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Rudolf Steiner e.Lib
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Universe, Earth and Man
Rudolf Steiner e.Lib Document
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Universe, Earth and Man
The Egyptian period, and the present time.
Schmidt Number: S-1807
On-line since: 11th July, 2002
The Egyptian period, and the present time.
In the first lecture of this course we shall try to give, by way of
introduction, an outline of the subject before us. We shall not as yet
enter fully into this, but will first give an outline of those things
of which we shall speak during the next few days. We have a very
extensive theme before us; Universe, Earth, and Man, and I propose to
give a brief sketch of all the knowledge we can acquire concerning the
visible and invisible worlds.
Our feelings are borne into the farthest distance of the cosmos when,
in the deepest and most worthy sense, we make use of the expression
Universe. Earth indicates the field of action
upon which humanity is now placed, upon which we are to work and live,
and the mission of which we ought to understand. Lastly, the word
Man a word we here wish to understand in its occult
sense indicates that which the mystics of all ages meant when they
made use of the expression, O man, know thyself!
We also have a sub-title to our subject. Having set ourselves such a
highly important task, this sub-title is in a certain way justified;
for when we consider the connection between that wonderful
pre-Christian civilization the Egyptian and our own, we
see how mysterious are the forces permeating human life. Three ages of
human effort and research, of human development, morals, and life,
rise before us when we consider Egyptian civilization and that of our
own day. When we speak of Egyptian civilization in the occult sense we
mean the civilization that had its seat in the north-east of Africa,
on the banks of the Nile, which lasted for thousands of years and
terminated in the eighth century before Christ. We know that this
civilization was followed by another which we call the Greco-Latin.
This was centred on the one hand in the wonderful Greek race, with
their highly cultivated sense of beauty, and on the other hand in the
powerful state of Rome. We also know that in this age occurred the
mighty event in earthly evolution which we know as the advent of
Christ Jesus. Then followed the age in which we are now living.
First the Egyptian age with all that belonged to it and a great
deal belonged to it then the Greco-Latin age with its great
results the rise of Christianity and then our present
age. These are the three ages which come before our mental eyes when
we consider the sub-title of these lectures.
It will be shown that there was an interplay of mysterious forces
between the age of civilization first mentioned and our own. It is as
if in the Egyptian age certain seeds were sown in the breast of
gradually developing humanity, seeds which remained hidden during the
Greco-Latin age and have reappeared in a special manner in the present
one. Much of that which buds in our souls today, much of that which
surrounds us, and of which people speak and dream, has sprung like
seed from the ancient Egyptian civilization without our people being
aware of it.
You are all more or less acquainted with the telegraphic apparatus.
You know that wires connecting the different apparatuses extend from
one place to another, and without having any deep knowledge of these
things you understand that the force which sets the apparatus in
motion has something to do with the force which flows through the
wires. You perhaps also know that there is a connection down in the
earth, that the ends of the wires are connected with the earth; but
this subterranean connection is invisible because it is made by more
or less mysterious forces produced by the earth itself. Something
similar exists as a deep mystery in the development of man. In history
we see threads being spun which lie within the invisible world. By
means of history and of occultism we can trace out that which took
place in ancient Egypt. We see how the threads of culture stretch from
the Greek age, the Roman, the Christian, down into our own age. All
these are guided by a kind of connection that takes place above the
earth, but there is also a hidden, a subterranean force which works
more or less directly from the ancient Egyptian age into our own. Many
a remarkable secret is revealed to us when we follow these connections
and examine them thoroughly.
To begin with I shall indicate briefly the special facts referred to
in the sub-title of our theme. When we look back to ancient Egypt and
observe a few of the mighty records there we are struck by the
Pyramids, for example, and also the Sphinx that wonderful and
enigmatic figure. Then we let our glance pass on to ancient Greece.
