The Reflection of Cosmic Events
in the Religious Views of Men.
YESTERDAY we looked at certain connections in the spiritual
relationships of the so-called post-Atlantean time. We saw how the
first cultural epoch of this period will repeat itself in the last,
the seventh; how the Persian culture will repeat itself in the sixth;
and how the Egyptian culture, which will occupy us during the next few
days, repeats itself in our own lives and destinies in the fifth
period. Of the fourth culture, the Greco-Latin, we were able to say
that it occupies an exceptional position in that it experiences no
repetition. Thus we could point in a sketchy way to the mysterious
connections in the cultures of the post-Atlantean time, which follows
after the time of the Atlantis that perished through powerful
water-catastrophes. This age that follows Atlantis will perish in
turn. At the end of our fifth great epoch, the post-Atlantean, there
will be catastrophes that will work in a way similar to those at the
close of the Atlantean epoch. Through the War of All Against All, the
seventh culture of the fifth epoch will find its conclusion. These are
interesting connections that are indicated in certain repetitions, and
when we follow them more closely they will throw light into the depths
of our soul life.
In order to lay a proper foundation, we must today allow still other
repetitions to pass before our mind's eye. We will let our glance rove
far into the evolution of our earth, and we will see that these wide
horizons must have an intimate interest for us.
But let us begin with an admonition, a warning against a mechanical
approach to the repetitions. When in the realm of occultism we speak
of such repetitions, saying that the first cultural epoch repeats
itself in the seventh, the third in the fifth, etc., it is easy to let
a certain gift for combinations get the upper hand, so that we try to
apply such schemes or diagrams in other contexts also. It is easy to
believe that we can do this, and many books on theosophy actually
contain a good deal of rubbish of this sort. Hence there must be a
strong warning that such combinations are not controlling, but only
perception, spiritual vision, without which we go astray. Such
combinations must be warned against. What we can read in the spiritual
world may be understood, but not discovered, through logic. It can be
discovered only through experience.
If we wish to understand the cultural epochs more clearly, we must
achieve a general view of the evolution of the earth as it presents
itself to the seer who can direct his spiritual gaze to the events of
the most remote past. If we look far back into the evolution of the
earth, we can say that our earth has not always appeared as it does
today. It did not have the firm mineral base of today; the mineral
kingdom was not as it is today; the earth did not bear the same plants
and animals, and men were not in such a fleshly body as they have
today; men had no bony system. All that was formed later. The farther
we look back, the nearer we come to a condition which, if we could
have observed it from cosmic distances, we would have seen as a mist,
as a fine etheric cloud. This mist was much larger than our present
earth, for it extended as far as the outermost planets of our solar
system and even farther. It included a far-reaching nebular mass,
wherein was contained all that went into the formation of the earth,
and also of the planets and even of the sun.
If we could have examined this mass of mist closely, if an observer
could have approached it, it would have seemed to be composed entirely
of fine etheric points. When we see a swarm of gnats from a distance,
it looks to us like a single cloud; close-up, however, we see the
single insects. Thus, in the most remote past, the mass of our earth
would have appeared, although then it was not material in our sense
but was condensed only to an etheric condition. This earth-formation
consisted of single ether-points, but something special was connected
with these ether-points. Had the human eye been able to see these
points, it would not have seen what the clairvoyant would have seen or
what he actually sees now when he looks back. Let us make this clear
by a comparison. Take the seed of a wild rose, a fully developed seed.
What does one see who observes this? He sees a body that is very
small, and if he did not know how a rose seed looked he would never
imagine that a rose could grow from it. He would never derive this
from the mere form of the seed. But a person who was endowed with a
certain clairvoyant capacity would experience the following. The seed
would gradually disappear from his sight, but to his clairvoyant eye
would appear a flower-like form growing spiritually out of the seed.
It would stand before his clairvoyant view, a real form, but one that
could be seen only in the spirit. This form is the archetype of what
later grows out of the seed. We would err if we believed that this
form was exactly like the plant that grows from the seed. It is not at
all like it. It is a wonderful light-form, containing streams and
complicated formations. One could say that what later grows out of the
seed is only a shadow of this wonderful spiritual light-form beheld by
the clairvoyant.
