At the Gates of Spiritual Science
GA 95
1 September 1906, Stuttgart
11. The Post-Atlantean Culture-Epochs
Yesterday I told you how the great Initiate selected from the primal Semites, who were living in the neighbourhood of Ireland, a group of people whom he led towards the East and settled there. There Manu trained the chosen men to be the progenitors of the new civilisations. He taught them and gave them directions for a moral way of life, with everything laid down in the minutest detail. He taught them how to distribute their time and how to arrange their work from morning till evening. But even more than by his precepts he educated them by direct influence and by his thoughts. When he sent out his thoughts into the colony, his ideas and precepts acted by direct suggestion. This was the sort of influence needed by the men of that time for their training and re-moulding.
The following episode brings out the difference between the whole outlook of the Atlantean race and that of the new Root-race; it occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century. European colonists had induced some Red Indians—in whom we have to see the descendants of Atlanteans who had failed to make headway and had then become retrograde—to relinquish their lands on condition that new hunting-grounds were allotted to them. But the promise had not been kept and the Indian Chief could not understand this. Hence he addressed the Europeans as follows: “You pale-faces promised us that your Chief would give our brothers other lands in place of those you have taken from us. Your feet are now on our land and you are walking over the graves of our brothers. The White Man has not kept the promise he made to the Brown Man. You Pale-faces have your black instruments with all kinds of little magic signs”—he meant their books—“from which you learn the will of your God. Your's must be a bad God if he does not teach his people to keep their word. The Brown-man's God is not like that; the Brown-man hears the thunder and sees the lightning and this language he can understand; his God speaks to him in this language. He hears the rustling of the leaves and trees in the woods, and in them also his God speaks to him. He hears the water rippling in the brook, and the Brown-man can understand that speech also. He knows when a storm is brewing. Everywhere he can hear his God speaking, and the lesson his God teaches is very different from what your magical black signs say to you.”
This is really a very significant speech, for it contains a sort of confession of faith. The Atlantean did not raise himself to his God through concepts and ideas. He discerned something holy in nature as a keynote of the Divine; it was as though he breathed in and breathed out his God. If he wished to express what he heard in this way, he would embody it in a sound similar to the Chinese T-A-O. For the Atlantean this was the sound which pervaded the whole of nature. When he touched a leaf, or saw a flash of lightning, he was aware that part of the Godhead was displayed before him; it was as if he were touching the garment of the Divine. Just as we make contact with some element in a man's soul when we shake hands with him, so the Atlantean, when he took hold of a form in nature, felt that he was touching the body of the Godhead. He lived in a religious feeling quite different from our own. The Atlantean, too, was still clairvoyant and was thus in direct communication with the world of spirits.
But then the type of thinking associated with logic and mathematical calculation began to develop, and the more it did so, the more did clairvoyance fade away. People began to concern themselves more with what the senses could perceive externally, and so nature was increasingly divested of divinity. People acquired a new gift at the cost of an old one. In proportion as they achieved the gift of exact sense-observation, they ceased to understand nature as the body of the Godhead. Gradually they came to see before them only the body of the world, and not its soul. But as the result of this a yearning for the Divine arose once more in man. In his heart it was written: Behind nature there must be God. And he came to realise that he must seek for God with his spirit. That is in fact the meaning of the word ‘religion’: to try to re-establish a connection with the Godhead; religere means to re-unite.
Now there are various ways of finding the Godhead. The Indians, who were the first sub-race of the Aryan race, took the following way. Certain God-inspired messengers of Manu, called the holy Rishis, became the teachers of the ancient Indian culture. No poetry or tradition tells us about this it is known only through what has been handed down orally in the occult schools. Poems such as the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita, wonderful as they are, are of much later origin. The ancient Indian felt in his heart that external nature as he saw it was unreal, and that behind it the Godhead was concealed. The name he gave to this Godhead was Brahman, the hidden God. The whole external world was thus for him an illusion, deception, Maya. Whereas the Atlantean could still discern the Godhead in every leaf, the Indian said: “The Godhead is no longer apparent in the outer world. I must sink into my inner being and seek for Him in my heart; I must follow after Him towards a higher spiritual condition.” In every approach to the Godhead there was still a dreamlike element. The Indian could find no Divinity in nature; it was in great and powerful thought-pictures, in visions and imaginations that the world of Brahman revealed itself to him. Yoga was the name of the training he had to undergo in order to penetrate through illusion to the spirit and the primal source of being. The profound Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita, that sublime song of human perfection, are only echoes of that ancient divine wisdom.
This was the first stage along the path by which humanity sought to return to the Godhead; it is a stage which could not achieve much in terms of external civilisation. The Indian turned away from everything external and looked for the higher life only in world-renouncing ascent to the Spirit.
The second sub-race, that of the ancient Persians, had a very different mission, although its culture originated from the clear purpose of Manu. Long before the time of Zarathustra, Persia had an ancient culture, of which only an oral tradition survives. People were now coming to the thought that external reality was an image of the Divine, which must not be turned away from but shaped anew. The Persian wished to transform nature by work; he became a husbandman. He moved out of the quiet realm of world-renouncing thoughts and learnt from the resistance he encountered that the outer world was not wholly Maya. Side by side with the world of Spirit he found a real world in which work had to be done. The conviction gradually grew within him that there are two worlds: the world of the good Spirit in which a man can immerse himself and the world which has to be worked upon. And then he said: In the world of the Spirit I shall find the ideas and concepts through which I may transform the world of external reality, so that it may itself become an image of the eternal Spirit.
