LECTURE TWO
Berne, September 2, 1910
In the
early lectures of this Course it will be necessary to
repeat certain things that were said in explanation of
the Gospel of St. Luke. There are facts and happenings in
the life of Christ Jesus which cannot be understood
unless these two Gospels are compared.
For any
deeper understanding of the Gospel of St. Matthew it is
of primary importance to know that in respect of his
physical body, the Individuality with whom this record is
primarily concerned had descended from Abraham through
three times fourteen generations; he therefore
represented a kind of quintessence of the whole Hebrew
race. Spiritual Science knows that this Individuality and
the original Zoroaster or Zarathustra were one and the
same.
In the
lecture yesterday some idea was given of the external
scene of Zarathustra's activities in the very ancient
times in which he lived, and now the views of life and
the world prevailing in his environment must also be
considered. Principles of profound significance were
contained in the world-view held by men in those regions
and to speak of only a few of the teachings that are
rightly regarded as having been given by the first
Zarathustra is to point to deep foundations of all
post-Atlantean thought.
External
history itself tells us of the two fundamental principles
underlying the teachings of Zarathustra: the principle of
Ormuzd, the Good Being of Light, and that of Ahriman, the
Being of Darkness and Evil. But even in exoteric
presentations of this religious system it is emphasized
that these two, principles — Ormuzd or Ahura
Mazdao, and Ahriman — derive from one universal
principle: Zeruane Akarene.
What is
this single, undivided origin, from which the other two
principles — at war with one another in the world
— derive? Zeruane Akarene is generally translated
‘uncreated Time’. The primal principle of
which Zarathustra's teaching tells may therefore be
thought of as the calm, as yet undisturbed flow of cosmic
Time. Moreover, the very sense of the words implies that
it is meaningless to pursue the question further —
to ask what was the origin of this calm flow of Time. It
is important to realise once and for always that one may
speak of something in cosmic existence without being
justified in putting further questions, let us say, about
the causes of a First Principle such as this. Whenever
mention is made of a cause, abstract thinking will seldom
refrain from asking further questions about the cause of
that cause, and so on, forcing the concepts back as it
were to infinity But when there is a desire to stand
firmly on the ground of Spiritual Science, genuine
meditation will make it clear that questioning about
causes must end somewhere and that to continue it beyond
a certain point is merely to indulge in fantasy.
In the book
Occult Science — an Outline I referred to
this form of mental procedure. As an example, I said that
the sight of wheel-tracks on a road may evoke the
question: What has caused them? The answer is: The wheels
of a cart. Further questions might be: Where, exactly,
are the wheels joined to the cart? Why do they make
tracks and why was the cart being driven along the road?
Such questions can be answered. The cart made the tracks
because it was being driven along the road and it was
driven because someone wanted to be carried in it —
but this kind of questioning leads finally to the
intention which caused the person concerned to use the
cart. And if a halt is not made here, further questions
regarding the cause of the intention lose point and
become no more than a game.
The same is
true in connection with the great questions of Cosmogony.
Somewhere our questioning must end. For the deeper
teachings of Zoroastrianism it is meaningless to go back
beyond the calm flow of ‘uncreated Time’.
We now see
that Zoroastrianism divides Time itself again into two
principles, or — better said — speaks of two
principles proceeding from Time: a good principle of
Light characterized as that of Ormuzd, and an evil
principle of Darkness, that of Ahriman. This dual
conception is based upon a profoundly significant truth,
namely that all Evil in the world, everything that in its
physical image must be called dark and sinful, was not
originally so. I said that in ancient Persian thought,
the wolf, for example — which in a certain way
represented something savage and evil, an outcome of the
working of the Ahriman-principle — was regarded as
having degenerated; when left to itself the
Ahriman-principle could become active in it. Thus the
wolf had descended from a being in which the presence of
the Good cannot be denied. According to the conceptions
of the ancient Persians and the earliest Aryan peoples,
the fundamental principle in evolution is that Evil comes
into being because something that was good in the form in
which it existed in an earlier epoch retains this form in
a later age; in failing to transform itself it becomes
retrogressive, for it preserves the form suitable for an
earlier time. Therefore the cause of all Evil :all
Darkness, was to the earliest Aryan peoples simply this:
a form of being that was good in a previous epoch
continues without change into later times and the
consequence of the impact of such a form with one that
has made progress is a. battle between the two —
the battle between Good and Evil. So in the thought of
ancient Persia, Evil is not absolute Evil but, rather,
Good manifesting out of its appropriate time, something
that once, in an earlier period, was good but is no
longer so. Evil in the present, therefore, manifests in
the form of events through which conditions suitable for
the past are carried into the present. When there is as
yet no conflict between the earlier and the later, Time
is still undifferentiated, not divided into single
‘moments’.
