CHAPTER VII
HERE are certain facts in the evolution of mankind which are hardly noticed
in outer life. As a result there is misunderstanding of much that is being
fulfilled in the spiritual depths underlying human evolution. It has been
shown that the mystical Christ-experience — such an experience as a
man may have when by profound, inner life he permeates his soul
experiences with what we have called the Christ substance — was
not always possible, but became so in the course of time. The
historical descent into incarnation of the Christ was a necessary in
preparation for the presence of the mystical Christ in the soul. It
is not correct to say that in pre-Christian times the mystical Christ
experience had always been possible; individuals such as Meister
Eckhart and other similar personalities with their inner mystical
experiences are only possible in the Christian epoch; such
experiences would not have been possible at an earlier time. Abstract
thinking will be fundamentally unable to understand this; only
concrete and spiritually realistic thinking dealing with facts would
find its way to these things. Again, the description of the Luciferic
beings and the Christ can only be comprehensible if we assume that a
change took place in the whole human organisation. A change, it is
true, not to be realised by the external senses or the outer reason,
but none the less a radical change. This was accomplished during the
last thousand years before the appearance of Christ and during the
centuries following His appearance. Since the Atlantean catastrophe
man has essentially changed. And although in the present cycle of
humanity the important thing is that man, on incarnation depends for
his perception of the world, so far as his outer experiences are
concerned, upon the instruments which are at his disposal in the
envelopes of the physical, etheric and astral bodies, yet the nature
of his perception and realisation through subsequent epochs depends
upon the changes which this organisation undergoes. There is no such
thing as a conception of the world which holds good for all times.
Men's perception of the — world is conditioned by his
organisation.
Now
let us call up before our minds the most radical change in the nature
of man, which has occurred since the Atlantean catastrophe. Before
this the different members of our human nature were connected
otherwise than they grew to be later on. The etheric body did not
co-operate with the physical body during the Atlantean era in the way
it has done since. Formerly the etheric body of the head, for
instance, extended further above the physical head, and the progress
of evolution is expressed by the very fact that the etheric and
physical bodies grew more alike and their connection closer and
closer. Now it is in the etheric body that all the forces necessary
for the organisation of the physical body reside, all those forces
which unite the members of the physical body and produce harmony
between them. In the humanity of Atlantis the forces of the etheric
body and especially of the head worked at the building of the
physical body from outside. Later these forces drew within the space
filled by the physical body and at the present day they work more in
man's inner being, animating and stimulating it. But this was only a
matter of development. And if we wish to understand the old Indian
culture we must clearly realise that the conditions were quite
different from what they became during the Chaldean-Egyptian epoch.
But in humanity of the Graeco-Latin epoch, there was such a complete
permeation of the physical body by the etheric body, that in no part
of the human Organisation would clairvoyant consciousness have
perceived the etheric body extending far beyond the physical body.
This had not been the case with the old Indians. Their clairvoyant
vision perceived the etheric body still extending, especially as
regards the head, out beyond the physical body. Hence a native of Old
India saw the world quite otherwise than did a native of Old Egypt. A
man belonging to the Graeco-Latin people saw the world much as it is
to be seen today, i.e. as a sense-tapestry of colours, shades, etc.
But the whole of this world which lies spread out before the present
day sense-perceptions, was to the Indian spirit of the olden times
finely permeated by what we might today call the misty cloud
characteristic of etheric nature. It arose from all things, for they
all looked as if they were burning, and a fine misty smoke arose out
of each form. The manner of perceiving then was what might be called
a seeing of the etheric element, which was spread out over everything
like dew or hoar frost. That peculiar kind of sight was then natural.
At the present day the human soul can only attain to it by means of
special exercises given by spiritual science. The object of the
progressive evolution of mankind through the different periods of
civilisation is to cause the etheric body to descend deeper and
deeper into the physical body. Thus the whole manner of human
perception alters, for all human perception depends upon the way in
which the etheric body is organised. And this in its turn is
connected with the fact that the Luciferic beings manifesting within
the earth and within the soul have risen to the state of cosmic
beings, and that the Christ-Being Who was formerly a cosmic being
descended into incarnation in a human body and has now become an
inner being.
