The Principle of Spiritual Economy
GA 109
25 May 1909, Berlin
10. The God of the Alpha and the God of the Omega
It is often emphasized, and with good reason, that Spiritual Science should not simply be a theory about the world, life, and the human being, but that it should become the most profound content of the human soul: that which gives life its meaning. If one approaches Spiritual Science with the right attitude, it can indeed become the very substance of life within a human being. However, let me stress emphatically that it can take on this function only gradually, little by little, because Spiritual Science is much like everything that grows and develops: first it must have a seed that keeps growing, and then by virtue of this growth it becomes ever more effective.
It is also a fact that nobody could hope to extract from Spiritual Science the right way of life just by an intellectual understanding of its truths. Judging Spiritual Science by its outward features, one may come to the conclusion that it is a view of the world, albeit one that is more comprehensive and sublime than others. But no, it is still something else, for what other theory would be able to advance those comprehensive ideas about Saturn, Sun, and Moon? What other theories of the world today would dare to make very concise statements about this? None, because they end up with abstract concepts when they attempt to raise themselves above the objects we perceive with our physical eyes and ears. Such theories and conceptions of the world can offer only vague concepts about the divine that weaves and works behind material reality. As far as other less ambitious truths are concerned, such as the doctrines of reincarnation and of karma, Spiritual Science is also far ahead of anything traditional science has to offer when it talks about the evolution of the human being. To be sure, science too could adopt these doctrines for if one really wants to draw the proper conclusions from the materialistic-scientific facts, reincarnation and karma would long have been popular ideas. However, because modern scientists have not dared to come to these conclusions, the discussion about the subject has simply been put to rest. Evolution from the perspective of natural history and of history is discussed, but nobody wants to hear anything of the true evolution of the human individuality, which continues from one life to another and carries the human soul into the future.
Those who observe life properly will be compelled by its very consequences to embrace the doctrine of the four members of the human constitution, which is also revealed by clairvoyant investigation. But because thinking in the modern age lacks all courage, this doctrine is proclaimed only by Spiritual Science, which as a body of knowledge is in many ways ahead of other conceptions of the world and of the philosophies presented to human beings at the present time.
However, when all has been said and done, all that is not the real fruit of Spiritual Science. Its fruit does not consist in the fact that one accepts its teaching as satisfying and far- reaching. We cannot have the fruit without the seed. What we develop today as the fruit of the anthroposophical world view can make our hearts happy and warm our capacity to love. Yet nobody can enjoy this fruit of our spiritual scientific world view without the seed, that is without spiritual scientific knowledge itself. People may say: Of what use are these ideas about reincarnation and karma, or about the members of the human constitution and the evolution of the world? What is really important is the development of human love and of moral character. To this I would answer: Certainly, that is important, but true human love that is fruitful for the world is possible only on the basis of knowledge—Spiritual Scientific knowledge.
As a branch of knowledge, Spiritual Science has an advantage over other world conceptions in many areas. When it is experienced by us in a truly intimate manner, when we do not tire to awaken in our souls time and again those great comprehensive thoughts and carry them with us, then we will see that this body of teaching can in a very definite sense become the content and substance of one's life. Spiritual scientific teaching is a body of ideas that leads us into super-sensible worlds, and in spiritual scientific thinking we must therefore soar to higher worlds. Every hour spent in spiritual scientific study means that the soul reaches out beyond the concerns of everyday life. The moment we devotedly give ourselves to the teaching, we are transported into another world. Our ego is then united with the spiritual world out of which it was born. Thus, when we think in a spiritual scientific way, we are with our ego in our spiritual home, at the fountainhead from which it came.
If we understand this in the right sense, then we can truly compare spiritual scientific thinking with that state of consciousness that we recognize from the spiritual point of view as sleep. When human beings fall asleep at night and sleep themselves into a spiritual world, then they have transported the ego into the world whence it was born and from which it emerges every morning so that it can pass into the world of the senses within the human body. In times to come, the soul will live consciously within this spiritual world; however, at the present such is normally not the case. And why not? It is because in the course of the ages consciousness of the spiritual world has become weaker and weaker in the ego. In the Atlantean epoch the ego during sleep saw itself surrounded by divine-spiritual beings, but after the Atlantean catastrophe the ego was pushed out into the world of the senses and increasingly lost its capacity to gaze into the world that it inhabits during sleep. The idea that the ego is blotted out at night and resurrected in the morning is absurd. It is in the spiritual world but is not conscious of it.
Spiritual scientific thinking gives us the strength to tie ourselves consciously, little by little, to these spiritual realities. By leading us—at least in thinking—into the spiritual world, anthroposophy has certain beneficial qualities in common with sleep. The cares and worries that issue from the things of the sense world are obliterated in sleep. If human beings are able to sleep and their thinking is blotted out, they forget all worries. That is the most beneficent effect of sleep, an effect resulting from the fact that the ego lets the forces of the spiritual world stream into it during sleep. These spiritual streams contain strengthening forces, the effect of which is to help us forget our worries and cares during sleep and also to repair the damage that such worries and cares have inflicted upon our organism. The injuries caused by the sense world are healed by spiritual powers—hence the refreshment, the regeneration that every healthy sleep bestows upon us. In a higher sense, these then are the qualities that spiritual scientific thinking has in common with sleep.
Spiritual thoughts are powerful if we accept them as living forces. When we elevate ourselves to the thoughts that are connected with the past and the future of the earth and allow these momentous events to work on us, then our keyed-up soul will be drawn to these events, far away from the worries of the day. Thoughts of how the ideal of our own sovereign will grows for us out of karma—this plan of destiny—give us courage and strength so that we say to ourselves: “However insurmountable some of the problems of our lives may be today, our strength will grow from one incarnation to the next. The sovereign will within us is becoming stronger every day, and all the obstacles will help us to strengthen it even more. In the process of overcoming these obstacles, our will is going to develop ever more, and our energy is going to increase. The trivialities of life, all the inferior things in our existence, will melt away as the hoar does in the sun—melted by the very sun that rises in the wisdom that permeates our spiritual thinking. Our world of feeling is made to glow throughout and becomes warm and transillumined; our whole existence will be broadened, and we will feel happy in it.”
When such moments of inner activity are repeated and we allow them to work on us, a strengthening of our whole existence into all directions will emanate from this process. Not from one day to the next, to be sure, but constant repetition of such thoughts will bring about the gradual disappearance of our depressions, lamentations about our fate, and an excessively melancholy temperament. Spirit knowledge will be medicine for our soul, and when that happens, the horizon of our existence widens and implants in us that way of thinking that is the fruit of all spirit knowledge. This resulting way of thinking and feeling, this attitude of mind and heart, must be considered the ideal state to which spiritual scientific endeavors can lead. All discord, all disharmonies of life will disappear opposite the harmonious thoughts and feelings that bring about an energetic will. Thus, spiritual investigation proves to be not just knowledge and doctrine, but also a force of life and a substance of our soul. Seen in this light, Spiritual Science is capable of working in life in such a way that it frees human beings from cares and worries. And that is how it has to work in our time, for it owes its existence not to arbitrariness, but to the knowledge that it is needed.
The individualities who in their knowledge were far ahead of normal human beings, the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings, knew that Spiritual Science had to flow into our culture if it was not to wither. Spiritual Science is a new sap of life, and humanity needs such new sap from time to time. Spiritual Science is the stream necessary for our time. Those who have a feeling for these great truths should hurry to us and absorb the truths so that they can be salt and ferment for the spiritual life of all humanity The striving individual must see this as a sort of duty. It is not difficult to understand why the highest authorities have issued a call for Spiritual Science in our time precisely so that those with open hearts and unprejudiced minds may be assembled.
We have been viewing with our souls post-Atlantean humanity and have traced its cultural epochs from the ancient Indian down to our own fifth post-Atlantean epoch. We have seen that during this time human beings lost their consciousness of the spiritual world bit by bit. In the first epoch, the ancient Indian, human beings still had a profound yearning for the spiritual world. The world of the senses was considered maya, illusion. Then came the ages that issued a call to human beings to do external, physical labor. Human beings had to learn to love the world of the senses because only then were they able to cultivate it. At this time, human beings no longer said that the external world was nothing but maya. On the contrary, human beings now had to immerse themselves into the world and work on it with their faculties and wisdom. That, however, resulted in human beings' gradually losing the consciousness of the spiritual world so that Zarathustra, the initiator of the Persian culture, felt compelled to tell his disciples: “All living beings are called into existence by the force that streams from the sun as physical force. But this physical force is not the only thing. In the sun lives Ahura Mazdao—the spiritual Sun Being.” It was necessary to demonstrate to people how the material world is but the physical expression of the spiritual world.
Thus it was first in the ancient Persian epoch that there arose the sentiment that would express itself as follows: “Certainly, what the sun shines upon is maya, but I must seek the spirit behind this maya. The spiritual world is always around me, but I cannot experience it with physical eyes and ears. I can experience it only with super-sensible consciousness. Once this consciousness has been awakened, then in the physical existence also can I recognize the Great Spirit of the Sun with all its subordinate beings who also belong to the Sun. But an age is approaching when my soul will no longer have this knowledge.” It was difficult to transmit this knowledge fully to human beings. They must gradually be made more mature through renewed incarnations in order to recognize the divine-spiritual element behind all physical phenomena and to understand that all of nature is permeated by it.
In the ancient Persian culture, human beings were still capable of recognizing the divine element in this life, but they were unable to take this consciousness into the time period between death and rebirth. For the peculiar thing in this epoch was that consciousness between death and rebirth became increasingly darker. By contrast, let us look at the soul of an individual in ancient India. When it passed through death into the other world, it lived there among spiritual beings in a comparatively light-filled world. In the Persian culture, such was less the case; the world between death and rebirth had become darker. Obstacles between various souls accumulated, and the soul felt lonely; in a manner of speaking, it could not extend its hand to another soul. But that is the difficult and dark side of life in the spiritual world: the soul may not share its path with others.
In the Egyptian epoch, a substantial part of the soul's capacity to link up with other souls had already been lost to such an extent that the soul longed for the preservation of the physical body, which was to be preserved in the mummy. The reason for this was that the soul sensed it had very little strength that could be taken into the life between death and rebirth. Human beings at this time wanted to preserve the physical body so that the soul might be able to look down on it as on something that belonged to it, thus compensating for the power it no longer had in the spiritual world. Cultural phenomena such as mummification are deeply connected with the evolution of the human soul.