Thus the Persian saw himself placed in a struggle between two worlds; and presently this took more and more the form of a conflict between two powers—Ormuzd, representing the world of the good Spirit, and Ahriman, representing the world which has to be transformed. But he found himself still at a loss in one respect: the outer world confronted him as something he could not understand; he could not discover any laws in it. He failed to see that the spiritual can be found in nature; he was aware only of nature's resistance to his work.
The third sub-race, comprising the Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian-Egyptian people, and later the Semites who branched off from them, came to understand these laws. Men looked up to the stars and observed their movements and their influence on human life, and accordingly worked out a science which enabled them to understand these movements and influences. They brought the Heavens into connection with the Earth. We can see the character of this third sub-race from a particular example. The Egyptians observed that the flooding of the Nile, when it inundates the surrounding country, occurred at the time of the rising of a particular constellation, that of Sirius; and they connected the rising of the Nile with this constellation. Again, they observed the position of the Sun at the time of the arrival and departure of certain birds; they observed the rising and the setting of the stars, their relation to one another and to mankind, and so they gradually built up a science. It became clear to them that there was a great wisdom governing all natural processes; that everything happened in accordance with great laws, and these they tried to fathom. The ancient Chaldean priests, above all, were the custodians of profound wisdom, but for them these laws of nature were not merely abstract, nor were the stars merely physical globes. They looked on each planet as ensouled by a Being whose body it was. They had a quite concrete conception that behind every constellation was a divine Being which gave it life. Thus the Egyptians and Chaldeans discerned that they were spirits living among spirits in a world of spirits. They saw matter as filled with wisdom.
So humanity had gradually come by the path of knowledge to recognise the wisdom in external nature, and thus to rediscover something which the ancient Atlanteans had known through natural clairvoyance.
The fourth sub-race, the bearer of Graeco-Roman culture, was no longer directly influenced by Manu, but came under the influence of other cultures. It had a different mission—art. Little by little man had found the way to carry the spirit into nature. The Greek went further than the Egyptian: instead of taking the finished forms of nature, he took the still unformed substance of marble and impressed on it his own stamp. He formed his own gods, Zeus and the rest. The third sub-race had sought the spirit in the external world, the fourth impressed the spirit itself on the world. Art, the charming of spirit into matter, was the task reserved for the Graeco- Roman race.
The Egyptian studied the stars in their courses and in accordance with them he regulated his political institutions for centuries ahead. The Greek drew his ideas about the form of human society from his own inner life. The Roman went even further: he moulded the whole social life of human beings in accordance with his mind.
The Germans and Anglo-Saxons the fifth sub-race, to which we ourselves belong—go very much further in moulding the external world. They not only imprint on matter something from within themselves; they discover divinely-ordained laws of nature and use them to alter the world. They discover the laws of gravity, of heat, of steam and electricity, and with their aid they transform the whole visible world. The mission of this fifth sub-race is to study not only the laws which slumber within mankind, but those which permeate the whole world, and then to imprint them on the external world. The result is that humanity has become more material, indeed materialistic. In this age no Zeus could arise, but—the steam-engine!
We shall be succeeded by another race which will retrace the path to the spirit. The achievement of our race represents the highest point of man's power to transform the physical world. We have descended furthest into the physical plane and gone to the utmost limits in our conquest of it. This has been the mission of post-Atlantean humanity. The Indian turned away from the physical. The Persian saw it as a substance which resisted his efforts. The Chaldeans, Babylonians and Egyptians recognised the wisdom in nature. The Greeks and Romans went further in their conquest of the physical plane from within. Only our own culture has gone so far as to operate with the laws of nature on the physical plane. From now onwards mankind will become more spiritual again.
There is a great and powerful purpose in the course of human evolution. Each group of peoples has its own task. Present-day man knows nothing of what the third and fourth sub-races still had in their myths and legends as recollections of primal times and the world of the gods; he has only the physical plane. And through his descent to the physical plane he has lost his connection with the world of the gods. For him, only the physical world exists.
Theosophists are not reactionaries; they know that the age of materialism was necessary. Just as the organs of sight degenerate in animals when they go to live in dark caves, while other faculties develop more powerfully, so do we find the same thing happening in the world of the spirit and the world of the senses; if one faculty develops, another must fade away. The gift of clairvoyance and the power of memory had to withdraw in order that the power of physical sight could develop. When men learnt how to conquer the world by means of the laws of nature they had discovered, they had to sacrifice the power of seership.
How different earlier outlooks were! Copernicus,35Nicholas Copernicus, 1473–1543, originator of the modern astronomical world-picture. for instance, freed men from the mistaken idea that the Earth stands still. It was an error, he taught, to believe that the Sun moved round the Earth. His doctrine was further developed by Kepler and Galileo. Yet Copernicus and Ptolemy36Ptolemy, 87–165, geographer and astronomer. For him the Earth was stationary at the centre of the Universe. were both right. It all depends on the stand-point from which you are looking at Sun and Earth. If you study our solar system from the astral and not from the physical plane, Ptolemy's system is right—there is the Earth at the centre and the situation is as the ancients described it. We need only remind ourselves that on the astral plane everything appears reversed. The Ptolemaic system holds good for the astral plane, the Copernican for the physical. In future times yet another, quite different picture of the world will prevail. Generally we hear that Copernicus taught only two things: that the Earth revolves on its own axis and that the Earth moves round the Sun. It is seldom noticed that he taught also a third form of movement—that the whole solar system moves onward in a spiral. For the present this fact will be left aside, but in the future humanity will return to it. Copernicus stood on a frontier, and the old outlook was strongly present in him.
There is no absolute truth—each truth has its particular mission at a certain time. We talk of Theosophy today, but we know that when we come to reborn in the future we shall hear something very different and stand in quite a different relationship to one another.
