Lecture IV
Results of Spiritual Scientific Investigations
of the Evolution of Humanity: I
Rome, March 28, 1909
Tonight we
will talk about sin, original sin, illness, and so on. Let us
first look backwards into the past and then allow the future
to pass by our spiritual eyes. We have before our modern era
the time of Rome and Athens, which was preceded by the
Egyptian-Chaldaic period; actual historical records are
lacking for the time before then. However, for these older
prehistorical epochs there are two sources that can give
information; ancient religious teachings for those who know
how to decipher them and retrospective images that can be
perceived by clairvoyant consciousness. It is the latter we
wish to discuss.
Everything on
earth is subject to the laws of evolution, and that is
especially true for the life of the human soul. The life of
the soul in ancient times was different from what it is
today. In prehistoric times, thousands of years in the past,
the scope of the souls of human beings in Europe, Asia, and
Africa was much wider and more comprehensive than that of
human beings of our time. To be sure, they did not have the
kind of mind that enables us to read or to do arithmetic, but
they did possess a primitive clairvoyance and a tremendous
memory of which ours cannot have the slightest notion. We
shall see later why that was so.
To give you
an idea of how these prehistoric people perceived the world,
let me tell you, for example, that they saw everything
surrounded by an aura when they awakened to their
day-consciousness. A flower, for instance, appeared to them
surrounded by a circle of light similar to that we see around
the light of street lamps in the evening fog. And during
sleep these human beings were able to perceive the soul-
spiritual beings in their full reality. Human beings learned
gradually to see the contours of objects more clearly, but
simultaneously and in direct proportion to their ability to
do so, the conscious interaction with the spiritual world and
the beings in it decreased; it ceased altogether when the ego
became individualized in every single being.
The earth,
too, had quite a different configuration in those early ages.
Human beings lived in other regions and on other continents,
and our own ancestors lived on a continent that is now
covered by the Atlantic Ocean. The traditional name for this
continent is Atlantis, and its disappearance as well as the
legend of the universal flood is related in the myths of all
peoples. The Atlantean culture was magnificent, and mankind
lost many important insights with its destruction, insights
that now can be retrieved only with great difficulty. Just as
we in our times know how to harness the forces hidden in
fossil plants — coal — for trade and industry, so
the ancient Atlanteans knew how to utilize the driving forces
in grain as energy, for example for the purpose of propelling
their air vehicles that moved just a little bit above the
ground in air that was much denser than is ours.
Let us now
look at the physical organism of the Atlantean individual. It
had the peculiar characteristic that the etheric body was not
completely identical with the physical body and that the head
of the etheric body projected beyond the head of the physical
body. This peculiarity is connected with the clairvoyant
capabilities of the Atlanteans, also with their extraordinary
memory and with their magical powers. The ether-head had a
special and central point of perception.
When the
ether-head in the course of evolution retracted more and more
into the physical head, the profile was changed. Now we have
at that point an organ, the development of which will restore
the power of clairvoyance in humanity: the pineal gland. And
thus, the clairvoyant power of the Atlanteans, as well as
their tremendous memory and their magical powers, disappeared
gradually; and in its place we developed our present ability
to think and to do mathematics.
Going still
farther back, we find other catastrophes. The volcanos that
we have today are the last remnants of an epoch when whole
parts of the earth were destroyed by fire. The continent that
perished in those times is designated by the name
“Lemuria” and was the area that is now largely
taken up by the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The inhabitants of
that continent had bodies that were quite different from
human bodies in our age and by our standards would appear
grotesque. The relationship of the physical to the astral
body was different in those early human beings. The crown of
the head was open, and rays of light penetrated this opening,
so that the head was surrounded by a resplendent aura, and
this gave one the appearance of having a lantern on top. The
last remnant of this Lemurian head structure can be seen
today when we look at the head of a newborn baby and discover
the small opening on top that remains open for about a year
or a little longer. The bodies of the Lemurians had gigantic
dimensions and were made out of a fine, almost gelatine-like
substance.
Human beings
in the Lemurian age were not at all independent and could do
only the things they were inspired to do by the spiritual
forces within whom they were, in a manner of speaking,
imbedded. Receiving everything from these forces, they acted
as if driven by a soul-instinct. At this time the powerful
effect of spiritual beings who had not descended into a
physical incarnation made itself felt. These beings, who were
not well-disposed to humanity, had such an effect on humanity
that it attained the independence it had lacked heretofore.
According to divine providence, mankind was certainly meant
to attain this independence some day, but only through the
influence of these beings did that independence come about so
early. Together with the other forces, these beings slipped
into the astral bodies of human beings, who had not yet
entered into a close relationship with their own essence, and
bestowed on them a kind of will power that would enable them
to do evil since it was only astral and not guided by reason.
The influence of these forces, called Luciferic forces, as we
can see, may be good or bad because, on the one hand, they
led mankind astray and, on the other, gave it freedom.
Today's
consciousness originated in clairvoyant consciousness, which
we find increasingly more developed as we go back in human
evolution. The Lemurians were able to perceive things only
with their soul. They were, for example, unable to perceive
the form, the color, or the external qualities of a flower.
