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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
Ancient Wisdom and the new Apocalyptic Wisdom. Temple sleep. Isis and the Madonna. Past stages of Evolution. The bestowing of the Ego. Future Powers.
Schmidt Number: S-1808
On-line since: 11th July, 2002
Ancient Wisdom and the new Apocalyptic Wisdom. Temple sleep. Isis and the Madonna. Past stages of Evolution. The bestowing of the Ego. Future Powers.
We shall enter best into our subject if in the first place we try to
form a clear conception of the two extremes which have to be
considered when Universe and Man are brought into relationship with
each other. These two extremes are the spirit-soul and the
psycho-material. We will endeavour to discuss these, starting with a
phenomenon which, to the man of the present day, is more or less of a
riddle, but which is found in the ancient Egyptian conception of the
world and life. I mean what is called temple-sleep.
The unique fact lying at the foundation of temple-sleep is that among
the Egyptian priests, and in ancient civilizations in general, wisdom
was held to be very closely bound up with the art of healing and with
health.
The man of today has but a dim conception of those ancient ideas
regarding the inner relationships between wisdom and health, between
science and the art of healing; and it will be the task of the
Anthroposophical movement to direct humanity once more to that
conception of the spiritual through which wisdom and the art of
healing will be brought again into close connection. This recalls what
was said in the last lecture. It recalls that ancient figure of which
we were reminded when we looked at the picture of the Madonna and
child, as painted by Raphael it reminds us of Isis with the
child Horus, the Goddess on whose temple was inscribed the words:
I AM, who was, who is, who will be; my veil no mortal can
raise.
This Goddess was mysteriously connected with the art of healing; she
was regarded as the teacher of the Egyptian priesthood in this
respect. There is a remarkable statement taking us back to the very
earliest ages of antiquity that shows how Isis was particularly
interested in the health of mankind at the time when she was placed
among mortals.
This points to a very mysterious fact.
We must now sketch in a few words, and bring before your souls, the
nature of temple-sleep, which was one of the remedies employed by the
priests of Egypt. Anyone who had suffered loss of health in any way in
those days was not treated as a rule with external remedies; there
were only a few of these, and they were seldom used. Sufferers were in
most cases taken to the temple and there put into a kind of sleep. It
was not an ordinary sleep, but a kind of somnambulistic sleep which
was so intensified that the patient became capable of having not
chaotic dreams merely but of seeing orderly visions. During this sleep
the patient perceived etheric forms in the spiritual world, and the
wise priests understood the art of influencing these etheric pictures
which passed before the sleeper; they could control and guide them.
Let us suppose that an invalid was put into a temple-sleep. The priest
skilled in medicine was at his side when he fell into this
somnambulistic sleep, the invalid then entered a world of etheric
forms, and the priest, because of the power he possessed through his
initiation (and which was only possible in those ancient times when
conditions of existence were such as no longer or very seldom exist
today), was able to control the entire sleep. He formed and fashioned
the etheric visions and beings in such a way that there actually
appeared before the sleeper, as if by magic, those forms which at one
time the ancient Atlanteans had looked on as their Gods. These Divine
forms concerning which the various peoples still possessed a
remembrance, in the German and Norse, and the Greek mythologies
were now placed before the soul of the person who was in the
temple-sleep. He saw in particular certain figures which were
connected with the healing principle.
Had the patient remained conscious, as in the waking consciousness of
today, it would not have been possible for such forces to act upon
him; this was only possible in somnambulistic sleep. The wise priest
guided this dream-life in such a way that powerful forces were
liberated during the etheric visions, and these restored to order and
harmony the forces of the body which had fallen into disorder and
discord. This was only possible when the self-consciousness of the
patient had been suppressed. Temple sleep had therefore a very real
significance, and we can see how the healing art of the priests was
connected with knowledge only accessible to man through initiation.
The connection lies clearly before us. It was the priests who, through
the revival of the ancient vision of higher worlds, possessed in their
wisdom the forces which came from these worlds, whereby spirit could
work upon spirit. They acquired the capacity of allowing spirit to
work upon spirit, and through this wisdom was brought into inner
connection with health.
