The Answers of Spiritual Science to the Big Questions of Existence

Moses

Berlin, 9 March 1911

When we dealt with Zarathustra, Hermes, and Buddha in the preceding talks, we faced phenomena which interest us as human beings, in so far as we feel that we have a share of the entire development of humanity with our soul life and can understand the present only if we look back at those great spiritual men who co-operated on that what projects in our present. With Moses whom we want to consider today, the situation is completely different. For all that what is tied up with the name of Moses, we feel that infinite of it still lives on immediately in that what is a component, spiritual contents of our own soul. We still feel as it were in our limbs that the impulses have a lasting effect, which started from Moses. We feel that he still lives in our thoughts and sensations, and that if we deal with him we deal with a piece of our own soul. Hence, the continuing tradition that is linked to Moses is present to us in a quite different way from that which is linked to the other great men. This makes it easy, on one side, to deal with Moses, because today everybody knows this mighty figure projecting in the times from the Bible. Even if the conscientious research, the serious science unveiled many things in the last decades and years that can cast new light on the history of Moses in certain respect, in so far as we take it from the Bible, nevertheless, we must say if we exactly observe: in our general view of Moses has little changed, actually. Hence, we speak, if we speak about him, about something widely known. This makes the consideration easy as it were. On the other side, however, we can say that just the way of the tradition we have in the Bible about Moses makes this consideration difficult. One can realise this already in the destiny of the biblical studies in the nineteenth century. One has to stress repeatedly that — even if we consider the natural sciences — that hardly any branch of human scholarship, of serious scientific striving demands such deep attention, such holy respect as the biblical studies of the nineteenth century. Nothing can exceed that diligence, that astuteness, that scientific devotion which one applied to get to know the single parts of the Bible concerning their style or their origin, for example.

However, one can see something tragic in these biblical studies of the nineteenth century. Since the more they advanced, the more they withdrew the Bible from us, actually. Since they have cut the Bible into pieces, above all the Old Testament. Everybody can convince himself of it who reads the current books about the results of the biblical studies — in order to show that one piece follows the one stream of tradition or the other that everything has been brought together in the course of time to a whole, scholarship has to disassemble it again to understand it. That is why in a certain sense, one can call the result of this research a tragic one because it is quite negative, actually, and because it has contributed nothing to the revival of that which can liven the Bible up which revived it in the human hearts and souls for millennia.

Spiritual science often has the task of building up something and not of criticising only compared with the other sciences. It has also the task that we learn to understand, above all, the Bible again while questioning, is it not necessary to penetrate the whole sense of the traditions in their entire deepness, and then only, after one has completely understood them, to ask for their origin? This is easy by no means, concerning the Old Testament, in particular those parts of it which deal with Moses. Since what does spiritual science show as a characteristic of the biblical portrayals? It shows that outer events, outer facts which are tied up with this or that personality, with these or those people are shown in such a way as they just run for the outer historical consideration, so that in the Bible the experiences of Moses are presented in the outer physical world, as they happen in space and time. Then, however, it becomes obvious — and only the spiritual-scientific deepening in the Bible can achieve this result — that a portrayal that deals with outer processes and experiences in the outer world at first continues immediately in a portrayal of quite different kind that one can hard distinguish only from that what preceded.

One tells there about journeys and other outer experiences which we simply have to take as those. Then it is so continued that we do not notice at first that we are — reading on — in a portrayal of quite different kind, as if a journey is continued from one place to the other, and as if the further experiences are still to be taken as outer physical experiences like the preceding ones. Then we are right in the middle of a portrayal of the soul life of the person concerned, which does not refer at all to outer events, but to inner soul fights and soul experiences. Thereby the person concerned ascends to a higher level of soul development, of knowledge, to a higher level of energy or to a mission in the world development. The portrayals of the outer events change over as it were abruptly to symbolic representations that are completely held in the style of the former outer events, which do not at all mean outer experiences, but inner soul experiences. I have to say that this assertion remains an assertion for everybody as long as he does not settle more and more in the peculiarity of the biblical portrayals on the basis of spiritual-scientific representations, in particular also of those parts which deal with Moses. However, if one settles in this peculiarity, one learns to feel how in such points where an outer portrayal of physical experiences changes to a portrayal of mental experiences and developments, indeed, the whole style, the whole tonic changes that suddenly a new element of representation appears, and we ask ourselves: why does this happen? Then this “why” can be answered in no other way than by the conviction that can be gained from the soul itself. We deal with that peculiarity of representation, which has been characterised just now.