An Egyptian had the notion that in death he would be united with Osiris. He said these words to himself: “Long ago, in ancient ages, the soul was able to gaze into the beyond. It has now lost this visionary power, but it can make up for the loss if in this life it develops qualities by which it will become more and more like Osiris himself. The soul will then itself become Osiris-like and will be united with Osiris after death.” And so, by clinging to Osiris, the soul tried to create a surrogate for everything that could no longer be preserved from ancient times.
However, what Osiris was unable to give to the human soul is told in an Egyptian legend, whereby Osiris was once living with human beings on earth, until his evil brother Seth shut him up in a wooden box similar to a casket. This means that Osiris did live on earth with human beings when they were still more spiritual. But then he had to remain in the spiritual world because he was too sublime to fit into the physical human form. Similarly, if the soul wanted to create a substitute for the lost spiritual power of vision between death and rebirth, it had to become a being that is too sublime, too good for the human form. By becoming similar to Osiris, the soul would be able to overcome its loneliness in the beyond, but it could not take into a new incarnation what it had received in the spiritual world through the characteristics it had in common with Osiris. This is so because, after all, Osiris was not suited for this physical incarnation.
The grave danger threatening humankind in those times was that incarnations were steadily deteriorating because there could be no new influx of spiritual forces. Only what had remained from ancient ages could be further developed, and all that reached its ultimate maturity in Graeco-Roman times. This was made manifest in the magnificent art of the Greeks—the mature fruit from earlier blossoms. Greek art was the finest fruit of the heritage bequeathed to humanity beginning with primeval times. But hand in hand with this accomplishment came the feeling of deep darkness in the life between death and new birth, and a noble Greek individual was right when he said: “Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the shadows.”44Homer, Odyssey, Canto 489–491. These words are spoken by the soul of Achilles after Ulysses had conjured it up from the Underworld. Yes indeed, human beings in Greece and the Roman states possessed so much to delight and satisfy their senses, but they could take nothing with them into the life between death and new birth.
Then came the event of Golgotha—the event that is of significance not only for the external physical world, but also for all the worlds through which a human being must pass. The moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer, when the corpse was hanging on the cross, the Christ appeared in the underworld and kindled the light that once again gave sight to the souls below. And the soul was able to realize from that moment on that once again strength could also be derived from the world below and benefit the physical world. No longer does the soul endeavor to unite itself with Osiris in order to have a surrogate for the loss of vision. From now on, it could say to itself: “In the underworld, too, I can find the light of Christ—that which has immersed itself into the earth, for the Christ has become the spirit of the earth. And now I imbibe a new force from a spiritual fountainhead, a force that I can take back to earth when I return for a new incarnation.”
What was necessary so that this force could flow into the soul in the right way? A complete reversal in the way human beings looked at the physical world was necessary. First, let us ask what the people in ancient India experienced when we reconstruct what one of them might have said: “This world is maya, the great illusion. Whenever I perceive this world and relate myself to it, I have fallen victim to the illusion. Only by withdrawing from it and by elevating myself to primeval spiritual things beyond the world of the senses can I be in the world of the gods. Only by withdrawing from the outer world can I traverse through my inner being that has remained with me as an ancient legacy of these spiritual worlds and thus return to my ancient home. I must return to this primeval holy realm from which I once started out to the world of the senses, and I can return only by giving free rein to my spiritual powers, thereby diverting my attention from the lure of the outer world.” In the days of the ancient Indian culture it was possible for human beings to take this step back into the far-distant past. Inside of them, they had retained much of the force that could help an individual, if properly applied, to find the way back to the old gods. Thus did the human being in ancient India find his Devas, the beings from whom everything had come into existence.
Now came the epoch of ancient Persia, when the human soul had lost much of the power that was like a legacy from ancient times. If in this epoch the soul had said: “I will turn back because I do not wish to remain in this world,” it would not have found the ancient gods because the power to make that possible was no longer adequate. This fact is related to the evolution of humanity. Had the soul attempted to divert its gaze away from the outer world and consider it as nothing but maya, this would have led to its seeing not the higher gods, but rather the subordinate Devas who were evil spiritual beings that did not belong to the ranks of higher gods. Because this danger existed, the soul had to be shown how this world of the senses could be seen as the outward expression of the spiritual by starting from the world of the senses and not turning away from it. In looking up to the sun, the soul learned to see in it not only its external physical sun force, but also the Sun God Ahura Mazdao, and thereby it learned to know something of the divine-spiritual reality.
The soul of the ancient Persian had become too weak to activate the spiritual forces that could lead it back to the ancient gods. Hence, it had to be educated to pierce through the veil of materiality covering the spiritual. In the outer world the evil Asuras lay hidden, but human beings were not yet capable of seeing the beneficent spiritual beings beyond the world that was regarded as maya. That is why all names for spiritual beings came to be reversed during the time between the Indian and the Persian epochs. Devas were the good beings in ancient India, but in the Persian culture, they became the evil gods. The true reason for this reversal is evident from the continuing development of the human soul; in relation to the external world it had become increasingly stronger, in relationship to the inner world, increasingly weaker.
Preparation for what was to come was now made by those beings who guide and direct human evolution. After Zarathustra had learned to look up to the sun and see in its aura the Sun God, he knew that this Sun God was no one else but the Christ-Spirit, who at that time could reveal Himself only from outside the world. The human being in his soul here on earth could not yet perceive the Christ-Being. The being that was formerly seen in the sun and had been given the name Ahura Mazdao had to descend to earth because only then could the human being learn from within to recognize a Deva, a divinely spiritual principle, within his own soul. In the age of ancient Persia, life in the human body was not yet capable of receiving the Christ-Spirit, let alone be permeated by it. All that had to happen slowly and gradually. We must acquaint ourselves with the thought that the gods can reveal themselves only to those who prepare themselves as recipients of a revelation. Deva, the god who can be perceived through our inner forces, could appear only to that part of humanity that had prepared itself for his coming.
Everything in human evolution comes to pass slowly and gradually, and evolution does not proceed everywhere in the same manner. After the Atlantean flood, the tribes had migrated to the East. Since they settled in various regions, their development also differed. What enabled the ancient Indian to have a vivid feeling for the spiritual world? This happened because the evolution of the ego in this part of the world had taken a very special course. In the people of ancient India the ego had remained deeply entrenched in the spiritual world so that it was disinclined to make much contact with the physical world. It was the peculiar characteristic of an individual in ancient India that he or she would cling to the spirituality of preceding ages while at the same time confining relations with the physical world to a minimum. Since the individual in ancient India did not want to connect his or her ego with the physical world, the achievements of external civilization have not blossomed in India or in many other regions of the East where people by and large seem to have lacked inventive genius. By contrast, the inventiveness of the people in the West prompted them to take hold of the external world since they considered it their task to cultivate and improve it. Ancient Persia formed, as it were, the boundary between East and West. The people who paid little attention to the material existence in this world tended to settle and remain in the East. That is why the teaching of a Buddha was still necessary for the people of the East six hundred years before Christ. Buddha had to be placed into world evolution at this juncture because it was his mission to keep alive in the souls the longing for the spiritual worlds of the past, and that is why he had to preach against the thirst for entering the physical world. However, he was preaching at a time when the soul still had the inclination, but no longer the capacity, to elevate itself into the spiritual worlds. Buddha preached to human beings the sublime truths about suffering, and he brought to them the insights that could lift the soul above this world of suffering.
Such teaching would have been unsuitable for the Western world. It needed a doctrine that was in tune with the people's inclination to embrace the physical world and that could be summarized by the following explanation: “You must work in the outer world in such a way that the forces of this world are placed in the service of humanity; but after death, you can also take the fruits of your life into the spiritual world.”
The peculiar essence of Christianity is usually not properly understood. In the Roman world it did not appeal much to those who were able to enjoy the treasures and riches of this world, but those who were condemned to toil in the physical world liked Christianity. They knew that in spite of all their work in the physical world, they were developing something in this life that they could take with them after death. Such was the feeling of exaltation inspiring the souls of those who accepted Christianity. Human beings could say to themselves: “By setting up Christ as my ideal, I develop something in this world that cannot be annihilated even by death.” This consciousness could develop only because Christ had actually been on earth not as a Deva, but as a being who had incarnated in a human body and who could be a model and an ideal for every human being. For this to happen, the impulse and the proper forces had to be created, and this preparatory work had been done by Zarathustra. He had experienced so much that he was prepared to take this mission.
In ancient Persia, Zarathustra had been able to behold the Sun God in the aura of the sun, but he had had to prepare himself for that task in earlier incarnations. During the era that was still inspired by the teachings of the Holy Rishis, Zarathustra had already gone through some sublime experiences in incarnations. He had been initiated into the teachings of the Holy Rishis, having absorbed them stage by stage in seven subsequent incarnations. Then he was born into a body that was blind and deaf, which afforded him as little contact with the outer world as was possible. Zarathustra had to be born as a human being who was practically nonsusceptible to outer sense impressions, and then out of his innermost being the memory of the teachings of the Holy Rishis from a previous incarnation welled up in him. And at that moment the Great Sun God was able to kindle in him something that went ever further than the wisdom received from the Holy Rishis. That experience awakened in him again in his next incarnation, and it was then that Ahura Mazdao revealed himself to Zarathustra from without.
You can see, therefore, that Zarathustra had experienced a great deal before he could become the teacher and inspirer of the people of ancient Persia. We also know that Moses and Hermes were his disciples and that he gave his astral body to Hermes and his etheric body to Moses. Moses was the first to proclaim the teaching that emanated from the Akasha Chronicle, the teaching of the “I am the I am.” (Ejeh asher ejeh). And thus Zarathustra prepared himself slowly for an even greater and more prodigious sacrifice. When Zarathustra's astral body reappeared in Hermes and his etheric body in Moses, his ego—whose development had steadily progressed—was able to form a new astral body and a new etheric body for the new incarnation, commensurate with the full powers of the ego. And six hundred years before Christ, Zarathustra was born again in the land of Chaldaea and became the teacher of Pythagoras under the name Zarathos, or Nazarathos. Within the Chaldaean culture he then prepared the new impulse that was to come into the world. This is reflected in that passage of the New Testament that speaks of the Three Wise Men from the East who came to greet the Christ as the new Star of Wisdom. Zarathustra had taught that the Christ would come, and those who were left as disciples of this significant Zarathustra doctrine knew at what point in time the great Impulse of Golgotha would arrive.
