The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] In the two previous lectures of this cycle, it has been emphasized that supersensible perception is able to see the spiritual beings behind the details of the sensory world spread out before us, that from a certain stage of spiritual development, or let us say, from initiation, initiation, what we call in ordinary life fiery, airy, liquid bodies, and so on, are transformed into living, active, spiritual beings. And yesterday we mentioned in particular that spiritual beings are also hidden behind the phenomena and facts of our own soul life, insofar as this takes place in the physical world. You may now ask yourselves: Is it the case that where ordinary sensory perception perceives, say, warmth, color, and the like, supersensible consciousness sees spiritual beings, so that we then have the world before us in two forms, once as the outer sensory world and once as the spiritual world? And again, with regard to the inner world: Is it the case that in our soul life we have sensations, feelings, facts of conscience, facts of thought, and behind them spiritual beings? Or is it different? That is to say: does the spiritual world in its outer expression perhaps not completely coincide with the sensory world? We could also put the question this way: do we find all possible spiritual beings when we start from what is the outer expression in the physical world, or are there other spiritual beings that have no expression at all in the physical world? We could raise this question, and it is answered in the following way for the supersensible consciousness: It is true that behind every external perception there is a spiritual being or spiritual fact, but for the supersensible consciousness, as it ascends into the higher worlds, there are also spiritual beings and facts that have no expression in the physical world. So there are other experiences for the initiate than only those that cast their projection, their shadow image, down into the physical world. And likewise, there are spiritual beings and facts that do not cast their shadow into our soul life, that therefore find no expression in facts of conscience, in facts of thought, in feelings and sensations, and so on. If we want to summarize what has been said, we can say: The spiritual world presents itself to the higher consciousness as a far richer world than its outer expression in the physical world. — This is probably not a particularly surprising fact for most of you, but it must nevertheless be clearly brought to the fore. It must be clear that there are not only veiled spiritual phenomena and beings, just as fire veils the elemental spirits of fire behind it, but that there are also hidden spiritual beings and facts. And we must distinguish between them if we want to continue our consideration and bring some things that were touched upon yesterday more clearly before our souls.

[ 2 ] Yesterday we pointed out that there are indeed spiritual beings that correspond to what we call conscience. Thus, there are spiritual beings for all inner realities. And at the end of yesterday's lecture, I was able to remark how Greek mythology had a clear insight into the fact that those spiritual beings which reveal themselves in this way are depicted figuratively in the Erinyes as the animators and agitators of our inner soul life, and that these belong to an older race of gods or spirits than those who confront us behind the outer sense phenomena. That is why those who spoke of the Erinyes said that they belonged to an older race of gods than the folk gods of the Greeks, who considered Orestes' revenge to be justified. From a higher insight, as it were, the Erinyes were sent to correct what the folk gods, who were nothing more than mythical expressions of beings behind the sensory world, considered to be right. We have thus pointed to a very important fact of the entire evolution of humanity and the world, and this fact must occupy us more intimately today.

[ 3 ] Take another look back at everything that preceded the development of our Earth. You know that before it became Earth, our Earth was old Saturn, old Sun, and old Moon. Those of you who have previously studied this subject will say to yourselves: in everything that happens in the course of our Earth's development in the four kingdoms, in the human kingdom, in the animal kingdom, in the plant kingdom and in the mineral kingdom, there is an army of spiritual beings at work, and these are at various stages of their development. The beings that send down their beneficial effects from the sun are at a certain stage of development, and behind the development of the earth are other beings who separated the moon at the right time. All these beings intervene somewhere in the structure of Earth's development, in the structure of the realms that belong to Earth's development, so that what lies behind the phenomena that surround us is a richly structured spiritual world. Now you can easily imagine that there were equally richly structured spiritual realms during the ancient Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions. All these realms should not be understood in such a way that names are invented that are now supposed to apply to one or the other entity. The names that can be used are mostly not names that designate individualities, but names that designate, as it were, dignities or offices. So if one gives a name to a being that was active during the Sun period, one cannot use the same name when one wants to designate this being in relation to its activity on Earth, because it has progressed further. You see that one must speak very precisely if one wants to grasp reality in the spiritual realms.

[ 4 ] Thus, our Earth's development was preceded not only by three incarnations of our Earth sphere, but by three spiritual worlds, three mighty world realms. And these three mighty world realms differ very significantly from one another when examined with supersensible consciousness. When one investigates the old Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, something emerges that cannot really be compared with anything we are able to name on our Earth. We can only speak comparatively.