In the uplifting of the self to what was spiritual there was, in
ancient times, a healing element, and it would be well if man were to
learn to understand this again, for he would then understand the great
mission of the Anthroposophical movement, which is to lead man up to
the spiritual world, so that he may again enter those worlds from
which he has descended. It is true that in future people will not be
put into a somnambulistic condition; self-consciousness will be fully
maintained, all the same, strong spiritual forces will become active
in man, and the possession of wisdom and insight into higher worlds
will then be capable of acting on human nature to harmonize and heal.
Today this connection between spirituality and the healing art is
hidden, those who are not initiated into the deeper wisdom of the
Mysteries cannot discern the connection, they cannot even observe the
more subtle facts that confront them. Those who look more deeply know
upon what profound inner conditions a case of healing may depend. Let
us suppose for example that a certain illness befalls a person and
that it has an inner cause, not a fractured thigh-bone or a disordered
stomach, for these are external causes.
Anyone wishing to go deeply into this will very soon find that in the
case of a person who occupies himself much with mathematical ideas
conditions of health are very different to the case of another who
does not occupy himself with such things. This fact indicates the
remarkable connection between the mental life of a person and the
state of his external health. It is not, of course, as if mathematical
thinking healed the man. Let us look at this more closely: that
different conditions of healing are necessary in the case of one
applying himself to mathematics and one who does not. Suppose two
people have exactly the same illness in reality this never
happens, but we may suppose it. One of them does not care to know
anything about mathematical ideas; the other is intensely interested
in them. It might happen that it was quite impossible to cure the
non-mathematical person whereas it might be possible to heal the other
with suitable remedies. What I have stated is an actual fact.
Take another example. We have two people before us; one is an Atheist
in the worst sense, the other a deeply religious man. Again it might
happen that if both have the same disease and the same remedy is used
that the religious man can be cured and the other not. These are
things which to modern thinking at least to the greater part of
humanity will seem absurd; however, they are not so. How is
this? It depends on the fact that an entirely different influence is
exercised upon human nature by so-called sense free ideas,
and by those filled with sense perception. Think for a moment of the
difference between a man who likes mathematics and one who does not.
The latter says: I ought to think about these things! but I only
want to think of things which I can perceive with my senses!
Nevertheless, it is of great use to the inner being of man to dwell on
conceptions of that which cannot be seen. Hence it is useful to have
religious conceptions, for these also relate to things which cannot be
grasped with the hands, nor have any connection with outer, material
things in a word with things which are sense-free. These are
matters which one day, when man will look up more to that which is
spiritual, will have a great influence on educational principles.
For example, let us take the simple conception 3 x 3=9. Children form
such a conception best when they do it without the help of anything
material. It is not good when they put 3 x 3 beans next each other for
too long, for then they do not rise at all above the sense conception;
but if you accustom children, to begin with, not for too long, to
count on their fingers, and then follow it with pure mathematical
thinking, such thought has a curative, harmonizing effect upon the
children. How little people of the present day understand such things
can be seen from the fact that in their system of instruction the
exact opposite occurs. Has not the abacus been introduced into our
schools whereby addition, subtraction, etc., are made clear to
sense-eyes by means of different coloured balls? In this way that
which ought to be comprehended purely in the mind is said to be
made clear to the senses. It may be convenient, but those who
consider this to be educational know nothing of that deeper curative
education which is rooted in the power of the spirit. A man who from
childhood has been accustomed to live with sense conceptions will not,
because his nerve system has lived under sickly conditions, be able to
be cured as easily as one who from his youth has been accustomed to
sense-free ideas. The more a person is accustomed to think apart from
objects the easier it is to cure him.
In ancient times when a person was ill it was customary to place
before him all kinds of symbolic figures, triangles, and combinations
of numbers. The object, besides the other value these things possessed,
was to uplift him from the mere outward vision of things. If I place a
triangle before me and merely look at it, that has no particular value
but if on the other hand I see it as the symbol of the higher triad of
man it becomes a healing conception of the mind.