There is always a certain connection between great individualities of the world, such as Buddha, Zarathustra, and Pythagoras, because what is at work in the world is a force—a fact. Great spirits work together, and they are born into a certain age for a purpose. Likewise, the great impulses in human evolution weave themselves into each other. Zarathustra had pointed to the One who was to make it possible, through the Event of Golgotha, for human beings to find the world of the Devas through the force of their own inner being; moreover, they would be increasingly able to do so as they developed forward into the future. And in the same epoch, the Buddha was teaching: Yes, there is a spiritual world, compared to which the whole world of the senses is maya. Turn your steps back into the world in which you were before the thirst for an earthly existence awakened, and then you will find Nirvana—rest within the divine!
Such is the difference between the teachings of Buddha and Zarathustra. Buddha taught that the human being can reach the divine by going back; Zarathustra, in his incarnation as Zarastra, taught that the time is approaching when the light will incarnate within the earth itself, which will enable the progressive soul to come closer to the divine. Buddha said, the soul would find God by going back; Zarathustra said it would find Him by going forward.
Regardless of whether you regress or progress, whether you seek God in the Alpha or in the Omega, you will be able to find Him. What is important is that you find Him with your own heightened human power. Those forces necessary to find the God of the Alpha are the primal forces of a human being. However, the forces necessary to find the God of the Omega must be acquired here on earth by striving human beings themselves. It makes a difference whether one goes back to Alpha or forward to Omega. He who is content with finding God and just wants to get into the spiritual world has the choice of going forward or backward. However, the individual who is concerned that humanity leave the earth in a heightened state must point the way to Omega—as did Zarathustra.
Zarathustra prepared the way for that part of humanity that was to become involved with the very forces of the earth. Yet Zarathustra also fully understood the Buddha, for their quest was ultimately the same. What was Zarathustra's task? He had to make it possible for the Christ-Impulse to descend to the earth. Zarathustra was reborn as Jesus of Nazareth, and because of what had transpired in the previous incarnation, his individuality was able to unite itself with many a force that had been preserved as a result of spiritual economy. The world is profound and truth is complicated!
There was also interwoven in Jesus of Nazareth the being of the Buddha. It had advanced on different paths because many powers work in the one who is supposed to have an influence on humankind. The ego of Jesus left the physical, etheric, and astral bodies at baptism in the Jordan River, and the Sun God—the Christ-Spirit—entered and lived three years in the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. And this is how Zarathustra had prepared humanity to be the recipient of the Christ-Impulse.
An important moment in the evolution of the earth had arrived with these events. It had now become possible for human beings to find God in their innermost being; in addition, they were now able to take something with them from the life between death and new birth into the new incarnation. And now, in our own age, there are already present souls who feel strongly enough that they have been in a world illumined by the Light of Christ. The fact that this is dimly divined in many a soul means that human beings today are capable of receiving and understanding the teachings of Spiritual Science. And because such people exist today, the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings have expressed the hope that such people will also feel the truths of Spiritual Science and will make them the very substance of their lives. Knowing all this, the Masters assigned the mission of proclaiming anthroposophy in the present age to those who have already attained a high level of understanding.
It is essential that Spiritual Science begin now to become a spiritual impulse of our time. Christ Himself has prepared human souls for Spiritual Science, and it is guaranteed to stay in this world for the simple reason that the Light of Christ, once kindled, can never be extinguished. Once we inspire ourselves with the feeling that the stream of anthroposophical spirituality is a necessity, then we are immersed in it in the right way, and it will always stand before us as an unshakable ideal.
Yes, the human personality had to develop to such an extent that light could descend and say in a human body: “I am the Light of the world!” The Light of the World first came down into the soul of Zarathustra and spoke to it. Zarathustra's soul understood the meaning of this universal light and sacrificed itself so that these significant words would go out to all humanity—from a human body: “I am the Light of the World.”
Der Gott Des Alpha Und Der Gott Des Omega
Mit Recht wird oftmals betont, daß Geisteswissenschaft nicht nur eine Theorie über die Welt, das Leben und den Menschen sein soll, sondern daß sie werden soll des Menschen tiefster Seeleninhalt: Lebensgehalt. Wenn man in der richtigen Gesinnung der Geisteswissenschaft gegenübertritt, so wird sie das durchaus im Menschen werden. Ausdrücklich sei betont, daß sie das nach und nach werden wird, denn Geisteswissenschaft gleicht dem, was wächst und sich entwickelt: erst ist der Keim da, der immer größer wird und damit immer wirksamer.
Es ist aber so, daß niemand hoffen kann, daß er durch das bloß verstandesmäßige Begreifen der Geisteswissenschaft aus ihr das richtige Leben ziehen könnte. Äußerlich betrachtet erscheint es so, als ob Geisteswissenschaft eine Weltanschauung wäre, allerdings umfassender und großartiger als andere. Aber sie ist noch etwas anderes; denn welche Theorie würde jene umfassenden Anschauungen über Saturn, Sonne und Mond haben können? Welche Weltanschauungen würden heute wagen, ganz bestimmte Aussagen darüber zu machen? Sie bleiben bei abstrakten Begriffen stehen, wenn sie sich über dasjenige erheben, was sinnliche Augen sehen und sinnliche Ohren hören. Solche Weltauffassungen und Theorien haben unbestimmte Begriffe über das Göttliche, das hinter dem Wirklichen webt. Auch in bezug auf andere, weniger hochfliegende Wahrheiten, wie die Lehren von Reinkarnation und Karma, auch darin ist Geistesforschung weit voran alldem, was die Wissenschaft in bezug auf die Entwickelung des Menschen zu sagen wagt. Sie könnte zwar auch zu diesen Lehren kommen; denn wenn man die Konsequenzen der materialistisch-wissenschaftlichen Tatsachen wirklich ziehen wollte, so müßten Reinkarnation und Karma längst populäre Lehren sein. Aber weil man nicht wagt in der heutigen Wissenschaft, diese Konsequenzen zu ziehen, so macht man [davor} halt. Man spricht von naturgeschichtlicher und geschichtlicher Entwickelung, aber von der wahren Entwickelung der menschlichen Individualität, die von Leben zu Leben geht und welche die Menschenseele in die Zukunft hinüberträgt, davon will man nichts hören.
Diejenigen, die das Leben betrachten, müssen rein durch die Konsequenzen dieses Lebens auch zu der Lehre kommen, die durch die hellseherische Forschung bekundet wird: zu der Lehre von den vier Gliedern des Menschen. Aber weil die heutige Zeit in ihrem Denken so mutlos ist, wird diese Lehre nur von der Geisteswissenschaft verkündet. So hat Geisteswissenschaft auch als Lehre vieles voraus vor andern Weltanschauungen und Philosophien, die in der Gegenwart an den Menschen herantreten.
Aber alles das ist im Grunde genommen doch nicht die eigentliche Frucht der Geisteswissenschaft. Ihre Frucht besteht nicht darin, daß sie als befriedigende, weittragende Lehre hingenommen wird. Man kann die Frucht nicht haben ohne den Keim. Was wir heute als Frucht der anthroposophischen Weltanschauung entwickeln und was unsere Herzen beseligen und unsere Liebe warm machen kann: diese Frucht geisteswissenschaftlicher Weltanschauung kann man nicht haben ohne den Keim, das heißt die geisteswissenschaftliche Erkenntnis selber. Man sagt etwa: Was brauchen wir diese Vorstellungen über Reinkarnation und Karma, über die Glieder des Menschen und die Entwickelung der Welt? Es handelt sich um Entwickelung der Menschenliebe und einer edlen Gesinnung. - Gewiß handelt es sich darum, aber eine wahre, für die Welt fruchtbare Menschenliebe ist nur möglich auf der Grundlage der Erkenntnis, und zwar der geisteswissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis.
Als Erkenntnis hat Geisteswissenschaft vieles vor den andern Weltanschauungen voraus. Wenn sie in uns wahrhaft innerlich erlebt wird, wenn wir uns nicht verdrießen lassen, in unseren Seelen immer wieder diese großen, umfassenden Gedanken zu erwecken, die Gedanken immer in uns herumtragen, dann sehen wir, daß diese Lehre in einem ganz bestimmten Sinn ein Lebensinhalt werden kann. Die geisteswissenschaftliche Lehre ist eine Summe von Ideen, die uns in übersinnliche Welten führen, und wir müssen uns deshalb bei unserem geisteswissenschaftlichen Denken aufschwingen zu höheren Welten. Eine jede geisteswissenschaftliche Stunde ist ein Hinausgreifen der Seele über das Alltägliche. Wir sind mit unserem Denken in dem Augenblick, wo wir uns der Lehre hingeben, hinausentrückt in eine andere Welt. Unser Ich ist dann vereint mit der geistigen Welt, und wenn wir bedenken, daß sie es ist, aus der unser Ich herausgeboren ist, so sind wir dann, wenn wir geisteswissenschaftlich denken, mit unserem Ich in unserer geistigen Heimat, bei dem Urquell, aus dem es stammt.
Wenn wir dies in richtigem Sinne fassen, dann können wir wahrlich das geisteswissenschaftliche Denken mit demjenigen Bewußtseinszustande vergleichen, den wir - vom geistigen Standpunkte aus - als den Schlaf erkennen. Wenn der Mensch des Abends einschlummert und in eine geistige Welt hineinschläft, dann ist er mit seinem Ich auch in derjenigen Welt, aus der sein Ich herausgeboren ist, aus der es an jedem Morgen heraustritt, um innerhalb des Leibes in die Sinnenwelt hineinzutreten. Einstmals wird die Seele bewußt in dieser geistigen Welt darinnen sein; im normalen Menschenbewußtsein ist das Ich nicht bewußt darinnen. Warum? Deshalb, weil es im Lauf der Zeiten in seinem Bewußtsein für die geistige Welt immer schwächer geworden ist.
In der atlantischen Zeit sah sich das Ich im Schlafe umgeben von göttlich-geistigen Wesenheiten. Nach der atlantischen Katastrophe wurde das Ich herausversetzt in die Sinneswelt und verlor immer mehr die Fähigkeit, hineinzuschauen in diejenige Welt, in der es im Schlafe darinnen ist. Denn unsinnig ist der Gedanke, daß es am Abend auslöschen und am Morgen wieder auferstehen würde. Es ist in der geistigen Welt, nur nicht bewußt!
