The Rudolf Steiner Archive

20. Occult History I

[ 1 ] Today we will deal with a chapter from the field of theosophy, which on the one hand will follow on somewhat from various things we discussed in our last course here, but which in a certain respect is nevertheless quite independent. In the sense that has already been characterized here, we will again discuss something that applies to more advanced students, not in the sense that one needs to be advanced in terms of intellect and knowledge, but advanced in terms of the feelings one needs to perceive higher truths, which very often appear paradoxical, strange, or fantastic to the materialistic mind. in the sense of taking them in not as everyday events, but as something not only possible, but real.

[ 2 ] Today we want to bring a chapter from occult history to mind. We all know what history is in the outer, physical sense. Everyone knows that history represents the successive facts of the external physical world as far back as human beings can trace them, either by means of documents, records, or traditions. In the field of spiritual science, we go even further back in this external history, to the spiritual records available to us, back to the great Atlantic flood. We observe the successive cultural epochs according to the same principle, going back even beyond this great flood, which has been preserved in the flood legends of various peoples, and going back very, very far in time. All of this, however, is history, researched by occult means, but in a certain sense it is still external, physical, or more or less physical factual history. But there is also an occult history, and you will understand how this can be when you ask yourself the following question: All your souls lived before they entered the bodies of our present cultures, apart from everything that came before, in ancient Indian, ancient Persian, Egyptian-Chaldean, Greek-Roman bodies, and so on. When these souls entered the outer physical plane through birth, they saw what can be experienced on the physical plane. These souls looked out upon the works of ancient Indian culture, they saw the gigantic pyramids of the Egyptians, the Greek temples, and so on. From this we can all form a picture of how progressive the events are that human beings go through in the course of history on the outer physical plane in the life between birth and death. Now, however, one may ask the question: What happens when the soul passes through the gate of death and goes through life between death and a new birth? These souls, which are now incarnated, passed through death in ancient India, ancient Persia, and so on. Did the same thing always happen between death and a new birth? Is there perhaps something like a history on the other side of life, which we go through between death and a new birth? Did souls experience something different when they passed through the gate of death in ancient India or ancient Persia and so on, and do they experience something different today in our present cycle? Is there something like a sequence of events taking place over there?

[ 3 ] Today we are discussing what happens between death and a new birth, as an experience of the Kamaloka period, the time of Devachan until a new incarnation, and we are right to discuss it in this way. Some anthroposophists will be aware that this is the same for all times. It would be wrong to believe this. For just as the soul experiences different things in successive times when it passes through the gate of birth, so too are the events between death and a new birth subject to a history. We are right to discuss these events today as we do, because that is how they unfold. But there is also a history there, and the facts are not the same in all times, and today we want to consider a little of what the other side of existence goes through in terms of history, essentially in the post-Atlantean time. To do this, it is good to take a look at some familiar things, at the ancient Atlantean time.

[ 4 ] You know that life in the Atlantean era was different than it was later. When the soul of the ancient Atlantean left the physical and etheric bodies at night and ascended into the spiritual worlds, darkness and gloom did not spread as they do today. Instead, the soul was then in the night consciousness to a high degree in divine-spiritual worlds; divine-spiritual beings were its companions. This change between day and night was quite different in the old Atlantean time. When the Atlantean woke up early, that is, when he re-entered his physical and etheric bodies with his astral body and ego, he did not see external objects with sharp outlines as we do today, but rather blurred, as as when we go out in the evening when there is a thick November fog and we do not see the lanterns clearly and sharply outlined, but surrounded by an aura. This is how indistinctly the Atlantean primitive human being saw everything on the physical plane. Gradually, objects took on sharp contours in daytime consciousness. When he stepped out in the evening with his astral body and ego from the physical and etheric bodies, he was not in a world of unconsciousness; he had blurred but thoroughly experienced ideas of the divine-spiritual worlds. And what has been preserved as the names and ideas of gods, such as Wotan, Thor, Baldur, Zeus, Apollo, are not mere figments of the imagination, but beings that humans themselves experienced in ancient Atlantean times.

