The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] Last week we considered how the Christ impulse will develop within humanity over the course of the epochs of Earth’s evolution that will follow our own—and, of course, within our own epoch as well. We have seen that because, as it were, the following elements are organized around this Christ impulse like physical bodies: wonder or amazement as an astral body, the feelings of compassion or empathy practiced by humanity as an etheric body, and everything that has occurred under the influence of the impulses of conscience as a physical body, thus, in the course of the time still available to us during Earth’s development, that ideal being will be fully formed, which, in relation to its I—which, we may say, is the Christ impulse itself—entered into this Earth development at the beginning of our calendar—or with the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus, our aim was to characterize, as it were, the fundamental nuance, the fundamental character of the ideals of humanity’s future from one perspective. Today we shall attempt to add a further dimension to these discussions from the last session from another perspective.

[ 2 ] Remember that the Christ impulse, so to speak, fell right in the middle of the period that followed the great Atlantean catastrophe. We can regard this period, as it were, as the one extending from the great Atlantean catastrophe to the next great, overwhelming catastrophe, which is described in the lectures on the Apocalypse. If we wish to place the most significant event in the entire history of the Earth right in the middle of this period, then we have the Christ impulse. We do not even need—as we have recognized from recent discussions—to necessarily turn our gaze, so to speak, toward Palestine to see that something of the utmost importance in Earth’s development is taking place at this point in time. We can simply consider the Greco-Latin cultural epoch, which falls precisely in the middle, that is, the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and we need only recall some characteristic circumstance from this period; then we can compare this characteristic circumstance, for example, with what occurred in a similar field during the preceding third cultural epoch, and with what is happening in our present epoch. A circumstance familiar to you will be highlighted shortly.

[ 3 ] We have often described the essential characteristics of a Greek temple. We have highlighted what constitutes the essence of the Greek temple, explaining that the Greek temple, through its entire form and its self-contained wholeness, is such that one perceives it as something existing in and of itself, even when one is not physically present while observing it—indeed, even when one imagines that no human being is nearby at all. People whom one imagines inside a Greek temple are actually always something disruptive; they do not belong there, do not belong within it. For what is the Greek temple? In its entire form, it is conceived only in thought and can be understood only if one regards it as the dwelling of the invisible living God who has descended to the physical plane. Therefore, the individual temples are the temples of this or that deity. And when we imagine the God within it and no human being there, but only the God who has built a dwelling on Earth, on the physical plane, then we have what we might call the idea of the Greek temple. We must, as far as possible, leave human beings out of the picture: this is what the entire architecture of the Greek temple necessitated. This could only occur in an era in which, so to speak, everything living on the physical plane had to be permeated by the divine-spiritual. It could be felt in this way by people to whom, so to speak, the earth appeared everywhere to be directly permeated by the divine—by people among whom the words that touch our hearts so deeply could arise: Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows! — that is, in the world one enters after passing through the gate of death. It was the period in which human beings were most closely connected to the physical plane and the spiritual that permeated it.

[ 4 ] Let us compare Greek temple architecture with any similar phenomenon from earlier times and with what has set the tone, the fundamental character, of our own era. We could take something from the preceding era—the Egyptian temples, indeed the pyramids: they can only be understood if we perceive them as humanity’s striving upward toward the Divine, the Divine that has not yet descended to the physical plane. In every line, in every form, you can see humanity’s striving upward toward the divine-spiritual when you contemplate the architecture of those times. But one can see from the mysterious and deeply symbolic nature of these structures that people, so to speak, first needed something to help them find their way through this architecture up to the divine-spiritual. They needed preparation for this: they had to be at the first stage of initiation. This is also how the architecture of the Near East is to be understood.

