LECTURE THREE
THE TASKS OF THE FIFTH POST-ATLANTEAN EPOCH
We have often
studied the period of evolution following the Atlantean
catastrophe and the epochs of post-Atlantean civilisation:
the Old Indian, Old Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Graeco-Roman,
and now the fifth, in which we ourselves are living. There
will be two more epochs, making seven in all, before there is
another great catastrophe.
The accounts
given have naturally been of different aspects of these
culture-epochs, for an idea of the future can be formed only
by knowing how we are related to each of them. I have often
said that there is a correspondence between the individual
human being as a ‘Microcosm’, a ‘little
world’, and the ‘Macrocosm’, the
‘great world’. Man, the ‘little
world’, is in every respect a replica, a copy, of the
‘great world’. This is literally true, but stated
in this form it is a very abstract truth and does not lead us
very far. It becomes significant only if we can go on and
show in detail how the individual human being is to be
conceived as a Microcosm compared with the Macrocosm.
The man of
to-day belongs to all the seven post-Atlantean epochs for he
has been, or will be, incarnated in each of them. In every
incarnation we receive what that particular epoch can give
us. Thus we bear within ourselves the fruits of past phases
of evolution. Our intrinsic qualities and talents are those
we have acquired during the several post-Atlantean epochs and
they lie more or less within the range of human consciousness
as it is to-day. On the other hand, during our Atlantean
incarnations there were very different states of
consciousness and what we then acquired has, generally
speaking, been pressed down into the subconscious. It does
not therefore reverberate within us as strongly as what was
acquired in later incarnations during the post-Atlantean
epoch. In the much earlier Atlantean epoch human
consciousness was by no means as wideawake as it became later
on and men were not then able to the same extent to injure
their own development. Consequently the fruits of Atlantean
evolution within us are more in harmony with the World-Order
than has been the case since we have been able ourselves to
create disorder in our own being. Ahrimanic and Luciferic
influences were active during the Atlantean epoch too, but
the effect of them upon man was altogether different. Nor was
man then in a position to protect himself against them.
The
ever-increasing development of human consciousness is the
essential feature of post-Atlantean civilisation. The
evolution of mankind in the period between the catastrophe
which overwhelmed Atlantis and the one that will bring the
post-Atlantean epoch to an end may be thought of as a
macrocosmic process; humanity as a whole evolves as one great
being through the seven post-Atlantean epochs. And the most
important phases in the evolution of consciousness during
these seven epochs resemble what the individual himself
undergoes in the seven ‘ages’ or periods of his
own life.
In my book
Occult Science,
and elsewhere, these different
life-periods have often been described. The first period
covers the seven years from birth to the change of teeth.
During this period the physical body of the human being
acquires its basic forms and with the coming of the second
teeth these forms are to all intents and purposes
established. Naturally, the child continues to grow; but
speaking generally, the lines of the bodily structures have
already been established. What is accomplished in the first
seven years is the construction of the bodily form.
We must be prepared to find these rhythms manifesting in us
in a wide variety of ways. For instance, there is a
difference between the first teeth, which appear during the
earliest years of life and then fall out, to be replaced by
the second teeth. The two sets of teeth are the result of
essentially different conditions. The first teeth are the
inherited product of the organisms of the child's
forefathers. The second teeth are the product of the
child's own physical constitution. This must be kept
firmly in mind. Only by being attentive to such details can
the distinction be fully understood. Our first teeth,
together with our whole organism, are passed on to us by our
forefathers; our second teeth are the product of our own
physical organism. In the first case the teeth are a direct
inheritance: in the second it is the physical organism that
is inherited and this in its turn produces the second
teeth.
The second
life-period is from the time of the change of teeth to
puberty, at about the fourteenth or fifteenth year. The
important process now is the development of the etheric body.
The third period, to about the twenty-first year, covers the
development of the astral body. Then follows the development
of the Ego, with the progressive development of the Sentient
Soul, the Intellectual or Mind-Soul and the Spiritual Soul
(Consciousness-Soul).