This
permeation of the Apollonian with the Dionysian principle —
this transposition, as it were — only became possible because
of a corresponding change in the human Organisation. It was a change
that not only affected the past, but was also a preparation for the
future. We live in a time when the most complete inner permeation of
the physical by the etheric body is already a thing of the past; a
time when the tendency of evolution is in the opposite direction. We
live in an era in which the etheric body is slowly emerging from the
physical body. The normal development of humanity will in the future
consist in the gradual emergence of the etheric body from the
physical body; the time will come when the human Organisation will
once again wear the appearance which it wore in grey primeval ages,
and we shall again see the etheric body spreading out beyond the
human physical body. We are in the middle of this transition, and
many of the more subtle diseases characteristic of the present time
would be understood if this were known. But all this has a meaning
and corresponds with great cosmic laws, for man could not attain the
goal of his evolution unless he thus underwent a transposition of the
constituent parts of his Organisation. Now everything within us is
permeated by our whole surroundings; and by the divine spiritual
beings in the spiritual world sending their currents down into us,
just as the physical elements of the earth send their currents into
our physical organisation. At the time when the etheric body was
outside the physical body, currents were perpetually pouring into
this etheric body man experienced this consciously as a cosmic
revelation, as something revealed to him inwardly. These currents
descending into his etheric body from the spiritual world also worked
at the perfecting of his physical body.
Now
that which descended into the etheric body of man and was experienced
as the most inward element of his being, was the influence of the
Luciferic world, a great and powerful inheritance brought over from
the old ages of the pre-Atlantean evolution. The fact that these
Luciferic influences had become so much darkened that man, at the
very time when Christ appeared, could perceive nothing of them unless
he had reached a high grade of initiation, is explained by the fact
that the etheric body drew more and more inside the physical body and
became one with it; and man learned to make increasing use of the
physical organs as instruments. It was therefore necessary that the
divine spiritual being shortly to appear on earth, should be manifest
on the physical plane as a figure able to be perceived physically,
incarnate like other physical beings upon the earth. Only thus could
mankind have at that time understood a God appearing in a body
because it had become accustomed to consider true only what could be
observed by means of the instrument of the human physical body. This
had to come to pass before those who surrounded the Christ could say
by way of emphasising an event, ‘We have placed our hands in
His wounds, and our fingers in the prints of the nails.’ This
certainty yielded by the senses had to live as a feeling in those
men, a feeling which gave the stamp of truth to the event. To that
sort of testimony a man of the old Indian age would have attached no
importance; he would have said: ‘The spiritual perceived by
means of the senses means nothing much to me; in order to realise the
spiritual there must be ascent to a certain grade of clairvoyant
cognition.’ Understanding of Christ therefore had gradually to
be developed like everything else in the world.
The
Luciferic impulse, however, which man formerly had in his etheric
body gradually became exhausted. That which he had brought with him
out of primeval ages when his etheric body did not as yet dwell
entirely in the physical body, but was still outside and received the
Luciferic influence through the portion that still was outside, was
gradually used up. In order that the etheric body might slip into the
physical body it had to lose the capacity of realising the higher
worlds through its etheric organs. Therefore at a certain epoch it is
true to say of our human ancestors that they were still able to see
into the spiritual worlds, and what they saw is preserved in their
literature. There was, as it were, a primeval wisdom. The reason why
later this was not more directly attainable was, that as the etheric
body was taken up into the physical body, man could only make use of
his physical senses and of his physical reason. Clairvoyant power was
paralysed. The faculty of seeing into the spiritual world was
therefore only possible in the initiates who ascended to the
super-sensible worlds by means of systematic training.
The
reverse process is now being enacted. Mankind is entering a condition
in which the etheric body is to a certain extent drawing itself out
of the physical body again; but it must not be thought that it now
receives spontaneously everything which in earlier times it possessed
as an ancient heritage. If nothing else happened but its withdrawal,
the etheric body of man would just leave the physical body and would
retain in itself none of the forces which it formerly possessed. In
the future it will be born from out of the human physical body. If
the human physical body did not add something to it, this etheric
body would be empty, barren. The future of human evolution will be
that men will, as it were, allow their etheric body to leave their
physical bodily nature, and they will eventually have the possibility
of being able to send it out empty. What does that mean? The etheric
body is the force-bearer, the energiser of all that takes place in
the physical body. It must not only provide forces for the physical
body when it is entirely concealed within it, but at all times; it
must provide forces for the physical body even when it is again
partly outside it. If the etheric body is left empty it cannot react
upon the physical body, for it would then have no strength with which
to react. The etheric body must, after it has passed through the
physical body, have obtained its forces from within the physical
body. The forces with which the etheric body can react again upon the
physical body, must have been drawn from within the latter. The task
of present-day humanity is to absorb into itself that which can only
be acquired through activity in a physical body. That which is gained
within the physical body accompanies evolution, and when man in
future incarnations lives in organisms wherein the etheric body is to
a certain extent released from the physical body, he will experience
in his consciousness a kind of memory through the partially liberated
physical body.