Holding fast to this picture of how the clairvoyant sees the archetype
of the plant, let us now return to the primeval earth and the single
etheric points. If now, as in the previous example, the clairvoyant
contemplated such an etheric point in the primeval substance, there
would arise for him from the point (as from the seed in the previous
example) a light-form, a beautiful form, which in reality is not there
but rests slumbering in the point. What is this form that the seer
perceives, looking back at the primal earth atom? What is it that
arises? It is a form that is different from physical man, as different
as is the archetype from the physical plant. It is the archetype of
the present human form. At that time the human form slumbered
spiritually in the etheric point, and the whole earth-evolution was
necessary in order that what rested there might develop into
present-day man. Many, many things were necessary for this, just as
much is also necessary for the seed. This seed must be sunk in the
earth, and the sun must send its warming rays, before it can develop
itself into a plant. We will gradually understand how these points
became men if we make clear to ourselves all that has happened in the
meanwhile.
In the primeval past all the planets were connected with our earth.
However, we will first consider the sun, moon, and earth because they
are of special interest to us. At that time our sun, our moon, and our
earth were not separate, but were all together. If we could stir these
three bodies together like a broth in a great world-kettle, and if we
thought of this as one cosmic body, we would have what the earth in
its original condition was sun plus earth plus moon. Naturally, man
could live there only in a spiritual condition. He could live only in
this condition because what is in the present sun was then united with
the earth. For a long, long time the cosmic body contained our earth,
sun, and moon within itself, as well as all the beings and forces
connected with them. In those times man was still only present
spiritually in the primal human atom. This changed only in a time when
something important occurred in world-evolution, when the sun split
off and became a separate body, leaving earth and moon behind. After
this, what was formerly a unity appears as a duality, as two cosmic
bodies, the sun and the earth-plus-moon. Why did this occur?
All that happens has, naturally, a deep meaning, and we understand
this when, looking backward, we find that there dwelt on earth at that
time not only men but also other beings of a spiritual nature who were
connected with them. These were not perceptible to the physical eye
but were nevertheless present, as truly present as men and the other
physical beings. Thus, for example, there are connected with our
earth, living in its environs, beings whom Christian esotericism calls
angels, Angeloi. We can best conceive these beings if we reflect that
they stand at the stage at which man will be when the earth completes
its evolution. Today these beings are already as far along as man will
be at the end of his evolution on earth. A still higher stage is
occupied by the archangels, Archangeloi, or Spirits of Fire, beings
whom we can perceive when we direct our glance to what concerns entire
peoples. Such concerns are guided by the beings called archangels or
Archangeloi. A still higher type of being is called the Primal
Beginnings or Archai or Spirits of Personality. We find these when we
look at whole epochs of time and at many peoples, with all their
connections and contrasts, contemplating what is usually called the
Zeitgeist or Spirit of the Time. When we examine our own time, for
example, we find that it is guided by higher beings called Archai or
Primal Beginnings. Then there are still higher beings called, in
Christian esotericism, Powers or Exusiai or Spirits of Form. Thus
there are innumerable beings connected with our earth who are related
to man in a sort of ladder of successive stages.
If we begin with the mineral and rise from the mineral to the plant,
from the plant to the animal, and then to man, man is the highest
physical being, but the others are also there; they are among us and
permeate us. In the beginning of things, when the earth emerged from
the womb of eternity as a sort of primeval mist, all these beings were
bound up with the earth, and the clairvoyant would have seen how other
beings pervade this picture at the same time as the human form. These
were the beings named above, and beings of still higher types such as
the Virtues, Dominions, Thrones, Cherubim, and finally the Seraphim.
All of these beings were intimately connected with that powerful
etheric dust, but they are at various stages of development. There are
those whose sublimity man cannot fathom, but others are closer to him.
Since these beings were at different stages, they could not go through
their evolution in the same way as man. A dwelling place had to be
created for them. Among these high beings there were some who would
have been greatly handicapped had they remained bound to lower beings.
Therefore they split off. They took the finest substances out of the
mist and built their dwelling in the sun. They created their heaven
there, and there they found the proper tempo for their evolution. Had
they remained in the inferior substances that they left behind in the
earth, they would not have been able to continue their evolution. This
would have hindered their development like a lead weight. This shows
how material occurrences, such as the split in the cosmic substance,
do not proceed from merely physical causes but rather from the forces
of beings who need a site for their development. It happens because
they must build their cosmic house. We must emphasize that spiritual
causes lie at the foundation.
