The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Apart from the question posed at the end of the previous lecture, there is certainly much more that could be said on the subject of our lectures, but it is simply not possible to discuss all our worlds exhaustively in ten lectures. Therefore, before I turn to our question, please allow me to make a few remarks that, in a certain sense, will also be connected to our concluding reflection. The first remark I have to make is something that is difficult—one might even say, at first, not really comprehensible—for the consciousness of the present; but it is good to know that such a thing exists. Namely, the question is: How do these planetary formations actually disappear again? In the spiritual realm, it is clear to you how evolution takes place: the beings ascend to higher stages, and as they ascend, they must leave the old stage, the old dwelling place, which has served them for a time to develop certain abilities that they otherwise could not have developed. As the time we call the ancient Lemurian era approached in the course of evolution, humanity had reached a point in its overall development where it had repeated everything that could be attained through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases of development. Now it entered the stage of our Earth’s evolution that had just formed for its further development. He evolved through the Lemurian and Atlantean eras into our present time, and he will continue to evolve into the future, as we know it, progressing from incarnation to incarnation. But after some time, he will have to leave the Earth again, because it will have nothing more to offer him, because it will no longer provide him with opportunities for development. Now, you might initially imagine that our Earth would become, so to speak, a barren heap of rubble if humanity were to leave it; you could compare it to a city being abandoned by its entire population. You know what such a city looks like after only a short time, how it gradually turns into a sort of mound of earth. The sight of ancient cities, so to speak, absorbed by the earth, does indeed provide a sufficient picture of this. That is indeed how it is today. But that is not how the future of the Earth will be. What can lead you to an answer to the question of what the future of our Earth will be like can be found in the following consideration: What do people such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, or other great geniuses in this or that field actually mean for the development of the Earth? What does it mean for the development of the Earth that Raphael or Michelangelo produced those wonderful works of art that still delight thousands upon thousands of people today? But perhaps one or two of you, my dear friends, have felt a certain melancholy upon seeing Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, when, standing before the painting in Milan, you had to ask yourselves how much longer this marvel of Leonardo da Vinci’s will endure. For we must not forget that, for example, Goethe was able to see this work of art in all its splendor on his first trip to Italy, and that we can no longer do so to the same extent. So from Goethe’s time until today, this work of art has come to such a state within the outer material world that it evokes this wistful feeling. It will simply no longer be there for people who live as much later after us as we do after Goethe. This is the case with everything that human beings create on Earth and that is embodied in physical matter on Earth. But this is also fundamentally true for the Earth itself, and indeed for human intellectual creations as well. Try to imagine, in spirit, that time when human beings will have ascended, spiritualized, into higher spheres. Thoughts in today’s sense—I don’t even want to say scientific thoughts, for those will no longer have any significance after three or four hundred years—but human thoughts in general, as they have significance for the Earth now, as they emerge from a brain, naturally have no significance for the higher worlds, but only for the Earth. Yet humanity has left the Earth. What has become of all that human beings have now created over the course of centuries and millennia on our Earth?

[ 2 ] What first comes to mind, of course, is the evolution of an individual. Leonardo da Vinci rose to greater heights through his achievements—that is his ascent. But we ask ourselves: Do the great thoughts, the great impulses that the mighty creators imprint upon the earthly substance—do they mean nothing for the future of the Earth? Will the future reduce the Earth to dust, and will what humanity has made of the Earth disappear along with earthly existence? You admire Cologne Cathedral. Certainly, after a relatively short time, not a single stone will remain upon another; but does the fact that humanity once expressed the idea of Cologne Cathedral in stone mean nothing for the entire Earth? So we look beyond what people take from the Earth; we look at the Earth itself. You see, a planet does indeed become smaller and smaller in the course of its development; it contracts. That is the fate of the planet’s matter; but that is not all—it is merely what the physical eye and physical instruments can observe on the planet. There is also a development of the material realm beyond this point.