Now
let us ask ourselves, what enables the physical body to hand
something on like an heirloom to the etheric body? What enables a man
to send such forces into his etheric body that some day he will be in
a position to bear an etheric body itself and able to send back
certain forces into the physical body from outside? Suppose man's
life, let us say, from 3000 BC to our own era, and on to 3000 AD had
been such that nothing more was added to him than what would have
been his without the coming of Christ; he would then have experienced
in his physical body nothing that might bestow a power on the etheric
body when it is released from the physical body. That which a man can
hand on is what he can gain within the physical world through the
Christ event. All association with the Christ principle and the
experiences we may have in connection with the appearance of Christ,
sink down into the life of the soul in the physical world and the soul
as well as all that is physical are prepared in such a way that there
can flow into the etheric body that which it will need in the future.
Therefore the Christ event had to take place; to permeate the human
soul in order that men should be able to understand their future
evolution. That which is in the physical body today sends out forces
into the etheric body; and the etheric body, nourished by the
physical experiences of the Christ, will take up these forces, in
order again to become clairvoyant and possess the life-forces which
will sustain the physical body in the future. Hence what man
experiences of Christ through the reversal of the principles has its
proper bearing upon the future of human evolution.
But
this alone would not suffice. By passing through the Christ
experience in our own souls, by becoming more and more familiar with
the Christ, and by letting Him grow more and more into our soul
experiences, we do indeed thus influence the etheric body, and pour
streams of force into it. Now if this etheric body withdraws and
enters into a wrong element it will undoubtedly have the Christ
force, but if it does not meet there the forces which are able to
work in a sustaining and enlivening way upon the Christ principle
which has entered it, it will find itself in a sphere in which it
cannot live. The outer forces would destroy it. It would, being
permeated with the Christ, and having entered an unsuitable element,
be faced with its own destruction, and would react destructively upon
the physical body. Furthermore the etheric body must make itself fit
once more to receive the light out of which it originally sprang
forth, the light from the realm of Lucifer. Whereas by an inner
experience man formerly saw Lucifer appear through the veil of his
soul-life, he must now prepare himself to be able to experience
Lucifer as a cosmic being in the world around him. From having been a
sub-terrestrial god, Lucifer becomes a cosmic god. Man must prepare
himself in such a way that his etheric body is provided with such
forces as make Lucifer a fructifying and a beneficent element,
instead of a destructive one. Man has to pass through the Christ
experience, but in such a way that he becomes capable of recognising
in this world the spiritual fabric of which the world was created.
Training
such as spiritual science offers, is fully empowered to prepare the
whole nature of man again to understand the light of Lucifer's realm,
because only thus can the human etheric body receive life forces
adequate to it. Christ was influencing man even before He appeared
upon the earth. As long ago as the age when Zarathustra was pointing
up to Ahura Mazdao, the force of Christ was radiating down. And from
the other direction there shone the power of Lucifer,
That
is reversed as we have seen; in the future the forces of Lucifer will
stream in from outside, while the Christ will dwell within. The human
Organisation must again be influenced from two sides. The old Indian
realised on the one side ‘That thou art,’ and on the
other side ‘I am the all’ and knew that the world which
he saw outside was the same as that within. In ancient Indian times
this was realised as an abstract truth; it will be realised on earth
as a concrete experience of the soul when the time is accomplished,
when by means of suitable preparation, that which was manifest
prophetically, among the ancient Indians, shall come to life again in
a new form. Thus does human evolution proceed in the post-Atlantean
epoch.