[ 5 ] And as for our own time, we could say that the fundamental tone for architecture was set by the Gothic style. That is an occult fact. It is impossible to conceive of a Gothic cathedral as a Greek temple. For a Gothic cathedral is precisely imperfect when the congregation of believers is not present. It cannot be conceived of without them! And all forms are such that they are meant to receive the prayers of the faithful—but of the faithful, in contrast to the initiates of the ancient Egyptians. Anyone capable of judging such things knows from the course that the development of form has taken—from the Egyptian temple through the Greek temple to the Gothic cathedral—that the impulse which has led upward to the human ego has entered and taken hold there! This could be demonstrated in all fields: how the Christ impulse grasps humanity, how it imprints itself on all events and all becoming; and it seems downright grotesque when all manner of philosophical and theologically oriented worldviews presume to claim that the acceptance of a Christ impulse depends on some historical document. It does not depend at all on any historical documents, but only on an understanding, meaningful consideration of human development. For wherever one examines it, one notices that the same process has taken place as occurred in relation to architecture. The initiate, who alone could understand the architectural forms of the Egyptian-Chaldean era, the third post-Atlantean period, knew that one must first rise above ordinary humanity; only then could one ascend into the realm of divine-spiritual life. The initiate who lived in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch knew: he lives in the physical world together with the divine, but he has the slightest connection with what the Greeks called the shadow world, precisely because human beings have descended further into the physical world. And if the gods did not unite with human beings in the temples, there would be no such connection in the Greeks’ perceptions.

[ 6 ] This changed after the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. It has come to be such that every soul, just as it is, can find the path to the divine-spiritual. It is of the utmost importance that we take this into account, for it is, after all, the most concrete expression of the fact that in ancient times, human beings were even closer to the spiritual with their entire consciousness, knowledge, and soul life; then they descended to the physical plane and must now gradually ascend again. And we are in that age in which the ascent—while the Christ impulse initially drove people unconsciously—must take place consciously.

[ 7 ] We know, then, that our own time is marked by a kind of repetition of the Egyptian-Chaldean period. The Greek-Latin period stands apart within the seven successive cultural periods. It cannot return, for it is a midpoint. The third cultural epoch is, in a certain sense, recurring in our time. The second, the Proto-Persian, will return in the sixth cultural epoch, which will succeed our own. And the first, the primordial Indian period, will return in the seventh cultural epoch—to which we look in a distant human future—before a great, immense catastrophe, not in the same way, but such that the Christ impulse will be imprinted upon all that existed before during this repetition.

[ 8 ] An awareness of what has happened in the course of human development was, in essence, present, particularly in earlier times. Of course, people in earlier times were mainly aware of humanity’s descent—the descent from the divine-spiritual heights to the physical plane. Now, everything is preparing itself. Everything happens gradually. And the impulse toward re-ascent—which, admittedly, was only given with the Mystery of Golgotha in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch—was also preparing itself earlier. It had its precursors as an impulse. We have considered a certain precursorship in the figures of Elijah, John the Baptist, and others. But not only within the culture that later entered the West, but within all cultures, we find an awareness that humanity has descended from the divine-spiritual heights and must look to the future—as the future approaches—for a new ascent into the divine-spiritual worlds. If we wish to consider a characteristic view held by the most diverse peoples, one that can truly explain to us how people formed mental images of what has just been mentioned in that era, we need only highlight a fact mentioned in the traditions of virtually all peoples, a fact that can indeed be related to a wide variety of things, but which, in its final phase, must be related to something quite specific—a fact that has been much pondered and about which one can only gain clarity by reflecting on it in an occult sense, namely the tradition of the Flood. Certainly, there are many elements associated with this Flood tradition that relate to earlier times. But one thing must be traced in an occult sense: that the peoples—and almost all peoples who have left behind reliable historical records or legends—date the occurrence of the Flood to a time approximately three thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha. So that, if we go back three thousand years from there, we arrive at what the Flood legend had in mind as the very last event it referred to. Now, there would not be enough time today to explain the reasons why this final Flood, said to have occurred three thousand years before our era, cannot be understood as a great catastrophe or a flood in the physical sense. It goes without saying that this does not refer to the Atlantean catastrophe either, for that lies even further back in time. It must therefore refer to something entirely different. Nevertheless, one should not lose sight of the fact that the traditions of all relevant peoples place the Flood in the fourth millennium B.C.E.—the dates may not coincide exactly, but they essentially agree.