[ 5 ] Then came the great flood. The most advanced part of the Atlanteans went from west to east, settled the European lands, moved to Asia, and founded in Central Asia the great cultural colony of Manu, who was the leader of this then highly developed, most advanced group of Atlanteans, which then gave rise to the various cultural epochs from Central Asia. We must imagine that Asia and Africa were populated by earlier and later migrations and by other people, descendants of earlier epochs, and that these colonies moved in different directions to spread new cultural currents. The first went from Central Asia to India. Manu, who was in seclusion for certain reasons, sent his first disciples to India. Manu's first disciples became the teachers and leaders of the first post-Atlantean cultural people, the ancient Indian people. There, the first culture arose under the influence of the first post-Atlantean teachers, the ancient, holy Rishis.

[ 6 ] We already know the basic mood of this culture. The disciples of the rishis had a kind of memory of ancient times, of how they had been in Atlantis, how they themselves had been companions and fellow beings of the gods. That was their real home, in the spiritual world. Now we have been transferred to the physical world. That is why we find in India such a great longing for the spiritual homeland of humanity. People felt alien in the physical world. Illusion, Maya, mere outward expression of the actual spiritual was what this was to them. Hence the longing for the spiritual, hence the view of the physical world as illusion, deception, Maya. They did not yet love the physical world; they still longed for the spiritual world. They saw the stars, the rivers, the mountains, but that did not interest them yet. What took place between birth and death was illusion, Maya. They knew that between death and a new birth they lived in the spiritual homeland. That was the basic mood of the ancient Indians. But they continually received knowledge and communication from the spiritual worlds through the holy Rishis, the disciples of the great Manu. And it is good for us to form certain ideas about the nature of these great Indian teachers. Anyone who can gain an inkling of what was going on spiritually at that time in the northern part of India between the rishis and their disciples is, so to speak, filled with a feeling of deepest, most sacred reverence when they contemplate this first starting point of post-Atlantean humanity. It is hardly possible today, after human beings have gone so far out into the physical plane and have adopted such a materialistic way of thinking, for anyone to form a good idea—unless they constantly seek to acquire this idea through the secret science—of the kind of knowledge that Manu brought with him from the ancient Atlantean time from the West to the East. For even if the book with the twelve chapters, in which the Manu had preserved the ancient tradition of the earth, in which was written down what could be proclaimed as laws in ancient times when people were in the bosom of the gods, were to be placed before people today, they would understand nothing of this book. Nevertheless, it contained the instructions that Manu gave to his most intimate disciples, and through which the seven holy Rishis were able to prepare themselves for their profession.

[ 7 ] If we want to form an idea of the holy Rishis, we can do so in the following way: Anyone who had seen them in life would have seen them as simple people. For a large part of their lives, they were such simple people.

[ 8 ] But then times came upon these Rishis when they were something quite different from ordinary human beings. They were not scholars in the modern sense; during this time, they were mouthpieces and instruments of higher spiritual beings. Higher spiritual beings animated the Rishis in those ancient times, and when the Rishis spoke, they did not speak what they knew, but what the spirit that had entered them spoke. The essence of a higher spirit permeated the physical bodies of the holy Rishis, and it was the seven planetary spirits themselves that were connected with the first post-Atlantean human culture at that time, the seven spirits of our planetary world. They spoke through the mouths of the Rishis, who were merely instruments of the seven planetary rulers of our universe, and they spoke great and meaningful magic words that had magical effects. These were not merely words of teaching, but commands for what people had to do at that time, messages from the cosmos; these were spoken by the seven holy Rishis.

[ 9 ] What is later contained in the Vedic literature is only a faint echo of the great and mighty things that flowed from the cosmos itself through the instrument of the holy Rishis as the first manifestation of the post-Atlantean divine to humanity. But only at certain times were the Rishis inspired by the planetary spirits. They were therefore able to communicate great and powerful things to human beings. Much greater and more powerful things were spoken to human beings through them when they were between birth and death in this first post-Atlantean period than in the world beyond, for the Rishis were able to reveal all the secrets that human beings could no longer look up to from the physical world.

