The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] If we consider the human being in his present form, as he is composed of the physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, the important fact emerges for the clairvoyant consciousness above all that the physical body and the etheric body are approximately the same in terms of size and form - at least for the upper parts of the human being. In particular, if we think of the human head as it appears to us physically, it coincides almost completely with the etheric part of the head; the human etheric head only protrudes slightly beyond the physical head on all sides. This is not at all the case with animals. Even in the higher animals there is an enormous difference between the shape and size of the etheric part of the head and the physical head. If you look at a horse, for example, with clairvoyant consciousness, you will see that the etheric head protrudes far beyond the physical head and in a rather different shape than it is. If I were to show you what kind of structure the elephant has over its trunk and head, you would be quite astonished at the nature of such an animal. For what physical perception sees of such an animal is only the solidified physical part in the middle. Let us take a closer look at this fact.

[ 2 ] Man's perfection on our physical plan is basically based on the fact that his etheric body coincides so strongly with his physical body. But this was not always the case. In the times of our development on earth, which we have followed in the last observations, there were also epochs when man's etheric body did not coincide with his physical body in the same way as it does today. Indeed, the progress of man in the course of his development consists in the fact that the etheric body, which protrudes beyond the physical body, gradually crept into the physical body, as it were, and gradually came to coincide with it. Now it is essential to realize that this interpenetration of etheric body and physical body had to take place at a very specific time in the earth's evolution if humanity was to undergo its development in the right way. If the etheric body of man had come to coincide with the physical body earlier, man would have reached a certain stage of development too early and would have hardened in it, so that he would have had to remain standing. The fact that he attained a certain possibility of development stems from the fact that this covering took place at a very specific point in time. For this we must take a closer look at the development that we saw in broad outline yesterday and the day before yesterday.

[ 3 ] We imagine once again that at the beginning of our earth evolution the earth was united with the sun and the moon. At that time the human being was resurrected from his germinal plant, which contained the physical body, etheric body and astral body. He was, so to speak, in his first earthly form, just as he could be when the earth still contained the sun and the moon. This period of the earth's evolution, which man and his planet went through with him, is usually called the “polar period” of the earth's evolution in the literature of spiritual science. To explain why it is called the polar time would go too far today, let us simply accept this name. Then comes the time when the sun prepares to leave the earth, when those entities that cannot continue with the coarser or coarser substances of the earth, so to speak, separate from the earth with the finer substances of the sun. We call this time the hyperborean time. Then comes an age in which the earth is only united with the moon, where a continuous desolation of our earthly life takes place. We saw yesterday how the human souls leave this earth and how only atrophied human forms remain behind. This is the time that is called the Lemurian period in the literature of spiritual science. In this time the separation of the moon from the earth takes place, and a revival of all the kingdoms that were founded on it takes place on the earth. The mineral kingdom needs the least revitalization; the plant kingdom needs a little more, the animal kingdom even more, and the human race needs the most significant, strongest forces so that it can develop further. This revitalization begins with the exit of the moon. We have only a small number of human beings, as we discussed yesterday, and these human beings consist of the three members which they have absorbed during the Saturnian, solar and lunar evolution, to which the ego disposition has been added on earth.

[ 4 ] But at that time, when the moon emerged from the earth, the human being was not yet present in the carnal substance in which he later confronts us. He is present in the finest matter of that time. In Lemurian times the earth was in such a state that, for example, much of what is present today as a solid mineral was still liquid, dissolved in the other substances that are separated today as aqueous matter, such as water. It was the time when the air was still permeated with dense vapors of the most diverse substances. Pure air, pure water in today's sense was basically not present at that time, or at least only in the smallest areas of the earth. So it was in the purest substances of that time that man formed his volatile, delicate body. If he had formed his body in a coarser substance at that time, the form of this body would have developed into a very definite outline, into a shape with sharp contours. These contours would have been passed on to the descendants, and the human race would have stood still. Man was not allowed to create his form in such matter, he had to ensure that he could move the matter of his body freely according to the impulses of his soul. At that time the matter in which his body was formed was so soft that it followed the impulses of the will in all directions. Today you can stretch out your hand, but you cannot make your hand three meters long by your will. You cannot conquer matter because the form is inherited as it is today.