[ 3 ] And now let us consider the development of the material world beyond this point, and I will address what I said is difficult—perhaps even impossible—for the modern mind to comprehend. The fact is that the Earth is constantly contracting. As a result, matter is pressed from all sides toward the center. And now I say—of course with full awareness that there is a law of conservation of energy, but also with full awareness of the facts known to every occultist—that matter is being pressed closer and closer together toward the center, and the peculiar thing is that the matter at the center disappears.

[ 4 ] To put it very clearly: Imagine you have a piece of matter that is being pushed further and further toward the center—at the center it disappears; it is not pushed over to the other side, it actually vanishes into nothingness at the center! So that you can imagine that the entire Earth will one day, as the material parts press together toward the center, disappear into the center. But that is not all. To the same extent that it disappears into the center, to the same extent it appears in the periphery. Out there it reappears. At one point in space the matter disappears, and from the outside it reappears. Everything that disappears into the center comes back in from the periphery, is drawn in, and in such a way that everything the beings who worked on the planet have imprinted upon the matter is now incorporated into this matter; naturally not in its present form, but in a form given to it precisely through this transformation. You will thus see Cologne Cathedral, as its material particles disappear into the center, reappear from the other side. Nothing, nothing is lost of what is worked on a planet, but it returns from the other side.

[ 5 ] That which arrived at the beginning of our Earth’s evolution, prior to the Saturn evolution, we must place outside the zodiac. Ancient wisdom called it the crystal heaven, and in this crystal heaven were deposited the deeds of the beings of an earlier evolution. They formed, so to speak, the foundation upon which the new beings began to create.

[ 6 ] As I said, this is extremely difficult for the modern mind to grasp, because it is accustomed to focusing only on the material, and is not accustomed to realizing that the material can disappear from one point in three-dimensional space and return at another point after passing through other dimensions. As long as you remain within three-dimensional space in your imagination, you cannot grasp this, for it goes beyond three-dimensional space. Therefore, it cannot be seen until it re-enters three-dimensional space from the other side. In the meantime, it is simply in another dimension. This is something we must now come to understand, for the events of our world’s creation are interconnected in the most manifold ways, and something that is in one place is sometimes quite intricately connected to something else located in a completely different place within three-dimensional space.

[ 7 ] We have said that our planetary formation began with ancient Saturn. That is indeed how it began. It then progressed on to Jupiter. When the entire creation was in the process of forming at Jupiter, as you know, all the beings of the surrounding region were also active there. But just as the beings within the entire planetary system work and continue to develop, so do the beings out there who work from the outer sphere. Just as certain beings withdraw from within, so do certain beings withdraw from those who are out there in outer space. And just as Jupiter was compressed, so too was something compressed by beings who withdrew—something that has nothing to do with our development, but which, with the withdrawing beings, initially became Uranus and, during the development of Mars, Neptune. The names Uranus and Neptune are, of course, no longer chosen in the way the ancients chose their names to fit the subject, although there is still a meaning in the name Uranus. It was, after all, given when people still had a faint inkling of proper naming; that is why what lies outside our circle was summarized under the name Uranus.

[ 8 ] So we see that the two planets, which modern astronomy regards as completely equivalent to the other planets, stand on an entirely different foundation; that, in essence, they have nothing special to do with the development of our world. They represent precisely those worlds that came into being because beings who still had some connection with us during the Saturnic epoch withdrew and established their abodes elsewhere. From this, you will be able to deduce many other facts, for example, that these planets have retrograde moons and other such things.