One finds this with all old religio-historical representations and especially if persons should be described, who have attained a certain height of cognition, of soul work, and one familiarises oneself with such a style if one settles down more and more in spiritual science. This makes it difficult again, so to speak, to obtain full understanding of that from the biblical representation what is meant at the single passages with the portrayal of Moses.

Thus, we have as it were the Bible on one side — however, we also have difficulties on the other side because of its kind of representation where it penetrates in particular depths. This caused that one went too far concerning the view of the Bible now and again. If one envisages, for example, the view of the ancient Hebrew history by that philosopher who lived in the time of the foundation of Christianity, Philo (Ph. of Alexandia, ~ 25 BC - ~ 50 AD, Hellenistic Jewish philosopher), then one realises that he wants to show the whole history of the ancient Hebrew people allegorically. He wants to give a symbolic representation of the historical view, so that the whole history would be a kind of symbolism of the soul experiences of a people. This would go too far. Philo went so far because he lacked the spiritual-scientific sensibility to know where the outer experiences change to mental experiences.

With Moses, I want to show how a personality intervenes in the living course of human development who had to bring something highest, most important to humanity. If we feel that we still have something relative of it in our souls, the full understanding of Moses's impulse becomes quite necessary to us. Hence, we can immediately go into the mission of Moses without further ado.

However, one cannot understand this mission of Moses if one does not assume that the consciousness of a fact forms the basis of the biblical representation at first that we could already envisage considering Hermes, Buddha, and Zarathustra. It is the fact that the development of humanity experienced a transition from the old clairvoyant state to the today's state of our intellectual consciousness. Once again, I mention that in ancient times the human soul was able to behold in a spiritual world in certain interstates between waking and sleeping that that what one beheld this way in the spiritual world was shown in pictures, and that these pictures were preserved to us in the mythologies and legends of ancient times. If anybody asks, how can one prove the old clairvoyant consciousness also externally without spiritual science? Then he can get answer by means of conscientious researches, which were already done in our time, which, however, did not meet with universal approval. I have to refer to the fact that certain mythographers saw themselves forced to assume a quite different kind of human consciousness for the origin of myths or legends also of later times. I often referred to an interesting book which is due to a mythographer who must be called the most important mythographer of the newer time: I mean Ludwig Laistner (1845-1896), and his book The Riddle of the Sphinx (1889). This book belongs to the most significant ones in this field. He showed in it that certain myths appear as continuations of dream events, which are experienced typically. Laistner did not advance to spiritual science, he was not aware that he delivered the first stones of a real cognition of the ancient mythologies.

However, one cannot understand the myths and legends as transformations of typical dreams as Laistner understood them, but one has to understand them as arising from a former state of human consciousness that beheld the spiritual world in pictures and expressed them, therefore, also in pictures. Nobody can understand the ancient myths and legends really who does not assume — at first as a hypothesis — that the ancient mythology is taken from another state of human consciousness. This ancient prehistoric state of spiritual condition changed to the current state of consciousness that can be characterised briefly that one says, we change concerning our consciousness from waking to sleeping. In the awake consciousness, we perceive the outer world by our senses and connect the percepts with our intellect. The sensuous-intellectual consciousness, which works by our mind, by our reason, removed the ancient clairvoyant spiritual condition. Thus, we have characterised a feature of history if one considers the human development in its depths.

However, something else forms the basis of such representations as the Bible gives them. This is that to every people, every tribe, every human race, as they appear in the course of the human development, so to speak, a certain mission is assigned. The old clairvoyant consciousness appeared in different forms according to the talents, the temperaments of the single peoples. Hence, the unity of the old clairvoyant consciousness is preserved to us in the different mythologies and pagan religions of the single peoples. Thus, we can say: there is not only an abstract unity of this old view of the world, but the most manifold missions were handed over to the most various peoples and races, and thereby the common consciousness was elaborated in the most various ways.