[ 5 ] That was not the case back then. Man could be shaped as he wished, could develop the form as his soul wished. It was, so to speak, a condition for the further development of man that after the moon had gone forth he embodied himself in the softest masses, so that his body was still plastic and pliable and followed the soul in every respect.

[ 6 ] Now came the time when certain parts of matter, which today are so necessary for our life, the water and the air, gradually purified themselves of what they contained of dense matter, where, as it were, what had formerly been dissolved in the water separated out of it. Just as substances dissolved in cooling water fall to the ground, so the dissolved matter fell to the ground, as it were. The water became free, the matter was separated from the air, air and water were formed. Man was able to use this refined matter for his construction.

[ 7 ] From this third age mankind gradually lived over into a period of the earth's development which we call the Atlantean, because during this time the main part of the human race lived on a part of the world that has now disappeared, which was situated between present-day America and Europe and Africa, where the Atlantic Ocean is now. So after the Lemurian period had lasted a while, humans continued to develop on the Atlantic continent. And there everything happened that I have to describe to you now, and also much of what we had to mention yesterday.

[ 8 ] At the moment when the moon left the earth, there were very few of the human souls on earth that were later embodied. The human souls were distributed among the various world bodies. During the last Lemurian period and the first Atlantean period, these human souls came down. Few people, I told you, were able to experience the crisis during the Lemurian epoch, for only the strongest, who were able to obtain this hardening, not yet softened matter before the moon's exit, were able to survive this lunar crisis on earth. But when everything that had hardened during the lunar crisis softened, when descendants were formed who were not pressed into fixed contours by hereditary conditions but were mobile, then little by little the souls came down again from the various planets and occupied these bodies. Those forms, however, which became physical very early after the separation from the moon, retained the fixed form through heredity and could not receive human souls after the separation from the moon. We can almost imagine the process in such a way that these souls have the need to come down to earth again. Down there the most varied forms arise, descendants of the forms that remained after the separation from the moon, and among these there are the most varied degrees of hardening. Those human souls, those soul beings in general, who in a certain respect had the least urge to unite completely with matter, chose the softest of these forms and soon left them again. The other soul beings, on the other hand, who had already united themselves with the hardened forms, were bound to these forms, and as a result they remained behind in their development. It was precisely the animals closest to man that came into being because certain souls that had descended from world space could not wait. They sought out the bodies below too early and turned them into limited forms before these bodies could fully penetrate the etheric body. The human form remained plastic until it was able to adapt itself completely to the etheric body. This gave rise to the covering of which I have spoken, and which took place approximately in the last third of the Atlantean period. Before that, the human part of the soul that came down from there kept the body fluid and ensured that the etheric body did not completely melt together with any part of the physical body. This merging of the etheric body and the physical body happened at a very specific point in time. It was only during the Atlantean epoch that the human physical body took on a certain configuration and began to harden.

[ 9 ] If nothing else had happened at this point in the Atlantean development, if nothing else had occurred, then the development would have proceeded differently than it did in reality, then man would have passed from an earlier state of consciousness to a later one quite rapidly. Before man was completely united with regard to his physical and spiritual parts, he was a clairvoyant being, but this clairvoyance was a dim, dull one. Man had the possibility of looking into the spiritual world, but he could not say “I” to himself, he could not distinguish himself from his surroundings. He lacked self-consciousness. This occurred at the point of development when the physical body united with the etheric body. And if nothing else had happened, the following would have taken place in a relatively short time.

[ 10 ] Before this time man had an awareness of the spiritual world. He could not see the animals, plants and so on clearly, but he could see a spiritual world around them. For example, he would not have seen the shape of the elephant clearly, but he would have seen the etheric that extends above the physical body of the elephant. This consciousness of man would have gradually dwindled, the ego would have developed as the physical and etheric bodies collapsed, and man would have seen the world approaching him as if from another side. Whereas previously he had seen clairvoyant images, from this point on he would have perceived an external world, but at the same time also the spiritual entities and spiritual forces that underlie this external world. He would not have seen the physical image of the plant as we see it today, but at the same time as this physical image he would have perceived the spiritual essence of the plant. Why, in the course of development, has the dull consciousness of light not simply been replaced by a consciousness of objects which would have allowed man to perceive and know spiritual things at the same time?