Hence
it is clear that the evolution of humanity does not move in a
straight line, but runs its course, as does everything in nature. I
have given the example of a plant, which grows but cannot develop its
fruit unless a new factor comes into its development. Here is a
picture which shows that other influences must come in from another
side. There is no such thing as an evolution which proceeds along a
straight line. The Luciferic and the Christ principles had to overlap
one another. Those who seek to find an undeviating evolution can
never understand the world evolution; only those who notice the
divided streams and how they mutually fructify each other can really
understand evolution. During the old Indian civilisation, when man
was in a certain sense differently organised, his outlook was
different. What man's outlook then was can only be definitely
experienced by means of that kind of clairvoyant research which is
suitable for the present age. And clairvoyance is a power which today
has to be acquired by effort, although it was at one age a natural
faculty. It is very difficult indeed, even for those who have a
thorough knowledge of spiritual science to understand how much the
soul-experiences in the old Indian age different from those of later
times, and one can only try to clothe this difference in words which
approximate to the real sense.
When
man looks out into the world today he perceives it through his
various senses. We cannot here go into all that modern science has to
say about sense-perception; it will suffice to hold in our mind the
usual conception that man perceives the outer world by means of his
various senses, and gathers the different impressions together by
means of the spiritual faculty that is bound up with the physical
brain. Think this over a little, and it will become evident that
there is a great difference in the character of the different
sense-perceptions; compare, for instance, the sense of hearing with
that of sight. It is evident that as regards hearing, if we look in
the outer world for the facts corresponding to it, we find matter in
movement, air in regular motion. If our instrument of hearing is
brought into contact with this air which is in motion we experience
what is called hearing. But the inner experience of hearing and the
air in motion without, are two very different things. Now sight is
not such a simple thing as hearing, though physicists have made it
appear to be so. Their postulate, built up by analogy runs somewhat
as follows: Let us take, they say, one of the finer substances which
moves just as does the air outside. But the realistic thinker sees a
great difference, viz. that as regards the ear, one can very easily
detect what moves outside. It can easily be proved that something
really does move outside — as far as the ear is concerned —
by putting little paper riders on a violin string and striking it.
But nobody can see for himself the existence of vibrations in the
ether. It is a hypothesis; it exists only as a theory of physics and
is non-existent for the realistic thinker. Sense perception by means
of sight is a very different thing. What is perceived through light
is much more objective than what is sense through hearing. We
perceive light as colour, we perceive it spread out in space; but we
cannot, as in the case of sound, go into the outer world in search of
external processes. Such distinctions as these are readily overlooked
by man of modern times. The old Indian, possessing a finer
consciousness of the whole outer world, could not have overlooked
this. He perceived all these delicate external distinctions. I only
want to point out that there are characteristic and essential
differences between the realms of the various senses. If we consider
the German language it may strike us that with the same word we
express an inner soul experience and an impression that comes, in a
sense, from outside (I admit that this happens in incorrect
speaking). That word is the word ‘feeling.’ We speak of
the five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. When
speaking of feeling in a superficial way we mean the sense of touch,
but call it feeling and add that which is experienced by this sense
to the outer sense experiences. Again, inspired by the genius of
speech, we define in a much more spiritual sense than is generally
realised, an inner soul experience by the wood ‘feeling.’
Experiences of joy or pain are defined as feelings. This particular
feeling of which we are here speaking is an intimate soul experience;
the other feelings, produced by the sense of touch, are always caused
by some external object. The other feeling may be associated with an
external object, but it can be seen that an external object is not
the only cause, because the effect upon one person is different from
the effect upon another. We have two experiences, one connected with
the external sense the other bound to the inner. These two at the
present day appear to be widely divided, but this was not always the
case. Here we come to another view of what has previously been
described in an external sense. We have described how the etheric
body slips in and out again. This is connected with the fact that
something takes place in the inner being of man. Today these two
experiences, the experience of ‘feeling’ within one and
the experience caused by personal contact with an external object
which we also describe by the word ‘feeling’ are widely
divided. The further we go back in the evolution of humanity, that is
to say, the further the etheric body is outside the physical body, so
much the nearer are these two experiences to one another. They are
only widely divided in mankind today. In the Indian epoch this
difference did not exist to the same extent. At that time the inner
experience of feeling and the outer were more like each other. Why
was that?