[ 5 ] You remember how I said that the old Saturn evolution was essentially a development of heat, a development of fire; that on the Sun, heat condensed into air, on the old Moon, air condensed into water, and only on Earth did “earth” appear. But if you wanted to apply what you today associate with the concepts of fire or heat directly to the heat or fire development of ancient Saturn, this would not give you a completely correct idea, because that Saturn fire differs essentially from our Earth fire. You cannot compare this Saturn fire with the fire you obtain when you light wood, or with the fire you use when you melt metal and the like. There is only one thing with which the ancient Saturn fire can be compared to some extent, and that is the fire that flows through your own blood as warmth. In this, one might say living fire, in this warmth, which is at the same time the life force within you, you have something that you can compare with the substance of which the old Saturn alone consisted, while what is physical fire today is already a derivative, a late product of the old Saturn fire, and this form, as you see it outside in space with your physical eyes, actually only came into being on Earth. Only our blood warmth physically reminds us of what existed during the physical development period on the old Saturn. So you see that there is very little within our present experience that can be compared with the properties that existed in these earlier stages of development, so that we find three states of our ancestors that are very different from our present state on Earth: the old Saturn state, the old Sun state, and the old Moon state.

[ 6 ] Now, however, you must be clear that, in essence, everything that existed during the old Saturn, Sun, and Moon states is contained in a certain way in our Earth's development; it has only changed. In a sense, what was first present as a seed in the old Saturn and developed further through the Sun and Moon is contained within our Earth's development, and we see everything that has developed through these three successive states, albeit changed within our Earth's development, but we can always determine from the changed states what underlies them from the earlier stages of development. It is as if the old Saturn, the old Sun, and the old Moon are hidden within our Earth.

[ 7 ] Now let us examine a little more closely how these things are hidden within our Earth's development. If you bring to mind what has been said in the previous lectures, you can say that the Earth, together with the Sun and Moon, was once a single body. At that time, everything that existed during the old Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods was present in this Earth in the form of spiritual beings and physical substances, but also everything that was active as spiritual beings during these periods. This all lived together in the Earth at the beginning of the Earth's time. So we can characterize the beginning of the Earth's time as follows: the Earth begins by taking into itself three previous stages of development with all the stages of development of the spiritual beings that preceded it. All of this lived within our Earth. But if you imagine that these beings have different stages of development, you must say to yourself: Someone who looks at this Earth must therefore be able to distinguish between these three different spiritual beings and substances; he must be able to say about the beginning of Earth's development: Here is something that could only have come into being because the Saturn evolution preceded the evolution of our Earth; here is something that could only have come into being because the Sun evolution preceded it; and here is something that could only have come into being because the Moon evolution preceded the evolution of our Earth. — So that three states preceded our Earth's development, which are found again in this Earth body at the beginning of Earth's development.

[ 8 ] The fact that I have just brought before your spiritual mind was always clear to people who, in an ancient instinctive consciousness, had a connection with the mysteries of the spiritual world. And when the number three is mentioned as a characteristic number for higher worlds, those who have the concrete, not the abstract, who have things, not concepts, before their eyes, always had before their souls the fact that our Earth contained within itself, as in its womb, what came from the old Saturn, from the old Sun, from the old Moon. This is the so-called higher, pre-earthly trinity. The ancient initiates looked back to ancient times when everything earthly was still spiritual, and said: What first became solid on earth was preceded by other elemental states. When the Earth had not yet joined the three preceding states as the fourth, these three states preceded it: the pre-Earth, to which everything earthly owes its existence. A trinity, which we describe in familiar terms as Saturn, Sun, and Moon, precedes our Earth. And what about the development of our Earth now? This trinity has developed further, into our Earth itself. So when we speak of the so-called higher trinity, we mean specifically the three pre-earthly states; when we speak of the fourfold, we mean these three states as they gradually changed so that they could still accommodate the Earth itself. That is why all people who were connected to the facts of the spiritual world through an instinctive consciousness perceived the mystery of the Earth's becoming in the relationship between three and four; they said to themselves: Our Earth is the fourth embodiment of our world's development; being the fourth embodiment, it has taken in the three previous embodiments, which developed up to their Earth state, but three of them had to develop to ever higher stages already in the pre-Earth time. Thus, from what had become the four, one looked up to the three with holy awe and said: The three—Saturn, Sun, and Moon—lie at the foundation of the four that expresses our Earth's development. It goes without saying that the terms Saturn, Sun, and Moon are my present-day terms for others of instinctive consciousness.