This
profoundly significant world-view held by very early
post-Atlantean peoples can be regarded as, the basis of,
Zoroastrianism; it includes the concept that was
characterized in the lecture yesterday and was dominant
in those who adhered to the teachings of Zarathustra.
There is evidence on every side that these peoples
recognized two phases proceeding from the hitherto
undivided flow of Time — two phases coming into
conflict as they encounter one another and resolving
their conflict only in the stream of onflowing Time. It
was realised that the new must come into being and that
the old must not be swept away; the goal of the Universe
— above all, the goal of the Earth — will be
achieved through the creating of balance, of harmony,
between the old and the new. This conception, as it has
now been characterized, lies at the basis of all forms of
higher development originating in Zoroastrianism.
Once the
original centre of Zoroastrianism had been established in
the region and epoch indicated yesterday, its influence
was effective wherever it made its way. And we shall see
what a tremendous effect it had upon subsequent epochs,
giving expression everywhere to the teaching on the
polarity between the old and the new.
The reason
why Zarathustra was able to exercise such a far-reaching
influence upon posterity was that at the time when he had
attained the highest Initiation possible in his day, he
had two intimate pupils of whom I have previously spoken.
[ Note 01 ] To one of these pupils
Zarathustra taught everything relating to the secrets of
surrounding physical Space, the secrets of
contemporaneous existence. To the other pupil he taught
the secrets of Time in flow, the secrets of
evolution, of development. On a previous occasion I said
that at a certain point on the path of Initiation such as
this, something of great significance is able to take
place, namely that the teacher can offer up part of his
own being to his pupils. And Zarathustra offered up to
his two pupils his own astral body and his own etheric
body. The Individuality of Zarathustra, the inmost core
of his being, remained intact for ever-recurring
incarnations. But his astral ‘raiment’, that
is to say the astral body in which he had lived as
Zarathustra in a very early post-Atlantean epoch —
this astral raiment was so perfect, so charged with the
essence of his whole being that it did not disperse as do
the astral sheaths of other human beings, but remained
intact. In the great process of evolution the power of an
Individuality bearing human sheaths of this quality, may
enable them to remain intact and be preserved, and this
was so in the case of the astral body of Zarathustra.
The pupil
who had received from Zarathustra the teaching about
Space and everything that exists contemporaneously in
physical Space — this pupil was reborn in the
personality known in history as the Egyptian Thoth, or
Hermes. Occult investigation reveals that he was destined
not only to consolidate in his own being all the teaching
imparted to him in an earlier incarnation by Zarathustra,
but to do even more. This was made possible by the fact
that through a process enacted in the holy Mysteries, the
preserved astral body of Zarathustra himself was
incorporated into him. Thus the Individuality of this
pupil of Zarathustra was reborn as the inaugurator of
Egyptian culture. The Egyptian Hermes therefore bore
within himself part of the being of Zarathustra, and this
power, together with the fruits of his own former
discipleship, enabled Hermes to give the impulse for all
that was great and significant in the culture and
civilization of ancient Egypt.
In order
that the mission of this messenger of Zarathustra might
be fulfilled, there had naturally to be a folk suited to
receive the impulse. Only among those peoples who had
taken the more southerly path from Atlantean territories,
had settled in the East of Africa and in whom a high
degree of clairvoyance in its Atlantean form had been
preserved — only among such peoples could fruitful
soil be found for what Hermes, the reborn pupil of
Zarathustra, was able to impart. The soul-life prevailing
in the Egyptian population came into contact with the
teaching of Hermes and from this source the culture of
ancient Egypt developed.