[ 11 ] This did not happen because precisely during the lunar crisis, when the human being came to life again, beings took influence on him which must be described as retarded, but which are higher than the human being. We have already become acquainted with various such higher beings. We know that there are those who have ascended to the sun and others who have gone to other planets. But there have also been spiritual beings who did not complete the work they were supposed to do on the moon. We call these beings, lower than the gods and higher than man, the Luciferian beings, after their leader, the highest and strongest of them all, Lucifer.

[ 12 ] In the time of the lunar crisis man had developed to such an extent that he had his physical body, etheric body, astral body and his ego. He owed his ego to the influence of the “spirits of form”, just as he owed his astral body to the “spirits of movement”, his etheric body to the “spirits of wisdom” and his physical body to the influence of the “thrones”. It was the spirits of the form “Exusiai” or “Powers” in Christian esotericism - that made it possible for the germ of the ego to be added to the other three members. Now if man had only stood in the normal development and all the entities around him had gone through their corresponding tasks, then certain entities would have worked on his physical body, others on his etheric body, others on his astral body and still others on his ego, we can say, as would have been appropriate, each kind on the member to which it belonged. But now there were these entities left behind on the lunar level, the Luciferic entities. If they had been able to continue working properly, they would have been called upon to work on the ego. But on the moon they had only learned to work on the astral body, and this resulted in something significant. If these Luciferic spirits had not been there, man would have absorbed his ego system and by the last third of the Atlantean period would have developed in such a way that he would have exchanged the dim clairvoyant consciousness for the outer object consciousness. Thus, however, the effects of the Luciferic spirits penetrated his astral body like rays of power. What were these effects?

[ 13 ] The astral body is the carrier of drives, desires, passions, instincts and so on. Man would have become quite different in the structure of his astral body if the Luciferic spirits had not come to him. He would then have developed only instincts that would certainly have guided him and only brought him forward. The spirits would have led him to see the world in objects behind which the spiritual entities would have become visible. But he would have lacked freedom, enthusiasm, a sense of independence and passion for these higher things. Man would have lost the old clairvoyant consciousness. He would have looked upon the glory of the world as a kind of God, for he would have become a member of the Godhead. And this view of the world would have created its mirror image in his mind with a great perfection. But man would only have been like a great mirror of the universe in its perfection.

[ 14 ] Now, before this time, the Luciferic spirits poured into the astral body passions, instincts, desires, which united with what man absorbed on his path of development. This enabled him not only to become aware of the stars, but at the same time to flare up for them, to kindle enthusiasm and passion, not only to follow the deified drives of the astral body, but to develop his own drives out of his freedom. This is what the Luciferian spirits had poured into his astral body. But at the same time they had given him something else: the possibility of evil, of sin. He would not have had this if he had been guided step by step by the more exalted gods. The Luciferian spirits made man free, implanted enthusiasm in him, but at the same time gave him the possibility of base desires. In a normal course of development, man would, so to speak, have connected the normal sensations with every thing. In this way, however, the things of the sense world could please him more than they should have pleased him. He could cling with his interest to the things of the sense world. And the result was that he entered into this physical hardening earlier than would otherwise have happened.

[ 15 ] Thus man came to a solid form earlier than was, so to speak, decided with the divine-spiritual beings. Actually, he should have descended from an airy to a solid form in the last third of the Atlantean period. But he descended before this time and became a solid being. This is what is described in the Bible as the Fall of Man. This is the Luciferian influence that asserts itself. But in the times we have now considered, we also have high spiritual beings who have an effect on the ego of man, which they have given him. They allow the forces to flow in that bring man forward in his path in the cosmos to the same extent as these human beings come down and unite with the human bodies. They hold their hand protectively over him. On the other side, however, are those beings who have not risen to work on the ego. They now have an effect on the astral body of the human being and develop very special instincts in it.

[ 16 ] If we look at the physical life of the human being during this time, we see an image of these two opposing forces, the divine-spiritual forces that work on the ego and the Luciferic entities. If we follow the spiritual side of the process a little, we can say to ourselves: While the earth was desolate, the human souls went up to the various world bodies that belong to our solar system. Now these souls return again, depending on where they find bodies in the physical line of inheritance. If you remember that the earth is least populated at the time of the separation of the moon, you can imagine that the human race branched out from a few people. Little by little it multiplied, and more and more souls descended and populated the bodies that came into being on earth. For a long time it was the case that only the few people who were there at the time of the separation of the moon produced descendants. The high solar forces themselves had an effect on these people. These people had remained strong enough to give the solar forces a point of attack even during the lunar crisis. All these people and their descendants felt themselves to be “sun people”, so to speak. Let us realize this for a moment.