Let us cast our gaze back to a time when we were perhaps even then assembled together in some region of Northern Europe, where people gathered round a Druid priest who imparted truth to them in the form of myths and legends. If we had not heeded what he then said and if he had not influenced our souls, we should not be able today to understand the truth which Theosophy now brings to us in a different form. When we are reborn, we shall hear the truth spoken in another and a higher form. Truth evolves, as does everything else in the world. It is the form of the divine Spirit, but the divine Spirit has many forms. If we thoroughly imbue ourselves with this characteristic of truth, we shall acquire a quite different relation to it. We shall say: Indeed we live in the truth, but it can take many forms. And we shall then look at modern humanity in a quite different light. We shall not say that we possess absolute truth; we shall say that these men, our brothers, are now at a point where we also stood in the past. It is our duty to enter into what another person says; we need only make it clear to him that we value him at that stage of truth where he now stands. Everyone has to learn for himself, and thus we shall become tolerant towards every form of truth. We come to a better understanding of things; we do not battle against people but seek to live with them. Modern humanity has cultivated individual freedom. From out of this fundamental view of truth, Theosophy will develop an inner tolerance.
Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another, the most varied opinions can be reconciled. Hence it is deeply significant that in Theosophy no religion is attacked and no religion is specially singled out, but all are understood, and so there can be brotherhood because the adherents of the most varied religions understand one another.
This is one of the most important tasks for mankind today and in the future: that men should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of occult development is empty.
Elfter Vortrag
Ich schilderte Ihnen gestern, wie der große Eingeweihte sich aus der Gegend des heutigen Irland unter den Ursemiten eine Schar aussuchte, die er nach dem Osten führte und dort ansiedelte. Dort machte der Manu seine Auserwählten zu Stammvätern der neuen Kulturen. Er belehrte sie und gab ihnen Anweisung zu einer moralischen Lebensführung, die bis in die kleinsten Einzelheiten hinein vorgeschrieben war: wie die Zeit einzuteilen und die Arbeit vom Morgen bis zum Abend zu verrichten war. Aber mehr noch als durch seine Lehren erzog er sie durch seinen unmittelbaren Einfluß und durch seine Gedanken. Sein Einfluß war unmittelbar suggestiv; wenn er seine Gedanken in die Kolonie hineinschickte, wirkten seine Ideen und Vorschriften suggestiv. Solch einen Einfluß brauchte der damalige Mensch zu seiner Umbildung.
Für den Unterschied in der ganzen Anschauung zwischen der atlantischen und der neuen Wurzelrasse ist folgende Szene charakteristisch, die sich in der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts abspielte. Europäische Kolonisten hatten die Indianer, in denen wir in der atlantischen Kultur stehengebliebene Nachkommen der alten Atlantier zu sehen haben, veranlaßt, ihnen Länderstrecken abzutreten unter der Bedingung, daß man ihnen neue Jagdgründe anweisen würde. Dieses Versprechen war nicht gehalten worden, und das konnte der Häuptling nicht begreifen. Das war die Veranlassung zu dem folgenden Gespräch. Der Indianer sagte: Ihr Bleichgesichter habt uns versprochen, daß euer Häuptling unseren Brüdern anderes Land anweisen werde, nachdem ihr uns dieses genommen habt. Eure Füße stehen jetzt auf unserem Land und gehen über die Gräber unserer Väter. Der weiße Mann hat sein Versprechen dem braunen Manne nicht gehalten. Ihr Bleichgesichter habt schwarze Instrumente mit allerlei kleinen Zauberzeichen — gemeint sind Bücher - und aus diesen lernt ihr erkennen, was euer Gott will. Das muß aber ein schlechter Gott sein, der die Menschen nicht lehrt, ihr Wort zu halten. Der braune Mann hat nicht einen solchen Gott, der braune Mann hört den Donner und sieht den Blitz, und diese Sprache versteht er; da spricht sein Gott zu ihm. Er hört im Walde das Rauschen der Blätter und Bäume, auch da spricht sein Gott zu ihm. Er hört die Wellen im Bach plätschern, und dann versteht der braune Mann diese Sprache. Er spürt, wenn sich ein Sturm erhebt. Überall hört er seinen Gott zu ihm sprechen, und dieser Gott lehrt etwas ganz anderes, als was euch eure schwarzen Zauberzeichen sagen.
Es ist das eigentlich eine recht bedeutsame Rede, denn sie enthält eine Art Glaubensbekenntnis. Nicht in vernunftgemäßen Begriffen und Vorstellungen erhob der Atlantier sich zu seinem Gott, sondern er spürte gleichsam etwas Heiliges in aller Natur als einen Grundakkord der Gottheit, er atmete gleichsam seinen Gott aus und ein. Und wenn man aussprechen wollte, was man so hörte, dann faßte man es zusammen in einen Laut, der ähnlich dem chinesischen Tao ist. Das war für den Atlantier der Laut, der die ganze Natur durchströmte. Wenn er ein Blatt berührte, wenn er einen Blitzstrahl sah, so war er sich bewußt, einen Teil der Gottheit vor sich zu haben; es war ihm, als berühre er das Kleid der Gottheit. Wie man im Händedruck das Seelische eines Menschen mitergreift, so ergriff der Atlantier, wenn er ein Naturgebilde anfaßte, den Körper der Gottheit. Es war eine ganz andere religiöse Empfindung, in der jene lebten. Dazu kam noch, daß die Atlantier mit Hellsehen begabt waren und dadurch im Verkehr mit der Geisterwelt standen.