If
you meet a man today who has an evil thought about you (let us say
you dislike him and he has the same sort of feeling towards you), you
will, as a general rule, if you are only provided with the external
senses and the physical brain, not be deeply aware of his feelings,
of his sympathies and antipathies. If he should strike you, you would
be aware of it, because your sense of feeling would notice it. In the
old Indian times there was a different state of things. Man then was
so organised, that be was not only aware of that which is felt by the
present crude sense of touch, but also of that which today has
withdrawn into his inner being; he was still able to sense what
someone else felt about him. Through sympathetic comprehension of
another individual's feelings he awakened in his soul just such an
experience as we have through the sense of touch. He felt the
physical-psychical process. On the other hand that which we call our
inner feeling was not so far developed in those days; it was still
more closely connected with the outer world. Man had his sorrows and
joys which in many respects corresponded more to outer happenings;
but he could not retire so deeply into his inner being as he can
today. At the present time, inner soul experience is to a far greater
extent severed from the whole surroundings than formerly was the
case. At the present time a man may find himself in a position in
which he is surrounded by circumstances which could be better; but
because of his inner soul life being severed from his surroundings he
may perhaps feel inward pain without any real cause on account of his
way of looking at the world.
This
would have been impossible at the time of the old Indian epoch of
civilisation. At that time the inner impressions were a much truer
reflection of what went on in the outer environment, for man's
feeling was then to a greater extent bound up with the external
world. The reason for this was that in those olden times, for
example, man, in his whole make up, stood in a very different
relation to light. The light surrounding us has not only its external
physical aspect, but, like everything physical, is also permeated by
soul and spirit. The course of human evolution was such that the soul
and spirit of the outer world withdrew more and more from man and
gradually the physical part came to be all that was perceptible. Man
came to perceive light as a fluid pouring into his Organisation from
all sides, and within this light streaming through him, he felt its
soul. Today the soul of the light is stopped by the human skin. The
Indian organisation was permeated by what lives as soul within the
light, and man realised the soul of the light. That light was the
bearer of what could be perceived as sympathy and antipathy in other
beings, which has now withdrawn with the soul of the light away from
men. This was connected with other experiences. Today when men inhale
and exhale they can, at the most, know of the existence of breath
through the mechanical working. If it is at all chilled they see it
becoming watery. This is a mechanical way of seeing the breath.
Improbable as it may appear to the man of today, it is nevertheless
true that by means of occult research we can substantiate the fact
that most of the old Indians had quite a different conception of what
their breath signified. The soul of light had not as yet withdrawn
from what went on around men of that time; so that they perceived the
air as it was breathed in and breathed out in different light and
dark shades of colour. They saw the air pouring in and out again like
flames of fire. We may therefore say that even the air itself has
become something quite different, by reason of the change that has
taken place in man's conceptual life.
Air
today is something that is only perceived mechanically by men through
the resistance it offers, because they are no longer directly aware
of the soul of the light which permeates the air. Man has parted even
from this last remnant of instinctive perception. The old Indian
would not have called that which is breathed in and out merely
‘air’; he would have called it ‘fire air,’
because he saw it in varying degrees of fiery radiations.
There
again we have an example of how even in external experiences the
transformation in the constitution of man in the course of evolution
is manifest. These are intimate, hidden processes in human evolution,
and we can never understand the Vedas, if we do not understand how
and in what sense the words are used. If we read the words contained
in them without knowing that they described what could then be seen,
the words would lose all sense, and our interpretation would be
completely wrong. We must always take the realities into
consideration when we approach the study of ancient documents. That
which lives in the human soul alters in character with the course of
time. And now a certain fact will be comprehensible which could not
have been so without these statements, statements which are quite
independent I of any proofs to be established by physical research.
Look into the eastern writings and see how the Elements are there
enumerated. They are placed in the following order: earth, water,
fire, air, and ether. Only in Greek times do we find a different
order which to us today is the obvious one and upon which we base all
our understanding, viz. earth, water, air, fire and the other ethers.
Why is this so? The old Indian consciousness saw, just as man sees
today what is manifested through the solid (that which we call the
earth), through the fluidic, or water, to speak in the spiritual
sense. But what we today call air, to the old Indians was fire, for
they still saw the fire in the air — they described what they
saw as fire. We no longer see this fire in the air; we only feel it
as heat. Everything has changed since the fourth post Atlantean
epoch. So it was that only when they went a little higher in the
series of the elements the Indians came to an element in which at
that time there appeared to mankind what we today call air —
the air to us being penetrated by light, but not revealing the light.