[ 17 ] Imagine, for the sake of simplicity, that during the lunar crisis there was only one human couple. I do not want to decide whether this was really the case. This human couple had descendants, who in turn had descendants, and so on. This is how the human race branched out. As long as there was a mere offspring of the old sun people in the narrower sense, a very special state of consciousness was still present in all these people as a result of their old clairvoyance. At that time man not only had a memory of what he himself had experienced from the time of his birth or, as is the case today, from a time later than his birth, but he remembered everything that his father, grandfather and so on had experienced. His memory went all the way back to his ancestors, to all those to whom he was related by blood. This was because, in a certain sense, the solar forces held a hand over all those who were related by blood and who traced their ancestry back to the people who had survived the separation from the moon. The solar forces had called forth the ego consciousness and maintained it throughout the bloodline. Now the human race multiplied, and the souls who had gone into world space came back to earth. But those souls in whom the solar forces were strong enough still felt these solar forces, even though they had come down and were related to spheres quite different from the sun.

[ 18 ] But then came times when these souls, if they were later descendants, lost their connection with the solar forces. And so they lost this shared memory with their ancestors. And the more the human race multiplied, the more this living consciousness, which was connected with blood inheritance, was lost. It was lost because the powers that guided people forward and implanted the ego in them were opposed by the Luciferic powers that worked on the astral body. They worked against everything that cemented people together. They wanted to teach man freedom and self-consciousness. So it was that after the separation of the moon the oldest people said “I” not only to what they themselves experienced, but also to what their ancestors had experienced. They felt the common solar being that worked in their blood. And even when this had already died out, those who had come from Mars, for example, felt the bond that united them with the protective spirit of Mars. The descendants of those who had descended from Mars, precisely because they had been reincarnated from Martian souls, felt the protective force emanating from the Martian spirit.

[ 19 ] It was against this feeling of groups in which love reigns that the Luciferic spirits attempted their attack. They knew how to cultivate the individual ego of the human being against the common ego that developed in such groups.

[ 20 ] If we look back to ancient times, the further back we go, the more we find community consciousness bound to blood relations. And the more we advance, the more this consciousness fades, and the more man feels independent, feels that he must develop an individual ego in relation to the common ego. Thus two realms are at work in man: the realm of the Luciferic spirits and that of the divine-spiritual beings. The divine-spiritual entities lead the human being to the human being, but through the bonds of blood. The luciferic entities seek to separate, to separate man from man. These two forces have been at work throughout the Atlantean period. And they are still at work when the Atlantean continent perishes through great catastrophes and Europe, Asia, Africa and, on the other side, America take on their present form. They continue to have an effect in the fifth earth epoch, right up to the present day.

[ 21 ] Thus we have been able to describe five earth epochs: the polar time, when the earth was still united with the sun, the hyperborean time, when the moon was still united with the earth, then the Lemurian time, then the Atlantean time and finally the post-Atlantean time, our own time. We saw how the Luciferian spirits intervened and how they worked against the divine-spiritual powers that brought people together. And we must say to ourselves: something quite different would have happened if the Luciferic spirits had not intervened in the development of humanity. In the last third of the Atlantean period the old clairvoyant consciousness would have been exchanged for an object consciousness, but for a spirit-infused object consciousness. In this way, however, the Luciferic spirits previously led man to a hardened physical body. As a result, man saw out into the physical world earlier than he would otherwise have been able to see out. And the consequence of this was that man entered the last third of the Atlantean period in a completely different state than would have happened if only the divine-spiritual powers had been guiding him.