Dann aber entwickelte sich das rechnerische, logische Denken, und je höher sich dieses entwickelte, desto mehr nahm das Hellsehen ab. Die Menschen machten sich viel mehr mit dem zu tun, was die Sinne von außen wahrnahmen, und dadurch wurde die Natur mehr und mehr ihrer Göttlichkeit entkleidet. Die Menschen eroberten sich eine neue Gabe auf Kosten einer alten. In dem Maße, wie sie die Gabe des genauen sinnlichen Anschauens erlangten, hörten sie auf zu verstehen, daß die Natur der Körper der Gottheit ist. Nach und nach hatten sie nur noch den Körper der Welt vor sich, nicht mehr die Seele. Dadurch entstand in dem nachatlantischen Menschen die Sehnsucht nach dem Göttlichen. In seinem Herzen stand ja geschrieben: Hinter der Natur muß die Gottheit sein -, und er erkannte, daß er sie mit dem Geiste suchen müsse. Das Wort Religion heißt nichts anderes als: Suchen, eine Wiederverbindung mit der Gottheit herzustellen; religere heißt wiederverbinden. Nun gibt es verschiedene Wege, die Gottheit zu finden. Die erste Unterrasse der nachatlantischen arischen Rasse, die Inder, ging folgenden Weg. Einige gotterfüllte Sendboten des Mann, die heiligen Rishis genannt, wurden die Lehrer der uralten indischen Kultur, von der keine Dichtung, keine Tradition erzählt, die nur noch in den mündlichen Überlieferungen der Geheimschulen bekannt ist. Wunderbare Dichtungen, wie die Veden und Bhagavad Gita, sind viel später entstanden. Der alte Inder sagte sich: Das, was uns geblieben ist als äußere Natur, ist nicht die wahre Natur; hinter dieser Natur verbirgt sich die Gottheit. - Und das, was sich hinter der Natur verbirgt, das nannte er Brahman, den verborgenen Gott. Die ganze äußere Welt war für ihn nur Illusion, Täuschung, Maja. Und während der Atlantier noch in jedem Blatt die Gottheit spürte, sagte der Inder: Nirgends mehr in der Außenwelt zeigt sich die Gottheit. In das Innere muß man sich versenken. Man muß die Gottheit suchen im eigenen Herzen, man muß ihr nachgehen in einem höheren, geistigen Zustand. — Etwas Traumartiges hatte alles Sichnähern der Gottheit beibehalten. In der Natur fand der Inder keine Gottheit; in großen und machtvollen Gedankenbildern, in Visionen und Imaginationen ging ihm die Welt des Brahman auf. Yoga war die Schulung, die er durchmachte, um jenseits der Illusion zum Geiste, zum Ursein zu kommen. Die tiefsinnigen Veden, die Bhagavad Gita, dieses Hohelied von der menschlichen Vollkommenbheit, sind nur Nachklänge jener uralten Gottesweisheit.
Das war die erste Stufe, auf der die Menschheit zurückkommen wollte zur Gottheit; es ist eine Stufe, die es in der äußeren Kultur nicht besonders hoch bringen konnte. Denn von allem Äußeren hat sich der Inder abgewandt; nur in einem weltabgewandten Aufgehen im Geiste hat er das höhere Leben gesucht.
Schon eine andere Mission hatte die zweite Unterrasse, die Urperser, deren Kultur gleichfalls wohlberechnet vom Manu ausging, Noch vor der Zarathustra-Zeit hatten die alten Perser eine uralte Kultur, die sich auch nur durch mündliche Überlieferung erhalten hat. Dem Menschen erwuchs jetzt der Gedanke, daß die äußere Wirklichkeit ein Abbild der Gottheit sei, daß man sich nicht von ihr abwenden, sondern sie umgestalten müsse. Der Perser wollte die Natur umgestalten, er wollte an ihr arbeiten; er wurde ein Ackerbauer. Aus der Stille der weltfremden Gedankenwelt trat er hinaus und merkte an dem Widerstand, der sich ihm entgegenstellte, daß doch nicht alles Maja sei, daß neben der Welt des Geistes auch eine sehr reale Welt der Wirklichkeit existiere. Neben der Welt des Geistes fand er eine Welt, in der man arbeiten mußte. Es erwuchs in ihm allmählich die Überzeugung, daß es zwei Welten gibt: eine Welt des guten Geistes, in die man sich vertiefen kann, und die andere Welt, die man bearbeiten muß. Und dann sagte er sich: In der Welt des Geistes werde ich die Ideen und Begriffe finden, durch die ich die äußere Wirklichkeit umwandeln werde, so daß sie selbst ein Abbild des ewigen Geistes wird.
So sah der Perser sich selbst in einen Kampf hineingestellt zwischen zwei Welten, und das gestaltete sich später mehr und mehr um zu den beiden Mächten Ormuzd, die Welt des guten Geistes, und Ahriman, die Welt, die umgestaltet werden muß. Eines aber fehlte dem Perser noch: Die äußere Welt stand ihm gegenüber als ein Wesen, das er nicht verstand; er konnte keine Gesetze darin fiinden. Er merkte nicht, daf3 das Geistige in der Natur zu finden ist; er empfand nur den Widerstand bei seiner Arbeit.