Here the Greek temple appears with its unique architecture, we can see
and admire what we know from history of this wonderful land; we see
its sculptures, those great, ideal, and perfect human forms described
as gods: Zeus, Demeter, Pallas Athene, Apollo. Then we turn to the
ancient kingdom of the Romans. Something remarkable appears when we
thus allow our vision to sweep from the ancient Grecian peninsula to
the Italian. Before us appear the figures of ancient Rome, many of
which are still preserved; we see forms clothed with the toga, which
is indeed more than a mere outer dress. What do we feel with regard to
these Roman figures? One might say regarding certain of those
belonging to the Roman Republic that one feels as if the ideal forms
of the Greeks had descended from their pedestals and had appeared
before us as men of flesh and blood. What we are made to see is their
inner power; we recognize what lies in this inner power when we
compare that which developed in ancient Rome with the feeling, the
thought, the content of a figure belonging to the Grecian States
that of a Spartan or an Athenian, for example. We feel what
this figure contains. The men belonging to Sparta or Athens felt that
they were first of all Spartans or Athenians. Being provided in a
certain way and to a certain degree with a common soul, the Spartan or
Athenian felt more what we might call the Greek spirit than his own
personality; he felt himself more as a Spartan or as an Athenian, than
as an individual human citizen; he felt the power that worked so
strongly in him proceeded more from the common spirit of the people
than from his own personal power. The Roman on the contrary appears to
us as being placed somewhat more exactly upon the centre of his own
personality. Hence in the Roman kingdom there appears something very
special, namely the comprehension of the rights of the citizen. All
that lawyers dream regarding the origin of justice
previous to this is very different from what in times of better
research was rightly called Roman Law.
In ancient Rome man learned to regard himself as an individual, he
stood upon his own two feet, no longer as one belonging to a certain
town, but as a Roman citizen; that is to say he felt himself placed
upon the centre of his own human nature. With this feeling of
individuality the time came when what was spiritual in man descended
to earth. Previously it was perceived as hovering, so to speak, above
him in spiritual regions. There is something unique in Roman law and
in Roman civilization. Let us consider the circumstance that the Greek
felt himself primarily as a Spartan or as an Athenian. What was the
spirit of Athens or of Sparta? For us Anthroposophists this was no
abstraction, but something like a spiritual cloud, which in its turn
was the spiritual expression of a spiritual being in which the town of
Athens or Sparta was embedded; but this being was not visible upon the
physical plane. The Greek looked primarily not to himself, but to
something above him, the Roman looked primarily to himself. It was he
who first recognized man as the highest creature that can take on
fleshly form upon the physical plane. The spirit had come completely
down into humanity. This was the time when the Divinity Itself could
descend into human evolution and incarnate in Jesus Christ.
The manner in which Egyptian civilization extended into the
Greco-Roman age was a very wonderful process. We recall how Moses,
when he received in Egypt the commission from higher realms to guide
his people to the One God, asked God What
shall I say to my people when they ask who sent me? And how God
answered (and we shall see what deep truth lay hidden in the
statement) Say to those to whom I send thee, I
AM hath sent me unto you. Thus I AM is the name of
an individual God who worked and ruled at that time as the Christ
Principle in spiritual heights, and who had not yet descended to the
physical plane. To whom did this voice belong which could make itself
perceptible to the initiate Moses, saying to him, as it were from
spiritual worlds, I am the I AM? It was
exactly the same Being (and this is the secret of the ancient Greek
Mysteries) it was the same Being who appeared later in the
flesh as the Christ: only afterwards He was visible to those around
Him, while previously He could speak only through Initiates from
spiritual heights.
Thus we see the Deity that which was Spiritual gradually
descending after humanity had been prepared, after it had learnt in
the Roman age the importance of embodiment in the flesh and its
manifestation on the physical plane. We see how a whole series of the
results of civilization develop in an exceedingly profound way from
out of that which man received as a new gift at that time. We see how
the form of the Pyramids and the Temple change to that of the Roman
church another record of inner human creative work. We see how
from the sixth century the Cross with the dead Jesus makes its
appearance; and how by degrees out of the stream of Christianity a
remarkable figure evolves whose mysteries are very deeply veiled. We
need only call up this figure before our eyes in the wonderful form
given to it by the painter's art in the Sistine Madonna, by Raphael.