[ 10 ] It is so with initiates that they can not only move in this world, not only be teachers here, but that they also pass over into alternating states of consciousness—even while they are in the physical body—into the spiritual world and become teachers between death and a new birth. The great teachers teach here and there; they also continue to teach between death and rebirth. The Rishis were also the teachers of people in the afterlife. There they could proclaim the same great spiritual truths that they could speak of here in the physical world, but they could not tell the dead anything particularly valuable about the other side of existence, about the physical world. Nothing happened there that could be of value for life after death. The ancient Indian longed for this life between death and rebirth. He was happy to be in this life and had no inclination toward physical life. And so the life of the ancient Indian, when he passed through the afterlife, was such that he was not only knowledgeable to a certain degree, not only saw the events that were taking place up to a certain height. He could also—because human beings must do something in the other world—work skillfully there. The souls of the ancient Indians were much more skilled at working over there than here. The tools of the physical world were simple and primitive at that time. People were still clumsy on the physical plane, but over there they possessed great skill. It had remained with them from an earlier time. People developed a more lively life between death and a new birth than here in the physical world. People were more active and lively over there. The spiritual world deeply satisfied them; everything was light and bright after death.

[ 11 ] Then world history continued. The pre-Persian culture began. On the physical plane, man has progressed a little further in that he has now begun to love the physical plane. They already want to do work on the physical plane and feel that they should use their spiritual powers to work on the earth. The Persians gained a little more love for the culture inspired by Manu. Zarathustra now became the great teacher. What had flowed together in teachings from the inspirations of the Rishis now passed through Zarathustra in the second stage of culture. He was a great teacher, and he had to set himself the task of forming a counterweight to what arose of its own accord. People should come to love the physical plane, the physical earth, more and more, should become more conscious of it, should discover the means of culture, settle into the physical plane, and not perceive it merely as an illusion, as Maya, but as a revelation of the divine forces. But Zarathustra told them: In the material there lives something that is the opposite of the purely spiritual; mixed with the material is the power of evil. But if you unite yourselves with the servants of the good spirit, then in union with them you will overcome what is mixed with the material as evil. It could not be otherwise than that there was already the danger of losing the first glimmer of the same, of losing all connection with the spiritual. Therefore, the teachers had the special task, in addition to telling stories about the spiritual world, of making people aware that the spiritual reveals itself in the material, and those who had fallen into an exaggerated belief in the material had to be brought back to faith in the spirit, to faith that God reveals Himself in the material.

[ 12 ] That was what Zarathustra had to proclaim. He spoke powerful words. In today's languages, it is no longer possible to convey an idea of the fiery words with which he proclaimed what he could still see, since he was the successor of the disciples of Manu. For example, when he looked at the sun, he saw not only the outer physical sun, but also the spiritual beings living in the sun, of which the physical sun is only the physical body, and he called these spiritual beings Ahura Mazda, the great sun aura that became Ahura Mazda or Ormuzd. From this came the inspiration for all the teachings he was to impress upon the second cultural epoch, which was already falling prey to the temptations of Ahriman. These were powerful words that Zarathustra proclaimed to humanity. He said, for example: I will speak, now listen and hear me, you who desire it from near and far. Mark everything carefully. For He is manifest; no longer shall the false teacher corrupt the world, he who is evil, who has professed evil faith with his mouth. I will speak of what is greatest in the world, what He has revealed to me, He who is mighty. Whoever does not follow my words as I mean them will experience misery at the end of the world. That He, the great spirit who permeates the world, is manifest in the external world, and that he who already believed he could seduce mankind, he who wants to say: “The material is the only thing that exists,” that he shall not prevail, was proclaimed in such powerful words, and Zarathustra already pointed out that one would come, when the times are fulfilled, who will be in human form the embodiment of all the powers that surge and weave through the world, which are now only foretold; he calls him Saoshyant, who will be the power that lives in the sun, which can now only be seen through the outer shell, who will come in human form. Zarathustra foretells the Christ. Zarathustra had two disciples whom he did not instruct to go out and teach the Persians. They belonged to those disciples who are always found among the great initiates, who prepare themselves in silence for their future profession, who at first renounce going out and teaching. Hermes, the great Egyptian teacher, and Moses were these two disciples in a previous incarnation.