These are the
different periods in man's life: but as you certainly
know, the first period of seven years alone follows a
completely regular pattern, and this is as it should be for
man of the present age. The regularity apparent in the first
three life-periods is not found in the later ones, nor can
their length be defined with exactitude. If we ask why this
is so, the answer is that in world-evolution which proceeds
in rhythms of seven periods, the fourth plays a middle part.
Thus in the post-Atlantean era we already have within us the
fruits of the first four epochs; we are now living in the
fifth and moving towards the sixth.
There is
undoubtedly a certain correspondence between the evolution of
the post-Atlantean epochs and that of the individual human
being. Here again there is evidence of correspondence between
the macrocosmic and the microcosmic.
Let us
consider what was particularly characteristic of the first
post-Atlantean epoch. We call it the Old Indian epoch because
the character of post-Atlantean evolution in general was
especially marked in the people of India. In this epoch there
existed a sublime, all-embracing wisdom, with wide
ramifications. In principle, the teachings given by the seven
holy Rishis were identical with what was actually seen in the
spiritual world by natural clairvoyants and also by very many
of the people of that time. This ancient knowledge was
present in the Old Indian epoch as a heritage from still
earlier times. In the Atlantean epoch it had been experienced
clairvoyantly, but it had now become more of an inherited,
primal wisdom, preserved and made known by those who, like
the Rishis, had risen through Initiation to the spiritual
worlds. Basically, all the wisdom that penetrated into human
consciousness was inherited and therefore essentially
different from our modern knowledge.
It would be
quite wrong to attempt to express the sublime truths
proclaimed by the holy Rishis in the first post-Atlantean
epoch in terms such as those used in modern scholarship;
moreover it would hardly be possible to do so, because the
forms assumed by scholarship as it is to-day appeared only in
the course of post-Atlantean culture. The knowledge possessed
by the ancient Rishis was of a very different character.
Anyone capable of proclaiming it felt it working and seething
within him, rising up spontaneously. To understand what
knowledge was in those days we must realise above all that it
did not in any way rely upon memory. Please keep this very
specially in mind. Memory is the most important factor when
knowledge is being transmitted to-day. A professor or a
public speaker must take care that he knows beforehand what
he is going to say from the rostrum, and then draw it out of
his memory. True, there are people who deny that they do any
such thing, insisting that they simply follow their own
genius. But they don't affect the argument. The
communication of knowledge to-day depends almost entirely
upon memory.
Things were
very different in the Old Indian epoch. It would be true to
say that knowledge arose at the actual moment of speaking. In
those early times knowledge was not prepared beforehand as it
so often is to-day. The ancient Rishi did not prepare what he
had to say and then memorise it. The preparation he made was
to induce in himself a mood of piety, of reverence. It was
his mood and his feelings that he prepared, not the content
of what he was about to communicate. And then, while it was
being communicated it was as if he were reading from an
invisible script. It would have been unthinkable in those
days for listeners to take down in writing what was being
said; anything recorded in this way would have been
considered quite worthless. Value was attached only to what a
man preserved in his soul and might later reproduce for
others. It would have been regarded as desecration to write
anything down. The view rightly held at that time was that
what is transcribed is not, and cannot be, the same as the
oral communication.
This way of
thinking persisted for a very long time. Such matters are
retained in the feelings much longer than in the intellect
and when, in the Middle Ages, the art of printing was added
to that of writing, it was at first regarded as black magic.
Old feelings were still astir in men and they felt that what
is meant to pass directly from soul to soul should not be
preserved in the grotesque form of letters and words printed
on sheets of white paper. People were convinced that this
transformed the knowledge to be communicated into something
lifeless which might, moreover, subsequently be revived with
anything but beneficial results. The direct streaming of
knowledge from soul to soul was characteristic of the times
we are considering. It was a prominent feature in the
cultural life of the first post-Atlantean epoch and must be
recognised if we are to understand, for instance, how it came
about that Greek and even old Germanic rhapsodists could go
from place to place reciting their very lengthy poems. This
would never have been possible if they had been obliged to
rely upon memory. It was a power and a quality of soul much
more alive than memory that lay behind their recitations.