Observe how the conceptions of Spiritual Science lead us to the vision
of things Spiritual. We are led from what takes place on earth to what
has taken place on the ancient Sun, Moon, and Saturn. With physical
eyes we cannot see the events of those times, nor with sensely hands
can we reach up to the ancient Moon or ancient Sun; but without the
aid of the external crutches of our senses we can uplift ourselves to
the things which existed once upon a time; we can acquire conceptions
which have an equalizing and harmonizing effect upon our whole life
and likewise upon our body.
Spiritual Science will again prove to be a great, a universal remedy,
as it was formerly in the hands of the Egyptian priests; at that time,
however, it necessitated the suppression of the ego, as in
temple-sleep. The spiritual conception of the world is a curative
conception.
Many people will say in answer to this assertion: Are all
Anthroposophists healthy people? Are there no invalids among them?
We must understand that fundamentally the individual can do very
little for his health and his sickness. A large proportion of the
causes of disease lies outside the individual personality. A person
may have the healthiest ideas, which, if he were to live under quite
healthy conditions, would result in his never being ill from internal
causes; but there are other causes lying outside the power of the
individual of today, the secret causes of heredity for example, the
influences passing from one human being to another, the influences of
unnatural environment, etc. All these influences, which, in a hidden
way, are external causes of disease, can only be done away with
gradually by a healthy Anthroposophical method of thought. Although we
may observe that a person who is inwardly most healthy may fall ill,
even dangerously ill, we must not regard this as a sign that Spiritual
Science will fail to act curatively upon humanity in the course of
centuries I say centuries, not thousands of years. There is a
future before spiritually thinking men, in whom no inner cause of
sickness will exist for those able to provide the inward and outward
conditions of Spiritual wisdom. External causes there will always be,
these can only be eradicated as a spiritually scientific art of
healing gains more and more ground.
When we rightly understand the effect of that which is Spiritual we
find that temple-sleep is not unintelligible to us. What was it that
was conjured up before the sleeper in the temple in his etheric
visions? It was the picture of the Atlantean Gods whom we once knew as
etheric forms; among whom we once lived, when we were able to be
conscious outside the physical body and could exercise etheric
clairvoyance. If we go still farther back in human evolution, far
beyond the Atlantean epoch, we reach a period in which man first
became what he now is, when he first appeared as the individual
personality he is today. This period is called the Lemurian epoch. The
Atlantean continent, from which the people spread to Africa, Europe,
and Asia, came to an end through mighty water catastrophes.
Lemuria, which was that portion of the earth upon which humanity dwelt
before the Atlantean epoch, was destroyed through the forces of fire,
by volcanic catastrophes. It was during the Lemurian epoch that man
first gained consciousness of his ego. This was a mighty impulse in
the evolution of man.
How was it that man attained to his I or ego
consciousness?
It is very difficult for the materialist thought of the present day to
imagine this ancient condition of humanity. Were you to imagine the
man of that time as similar to the man of today, with flesh and blood,
bones and muscles, your idea would be entirely wrong. At that time man
possessed a far more impermanent, a far softer form; his body was
comparatively fluidic. That which later became muscles and bones has
only grown hard in the course of time. At that period also the
propagation of humanity was entirely different. Man lived more in the
surroundings of the earth in the atmosphere, which at that time
was not pure air as it is today, but was filled with all kinds of
vapours. In this man lived as a true airy form, and the currents
surrounding the earth passed in and out of him. Man's form was almost
the same as some cloud we see today which continually changes its
form, only the form of man at that time was firmer and more defined.
There appeared then, also for the first time, what are now described
as the sexes; at that period of evolution an ancient, non-sexual kind
of propagation was replaced by a sexual one.
This took place, however, millions and millions of years ago.