[ 9 ] We have thus briefly surveyed the development of our solar system and asked ourselves: What is humanity’s actual relationship to these beings of the higher hierarchies, who were, in essence, humanity’s ancestors? We can begin with the highest beings—the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones—and it is precisely through their characterization that we will be able to form a good understanding of humanity. If we were to ascend beyond the Seraphim, we would enter the realm of the Divine Trinity. What is it, then, that the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones possess as something quite special compared to all other beings in the world? They possess what has been called the “direct vision of the Deity.” What human beings must gradually seek through their own development, they have possessed from the very beginning. We humans say: We must start from our present standpoint in order to attain ever higher powers of knowledge, will, and so on; through this we will come ever closer and closer to the Godhead, and the Godhead will become ever more present to us. But we tell ourselves: We are developing upward toward something that is still veiled from us, toward the Godhead. This is what distinguishes the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, and human beings: that from the very beginning of our development, these highest beings of the spiritual hierarchies are immediately present around the divine Being, around the divine Trinity, and that they enjoy the vision of the Godhead from the very beginning. What humanity is meant to evolve into, they have possessed from the very beginning. It is therefore infinitely important to know that these beings, from the moment of their creation, behold God, and that as they live, they continually behold God. Whatever they do, whatever they accomplish, they do it out of their vision of God; God does it through them. They could not do otherwise; it would be impossible for them ever to act differently than they do, for the vision of God is such a powerful force, has such an effect on them, that with immediate certainty and immediate impulse they carry out what the Deity commands them. There is no such thing as deliberation or judgment among these beings; there is only a perception of the Deity’s commands, in order to have the immediate impulse to also do what they have perceived. And in doing so, they see the Deity in its original, true form, just as this Deity is. They themselves, however, see themselves only as the executors of the divine will, of divine wisdom. Such is the case with the highest hierarchy.

[ 10 ] When we descend to the next hierarchy, to those entities we call principalities, powers, and authorities—or spirits of wisdom, motion, and form—we must say: They no longer have such a direct vision of the Deity; they no longer see God in His immediate form as He is, but in His manifestations, in the way He reveals Himself, if I may say so, through His countenance, through His physiognomy. It is, of course, unmistakable to them that it is the Godhead; it is an immediate impulse for them to follow the manifestations of the Godhead, as with the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. The impulse is no longer as strong, but it is still an immediate one. It would be impossible for the seraphim, cherubim, and thrones to say that they would not carry out what they see as prescribed by the Deity; that would be unthinkable because of the closeness of their relationship to the Deity. But it would also be, in a certain sense, entirely out of the question for these principalities, powers, and authorities to undertake anything that the Deity Himself does not will.

[ 11 ] Therefore, for the development of the world to move forward at all, something quite extraordinary had to occur. We are now entering a realm that has always been difficult for people to understand, even for those who had advanced to a certain degree in the wisdom of the mysteries. But in the ancient mysteries, an attempt was made to make this understandable through the following. At a certain stage of initiation into the ancient mysteries, the initiate was led before hostile forces that appeared outwardly cruel and terrifying and that also committed horrific acts before the eyes of the initiate. And those who performed these acts were none other than masked priests, masked sages. In order to bring about the necessary temptations, priests had to disguise themselves as hideous demonic figures, as hideous beings who committed atrocities, committed things more hideous than humans could ever invent. What was the underlying purpose? To show the initiate how far development can stray from the straight path, the initiate himself—the priest—was presented to him in the mask of the evildoer, in the mask of evil. He was to have the illusion that evil stood before him, and only when the unmasking occurred did he see the truth. Then the illusion was lifted from him, and he saw that it was a test. To make him strong and arm him against evil, it was presented to him in its most terrifying form, presented precisely by the priestly sages, who of course did not stray from the truth. This was merely a reflection of what has truly taken place in cosmic evolution.

[ 12 ] In the interval between the Jupiter and Mars stages of evolution, if I may put it simply, a number of beings were detached from the sphere of the Powers; they were placed within the course of evolution in such a way that, instead of advancing it, they placed obstacles in its path. This is what we have come to know as the conflict in the heavens. Thus, the actions of, if we may say so, dispatched powers were thrown into the course of development, for the ruling world powers of the hierarchies had to say to themselves: What is meant to come into being could never arise if the path were to continue straight ahead. Something greater must come into being.