It revealed itself to them as a shining astral configuration
that they perceived with a kind of inner organ. According to
the divine plan, human beings were not supposed to perceive
the world with external sense organs before the middle of the
Atlantean period, but the Luciferic forces made this happen
earlier, at a time when human instincts had not yet matured.
That represents the “Fall” of mankind. Religious
documents tell us that the snake opened man's eyes, but
without the interference of Lucifer the human body would not
have become as firm as it now is and the Atlantean humanity
would have been able to see the spiritual side of all things.
Instead, man fell into sin, illusion, and error, and to make
things worse, toward the middle of the Atlantean period he
was also subjected to the influence of Ahrimanic forces. The
Luciferic forces had worked on the astral body, but the
Ahrimanic forces worked on the etheric body, especially on
the ether-head. By that, many human beings fell into the
error of mistaking the physical world for the world of truth.
The name “Ahrimanic” comes from Ahriman, the name
the Persians gave to this erroneous principle. Zoroaster told
his people about Ahriman, warned them about him, and exhorted
them to become one with Ahura Mazdao — Ormuzd. Ahriman
is identical with Mephistopheles and has nothing to do with
Lucifer. Mephistopheles comes from the Hebrew word
me-phis-to-pel, which means the liar, the cheater.
Satan in the Bible is Ahriman too, not Lucifer.
Ancient
Atlantis was gradually destroyed in the course of centuries
by floods, and the inhabitants left over from the catastrophe
retreated to regions that had been spared, such as Asia,
Africa, and America. The first region in which Atlantean
culture continued to develop was the area that later came to
be called India. There the people kept a clear memory of the
earlier clairvoyance and of the perception of the spiritual
world. It was therefore not difficult for their teachers
— the Rishis — to direct their attention to the
spiritual side of the world, and initiation was easy to
achieve. Clairvoyance was never completely lost; there always
existed some clairvoyant people up to the time of Christ. We
can recognize a remnant of this primitive form of
clairvoyance in mythology, in which the central concern was
with beings who had actually been alive, such as Zeus,
Apollo, and so forth. Although the Ahrimanic influence began
in the Atlantean epoch, as we have said, it unfolded its full
strength only later in human evolution. The ancient Indians
were sufficiently protected against Ahriman; for them the
physical world was never anything else but maya,
illusion. Only in the most ancient Persian period of
Zarathustra did people begin to place value on the physical
world and thereby come into the power of Ahriman. This
clarifies for us Zarathustra's admonition of which we spoke
earlier.
As the
evolution of humanity reached the Greek period, human beings
were confronted by another force that began to drive them
back up to the spiritual world from which, as it were, they
had been expelled since the Lemurian age. This new force was
the Christ-Principle, which entered Jesus of Nazareth and
permeated His three bodies — the physical, the etheric,
and the astral. When the human soul is completely imbued with
the Christ-Principle, the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers will
be defeated, and through this principle the course of
evolution will be reversed. Christ would not have been able
to influence humanity had His coming not been announced to it
a long time before He actually appeared. Inwardly, however,
humanity has always been led by Christ; we can deduce this
from the magnificent images by which His coming was
prophesied. Who else could have inspired such mighty
imaginations?
Immediately
after the mystery of Golgotha when Christ's blood ran from
five wounds and His spirit permeated the lowest realms, the
incarnation of Christ brought about a remarkable change in
the physical, etheric, and astral bodies of humanity.
Christ's etheric and astral bodies multiplied like a grain of
seed, and the spiritual world was filled with these copies.
For example, human beings living in the period from the fifth
or sixth through the tenth centuries who had developed
sufficiently received at their birth such an imprint of the
Christ-Incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth. St. Augustine is the
individual in whom such partaking in the etheric body of
Christ is most clearly evident, and the great significance of
his life must be attributed to this fact. On the other hand,
Christ's astral body was incorporated into human beings from
about the tenth to the sixteenth centuries, and this explains
the appearance of human beings who were endowed with
extraordinary humility and virtue, such as St. Francis of
Assisi and the great Dominicans who reflected the wonderful
astral qualities of Christ. These individuals were imbued
with such a clear image of the great truths they practiced
throughout their lives. By contrast, St. Augustine was never
free of doubt and always experienced the conflict between
theory and practice. Of the great Dominicans, St. Thomas Aquinas
[ Note 30 ]
is especially noteworthy because in him the influence of the
astral body of Christ was manifest to a high degree, as we shall
see later. Beginning with the sixteenth century, copies of the
Christ-Ego begin to weave themselves into the egos of a few
individualities, one of them being Christian Rosenkreutz,
[ Note 31 ]
the first Rosicrucian. This phenomenon led to the feasibility
of a more intimate relationship with Christ, as is revealed by
esoteric teaching.
The power of
Christ will make human beings more perfect, spiritualize
them, and lead them back into the spiritual world. Mankind
developed its reason at the expense of clairvoyance; the
power of Christ will enable human beings to learn on this
earth and to ascend again with what they will have acquired
on earth. Human beings descended from the Father, and the
power of Christ will lead them back to the Father.
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