It was a
culture of a very special character. Think of what
treasures of wisdom had been received by Hermes when
Zarathustra imparted to him the secrets of things
existing contemporaneously in Space. Hermes bore within
his own being this supremely important teaching of
Zarathustra. As we have often heard, the most
characteristic feature of Zarathustra's teaching was that
he directed the attention of his people to the Sun and
the external light of the Sun, explaining to them that
this solar body is only the outer sheath of a lofty
Spiritual Being. Thus Zarathustra entrusted to Hermes the
secrets of the the reality of being underlying the whole
of Nature in the world of Space, the reality of being
which underlies everything in contemporaneous existence
but goes forward through Time from epoch to epoch,
manifesting itself anew in each particular epoch. The
wisdom possessed by Hermes concerned all that proceeds
from the Sun and evolves to further stages. And the
reason why he was able to instill this teaching into the
souls of the descendants of Atlantean peoples was because
those souls had at one time themselves gazed into the
mysteries of the Sun and had preserved in memory
something of their vision. Everything, of course, had
advanced in evolution — the souls who were destined
to receive the wisdom of Hermes, as well as Hermes
himself.
Circumstances were different in the case of the second
pupil of Zarathustra. To him had been entrusted the
secrets relating to the flow of Time, and he had
necessarily to experience the conflict between the old
and the new, the active principle of contrast, of
opposition and of polarity, implicit in evolution.
Zarathustra had offered up part of his being for this
second pupil as well, and when the latter was reborn he
too was able to receive what had been bequeathed to him.
Whereas the Individuality of Zarathustra remained intact,
the astral and etheric sheaths were separated from him,
but because they had been borne by such a mighty
Individuality, they too remained intact and did not
disperse. At a certain point in his new incarnation, this
second pupil, to whom had been communicated the wisdom
relating to Time — in contrast to that relating to
Space — this second pupil received into him-self
the etheric body of Zarathustra, who had offered it up as
he had offered up his astral body. This second pupil of
Zarathustra was reborn as Moses, into whom, in very early
childhood, the preserved etheric body of Zarathustra was
incorporated.
Religious
chronicles that are genuinely based on occultism contain
mysterious clues pointing to the secrets disclosed by
occult investigation. To enable Moses, the reincarnated
pupil of Zarathustra, to receive into himself the etheric
body of his former teacher, something quite unusual must
necessarily happen to him. It was essential that the
miraculous legacy he was to receive from Zarathustra
should be incorporated into him before impressions from
the environment were made upon his individuality, as in
the case of other human beings. This is narrated
symbolically in the story that he was laid in a cradle of
reeds and lowered into a river — an indication of a
remarkable Initiation, During the process of Initiation a
human being is shut off from the outer world for a
certain period of time and what he is destined to receive
is then instilled into him. Thus the etheric body of
Zarathustra that had been preserved intact was
incorporated into Moses at a certain moment while he was
shut off from the outer world; and then there could come
to flower within him the wonderful wisdom concerning Time
once imparted to him by Zarathustra. He was able, now, to
give expression to it in pictures suitable for his
people.
Hence we
have from Moses the mighty pictures of Genesis —
external Imaginations of the wisdom of successive epochs.
These pictures were the expression of reborn knowledge,
of wisdom that had once been imparted to him by
Zarathustra and was now rooted in his very being because
the etheric sheath of Zarathustra himself had been
incorporated into him.
But in a
measure of such significance for the evolution of
humanity, two factors are essential. Not only must there
be an Initiate to inaugurate an impulse in culture, but
it must be possible for this great Individuality to plant
the seed of future culture in the folk-soil suitable for
it. And to understand the nature of the folk-soil into
which Moses could plant what had been transmitted to him
by Zarathustra, it will be well to concern ourselves with
a certain, characteristic of the Mosaic wisdom.
In an
earlier incarnation, then, Moses had been a pupil of
Zarathustra. At that time there had been imparted to him
the wisdom relating to Time together with the secret that
in all epochs the earlier clashes with the later, thus
producing contrast. If Moses as the bearer of
this wisdom was to become a factor in the evolution of
humanity, it had to be presented as a contrast to the
other stream of wisdom — the Hermes-wisdom. And
this was what actually happened.