Diese Weltgesetze lernte die dritte Unterrasse kennen, die chaldäisch-assyrisch-babylonisch-ägyptischen Völker, und später die Semiten, die wie ein Zweig aus ihnen hervorgingen. Sie sahen empor zum Sternenhimmel, sie beobachteten den Gang der Gestirne und ihren Einfluß auf das menschliche Leben und ersannen danach eine Wissenschaft, durch die sie die Bewegung und den Einfluß der Gestirne begreifen konnten. Sie verbanden Himmel und Erde miteinander. Wir können den Charakter dieser dritten Unterrasse an einem Beispiel betrachten. Der Ägypter sagte sich: Der Nil überschwemmt zu einer bestimmten Zeit das Land und macht es fruchtbar. Das geschieht stets beim Aufgang eines bestimmten Sternbildes, des Sirius. - Und nun beobachteten die Ägypter die Zeit der Überschwemmungen. Das Sternbild, das dann am Himmel stand, brachten sie mit der Tätigkeit des Nils in Zusammenhang. Sie beobachteten ferner den Stand der Sonne beim Kommen und Fortwandern gewisser Vögel, das Auf- und Niedergehen der Sterne und ihre Beziehungen zueinander und zur Menschheit und bildeten so eine Wissenschaft aus. Es wurde ihnen offenbar, daß große Weisheit in allen Naturvorgängen herrsche, daß alles nach großen Gesetzen geschehe, die sie zu durchdringen suchten. Vor allem waren es die alten chaldäischen Priester, die Vertreter einer tiefen Weisheit waren. Die Naturgesetze waren ihnen aber keine abstrakten Gesetze. Sie sahen in den Sternen keine physischen Weltkugeln, sie sahen jeden Planeten beseelt durch eine Wesenheit, deren Körper der Planet war. Ganz konkret stellten sie sich hinter jedem Sternbild die belebende Gottheit vor. So spürte der Ägypter, der Chaldäer, daß er im Schoße der Welt der Geister als Geist unter Geistern eingeschlossen war; er sah weisheitserfüllte Materie.
Sie sehen, die Menschheit war allmählich dahin gelangt, auf dem Wege der Wissenschaft wieder die Weisheit in der äußeren Natur zu erkennen, zu erneuern, was dem alten Atlantier als ein natürliches hellseherisches Wissen eignete.
Die vierte Unterrasse, die griechisch-römische Kultur, wurde nicht direkt von dem Manu beeinflußt, stand aber unter dem Einfluß der anderen Kulturen. Sie hatte wiederum eine andere Mission: die Kunst. Nach und nach hatte der Mensch den Weg zur Vergeistigung der Natur gefunden. Der Grieche ging weiter als der Ägypter; er nahm nicht die fertigen Naturbilder, sondern er nahm die ungeformte Materie, den Marmor, und drückte ihm seinen eigenen Stempel auf. Er formte sich selbst den Zeus und die anderen Götter. Die dritte Unterrasse suchte den Geist in der Außenwelt; die vierte Unterrasse prägte ihr den Geist selbst ein. Die Kunst, das Einzaubern des Geistes in die Materie, war der griechisch-lateinischen Rasse vorbehalten.
Der Ägypter studierte den Gang der Sterne und richtete danach die Staatenbildung ein auf Jahrhunderte hinaus. Der Grieche prägte das, was er aus seinem Innern nahm, der äußeren menschlichen Gemeinschaft ein, den Städten Sparta, Kolchis und so weiter. Der Römer ging noch weiter, er formte nicht nur Stein und Erz, sondern auch das ganze große Gemeinwesen der Menschen nach seinem Geiste um.
Die Germanen und Angelsachsen, die fünfte Unterrasse, gehen noch viel weiter in bezug auf die Formung der Außenwelt. Diese Unterrasse, der wir selbst angehören, prägt der Materie nicht nur ein, was im Menschen lebt, sondern sie prägt die Naturgesetze selbst der Materie ein. Sie entdeckt die göttlichen Weltengesetze, die Gesetze der Schwerkraft, des Lichtes, der Wärme, des Dampfes, der Elektrizität und gestaltet mit ihrer Hilfe die ganze Sinnenwelt um. Ihre Mission ist, nicht nur die im Menschen schlummernden Gesetze, sondern die die ganze Welt durchflutenden Gesetze zu studieren und sie der Außenwelt aufzudrücken. Dadurch ist die ganze Menschheit materieller, ja materialistisch geworden; es konnte kein Zeus entstehen, sondern —- die Dampfmaschine, Telegraf, Telefon und so weiter.
Auf uns wird eine andere Rasse folgen, die wiederum den Weg zurück finden wird. In unserer Rasse ist der Mensch auf dem Höhepunkt der Umgestaltung der physischen Welt angelangt. Wir sind am weitesten heruntergestiegen auf den physischen Plan, bis zum Äußersten sind wir gekommen in der Eroberung des physischen Planes.
Das war die Aufgabe der nachatlantischen Menschheit. Der Inder hatte sich abgewandt vom Physischen. Der Perser erkannte es als Masse, die ihm Widerstand entgegensetzte. Die Chaldäer, Babylonier, Ägypter erkannten die Weisheit der Natur. Die Griechen und Römer eroberten von innen aus den physischen Plan weiter, und erst unsere Menschheitskultur ist so weit vorangeschritten, daß sie die Naturgesetze dem physischen Plan einverleibt. Und nun wird die Menschheit wieder spiritueller werden.
Gewaltig, sinnvoll ist der Gang der Menschheitsentwickelung. Jede Menschengruppe hat ihre Aufgabe. Was in der dritten und vierten Unterrasse noch in Mythen und Sagen fortlebt, die Erinnerung an die Urzeit, an die Götterwelt, unsere Menschheit hat nichts mehr davon, sie hat nur noch die physische Welt. Mit dem Heraustreten auf den physischen Plan hat die Menschheit den Zusammenhang mit der Götterwelt verloren; nur noch die physische Welt ist für sie vorhanden.