In respect to fire and air, man's vision has been entirely
reversed. What we have said about Christ and Lucifer crossing each
other — that Christ the cosmic being has entered within the
human soul, while Lucifer who at first was within man has become a
cosmic being — holds good in all departments of life. That
which in the first post-Atlantean epoch was what we call fire, is at
the present day perceivable as air, and that which we today see as
fire, was then seen as air. That which underlies human evolution is
expressed not only in great things but also in small ones. These
things must not be put down to chance; we can see into the
profundities of what happens in the course of the evolution of
mankind, if we look at things from the only real point of view —
that of spiritual science. The Indian consciousness was one which
felt the unity of that which lies deep down in the soul with that
which is outside it; hence the Indian lived to a greater degree in
his environment. The last echoes of what existed in the ancient
Indian as instinctive sight are to be found in the rudimentary
‘clairvoyance’ possessed today by those men who have what
we call second sight. Suppose when walking along the street anywhere,
there enters the mind the thought of a certain man whom at the moment
we cannot physically see, and we meet him a little further on. Why
was the thought of him in the consciousness before he was seen? It is
because his influence has entered into the sub-consciousness, whence
it ascended into the consciousness as a complete thought. Today man
possesses in rudimentary form what was once of great significance in
his life. In earlier times there existed a much closer connection
between inner and outer feeling. These are some more detailed
instances of my oft-repeated statements that humanity has evolved out
of the old dim clairvoyance into the full consciousness of the senses
we now possess, and humanity in the future will once again evolve a
fully conscious clairvoyance. This will be attained in such a way
that man will consciously experience it; he will know that his
etheric body goes forth out of him and that he can use the organs of
the etheric body just as he can the physical body.
In
earlier, more spiritual ages, when men had more wisdom than has
modern abstract materialistic science, they were always conscious
that there was an old clairvoyance to the possessors of which the
world became transparent. They felt that man had lost this old sight
and had entered into his present state. Formerly, men did not express
their knowledge in abstract formulae and theories, but in mighty,
vivid pictures. The Myths are not ‘thought out’ or
invented, but are the expressions of a profound primeval wisdom
acquired by spiritual vision. In ancient times there was
consciousness of the fact that at a still earlier epoch man had
embraced the whole world in his feeling, and this is expressed in the
Myths. The ‘clair-sentience’ of the old Indian was the
last remnant of an original, dim clairvoyance. This was known; but
what was not known, was that this clairvoyance — let us
summarise it so — withdraws little by little, giving way to the
external life which is confined to the world of the senses. The more
important Myths express this very fact. It was known, for instance,
that there were mystery places, leading the way to the
sub-terrestrial spirits and that there were others leading up to the
cosmic spirits. There was a sharp distinction between them. Men who
were not initiated knew nothing of this, just as today men who do not
seek along the right paths have no idea that there is such a thing as
Mystery Wisdom. A certain amount of information filtered out. With
regard to the mysteries it is true to say that the further we go back
into olden times, the more significant does their age of splendour
appear. Even the Greek Mysteries do not belong to the most brilliant
period. The mysteries themselves had fallen into decadence.
Nevertheless
the people knew that that which came from those places where
clairvoyant consciousness was still active was connected with the
spiritual substance which streams through the world and animates it;
they knew that where clairvoyant consciousness still prevailed,
something could be experienced about the world which was possible in
no other way.
And even in the period
of their decadence clairvoyant consciousness was cultivated in these
oracle-places, and from them information was conveyed to mankind such
as cannot be experienced by ordinary sense-methods, and intellectual
conceptions bound up with them. Yet it was also known that man is
developing, that that which could be attained by the old
clairvoyance, useful and practicable in ancient days, was no longer
adequate for later times. The Greeks had a deep consciousness of the
fact that that which came from the oracles certainly aroused
curiosity, that men would fain know something about the hidden
connections of the world, but that they had departed from the right
method of using such clairvoyant information; that man's relation to
the world was different from what it had formerly been and that
therefore no good could originate from clinging to the results of the
old clairvoyance. This is what the Greeks wanted to express and they
did so in magnificent pictures. One such picture is the Oedipus
legend. Through an oracle (that is to say, from a place in which
secret connections, hidden from the human gaze, were clairvoyantly
perceived), the father was told that if a son were born to him,
disaster would result, that this son would murder his father and
marry his mother. This son was born. The father tried to prevent what
had been seen clairvoyantly from coming to pass. The son was sent
away, and brought up in another place, but he came to know the
oracle that is to say, something entered his soul which could only be
known by means of clairvoyance. The Greek consciousness would say:
Something still continues to enter into man from olden times, but the
human organisation has already progressed so far that it is no longer
adapted to this sort of clairvoyance, and cannot make use of it.