Nowadays if we are to recite a poem we must have learnt it
beforehand; but what those men were reciting was an actual
experience in them, a kind of new creation. Moreover a direct
expression of the life of soul was then more clearly in
evidence than it is now, when — with some justification in
view of prevailing conditions — it is apt to be suppressed.
What is considered of main importance nowadays in recitation
is the actual meaning of the words. It was not so, even in
the Middle Ages, when a minstrel was reciting the
Niebelungenlied, for instance. He still had a
feeling for the inner rhythm and would stamp his feet to mark
the rise and fall of the verse as he strode forward and back.
But this was only an aftermath of what had been customary in
more ancient times. You would have an erroneous idea of the
Rishis and their pupils if you were to think that they had
not faithfully communicated the old Atlantean knowledge. Even
if the pupils in our schools were to fill their exercise
books from cover to cover, they would not have reproduced
what had been said as faithfully as the Indian Rishis
reproduced the ancient wisdom.
The
characteristic feature of the epochs which followed was that
the flow of Atlantean knowledge came to a standstill. Until
the decline of the Old Indian culture-epoch, knowledge
received by men in the form of an inheritance continually
increased. In essentials, however, the increase ceased with
the close of this epoch: thereafter, hardly anything new
could be produced from existing knowledge. An increase of
knowledge was therefore possible only in the first epoch;
thereafter it ceased. In the Old Persian epoch, among men
influenced by Zoroastrianism, something began in connection
with knowledge of the external world which can be compared
with the second period in human life and is, in fact, best
understood through such a comparison. In a spiritual respect
the Old Indian culture-epoch is comparable with the first
period in human life, from birth to the seventh year. During
this period the basic forms are developed; whatever comes
later is merely expansion within these established forms.
What followed in the Old Persian epoch can similarly be
compared with a kind of school-learning, the kind of learning
connected with the second life-period. Only we must be clear
who were the pupils and who were the teachers. At this point
there is something I want to interpolate.
You must have
been struck by the difference between the figure of
Zarathustra, the Leader of the second post-Atlantean epoch,
and the Indian Rishis. Whereas the Rishis seem to be
consecrated individuals stemming from a primordial past, to
be vessels into whom old Atlantean wisdom has poured,
Zarathustra appears as the first historical personality to be
initiated into a genuinely post-Atlantean Mystery-knowledge,
that is to say, knowledge presented in such a way that it
could be understood only by the intelligence of
post-Atlantean humanity. Something new has therefore made its
appearance. True, during the early period it was preeminently
supersensible knowledge that was acquired in the Zoroastrian
schools. Nevertheless it was there that knowledge began for
the first time to take the form of concepts. The ancient
knowledge possessed by the Rishis cannot be reproduced in the
forms of modern scholarship but to some extent this is
possible with the Zoroastrian knowledge. This is knowledge of
an altogether supersensible character and concerned entirely
with the supersensible world but it is clothed in concepts
comparable with those current during the post-Atlantean epoch
in general. Among the followers of Zarathustra a systematic
development of concepts took place. To sum up: The
treasure-store of ancient wisdom which had evolved until the
end of the Old Indian epoch and continued from generation to
generation, was accepted. Nothing new was added but the old
was elaborated. A comparison, for example, with the
production nowadays of a book on occultism will help us to
picture the task of the Mysteries of the second
post-Atlantean epoch. The contents of any book resulting from
genuine investigations into the higher worlds could of course
be presented as an entirely logical exposition in the
physical world. This might be done. But in that case my book
Occult Science,
for example, would have to consist
of fifty volumes at least, each of them as bulky as the
present one. There is, however, another way of doing things,
namely to leave something to the reader, to induce the reader
to think things out for himself. That is what must be
attempted nowadays, for otherwise no progress in occultism
could be made. To-day, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch,
with the intellectual concepts developed by humanity, it is
possible to approach and also to assimilate occult knowledge.