[ 9 ] If we now follow our own earthly development, we may ask ourselves: How do the individual spiritual beings participate in its further progress? This progress consists in the sun detaching itself from the earth, and then the moon. Spiritual beings are involved in these processes; they guide these processes. Spiritual beings pull the sun out of the earth, and the same beings pull the moon out of the earth. How do the individual spiritual beings of the old Saturn, those of the old Sun, and those of the old Moon realm participate in the various processes? They are at different stages of development, so they will participate in different ways. First, we have a group of spiritual beings — those who who underwent a certain development during the old Sun evolution, a development that was as important for them as the Earth evolution is for human beings — beings who underwent such a development that the old Sun was chosen to provide the stage for them, beings who are, as it were, adapted to the old Sun and belong together with it. These are the beings who also brought the sun out of the earth during the earth's development, because they were already so far advanced during the old sun that they were then as connected to it as humanity is now connected to the earth. They are so far advanced that they need the sun for their further progress. With the separation of the sun, the sun spirits also left the earth in order to work on our earth from outside. Now, since the sun spirits had departed, the Saturn spirits and the moon spirits remained with the Earth. Of these two groups of spiritual beings, it is the Saturn spirits who were so far advanced in their development that they were able to guide and direct the moon's departure from our Earth. These spirits were ready for this task because they had, in a certain sense, preceded the sun spirits in their maturity, having already undergone during the Saturn period what the sun spirits underwent during the sun period. They were therefore able to drive the moon out of the earth and stimulate the inner development of human beings, who would otherwise have become hardened and mummified, and to enliven them from within. So we can say that the act of separating the sun was brought about by the sun spirits, and the act of separating the moon by the Saturn spirits. The sun is the cosmic symbol of the deed of the sun spirits, the moon is the cosmic symbol of the deed of the Saturn spirits. What remains for the earth itself? What were actually old moon spirits remain for the earth itself.

[ 10 ] For the next few days, it will be useful to focus on a very specific moment in the earth's development. I mean the moment when the moon had just left the earth. The earth had been left behind. The sun had already gone away earlier. The earth is now in a very specific state; it was not yet as it is today. If the earth had already been as it is today at the time of the moon's separation, then the entire course of history would not have been necessary. So the Earth was not like that; in relation to its present state, where it is covered with a present mineral, plant, animal, and physical-human kingdom, it was in an imperfect state. All of that had not yet clearly emerged. The individual continents had not yet separated from one another. Everything was, one might say, in confusion. What came later had to develop first. You would search in vain if you were to look at the course of development with supersensible vision and expect to find, in the state of the earth at that time, a covering of plants and minerals like those of today; you would search in vain for animal and human forms like those of today. How did all this come into being? Through the influence of the sun and moon from outside. They had gone out so that they could work on the earth from outside. Our earth conjured up that which could come into being through the influence of the sun and moon: everything that we see around us on earth today. So we must picture an imperfect, chaotic earth when we speak of the time when the moon went out, and we must say: Little by little, the earth was covered with the forms we perceive around us today, with the plant cover, with the various animal groups, the human races in the physical sense of today. All this sprouts and grows through the influence of the beings working from the sun and the moon. The beings working from the sun bring forth the outer forms, the forms of minerals, plants, animals, and physical human beings; the beings working from the moon stimulate the soul life in animals and human beings. Thus, these beings work from outside on the development of our earth. What I have now described to you is, in a few words, the picture that characterizes the development of the earth from the so-called Lemurian period to the Atlantean period. It was only during the Atlantean period that the picture of the earth as we now see it in our surroundings slowly and gradually took shape. Thus, in the course of Earth's development since the separation of the Moon, we must distinguish, so to speak, between a chaotic Earth and an ordered Earth, an Earth that has already experienced the effects of the spiritual beings in its environment.