Geisteswissenschaftliches Denken macht uns stark, um nach und nach uns bewußt zu verbinden mit diesen geistigen Welten. Dadurch, daß uns Anthroposophie wenigstens im Denken in diese Welt hineinführt, hat sie gewisse Eigenschaften - wohltuende Eigenschaften mit dem Schlaf gemein. Im Schlaf hören alle Sorgen und Bekümmernisse auf, die aus den Dingen der Sinnenwelt heraus kommen. Wenn der Mensch schlafen kann und sein Denken ausgelöscht ist, vergißt er alle Sorgen. Das ist die wohltuendste Wirkung des Schlafes und sie beruht darauf, daß das Ich während des Schlafes die Strömungen der geistigen Welt in sich einfließen läßt. Diese Strömungen haben stärkende Kräfte und bringen es dahin, daß nicht nur während des Schlafes Vergessen der Sorgen und Kümmernisse eintritt, sondern daß auch jene Schädigungen unseres Organismus, die wir durch Sorgen und Kümmernisse empfangen, dadurch überwunden werden. Was diese schlimm gemacht haben, löscht jene geistige Macht aus, und daher die Erquickung, die Wiedergeburt, die jeder gesunde Schlaf gibt. Solche Eigenschaften hat geisteswissenschaftliches Denken mit dem Schlaf im höheren Sinn gemein.
Die spirituellen Gedanken sind starke Gedanken, wenn wir sie lebensvoll erfassen. Wenn wir uns hinauferheben zu den Gedanken der Erdenvergangenheit und -zukunft und diese grandiosen Geschehnisse auf uns wirken lassen, dann wird unsere Seele gespannt hingezogen werden zu ihnen und sie wird über die Sorgen des Tages weit hinweggetragen werden. Gedanken, wie aus dem Karma, diesem Schicksalsplan, uns das Ideal unseres eigenen königlichen Willens erwächst, geben uns Mut und Kraft, so daß wir uns sagen: Mögen auch heute diese oder jene Hindernisse in meinem Leben unüberwindlich sein meine Kraft wächst von Inkarnation zu Inkarnation. Immer stärker wird der königliche Wille in mir, und alle Hemmnisse werden mir helfen, diesen Willen immer königlicher zu machen. Ich werde die Hemmnisse überwinden und daran wird sich mein Wille immer mehr entwickeln, meine Energie wird wachsen. Die Kleinlichkeiten des Lebens, all das Minderwertige des Daseins, werden schmelzen wie Reif an der Sonne, jener Sonne, die aufgeht in der Weisheit, die uns im spirituellen Denken durchdringt. Unsere Gefühlswelt wird durchwärmt, durchglüht, durchleuchtet; unser Dasein wird sich weiten und wir werden uns darin beseligt fühlen.
Wenn wir solche Augenblicke wiederholen und auf uns wirken lassen, dann wird eine Stärkung unseres ganzen Daseins nach allen Richtungen hin daraus erfließen. Zwar nicht von heute auf morgen, aber in steter Wiederholung solcher Gedanken werden der Trübsinn, das Wehklagen über unser Schicksal, das trübselige Temperament nach und nach hinschwinden. Ein Heilmittel unserer Seele wird GeistErkenntnis sein! Und wenn sie das wird, wenn sich unser Dasein so weitet, dann pflanzt sie in uns die Gesinnung, welche die Frucht der Geist-Erkenntnis ist. Das, was sie so in uns erstehen läßt, muß betrachtet werden als das geisteswissenschaftliche Ideal. Aller Zwiespalt, alle Disharmonien des Lebens werden gegenüber den harmonischen Gedanken und Gefühlen, die einen energischen Willen nach sich ziehen, fallen. Damit erweist sich die Geistesforschung nicht bloß als Wissen und Lehre, sondern als Kraft des Lebens und als Inhalt unserer Seele. Wenn sie so verstanden wird, dann wird sie imstande sein, im Leben derart zu wirken, daß sie den Menschen allen Sorgen und Kümmernissen entreißt. Und so muß sie wirken in unserer Zeit, denn sie verdankt ihr Dasein nicht einer Willkür, sondern der Erkenntnis, daß sie notwendig ist.
Die Individualitäten, die dem normalen Dasein der Menschen weit vorangeschritten sind, die Meister der Weisheit und des Zusammenklanges der Empfindungen haben erkannt, daß Geisteswissenschaft in unsere Kultur einfließen muß, wenn diese nicht verdorren soll. Geisteswissenschaft ist ein neuer Lebenssaft, und die Menschheit muß von Zeit zu Zeit neue Lebenssäfte zugeführt bekommen. Geisteswissenschaft ist eine in unserer Zeit notwendige Strömung. Diejenigen, die ein Gefühl haben für diese großen Wahrheiten, sollen herbeieilen und die Wahrheiten aufnehmen, um eine Art Ferment zu sein für die übrige Menschheit, um Salz zu sein für das Geistesleben der ganzen Menschheit. Das muß der Strebende als eine Art Pflicht empfinden. Unschwer ist es zu erkennen, warum gerade in unserer Zeit von hoher Stelle aus der Ruf nach Geisteswissenschaft ergangen ist, um diejenigen zu sammeln, die offenes Herz und freien Verstand für sie haben. Wir haben an unserer Seele vorüberziehen lassen die nachatlantische Menschheit und haben die Kulturepochen verfolgt von der indischen bis zu unserer Zeit, der fünften Epoche. Wir sahen, wie während dieser Zeit die Menschen Stück für Stück das Bewußtsein der geistigen Welt verloren haben.
In der ersten Epoche hatten die Menschen noch ein tiefes Sehnen nach der geistigen Welt. Die Sinnenwelt ist ihnen Maja, Illusion. Dann aber kamen Zeiten, die den Menschen zu äußerer, physischer Arbeit berufen haben. Er muß die Sinneswelt liebgewinnen, denn nur dann kann er sie bearbeiten. Nicht mehr darf der Mensch sagen, die äußere Welt ist nur Maja, sondern er muß sich mit seinen Kräften und seiner Weisheit in sie hineinvertiefen. Dadurch aber verliert er nach und nach das Bewußtsein von der geistigen Welt, und Zarathustra, der Initiator der persischen Kultur, muß seinen Schülern sagen: Die Kraft, die von der Sonne ausstrahlt als physische Kraft, ruft alles Lebende zum Dasein auf. Aber diese physische Kraft ist nicht das einzige. In der Sonne lebt Ahura Mazdao, das geistige Wesen der Sonne. - Es mußte den Menschen gezeigt werden, wie in allem Sinnlichen der äußere Ausdruck eines Geistigen gegeben ist.
So kam es, daß zuerst in der persischen Kultur aufging jene Stimmung: Das, was von der Sonne beleuchtet wird, ist zwar Maja, aber hinter dieser Maja ist der Geist zu suchen. Die geistige Welt ist immer um mich herum, aber mit sinnlichen Augen und Ohren kann ich sie nicht erleben, nur mit übersinnlichem Bewußtsein. Wenn dieses Bewußtsein erweckt wird, dann kann ich auch im sinnlichen Dasein den großen Geist der Sonne mit allen seinen Unterwesen, die zur Sonne gehören, erkennen. Es kommt eine Zeit, wo meine Seele das nicht erkennen wird. —- Aber schwierig war es, dies den Menschen voll zu überliefern. Sie müssen in immer neuen Verkörperungen nach und nach reif gemacht werden, um hinter allem Physischen ein GöttlichGeistiges zu erkennen, um zu erkennen, daß die ganze Natur davon durchdrungen ist.
Der Mensch konnte in diesem Leben das Göttliche erkennen, aber er konnte nicht dieses Bewußtsein in die Zeit zwischen Tod und einer neuen Geburt hinübernehmen. Denn das war das Eigenartige in dieser Zeit, daß das Bewußtsein des Menschen zwischen Tod und einer neuen Geburt immer dunkler wurde. Nehmen wir eine Seele von einem Inder der alten Zeit. Wenn sie hinüberging durch den Tod und in der andern Welt war, so lebte sie noch in einer verhältnismäßig hellen Welt innerhalb geistiger Wesenheiten. In der persischen Kultur war das schon weniger der Fall. Die Welt zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt war dunkler geworden. Hindernisse türmen sich auf zwischen Seele und Seele, und einsam fühlt sich die Seele. Sie kann sozusagen nicht die Hand hinüberreichen zur andern Seele. Das ist das Schwere und Dunkle dieses Lebens in der geistigen Welt, daß man nicht gemeinsam mit andern gehen kann.
Während der ägyptischen Zeit war schon ein großer Teil der Kraft für die Seele verloren, die sie befähigte, andern Seelen die Hand zu reichen; so viel, daß die ägyptische Seele sich sehnte nach Erhaltung des Leibes. Er sollte in der Mumie erhalten bleiben. Das kam daher, weil die Seele spürte: Die Kraft, die ich mitnehme in dieses Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt, ist gering. Man will den Leib erhalten, damit die Seele auf ihn herabschauen kann wie auf etwas, das zu ihr gehört und so die Kraft ersetzen, die sie drüben nicht mehr erhielt. Solche Kulturerscheinungen wie die Mumifizierung hängen tief zusammen mit der Entwickelung der menschlichen Seele.
Der Ägypter hatte die Vorstellung, daß er sich im Tode mit Osiris vereinigt. Er sagte sich: Einstmals, in alten Zeiten, konnte die Seele drüben schauen. Jetzt hat sie die Kraft verloren, aber sie kann sich dafür einen Ersatz schaffen, wenn sie hier im Leben sich solche Eigenschaften aneignet, daß sie Osiris immer ähnlicher wird. Dann wird sie selbst eine Art Osiris und wird mit ihm nach dem Tode vereint sein. So hatte sich die Seele durch Anklammern an Osiris einen Ersatz zu schaffen versucht für das, was sie nicht mehr aus alten Zeiten erhalten konnte. Aber was Osiris der Seele nicht geben kann, das zeigt die ägyptische Legende, die sagt, daß Osiris einst mit den Menschen zusammen die Erde bewohnte. Dann aber wurde er von seinem bösen Bruder Seth in einen Kasten gesperrt, wie in einen Sarg. Das will sagen, daß Osiris einstmals, als die Menschen noch geistiger waren, mit ihnen zusammen war auf der Erde; doch dann mußte er in der geistigen Welt verbleiben, weil er zu gut war für die physische Menschengestalt. Ein solches Wesen muß die Seele werden, ein Wesen, das zu gut ist für die Menschengestalt, wenn diese Seele sich einen Ersatz verschaffen wollte für die geistige Kraft des Schauens zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt. Durch das Ähnlichwerden mit Osiris konnte die Seele drüben ihre Einsamkeit überwinden, doch sie konnte nicht das, was sie so erhielt in der geistigen Welt durch die Gemeinschaft mit Osiris, wieder mitbringen in eine neue Verkörperung, denn Osiris paßte ja nicht hinein in diese sinnlich-physische Verkörperung. Erträglich machte sich die Seele das Dasein zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt, aber sie konnte nichts von dem mitbringen in eine neue Inkarnation.