Man remained behind on the earth-plus-moon, and with him higher beings
of the lowest hierarchy, such as angels and archangels, as well as
beings who stood lower than man. But a single mighty being, who was
already ripe enough to migrate to the sun, sacrificed himself and
stayed with earth-plus-moon. This was the being who was later named
Yahweh or Jehovah. He left the sun and became the leader of affairs on
earth-plus-moon. Thus we have two dwelling-places: the sun and
earth-plus-moon. On the sun were the most exalted beings, under the
leadership of an especially high and sublime being whom the Gnostics
attempted to conceive under the name Pleroma. We must picture this
being as the regent of the sun. Yahweh is the leader of
earth-plus-moon. We must make it especially clear that the noblest
loftiest spirits went out with the sun, leaving the earth behind with
the moon. The moon was not yet split off; it was still within the
earth.
How should one conceive this cosmic event of the separation of the sun
from the earth? Above all, one must feel the sun and its inhabitants
to be the most august, pure, and sublime element that was formerly
connected with the earth, whereas earth-plus-moon was the lower
element. At that time its condition was still lower than that of our
present earth. The latter stands higher because there came a later
period during which the earth unburdened itself of the moon and its
grosser substances, in the presence of which man could not have
developed further. The earth had to expel the moon.
Just before this, however, was the darkest and most dreadful time for
our earth. Everything with a noble evolutionary disposition came under
the control of bad forces, so that man could progress further only by
eliminating the worst conditions of existence along with the moon.
We must realize that a sublime light-principle, that of the sun, was
opposed to the principle of darkness, that of the moon. Had one
clairvoyantly observed the sun, which had already withdrawn, one would
have seen the beings who wished to inhabit it, but also something else
would have been perceived. What had withdrawn itself as the sun would
have shown itself not only as a cluster of spiritual beings, nor would
it have appeared as something etheric, for that belongs to a coarser
realm; it would have appeared as something astral, as a mighty
light-aura. What one would have sensed as a light-principle, one would
have seen as a shining aura in cosmic space. The earth, through
allowing this light to go forth, would suddenly have appeared
densified, though not yet coming to a firm mineral consistency. A good
and an evil, a bright and a dark principle, stood opposed to each
other at that time.
Now let us see how the earth looked before it expelled the moon. It
would be entirely wrong to think of it as resembling our present
earth. The core of the earth was then a fiery seething mass. This core
would have appeared as a nucleus of fire surrounded by powerful
water-forces, although these would not have been like our water of
today, for they contained the metals in fluid form. In the middle of
all this was man, but in entirely different form.
Thus the earth appeared when it expelled the moon. Air was not to be
found on the earth; it simply was not there. The beings then existing
needed no air; they had an entirely different breathing system. Man
had become a sort of fish-amphibian, but he consisted of soft fluid
material. What he sucked into himself was not air but what was
contained in the water. This is approximately the way the earth looked
at that time. We must see that the earth at that time was in a lower
condition than at present. It had to be so. Otherwise man could never
have been able to find the right tempo and the means for his
evolution, if the sun and moon had not separated themselves from the
earth. Had the sun remained in the earth, everything would have gone
too fast; whereas everything would have gone too slowly with the
forces that now work on the moon. As the moon withdrew from the earth
amid tremendous catastrophes, there prepared itself slowly what we may
call the separation of an air-sheath from the water-element. Air was
then entirely different from the air of today, for all kinds of vapors
were still contained in it. But the being that was then gradually
preparing itself was a sort of sketch of the man of today. We will
describe all this more fully later.
We have learned to know man in three relationships. First, as he lived
in earth-plus-sun-plus-moon with all the higher beings in a single
cosmic body. Here he presented himself to the clairvoyant eye in the
way described above. Next we see him under unfavorable conditions on
earth-plus-moon. Had he remained in this condition, he would have
become a malicious and savage being. When the sun had separated
itself, there was the contrast of the sun on one side and
moon-plus-earth on the other side. The sun, in all its streaming
glory, glittered as a great sun-aura in space. On the other side
remained earth-plus-moon with all the sinister forces that drag down
the nobler elements in man. A twofoldness arises, which is followed by
a threefoldness. The sun remains as it is, but the earth separates
itself from the moon. The grosser substances withdraw and man remains
behind upon the earth.
Looking at the third period, man feels the forces as a threefold
principle. He asks: Whence come these forces? In the first period man
was still connected with all the high forces of the sun. The forces
that developed in the second period then went out with the moon. Man
felt this as a redemption, but he had a memory of the first period in
which he was still united with the sun-beings. He learned to know what
longing was; he felt himself to be a cast-off son. With the forces
that had gone out with sun and moon he could feel himself as a son of
the sun and of the moon.
So, our earth evolved from a unity to a duality to a trinity: sun,
earth, and moon.
