle of initiation again so that the original connection with the spiritual world can be restored. This is the task of the anthroposophical world movement. No wonder so many people have lost wisdom, for without the principle of initiation it is difficult to attain wisdom today, more difficult than in the past, when only the memory of old experiences could be refreshed, when the fruits of earlier developments could be experienced. Today it is difficult — hence we understand that today the sensory world without God is barren and empty for human beings. But even if it seems as if the old spiritual world has died, it is still there, effective and fruitful, and if human beings want to, they will find connection with the spiritual world again. Provision has been made for this by the fact that just when the ancient memories seemed to be dying out in the Greek-Latin period, a wonderful seed for all subsequent ages was planted in the cold soil of the earth, the seed we call the Christ principle. In connection with this Christ principle, apocalyptic wisdom, true, new spiritual knowledge, will be found, which not only recalls past times, but also points prophetically to the future and, precisely through this, calls people to action, to creativity. This active, productive wisdom has, of course, emerged from what was sown in the past.

[ 26 ] Thus we see the connection between the past and the future, which is already before us today as a field of work. We see the entire horizon of the future emerging before us, and when we speak of the world, of human beings, and of the earth, we will not only have to speak of the past, but also of the forces of the future; for the world is not merely something that has to do with the past, but something that develops into the future, and our earth still has a great deal of future to complete. But human beings will be even more future than the earth, and if we want to know them completely, then we must not only look into the past, but we must study what is at work today and what will be at work in the great world of tomorrow.