Then, however, we have to take into account if we want to understand this human development that it is not a futile succession of cultures, but that a sense goes through the whole human development. Hence, any form of consciousness enjoys life in a certain culture later because the later has to add something like a new leaf, a new blossom to the former because the whole sense of human development enjoys life in successive arrangements. Thus, we understand people best of all in the spiritual-scientific sense that we say to ourselves: all these peoples — the ancient Indians, Persians, Babylonians, Greeks, or Romans — had a certain mission; what can live in the human consciousness was developed with them in a particular way. We do not understand these peoples if we are not able to comprehend their particular, individual characteristic as their mission. Now, however, the whole development of humanity proceeds in such a way that, so to speak, a period is assigned to such a mission. If this period has run out, this mission is fulfilled. The concerning mission was assigned to a people. The period can have run out, so to speak, for the concerning national mission. What is included in it embryonically became fruit, enjoyed life. Then, however, it can happen that these or those peoples keep the concerning characteristic, which lies in its temperament, in its other arrangements. Then the concerning people skips over, so to speak, the point in time at which a new mission should replace the old one, lives on with its characteristic in the later time, while the objective course of the human development puts something new to its place.

One can see such a thing especially with the Egyptians whose characteristic we got to know in the talk on Hermes. The Egyptians had a high mission in the whole development of humanity. Nevertheless, this mission developed everything that was in it once. What should happen further, indeed, was embryonic in the Egyptian culture, but the Egyptian people as such kept its temperament, its characteristic, was not able to develop the new mission from itself. Hence, the leadership of humanity had to change to another human element. Indeed, this had to grow out of the Egyptian element; nevertheless, it had to be different. Thus, we realise something like a change of direction in the whole sense of the human development. One has to think one's way into the development of the Egyptian mission. Moses opened himself to what could be got out of it at first. This also worked on the souls of his people. However, he was destined not to continue the old Egyptian mission but to inculcate something quite new in the human development. Because this new was so immense, so extensive and drastic, the personality of Moses was such a mighty one for the whole human history, and, therefore, the way in which the mission of Moses developed from the expired development of the Egyptian people is so interesting and fertile still for our time. Since what Moses got out of the Egyptian people, what he added then like from eternal heights of the spiritual development keeps on working on our souls. Hence, one felt Moses as a human being who had not to take what he had to give humanity from any time, from any special mission immediately. He was understood as somebody who had to be touched in his soul by the waves of the eternal, which flows through new canals in the human development repeatedly to fertilise it. What existed as the everlasting core in the soul of Moses had to find its ground and mature on that what he could get out of the Egyptian culture.

The fact that one deals with Moses as with a soul which the highest that it had to give from everlasting origins is symbolically indicated in the way of old representations that Moses is enclosed in a small basket soon after his birth. With it, one indicates something significant. From former talks of this cycle, we know that the human being if he wants to attain knowledge of higher spiritual worlds has to experience certain stadia of his soul development, while he completely cuts himself off from the environment and evokes the elementary spiritual forces of his soul. If now should be shown that such a person already brings those spiritual gifts with him at birth, which lead to the heights of humanity, it cannot be shown better than that one says: this person had to go through an experience, into the physical by which his senses, his perceptive faculties are cut off from the physical world. — Then it seems understandable that Pharaoh's daughter drew the boy out of the water and called him “Moses” because she said: “I drew him out of the water” (Exodus 2:1-10). This is already contained in the name Moses for someone who understands this name. One wanted to say with it that the representative of the Egyptian culture, Pharaoh's daughter, directed life in a soul that is filled with eternal contents. Thus, it is wonderfully indicated that the everlasting that Moses had to bring to humanity is wrapped in the outer cover of the Egyptian culture and mission.