The time when the moon split away, when man first received the
possibility of developing himself, is designated as the Lemurian
epoch. After great fire-catastrophes had terminated this Lemurian
epoch, our earth gradually entered a condition that could produce the
relationships prevailing in ancient Atlantis. The first beginnings of
land emerged from the water-masses. This was long after the moon broke
away, yet it was only because of that breaking-away that the earth was
able to evolve as it did.
In Atlantis man was entirely different from today, but he had reached
the point where he could move about within the air-sheath as a soft,
swimming, floating mass. Only gradually did he develop a bony system.
About the middle of Atlantis he had progressed so far as somewhat to
resemble our present form.
But in Atlantis man had a clairvoyant consciousness. Our present
consciousness developed only in much later times, and if we wish to
understand the man of that time we must bear this clairvoyant
consciousness in mind. We can understand this best through a
comparison with the consciousness of today. Today man perceives the
world from morning to evening by means of his senses. Through his
sense-activity he continually receives impressions of sight, hearing,
etc. But at night this sense-world sinks into an ocean of
unconsciousness. For the occultist, this is really not so much a lack
of consciousness as a lower grade of consciousness.
At this point we must make it clear that today man has a double
consciousness, a bright day-consciousness and a sleep or dream
consciousness. This was not at all the case in the first Atlantean
times. Let us examine the alternation between waking and sleeping in
those early times. During a certain period man dipped down into his
physical body, but he did not perceive objects in the same sharp
outlines as today. If we picture ourselves walking through a dense fog
when the street lamps seem surrounded by a light-aura, we will have a
rough idea of the Atlantean's object-consciousness. For the man of
that time, everything was surrounded by such a fog; everything was as
though enveloped in mist. That was the look of things by day. By night
things looked entirely different, although still not the same as
today. When the Atlantean went out of his body, he did not sink into
unconsciousness but found himself in a world of divine spiritual
beings, ego-beings, whom he perceived around him as his companions. As
truly as man today does not see these beings at night, so truly did he
in those times plunge into an ocean of spirituality, in which he
actually perceived the divine beings. By day he was the companion of
the lower kingdoms; by night he was the companion of the higher
beings. Man lived in a spiritual consciousness, though this was dim;
and, though he had no self-consciousness, he dwelt among these divine
spiritual beings.
Now let us recapitulate the four epochs in the evolution of our earth.
First, let us bring to mind the epoch in which sun and moon were still
united with the earth. We must say that the beings of this earth are
pure ideal beings, while man is present only as an etheric body,
visible only to spiritual eyes. Then we come to the second epoch. We
see the sun as a separate body, visible as an aura, and
moon-plus-earth as a world of evil. Then we come to a third epoch,
where the moon separates itself and on earth there work the forces
that are the result of this threeness. Then we come to a fourth epoch.
Here man is already a being in the physical world, which seems misty
to him, and in sleep he is still the companion of divine beings. This
is the epoch that closes with huge water-catastrophes, the time of
Atlantis.
Now let us go one step further, to the man of the post-Atlantean time.
As stated earlier, he has evolved through many thousands of years. We
see him pass through the cultural epochs of the post-Atlantean time;
the ancient Indian, the ancient Persian, the
Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian, the Greco-Latin culture, and our fifth
culture. What, above all things, had man lost? He had lost something
that we can conceive when we bear the description of Atlantis in mind.
Let us try to imagine the sleep-condition of the Atlantean. Man was
then still the companion of the gods; he actually perceived a world of
the spirit. This he had lost after the Atlantean catastrophe. The
darkness of night surrounded him. In recompense there came a
brightening of the day-consciousness and the development of the ego.
All this man had achieved, but the old gods had vanished from his
sight; they were now only memories. In fact, during the first
post-Atlantean time all that his soul had experienced was merely a
memory, a memory of his earlier inter-course with these divine beings.
We know that souls endure, that they reincarnate. Just as in ancient
Atlantean times our souls were already present, were already living in
bodies, so were they also present at the separation of moon and sun
from the earth, and also in the earliest times of all. Man existed in
the etheric dust or points, and the five cultural periods of the
post-Atlantean time, in their views of the world, in their religions,
are nothing else than memories of the ancient epochs of the earth.