Everyone knows this wonderful figure of the Virgin in the centre of
the picture, carrying the child in her arms, and we have certainly all
experienced a corresponding emotional thrill when confronted by it. I
would ask you, however, to note one thing with regard to it which
expresses the spiritual striving of humanity at the stage with which
we are dealing the three civilizations mentioned above. It is
not for nothing that the artist has surrounded the Madonna with a
cloud out of which develop a great number of similar little children,
a crowd of angelic forms. Let us now allow our feeling to be
completely absorbed by this picture of the Madonna. Anyone whose
emotion is sufficiently deep for him to be able to do this will feel
and perceive that there is here something very different from what an
ordinary profane intellect will see in the picture. Do not these
cloud-angels surrounding the Madonna say something to us? Yes, they
say something of the greatest significance if we do but consider them
deeply enough. When we allow ourselves to sink deeply into this
picture, something whispers in our soul, Here before us is a
miracle in the best sense of the word. We do not think that this
child whom the Madonna bears in her arms is born in the ordinary way
from the woman. No! These wonderfully delicate angel-forms we see in
the clouds seem to be in process of development, and the child in the
Madonna's arms seems to be only a more condensed manifestation of
them, like something that had crystallized somewhat more than these
fleeting angel-forms, which seems as if brought down from the clouds
and held fast in her arms. It is thus this child appears to us, and
not as if born from the woman. We are directed to a mysterious
connection between the child and the virgin mother. If we call up the
picture thus before our souls, another virgin mother appears to our
mental vision: the ancient Egyptian Isis, with the child Horus, and we
may become aware of a mysterious connection between the Christian
Madonna and the Egyptian figure on whose temple was written the words,
I AM, which is, and which was, and which is to come my veil no
mortal can raise.
That which we have hinted at as a miracle in the picture of the
Madonna is also revealed in the Egyptian myth, for it there describes
Horus as not having been born through conception, but tells how a beam
of light fell from Osiris upon Isis, a kind of miraculous birth took
place, and the child Horus appeared. Here again we see how threads
connect one thing with another; what we are here able to investigate
is without any earthly connection.
Let us now pass on to where our own age begins. Let us think of the
Gothic cathedral with its wondrous construction of pointed arches, let
us call to mind what took place there in the Middle Ages, in
gatherings where true believers met true priests. Think of the effect
of this Gothic cathedral with its many coloured panes of glass through
which the sunlight penetrates; think, how many of those who were able
to speak of the deeper secrets of the world's evolution could let
tones ring forth, whose outward image was the wonderful light split
thus into varied colours. Again and again it happened that the priests
showed how the common power of the Divine Being was imparted to
humanity in separate rays of power, split up like the light which
streamed in through the coloured windows. The partition of the light
was placed before men's senses, and in their souls was aroused that
which lay spiritually at the back of this symbol. In this way the
Gothic cathedral pervaded the powers of perception, and of feeling, of
the worshippers.
Let us now enter more deeply into what is thus pictured in our minds.
Let us first consider the Egyptian Pyramid a most
characteristic form of architecture! We must exert ourselves mentally
in order to discover what it has to say to us. By degrees we shall see
how in the pyramid the secret of the World, Earth, and Man is
expressed; we shall see that there is expressed in it what the
Egyptian priest felt according to his form of religion. Later we shall
penetrate deeply into all these things; today we will only notice what
such a priest felt, and imparted to his people in pictures. The wisdom
expressed in the Egyptian form of religion was very profound; it was
the direct result of ancient tradition; it was like a memory, and the
Egyptian sage in his meeting with Solon could say with truth: Oh
ye Greeks, ye remain children all your lives, and in your childish
souls is none of the ancient truth! He refers here to the age of
wisdom in Egypt. From whence came this wisdom?
Our present humanity was preceded, as you know, by another which dwelt
upon a continent over which the billows of the Atlantic Ocean now
roll. When the great Atlantean flood took place, the knowledge of the
Atlanteans was carried towards the East across present-day Europe. The
northern myths have remained behind as remembrances of the wisdom of
Atlantis. We know that the successors of the Atlanteans carried the
wisdom of ancient India and Persia into Asia. We also know that
Egyptian wisdom was partly re-animated by Asia, but that it also
streamed directly from the West, from Atlantis, towards Africa.