[ 11 ] Everything I have said is the result that does not need to be taken from this or that historically handed down teaching. Suppose that through some event everything that the initiates of Let us assume that the knowledge of the Persian magicians, the knowledge of the Chaldeans, the knowledge of the Egyptian initiates, the knowledge of the mysteries of Greece had been lost; suppose that everything except for external documents had been lost to the present day, and we had no written records telling us what had ever been taught about the spiritual foundations of our Earth's development! We would not have lost the possibility of developing supersensible consciousness ourselves today. Thus, everything that has now been told can be found without any historical document through supersensible research. We therefore have before us something that, at the present stage of development, can be learned directly from the original source, just as mathematics can be learned from the original source.

[ 12 ] Now that we have presented a small chapter of comprehensive spiritual science, let us try to pick up somewhere to see how what we can establish today through supersensible research has been lived in past times. Certainly, another method could be adopted, but for this cycle we have decided to compare what we can find without historical documents with what has been handed down to us through this or that document. We do not want to go back very far, but rather to a historical figure who lived in relatively ancient times during the development of the Greek spirit, to a figure about whom very little is known from external history, not even the exact year of his birth. Let us go back to that personality who in a certain sense preceded the other Greek sages, to Pherekydes of Syros. He lived during the period of Greek intellectual development known as the age of the seven sages, which thus precedes everything else that is historically known about Greek philosophy. Little is known about Pherecydes of Syros from an external point of view. However, it is interesting enough to take a closer look at what is said about him. Among other things, he is also referred to as the teacher of Pythagoras. Many of the teachings found in Heraclitus, Plato, and later sages can be traced back to him. He belonged to the earlier period of Greek development, which is said to have had seven sages, just as the ancient Indians are said to have had seven rishis. Pherekydes of Syros lived at the time of these seven wise men of Greece. It is said of him that he taught that our entire development is based on three principles, which he called Zeus, Chronos, and Chthon. What are these three terms? If we examine more closely what is meant by these three terms, we find the following: First, you will readily know that Chronos is simply another name for the ancient Saturn; they are one and the same. Thus, in the one principle of Pherecydes of Syros, we have in Chronos the sum of the spiritual beings that we count as belonging to the realm of Saturn, everything that we count as belonging to the realm of the old Saturn, everything that then again worked in the earth's evolution as beings that were able to separate the moon; we have all of that in Chronos-Saturn. And further, Zeus! Zeus is a word, a name that is ambiguous when used in older times. It is used for spiritual individualities at various stages of development. But those in ancient Greece who knew something about initiation saw in Zeus the leader of the sun spirits whom they could recognize. Zeus is that which lives in the effects exerted by the sun on the earth. Thus we have the second kingdom, the kingdom of the sun spirits, designated as the kingdom of Zeus by Pherekydes of Syros. Chthon, what is that? This is nothing more than a name for the state of our Earth at the moment when the moon separated from it, namely in a kind of chaotic state where neither plants nor animal or human forms covered the Earth. And now you find a strange word in Pherekydes of Syros; he said: So these three principles, Zeus, Chronos, and Chthon, are at the basis of our Earth's development. What the Earth has become, it has only become through the interaction of these three principles, that sacred original trinity that came over from pre-Earth conditions. —This ancient Greek sage also knew this, and he designated it with the three names familiar to him. Now he tells how this continued. In ancient times, however, it was not customary to describe such things with such dry, brutal terms as we do today, but rather colorful images were used for what was seen and recognized in the spirit. And then Pherekydes of Syros said: Chthon became Gaia, the earth, what we now call earth, because Zeus presented her with the gift of honor and she was thereby covered with the garment. — A beautiful word for the development that I have just summarized for you in a few words. The earth stood alone; outside were the sun and moon, the spiritual realms of Zeus and Chronos. Then the sun, which had gone out first, began to act upon the earth. It was like a fertilization of the earth in its chaotic state; thus, to speak with the ancient Greek sage, it was like a fertilization of Chthon by Zeus. The sun's warmth and sunlight were sent down into the physical realm, and within the sun's warmth and sunlight were sent down the beneficial effects of Zeus's realm, which fertilized everything. The earth was given the gift of honor. The earth covered itself with a garment, and this garment is now nothing other than the carpet of plant and animal forms and forms of physical human beings with which the earth now surrounds itself. Chthon became Gaia through Zeus giving her the gift of honor and her covering herself with the garment.