[ 13 ] Imagine you have a cart to push. By pushing it forward, your strength develops in a certain way. If you now load the cart with heavy ballast, you have to push harder, but in return your strength develops more powerfully. Imagine that the Deity had left the evolution of the worlds as it was, all the way beyond Jupiter: Certainly, humanity could have developed well; but humanity could have become even stronger if obstacles to its development had been placed in its path. For the good of humanity, certain powers had to be dispatched. These powers were not initially evil; one need not regard them as evil powers, but one can even say that they sacrificed themselves by standing in the way of development as hindrances. These powers can therefore be called the gods of obstacles, in the broadest sense of the word. They are the gods of hindrances, of the obstacles that were placed in the path of evolution; and from that point on, the possibility was created for all that was to unfold in the future. These powers that were set in motion were not yet evil in themselves; on the contrary, they were the great promoters of evolution by opposing the normal course of development. But they were the creators of evil; for through their opposition, evil gradually arose. The path of development of these “commissioned” powers naturally took a very different course from that of their brethren. Their activity was entirely different, and the consequence of this was that during the lunar evolution these powers, in a certain sense, became the tempters of those beings we call angels. The angels pass through their human stage during the lunar evolution. There were angel-men on the Moon who, so to speak, witnessed how the obstacles to evolution were at work, and who said to themselves: We could now set out to overcome these obstacles, plunge into the whole current of lunar evolution, but we will refrain from doing so; we do not want to dive down; we want to remain up here with the good gods. At a certain point in the development of the Moon, these angelic beings, so to speak, tore themselves away from the powers that were throwing obstacles into the development of the Moon down below. In contrast, there were others among the angelic beings on the Moon who said to themselves: We will not follow them; if we were to follow them, development would now reverse again, and nothing new would be incorporated into it. — It was precisely because these obstacles were there that something new was indeed incorporated into the development of the Moon. Those beings who said to themselves: “I want nothing to do with what is happening down there; I will remain with the powers that do not wish to be touched by anything lower”—they withdrew from the lunar mass during the old lunar evolution and became beings of the retinue of all that is in the Sun. They did not get involved in what was happening in the moon that had been hurled out, in which the obstacles were present. The others, however, who went underground—these beings—now had to take into all their physicality, into all that they drew from the moon, whatever obstacles to development were present; they had to, so to speak, harden themselves more than would otherwise have been the case. Their physical bodies became denser than they would otherwise have become; they bore within their bodies the consequences of the deeds of the powers. But the deeds of the powers were well-founded in the divine plan of the worlds; we must always keep this in mind. And a further consequence was that, as the lunar evolution gave way to the Earth’s evolution, the whole process repeated itself in a certain sense: those beings who had thrown themselves into the full tide of the lunar evolution lagged behind those who had wanted nothing to do with it, and others lagged even further behind, having been drawn toward the retrogressive development. All of this had led to the fact that during Earth’s evolution there were advanced angelic beings and those who had lagged behind. The more advanced angel-men approached humanity at the time when, in Lemuria, it had matured to receive the seed of the human ego, and offered it, so to speak, the freedom to ascend even now into the spiritual worlds and not to become further entangled in what had been mixed into the course of world evolution since the time of the Moon. And it was those beings who had remained behind at that time—whom we call the Luciferic entities—who set about influencing the human astral body—for they could not reach the ego—and implanted into this astral body all the consequences of the conflict in heaven. So while the powers were dispatched to the conflict in the heavens—while they were created there solely as gods of obstacles—the consequences of their deeds now crept into the human astral body, and there they signify something else: there they signify the possibility of error and the possibility of evil. Now humanity had been given the possibility of error and the possibility of evil, but at the same time the possibility of rising above error and evil through its own power.