Das war die schwere Gefahr, in der die Menschheit damals schwebte, daß die Inkarnationen immer schlechter wurden. Denn nichts Neues konnte hinzukommen an geistiger Kraft. Nur das, was aus alter Zeit geblieben war, konnte ausgebildet werden. Das war ausgereift in der griechisch-römischen Zeit. Wie von der Blüte die Frucht trat das zutage in der herrlichen Kunst der Griechen. Das war die schönste Frucht dessen, was der Menschheit als altes Erbgut mitgegeben war aus Urzeiten. Aber damit war verknüpft Dunkelheit und Finsternis in dem Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt, und recht hatte der vornehme Grieche, wenn er sagte: Lieber ein Bettler auf Erden, als ein König im Reich der Schatten! - Jawohl, in dieser Welt der griechischen Lande und der römischen Staaten, wo der Mensch so viel besaß, was seine Sinne beglückte und befriedigte, in dieser Welt war es, wo er nichts mitnehmen konnte in das Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt.
Dann kam das Ereignis von Golgatha, jenes Ereignis, das nicht nur Bedeutung hat für die äußere physische Welt, sondern für alle die Welten, die der Mensch durchlebt. In dem Augenblick, wo das Blut aus den Wunden des Erlösers floß, als der Leichnam am Kreuze hing, erschien der Christus in der Unterwelt und entfachte das Licht, das wiederum sehend machte die Seelen da unten. Und von jenem Augenblicke an war es, daß die Seele einsehen konnte, daß auch wiederum von da unten Kraft kommen kann für die äußere Welt. Nicht mehr vereint sich die Seele mit dem Osiris, um Ersatz zu haben für das verlorene Schauen, sondern von nun an konnte sie sich sagen: Ich finde auch da unten das Christus-Licht, das, was sich hineinversenkt hat in die Erde, denn der Christus ist der Geist der Erde geworden. Und ich sauge Kraft im Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt aus dem Geistigen heraus, solche Kraft, die ich mitbringen kann, wenn ich zu neuer Geburt auf die Erde zurückkehre. - Was war aber notwendig, damit diese Kraft in richtiger Weise einströme? Dazu war notwendig, daß sich in bezug auf das Sinnliche ein völliger Umschwung vollzog.
Fragen wir uns, was diese alten Inder empfanden, wenn sie sagten: Diese Welt ist Maja, die große Täuschung, und wenn ich durch meine Sinne mich mit ihr verbinde und sie wahrnehme, dann bin ich selbst der großen Täuschung verfallen. Nur wenn ich mich abziehe von ihr und mich erhebe zu dem, was jenseits vom Sinnlichen liegt, wenn ich mich zu dem uralten Geistigen erhebe, dann bin ich in der Welt der Götter! Allein dadurch, daß ich mich von der Außenwelt zurückziehe, komme ich durch mein Inneres, das mir wie ein altes Erbstück geblieben ist von diesen geistigen Welten, zurück zu meiner alten Heimat. Ich muß zurückgehen in dieses uralt heilige Land, aus dem ich hineingeschritten bin in die Sinnenwelt. Ich kann nur dadurch zurückkommen, daß ich mein Geistiges wirken lasse, wenn es den Blick ablenkt von der Außenwelt. - Das konnte man in jener Zeit: man konnte den Schritt zurückwenden. Es war noch so viel in diesem Innern geblieben von der Kraft, zu den alten Göttern aufzuschauen, daß bei Anwendung dieser Kraft der Weg zu den Göttern gefunden werden konnte. So fand der Inder seine Devas, aus denen alles entsprungen ist.
Nun kam die persische Zeit, in der die menschliche Seele nicht mehr so viel hatte von der Kraft, die wie ein Erbgut aus der alten Zeit war. Hätte jetzt die Seele gesagt: Ich lenke meine Schritte zurück, ich will nicht in dieser Welt bleiben -, so würde sie nicht mehr die alten Götter gefunden haben. Dazu reichte die Kraft nicht mehr aus. Das ist mit der Fortentwickelung der Menschheit verbunden. Versuchte jetzt die Seele den Blick hinwegzulenken über die äußere Welt und sie bloß als Maja anzusehen, so hätte das dazu geführt, nicht die hohen Götter zu sehen, sondern nur die untergeordneten Devas, die schlimmen geistigen Wesenheiten, die nicht zu den hohen Göttern gehören, und die in das Böse herabgefallen sind. Dies hätten die Seelen gefunden. Weil diese Gefahr vorlag, mußte der Seele gezeigt werden, wie sie, nicht sich abwendend von der Sinneswelt, sondern ausgehend von ihr, in ihr mehr sehen kann, wie die Sinneswelt ein äußerer Ausdruck für ein Geistiges ist. Wenn sich der Blick zur Sonne emporwendet, so lernt die Seele in ihr nicht bloß die äußere physische Sonnenkraft sehen, sondern Ahura Mazdao, den Sonnengott, und dadurch wird die Seele fähig, auch innerhalb der Sinnenwelt etwas vom GöttlichGeistigen zu wissen.
Die persische Seele war schwach geworden für die geistigen Kräfte, die zu den alten Göttern zurückführten, und sie mußte erst erzogen werden, durch den Schleier des Materiellen, der über dem Geistigen liegt, hindurchzuschauen. In der Außenwelt verbargen sich ihr die schlechten Asuras, aber sie konnte noch nicht die guten geistigen Wesenheiten schauen, die hinter der Maja sind. Deshalb kehrt sich zwischen der indischen und der persischen Kultur alle Namengebung für das Geistige um. Devas sind in der indischen Kultur die guten Wesen, in der persischen sind die Devas die schlechten Götter geworden. Das ist der wahre Grund dieser Umänderung; er lebt in der Fortentwickelung der menschlichen Seele. Sie war immer stärker geworden in bezug auf die äußere, aber immer schwächer in bezug auf die innere Welt. Aber nun wurde von denjenigen, die die Menschheitsentwickelung zu leiten haben, das Kommende vorbereitet.
Als Zarathustra gelernt hatte, den Blick zur Sonne emporzuwenden und in der Sonnenaura den Sonnengott zu schauen, da wußte er bereits, daß das kein anderer als der Christus-Geist ist, der sich vorläufig nur von außen offenbaren kann. In seiner Seele auf der Erde konnte der Mensch noch nicht die Christus-Wesenheit erblicken. Was als Ahura Mazdao früher in der Sonne gesehen ward, das muß herabsteigen auf die Erde. Erst dann kann der Mensch lernen, durch sein Inneres wieder einen Deva, ein Göttlich-Geistiges, in sich selber zu sehen. Das Leben im Menschenleibe war in der persischen Zeit noch nicht fähig, den Christus-Geist aufzunehmen und sich damit zu durchdringen. Das mußte langsam und allmählich kommen. Wir müssen uns mit dem Gedanken bekanntmachen, daß sich die Götter nur dem offenbaren können, der sich zu einem Empfänger der Götter bereitet. Nur zu der Menschheit, die sich vorbereitet hatte, konnte der Deva kommen, der durch das Innere geschaut werden konnte.
Alles in der Menschheitsentwickelung geschieht langsam und allmählich; nicht überall schreitet sie in der gleichen Weise vorwärts. Nach der atlantischen Flut waren die Völker nach dem Osten gezogen. Dieser oder jener Teil der atlantischen Nachkommen war in dieser oder jener Gegend geblieben, und diese Völker hatten sich verschieden entwickelt. Wodurch war der Inder fähig geworden, eine lebendige Empfindung zu haben für die geistige Welt? Dadurch, daß die Ich-Entwickelung einen ganz besonderen Gang genommen hat. Das Ich ist tief drinnen geblieben in der geistigen Welt, so daß es geneigt war, wenig Zusammenhang mit der physischen Welt zu finden. Das war die Eigentümlichkeit des Inders, daß er diesen Hang zum Geistigen der Vorzeit hatte und wenig Zusammenhang hatte mit der physischen Welt, mit der er sein Ich nicht in Verbindung bringen wollte. Daher blühen die Errungenschaften der äußeren Kultur nicht im Osten; die Völker dort haben keine Erfindungsgabe dafür. Im Westen hatte der Mensch mehr die Begabung, in der Außenwelt Hand anzulegen, da er die Aufgabe hatte, sie durchzuarbeiten. Persien bildete da gewissermaßen die Grenze zwischen Westen und Osten. Mehr im Osten blieben die Menschen, die den Blick wenig auf das äußere Sinnliche richteten. Daher konnte es kommen, daß sechshundert Jahre vor Christi für den Osten noch eine Lehre notwendig wurde, wie die des Buddha. Er mußte an diesen Punkt der Weltentwickelung hingestellt werden, weil er in den Seelen die Sehnsucht nach den geistigen Welten der Vorzeit wach erhalten sollte. Darum mußte er predigen gegen den Durst, in die physische Welt hineinzukommen. Und darum predigt er in einer Zeit, in der die Seele zwar noch den Hang, aber nicht mehr die Fähigkeit hatte, sich in die geistigen Welten zu erheben. Buddha predigt den Menschen die hohen Wahrheiten über das Leid, und er bringt ihnen die Erkenntnisse, die die Seelen hinwegheben über diese Welt des Leides.
Für die westliche Welt wäre diese Lehre unmöglich gewesen. Für sie mußte eine solche da sein, die dem Hang zur sinnlichen Welt gewachsen war. Der Westen mußte eine Lehre haben, die da sagte: In der äußeren Welt müßt Ihr so arbeiten, daß die Kräfte dieser Welt in den Dienst der Menschen gestellt werden. Aber Ihr könnt auch die Früchte dieses Lebens hineinnehmen in die geistige Welt nach dem Tode.