[ 13 ] Thus, in strange pictorial expressions and beautiful language, we see once again what the supersensible consciousness can find today, in the time when the seven sages of Greece lived, when Pherekydes of Syros was active, of whom little more than the external facts I have just told you have been preserved. But anyone who illuminates these things that happened to this wise man with the light that supersensible research can give us today will say to himself: It would not be possible to express something like this so aptly that it could be confirmed by today's supersensible research if one did not oneself know something about all these things. And if we now ask ourselves further: Where did the knowledge of Pherecydes of Syros come from? We come to the conclusion that he was able to enjoy a so-called Phoenician initiation. We see in him a man who was initiated in the temples of the ancient Phoenician country and who brought what he was allowed to say from these Phoenician temples to Greece and taught it there. In this way, many things that existed there in harmony with the rest of Oriental wisdom flowed over from the Orient.

[ 14 ] I only wanted to give you one example, and we could cite many such examples of how we can find in the ancient sages what can be found today without any historical tradition, if we know how to read it correctly. We have not gone far back in human history. It can be seen in many ways that the teachings that can be found today as original can be found in a corresponding way in ancient times, if one is able to decipher the expressions. Nevertheless, you must not misunderstand that it would be a completely wrong principle if we believed that the illumination of Oriental wisdom through what can also be gained today in the Western world was exhausted by simply saying: We find this or that in the Orient as an opinion for world development; and so we speak today. But we find the same thing in Pherecydes of Syros, for example, and we also find it in Egyptian times, in the time of the Chaldean magicians, and in ancient India. If one were to consider this to be the only possibility, one could say: So today we find a wisdom that has existed in the most diverse forms everywhere where people have strived for wisdom: one and the same wisdom everywhere! Not the slightest objection can be raised against this assertion in its abstract form, for the fact simply stands; but it must be said that this is only part of the truth. Just as the development of a plant does not consist in the plant producing the same organs from its lowest root points to the fruit, but produces the green leaves, the colored petals, the stamens, the pistil, and so on, just as the plant thus changes the form of its products, driving them ever higher and higher, so it is with the progress of human life on earth. If it is quite correct that the same phenomena appear again and again in the most diverse forms, so to speak, there is nevertheless a development of these phenomena; and it is simply not correct that what exists today already existed in ancient Indian times. That would be just as incorrect as saying that the same thing is true of a plant when the flower is formed as when, say, the root is formed. The same force is present, so to speak, but it can only be recognized in its reality if one follows its actual development, so that one recognizes progress in the mysteries underlying human evolution. What was taught on Earth in the early days after the great Atlantean catastrophe can still be taught today; what Pherecydes of Syros taught can still be taught today; but Earth's development has also been enriched for human beings; it has received new influences.

[ 15 ] Yesterday we pointed to the important moment of the Christian impact on human development. With it came something that cannot be compared to anything else, something that stands entirely alone in the development of the earth. I have already heard someone say: Yes, it would be an injustice within human evolution if, so many millennia before the appearance of Christ, full wisdom could not have been communicated to human beings. How did the people of pre-Christian times come to have something withheld from them? We must assume, based on general world justice — so some say — that although the forms of truth change, no new truths are added to the old ones, otherwise one would have to claim that something higher had been prepared for the people who remained in their lives for the post-Christian era than for the pre-Christian people. —- If it were not actually said at times, there would be no need to mention it here, for one can understand that this thing is said elsewhere, only not among those who strive for spiritual science. Why not? Well, because the people who are incarnated in the post-Christian era are the same as those who lived before; because people go through repeated incarnations and are called upon to learn afterwards what they were unable to learn before Christ appeared on earth. Anyone who believes that human beings incarnate again and again so that they may be served up the same thing over and over again does not seriously believe in reincarnation, not in their feelings and the whole life of their soul; for to believe in it seriously means to understand its goal, its meaning, to understand that it is not in vain to come again and again, but that this happens so that one may always experience something new on earth. But if this is so, then new and new life must always flow to this earth; one must see something new on earth when one arrives there again. It is an abstraction to say: The same wisdom returns again and again in different worldviews. But it is concrete, it is true, that the ways of life develop, that they take on ever higher and higher forms, until that which is ripe to pass into another state appears on earth, just as the Saturn, Sun, and Moon states passed into the Earth state. Not mere repetition, but real progress! That is what it is all about.