[ 13 ] This was what radiated in the second post-Atlantean culture; it had to be so, because humanity had advanced one step and people had gained something more than the physical plane. But this darkened in a certain way what could be experienced between death and a new birth. Although people could still see into the spiritual world, it was no longer with the same clarity as in the ancient Indian cultural epoch. It was dimmer and darker when souls entered Devachan from Persian bodies, and in Devachan people became less skilled in their actions there to the same extent that they became more skilled in working with the external world. If we have an ascending line on the outside, we have a descending line in the world after death. And when the initiates migrated—this is a spiritual migration, the initiates remain connected to the physical body—to the world beyond in order to visit people who were between death and a new birth, they could say much about the important things that people had seen in the past and which had now become obscured in physical life. They could be teachers of the higher spiritual facts and wisdom that gradually faded for people between death and a new birth, but they could not yet communicate anything about what was happening in the physical world. That did not yet have great significance for the afterlife. If they had told what people were doing there, it would not have been uplifting for people in the life between death and a new birth. Only what was the consequence of the spiritual world took place over there. No event took place on the physical plane that was worth communicating to the world beyond.

[ 14 ] Then came the Egyptian era. People had grown even more fond of the physical plane and had become even more skilled and influential on it. It was no longer a maya, an illusion, to them. People looked up at the stars and saw in the constellations and the movements of the stars a writing of the gods. They saw revelations of divine spiritual beings in the physical world. And below, they worked the earth with the knowledge they were able to gain with their human powers. We need only think of the cultivation of the soil. The bond between the human spiritual powers that man brought with him from the spiritual world into the physical world grew ever stronger. Now Hermes, in his new incarnation, became the first important teacher of Egypt. Let us try to imagine what he was able to teach. Above all, it will become clear to us what Hermes was able to teach his Egyptians when we consider the figure of Osiris from the perspective that is of interest to us today.

[ 15 ] Osiris is, in a sense, the center of Egypt, who was revered above all other gods. The Egyptian gods were worshipped under various names by laymen, initiates, and priests. You know the legend of Osiris. It is said that Osiris ruled over mankind, that his evil brother Typhon came and cunningly placed him in a chest, and threw him into the sea, leaving behind his grieving wife Isis, who searched for and found the body, but could not bring Osiris back to this world. A ray of Osiris fell from the afterlife onto Isis, and she gave birth to Horus, the successor of Osiris on earth. Osiris remained in the afterlife. And what was said to the Egyptian? He was told: Behold, Osiris is a being who is close to humans. He is one of the last beings with whom humans were together when they lived consciously in the spiritual world above. Humans descended into the physical world in order to develop further here, so that they can ascend again, enriched by the experiences of the physical world. Osiris is one of the beings who no longer needed to descend to the physical world because they had already risen so high that they did not need to. They moved up one level; they were not created to dwell in a physical body, which is the caste. They could only come into fleeting contact with it. Osiris can only be found when a person passes over into the other life. He is the last figure you can still experience, said the initiate to the Egyptian, if you make yourselves worthy, if you follow all the rules. Then, after death, when you are judged, you will be together with Osiris. He will form your essence, so to speak; you will feel like limbs of Osiris. So those who wanted to be with Osiris had to be sent beyond death. But since what people could experience after death was even more vague, even though they were united with Osiris, they could only experience what constituted their highest bliss—union with Osiris—in a faint and weak form. But they knew firmly in this life, through the faith that the priests had instilled in them, they knew and hoped that they would be united with Osiris, and in moments of celebration they also felt themselves to be members belonging to the soul of Osiris. Gradually, this consciousness of belonging together faded away. As culture on the physical plane rose higher, culture in the spiritual world between death and a new birth became increasingly diminished. People in the devachanic world saw less and less. And when the initiates then came over into the world beyond, they still could not tell anything that had happened in the physical world that had any special meaning for the world beyond. What happened there was only the consequence of the spiritual world. The souls of the dead could not be very interested in what was happening in the physical world. What could be done was to prepare for the Osiris experience, but that was only preparation for what they would receive in the spiritual foundations.