The first period, the primeval Indian, developed a religion that seems
like an inner lighting-up, an inner repetition, in ideas and feelings,
of the very first period, when sun and moon were still bound up with
the earth, when the lofty beings of the sun still dwelt on earth. We
may imagine that this had to awaken a sublime view. The spirit who, in
the first condition of the earth, in the primeval mist, connected
himself with all angels, archangels, high gods, and spiritual beings,
was for Indian consciousness summed up as a single high individuality
under the name of Brahm or Brahma.* This
first post-Atlantean culture recapitulated in the spirit what had
happened earlier. It is a repetition of the first epoch of the earth,
in its inner aspect.
Now let us look at the second cultural period. In the principles of
light and darkness we have the religious consciousness of the primeval
Persian period. The great initiate saw an opposition between two
beings, one of which was personified in the sun and the other in the
moon. Ahura Mazdao or Ormuzd, the Light-aura, is the being whom the
Persians venerated as the highest god. Ahriman is the evil spirit, the
representative of all the beings who belonged to earth-plus-moon. The
religion of the Persians is a remembrance of the second epoch of the
earth.
In the third cultural epoch, man had to say to himself, In me
are the forces of the sun and of the moon; I am a son of the sun and a
son of the moon. All the forces of the sun and of the moon appear as
my father and my mother. Thus we have unity in the
primeval past as the attitude of the Indian; while the duality
that appeared with the separation of the sun is reflected in the
religion of the Persians; and in the religious views of the Egyptians,
Chaldeans, Assyrians, and Babylonians we find the trinity that
appeared in the third epoch, after the separation of sun and moon.
Trinity appears in all the religions of the third period, and in Egypt
it is exemplified in Osiris, Isis, and Horus.
But what man had experienced in his consciousness in the fourth
earth-epoch, the Atlantean, as a companion of the gods, emerges as a
memory in the Greco-Latin period. The gods of the Greeks are nothing
other than memories of the gods whose companion man was in Atlantis,
the gods whom he saw clairvoyantly in etheric forms when he had risen
out of his physical body at night. As truly as man today sees outer
objects, so truly at that time did he see Zeus, Athena, etc. For him
these were real figures. What the Atlantean felt and experienced in
his clairvoyant condition reappeared, for the man of the fourth
post-Atlantean period, in the pantheon. As the Egyptian time was a
memory of the trinity that prevailed in the Lemurian epoch, the
experience of Atlantis remained as a memory in the Hellenic hierarchy
of gods. In Greece and elsewhere in Europe these were the same gods
whom the Atlantean had seen, but under other names. These names were
not invented; they are names for the same forms that walked beside man
in the Atlantean time when he went out of his physical body.
So we see how the epochs of cosmic events find their symbolical
expression in the religious views of the different post-Atlantean
cultural periods. What took place during sleep in the Atlantean time
lives again in the fourth period.
We are in the fifth post-Atlantean period. What can we remember? In
the first period the ancient Indians could conceive the first
earth-epoch; in the second period the Persians had the principles of
good and evil; the ancient Egyptians could picture the third epoch in
its trinity. The period of the Greeks, the old Germans, the Romans,
had its Olympus. It remembered the godlike figures of Atlantis. Then
came the modern time, the fifth period. What can it remember?
It can remember nothing. This is the reason why in this period,
godlessness has been able to make headway in many respects. This is
why the fifth period is driven to look toward the future rather than
the past. It must look toward the future, when all the gods must arise
again. This reunion with the gods was prepared in the time of the
bursting-in of the Christ-force, which worked so powerfully that it
could again endow man with a godly consciousness. The god-pictures of
the fifth period cannot be memories. Only if man looks forward will
life again become spiritual. In the fifth post-Atlantean period,
consciousness must become apocalyptic.
Yesterday we examined the relations of the single cultures of the
Post-Atlantean time. Today we have seen how cosmic events are
reflected in the religious views of these cultures.
Our fifth period stands at a central point in the world, hence it must
look forward. The Christ must for the first time be fully grasped in
this period, for our souls are deeply interwoven in mysterious
connections. We shall see how the repetition of the Egyptian time in
our fifth period gives us a point of departure, and how we can
actually pass over into the future.
* Note 1: It may occur to the reader that India, even in ancient times, was notable for the multiplicity of its gods rather than for their unity. In this connection the following passage from the Upanishads may be illuminating:
Then Vidagda Sakayla questioned him: How many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?
He answered: As many as are mentioned in the Hymn to All the
Gods, namely three hundred and three, and three thousand and
three.
Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?
Thirty-three.
Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?
Six.
Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?
Two.
Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?
One and a half.
Yes, but just how many gods are there, Yajnavalkya?
One.
(Brih. Upan., ii, 2, iv, 4.)
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