Hermes had
received from Zarathustra the direct wisdom, the
Sun-wisdom, that is to say, knowledge of the reality of
being working mysteriously in the outer, physical sheath
of the light — the solar body. With Moses it was
different. The kind of wisdom of which he was the
recipient is harboured more in the denser, etheric body,
not in the astral body. His was the wisdom that does not
only look upwards to the Sun, seeing all things streaming
from the Sun, but is also concerned with what stands over
against the light and essential quality of the Sun; this
wisdom assimilates — without being corrupted by it
— that which has become earthly, dense, solidified,
old. This was Earth-wisdom, comprised, it is true, within
Sun-wisdom, but for all that essentially Earth-wisdom,
The secrets of Earth-evolution, of how man develops on
the Earth and how the Earth evolves when the Sun has
separated from it — these were the secrets imparted
to Moses. And this, if we study the inner, not the
external aspects of the matter, explains why we encounter
in the teachings of Hermes something that is an utter
contrast to the wisdom of Moses.
In studying
all such matters, certain modes of thought current at the
present time apply the principle that in the night all
cows are grey! Those who think in this way have eyes only
for similarities and are overjoyed when, for example,
they find the same thing in the teachings of Hermes and
of Moses: here a triad, there a triad, here a quaternary,
there a quaternary, and so on. But there is not much
point in this. It would be rather like a person setting
out to train someone else to be a botanist without
teaching him what differentiates, let us say, a rose from
a carnation, but speaking only of features that are
identical in both. This does not help. We must know in
what respects the beings themselves, and also the forms
of wisdom,differ; we must realise that the
Moses-wisdom was quite different in character from the
Hermes-wisdom. Both forms of wisdom proceeded,
originally, from Zarathustra; but just as unity, divides
and manifests in very various ways, so did Zarathustra
give essentially different revelations to each of his two
pupils.
If we steep
ourselves in the Hermes-wisdom, we find illumination on
cosmogony — it explains to us the origin of worlds
and the operations of the inpouring light. But in the
Hermes-wisdom we do not find the concepts which reveal
the fact that in the evolutionary process the earlier
works on into the later, and because of this, the past
and the present come into conflict, causing the
opposition between Darkness and Light. Earth-wisdom which
makes intelligible to us how the Earth, together with
Man, evolved after the Sun had separated — this is
nowhere contained in the Hermes-wisdom. But it was to be
the special mission of the Moses-wisdom to make
comprehensible to men the evolution of the Earth after
the separation of the Sun. Earth-wisdom was to be the
gift of Moses; Sun wisdom, the gift of Hermes. To Moses,
with his remembrances of all that had been imparted to
him by Zarathustra, there is revealed the process of the
Earth's evolution and man's evolution on the Earth. His
starting-point as it were is the earthly; but
the earthly is separated from the Sun and contains the
Sun-nature in a weakened form only. The earthly comes
towards and meets the Sun-nature. Hence the Earth-wisdom
of Moses had actually to encounter the Sun-wisdom of
Hermes in concrete existence; these two streams of wisdom
had to contact each other. The outer circumstances too
indicate this in a most wonderful way. Moses is born an
Egypt, his people are brought thither and make contact
with the. Egyptians — the people of Hermes. These
happenings are the outer reflection of the contact of
Sun-wisdom with Earth-wisdom. Both forms of wisdom stem
from Zarathustra but pour over the Earth in quite
different streams of evolution, eventually meeting and
working in conjunction.
Now certain
wisdom connected with proceedings in the Mysteries always
expresses itself in, a very special way about the deepest
secrets of human and other happenings. In the lectures on
Genesis given at Munich, I indicated how
extraordinarily difficult it is to speak in terms of
current language of these great truths which embrace not
only the deepest secrets of the being of man but also
cosmic facts. Our words are often fetters, for they bear
the connotations that have come to be attached to them
from long usage, and when with the great wisdom-truths
unfolding themselves in the soul we resort to language,
endeavouring to clothe these inner revelations in words,
we find ourselves battling with a dreadfully feeble
instrument.