[ 16 ] And therein also lies the difference between Eastern and Western ways of thinking. The Western way of thinking, in accordance with the whole task and mission of the West, can never separate itself from a truly concrete historical view of our Earth's development. And a historical view is only one that sees progress, not repetition of the same thing. The concept of history is one that only entered human development through the West. It was there that people first learned to truly understand things historically, not just to see a repetition of the same thing. And if someone among us appears who is not completely imbued with the concept of historical progress and then indulges in a particularly Eastern way of thinking, whose truth is not doubted in the least, which is accepted unquestioningly, even though it is said that the historical view must be added, then it is easy for him to lose the concept of history and for a strange question to arise for him: Why, actually, this eternal repetition of the same thing? That was, for example, the question posed by Schopenhauer, who lacked the concept of history in the true sense of the word and who, within our intellectual life, was one of those who absorbed much of the external exotericism of Oriental life. By positing some higher truth, the lower truth is not affected in any way; everything that is asserted from the unhistorical point of view is accepted; only a lower way of thinking is elevated to a higher realm, that is, in our case, the Eastern way of thinking is illuminated by the light of the West. ^{1This presentation, which in itself seems somewhat lengthy, is justified by the fact that it must be directed against the assertion often found in mystical worldviews that, in essence, the various successive religions and so on are only transformations of one original wisdom.}

[ 17 ] I would like to illustrate what I have just said in abstract terms with an example. You will already have sensed from what I have said that we can find the results of present-day supersensible research in a different form in ancient times, if we look for them. We can only shed light on the past if we take this light from the present. In doing so, we once again connect, let us say, with a very specific spiritual personality, a spiritual individuality. Later we will have to discuss various details from this area, but today only one thing needs to be highlighted. If you go back to the time when the Vedas recorded what was still present in a certain sense as an echo of the high, noble wisdom of the Rishis, you will find among the various names for the divine beings the name Indra. If I am to answer the question from the point of view of present-day supersensible research: What kind of being is it that was called Indra in the Vedic period? — I can best do so by characterizing once again how a person today, through supersensible research, can gain a view of this being, which really exists.

[ 18 ] We have emphasized that behind everything that surrounds us externally in the world, behind fire, air, water, and earth, there are spiritual beings. When we allow what is fire or air to affect us, first through our senses, we have the external expression of spiritual beings that stand behind the fire or the air. We can search for what lies behind what we perceive physically in ordinary life by rising from the physical world to the soul world through supersensible vision. There we find many beings for what is expressed outwardly in the air; that is, many spiritual beings work together in our spiritual environment to bring about what is expressed outwardly to us in the physical phenomena of the air. Let us ask ourselves: How does the spiritual realm behind the air appear when we look at it in the soul world? The answer is: we come to a number of spiritual beings that do not descend to the physical world, that express themselves in it through the air, and that confront us in the soul world as individualities. And the most powerful of these beings is one very specific one. We still find it today; it is the one that was named Indra in ancient India. It is at the same time the one that is involved in the entire organization of our breathing process. We owe it to the activity of this entity that we have become breathing beings as we are. We can constantly look up to this entity and say: “To you, O Indra, I owe the possibility of having such a breathing apparatus as we have as human beings.” But the activities of such entities are not limited to one thing; they are ramified. Human beings owe many other things to this same entity. That is why they can say: “To you, God Indra, to whom I owe the ability to breathe, I can also owe the strength that flows through my muscles when I have to defeat my enemies in war.” Thus, he can pray to Indra for the strength to defeat his enemies, for this is, so to speak, the function assigned to this same entity. It is also attributable to this same entity, for which we do not need a name if we only know that it exists, that lightning flashes through the clouds, that thunder rolls, and that the beneficial effects accompanying thunderstorms occur. One can also send up prayers for these phenomena, so to speak, if one thinks of praying to the gods at all.

[ 19 ] Thus we see that there is a certain entity in the soul world that was simply called Indra in ancient Vedic times. Indra is just as real to us as he was to the people of that time.

[ 20 ] And now comes the other point. Take this entity of Indra, take it as the ancient Indian initiate really saw it when he directed his spiritual eye toward the soul world, take that and now ask: Does today's initiate see this Indra in the same way? — We must answer: He sees everything that was seen in Indra at that time, everything, but he also sees something else in Indra. If you look at a man in his fortieth year who is called Fritz Müller, you can say to yourself: This is the same man I saw thirty years ago as a ten-year-old, who was already called that then; but in a certain sense he has become something else. And you will give a poor description of this Fritz Müller in his fortieth year if you tell someone what he looked like in his tenth year. What you say about Fritz Müller in this case is quite correct, but he has undergone a development during the thirty years, and you must bear this in mind when you talk about his present state. Do you now believe that although human beings on earth develop continuously in their individual lives and also from life to life, that spiritual beings should be such that they are still at the same stage today as they were when the contemplative consciousness was directed toward them in ancient India? Are the gods merely those who have remained the same for thousands of years? They are not. We can reasonably say that Indra has developed since the time when the clairvoyants of ancient India looked up to him. What has happened to him? How does his development appear to us?