Then the Bible shows outer experiences of Moses. There we realise again that the Bible gives its representation in such a way that outer experiences are concerned. We can regard what we read in the Bible about the destinies of Moses and his pains because of the suppression of his people in Egypt as a representation of outer conditions. Then, however, the representation changes again unnoticed to a portrayal of inner soul experiences. This happens where Moses flees to Jethro or Reguel, a priest of Midan. Someone who can recognise such a representation from the custom of old spiritual representations finds out even in the names that here the portrayal changes to the description of soul experiences of Moses. This is not meant possibly in such a way, as if Moses had not really made such a trip to a temple site, a priestly training centre, but the representation is given so skilfully that the appearance is interweaved in the soul experiences of Moses. Thus, the outer experiences are everywhere indications of that for what Moses struggles to attain a higher position of his soul. What is indicated in Jethro? One can infer from the Bible easily that he is one of those individualities to whom we are led repeatedly if we go through the evolution of humanity. They have attained a surveying knowledge to a high degree that one can only gain if one settles down slowly and gradually by inner battle of the soul in that which can only give understanding of those spiritual heights on which such human beings walk. Moses should be stimulated to his mission by the fact that he became the pupil of one of those mysterious figures who withdraw with their meditation for the remaining humanity and are only the teachers of the leaders of humanity. I probably know that I say something at which many people take offence today. However, it is something that should strike every deeper beholder of the historical evolution already externally that there are such secrets and mysterious human beings.

What Moses should experience now as a pupil of this great priestly sage is shown in such a way that he meets the seven daughters of the priest at the place where he visits the priest, at a well — again a symbol, a symbol of the source of wisdom. He who wants to understand what is deeper hidden in such a portrayal has to remember, above all, that in any mythical representation always that is represented by female figures which the soul can develop as higher knowledge and forces — down to Goethe in his words at the end of his Faust of the “eternally-female.” Thus, we recognise in the “seven daughters” of the priest Jethro seven human soul forces that the wisdom of the priest had at command. There one has to think that in those times of the ancient clairvoyance other views of the single soul forces prevailed. We can imagine this consciousness if we start from concepts which we have today. Today we speak of the human soul and its forces, thinking, feeling, and willing in the way that we have these forces in us that they form as it were inclusions of the soul. The ancient human being thought different under the influence of his clairvoyant talent. He did not feel such uniform being and not such forces in his thinking, feeling and willing at first, which work from the centre of the ego and organise the soul uniformly. Nevertheless, he felt given himself up to the macrocosm and its single forces, and he felt the single soul forces as connected with special divine-spiritual beings. As we can imagine — however, we do not do it — that our thinking is fertilised, is carried by a spiritual world force different from that of our feeling and our will. Hence, different streams, different spiritual forces flow from the macrocosm in our thinking, feeling and willing. We are related to them — in such a way the ancient human being did not feel the soul as something uniform, but he said to himself: what is in me is only the mental scene on which spiritual-divine forces of the universe are acting.

Seven such soul forces worked on the scene of the soul life of Moses. If we want to see how generally for the development of the human consciousness the views became more and more abstract and intellectual, we can look, for example, at Plato whose ideas are living beings that are as real as only the materials to the modern human being. The single soul force has something that has an effect on the scene of the whole soul. However, the abilities of the soul become more and more abstractions, and the unity of the ego gets its rights more and more. We can still recognise — as strange as it sounds — what the seven daughters of Jethro symbolise as the seven living spiritual forces which should work on the scene of the soul as the medieval seven free arts in abstract form; they are the last abstract echo of the consciousness that seven abilities work in the soul.

If we regard this, we are led before the fact that Moses stood with his soul before the whole aspect of the seven human soul forces that he had, however, the task mainly to inculcate one single of them completely as an impulse in the human development. He was able to do this because it was given to the special blood predisposition and the temperament of his people to meet this soul force with particular interest whose effects reach down to us. This soul force unites the remaining soul forces imagined as separated before in a uniform soul life, in an ego-life. This is why the Bible tells: one of Jethro's daughters marries Moses. That is, in particular, in his soul one of the soul forces made itself so effective that it became the predominant soul force for a long time of the human development that comprises the others to a uniform ego-soul.