Simultaneously with sexual reproduction came the embodiment of the
earliest germ of the ego. Previous to this man was impelled to produce
his like from himself through external influences which lay in the
sphere around him. That was the form of reproduction at a time when
man did not as yet possess an ego, when he still had a dim clairvoyant
consciousness, when he rested
Entirely in the bosom of the Deity, and could not say,
I am. His perception was somewhat as follows: he was aware
that when he did anything it made an impression upon his spiritual
environment, and he felt his existence to be within this environment.
He was not able to say: I am here, but my
environment lets me be here. He lay within the bosom of the
living earth, and the living forces of the earth streamed out and in
of him. At that time there were no unhealthy forces; disease did not
exist; there was no death such as we know it. It was only when, with
sexual reproduction, man was endowed with his ego, that sickness and
death entered. At that time the human being was not fertilized by his
like but just as today he breathes, so he then absorbed substances
from his environment, and in this environment the fertilizing forces
were to be found; that which then entered into him fertilized him, and
caused him to bring forth his kind.
These forces in man were healthy, and so was that which, as his kind,
he produced.
The priests of ancient Egypt knew this, and they said: The further we
guide man's vision back into previous conditions the more do we bring
him into conditions in which there is no disease. The vision of the
old Atlantean Gods acted curatively, and this was still more the case
when the priests guided these visions so that the temple-sleeper had
before him those primeval forms which were fertilized, not from their
like, but from that which was in their environment. The invalid who
lay in the temple-sleep beheld the form of her who was the mother of
her kind without having received fertilization from her kind. Before
him stood the generating woman, the woman with child, yet who is
virgin; the Goddess who in the Lemurian epoch was the companion of
man, and who has since disappeared from the sight of man. In ancient
Egypt she was called Holy Isis.
Isis could only be seen by men in a normal way when death had not as
yet appeared on earth. At that time men were, in normal consciousness
the companions of such forms as floated around them, and they brought
forth their kind virginally.
When Isis was no longer the visible companion of humanity, when she
was withdrawn into the circle of the Gods, she continued to interest
herself in the health of man from the Spiritual World so said the
priests and when a person was raised to the vision of those
ancient forms in an abnormal way, as in temple-sleep, the pictured
Isis still acted curatively on him. She is that principle in man which
was present in him before he received his mortal covering. HER veil
has no mortal raised, for she is the form which was there when death
had not as yet come into the world. She is the ONE ROOTED IN THE
ETERNAL; she is the great HEALING PRINCIPLE to which humanity will
again attain, when it steeps itself anew in Spiritual Wisdom.
We see what has remained of this in the wonderful symbol of the Virgin
Mother with the child; speaking from the standpoint of Spiritual
Science we say with emphasis that we see it in many pictures of the
Madonna. We assert these pictures have a curative effect; for, within
the limits which have been discussed, a picture of the Madonna is a
means of healing. When it is viewed and studied in such a way that it
has an after effect upon the human soul, when this human soul can
dream during sleep about the Madonna picture, it then possesses a
healing power even today.
Let us now ask what were the fertilizing forces at a time when the
human being was not fertilized by his own kind?
Think of our earth at that time as being a solid kernel surrounded by
all kinds of viscous, seething, substances, mingled with vapour, and
in this half-watery structure dwelt Lemurian humanity. The earth was
shone upon by the sun, which could not then be perceived by human
eyes, because our sense organs had not developed; the sun's influence,
however, penetrated through the veils of mist and cloud, and with the
power of the sun's rays the earth received also powers of
fructification. The earth did not only receive the forces of warmth,
but at the same time the forces which today live in the power of
fructification. That which the human being absorbed streamed to the
earth from invisible Spiritual Sun-beings. Such was the relationship
between sun and earth. The power which acted at that time upon those
sexless self-propagating human forms was perceived as a masculine
power. This was poured out over the whole earth as a product of the
sun. Such were the conditions during the early part of the Lemurian
epoch.