Now what sort of wisdom was it that was referred to by the ancient
sage when he spoke of the ancient truth? This will be
disclosed if for a moment we pause to consider the difference between
life today and life in ancient Atlantis. At that time man was gifted
with a dim clairvoyance, around him he saw beings who are also around
us today, but whom present day man sees no longer. The earth does not
contain only plants, minerals, and animals; spiritual beings are also
around us, but these are visible only to clairvoyant eyes. In Atlantis
at that time man was normally clairvoyant, divine beings were his
companions, he lived with them as we now live with human beings. There
was not as yet that sharp distinction between day-consciousness and
night-consciousness there is now. At the present time when man enters
in the morning, with his astral body and ego, into physical life
physical objects are around him; and when at night he rises out of his
physical body this world becomes dark and dim to him. This is the case
today with the normal human being; but in Atlantis it was not so,
particularly in its earliest periods. When at night man stepped out of
his physical and etheric body darkness did not then spread around him;
he entered a world of spiritual beings and he saw these divine
spiritual forms just as he now sees fleshly forms. He saw Baldur,
Wotan, Zeus, and Apollo who are not imaginary, fanciful
figures, but are the expression of real beings who, at the time of
which we are speaking, had not taken on bodies of flesh, but possessed
as their densest form transparent etheric bodies. When at night man
withdrew from his physical body these were around him as etheric
forms; and when in the morning he again drew into his physical body he
was in the world of reality which today is for him the only world; he
left for a time, one might say, the world of the Gods and dipped down
into the world of physical, fleshly existence. There was no strict
boundary between his day perception and his night perception, and when
in those times the Initiate spoke to ordinary people of these Divine
Beings he was not speaking of something that was strange to them. It
was the same as when today we speak of men and call them by their
names; the Initiate spoke of such Beings as Wotan and Baldur, for they
knew them as divine etheric Beings.
The remembrance of that ancient wisdom and of these experiences was
carried with them by those who journeyed towards the East; and from
them sprang these remembrances which were connected with something
else which developed in the peculiar constitution of the Egyptian
people the conviction that an eternal spiritual part dwells in
man, and that when his body becomes a corpse it has been forsaken by
this divine spiritual part. This conviction is expressed in numerous
symbols and teachings which the Egyptian priests gave to the people;
it was not merely an abstract truth to them, it was a truth in which
they lived, and which they experienced directly.
Let us describe what the Egyptian perceived. He said, I see here
a corpse, the dust of a man who was the bearer of an ego; I know
for I know it from ancient tradition and from the experience of
my ancestors that there is something else, a spiritual part,
which passes into other worlds. This could not fulfil its task were it
to live solely in that spiritual world. A connecting link must be
formed between this spiritual part and the earthly world; we must form
a magnetic link for the soul which passes at death into higher realms,
in order to arouse in it a feeling of permanence, so that it may
return again, and appear once more on this earth.
We know from the teachings of Spiritual Science that humanity of
itself takes care that the soul shall return again and again to new
incarnations; we know that when man passes at death into other
spheres, during the period in kamaloka (that period during which he
weans himself from what is earthly) he is still chained by certain
forces to that which is physical. We know that it is these forces
which do not allow him to rise at once into the regions of Devachan,
and that it is they also which draw him down again to a new
incarnation. But we are a people today who live in abstractions, and
who represent such things as theories. In ancient Egypt all this lived
as tradition. The Egyptian was the reverse of a theorist or mere
thinker; he wanted to see with his senses how the soul took its way
from the dead body into higher realms, he wanted to have this
constructed before him. These thoughts he embodied in the pyramids;
the way the soul rises, how it leaves the body, how it is still partly
fettered, and how it is led upwards to higher regions. In the
architecture of the pyramids we can see the fettering of the soul to
what is earthly, we can see how kamaloka with its mysterious forms
comes before us, and we can say that, considered externally, it is a
symbol of the soul which has left the body and is rising into higher
realms.