[ 16 ] Then came the Greco-Roman period, the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. Here, the marriage between the human spirit and outer matter became even more intimate, and it is on this marriage between the spiritual abilities of human beings and outer physical life that the splendor of Greek culture is based. When we look at the Greek temple in its wonderful forms—even in its echoes, such as in the temple at Paestum—we see what the human spirit has achieved in its conquest of outer matter. The lines and distribution of forces in the Greek temple represent the highest achievement in architecture. The Greek temple represents such a marvel of architecture and art because everything there is an expression of the spiritual. That is why it is so blissful to look into the harmony of the Greek temple. And something peculiar must be said about what happens to the clairvoyant consciousness when viewing a Greek temple. Let us assume that clairvoyant consciousness stands before the last echoes of a Greek temple, such as the one built in Doric style at Paestum in southern Italy, and can still feel the aftereffects that the Greeks felt on the physical plane. Let us assume the clairvoyant consciousness, when it sees the physical form in the body, could experience all the delight that can really be experienced there, then the clairvoyant consciousness would experience the following: When it goes out, does not use the physical organs, and sees spiritually, then the Greek temple with all its splendor has disappeared into the spiritual world. What is so perfect, great, mighty, and glorious in the physical world cannot be transferred—not even for today's clairvoyant consciousness—into the spiritual world. In the place in space where the magnificent temple was seen, there is correspondingly nothing in the spiritual world! And so it was with all the great cultural works of that admirable Greek-Latin period. Yes, it was also true in another respect. It was during this same period that the personality consciousness of human beings was most strongly expressed here in the physical world. The Romans first felt themselves to be personal citizens of the earth, firmly standing on this earth. To the same extent that people felt so firmly grounded on earth, they felt weak between death and a new birth, weak and weary and unskilled for the beyond. Even more than before, life between death and a new birth had faded away. Nothing of all that had been experienced so wonderfully in this life could be taken over into the beyond.

[ 17 ] It is no legend, as has been handed down from Greek times, that one of the most glorious heroes, who was visited by an initiate in the underworld, said in the realm of shadows: Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows—because between death and a new birth, man felt like a shadow and faded away, longing for the life between birth and death, which was filled with such beauty and greatness. So to speak, life had descended to the most perfect marriage between the human spirit and the outer form; in return, life between death and a new birth had descended.

[ 18 ] It was at this time that the event prepared by the other initiate, who was already a disciple of Zarathustra, through Moses, took place. Moses was chosen, first in the form that was possible at that time, to proclaim a God who could also reveal Himself in the physical world, who was also present in the physical world. However, this revelation took place in such a way that that which cannot yet be grasped by the senses was to become the only image of the God who weaves through the world. And when Moses announced himself at the beginning of his mission with the words “Ehjeh ascher ehjeh” — I am who I am — this was the first announcement of the God who is now to be found not only in the otherworldly realm, but who has passed over into this world and is to be experienced here. The figure of Yahweh announced himself through this second of the disciples of Zarathustra, and through them the great appearance of Christ, the mystery of Golgotha, was prepared. You know in part what this mystery of Golgotha means for the physical plane: actual proof that life in the spirit conquers death. This was achieved through what the prophets proclaimed, what was present even at the creation of all the kingdoms of nature, what walked on the earth. It is right to give a Greek name to this primordial being of the world, which is the spirit of the sun, for it could and had to appear in the Greek era, when humanity needed an upward impulse. In eternal remembrance of the fact that this had to happen at that time, the being who incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth is named Christ. This name is taken from the age in which Christ had to appear.