Man faßt gewöhnlich das Eigenartige des Christentums nicht richtig auf. In der römischen Welt fand es wenig Anklang bei denen, die die Schätze und Reichtümer dieser Welt genießen konnten, dagegen vielen Anklang bei denen, die die Arbeit in der sinnlichen Welt [zu tun} hatten. Trotz aller Arbeit in dersinnlichen Welt, innerhalb der physischen Welt, wußten diese, daß sie hier etwas entwickeln, was sie mitnehmen können nach dem Tode. Das war das hohe Gefühl, das diejenigen beseelte, die das Christentum annahmen. Die Menschen konnten sich sagen: Indem du den Christus als dein Ideal hinstellst, wirst du etwas entwickeln in dieser Welt, was selbst durch den Tod nicht zerstört werden kann. - Dieses Bewußtsein konnte sich nur dadurch ausbilden, daß der Christus wirklich auf der Erde war, nicht als Devawesenheit, sondern als Wesenheit, die in einem Menschenleib sich verkörperte, so daß ein jeder Mensch sie zum Vorbild und Ideal nehmen konnte. Aber dazu mußten der Impuls und die Kraft geschaffen werden. Und Zarathustra schaffte die Vorbedingungen dafür. Er hatte so viel durchgemacht, daß er vorbereitet war, diese Mission zu übernehmen.
Der Zarathustra, der in Persien in der Sonnenaura den Gott der Sonne erblickte, hatte sich in früheren Verkörperungen wohl vorbereiten müssen, um diesen Gott erblicken zu können. Er hatte schon in der Zeit, die noch erfüllt war von den Lehren der heiligen Rishis, hohe, erhabene Inkarnationserlebnisse hinter sich. Er war eingeweiht in die Lehren der heiligen Rishis. Er hatte sie nach und nach empfangen in sieben aufeinanderfolgenden Inkarnationen. Dann wurde er geboren in einem Leibe, der blind und taub war und möglichst wenig Beziehung zur Außenwelt hatte. Als ein Mensch, der geradezu unempfänglich war für äußere Sinneseindrücke, mußte Zarathustra geboren werden; und da kam ihm aus seinem Innern heraus die Erinnerung an die Lehre der heiligen Rishis, die er einstmals empfangen hatte. Und gerade da konnte der große Sonnengott etwas in ihm anzünden, was über die Lehre der Rishis hinausging. Das erstand wieder bei der nächsten Inkarnation und da war es, wo Ahura Mazdao sich von außen dem Zarathustra offenbarte.
So hatte Zarathustra viel durchgemacht, ehe er der Lehrer und Inspirator des persischen Volkes wurde. Dann wissen wir, daß er Moses und Hermes zu Schülern hatte und daß er seinen Astralleib dem Hermes, seinen Ätherleib dem Moses gab. Von Moses geht aus die aus der Akasha-Chronik geflossene Lehre von dem «Ich bin der Ich-bin» Ejeh asher ejeh. So hat Zarathustra sich langsam vorbereitet zu einem noch viel größeren und gewaltigeren Opfer. Als der Astralleib des Zarathustra wieder erschien in Hermes und der Ätherleib in Moses, da konnte sich das Ich, das sich immer weiterentwickelt hatte, bei der neuen Verkörperung einen Astral- und Ätherleib bilden, entsprechend dem vollkommenen Ich. Und Zarathustra wurde innerhalb der alten chaldäischen Lande wiedergeboren, sechshundert Jahre vor Christi, und wurde Lehrer des Pythagoras - als Zarathos oder Nazarathos. Er bereitet dann innerhalb der chaldäischen Kultur vor auf den Impuls, der in die Welt kommen soll. Das finden wir wieder in jener Stimmung, die sich in dem Teil der Bibel ausdrückt, in dem gesagt wird: die Weisen des Morgenlandes kommen den Christus zu begrüßen als den neuen Stern der Weisheit, der aufgegangen war. Zarathustra hat gelehrt, daß der Christus kommen werde, und diejenigen, die als Schüler dieser bedeutsamen Zarathustra-Lehre verblieben, die wußten, wann der Zeitpunkt des großen Impulses von Golgatha kommen werde.
Nun ist zwischen denjenigen, die also in der Welt dastehen - einem Buddha, Zarathustra, Pythagoras -, immer ein gewisser Zusammenhang. Denn was in der Welt wirkt, ist ja eine Kraft, ist Tatsache. Die Geister wirken zusammen, sie werden nicht umsonst zusammen in einem Zeitalter geboren. So greifen ineinander die großen Impulse der Menschheitsentwickelung. Zarathustra wies hin auf denjenigen, der durch das Ereignis von Golgatha bewirken sollte, daß die Menschen die Welt der Devas durch die Kraft ihres eigenen Innern finden können, immer mehr und mehr, je weiter sie sich in die Zukunft hinein entwickeln und die Schritte nach vorwärts richten können. Und zur selben Zeit sagte der Buddha: Ja, es ist eine geistige Welt, der gegenüber alle Sinneswelt Maja ist. Lenkt Eure Schritte zurück in die Welt, in der Ihr waret, bevor der Durst nach irdischem Dasein erwachte, und Ihr werdet finden Nirvana, das Ruhen im Göttlichen! - Das ist der Unterschied in der Lehre des Buddha und des Zarathustra. Der Buddha lehrt, daß der Mensch durch Zurücklenkung der Schritte zum Göttlichen kommen kann, und der Zarathustra lehrt als Zarathos: Es wird die Zeit kommen, da wird das Licht sich verkörpern innerhalb der Erde selbst, und dadurch wird die Seele, wenn sie vorwärtsschreitet, näher dem Göttlichen kommen. — Buddha sagt: Im Zurückschreiten — Zarathustra sagt: Im Vorwärtsschreiten wird die Seele den Gott finden.
Ob man den Gott sucht im Alpha oder im Omega: man findet ihn. Ob man zurück- oder vorwärtsschreitet: zu Gott kommt man! Aber mit erhöhten menschlichen Kräften sollen die Menschen ihn finden. Diejenigen Kräfte, die nötig sind, den Gott des Alpha zu finden, sind die Urkräfte des Menschen. Die Kräfte aber, die nötig sind, den Gott des Omega zu finden, die muß sich der Mensch selber erringen auf der Erde. Es ist nicht einerlei, ob man zurück zum Alpha oder vorwärts zum Omega geht. Wer nur den Gott finden will, nur hineinkommen will in die geistige Welt, der mag vorwärts- oder rückwärtsgehen, aber wem daran liegt, daß die Menschheit die Erde in einem erhöhten Zustande verlasse, der muß den Weg zum Omega weisen.
Das tat Zarathustra. Er bahnte den Weg für jene Menschheit, die Hand anlegen sollte an die Kräfte der Erde selber. Das vollste Verständnis brachte Zarathustra dem Buddha entgegen, denn beide suchten ja ein und dasselbe. Was muß Zarathustra tun? Er muß die Möglichkeit herbeiführen, daß der Christus-Impuls zur Erde hinabsteigen kann. Zarathustra wird wiedergeboren als Jesus von Nazareth, und durch das, was in der vorangehenden Inkarnation geschehen war, konnte sich Zarathustra mit mancherlei, was übriggeblieben war durch die spirituelle Ökonomie, vereinigen. Die Welt ist tief und die Wahrheit kompliziert!
Und einverleibt wurde dem Jesus von Nazareth auch die auf verschiedenen Wegen fortgeführte Wesenheit des Buddha, denn in dem, der viel wirken soll, wirkt viel. Das Ich des Jesus verließ bei der Taufe im Jordan den physischen, Äther- und Astralleib, und der Sonnengott, der Christus-Geist zieht ein und lebt drei Jahre in den Leibern des Jesus von Nazareth. So hatte Zarathustra hingearbeitet darauf, die Menschheit zu einem Empfänger des Christus-Impulses zu machen.
Damit war ein wichtiger Moment der Erdenentwickelung gekommen. Es war jetzt möglich geworden, daß die Menschen den Gott in ihrem Innern finden konnten, und sie konnten jetzt etwas mitbringen aus diesem Leben zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt in die neue Verkörperung hinein. Und jetzt sind schon Seelen da, die stark genug empfinden: Ich war in einer Welt, in der das Christus-Licht geleuchtet hat. - Daß das in mancher Seele dunkel geahnt wird, das macht den Menschen fähig, heute das Wort der Geisteswissenschaft zu verstehen. Weil es heute solche Menschen gibt, sagten sich die Meister der Weisheit und des Zusammenklanges der Empfindungen, dürfen wir hoffen, daß sie die Wahrheiten der Geisteswissenschaft empfinden und daß sie dieselben zu ihrem Lebensinhalte machen werden. Weil die Meister dies wissen, übertrugen sie denen, die Verständnis dafür hatten, die Mission, die Anthroposophie in der Gegenwart zu verkünden.
Es ist eine Notwendigkeit, daß Geisteswissenschaft jetzt beginnt, eine geistige Strömung in unserer Gegenwart zu werden. Die Seelen für sie hat der Christus selber vorbereitet, und eine völlige Gewähr für ihr Bleiben ist die Tatsache, daß das Christus-Licht, nachdem es einmal entzündet ist, nicht mehr erlöschen kann. Mit diesem Gefühl der Notwendigkeit der anthroposophischen Geistesströmung erfüllen wir uns, und dann stehen wir im rechten Sinne darinnen und sie wird uns als unverrückbares Ideal vor Augen stehen.
Ja, eine menschliche Persönlichkeit mußte sich so weit entwickeln, daß ermöglicht wurde, daß das Licht hinabsteigen und in einem Menschenleibe sagen konnte: «Ich bin das Licht der Welt!»
Es leuchtete zuerst hinab in die Seele Zarathustras und sprach zu dieser Seele, und diese Seele begriff das Licht der Welt und hat sich für dasselbe hingeopfert, damit es eine Stätte fand, um den Menschen aus einem irdischen Leibe heraus sagen zu können: «Ich bin das Licht der Welt!»
The God of Alpha and the God of Omega
It is often rightly emphasized that spiritual science should not only be a theory about the world, life, and human beings, but that it should become the deepest content of the human soul: the substance of life. If one approaches spiritual science with the right attitude, it will indeed become this in human beings. It should be expressly emphasized that this will happen gradually, for spiritual science is like something that grows and develops: first there is the seed, which grows larger and larger and thus more and more effective.
However, no one can hope to derive the right way of life from spiritual science through mere intellectual understanding. Viewed externally, spiritual science appears to be a worldview, albeit more comprehensive and magnificent than others. But it is something else as well, for what theory could have such comprehensive views of Saturn, the sun, and the moon? What worldviews would dare to make definite statements about these things today? They remain stuck in abstract concepts when they rise above what the senses can see and hear. Such worldviews and theories have vague ideas about the divine that weaves behind the reality we experience. Even with regard to other, less lofty truths, such as the teachings of reincarnation and karma, spiritual research is far ahead of anything science dares to say about human development. It could also arrive at these teachings, for if one really wanted to draw the consequences of materialistic-scientific facts, reincarnation and karma would long since have become popular teachings. But because modern science does not dare to draw these conclusions, it stops short of doing so. People speak of natural and historical development, but they do not want to hear anything about the true development of human individuality, which passes from life to life and carries the human soul into the future.