[ 9 ] Why is that? Here I ask you to recall something I have often pointed out: that in the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch, whose teachers were the great holy Rishis, the human etheric body—which was primarily active at that time—is of significance, whereas in the ancient Persian cultural epoch it was the human astral body, the feeling body, was particularly active; in the Egyptian-Chaldean period, the feeling soul; in the Greco-Latin period, the intellectual or emotional soul; in our present epoch, the conscious soul; and now we are moving toward the time in which what we call the Spirit-Self will gradually emerge in cultural manifestations. As humanity developed in this way, something very significant took place in what the soul experienced. Just consider that the ancient Indian, the primordial Indian, of whom the Vedas know nothing more, viewed the world, so to speak, in the way that this worldview arose when the etheric body was primarily active. For through the etheric body, human beings cannot look outward in the same way they look outward today. They cannot gain such a perception, such a worldview as is ours today; rather, through the etheric body, everything comes from within. Modern humans can only grasp a faint, dim image of how perception arises through the etheric body when they recall what their dreams are like. Yet in the primordial Indian era, the dreams and visions people experienced were of the highest degree of vividness. If one person encountered another on the path, they could not see them with the physical eye as we do today. To believe that would be a prejudice. However, they did see an image that stood before them. Human beings were still surrounded by a kind of auric cloud, and what they physically had before them was as if shrouded in a kind of mist. They perceived things quite differently. And while what was perceived in blurred images—in contrast to today’s understanding—held the highest spiritual significance, what was clear in ancient times was that which streamed down from the cosmos, from the world of the stars.

[ 10 ] During the second post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the ability to look outward gradually emerged, but strangely enough, the ability to gaze out into outer space remained intact. While everything below remained blurred, the ancient Persians looked clearly into the world of the stars. It is therefore understandable that Zoroastrianism immediately directed people’s attention to what comes from outer space—to sunlight—in its Ahura Mazdao, Ormuzd. This was because what we call the astral body was now active. By the end of this period, the groundwork was already being laid for looking outward. Slowly, the impulses are coming to see things as they are now seen. Thus, the impulse was given to humanity to gradually look out onto the physical plane. And this impulse came to people in such a way that they gradually transitioned to a completely new way of seeing; little by little, this dawned upon humanity. And specifically in the following manner.

[ 11 ] If we were to describe what people felt—what might be called a dawning—we could say: As the primordial Persian era drew to a close and the next one glowed on the horizon like the dawn of a new day, people felt: We will no longer experience so intensely what has come to us as a divine legacy from ancient times—inner human vision, visionary clairvoyance—when humanity lived in close communion with the divine-spiritual worlds during the Atlantean era. — People looked back. The most important thing for them were memories in which, like living dream images, it appeared how the gods had shaped the world throughout the Lemurian and Atlantean eras. These memories were felt as something that was withdrawing from humanity, something that was gradually fading away. And one sensed that something was now coming where human beings would have to intervene with that which speaks within them about the outer world, which obscures for them the light of the inner spiritual world, and which compels them to look outward from within in order to make the outer world their own. This time was drawing ever nearer. And most of all, one might say most clearly, it was felt by those who at that time belonged to the wise ones of ancient India. They perceived it as a kind of divine impulse approaching humanity, which worked in such a way that it compelled human beings, through their own selves—through humanity’s stepping out into the physical world—to think within themselves about what met them there in the physical world. Conceiving of this divine impulse as a divine being, the followers of ancient Indian culture—who were thus living during the second cultural epoch—interpreted it in such a way that they called this being Pramati. And this is roughly how one would have felt, together with an ancient Indian living in that age: the deity Pramati is approaching. She snatches humanity away from the old guidance of the ancient gods; she causes what was gained from the world through inner clairvoyance to vanish; she compels humanity to look out into the physical plane. The ancient world of the gods grows dark. A time is approaching in which people will no longer be able to see into the world of the gods from within their souls, but will instead look out into the outer world. Kali Yuga is approaching, the “dark age,” no longer the bright, white age of the ancient divinity, the age in which the ancient gods withdraw, the age ushered in by the deity Pramati!