Let us endeavour to understand these ancient traditions. In the
Atlantean age man still saw around him much that is completely hidden
from him today. You will recall from previous lectures that in
Atlantis the etheric body of man was not so intimately bound up with
the physical body as it is now, the etheric head projected far beyond
the physical head. In animals this formation has remained to the
present day. When a horse is observed clairvoyantly the etheric head
may be seen towering upwards as a form of light above the horse's nose
and in the case of an elephant a truly remarkable structure can be
seen above the trunk. In Atlantean humanity the etheric head was in a
somewhat similar position, although not quite so far outside. Later it
gradually drew more and more into the physical head, so that now it is
about the same size as the latter. On this account the physical head
which was at first only partly governed by the etheric head and
still had many forces outside which are today within it was not
yet human to any high degree; it was only in course of development,
and still possessed a somewhat lower animal form.
What did the Atlantean see when he looked at a companion during the
day? He saw a man with a very receding forehead, very protruding teeth
something that reminded him of an animal but at night when he
slept clairvoyant consciousness began, the animal-like form
became less distinct, and out of the physical head grew the etheric
head, which already had a human form and indeed a very much more
beautiful form than we see today. In still more remote times the
Atlantean clairvoyant could look back to a period when man's physical
form was yet more animal-like though he possessed an etheric body
which was entirely human; far more beautiful indeed than the present
physical form, which has adapted itself to coarser, denser forces. Now
imagine this memory of the Atlantean placed consciously yet
symbolically before the people of Egypt. Imagine the Egyptian priest
saying to the people: In Atlantean times your own souls, when
you were awake, beheld the human figure with an animal form, but at
night there grew out of it an exceedingly beautiful human head.
This memory, presented in sculpture, is the Sphinx. It is only thus
that these forms can be understood; we must realize that they are not
merely thought-out forms, but realities.
Let us now pass from the Egyptian pyramid to the Greek temple. This
temple will only be understood by those who are able to feel that
there are forces in space. The Greek possessed this feeling. Anyone
studying space from the standpoint of Spiritual Science knows that it
is not the absolute void of which our ordinary mathematicians and
physicists dream, but that it is differentiated. It is something that
is filled with lines, with lines of force in this direction and in
that, from above downwards, from right to left, straight and curved
lines going in every direction. Space may be felt, it may be
penetrated with feeling. He who has such a feeling for space knows why
certain old painters could paint the floating angel forms in the
pictures of Madonna in a way so wonderfully true to nature; he knows
that these angels mutually support each other, just as the planets do
in space by their power of attraction. It is quite different when we
consider Bocklin's picture Piety. Nothing is said here
against the excellence of this picture otherwise, but anyone who has
preserved the living feeling for space has the sensation that those
remarkable angel forms may fall at any moment. The painters of olden
times had the perception that belonged to earlier clairvoyance. In
modern times this has been lost.
When art still possessed occult traditions these mutually supporting
forces which existed in space, which streamed hither and thither, were
recognized. They were perceived by those in whose minds the thought of
the Greek temple originated. They did not think out these forms, but
they perceived the forces streaming through space, and filled them
with stone; that which was already there occultly they filled with
substance. Hence the Greek temple is a material presentation of actual
forces existing in space; a Greek temple is a crystallized
space-thought in the purest sense of the word. The result of this was
very important; by giving material expression to force forms in space
the Greeks gave divine spiritual beings the opportunity of using these
material forms. It is no figure of speech but a fact when we say that
Gods came down at that time into the Greek temples in order to be
among men on the physical plane.
Just as today parents place the physical form, the body of flesh, at
the disposal of the child, in order that the spirit can express itself
on the physical plane, so something similar took place in the case of
the Greek temple. The opportunity was provided for divine spiritual
beings to stream down and incarnate in the architectural structure.
That is the secret of the Greek temple. God was present in the temple.
Those who felt the form of the Greek temple aright felt that there
need be no human being anywhere near it, nor in the temple itself, and
yet it would not be empty, for God was really present there. The Greek
temple is a whole; it is complete in itself, because it has a form
which magically draws God into it.