[ 22 ] Whereas otherwise man would have seen an outer world, as if glowing and spiritualized by higher beings, it was now the case that he saw only a physical world, and that the divine world had withdrawn from him. The Luciferic spirits had mingled with his astral body. The ahrimanic spirits of Zarathustra, which we can also call the Mephistophelean spirits, now mingled into his outer perception, into the relationship of the ego to the outer world, into the differentiation of the ego from the outer world, because man had connected himself with the sense world. Man does not have his physical body, the etheric body and the astral body within him as he would have them if only the upper gods had been at work. He has taken into his astral body entities which we call the Luciferic beings and which led him out of paradise earlier than he should have come out. And the consequence of the action of the Luciferic spirits is that the Ahrimanic, the Mephistophelean spirits have mingled into his vision, which now show him the outer world in mere sensory form, not as it is in its truth. That is why the Hebrew world calls these spirits, who make man believe a falsehood: “mephiz -topel” - “mephiz” the corrupter, and “topel” the liar. “Mephistopheles” is what it became. This is the same spirit as Ahriman. What did Ahriman achieve in man in contrast to Lucifer?

[ 23 ] Lucifer has caused the powers of the astral body to become worse than they should otherwise have become, and that man has condensed his physical matter earlier than usual. However, man has also thereby attained his freedom, to which he would otherwise not have come. The Mephistophelean spirits have had the effect that man does not see the spiritual basis of the world, but that he is made to believe an illusion of the world. Mephistopheles has taught man the opinion that the outer world has only a material existence, that there is not a spiritual being in and behind every material thing. The scene that Goethe paints so wonderfully in his “Faust” has always played out in the whole of humanity. On the one side we see Faust, who is seeking the way into the spiritual world, and on the other Mephistopheles, who describes this spiritual world as nothing, because he has an interest in presenting the sensory world to him as the whole. Faust replies to him what any spiritual scientist would say in this case: “In your nothingness I hope to find the universe!” Only when one knows how spirit is in every smallest part of matter, and how the idea of matter is a lie, only when one recognizes that Mephistopheles is the spirit in the world that corrupts ideas, only then does one arrive at a real idea of the outside world.

[ 24 ] What was necessary for mankind in order to bring mankind forward again, in order not to let it sink into the fate that would have been prepared for it by Lucifer, by Ahriman?

[ 25 ] Already during the Atlantean period it was necessary to work so that the influence of the Luciferic entities would not become too great. Already in the old Atlantean times there were people who worked on themselves in such a way that the Luciferic influence in their astral body could not become too great, who paid attention to what came from Lucifer, who sought out in their own souls the passions, instincts and desires that came from Lucifer. What happened when they eradicated these qualities that came from Lucifer? By doing so, they restored to themselves the possibility of seeing in a pure form what man would have seen if he had not suffered the influence of the Luciferic and later the Ahrimanic spirits. Through a pure way of life and careful self-knowledge, certain people of the Atlantean period sought to cast this influence of Lucifer out of themselves. And thus it was possible for them in those times, when the remnants of the old clairvoyance were still present, to look into the spiritual world and to see higher things than the others could, who had hardened physical matter within themselves through the Luciferian influence. Such people, who eradicated the Luciferic influence through a self-knowledge full of character, became the leaders of the Atlantean period, we can also say: the Atlantean initiates. - What did Lucifer actually do?

[ 26 ] Lucifer directed his attack primarily against that which held people together, that which was linked to blood in love. Now these people knew how to fight the influence of Lucifer. This enabled them to see this connection spiritually, to say: Not in separation, not in segregation lies that which brings man forward, but in that which unites men. Thus these people, who worked against the Luciferic influence, tried, as it were, to bring about the ancient state again, when the upper spiritual world was not yet endangered by Lucifer's power. They endeavored to eradicate the personal element: “Kill that which gives you a personal ego, and look back to those ancient times when consanguinity still spoke so vividly that the descendant felt his ego right up to the first ancestor, when the first ancestor, who had long since died, was still considered sacred! - The leaders of the Atlantean period wanted to lead mankind up to those times of ancient human community. Throughout the entire development there were such leaders of mankind who always appeared anew and said: “Do not seek to fall prey to the influences that want to drive you into the personal ego; seek to recognize that which held people together in ancient times! Then you will find the way to the divine spirit!