[ 12 ] Kali Yuga: it was understood to have begun in 3101 BCE, that is, precisely during the period to which Indian tradition also assigns the Great Flood. For it was said that the Great Flood coincided with the onset of the Kali Yuga. And Kali Yuga was understood as the offspring of the god Pramati.

[ 13 ] The Kali Yuga has begun. We know that it was only in our time that the Kali Yuga came to an end, and that we must now find our way up into the spiritual world—and that this is why there is a spiritual science! For just as the Kali Yuga began in 3101 B.C., so did it end in the year 1899. That is why 1899 is an important year. Therefore, humanity must conceive of its ideal for the future in such a way that it must now ascend once more into the spiritual worlds.

[ 14 ] The age that preceded the dawn of the Kali Yuga was also the one characteristic of the early Persian period, when people could still sense the ancient memories through their astral bodies. Now, however, they had to turn outward. This was a momentous transition. For many people, this took place in such a way that for a time they saw nothing at all, that darkness spread over human souls through the forces of human evolution. This eclipse, this state of sleep that humanity had undergone, did not last for long periods of time, but in fact only for weeks. Yet they did indeed go through this state of sleep, and many did not emerge from it. Many perished in the process, and only a few remained at various points on Earth. There is not enough time today to describe the conditions that arose there. It can only be briefly said that, because a great number of people perished, the conditions were very, very eerie, and only in a few places on Earth did people awaken from the great spiritual flood that spread over the souls like a sleep. And most souls experienced this state of sleep as drowning—and only a few as a rebirth. Then came the “Dark Age,” the age of deification.

[ 15 ] Did anyone else on Earth know about this?

[ 16 ] Yes! We could go around among the various peoples and would find, to our astonishment, that even in the broadest circles people have indeed known that this is the case—that a flood of consciousness has taken place and that in the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch, through the particular development of the feeling soul—that is, through looking outward—something entirely new had to come about. The Indians sensed this when they said: Kali Yuga emerges as a successor to Pramati. What did the Greeks say? Exactly the same thing. For them, Pramati is simply called Prometheus, which is exactly the same. He is the brother of Epimetheus. The latter still represents what looks back to ancient times. Epimetheus is the “Contemplative One,” Prometheus is the one who must already foresee in his thoughts what is outside and what is taking place outside. And just as Pramati has his descendants in the Kali Yuga, so does Prometheus have his successors: we need only form the word “Kali Yuga” according to the Greek; there it is “Kalion,” and because the Greeks felt that it is the age of the black Divine, we must prefix the “Deu”—deus—and we get “Deukalion.” This is the same word as Kali Yuga. We are not dealing here with mere speculation, but with an occult fact. From this we see, then, that the Greeks know the same thing that the Indians know. Let this be cited merely as an example that can show us how people, in their ancient clairvoyant states, knew full well what was at stake, and how they knew how to express what was happening in powerful images. For the Greek legend tells us how Deucalion, on the advice of his father Prometheus, built a wooden chest; in it he saved himself and his wife Pyrrha alone from destruction when Zeus sought to wipe out the human race with a flood. Deucalion and Pyrrha, who were then washed ashore on Mount Parnassus, thus represent for the Greeks the origin of the new human race. Deucalion is the son of Prometheus. And in between lies the “flood,” which for the most diverse peoples took place as a process within the state of consciousness.

[ 17 ] What is so remarkable is that when we immerse ourselves in these wonderful images preserved for us by the traditions of various peoples, we come to realize how the truth about the evolution of humanity was alive among these different peoples.