I have to give such considerations very reservedly. For our time has, so to speak, no suitable organ to realise that those portrayals which look like outer, physical experiences are just given to show that in the time for which this is described the soul concerned goes through an inner development, that is it is especially called on its mission. Thus, we see what the ancient Egyptians did not have: Moses's inspiration with the human ego power, with the centre of the human soul forces which is the authoritative for him. We may say, it was the mission of the ancient Egyptian people to found a culture still with the old clairvoyance. Everything that the Egyptian culture delivered to us as its best had still arisen from the special kind of clairvoyant forces, which the Egyptian priest sages and the leaders of the Egyptian people had. Nevertheless, the time for this mission passed as it were, and humanity should be called for the development of that soul force that should substitute the old vague clairvoyance for a long time of the human development. Self-consciousness, intellectuality, rationalism, reason, and mind directed to the outer sensory world should replace the old clairvoyance. However, I have also already mentioned that both kinds combine in future: the clairvoyant force with the intellectual consciousness, so that humanity progresses towards such future where intellectuality interweaved by clairvoyant force is general for the human beings.

What we regard as the most significant element of the cultural life received its first impulse from Moses, hence, the feeling that the impulse of Moses still keeps on working in our own soul force. Moses received the intellectualistic thinking, the working with mind and reason. However, he received it in particular way. Since everything that should appear in its special characteristic later must be given before in the characteristic way of the old times. There is a miraculous fact that Moses had to receive the consciousness of intellectuality in such a way that in him the intellectual consciousness still lighted up in the way of the old clairvoyants. That is, indeed, Moses had the first intellectualistic impulse, but it was still clairvoyance with him. With him, it was the first new impulse and the last old one at the same time. What the later humanity had beyond clairvoyance, he had this within it. The knowledge of the pure reason and mind was given to him, while his soul was transported to clairvoyant states by the influence which he had received from Jethro, thus, for example, with the experience of the burning bush which glowed, however, in such fire that he did not burn. There the world spirit revealed itself to Moses in new way as it did reveal itself to the clairvoyant knowledge of the Egyptians.

He who knows the facts knows how in the course of the development the human soul gradually gets around to seeing the outer objects changed, so that they appear on the background interweaved by the prototypes from which they have arisen. Everybody who rises to spiritual knowledge recognises the picture of the burning bush as something by which he beholds into a spiritual world. Thus, we understand that what had to be given to Moses in clairvoyant way a new consciousness of the world spirit had to be that interweaves and lives in the world. While the ancient peoples looked up at the majority of the world forces in such a way that they work in the soul that the single soul forces represent no unity, but a variety and that the human soul is only their scene. Moses, however, should now recognise such a world spirit that does not reveal itself only for a single soul force that does not stand beside spirits of the same value that work in other soul forces. Moses should recognise the world spirit that can only reveal itself in the holiest centre of the soul life that lives in the ego where the human soul realises its centre. If the human soul feels standing in the ego as the peoples felt once standing with their being in the spiritual world forces, the soul feels that what revealed itself to Moses first by clairvoyant cognition and what should be considered as the primordial ground from which the peoples got the impulse by Moses. One cannot understand it with the reason, which combines the phenomena by the uniformity of the world. If the human being looks at the centre of his soul life today, it is still something that must appear to him as rather poor in contents, even if it is the strongest that he can experience. Highly gifted human beings felt directed to this centre of their soul life in particular in the course of their life as, for example, Jean Paul (born Johann Paul Richter, 1763-1825, German author) who tells in his autobiography:

“I never forget the phenomenon in myself still told to no one where I stood at the birth of my self-consciousness the place and time of which I can give. In a morning, I stood as a very young child under the front door and looked at the woodshed on the left when all at once the inner face “I am an ego” as a streak of lightning penetrated me and stood still luminously since then, my ego had seen itself for the first time and forever. Deceits of memory are hard to imagine, because no other information could intermingle something in an event that took place only in the veiled sanctum of the human being the novelty of which made everyday minor details permanent.”

What the “veiled sanctum” is, appears to the human being, indeed, as the strongest, the most powerful of the soul life, but he cannot realise it as the various other soul experiences: it is not so rich. If the human being withdraws to this centre, he feels that in the wonderful words “I am” this centre of his soul life sounds intense and powerful, but with low contents.