The
greatest piece of nonsense uttered in the course of the
19th century and repeated times without number is that it
should be possible to couch every real truth in simple
words and that language, with the means of expression it
offers, should actually be a criterion of whether a
person is in possession of some particular truth or not.
This statement, however, only shows that those who make
it are not in possession of essential truth but only of
such truths as have been conveyed to them through
language in the course of the centuries, the forms of
which may change. For such people language is adequate
and they feel nothing of the struggle that must often be
waged with it. But this struggle becomes only too
glaringly real when something of great consequence has to
be expressed.
(I referred
in Munich to the hard struggle I had with language in
connection with the passage spoken in the meditation
chamber at the end of the first scene, in. the Mystery
Play, The Portal of Initiation. It was actually
no more than a faint echo — all that could be
expressed through the feeble instrument of language
— of what the Hierophant was intended to say to the
pupil.)
In the
sacred Mysteries the very deepest secrets were brought to
expression and the inadequacy of language for this
purpose was felt at all times. Hence the age-long efforts
in the Mysteries to find means of expression for the
soul's experiences. Terms and phrases that had been used
in ordinary intercourse for centuries proved to be
utterly inadequate, whereas the opposite was true of the
pictures arising when the gaze was directed to the
expanse of universal space, to the constellations, to the
appearance of a certain star or the eclipse of one
heavenly body by another at definite times. These were
pictures well fitted to portray particular happenings and
experiences in man's life of soul. I will give a brief
example.
Let us
suppose it was a matter of announcing that something of
great and far-reaching importance would take place at a
particular moment in time because some human soul would
then be sufficiently mature to undergo a sublime
experience and to communicate it to his people; or
perhaps there might have been a desire to indicate that a
people, or a particular section of humanity, had reached
a certain state of maturity in evolution and that an
Individuality had come to dwell among them, possibly from
some quite different region. In the latter case, the
highest point reached in the development of this
individual was coincident with the highest point reached
in the development of the folk-soul of the people
concerned and it was desired to express the unique nature
of this event. Nothing that could be conveyed through
ordinary language was found to be lofty enough to impress
men's feelings with the significance of such an event. It
was therefore expressed pictorially by saying : When the
highest power developed by an an individual coincides
with the highest power developed by a particular
folk-soul, it is as when the Sun is in the constellation
of Leo and radiates its light from there. In this example
the picture of the Lion was chosen to denote something
manifesting in its greatest strength in the evolution of
humanity. A phenomenon in cosmic space was thus used to
indicate a happening in the life of humanity. Such is the
origin of certain expressions used in history; they were
derived from the stars and constellations,and were the
means used to express spiritual facts in the life of
mankind.
When it is
said, for example, that an event in the evolution of
humanity is expressed symbolically by a phenomenon in the
heavens such as the Sun in Leo or in some particular
constellation, trivial thinkers are very apt to reverse
the real meaning and state that all happenings connected
with the early history of humanity were mythical
descriptions of movements of celestial bodies; whereas
the truth is that earthly events were expressed in
pictures taken from the constellations. The truth is
invariably the opposite of the theories loved by
superficial thinkers.
This
connection with the Cosmos is something that should fill
us with reverence for what we are told about the great
events in the evolution of mankind and the expression of
them in pictures derived from cosmic phenomena. There is
actually a mysterious connection between all cosmic
existence and what comes to pass in man's existence; for
happenings on Earth are reflections of happenings in the
Cosmos.
In a
certain respect the convergence of the Sun-wisdom of
Hermes and the Earth-wisdom of Moses in Egypt is also a
reflection, a mirror-image, of happenings in the Cosmos.
Picture to yourselves certain forces streaming out from
the Sun and other forces streaming back from the Earth
into cosmic space; the point in space at which they meet
will not be without importance; according to whether the
contact is made at a point nearer to or farther away from
the sources in question, the effect of the radiations
emitted and then sent back, will be different. The
contact between the Hermes-wisdom and the Moses-wisdom in
ancient Egypt was presented in the Mysteries in such a
way that comparison was possible with something that
according to spiritual-scientific cosmology had already
taken place in the Cosmos. We know that Sun and Earth had
separated, that for a time the Earth was still united
with the Moon, that then a part of the Earth moved out
into space to become our present Moon. The Earth had
therefore sent back part of itself towards the Sun in
cosmic space. And when, in Egyptian civilization, the
Earth-wisdom of Moses came into contact with the
Sun-wisdom of Hermes, this remarkable happening was also
like a ‘radiation’ — this time from the
Earth towards the Sun.