[ 18 ] As humanity gradually emerged into the age of Kali Yuga and entered the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch, the ancient clairvoyant insights were lost. And we, who must relive the third cultural epoch, must now see these very insights re-emerge in a new form. We cited a characteristic example two weeks ago of how these insights are emerging once more. We showed how the culture we must regard as Western—though with its origins extending back into ancient Hebrew culture—initially focused on the individual personality; and how, since on the physical plane only the individual personality exists between birth and death, cannot direct its main attention to what passes through the various epochs, but only to the existence of the individual personality, since life between birth and death does not flow on the higher planes, but on the physical plane. Now we must realize: because the Kali Yuga has come to an end, it is therefore a necessity of human development to realize that we must bring to consciousness what is necessary for humanity: that we must gradually bring up from the depths of research what was lost during the Kali Yuga. I have shown how we must gradually come to regard the continuous individuality once more; I have shown how the West had a disintegrating series of individuals—Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, Novalis—and how we now, by adding what comes to us from the spiritual worlds, bring before our eyes the continuous thread of the soul, the continuous individuality, which is the same in Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, and Novalis.

[ 19 ] In this regard, we must be absolutely clear that within our spiritual movement we must consciously strive toward this mission, and that the development of the Earth and its culture need this mission. For the continued development of culture could not take place merely through the persistence of old events and old insights. I have also sufficiently emphasized what it means for the human mind to enrich and fertilize what has come down from ancient times with what is to be regained anew. But we must be clear that we must now gradually work our way—just as it was of extraordinary significance for humanity to experience a transition from life in the astral body to the spiritual life of the soul, primarily in the feeling soul—from life in the consciousness soul to life within the Spirit-Self. I have often hinted at what the entry into the Spirit-Self entails. I have pointed out that the number of people who will experience the manifestation of the Christ impulse over the next three thousand years will grow ever greater, that human beings will gradually become capable of experiencing the Christ impulse in the spiritual worlds. But the entire experience and influx of the spiritual world will be something with which people will have to become increasingly familiar in the course of the next epoch. And it will not be enough, for example, to know theoretically that human beings generally live on after death; rather, one will sense that one’s entire life, one’s entire view of life, one’s entire picture of life must be placed within that perspective which knows: When a human being passes through the gate of death, they continue to live on; it is merely a transition. When a person has not yet died—this will be shown more and more, not as a theory but as a fact—they act upon us physically through their body; when they have died, they act upon our physical world spiritually from the spiritual world. They are there. People will learn to view life in the light of such facts and to take the corresponding facts into account.

[ 20 ] Let us suppose that one has to raise children. Anyone familiar with such realities knows that raising children who have their parents until the age of twenty is quite different from raising children whose father died when they were perhaps three or five years old. If one takes education seriously and responds to the children’s individuality—this is no mere speculation—especially when dealing with children whom one must teach after their father has died, then one will sometimes realize: There is something peculiar here that one cannot cope with. — And one will not be able to cope with it either if one adopts the usual habits of thought derived from materialism. But one can now imagine: There is such a strange current of time. Most people, of course, regard those who profess this as a kind of fool; but let us see what these Theosophists say about the fates of human beings in the time after death. There one can find that although they have shed their physical bodies with death, what constitutes the content of their soul—their hopes and so on—is still there, and that it also has an effect; it is not ineffective. Indeed, it is often far more effective after death than it is in a person while they are on the physical plane, where they are confined by their physicality. — So, now that we have looked into what spiritual research says, we know: the father does indeed influence his children from the spiritual world! He has certain hopes and longings regarding the children; these flow into the children’s lives. If one now takes what one can know, then one can cope with what one previously could not, and knows what sympathies and antipathies arise in the children, and what one must reckon with. One can only cope with children when one knows not only that the air affects people and that one can catch a cold in cool air, but also what influences flow from the spiritual world into the physical world and how they flow in.

[ 21 ] Today, what I have just said is still considered nonsense. But the time is not far off when the facts of life will compel people to reckon with these facts, to observe them vividly, and to regard what remains after people have passed through the gate of death as effective causes. Only then will people begin to grasp the concrete reality of the spiritual worldview.