Let us now go back still further, to a period in which the conditions
were again quite different, to a primeval past when the sun, which is
now separate, was bound up with our earth. At one time the earth and
the sun formed a single body. All the finer and more etheric parts
were still within this common body. We will consider this body at the
time when the two were connected as somewhat resembling in shape a
fancy biscuit, one part, a smaller globe (namely the earth-plus-moon)
hanging as it were on to the other.
We must imagine the sun as a vast etheric body on which
earth-plus-moon hung. The rays of force from the sun still mingled
with the earth, they passed from the sun to the earth and back from
earth to sun for the two were in a certain way one body. We
shall best understand the purpose of this development if we enquire:
What would have happened if, without anything further taking place,
the sun had turned entirely away from the earth after the separation,
and had no longer sent its beams and currents to the earth? All life
upon the earth would in this case have dried up and hardened. It was
necessary to the earth that the fertilizing influences from the sun
should remain. We have to regard this interaction between sun and
earth as the interaction between two principles: one leading to
destruction, the other giving life. This was also the case later;
invigorating life flowed continually from the sun to the earth.
We have now briefly recapitulated the various stages in the evolution
of our earth. First there was a primeval past when the earth was still
within the sun-body; then a second stage in which the earth was more
loosely connected with the sun; then a third, when the two bodies were
completely separated from each other. It was only in this third epoch
that the ego really entered into man and at this stage sexual
reproduction began. Then followed the fourth epoch, the Atlantean, and
lastly the post-Atlantean epoch, that in which we are now living. To
those who look more deeply into the structure of the world, all that
happens visibly, all that is external, takes place under the influence
of Spiritual Beings. At one time the sun and the earth were one. (We
will go into the Moon development later.) This common body was then
permeated with harmoniously working Divine Spiritual Beings. Such
lofty beings were necessary to govern the forces that at that time
were still undifferentiated.
Now think of development as having progressed: the sun withdrew. What
took place then? With the sun went forth the highest beings and the
finest substances; henceforward they worked upon the earth from
outside. Beings who represented truly living ever-accelerating
life, dwelt upon the sun; and on the earth the beings who, if they had
been left to themselves, would have suffered stiffening, darkness,
destruction. At this second stage of evolution light and darkness were
both at work.
At the third stage of evolution the earth-man is endowed with his ego,
and the time begins when his self-conscious I dwells
within him. He becomes aware of this ego by its opposite, and he
gradually passes into one condition in which he has a clear
consciousness, and into another in which he has a dim consciousness;
the first comes to him from the sun, and the other preferably from the
earth. The ego, the eternal germ, has to alternate between two forms,
one an eternal form, and the other a form which can be born and can
die. Those beings, who always possess what man has only occasionally,
have forsaken their earth bodies. First that being who brings about
fertilization, who lives principally on the sun, went forth from the
moon-earth, then the being who makes the human form static or more
permanent goes forth with the moon.
Sun and moon gradually separated from the earth. With the sun went
forth the beings who, had they remained united with it, would have
brought a too precipitate life to earth; and with the moon all those
forces withdrew which would have brought about a hardening and
stiffening; everything which would have tended to make form permanent.
The earth remained in the midst, as it were between the two. Man on
earth alternates between these two, he is influenced on the one hand
by the sun, and on the other by the forces of the moon. The beings who
were previously man's companions had now withdrawn, some to the sun
and some to the moon.
In the fourth epoch of the earth's evolution, those companions of man
were met with who had condensed so far as to an etheric body, and they
were in certain respects subject to human weaknesses. These were the
etheric Gods with whom men lived during the Atlantean period. In
post-Atlantean times he lost his connection with these etheric Gods,
he entered entirely into the physical world and the door leading to
spiritual worlds was shut.
There remained to man, however, from these ancient times something
that was like a remembrance of the spiritual worlds, and, in
accordance with the law of repetition everything he had passed through
in life at one time woke up within him later as knowledge.
Man had lived through numerous epochs in which he was variously
related to the Gods. He now passed through the same stages again, but
with knowledge.