[ 27 ] Basically, this attitude was preserved most purely among those whom we know as the ancient Hebrew people. Try to understand the sermons of those who were the leaders of this ancient Hebrew people. They stood before their people and told them: You have come so far that everyone emphasizes his personal ego within himself, that everyone seeks his being only within himself. But you promote development when you kill the personal ego and tense all those forces that bring you to the awareness that you all descend from Abraham and are connected up to Abraham, that you are members of the great organism up to Abraham. When you are told: “I and the Father Abraham are one”, and you accept this with disregard of all personal things, then you have the right consciousness which leads you to the Divine, for the path to the Divine goes through the Original Father. - For the longest time the Hebrew people had preserved that which is the basic nerve in the leadership of those who fought the Luciferic influence.

[ 28 ] But the people were entrusted with the mission not to kill the ego, but to develop and cultivate it. The ancient initiates had nothing to say against the personal ego except that one should rise above the ancestors to the old gods.

[ 29 ] When the great impulse came to earth, as we were able to characterize it yesterday, when the Christ-impulse came, another speech resounded very clearly and distinctly at first. And it could be heard so clearly and distinctly precisely within the Hebrew people, because this people had preserved until the latest times what we can present as the echo of the old Atlantean initiates.

[ 30 ] Christ transformed that speech of the ancient initiates and said: “There is a possibility that man may cultivate his own personality, that he may not merely follow the physical bonds of blood brotherhood, but that he may look into his ego and there seek and find the Divine! In what we have characterized as the Christ impulse lies the power which, if we unite ourselves with it, enables us to create a spiritual brotherly bond from person to person despite the individuality of the ego. Thus the power of Christ was different from that which prevailed in the circle into which he was placed. Then it was said: “I and the Father Abraham are one! I must know that if I want to find my way back to the divine.” But the Christ said: “There is another Father through whom the I will find the way to the Divine; for the I or I-am and the Divine are one! There is an eternal that you can find if you remain within yourself.” This is why Christ was able to describe the power that he wanted to communicate to people with the words of the Gospel of John: “Before Abraham was, there was the I-am!” And the I-am was no other name than the one Christ gave himself. And man kindles this awareness: Something lives in me that was there much earlier than Abraham; I do not need to go as far as Abraham, I find in me the divine Father-Spirit! - then he can transform into good that which was brought by Lucifer for the cultivation and cultivation of the ego, and which has led to the inhibition of humanity. This is the deed of the Christ, that he has transformed the influence of Lucifer into good.

[ 31 ] Let us suppose that only the upper spiritual-divine entities had been at work, those who have tied love only to the blood ties, who have always demanded of man: “You must go up through the whole line of blood if you want to find the way to the gods! - then people would have been driven together into a human community without their full consciousness being present, and they would never have attained a full awareness of their freedom and independence. This is what the Luciferic spirits implanted in man's astral body before the appearance of Christ. They separated people, they wanted to put everyone on their own feet. The Christ, however, transformed into good what would have been necessary if the Luciferic influence had gone to extremes. If the Luciferian influence had gone to the extreme, people would have fallen into unkindness. Lucifer brought people freedom and independence; Christ transformed this freedom into love. And it is through the bond of Christ that people are led to spiritual love.

[ 32 ] From this point of view, a different light falls on what the Luciferian spirits have done. May we still call it laxity and indolence that they once “lagged behind”? No! They stayed behind to fulfill a certain mission while on earth: to prevent people from being forged together as if into a mere pulp by only natural bonds. And they were to prepare the way to the Christ. They said, as it were, on the moon: We want to renounce our lunar goal so that we can work on earth in the sense of further development! - This is one example of how an apparent evil, an apparent error in the whole context of the world can be turned to the best. In order that the Christ could intervene in earth evolution at the right time, certain moon spirits had to sacrifice their moon mission and prepare the Christ. We see from this that we can just as well understand Lucifer's remaining behind on the moon as a sacrifice.

[ 33 ] We will thereby come ever closer to a truth which man should write into his soul as a high moral: If you see an evil in the world, do not say: Here is an evil, that is, an imperfection, but ask: How can I develop into the realization that this evil will be transformed into a good in a higher context by the wisdom that is in the cosmos? How do I come to say to myself: The fact that you see something imperfect here is due to the fact that you are not yet ready to recognize the perfection of this imperfection? -- Where a man sees an evil, he should look into his own soul and ask himself: How is it that here, where evil confronts me, I am not ready to recognize the good in this evil?

[ 34 ] More of this tomorrow.