But in Zarathustra's time the concepts in which to
clothe occult facts had first to be discovered and gradually
elaborated. There were then no branches of knowledge such as
exist to-day. Something capable of being clothed in human
concepts had survived from the time of the ancient Rishis,
but the concepts as such had to be formulated before the
supersensible facts could be clothed in them. It was then,
for the first time, that man-made concepts were used to grasp
supersensible realities. The Rishis had spoken in the only
way in which, in their day, supersensible knowledge could be
communicated. They poured their knowledge from soul to soul
in an unceasing flow of pictures. They were unconcerned with
cause and effect, with concepts and categories such as are
familiar to us to-day. This was a much later development. In
the field of supersensible knowledge a beginning was made in
the second post-Atlantean epoch. It was then that man first
became aware of the opposition offered by material existence
and therewith the need to express supersensible facts in
forms of thought employed on the physical plane. This was the
basic task of the second post-Atlantean epoch.
By the third
epoch, that of Egypto-Chaldean culture, concepts of
supersensible realities were actually in existence. This
again is difficult for the modern mind to grasp. There was no
physical science but there were concepts of supersensible
facts and happenings which had been acquired in a
supersensible way, and these concepts could be expressed in
forms of thought applicable to the physical plane. In the
third post-Atlantean epoch men began to apply to the physical
world itself what they had learnt from the supersensible
world. This again can be compared with the third period in
the life of a human being. In the second period he learns
without proceeding to apply what he has learnt. In the third
life-period most human beings have to apply their knowledge
to the physical plane. The pupils of Zarathustra in the
second culture-epoch were pupils of heavenly knowledge; now
men began to apply to the physical plane what they had
learnt. It may help us to picture this if we say that through
their visions men learnt that the supersensible can be
expressed by a triangle — a triangle taken as an image of
the supersensible; that the supersensible nature of man,
permeating the physical, can be conceived as threefold. Other
concepts too were mastered, enabling physical things to be
related to supersensible facts. Geometry, for instance, was
first mastered in the form of symbolic concepts. In short,
concepts were now available and were applied by the Egyptians
to the art of land-surveying, also to agriculture, and by the
Chaldeans in their study of the stars and in the founding of
Astrology and Astronomy. What had previously been regarded as
purely supersensible was now applied to things physically
seen. In the third culture-epoch, then, men began for the
first time to apply supersensible knowledge to the phenomena
of the world of sense.
In the fourth
epoch, the Graeco-Latin, it was especially important that men
should come to see that what they were doing was to apply to
the physical plane knowledge derived from supersensible
sources. Hitherto they had acted without questioning whether
this was actually the case. The ancient Rishis had no need
for such questioning because the knowledge streamed into them
directly from the spiritual world. In the epoch of
Zarathustra men assimilated the supersensible knowledge and
were fully aware how it originated. In the Egypto-Chaldean
epoch men invested the concepts derived from the
supersensible world with knowledge they had acquired in the
physical world. And in the fourth epoch (the Graeco-Latin)
they began to ask whether it is right to apply to the
physical world what has come from the spiritual world. Is
what has been spiritually acquired in fact applicable to
physical things? — Men could not put this to themselves as a
definite question until the fourth culture-epoch, after they
had for some time been applying supersensible knowledge in
all naivety to physical experiences and observations. Now
they became conscientious in regard to their own doings and
began to ask whether it is justifiable to apply supersensible
concepts to physical facts.
Now when any
epoch has an important task to perform, it always happens
that some individual is particularly alive to its nature and
responsible for fulfilling it. In this case, such an
individual would have been struck by the thought as to
whether one has the right to apply supersensible concepts to
physical facts. Can anyone really predict how things will
develop? It is obvious that Plato, for example, had
a living connection with the ancient world and still applied
concepts in their old form to the physical world. It was his
pupil Aristotle who asked whether it is right to do
this. — And so Aristotle became the founder of Logic.
People who
reject Spiritual Science should just ask themselves why man
had managed to get on without any system of Logic. Had they
never before the fourth epoch felt any need for it? — To a
clear-sighted view of evolution, important periods occur at
definite points of time. One such period lies between Plato
and Aristotle. Here we have before us a situation that is
related in a certain way to the connection with the spiritual
world existing in the Atlantean epoch. True, the living
spiritual knowledge died out with the Old Indian
culture-epoch, but something new had nevertheless been
brought down to the physical plane. Now, in this later age,
man had begun to develop a critical faculty, and to ask how
ideas about supersensible reality may be applied to physical
things. This is a sign that man only now became conscious
that he himself achieves something when he is observing the
external world, that he is actually bringing something down
into the sense-world. This was a significant state of
things.