After the great Atlantean flood, in the first holy ancient Indian
civilization, man passed once again in soul and spirit through that
epoch when earth and sun were united. The very exalted Deity who
guided and adjusted everything that man experienced in the first
post-Atlantean civilization was called by a name which remained, as a
tradition, into later times. Man called this Deity Brahman, the
All-One.
This Deity actually dwelt among men at one time in the first
epoch of the evolution of our earth man was the companion of Brahman,
who was reverenced in the ancient Indian civilization, and was known
to man when in a higher state of abstraction.
Then followed the Persian civilization during which mankind
experienced consciously the second epoch, when the sun with its
all-invigorating forces separated itself from the forces of darkness.
Therefore man perceived a duality in the Godhead in the second age of
civilization, and this duality is represented as the opposition of
Ormuzd, the good Deity, and Ahriman, the destroying Deity. This was
nothing but a repetition but in knowledge of that which
man had passed through in fact in earlier ages.
We then come to the memory of the epoch when the sun and moon went
forth from the previously united celestial body, the sun with its
fertilising forces and the moon with forces which gave form: to man a
transitory form, and to the Gods a permanent one. In the Egyptian age
this difference was perceived in the opposition of earlier forces to
those still at work, but now their opposition was in a different form.
In Egypt the solar forces were perceived as the forces of Osiris.
Osiris was the power of the sun as it worked in the third epoch of
earthly evolution, and the religion of Osiris arose and flourished in
this age. Isis represents the power of the moon before its complete
separation from the earth, before the division of sex, when the
virginal power of reproduction was still operative. Later Isis escaped
to the moon, where she became numb congealed.
In the fourth age, that of the Greco-Latin civilization, humanity
experienced in polytheism a remembrance of the Atlantean epoch with
its numerous etheric figures of the Gods.
In our age of civilization, the fifth, we have nothing to repeat. Let
us bring this thought before our minds: we have nothing to repeat, no
ancient remembrances. We have given birth to a fifth age of
civilization, one whose results will be seen in the future, while the
four previous ages were repetitions of the four preceding cosmic
epochs. Our age must give birth not merely to an ancient wisdom, but
to a new wisdom, a wisdom which points not only to the past,
but which must work prophetically apocalyptically into
the future. In the mysteries of past ages of civilization we see an
ancient wisdom preserved, but our wisdom must be an apocalyptic
wisdom, the seed for which must be sown by us. Once again we have need
of a principle of initiation so that the primeval connection with
spiritual worlds may be renewed.
The task of the Anthroposophical movement is to supply this principle.
No wonder that wisdom has been lost to so many, for without the
principle of initiation it is very difficult nowadays to obtain
wisdom, more difficult than formerly, when the memory of ancient
experiences had only to be refreshed, and when the results of earlier
development could be brought to the consciousness of man. Today this
is difficult; therefore we can understand that the sense-world seems
to be without a God, and to be barren and empty; but although it
appears as if the ancient spirit-world had died out, it is there; it
is working and fructifying, and if man wills he can find connection
with the spiritual world.
Care was taken, precisely at the moment when the ancient memories
seemed to be disappearing during the Greco-Latin age, that a wonderful
new seed for all future time should be laid within the cold ground of
the earth; this seed is what we describe as the Christ-Principle. The
apocalyptic wisdom, the true new Spiritual Wisdom, will be found in
conjunction with this Christ Principle, which does not point back only
to memories of past epochs, but prophetically to the future, and
precisely through this it summons man to action, to creative work.
This productive wisdom has sprung freely from seed that was sown in
the past. So we see a far horizon of the future rise before us when we
speak of Universe, Earth, and Man. In what follows we shall have to
speak not merely of the past, but also of the forces of the
future. The world is not merely concerned with what is past, it
evolves towards the future, and our epoch has still a long period to
pass through before it comes to an end. Man will, however, live on
after the earth has disappeared, and, if we are to know him
completely, we must look not to the past alone, but must study what is
active today, and what will go on working into the great to-morrow of
the world.
Last Modified: 07-Oct-2024
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