[ 19 ] At the very moment when the shell of Jesus of Nazareth died on Golgotha, something happened that is not merely a legend, but something that can still be verified today by anyone who has the necessary preparation on the path of spiritual science. At the very moment when death occurred on the cross, Christ appeared in the other world among the dead, among those who were between death and a new birth, and it was like a flash of lightning at that moment on the other side of the world. It had the effect of a flash of lightning, illuminating the weary life in the afterlife, which had been reduced to a shadow existence, this appearance of Christ. For the first time, something could now be proclaimed in the world after death that was different from what the earlier initiates had been able to proclaim when they passed over into the world beyond. Even an initiate of the Eleusinian mysteries could at most have proclaimed the beauties of the physical world that the dead could no longer see, and he would certainly have awakened a longing for the physical. He would not have brought anything special to the dead if he had told them what was happening in the physical world. But this was the first proclamation that Christ could make to the dead, that something had happened in the world of the here and now, between birth and death, which not only had meaning for the here and now, but continued into the life beyond. What had happened over there in the physical world was an event that lived on in the spiritual world. And we can experience in detail how it continues to have an effect. When we look at the most beautiful temple, the most beautiful cultural work of ancient Greece in the world here, and experience bliss as a result, it fades away and is no longer there in the world beyond. But when we immerse ourselves in the Gospel of John or in the Apocalypse, which proclaim the events that follow on from the Mystery of Golgotha, then we experience great things here in the world we live in. We can have wonderful experiences there if we allow them to affect us, if our clairvoyant consciousness allows them to affect us, and if we then pass over into the spiritual world, then the sensations do not fade away, but continue and only become glorious and understandable in the spiritual world. There we have even more wonderful things that are connected with the event of Golgotha.

[ 20 ] This is not the case with everything that is connected with it. No matter how much you admire the pyramids, only a faint echo can be felt in the world beyond; no matter how much you revel in the sight of a Greek temple or a Greek tragedy, nothing is transferred to the world beyond, neither for the initiated nor for the uninitiated. But if you stand before a painting by Raphael in which Christian truths are incorporated, you take the most beautiful part of the painting with you into the spiritual world, and over there you will understand things that you cannot yet see here. Over there, they become a light that illuminates the spiritual world anew, and so the event of Golgotha was the first glimmer of light with the appearance of Christ in the world of shadows. And more and more, through everything that has come into the world through Christianity, it will shine forth in the spiritual world. In this way, culture descends from the heights of the Atlantean world to the Greco-Latin period, when people were at their most decadent in terms of their experience of the spiritual world and sank deepest into the material world. The people of that time found existence between death and new birth in the spiritual world most desolate. Now, with the appearance of Christ in the “underworld,” the great impulse of light fell into it; existence between death and new birth is becoming brighter and brighter. Now it is going upward; the ascending direction in the history of the afterlife is beginning. Christianity is only in its infancy today. It will become increasingly clear that through what human beings can experience here, they become more and more spiritual, that they take with them into the world beyond what they experience here in connection with the event at Golgotha, that there is an upward direction in the spiritual world.

[ 21 ] Thus, in the world between death and a new birth, a story also unfolds, and when we consider this story of the hidden side of the world, we see the infinitely great significance of the mystery of Golgotha. For it has significance not only in the physical world; it has significance for the so-called three worlds in which human beings live. Yes, the being that is connected with our evolution, that co-created everything around us, that lived in Jesus of Nazareth, who said at that time: How will you believe me if you do not believe Moses and the prophets, for they spoke of me in ancient times—clearly pointing out that Moses spoke of him where he spoke of the divine being announcing itself to him in the “I am that I am.” The Being in Jesus of Nazareth accomplished something in our world that is not only significant on the physical plane, but which, as the most shattering event, permeated the three worlds, from the physical to the spiritual world. Through the occult history of this event at Golgotha, it stands before our soul in all its power.