After its
subsequent separation from the Sun-wisdom of Hermes, the
wisdom of Moses Earth-wisdom — can be said to have
developed further as the science of the Earth and of Man;
in its course towards the Sun it absorbed and steeped
itself in the direct wisdom radiating from the Sun. There
was, however, to be a limit to this absorption; the
wisdom of Moses was destined to progress on its own and
develop independence. Hence it remained in Egypt only
until enough had been absorbed for its needs; then came
the “Exodus of the Children of Moses from
Egypt”, in order that the Sun-wisdom received by
the Earth-wisdom might be assimilated and also
developed.
Two phases
must therefore be distinguished in the wisdom of Moses:
one while it is developing in the sphere of the wisdom of
Hermes, surrounded by it on all sides and perpetually
absorbing it. Then comes the separation, and after the
exodus from Egypt the wisdom of Moses, although now
developing independently, elaborates the wisdom of Hermes
it has absorbed and on its own further course reaches
three stages . What was its goal and, its destined
task?
The task of
the wisdom of Moses was to find the way back again to the
Sun. It had become Earth-wisdom. Moses was born with all
that had been imparted to him by Zarathustra as a wise
man of the Earth and he sought for the way back to the
Sun in different stages. At the first stage he had
steeped himself in the wisdom of Hermes; the course of
his further development can best be portrayed in pictures
drawn from cosmic existence. When the effects of what
happens on the Earth stream back into cosmic space, the
first encounter on the path towards the Sun is with
Mercury. (We know that thc Venus of ordinary astronomy is
Mercury in the terminology of occultism and the Mercury
of astronomy is Venus according to occultism.) On the way
from the Earth towards the Sun, therefore, the
Mercury-nature is encountered first, at a later stage the
Venus-nature and then the Sun-nature. Hence through,
inner processes in the life of soul, Moses was to develop
the heritage received from Zarathustra in such a way that
on the returning path it would be able to find the
Sun-nature again; it had therefore to reach a definite
stage. The wisdom inculcated by Moses into culture and
civilization had necessarily to develop in the form in
which he had imparted to his people. Hence on the path of
return, having first absorbed something of the wisdom
imparted by Hermes as directly radiating from the Sun,
Moses developed it with a new orientation, that is, in
the opposite direction.
It is said
that Hermes later called Mercury (Thoth), brought to his
people art and science, knowledge of the external world,
external art, in the form suitable for them. But it was
in a different, indeed opposite way, that Moses himself
was to reach this Hermes-Mercury-wisdom and develop it to
further stages on the returning path. This process
portrayed in the history of the Hebrews up to the time
and reign of David; he is described as the royal
psalmist, as a divine prophet, as a man of God, an
armour-bearer and also a player on the harp. David is the
Hermes, the Mercury, of the Hebrew people who had now
developed to the stage of being able to produce a Hermes-
or Mercury-wisdom in an independent form. At the time of
David, therefore, the Hermes-wisdom, once assimilated by
the Moses-wisdom, had reached the region, or stage, of
Mercury.
On the
returning pail towards the Sun the wisdom of Moses was to
advance to the Venus-stage. Hebraism reached this stage
at the time when the Moses-wisdom, as it had flowed down
the centuries, was destined to unite with an entirely
different element, with a stream of wisdom that had come
from the other direction.
Whatever
rays back from the Earth into space encounters Venus on
the path to the Sun, and during the Babylonian captivity
the wisdom of Moses encountered the wisdom that had made
its way over from Asia and was presented in a modified
form in the Babylonian and Chaldean Mysteries. This
contact was made during the time of the Babylonian
captivity. Like a wanderer who, having started from the
Earth with a knowledge of what the Earth is, had passed
through the region of Mercury and arrived in the region
of Venus in order there to receive the light of the Sun
falling upon Venus, so did the wisdom of Moses absorb
what had proceeded directly from the sanctuaries of
Zoroastrianism and was being continued in a modified form
in the Mysteries of the Chaldeans and Babylonians. It was
this that the Moses-wisdom received during the Babylonian
captivity, thus assimilating wisdom that had made its way
to the region of the Euphrates and the Tigris.