Oedipus listens to the oracle, but acts in such a way that it is all
the more certainly fulfilled. Men can no longer handle the results of
clairvoyance; the spiritual world has withdrawn and the old
clairvoyance is no longer of service to them. But there has always
existed a consciousness that things will one day entirely change and
that what comes from spiritual worlds will once again mean something
to humanity; men have felt that what comes from these spiritual
worlds will be covered over by sense life only for a time. Of these
facts consciousness has existed; and has been expressed in the Myths
by the forces of human evolution which created them. We have seen
that the Christ event, when the two forces, the Lucifer principle and
the Christ principle, crossed each other, was the decisive one in
human evolution. The Christ event was the turning point, when that
which comes from out of the Cosmos, from the fountain of the spirit,
was to be poured as a ferment into human evolution. It had been lost,
but it had to be poured in again as a ferment. That which was harmful
to mankind, that which made it into something evil, is poured in as a
ferment and transformed into good. The evil has to drop into the
fructifying spiritual power inherent in human evolution and work with
it for the good. That too has been expressed in the Myths. There is
another legend which runs somewhat as follows: A certain man and wife
were told by an Oracle that they would have a son, who would bring
disaster upon his whole people. This son was to murder his father and
marry his mother. This son was born to the mother. On account of the
warning, this son was sent away too; he was put upon the island of
Kariot and was found by the Queen of that island. And because she and
her husband had no son, she adopted him. But later on a son was born
to her. Then the foundling thought he was wrongly treated and he
killed the real son. He was obliged to flee from the island of
Kariot, and he went to the court of Pilate in Palestine, where he
obtained employment as overseer of Pilate's household. He quarreled
with his neighbour, of whom he knew nothing beyond the fact that he
was his neighbour. In the course of this quarrel he killed him and
later married the widow. Only then did he learn that it was his real
father whom he had killed and that it was therefore his mother whom
he had married. The story tells us that he saw his entire existence
ruined but did not behave like Oedipus; for he was overcome by
remorse and went to the Christ and the Christ received him; this was
Judas Iscariot, Judas from Kariot. And the evil which dwelt in Judas
became a leaven in the whole of evolution. For the deed of Palestine
is connected with the betrayal by Judas; Judas is bound up with the
whole event; he belongs to the twelve that are not thinkable without
him. Here we see that the sayings of the oracle were indeed
fulfilled, and further that they are embodied in universal evolution
in the form of evil which is transformed and lives on as good.
The
story (which is in reality wiser than external science) indicates in
the most significant way that there is such a transformation in human
nature in the course of time, and that the same thing has to be
regarded differently at different epochs. In speaking of the
fulfillment of an oracular saying we must not relate it in the same
way when speaking of the time of Oedipus as when speaking of the time
of Christ. The same fact is at the one period the story of Oedipus at
another, in the time of Christ; it becomes the story of Judas. Only
when we know the spiritual facts lying at the foundation of the
evolution of the world and of humanity do we understand the results
of those spiritual facts which are manifest to external historical
conceptions. All phenomena of the sense-world, all external sense
impressions or manifestations of the human soul can be comprehended
by us when we understand their spiritual basis. That which the
investigator of spiritual worlds discovers he gladly hands on as a
stimulus to those who are willing to take it from him and who will
then examine the external facts which confirm it. If what is
discovered in the spiritual world be true, it is confirmed in the
physical world. But every true explorer of the spiritual life will
say that in communicating his knowledge of the higher world he
facilitates and desires the testing of all external facts in the
light of his assertions. If what I have said about the re-incarnation
of Zarathustra for instance be compared with external history, it
will be found that what has been said stands every test, if
sufficiently careful search is made in external history. External
life becomes comprehensible only when there is knowledge of the
inner, the spiritual.
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