[ 14 ] Consider now that such beings as the powers belonging to the second hierarchy would not have had the ability to become evil of their own accord—they had to be commanded to do so. And only the beings of the third hierarchy—specifically those closest to humanity, the angels—were able, so to speak, to follow or not follow the restraining powers. Those who did not follow are repeatedly depicted in images intended to symbolize the victories won in heaven; which are meant to express what happened during the lunar phase of development, when humanity progressed to the incorporation of the astral body, that is, to human-animal nature. For the angelic beings who had, so to speak, remained good, broke free from this lunar phase, rising above what was down there on the moon. And this image stands before the human soul in various forms. This is what Michael’s battle with the dragon originally signifies. You also see this image in the figure of the Mithraic bull, and there it is particularly vivid. Of course, the intention was not to say that these angelic beings had shirked their duty, but rather they were presented as an ideal for the future. These beings, it was said, had chosen the ascent into the spiritual world. You have descended; and with you descended other beings who followed the forces of obstruction. Now you must process what you have taken in through this, and carry it up into the spiritual world; you must, so to speak, become such a Michael, such a conqueror of the bull, upon your ascent. — For every such symbol can certainly be used in this twofold sense.

[ 15 ] Thus we see that, in a certain sense, it was only by the powers being sent forth that human beings were given the opportunity to achieve, of their own accord, the goal that even the highest seraphim cannot achieve on their own. That is the essential point. The Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones cannot act in any other way than to follow directly the impulses given by the Deity. The Principalities, the entire second hierarchy, cannot act any other way either. A number of the Powers were detached; thus even these Powers, who, so to speak, threw themselves into the path of evolution, could do nothing other than follow the commands of the Deity. Even in what one might call the origin of evil, even there they are merely carrying out the will of the Deity; by making themselves servants of evil, they are merely carrying out the will of the Deity, who wishes to develop the strong good through the detour of evil. And let us now descend to those beings we call the Powers: They could not have achieved this on their own. Nor could they have become evil of their own accord; neither the spirits of personality nor the fire spirits. For when these were human beings on the Sun, the Powers had not yet been dispatched; there was simply no possibility of becoming evil at all. The first to have the possibility of becoming evil were the angels, for this possibility only arose with the development of the Moon. There, from the Sun to the Moon, the conflict in heaven took place. A portion of the angels rejected this possibility; they did not, so to speak, allow themselves to be led astray by the forces intended to lead into the obstacles; they remained true to their original nature. So that, down to the angels and even among a portion of the angels, we have before us such beings of the spiritual hierarchies who absolutely cannot do otherwise than follow the divine will, for whom there is no possibility of not following the divine will. That is the essential point.

[ 16 ] And now we come to two categories of beings: first, those angels who threw themselves into the chaos wrought by the powers during the conflict in heaven. These were beings whom we call the Luciferic beings precisely because of their subsequent deeds. These beings then set about influencing the human astral body during the Earth’s evolution and gave humanity the capacity for evil, but with it also the capacity to develop through its own free will. Thus, within the entire hierarchy of levels, the capacity for freedom exists only among a portion of the angels and in human beings. The possibility of freedom begins, so to speak, in the middle of the angelic hierarchy; yet in human beings it is only truly developed. When human beings first set foot on Earth, they did indeed initially fall prey to the great power of the Luciferic spirits. They permeated the human astral body with their forces, and the ego was thereby drawn into these forces; so that during the Lemurian and Atlantean periods of development, and even afterward, the ego is as if in a cloud, as if shrouded in a cloud brought about by the influences of Lucifer. Humanity was preserved from being overwhelmed by the forces pulling it down only because earlier beings overshadowed it, because the angels who had remained above, and the archangels above, incarnated in specific individuals and guided humanity. And this continued until that time when something quite special occurred, when a being who until then had been connected only with the solar existence had advanced so far that it could now not only, like earlier beings of the higher worlds, enter into the physical body, etheric body, and astral body of the human being, but could penetrate into the human being as far as the I.