But
something else came to pass as well. Moses had
encountered the wisdom that once upon a time had streamed
from the Sun. In the sanctuaries that were known to and
frequented by the wise men among the Hebrews during the
captivity, the legacy of the wisdom bequeathed by Moses
to his people mingled with the Sun-nature of the wisdom
harboured in the Mystery-centres in the regions around
the Euphrates and the Tigris where the reincarnated
Zarathustra was teaching. Approximately at the time of
the Babylonian captivity, Zarathustra himself was
incarnated; thus while teaching in that region, he who
had already given over one part of his wisdom, receive it
back again. He himself incarnated time and time again,
and in his incarnation as Zarathas or Nazarathos he
became the teacher of the captive Jews who knew of the
sanctuaries existing in those regions.
Thus in its
later course the wisdom of Moses came into contact with
what Zarathustra himself had been able to achieve after
he had moved from the more distant Mystery-centres to
those of Asia Minor. There he became the teacher of the
initiated pupils of Chaldea as well as of individual
initiated teachers; there were also those in whom the
Moses-wisdom was fructified by the stream with which they
could now make contact, being able to receive from
Zarathustra himself, in his incarnation as Zarathas or
Nazarathos, what he himself had formerly imparted to
their ancestor — Moses. Such was the destiny of the
wisdom of Moses. It had actually originated with
Zarathustra and had been transplanted into foreign lands.
It was as if a Sun-being with bandaged eyes had been
carried down to the Earth and on the return journey must
seek again for what it had lost.
Moses,
then, was the reincarnated pupil of Zarathustra. In his
existence in Egyptian civilization everything once
imparted to him by Zarathustra lit up again within him;
but isolated in the domain of the Earth, it was as if he
did not know the source of his illumination. Hence he
took the path towards what had once been of the nature of
the Sun; in Egypt he turned to the Hermes-wisdom which
presented the wisdom of Zarathustra in its direct form,
not in reflection as in his own case. After he had
absorbed enough of the Hermes-wisdom, the stream of his
own wisdom developed in a straightforward course. Having
established in the Davidic age a form of Hermes-Wisdom,
with its own science and art, the stream of Moses-wisdom
moved towards the Sun whence it had originally issued,
but in a form which at first concealed its real
nature.
In the
centres of learning in ancient Babylon where he was also
the teacher of Pythagoras, Zarathustra — Zarathas
or Nazarathos — could only teach in a way that was
possible in a specially constituted body, for he was
obliged to use such a body as his instrument. If he was
to give expression to the Sun-nature in its fullness as
he had once done and had then imparted it to Hermes and
Moses — if he was to give expression to this wisdom
in a new form, suitable for the later epoch, he needed a
bodily sheath that would be a worthy instrument. It was
only in a form conditioned by a body such as ancient
Babylonia was able to produce that Zarathustra could
bring forth again all the wisdom which he then conveyed
to Pythagoras, to the learned Hebrews and the Chaldean
and Babylonian sages who at that time — in the
sixth century B.C. — were in a position to hear
it.
In regard
to what Zarathustra was able to teach, it was actually as
if the light of the Sun had first been intercepted by
Venus and could not find its way directly to the Earth;
it was as if the Zarathustra-wisdom could not manifest
itself in its primal form but only in modification. For
to enable this wisdom to work in its original form
Zarathustra would have to be enveloped in a suitable body
and such a body could only be produced in an altogether
unique way—which may be characterized somewhat as
follows.
It was said
in the lecture yesterday that there were three folk-souls
in Asia, each of a different character : the Indian in
the South, the Iranian and the Turanian to the North. It
was indicated that these three species of souls came into
being, firstly, because the northern stream of the
Atlantean peoples had passed into Asia across these
regions and had spread through them. But another stream
had passed through Africa and its final offshoots had
penetrated as far as the regions of the Turanian peoples.