If we now consider a Roman church, especially one with a crypt, we
shall see a further development. In the Pyramid we see presented the
path the soul takes after death, the outer architectural form for the
soul when departing; the Greek temple is the expression of the divine
soul which likes to tarry upon the physical plane; the Roman church
with its crypt corresponds to the Cross upon which the dead body of
Jesus hangs. Humanity at this stage had progressed to an advanced
consciousness in spiritual spheres. The bond to what is earthly, the
period in kamaloka, is represented by the Pyramids; the victory over
the physical form, the victory over death, is expressed in the Cross,
and reminds us of the spiritual victory of Christ over death.
Again, a further step is taken to the Gothic Cathedral. Without the
pious congregation within, it is incomplete. If we wish to feel it as
a whole, then to the pointed arches must be added the folded hands and
the upward-streaming feelings they express; not such feelings as are
in the crypt, where the memory of the spiritual victory over death is
preserved, but victorious feelings, such as the soul perceives who
already in the body has felt that it is a victor over death. The soul,
victorious over death while in the body, belongs to the Gothic
building, which is incomplete if it is not filled with such feelings.
The Greek temple is the body of God; it is complete in itself. The
Gothic church is something which requires a congregation; it is not a
temple but a Dom, a cathedral. The German word
Dom appears in the English suffix dom in the
words kingdom, Christendom, for example. It
also lies at the root of the Russian word Duma. A dome, or
dom, is something in which individual members are gathered together
into one congregation. From this we can see how in time human thought
and human perception progresses from the Pyramid to the Greek temple,
then to the Roman church with its crypt, and afterwards to the Gothic
cathedral.
Thus we arrive gradually at our own age, and we shall see how the
forces of evolution are at work not only on the surface, but that
mysterious occult currents are active also beneath, so that what is
taking place today in our civilization appears as a re-embodiment of
much that was sown within humanity in ancient Egyptian times.
We will close with a thought which hints at this mysterious
connection. What constitutes the materialism of our present
civilization? What is the special characteristic of the man who, when
he wishes to see something spiritual, has lost the harmony that
reconciles faith and knowledge? He sees nothing! He regards the gross,
material, physical part of the world; he feels it to be real, that it
exists, and he even comes to deny what is spiritual. He believes that
man's existence is finished when his corpse lies in the earth; he sees
nothing rising up into the spiritual worlds. Can a conception such as
this be the outcome of something that was sown at a time when there
was a firm faith in the continued life of the soul, such as existed in
Egypt? Yes, for it is not in Civilization as in the vegetable kingdom,
where like things spring forth again and again from the seed. In
civilization one characteristic alternates with another which is
apparently dissimilar to it and yet there may be deeper and
more intimate similarities.
The vision of man is confined today to the physical body; he regards
this as a reality; he cannot raise himself to that which is spiritual.
The souls who now regard their physical bodies with their eyes, and
are unable to rise to what is spiritual, were incarnated among earlier
peoples as Greeks, as Romans, and as ancient Egyptians; all that
exists in our souls today is the result of what we acquired in
previous incarnations.
Imagine your soul back in its Egyptian body. Imagine your soul after
death being led up again by way of the Pyramid into higher spheres
but your body held fast as a mummy. This fact had an occult
result. The soul had always to look downwards when its mummified body
was below; its thoughts were hardened, solidified, they were attracted
to the physical world. It was forced to look down from the realms of
the spirit upon its embalmed physical body, and in consequence the
thought became rooted in it that the physical body had a higher
reality than it actually had. Imagine a man, in his soul, looking down
at that time upon his mummy. Thought regarding the physical hardened;
it passed through repeated incarnations, and now is such that man
cannot extricate his thoughts from the physical bodily form.
Materialistic thought is often the result of the embalming of the
body.
Thus we see how thoughts and feelings work from one incarnation to
another; how civilizations are continued through repeated
incarnations, and how they reappear later in entirely different forms.
This ought to arouse a faint idea of the countless occult threads
which are hidden below the surface.
In this lecture we have indicated briefly the subjects to be dealt
with in subsequent lectures. In them our vision shall sweep upwards to
the highest regions of those worlds beheld by the Egyptian priests; we
shall have to direct our attention to the nature, the goal, and the
destiny of man; and we shall understand how such problems as these are
solved when we realize that the fruits of one age of civilization
reappear in a wonderful and mysterious manner in a subsequent one.
Last Modified: 07-Oct-2024
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