[ 17 ] Do you remember how I described that, in times past, higher beings descended and animated the human physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body? Now, at a special time destined for this purpose, an individual appeared who took into himself the highest being, which was initially connected to our solar existence and which exerted an inspiring influence down into the ego, down into all the powers of the ego.

[ 18 ] The ego finds its expression in the blood. Just as blood, as a material substance, is the expression of the ego, so the warmth of the blood, the fire of the blood—which is, so to speak, the remnant of the ancient Saturn fire—is the expression of the ego in the elements. This being had to express itself physically in two ways: first in fire. It announced itself to Moses in fire: in the burning bush and in the lightning on Mount Sinai; for it is the same being that was then able to enter the human ego, who spoke to Moses from the burning bush, from the lightning and thunder on Mount Sinai. And it prepares its coming and then appears in a blood-bearing body, in Jesus of Nazareth: Thus the solar being enters into an earthly individual. Through the fact that the ego will become more and more permeated and imbued with the power that once entered the ego, this ego will gain the ability to rise more and more of its own accord above all the influences that can pull this ego down. For this being, which penetrates into the ego, is of a different kind than the other beings who descended to Earth in the past and who animated the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body.

[ 19 ] Let us consider the ancient holy Rishis. As we have seen, their etheric bodies contained the spirit of a higher being, for they had inherited these etheric bodies from great Atlantean ancestors in whom this higher being dwelt. This had been transferred to them; with their astral body and I, they could not at all follow what arose from the inspiration of the etheric body. And so it happened from epoch to epoch. People were inspired. There was always something like a force within them when they were inspired; it was something that seized them with force. From what was the human condition—being left to one’s own devices—they were drawn away somewhat in order to become better: they were inspired by a higher being. This was the case with all founders of religions: a being was incorporated into them that was still above the strife in the heavens, so that they were not entirely left to their own devices. In Christ appeared a being of a completely different nature, a being who at first did absolutely nothing—not a single thing—to draw people to himself through any kind of compulsion. And that is the essential point. If you consider the entire spread of Christianity, it will serve as living proof to you that Christ did not, in his life, actually do what led to the spread of Christianity. Look at the founders of religions of antiquity. They are the great teachers of humanity; they teach about a specific period of human development, and their teachings have an overwhelming effect on people. Look at Christ. Did he, in essence, work through his teachings? Anyone who believes that the teachings are the main thing simply does not understand him. Christ did not work through his teachings at all at first, but through what he did. And Christ’s greatest deed was the one that ended in death—it was death itself. This is the essential point: that Christ worked through a deed such that, as it spread throughout the world, he was no longer physically present. This is the great difference between the impact of Christ and that of other religious founders. This difference is still hardly understood at all, but it is the essential point.

[ 20 ] You can examine all the teachings of Christianity—everything that is preached as doctrine in Christianity—and you can find every Christian teaching in other religious systems as well. There is no denying that. You might say: All the essential elements of Christian teachings are contained in other systems. But has Christianity had an impact through the content of its teachings? Did the one who initially did the most to spread Christianity rely on the teachings? Look at him, the Apostle Paul! Did he allow himself to be transformed from Saul to Paul through what is written in the Gospels? He was persecuting the followers of Christ Jesus. He persecuted them until the One who died on the cross appeared to him from the clouds, until he, Paul, had his own personal, occult experience that Christ lives. The impact of death, the impact of the deed—that was the impulse for Paul, and that is what matters. Other religious systems work through their teachings, and their teachings are the same as those in Christianity; but in Christianity it is not about the teachings, but about what has happened, about the deed. And this deed is such that it affects no human being differently than when he himself decides to allow it to take effect upon him, that is, when it is compatible with the absolutely free character of his individual I. For it is not enough that Christ becomes present in the human astral body; rather, if Christ is to be truly understood, he must become present in the human ego. And the ego must freely decide to receive Christ. That is what matters. But precisely through this, when this human ego unites with Christ, it takes in a reality within itself, a divine power, not merely a doctrine. Therefore, it can be proven a hundred times over that all the teachings of Christianity can already be found here or there; but that is not what matters, but rather that the essential aspect of Christianity is the deed, which can only become one’s own possession through a voluntary ascent into the higher worlds. Thus, man absorbs the Christ-force by voluntarily receiving it, and no one can receive it who does not do so voluntarily. But this has become possible for man only because Christ became human on earth, because he was called to become human on earth.