Those who observe life must, purely through the consequences of this life, also arrive at the teaching that is revealed through clairvoyant research: the teaching of the four members of the human being. But because the present age is so despondent in its thinking, this teaching is proclaimed only by spiritual science. Thus, spiritual science as a teaching has much to offer over other worldviews and philosophies that approach people today.
But all this is not, in the final analysis, the real fruit of spiritual science. Its fruit does not consist in its being accepted as a satisfying, far-reaching teaching. You cannot have the fruit without the seed. What we are developing today as the fruit of the anthroposophical worldview, and what can enliven our hearts and warm our love, cannot be had without the seed, that is, spiritual scientific knowledge itself. People say, for example: What do we need these ideas about reincarnation and karma, about the members of the human being and the development of the world? It is a matter of developing love for humanity and a noble disposition. Certainly that is true, but true love for humanity, fruitful for the world, is only possible on the basis of knowledge, namely spiritual scientific knowledge.
As knowledge, spiritual science has much to offer that other worldviews do not. When it is truly experienced within us, when we do not allow ourselves to be discouraged from awakening these great, comprehensive thoughts in our souls again and again, when we carry these thoughts within us at all times, then we see that this teaching can become a purpose in life in a very specific sense. Spiritual science is a collection of ideas that lead us into supersensible worlds, and we must therefore lift ourselves up to higher worlds in our spiritual thinking. Every hour of spiritual science is a reaching out of the soul beyond the everyday. The moment we devote ourselves to the teaching, our thinking is transported to another world. Our ego is then united with the spiritual world, and when we consider that it is from this world that our ego was born, we are then, when we think spiritually, with our ego in our spiritual home, at the source from which it originated.
If we understand this correctly, we can truly compare spiritual scientific thinking with the state of consciousness that we recognize, from a spiritual point of view, as sleep. When a person falls asleep in the evening and slips into a spiritual world, they are also in the world from which their ego was born, from which it emerges every morning to enter the sensory world within the body. Once upon a time, the soul will be consciously present in this spiritual world; in normal human consciousness, the ego is not consciously present there. Why? Because in the course of time, its consciousness of the spiritual world has become increasingly weaker.
In the Atlantean epoch, the ego saw itself surrounded by divine-spiritual beings during sleep. After the Atlantean catastrophe, the ego was displaced into the sensory world and increasingly lost the ability to look into the world in which it is present during sleep. For it is absurd to think that it would cease to exist in the evening and rise again in the morning. It is in the spiritual world, only not consciously!
Spiritual scientific thinking makes us strong so that we can gradually connect consciously with these spiritual worlds. Because anthroposophy leads us into this world, at least in our thinking, it has certain qualities in common with sleep. In sleep, all the worries and cares that come from the things of the sensory world cease. When a person can sleep and their thinking is extinguished, they forget all their worries. This is the most beneficial effect of sleep, and it is based on the fact that during sleep the ego allows the currents of the spiritual world to flow into itself. These currents have strengthening powers and bring about not only the forgetting of worries and cares during sleep, but also the overcoming of the damage to our organism that we receive through worries and cares. What these have made bad is erased by that spiritual power, and hence the refreshment, the rebirth that every healthy sleep gives. Spiritual scientific thinking has these qualities in common with sleep in the higher sense.
Spiritual thoughts are powerful thoughts when we grasp them with our whole life. When we lift ourselves up to thoughts of the earth's past and future and allow these magnificent events to work upon us, our soul will be drawn to them and carried far away from the worries of the day. Thoughts such as those that arise from karma, this plan of destiny, in which the ideal of our own royal will grows, give us courage and strength, so that we say to ourselves: Even if these or those obstacles in my life are insurmountable today, my strength grows from incarnation to incarnation. The royal will within me becomes ever stronger, and all obstacles will help me to make this will ever more royal. I will overcome the obstacles, and in doing so my will will develop more and more, my energy will grow. The pettiness of life, all the inferiority of existence, will melt away like frost in the sun, that sun which rises in wisdom and permeates us in spiritual thinking. Our emotional world will be warmed, glowed through, illuminated; our existence will expand and we will feel blissful within it.
If we repeat such moments and allow them to have an effect on us, then a strengthening of our entire existence will flow from them in all directions. Not overnight, but through the constant repetition of such thoughts, the gloom, the lamentation over our fate, the gloomy temperament will gradually disappear. A remedy for our soul will be spiritual knowledge! And when it does, when our existence expands in this way, it will plant within us the attitude that is the fruit of spiritual knowledge. What it brings forth in us must be regarded as the ideal of spiritual science. All the conflicts and disharmonies of life will fall away in the face of harmonious thoughts and feelings that draw an energetic will in their wake. Thus spiritual research proves itself not merely as knowledge and teaching, but as a force of life and the content of our soul. When understood in this way, it will be able to work in life in such a way that it will rescue human beings from all worries and cares. And this is how it must work in our time, for it owes its existence not to arbitrariness, but to the recognition that it is necessary.
Those individuals who are far advanced in the normal existence of human beings, the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings, have recognized that spiritual science must flow into our culture if it is not to wither away. Spiritual science is a new lifeblood, and humanity must be supplied with new lifeblood from time to time. Spiritual science is a necessary current in our time. Those who have a feeling for these great truths should hasten to take them up, so that they may be a kind of ferment for the rest of humanity, a salt for the spiritual life of the whole of humanity. Those who strive must feel this as a kind of duty. It is not difficult to see why, especially in our time, the call for spiritual science has come from high places to gather those who have an open heart and a free mind for it. We have let the post-Atlantean humanity pass before our souls and have followed the cultural epochs from the Indian to our own, the fifth epoch. We have seen how, during this time, human beings have gradually lost their awareness of the spiritual world.
In the first epoch, human beings still had a deep longing for the spiritual world. The sensory world was Maya, illusion, to them. But then came times that called human beings to external, physical work. They had to learn to love the sensory world, for only then could they work with it. Human beings can no longer say that the outer world is only Maya; they must delve into it with their powers and wisdom. In doing so, however, they gradually lose their awareness of the spiritual world, and Zarathustra, the initiator of Persian culture, must say to his disciples: The power that radiates from the sun as physical power calls all living things into existence. But this physical force is not the only thing. Ahura Mazdao, the spiritual being of the sun, lives in the sun. It had to be shown to people how the outer expression of something spiritual is present in everything sensory.
Thus it came about that the following mood first arose in Persian culture: What is illuminated by the sun is indeed Maya, but behind this Maya the spirit must be sought. The spiritual world is always around me, but I cannot experience it with my physical eyes and ears, only with supersensible consciousness. When this consciousness is awakened, then I can also recognize in physical existence the great spirit of the sun with all its sub-beings that belong to the sun. There will come a time when my soul will no longer recognize this. — But it was difficult to convey this fully to people. They must be gradually matured in ever new incarnations in order to recognize the divine-spiritual behind everything physical, to recognize that the whole of nature is permeated by it.
Human beings could recognize the divine in this life, but they could not carry this consciousness over into the time between death and a new birth. For it was peculiar to that time that human consciousness became increasingly dark between death and a new birth. Let us take the soul of an Indian of ancient times. When it passed through death and entered the other world, it still lived in a relatively bright world among spiritual beings. In Persian culture, this was already less the case. The world between death and rebirth had become darker. Obstacles pile up between souls, and the soul feels lonely. It cannot, so to speak, reach out its hand to another soul. This is the heaviness and darkness of this life in the spiritual world, that one cannot walk together with others.
During the Egyptian period, much of the power that enabled the soul to reach out to other souls had already been lost, so much so that the Egyptian soul longed for the preservation of the body. It was to be preserved in the mummy. This was because the soul sensed that the power it took with it into this life between death and new birth was small. People wanted to preserve the body so that the soul could look down on it as something that belonged to it and thus replace the power it no longer received on the other side. Cultural phenomena such as mummification are deeply connected with the development of the human soul.
The Egyptians believed that they would be united with Osiris in death. They said to themselves: Once, in ancient times, the soul could see over there. Now it has lost its power, but it can create a substitute for itself if it acquires such qualities here in life that it becomes more and more like Osiris. Then it will itself become a kind of Osiris and will be united with him after death. In this way, by clinging to Osiris, the soul tried to create a substitute for what it could no longer obtain from ancient times. But what Osiris cannot give the soul is revealed in the Egyptian legend, which says that Osiris once lived on earth together with human beings. But then he was locked in a box, like a coffin, by his evil brother Seth. This means that Osiris once lived with humans on earth when they were more spiritual, but then he had to remain in the spiritual world because he was too good for the physical human form. Such a being must become the soul, a being that is too good for the human form, if this soul wants to find a substitute for the spiritual power of vision between death and new birth. By becoming similar to Osiris, the soul was able to overcome its loneliness, but it could not bring back into a new incarnation what it had received in the spiritual world through its communion with Osiris, for Osiris did not fit into this sensual-physical incarnation. The soul made its existence between death and rebirth bearable, but it could bring nothing of this with it into a new incarnation.
This was the grave danger in which humanity found itself at that time, that incarnations would become increasingly worse. For nothing new could be added to spiritual power. Only what had remained from ancient times could be developed. This had reached maturity in the Greek-Roman period. Like fruit from a blossom, this came to light in the magnificent art of the Greeks. This was the most beautiful fruit of what had been given to humanity as an ancient heritage from primeval times. But this was linked to darkness and gloom in the life between death and new birth, and the noble Greek was right when he said: Better to be a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shadows! Yes, in this world of the Greek lands and the Roman states, where man possessed so much that delighted and satisfied his senses, in this world it was where he could take nothing with him into the life between death and new birth.
Then came the event of Golgotha, that event which has significance not only for the outer physical world, but for all the worlds that man passes through. At the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer as his body hung on the cross, Christ appeared in the underworld and kindled the light that restored sight to the souls below. And from that moment on, the soul was able to see that power could also come from below for the outer world. The soul no longer united itself with Osiris in order to have a substitute for the lost vision, but from then on it could say to itself: I also find the Christ light down there, that which has sunk into the earth, for Christ has become the spirit of the earth. And I draw strength in life between death and new birth from the spiritual, such strength that I can bring with me when I return to earth for a new birth. But what was necessary for this strength to flow in the right way? For this it was necessary that a complete reversal took place in relation to the sensory world.