[ 22 ] This influence exerted by beings from the spiritual world is, of course, not limited to children; it also applies to those who have been close to a person in later life, in that the individualities residing in the spiritual world exert their influence. At first, the person is completely unaware that they are being influenced. Once again, I am not telling you something I have made up, but something that has been observed in reality, something that has actually been established through Spiritual Science. A person becomes aware: I don’t know why I am now being drawn to this or that, why I have this or that impulse; I must now think differently about certain things than I did before! — After some time, they have a very significant dream. People may not pay much attention to this today, but that is not the point. People will gradually realize that it is not the form of the dream that matters, but its content. You can infer this from the fact that if Edison had made his inventions in a dream, it would have been just as good in terms of the inventions. — So let’s imagine that someone has a dream in which a figure appears to him who is unknown to him, someone he couldn’t possibly think of as a familiar person, a figure he doesn’t know what to make of. This figure enters his dream life, and this and that happens. And now he knows that this person—not that he can remember them—who may have died fifteen years ago, is influencing his life. In the past, he noticed it in the impulses that drove him; now he notices that she is influencing his nocturnal consciousness as a dream image. This is often characteristic of the connection between impulses that live within us and what affects us as a dream. These things will become part of our lives. And now, finally, how they will become part of our lives.

[ 23 ] Suppose someone were to read one of the many biographies of Raphael today. Then they will get the impression that Raphael, in a certain sense, stands there like a phenomenon—self-contained, giving his best, but in the realm where he works, so self-contained that he cannot be conceived of as rising above it, that he cannot be imagined as going beyond that particular level. And again: when we consider the peculiar nature of Raphael’s work, it is suddenly there. And the biography leaves a gap regarding how it arises in such a remarkable way in the young Raphael. Why?

[ 24 ] Biographers tell us that Raphael’s father was Giovanni Santi, who was, among other things, a writer; he died when Raphael was eleven years old, but had previously placed the boy in an apprenticeship with a painter. We also know what kind of painter Giovanni Santi was, and what talent he possessed in painting. But we also know that there was something within him that could not come to fruition. When one looks into the depths of what lived in his soul, one gets the feeling: there was something within him that did not come out because external circumstances stood in the way. Now he dies when the boy Raphael is eleven years old. If we now follow how Raphael’s development proceeds, we know where the forces come from that lead Raphael to reach perfection so quickly, to become a whole; we know they are the forces coming from the spiritual world through his father! And whoever wishes to write a biography of Raphael in the future will have to write: Giovanni Santi was Raphael’s father, and Raphael was eleven years old when his father died in 1494. This father was an outstanding man who sought the extraordinary throughout his life. And he desired much when he was free in the spiritual world and sent his impulses to his beloved son—down to the finest, most intimate spiritual matters—regarding what his own physical constitution prevented him from expressing in the physical world.

[ 25 ] This is, of course, not meant to diminish Raphael’s genius, for there must have been a reason for it. We know that he was the reincarnation of John the Baptist, and that therefore only the specific qualities needed to be infused into him to bring forth what was to emerge. When we consider this, we see the interplay between the spiritual world and the physical plane. In the future, at every turn, when contemplating Raphael’s life, we will have to take into account what works from the spiritual world into the physical. Then we will stand before a whole world that works within us, around us, and through us. In this way, we are once again introducing spirituality into our culture. That is why, however, we must not be surprised if those who today do not want to hear of this introduction of spirituality into our culture treat this spiritual worldview with such contempt; for it is something entirely new. It is the emergence of the new power of the human Spirit-Self. And a time will come—and I ask you to take this fact very much to heart—in which people will think of the materialistic culture now coming to an end just as one once thought of the time preceding the Flood and longed for the coming culture, when something entirely new arrived. Theosophists, however, should not merely seek a theoretical relationship to such an ideal, but take it into their hearts, into their minds; they should be clear that it is their good karma to know the course of humanity, which is the course of human culture.

[ 26 ] Let us inscribe such feelings deep within our souls, for I cannot yet say when we will be able to continue this reflection. But we know, of course, that it takes a great deal of time to allow what we encounter in the field of Spiritual Science to flow into the entire development of our minds and our mental impulses, and that part of our spiritual development is not only understanding the great truths, but also allowing our minds to develop what the great ideas of a spiritual worldview can convey to us.