Where the northern stream which had passed from Atlantis
towards Asia met the other stream which had passed from
Atlantis through Africa, a remarkable mixture of peoples
was produced and a racial stock formed from which the
Hebrews subsequently sprang.
Something
very remarkable came to pass in these people. Faculties
of astral-etheric clairvoyance that had remained in a
state of decadence among certain people and had become
corrupt as the last phase of a faculty of clairvoyance
directed outwards — all this turned
inwards in those who became the Hebrew people.
The direction was entirely changed. Instead of
manifesting in its outer operations in the form of a
lower astral clairvoyance, as the remains of the old
Atlantean clairvoyance, it worked as an organizing power
in the inner constitution of the body. What had
become a decadent outward clairvoyance and having
remained static had been permeated by the Ahrimanic
element — this had then developed in the right way
through becoming an active force in the inner, organic
constitution of the human body. In the Hebrew people this
faculty did not come to expression as an outdated form of
clairvoyance but it worked as a transforming force upon
the bodily nature, thus bringing it to a stage of greater
perfection. The faculty that in the Turanian people had
become decadent, worked creatively and with transforming
power in the inner constitution of the Hebrews.
The
following may therefore be said. In the bodily nature of
the Hebrew people as propagated through blood-relation-
from generation to generation, there were working the
forces which as outward clairvoyant vision had had their
day and were no longer to continue in this form but were
now to function in a different sphere where they would be
in the right element. The faculty that had enabled the
Atlanteans to look with spiritual vision into space and
into spiritual regions and in the Turanians had become a
degenerate residue of clairvoyance — this faculty
turned inwards in the Hebrew people. What had been of a
divine-spiritual nature in Atlantean culture worked
inwardly, in the Hebrews as an organic formative
force and within their blood was able to light up as an
inner consciousness of the Divine. It was as if
everything that had been seen by the Atlantean when he
directed his clairvoyant gaze outwards to the expanse of
space had now become wholly inward, arising in the inmost
organism of the Hebrews as consciousness of, Jahve or
Jehovah, as inner, consciousness of the Divine. Thus the
Hebrews felt the Godhead to be united with their blood,
felt themselves pervaded, impregnated, by the Godhead
outspread in space, and knew that this same Godhead was
living within them, pulsing through their very blood.
Yesterday
we considered the contrast between the Iranian and the
Turanian civilizations. Now, having compared the
faculties of the Turanians with those of the Hebrew race,
we see that what had become decadent in the former
progressed in the latter, subsequently working in the
blood. What had been visible to the Atlantean now
manifested in the Hebrew in the form of inner feeling.
This experience is summed up in a single word — the
name JEHOVAH. Compressed as it were into a single point,
into one inner centre of consciousness of the Divine,
lived the God who had been revealed to Atlantean
clairvoyance behind all external phenomena. Invisible and
inwardly experienced, the God lived in the blood of the
generations of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, leading them and
all their succeeding generations from event to event on
their path of destiny. In this way the outer had become
inward; the outer was now experienced within, no longer
seen, no longer called by different names but known by a
single designation: ‘I AM THE I AM !’ The
Divine had assumed an entirely different form. Whereas
with the faculties man possessed in the Atlantean epoch
he had found the God out yonder in the Universe, he now
found the God in the centre of his own being, in his
‘I’, felt the God in the blood flowing
through the generations. The great God of the Universe
had now become the God of the Hebrews, the God of
Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, the God who flowed in the
blood through the generations.
Thus was
founded the racial stock whose inner mission for the
evolution of humanity we shall study to-morrow. It has
only been possible to-day to give an indication of the
very earliest stage in the composition of the blood of
this people, the stage when everything that in the
Atlantean age man had allowed to work in upon him from
outside was now com-pressed within his own being. We
shall see what mysteries are fulfilled in happenings that
have only been touched upon to-day, and we shall learn to
understand the unique nature of the people from whom
Zarathustra, as the Being we call Jesus of Nazareth,
could derive his body.
Notes:
1. E.g. in the
Lecture Cycle The Gospel of St. Luke,
Lecture Five.
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