On this veiled sanctum that world spirit works which Moses recognised as the uniform world spirit. Small wonder when this world spirit revealed itself to him that Moses said to himself: if I receive the task to appear before the people to inaugurate a culture that should be founded upon self-consciousness, who will believe me? In whose name should I found my mission? He got the answer: you have to say, I am the I-AM. — That is: you cannot express the name of that being that announces itself in the innermost sanctum of the human being other than with the word which calls the self being! Thus, Moses beheld Yahveh or Jehovah in the burning bush. We understand that at the hour, when in Moses the name of Yahveh arose as “I am,” a new element in the development of humanity came that should supersede the ancient Egyptian culture with which Moses had only to develop his soul to understand what should meet him as a highest in his life.

Then we have the discussion of Moses with the Pharaoh. There we can easily realise that Moses and Pharaoh are confronted and do not understand each other. The portrayals should show that everything that Moses had to say from a completely changed human consciousness must remain incomprehensible to the Pharaoh in whom only the effects of the ancient clairvoyant Egyptian culture can live. This is clearly shown in the way in which clairvoyant documents talk. For Moses speaks a new language, dresses what he has to say in words that arise from the human self-consciousness, which had to remain quite incomprehensible to the Pharaoh.

Thus, the entire Egyptian people had the mission up to that world hour which it could accomplish on basis of the old clairvoyant consciousness. However, the time had passed. If the Egyptian people lived on, it lived on with the national qualities, with the temperament et cetera which it had before, but it did not find the transition from the abyss which opened between the old time and the new one for which just the Hebrew people was determined. Moses found this transition from the old to the new time. Hence, the memory of what Moses found with his people, the memory of the transition from the old to the new time, the Passover, was celebrated. Since this Passover should remind of the fact that with Moses the possibility was given to bridge the abyss from the old to the new time. The Egyptians could not bridge this abyss, while they stopped as people and the time passed over them. Thus, we have to imagine the relation of Moses to the Egyptians and to his own people.

What Moses had to give his own people was completely founded on the nature of the ancient Hebrew people. What was it? The intellectual consciousness should replace the old clairvoyance. I have shown in the preceding talks that the clairvoyant consciousness is not bound to the outer corporeality that it develops freely just when the human being becomes free by exercises in his soul life from the outer physical instrument. However, the intellectual consciousness just is bound to the brain and to the blood. What hovered as it were over the physical organisation once and found its further development beyond the organisation by the relation of the teacher to the pupil had to settle down as bound to a physical organisation, to the blood of the people flowing from generation to generation. Hence, what Moses should give as the impulse of an intellectual culture he could only give to a people that strictly observed the flowing on of the blood through the generations. The nature of the new culture was bound to this instrument at first. It had to enjoy life in such a way that it did not only live in the spiritual, but that the people was got out of the other people within which it prepared itself, and then developed the outer tools in the separate blood stream for centuries which should create the basis of the intellectual culture for the future.

Thus, we realise that world history makes sense and that the spiritual is bound to the outer physical tools of the blood. We can realise in the Bible that the author endeavours to show that the world historical significance of the transition from the ancient culture of the Egyptians to the culture of Moses, for example, with the passage through the Red Sea. A wonderful fact of the development of humanity is concealed behind the passage of the Israelites through the sea and the drowning of the Egyptians. This fact becomes only explicable if we understand these events.

There we see coming true with the Egyptian people what is necessarily connected for the soul forces with the clairvoyant culture. You do not assume after what I have brought forward up to now in these talks that I want to bring the human being closer to the animal nature. However, what I want to make clear is to understand best of all if we take the starting point from the animal organisation. We have to imagine that the entire animal imagination and the animal soul life is dreamlike, vague compared with the human one, in particular with the intellectual soul life. Although the ancient human clairvoyance must not be brought closer to the animal soul life and differs radically from it, we are allowed to clarify a feature of the ancient human soul life with the help of the animal soul life, the instinctual life of the animal. Even if the concerning portrayals often exaggerate, nevertheless, something true forms the basis of it that where earthquakes, volcano eruptions and the like happen the animals flee days before. While the human beings who understand everything with their intellect keep their seats, the animals are aroused. Thus, we consider the vague instinctual life of the animal as affinity to the natural life and realise how it works.