We can still
feel that concepts and ideas are in essence supersensible
when we regard their very character as being a guarantee for
the existence of the supersensible world. But only few feel
this. What concepts and ideas contain is for most people
extremely tenuous. And although there is something in them
which can provide complete proof of man's immortality,
it would be impossible to convince him, because compared with
the solid, material reality for which he longs, concepts and
ideas are as unsubstantial as a cobweb. They are, in fact,
the last and slenderest thread spun by man out of the
spiritual world since his descent into the physical world.
And at the very time when he had left the spiritual world
altogether and remained linked to it by this last, slender
thread only — a thread in which he no longer had any faith
— there came the mightiest incision from the supersensible
world: the Christ Impulse. The greatest of all spiritual
realities appeared in our post-Atlantean epoch at a time when
man was least able to recognise the supersensible, because
the only spiritual quality remaining to him was his feeling
for concepts and ideas.
For anyone
studying the evolution of humanity as a whole it would be
interesting in a strictly scientific sense — apart from the
tornado-like effect it may have on the soul — to set side by
side the infinite spirituality of the Christ Being who
entered into humanity and the fact that shortly before His
coming man had been wondering how far the last thread of
spirituality within him was connected with the supersensible
world — in other words, to contrast the Christ Principle
with Aristotelian Logic, that web of wholly abstract concepts
and ideas. No greater disparity can be imagined than that
between the spirituality which came down to the physical
plane in the Being of Christ and the spirituality which man
had preserved for himself. You will therefore understand that
with the web of concepts available in Aristotelianism it was
simply not possible in the first centuries of Christendom to
comprehend the spiritual nature of Christ. And then,
gradually, efforts were made to grasp the facts of
world-history and the evolution of humanity in such a way
that Aristotelian Logic could be applied. This was the task
facing medieval philosophy.
It is
significant that the fourth post-Atlantean epoch may be
compared with the period of Ego-development in man's
life. It was in this epoch that the ‘I’ of
humanity itself streamed into evolution, at the time when man
was further removed from the spiritual world than he had ever
been and was therefore at first quite incapable of accepting
Christ except through faith. Christianity was bound at first
to be a matter of faith and is only now beginning, very
gradually, to be a matter of knowledge. We have only just
begun to bring the light of spiritual knowledge to bear upon
the Gospels. For hundreds upon hundreds of years Christianity
could only be a matter of faith, because man had reached the
lowest point of his descent from the spiritual worlds.
This was the
situation in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. But after the
lowest point the re-ascent must begin. Although in a certain
respect this epoch brought man to the lowest point of
descent, it also gave him the strongest spiritual impulse
upwards. Naturally, this was beyond his comprehension then
and will be understood only in the epochs still to come. We
can, however, recognise the task before us: it is to
permeate our concepts and ideas with spirituality.
World-evolution is not a simple, straightforward process.
When a ball begins to roll in a certain direction, inertia
will keep it rolling unless its course is changed by some
other impact. Similarly, pre-Christian culture tended to
preserve and maintain the downward plunge into the physical
world until our own time. The upward urge is only just
beginning and periodically needs a new impetus.
The downward
tendency is particularly evident in the way men think, even
in a great deal of what is called Philosophy to-day.
Aristotle still recognised that spiritual reality is within
the grasp of human concepts. But a few centuries after him
men were no longer able to understand how the activity of the
human mind can make contact with reality. The most arid, most
barren element in the development of the old mode of thinking
is represented by Kantianism and everything related to it.