[ 21 ] If we direct our clairvoyant consciousness back to the form of the ancient Indra, how does this form appear to us? The following becomes apparent: there is a certain point in his development when we see something strange about this Indra. To illustrate this clearly, let us repeat: we direct our conscious awareness in the soul world toward the ancient Indian god Indra and follow him through the millennia. We find a point in time when it appears as if rays of light from a completely different spiritual being fall upon Indra; and through this light that falls upon Indra, he himself is illuminated; he is thereby raised to a higher stage of his development. It is just as when, at a certain age in your development, you learn something important that makes you a completely different person. This is what happened one day to Indra: the spiritual light of another spiritual being fell upon Indra, and since that time, that which was already present in the old Indra shines upon us, enriched by the spiritual light of another being. We can point precisely to the moment in the historical development of humanity when what I have just described took place. The god Indra is there in the soul world at a time when Christ is not yet perceptible for the development of the earth, but when the light that emanates from Christ already falls upon Indra. The light, the spiritual light that emanates from Christ, falls upon Indra only later. And someone who has the ability to do so can look at Indra and say: This Indra is now revealing something different to me than he revealed before, for previously the light of Christ did not shine back from him. Those who are called to proclaim this to humanity say: There was the old Indra, and we are interested in what he was before; but now we are also interested in what he reflects back to us, what now shines back to us from him. Just as the moon reflects the sunlight, so since that time Indra has not been shining his own light into the spiritual evolution of the earth, but is reflecting back the light of Christ. This light, which does not yet fall upon the earth, which is first reflected back by Indra, which therefore does not allow us to recognize Christ directly, but rather as we recognize the sunlight when it shines from the moon, was what Moses proclaimed to his people; and he called the Christ light, which is reflected back like the sunlight from the moon, Yahweh or Jehovah. And here you have what I have often emphasized in a different form in the lectures on the Gospel of John: Christ announces himself in advance, and Yahweh or Jehovah is the name for the Christ light that is first reflected back by an ancient deity, the Christ who was prophesied in advance.

[ 22 ] It is as if, in the course of the Earth's development, the old Indra had been taken up by the Christ light, and now this Christ light was shining back onto the Earth. By being touched by this Christ light, the god Indra himself underwent a development. Of course, he did not become Jehovah. You must not say: Jehovah is Indra. But you will find it understandable that just as Indra revealed himself in lightning and thunder, so Yahweh or Jehovah revealed himself in them, because reflection can only take place in accordance with the nature of the reflecting entity. That is why Yahweh revealed himself in lightning and thunder. Here you have an example of how spiritual development takes place in their world, so to speak, just as human development takes place in yours, and how the same sight does not present itself when we look at spiritual beings after thousands of years. Something is happening in the spiritual world; there is history within it, and what is earthly history is the outer expression of history in the spiritual world. Truly, everything that happens here on earth has its causes in events in the spiritual world, and we must learn to understand and comprehend in detail what events lie behind our earthly events as their foundations.

[ 23 ] I have thus shown you, by means of an example, what it means to illuminate those ancient worlds from today's point of view. To do this, it is necessary that we take the concept of history very seriously and ask ourselves: If we seek out the same being that existed thousands of years ago, how does it appear to us today, and what has brought about this change? I wanted to explain the history of spiritual life to you using a special example. If you hold fast to the belief that there is wisdom that we find today and that we find again when we look back, only with different names and forms and different expressions, and at the same time hold fast to the belief that there is a historical development, a progress in spiritual life that underlies physical life, then you also have the two correct principles that must underlie all spiritual science that wants to work into the future of humanity, that wants to progress.

[ 24 ] Tomorrow we will speak about the revelation of the one divine life in its various forms, about the knowledge of the progress of divine life toward ever higher and higher forms, toward the ripening of the actual fruits of world existence.