Let us ask ourselves what these ancient Indians felt when they said: This world is Maya, the great deception, and when I connect with it through my senses and perceive it, then I myself have fallen prey to the great deception. Only when I withdraw from it and rise to what lies beyond the sensory, when I rise to the ancient spiritual, am I in the world of the gods! Only by withdrawing from the outer world do I return to my ancient home through my inner being, which has remained to me like an ancient heirloom from these spiritual worlds. I must return to this ancient sacred land from which I stepped into the world of the senses. I can only return by allowing my spiritual nature to work when it distracts my gaze from the outer world. This was possible in those days: one could turn back. There was still so much left in the inner being of the power to look up to the ancient gods that, by applying this power, the way to the gods could be found. Thus the Indian found his devas, from whom everything sprang.
Then came the Persian era, in which the human soul no longer possessed so much of the power that was like a legacy from ancient times. If the soul had now said, “I will turn my steps back, I do not want to remain in this world,” it would no longer have found the old gods. It no longer had the strength to do so. This is connected with the further development of humanity. If the soul had now tried to turn its gaze away from the outer world and regard it merely as Maya, this would have led to it not seeing the high gods, but only the subordinate devas, the evil spiritual beings who do not belong to the high gods and who have fallen into evil. This is what the souls would have found. Because this danger existed, the soul had to be shown how, instead of turning away from the sensory world, it could see more in it, how the sensory world is an outer expression of something spiritual. When the gaze turns toward the sun, the soul learns to see in it not merely the external physical power of the sun, but Ahura Mazdao, the sun god, and through this the soul becomes capable of knowing something of the divine spirit even within the sensory world.
The Persian soul had become weak in relation to the spiritual forces that led back to the ancient gods, and it first had to be educated to see through the veil of the material that lies over the spiritual. The evil Asuras were hidden from her in the outer world, but she could not yet see the good spiritual beings behind the Maya. That is why all the names for spiritual beings are reversed between Indian and Persian culture. In Indian culture, the Devas are good beings, while in Persian culture, the Devas have become evil gods. This is the true reason for this change; it lives in the further development of the human soul. It had become stronger and stronger in relation to the outer world, but weaker and weaker in relation to the inner world. But now those who are responsible for guiding human evolution prepared what was to come.
When Zarathustra learned to turn his gaze upward toward the sun and to see the sun god in the sun's aura, he already knew that this was none other than the Christ spirit, who for the time being can only reveal himself from outside. In his soul on earth, man could not yet see the Christ being. What was seen earlier in the sun as Ahura Mazdao must descend to earth. Only then can man learn to see again within himself, through his inner being, a deva, a divine spirit. Life in the human body was not yet capable of receiving the Christ spirit and permeating itself with it in the Persian era. This had to come slowly and gradually. We must familiarize ourselves with the idea that the gods can only reveal themselves to those who prepare themselves to receive them. Only to humanity, which had prepared itself, could the deva come, who could be seen through the inner being.
Everything in human evolution happens slowly and gradually; it does not progress in the same way everywhere. After the Atlantic flood, the peoples had migrated to the East. This or that part of the Atlantean descendants had remained in this or that region, and these peoples had developed differently. How did the Indians become capable of having a living feeling for the spiritual world? Because the development of the I took a very special course. The I remained deep within the spiritual world, so that it was inclined to find little connection with the physical world. It was the peculiarity of the Indian that he had this inclination toward the spiritual of ancient times and had little connection with the physical world, with which he did not want to connect his I. That is why the achievements of external culture do not flourish in the East; the peoples there have no inventive talent for this. In the West, human beings had more of a talent for working with the external world, since they had the task of working through it. Persia formed, so to speak, the border between West and East. People who paid little attention to the external senses remained more in the East. That is why, six hundred years before Christ, a teaching such as that of the Buddha was still necessary for the East. He had to be placed at this point in world development because he was to keep alive in souls the longing for the spiritual worlds of the past. That is why he had to preach against the thirst to enter the physical world. And that is why he preached at a time when the soul still had the inclination but no longer the ability to rise to the spiritual worlds. Buddha preached the high truths about suffering to people, and he brought them the knowledge that lifts souls out of this world of suffering.
This teaching would have been impossible for the Western world. For them, there had to be a teaching that was equal to their inclination toward the sensual world. The West needed a teaching that said: In the outer world, you must work in such a way that the forces of this world are placed at the service of humanity. But you can also take the fruits of this life into the spiritual world after death.
People usually do not understand the uniqueness of Christianity correctly. In the Roman world, it found little resonance among those who could enjoy the treasures and riches of this world, but it found great resonance among those who had to work in the sensory world. Despite all their work in the sensual world, within the physical world, they knew that they were developing something here that they could take with them after death. This was the high feeling that inspired those who accepted Christianity. People could say to themselves: By setting Christ as your ideal, you will develop something in this world that cannot be destroyed even by death. This awareness could only develop because Christ was truly on earth, not as a deity, but as a being incarnated in a human body, so that every human being could take him as a model and ideal. But for this, the impulse and the power had to be created. And Zarathustra created the preconditions for this. He had gone through so much that he was prepared to take on this mission.
Zarathustra, who saw the sun god in Persia in the sun's aura, must have had to prepare himself well in earlier incarnations in order to be able to see this god. He had already had high, sublime incarnation experiences in the time that was still filled with the teachings of the holy Rishis. He was initiated into the teachings of the holy Rishis. He had received them gradually in seven successive incarnations. Then he was born in a body that was blind and deaf and had as little contact with the outside world as possible. As a person who was virtually impervious to external sensory impressions, Zarathustra had to be born; and then the memory of the teachings of the holy Rishis, which he had once received, came to him from within. And it was precisely then that the great Sun God was able to ignite something in him that went beyond the teachings of the Rishis. This arose again in his next incarnation, and it was there that Ahura Mazdao revealed himself to Zarathustra from outside.
Thus, Zarathustra had gone through much before he became the teacher and inspirer of the Persian people. We know that he had Moses and Hermes as disciples and that he gave his astral body to Hermes and his etheric body to Moses. From Moses came the teaching of “I am that I am” (Ejeh asher ejeh), which flowed from the Akashic Records. Thus Zarathustra slowly prepared himself for an even greater and more powerful sacrifice. When Zarathustra's astral body reappeared in Hermes and his etheric body in Moses, the I, which had continued to develop, was able to form an astral and etheric body in the new incarnation, corresponding to the perfect I. And Zarathustra was reborn within the ancient Chaldean lands, six hundred years before Christ, and became the teacher of Pythagoras—as Zarathos or Nazarathos. He then prepared within the Chaldean culture for the impulse that was to come into the world. We find this again in the mood expressed in the part of the Bible where it is said that the wise men of the East came to greet Christ as the new star of wisdom that had risen. Zarathustra taught that Christ would come, and those who remained as disciples of this significant Zarathustra teaching knew when the time of the great impulse from Golgotha would come.
Now there is always a certain connection between those who stand in the world in this way—a Buddha, Zarathustra, Pythagoras. For what works in the world is a force, it is a fact. The spirits work together; they are not born together in an age for no reason. Thus the great impulses of human evolution intertwine. Zarathustra pointed to the one who, through the event of Golgotha, would enable human beings to find the world of the devas through the power of their own inner being, more and more as they develop into the future and are able to take steps forward. And at the same time, the Buddha said: Yes, it is a spiritual world, compared to which the entire sensory world is Maya. Turn your steps back to the world where you were before the thirst for earthly existence awakened, and you will find Nirvana, rest in the Divine! This is the difference between the teachings of Buddha and Zarathustra. Buddha teaches that man can attain the divine by turning his steps back, and Zarathustra teaches as Zarathos: The time will come when light will incarnate within the earth itself, and through this the soul, as it progresses, will come closer to the divine. Buddha says: In stepping backward—Zarathustra says: In stepping forward, the soul will find God.
Whether one seeks God in Alpha or Omega, one will find Him. Whether one steps backward or forward, one will come to God! But human beings must find Him with heightened human powers. The powers necessary to find the God of Alpha are the primal powers of human beings. But the powers necessary to find the God of Omega must be attained by human beings themselves on Earth. It is not the same whether one goes back to the Alpha or forward to the Omega. Those who only want to find God, who only want to enter the spiritual world, may go forward or backward, but those who care that humanity leaves the earth in an elevated state must point the way to the Omega.
This is what Zarathustra did. He paved the way for those human beings who were to lay hands on the forces of the earth itself. Zarathustra had the fullest understanding of the Buddha, for both sought the same thing. What must Zarathustra do? He must bring about the possibility for the Christ impulse to descend to earth. Zarathustra is reborn as Jesus of Nazareth, and through what had happened in his previous incarnation, Zarathustra was able to unite himself with many things that had been left behind by spiritual economy. The world is deep and the truth is complicated!
And the essence of the Buddha, which had continued in various ways, was also incorporated into Jesus of Nazareth, for in him who is to accomplish much, much is at work. At his baptism in the Jordan, the I of Jesus left the physical, etheric, and astral bodies, and the Sun God, the Christ Spirit, entered and lived for three years in the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, Zarathustra had worked toward making humanity a recipient of the Christ impulse.
This marked an important moment in the development of the earth. It had now become possible for people to find God within themselves, and they could now bring something from this life between death and new birth into their new incarnation. And now there are already souls who feel strongly enough: I was in a world where the light of Christ shone. The fact that this is dimly sensed in many souls enables people today to understand the words of spiritual science. Because such people exist today, the masters of wisdom and harmony of feeling said to themselves that we may hope that they will feel the truths of spiritual science and make them the content of their lives. Because the masters know this, they entrusted those who had the understanding for it with the mission of proclaiming anthroposophy in the present age.
It is necessary that spiritual science now begin to become a spiritual current in our present time. Christ himself has prepared the souls for it, and a complete guarantee for its permanence is the fact that once the light of Christ has been kindled, it can never be extinguished. We fill ourselves with this sense of the necessity of the anthroposophical spiritual current, and then we stand within it in the right sense, and it stands before us as an unshakeable ideal.
Yes, a human personality had to develop to such an extent that it became possible for the light to descend and say in a human body: “I am the light of the world!”
It first shone down into the soul of Zarathustra and spoke to this soul, and this soul understood the light of the world and sacrificed itself for it, so that it might find a place to say to human beings from an earthly body: “I am the light of the world!”