Der Theosoph ist kein Reaktionär, er weiß, daß die materielle Zeit eine Notwendigkeit war. Geradeso wie die Tiere nach ihrer Einwanderung in finstere Höhlen zwar andere Organe mächtig ausbildeten, die Sehorgane aber rückbildeten, so geschieht es überall in der geistigen und sinnlichen Welt: Wo eine Fähigkeit sich entwickelt, muß eine andere zurücktreten. Die hellseherische Gabe und die Kraft der Erinnerung mußten zurücktreten, damit das physische Sehen sich ausbilden konnte. Als der Mensch lernte, die äußere Welt durch Naturgesetze zu beherrschen, mußte er die geistige Sehkraft einbüßen.
Wie ganz anders sah man früher! Kopernikus zum Beispiel hat die Menschheit von dem alten Irrtum abgebracht, daß die Erde stillstehe. Er lehrte, es sei ein Irrtum, anzunehmen, daß die Sonne sich um die Erde drehe. Kepler und Galilei bildeten diese Lehre weiter aus. Und doch haben beide, Kopernikus und Ptolemäos, recht; es kommt nur auf den Standpunkt an, von dem aus man die Sonne und die Erde betrachtet. Sieht man unser Sonnensystem nicht vom physischen, sondern vom astralen Plan aus, so ist das Ptolemäische System das richtige. Da steht die Erde im Mittelpunkt, und es verhält sich so, wie es die alte Welt beschrieben hat. Man braucht sich ja nur zu erinnern, daß auf dem Astralplan alles umgekehrt erscheint. Das Ptolemäische System gilt also für den astralen, das Kopernikanische für den physischen Plan. In Zukunft wird noch ein ganz anderes Weltbild kommen. Gewöhnlich wird bloß betont, daß Kopernikus zwei Dinge gelehrt habe: daß die Erde sich um ihre Achse bewege und daß sich die Erde um die Sonne bewege. Man beachtet es gar nicht, daß er noch eine andere Bewegung gelehrt hat, daß nämlich das ganze System sich in einer Spirale fortbewegt. Das bleibt liegen, bis die Menschheit in der Zukunft einmal darauf zurückkommen wird. Kopernikus stand an der Grenze und hatte das alte noch in starker Weise an sich.
Es gibt keine absolute Wahrheit; jede Wahrheit hat ihre Mission in einer bestimmten Zeit. Und wenn wir heute von Theosophie sprechen, so wissen wir, daß, wenn wir wiedergeboren werden, wir etwas anderes hören werden und in ganz anderer Weise zueinander stehen werden.
Blicken wir zurück in Zeiten, da wir vielleicht schon einmal zusammengewesen sind in irgendeiner Gegend des nördlichen Europa, wo Menschen sich um den Druidenpriester sammelten, der ihnen die Wahrheit in Form von Mythen und Sagen erzählte. Hätten wir nicht zugehört und hätte er nicht unsere Seelen geformt, so würden wir nicht verstehen, was uns heute die Theosophie in anderer Form als Wahrheit wiederbringt. Und wenn wir wiederkommen werden, wird in anderer Form gesprochen werden, in einer höheren Form. Die Wahrheit entwickelt sich wie alles andere in der Welt. Sie ist die Form des göttlichen Geistes, der göttliche Geist aber hat viele Formen. Durchdringen wir uns mit diesem Charakter der Wahrheit, dann werden wir ein ganz anderes Verhältnis zu ihr gewinnen. Wir werden uns sagen: Zwar leben wir in der Wahrheit, aber sie kann die verschiedensten Formen haben. — Wir werden dann auch zu der gegenwärtigen Menschheit in einer ganz anderen Weise hinschauen. Wir werden nicht sagen, daß wir die absolute Wahrheit haben, sondern wir werden sagen: Diese Menschenbrüder stehen jetzt auf einem Standpunkte, auf dem wir auch einmal gestanden haben. - Wir haben die Verpflichtung, auf das, was der andere sagt, einzugehen; wir brauchen ihm nur klarzumachen, daß wir ihn schätzen auf der Stufe der Wahrheit, auf der er steht. Ein jeder hat zu lernen, und so werden wir tolerant gegen eine jede Form der Wahrheit. So lernen wir alles verstehen; wir kämpfen nicht gegen die Menschen, sondern suchen mit ihnen zu leben. Die neuere Menschheit hat die Freiheit der Persönlichkeit herausgebildet. Die Theosophie wird aus dieser Grundanschauung über die Wahrheit eine innere Toleranz der Seele ausbilden.
Die Liebe steht höher als die Meinung. Die verschiedensten Meinungen vertragen sich, wenn sich die Menschen lieben. Deshalb hat es einen tiefen Sinn, daß in der theosophischen Weltanschauung keine Religion angegriffen und keine besonders herausgestellt wird, sondern alle werden verstanden, und es kann sich ein Bruderbund entwickeln, weil sich die Mitglieder der verschiedensten Religionen verstehen.
Das aber ist eine der wichtigsten Aufgaben der Menschheit heute und in der Zukunft: dieses Mit-den-andern-Leben, dieses Einanderverstehen. Und solange diese menschliche Gemeinschaftsstimmung sich nicht entwickelt, kann von einer okkulten Entwickelung nicht die Rede sein.
Eleventh Lecture
Yesterday, I described how the great initiate chose a group of people from the area of present-day Ireland among the Ursemites, whom he led to the East and settled there. There, the Manu made his chosen ones the progenitors of the new cultures. He taught them and gave them instructions for a moral way of life, which was prescribed down to the smallest details: how to divide their time and how to work from morning to evening. But even more than through his teachings, he educated them through his direct influence and his thoughts. His influence was directly suggestive; when he sent his thoughts into the colony, his ideas and precepts had a suggestive effect. Such influence was necessary for the transformation of the people of that time.