The portrayals are often exaggerated. However, someone who knows spiritual science knows that the animal nature is interwoven in the whole surrounding nature. Thus, we can talk about a “knowledge” of the animal which regulates the life of the animal in its elementary forces and which the human being does not have because he develops his higher intellect, which enables him to comprise the things with concepts that have torn him out of the connectedness with nature. We have now to imagine the old clairvoyance connected instinctively with the natural facts. This instinctive cognition said to the human being: this and that happens; this or that prepares itself, as it also applies to those human beings who attain higher knowledge by own efforts and are able to behold into the natural facts for which one can give no “reasons.” Who works on his soul and knows to say something out of the configuration of his soul that the intellectual consciousness does not know to say feels uneasy if one asks him everywhere: why is this in such a way? Prove what you have to say! — One does not notice that such a knowledge takes quite different paths than the knowledge that one obtains with the intellectual logic. It is absolutely appropriate that Goethe — if he looked out to the window — could often forecast the weather for hours. Imagine that because of their clairvoyance the ancient human beings were connected quite different with nature and its facts from the today's human beings with their science. The ancient humanity had no meteorological institutions and reports where from newspapers and the like the weather could be forecast, but it had a feeling, was determined by their view, which showed vividly what would happen. This was the case in particular with the ancient Egyptians, without having our disassembling knowledge and science; they knew to behave in such a way that it corresponded to the living connection with the whole environment.

But just because the world time had passed for the Egyptian culture, this ability of the Egyptians decayed more and more, and they were able less and less to familiarise themselves with the facts of nature, did no longer know based on the constellations of the outer elements how to behave. For the human being should learn to figure the constellations of the external elements out with the intellect, and Moses should still give the impulse from the clairvoyant consciousness.

We see Moses with his people standing before the Red Sea. With a knowledge similar to ours which is still translated into the clairvoyant with him he recognises that by an especial connection of an easterly wind and low tide and flood a possibility exists to lead his people through the sea at the favourable hour. This fact is described and is shown: Moses stands there as the founder of the new, intellectualised worldview that does not yet seem absolutely expired which will teach the human being only again to harmonise the life praxis with the physical conditions as Moses did. The Egyptians were a people whose hour had passed; they could no longer know what happens at a later hour. The old natural instincts had gone to rack and ruin with them. Thus, they stood at the same place as in the old times. However, in the old times they would have said to themselves, now we can no longer pass over! — This old, instinctive natural feeling had decayed with them, and they could not settle in the new, intellectual consciousness. Hence, they stood before the Red Sea helplessly, confused by their no longer authoritative consciousness, and went to rack and ruin. Thus, we realise how the new element of Moses contrasts the old element, and see the old clairvoyance decaying so that it must doubt in itself and has to prepare its doom because it did no longer fit into the new time.

If we look through such apparently outer portrayals at that what the author wants to say, actually, we find in such information the big turning points of human development characterised and understand that it is not easy at all to find the significance of such personalities out — as for example Moses — because of the peculiar representation in the old scriptures. The fact that Moses was completely based on an old clairvoyance and with him, the new intellectual culture was still clairvoyant is still shown later where it should be decided whether he has to lead his people to Palestine really. This people should found the intellectual culture on its blood. The clairvoyance of Moses could give the impulse; however, it could not be this culture. For this culture should not be clairvoyant, it should appear as something new compared with the old clairvoyance. Hence, we see Moses felt called to lead his people up to a certain point, however, being unable to lead it in the new land. He should leave this to those who are called to the new culture. This is clearly said in the Bible. While Moses is the herald of the God who announces himself in the ego-being, however, it is also indicated to us that Moses is only able to perceive the magniloquence of this world spirit with his clairvoyance. When he is in a situation where he is left to his own resources and should help his people, he flees to his tent where he could perceive his God clairvoyantly again. However, there it is said to him: because you could not continue what is given you in the clairvoyant thinking, another has to lead your people. — From it something speaks by which he appears to us, however, as in a glance which wants to say that no clairvoyant prophet lived in Israel after him. With it is indicated that he was the last to have such clairvoyance, and that the new culture had to work on without clairvoyance, with mere tradition and intellectuality with the suitable peoples. With it, it should be prepared that the ego of which humanity had become conscious now on this new cultural basis could take up a new element.