[ 21 ] The fallen angels, who have descended to Earth as Luciferic beings, are in a different situation. They were actually supposed to have become human on the Moon. They have lagged behind in their development, which is why they can enter the astral body; for the time being, they cannot reach the I. Now they find themselves in a peculiar situation, one that we can really only visualize graphically, even if that seems pedantic. Let us suppose—setting aside the etheric body and the physical body—that during the Lemurian period, the human astral body was this circle, and the ego was an inclusion within this astral body; the

[ 22 ] He has gradually entered into the astral body. What happens now? During the Lemurian stage of development, the Luciferic forces insinuate themselves everywhere into the human astral body and permeate it with what constitutes their deeds, which, however, manifest in him as base passions. That which enables him to fall prey to error and evil resides in the astral body; the Luciferic spirits have instilled it in him. Had they not instilled it in him, he would never have the possibility of error and evil; he would be lifted up to where he receives his I, untouched by all hindering influences. This is how it goes; only the great guides protect human beings from sinking too deeply, to the extent that is necessary.

[ 23 ] Now the event of Christ takes place. Let us take a person who voluntarily receives the Christ within themselves—Christianity is still in its infancy, but let us take the ideal: the human ego has voluntarily allowed the Christ force to flow into itself. When this ego has reached the point where it has become imbued with the Christ, then the Christ force also radiates into the astral body. The Christ force radiates from within into the very same astral body into which the Luciferic powers had previously injected their deeds. And what will happen in the future? By eradicating, with the help and only with the help of the Christ, all those human qualities that come from Lucifer, we as human beings gradually liberate the Luciferic powers as well. And a time will come when the Luciferic forces—which, during the lunar evolution, had to descend into a certain lower state of development for the sake of human freedom and had no opportunity on Earth to experience the Christ-force themselves—will, through humanity, experience the Christ-force and be redeemed. Humanity will redeem Lucifer when it receives the Christ-force in the appropriate manner. And through this, humanity will in turn become stronger than it would otherwise have become. For consider: if humanity had not received the Luciferic forces, the Christ force would radiate, but it would not encounter the obstacles of the Luciferic forces, and humanity would be unable to progress as far as it can in goodness, truth, and wisdom as it does when it must overcome these opposing forces.

[ 24 ] Thus, in human beings we have a member of our hierarchies whom we see to be quite distinct from the other members. We see that human beings stand apart from the seraphim, cherubim, thrones, the principalities, powers, and authorities, and even from the spirits of personality and the spirits of fire, as a part of the angelic realm. When looking toward the future, they can say to themselves: I am called to seek within my deepest self all that gives me the impulses to act—not from the contemplation of the Deity, as the Seraphim do, but from the depths of my innermost being. And Christ is a God who does not act in such a way that His impulses must be obeyed unconditionally, but only when one understands them, only in freedom. He is therefore the God who can never hinder this individual, free development of the ego in this or that direction. Christ could say in the highest sense: You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. — And those beings of the next hierarchy who had the possibility of doing evil, the Luciferic beings, they in turn are redeemed and liberated through the power of the human being.

[ 25 ] This also shows us that the development of the world does not simply repeat itself, but that something new is emerging. For a humanity such as that experienced by human beings has not yet existed—not among the angels, not among the archangels, not among the primordial forces. Humanity has a completely new mission to fulfill in the world, a mission that we have just described. And for this mission, humanity has descended into the earthly world. And Christ has risen in the world as a free helper to humanity, not as a God who acts from above, but as the firstborn among many.