The following scene, which took place in the middle of the 19th century, is characteristic of the difference in outlook between the Atlantean and the new root race. European colonists had persuaded the Indians, whom we regard as the descendants of the ancient Atlanteans who remained in the Atlantean culture, to cede them tracts of land on condition that they would be assigned new hunting grounds. This promise had not been kept, and the chief could not understand why. This was the reason for the following conversation. The Indian said: You palefaces promised us that your chief would assign other land to our brothers after you took this land from us. Your feet now stand on our land and walk over the graves of our fathers. The white man has not kept his promise to the brown man. You palefaces have black instruments with all kinds of little magic symbols—meaning books—and from these you learn to recognize what your God wants. But that must be a bad God who does not teach people to keep their word. The brown man does not have such a God; the brown man hears the thunder and sees the lightning, and he understands this language; this is how his God speaks to him. He hears the rustling of the leaves and trees in the forest, and there too his God speaks to him. He hears the waves splashing in the stream, and then the brown man understands this language. He senses when a storm is coming. Everywhere he hears his God speaking to him, and this God teaches something completely different from what your black magic symbols tell you.
It is actually a very significant speech, because it contains a kind of creed. The Atlantean did not elevate himself to his god in rational terms and ideas, but rather he sensed something sacred in all of nature as a fundamental chord of the deity; he breathed his god in and out, as it were. And if one wanted to express what one heard, one summarized it in a sound similar to the Chinese Tao. For the Atlantean, this was the sound that flowed through all of nature. When he touched a leaf, when he saw a flash of lightning, he was aware that he had a part of the deity before him; it was as if he were touching the garment of the deity. Just as one grasps the soul of a person in a handshake, so the Atlanteans grasped the body of the deity when they touched a natural formation. It was a completely different religious sensibility in which they lived. In addition, the Atlanteans were gifted with clairvoyance and thus stood in communication with the spirit world.
But then mathematical, logical thinking developed, and the more this developed, the more clairvoyance declined. People became much more concerned with what their senses perceived from the outside, and as a result, nature was increasingly stripped of its divinity. Humans gained a new gift at the expense of an old one. As they acquired the gift of precise sensory perception, they ceased to understand that nature is the body of the deity. Gradually, they saw only the body of the world before them, no longer the soul. This gave rise to a longing for the divine in post-Atlantean humans. It was written in their hearts: Behind nature must be the deity – and they realized that they had to seek it with the spirit. The word religion means nothing other than: to seek, to reestablish a connection with the deity; religere means to reconnect. Now there are different ways to find the deity. The first subrace of the post-Atlantean Aryan race, the Indians, took the following path. Some god-filled messengers of Man, called the holy Rishis, became the teachers of the ancient Indian culture, which is not recounted in any poetry or tradition, but is only known in the oral traditions of the secret schools. Wonderful poems, such as the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita, were written much later. The ancient Indian said to himself: What remains to us as outer nature is not true nature; behind this nature lies the deity. And what lies behind nature, he called Brahman, the hidden God. The whole outer world was for him only illusion, deception, Maya. And while the Atlanteans still felt the deity in every leaf, the Indians said: Nowhere in the outer world does the deity reveal itself anymore. One must sink into the inner world. One must seek the deity in one's own heart, one must pursue it in a higher, spiritual state. — Everything about approaching the deity had retained something dreamlike. The Indians found no deity in nature; the world of Brahman opened up to him in great and powerful thought images, in visions and imaginations. Yoga was the training he underwent in order to go beyond illusion to the spirit, to the primordial being. The profound Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita, this hymn to human perfection, are only echoes of that ancient divine wisdom.
This was the first stage at which humanity wanted to return to the deity; it is a stage that could not achieve particularly high status in external culture. For the Indian turned away from everything external; he sought the higher life only in a world-renouncing absorption in the spirit.
The second subrace, the ancient Persians, whose culture also originated from Manu, already had a different mission. Even before the time of Zarathustra, the ancient Persians had an ancient culture that was preserved only through oral tradition. People now began to think that external reality was a reflection of the deity, that one should not turn away from it, but rather transform it. The Persians wanted to transform nature; they wanted to work on it; they became farmers. They stepped out of the silence of their unworldly world of ideas and realized, through the resistance they encountered, that not everything was Maya, that alongside the world of the spirit there was also a very real world of reality. Alongside the world of the spirit, they found a world in which one had to work. Gradually, he became convinced that there were two worlds: one of the good spirit, into which one could immerse oneself, and the other, which one had to work on. And then he said to himself: In the world of the spirit, I will find the ideas and concepts through which I will transform external reality so that it itself becomes an image of the eternal spirit.
Thus, the Persian saw himself caught in a struggle between two worlds, which later developed more and more into the two powers of Ormuzd, the world of the good spirit, and Ahriman, the world that must be transformed. But one thing was still missing for the Persian: the outer world stood before him as a being he did not understand; he could find no laws in it. They did not realize that the spiritual can be found in nature; they only felt resistance in their work.
These world laws were learned by the third subrace, the Chaldean-Assyrian-Babylonian-Egyptian peoples, and later by the Semites, who emerged from them like a branch. They looked up at the starry sky, observed the course of the stars and their influence on human life, and then devised a science through which they could understand the movement and influence of the stars. They connected heaven and earth. We can see the character of this third sub-race in an example. The Egyptians said to themselves: The Nile floods the land at a certain time and makes it fertile. This always happens when a certain constellation, Sirius, rises. And so the Egyptians observed the time of the floods. They associated the constellation that was then in the sky with the activity of the Nile. They also observed the position of the sun when certain birds arrived and departed, the rising and setting of the stars and their relationships to each other and to humanity, and thus developed a science. It became clear to them that great wisdom prevailed in all natural processes, that everything happened according to great laws, which they sought to penetrate. Above all, it was the ancient Chaldean priests who were representatives of a profound wisdom. However, the laws of nature were not abstract laws to them. They did not see the stars as physical globes; they saw each planet as animated by a being whose body was the planet. Very concretely, they imagined the animating deity behind each constellation. Thus, the Egyptians and Chaldeans felt that they were enclosed in the womb of the world of spirits as spirits among spirits; they saw matter filled with wisdom.