Moses had led humanity until it could realise that the world spirit can be felt most clearly, most humanely in the I-am, in the innermost centre of the human soul that, however, only this I-am has to be filled with contents which can comprise the world again, so that the poor word I-am can receive the richest contents. However, for that another mission was necessary which could be pronounced with the important words of Paul: “Not I — but Christ in me!” Moses had led humanity to the foundation of an ego-culture. This ego-culture had to settle down like a gift from above, like a national culture, like a vessel that should take up new spiritual contents. The ego should develop in the ancient Hebrew people at first, and this vessel had to be filled with that what could originate from a real understanding of the events of the Mystery of Golgotha. There the ego should get new contents that were taken from the spiritual world itself. We can see this best of all, if we visualise the miraculous, but only from the characteristic of the ancient Hebrew people understandable tragedy in the Book of Job.

Although Job as a righteous man holds on his God and is aware that everything that he has comes from his God, he experiences misfortune by misfortune concerning his possessions, his family, and himself. There is something in the revelations of his God that could confuse him that now really that world spirit realises itself in the human ego. It comes to the point that Job's wife cannot understand, why her husband still holds on his God, and, hence, says the important words to him which are of incomparable meaning: “Curse God — and die!” What does that mean? Nothing else than: if God who should be the source of your life treats you in such a way, curse Him. Then indeed, it is certain that death is the result of the renunciation of God, so that someone who curses God lifts himself out from the living development. Job's friends cannot understand that he has not sinned, because, nevertheless, the results would have an effect on the righteous person. The author himself can make it comprehensible to us in no other way that the world justice still exists than by the fact that the deeply afflicted Job thrown in misery still gets a substitute in the physical world of everything he has lost.

Thus, Moses's consciousness already sounds through in the important allegory of the Book of Job, so that we see: the human being is referred to his ego. However, at the moment when he can err, because the ego can realise itself in the physical, he loses — or can lose — the consciousness of his connection with the source of life. However, the Christ impulse caused that the balance should not be in the physical world, but that in spite of all decay and misery, grief and pain the human being can be victorious over the physical. For in his ego not only the primary source of everything spatial and temporal shines, but in his ego can be taken up the power of the everlasting. Thus, the words of Paul “not I — but Christ in me” meant: Moses led the human beings to that point where they understood everything that lives in space and time and expresses itself in the human ego most characteristically. One understands the world if one understands it in its unity like arising from such an ego. However, if you want to take up the everlasting in the ego, you must not only recognise the summary of the temporal, not only Jahveh's unity behind that which is spread out in space and time, but the concentric Christ source behind any unity.

With it, we consider Moses as the true preparer of Christianity; we realise how he prepares the vessel for the human self-consciousness which now should be filled with the everlasting spiritual substantiality in future, that is — understood in the right sense — it should be filled with Christ. We understand that Moses is placed in the human development in such a way. Just by such a consideration, history gains the deepest sense. The fact that at this or that time these or those human beings appear that those everlasting sources flow through them for humanity which further its development, this causes the feeling of the real connection of the single human being with the entire human development.

Surveying the human development in such a way, we say to ourselves, we understand that we are in a living development. We learn to recognise what, so to speak, the world spirits meant with our existence, and how that what they have meant appears more and more in life. Just the considerations of the greatest spirits and events of the development of world and humanity give us that confidence with which we can stand in the entire human determination that we survey the world history in such a way and feel again according to Goethe that enthusiasm is the best that history can cause in us. That enthusiasm which does not only remain dead admiration but consists of the fact that we take up the seeds of the prehistoric time in our souls and develop them to fruits for the future.

The poet's words (Friedrich Schiller, 1759-805, in his Bride of Messina) revive in changed form, while we gain truth from the consideration of the greatest human beings and events:

Time is a blossoming mead,
The human development is a big living,
And everything is fruit,
And everything is seed!