[ 26 ] Only then do we understand the full dignity and significance of human beings within the ranks of our hierarchies, and we say to ourselves, as we look up to the glory and grandeur of the higher hierarchies: Even if they are so great, so wise, so good that they can never stray from the right path, the great mission of humanity is nonetheless to bring freedom into the world, and with freedom, that which is called love in the true sense of the word. For without freedom, love is impossible. A being that must unconditionally follow an impulse simply follows it; a being that can also act differently—for this being, there is only one force to follow: love. Freedom and love are two poles that belong together. Should love therefore enter our cosmos, it could only happen through freedom, that is, through Lucifer and his vanquisher, and at the same time through humanity’s Redeemer, through Christ. Therefore, the Earth is the cosmos of love and freedom, and it is essential that we, without tempting humanity into presumption, learn to enumerate the hierarchies in the manner in which they have always been enumerated within our Western esotericism. Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones—they follow the immediate impulses under the gaze of the Deity; Dominions, Powers, and Virtues—they are still so bound to the higher powers that they must be commanded so that the development toward humanity may proceed. Even archangels and spirits of personality cannot be absent; thus, they cannot sink into evil through free will. That is why the spirits of the immediately higher hierarchy were called messengers and arch-messengers, to indicate that they do not carry out their own tasks, but rather the tasks of those who stand above them. In human beings, however, a hierarchy will mature that carries out its own tasks. Through the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan stages of development, the human being will mature into the executor of his own impulses. Even if he is not yet ready today, he will mature into it.

[ 27 ] So we may ask: What are the hierarchies? Let us begin: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; the Dominions, which exercise their dominion by ruling solely through their action in accordance with the impulses given to them by the gods. Then come the Powers; they exercise their power solely by receiving it from above; the same applies to the Virtues. If they are to become evil, they must do so according to divine decree. We come to the spirits of personality, to the archmessengers and messengers, and have descended to a point immediately adjacent to humanity. And what can be said of human beings when we place them within the hierarchies? Following the archangels and angels, the archmessengers and messengers, the Spirit of Freedom or the Spirit of Love must be placed in the sequence of hierarchies, and this is, starting from the top, the tenth of the hierarchies, which is indeed in the process of development, but it belongs to the spiritual hierarchies.

[ 28 ] The universe is not a matter of repetition; rather, every time a cycle is completed, something new is introduced into the evolution of the world. And introducing this new element is always the mission of the corresponding hierarchy, which stands at the level of its humanity.

[ 29 ] In this way, we have sought to fathom the meaning of humanity from the perspective of the meaning of our cosmos. We have, at least to a certain extent, spiritually asked ourselves today about the meaning of the human being, and we have attempted to fathom this meaning of the human being—the point at the center of the universe—in accordance with the instructions of the Mysteries, by trying to unravel the point, the human being, from the surrounding sphere—the point from the surrounding sphere! But in doing so, our knowledge is placed within reality. And this is the essential point: that all genuine spiritual-scientific knowledge is a real, concrete, and actual knowledge; that is to say, spiritual-scientific knowledge itself directly provides a picture of the cosmos and the spiritual hierarchies.

[ 30 ] We stand at the center of the world. Everything around us loses its meaning for us because we tell ourselves: The external sensory world cannot solve the mysteries for us on its own. It is as if everything were converging at a single point. But then, when everything contracts, the solution to the world’s mystery returns from the periphery, as truly real as matter itself—which is a reflection and likeness of the spiritual—behaves. It contracts, disappears into the center, and reemerges from the periphery. That is reality. And our knowledge is real when it presents itself to us just as the structure and process of the entire universe do. Then it is not speculation, not mere musing; then it is born from the cosmos itself. And this is the feeling we should cultivate: Wisdom should be an ideal for us, born from the periphery of the cosmos and filling us with the strongest force—the force for our own destiny, for our own great world ideal, and thus also for our next human ideal.