You see, humanity had gradually come to recognize wisdom in the external world again through science, renewing what the ancient Atlanteans possessed as natural clairvoyant knowledge.
The fourth sub-race, the Greco-Roman culture, was not directly influenced by the Manu, but was under the influence of the other cultures. It had a different mission: art. Little by little, humanity had found the way to spiritualize nature. The Greeks went further than the Egyptians; they did not take the finished images of nature, but took unformed matter, marble, and stamped it with their own mark. They shaped Zeus and the other gods themselves. The third sub-race sought the spirit in the outside world; the fourth sub-race imprinted the spirit itself. The art of conjuring spirit into matter was reserved for the Greco-Latin race.
The Egyptians studied the course of the stars and used this knowledge to establish states that lasted for centuries. The Greeks imprinted what they took from within themselves onto the external human community, the cities of Sparta, Colchis, and so on. The Romans went even further, shaping not only stone and ore, but also the entire great community of human beings according to their spirit.
The Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples, the fifth sub-race, go even further in shaping the external world. This sub-race, to which we ourselves belong, not only imprints on matter what lives in human beings, but also imprints the natural laws of matter itself. It discovers the divine laws of the universe, the laws of gravity, light, heat, steam, electricity, and with their help reshapes the entire sensory world. Their mission is to study not only the laws that lie dormant in human beings, but also the laws that permeate the entire world, and to impose them on the external world. As a result, the whole of humanity has become more materialistic, even materialistic; Zeus could not arise, but instead the steam engine, telegraph, telephone, and so on.
Another race will follow us, which will in turn find its way back. In our race, human beings have reached the peak of the transformation of the physical world. We have descended furthest onto the physical plane; we have gone to the extreme in conquering the physical plane.
That was the task of post-Atlantean humanity. The Indians had turned away from the physical. The Persians recognized it as a mass that opposed them. The Chaldeans, Babylonians, and Egyptians recognized the wisdom of nature. The Greeks and Romans continued to conquer the physical plane from within, and only our human culture has advanced so far that it incorporates the laws of nature into the physical plane. And now humanity will become more spiritual again.
The course of human development is tremendous and meaningful. Every group of people has its task. What still lives on in myths and legends in the third and fourth sub-races, the memory of primeval times, of the world of gods, our humanity no longer has any of this, it only has the physical world. With its emergence onto the physical plane, humanity has lost its connection with the world of gods; only the physical world is available to it.
The theosophist is not a reactionary; he knows that material time was a necessity. Just as animals, after migrating into dark caves, developed other organs powerfully but regressed their organs of sight, so it happens everywhere in the spiritual and sensory world: where one ability develops, another must recede. The gift of clairvoyance and the power of memory had to recede so that physical vision could develop. When humans learned to control the external world through natural laws, they had to lose their spiritual vision.
How different things were seen in the past! Copernicus, for example, disabused humanity of the old error that the earth stood still. He taught that it was a mistake to assume that the sun revolved around the earth. Kepler and Galileo further developed this teaching. And yet both Copernicus and Ptolemy are right; it just depends on the point of view from which one looks at the sun and the earth. If one views our solar system not from the physical plane but from the astral plane, then the Ptolemaic system is correct. There, the Earth is at the center, and things are as the ancient world described them. One need only remember that on the astral plane, everything appears reversed. The Ptolemaic system therefore applies to the astral plane, and the Copernican system to the physical plane. In the future, a completely different worldview will emerge. Usually, it is only emphasized that Copernicus taught two things: that the Earth moves around its axis and that the Earth moves around the Sun. No attention is paid to the fact that he taught another movement, namely that the entire system moves in a spiral. This will remain unnoticed until humanity returns to it in the future. Copernicus stood at the boundary and still had the old strongly within him.
There is no absolute truth; every truth has its mission at a certain time. And when we speak of theosophy today, we know that when we are reborn, we will hear something different and relate to each other in a completely different way.
Let us look back to times when we may have been together before in some part of northern Europe, where people gathered around the Druid priest who told them the truth in the form of myths and legends. If we had not listened and if he had not shaped our souls, we would not understand what theosophy brings us back today in a different form as truth. And when we return, it will be spoken of in a different form, in a higher form. Truth evolves like everything else in the world. It is the form of the divine spirit, but the divine spirit has many forms. If we permeate ourselves with this character of truth, we will gain a completely different relationship to it. We will say to ourselves: Although we live in truth, it can take many different forms. We will then also look at the present humanity in a completely different way. We will not say that we have the absolute truth, but we will say: These fellow human beings now stand at a point where we once stood. We have an obligation to respond to what the other person says; we only need to make it clear to them that we value them at the level of truth where they stand. Everyone has something to learn, and so we become tolerant of every form of truth. In this way we learn to understand everything; we do not fight against people, but seek to live with them. Modern humanity has developed the freedom of personality. Theosophy will develop an inner tolerance of the soul from this basic view of truth.
Love is higher than opinion. The most diverse opinions are compatible when people love one another. That is why it makes deep sense that in the theosophical worldview, no religion is attacked and no religion is singled out, but all are understood, and a brotherhood can develop because members of the most diverse religions understand one another.
But this is one of the most important tasks facing humanity today and in the future: living together with others, understanding one another. And as long as this spirit of human community does not develop, there can be no question of occult development.