For Kant's philosophy severs all connection between the
concepts a man evolves, between ideas as inner experiences,
and what concepts and ideas are in reality. Kantianism is in
the process of withering away and has no living impulse to
give to the future. It will now no longer surprise you that
the conclusion of my lectures on Psychosophy had a
theosophical background. I have made it clear that in all our
activities, and especially in connection with knowledge of
the soul, our task is to take the knowledge bestowed by the
gods on men in earlier days and brought down as a stimulus to
our thought, and offer it up again at the altars of the gods.
But the ideas and concepts we make our own must have their
origin in spirituality.
Psychology as
a science must be cultivated in such a way that it can emerge
from the decadence into which it has fallen. This is not said
out of arrogance but because it is what the times demand.
There have been and there still are many psychologists: but
they all work with concepts totally devoid of spirituality.
It is significant that in 1874 a man like Franz
Brentano published only the first volume of his
Psychology, which in spite of certain distortions,
is generally sound. He had announced the second volume for
publication in the same year; but he came to a standstill and
could not finish it. He was able to give an outline of what
the content was to have been but to get beyond that a
spiritual impulse would have been needed.
Modern
psychologies, for example those written by Wundt and
Lipps, do not really deserve the name because they
work only with ideas previously evolved and it was obvious
from the outset that nothing would come of them.
Brentano's Psychology might have led to
something but he came to a standstill — which is the fate of
all dying sciences. It will not happen so quickly in the case
of the natural sciences, where cut-and-dried concepts can be
applied because facts are being collected and may be allowed
to speak for themselves. With Psychology — the science of
the soul — this is much less practicable, for the whole
foundation disappears if any attempt is made to work with the
ordinary, rigid concepts. You don't immediately lose
touch with a heart-muscle even if you analyse it as if it
were a mineral product and have no knowledge of its real
nature. But you cannot analyse the soul in the same way.
The sciences
are as it were dying from above downwards. And it will
gradually dawn on men that while they are certainly able to
turn the laws of nature to account, this is something quite
independent of science itself. To construct machines and
instruments, telephones and the like, is a very different
matter from a basic understanding of the sciences, let alone
the ability to further their progress. A man may have no
fundamental understanding of electricity and yet be able to
construct electrical apparatus. Science in the real sense is,
however, gradually declining and we have now reached a point
where in its present form it must be given new life through
spiritual science. In our fifth culture-epoch science is
rolling downwards by its own momentum: when the ball can roll
no further it will come to a standstill, as Brentano did. At
this time, therefore, it is imperative that the ascent of
humanity should be given a stronger and stronger stimulus.
This will indeed take place, but only if efforts continue to
be made to fertilise knowledge acquired from outside with
what spiritual investigation has to offer.
As I have said
before, a kind of repetition of the old Egypto-Chaldean epoch
will become apparent during our own fifth epoch. This
repetition is at present only just beginning. Indications of
this might have become clear to you during this General
Meeting. Think, for instance, of Herr Seiler's lecture
on Astrology. You will have felt that as students of
Spiritual Science you are able to apply to astrological
concepts ideas which would be quite impossible for a
conventional astronomer, who will inevitably treat anything
connected with Astrology as nonsense. This has nothing to do
with the intrinsic character of Astronomy. As a matter of
fact, Astronomy is the science par excellence which
lends itself readily to being led back again to spirituality;
from what Astronomy has at present to offer it would be easy
to pass to the basic truths of Astrology which is so often
derided. What stands in the way is that the general attitude
of mind is so far removed from any return to spirituality. It
will take time to build the bridge between Astronomy and
Astrology and meanwhile all sorts of theories will be devised
in an attempt to give a purely materialistic explanation of
the planetary movements, and so on. In the case of the
chemical and biological sciences the bridge will be even more
difficult to build.
The building
of a bridge can be easiest of all in the domain of Psychology
— the science of the soul. The first requisite will be to
understand the conclusion of my lectures on
‘Psychosophy’ where I showed that the stream of
soul-life flows not only from the past into the future but
also from the future into the past. There are two streams
of time: the etheric stream, flowing into the future, and the
astral stream, moving from the future back into the
past. It is unlikely that anyone in the world today will
discover anything of this character without a spiritual
impulse, but there can be no real grasp of the life of soul
until we recognise that something is perpetually coming
towards us from the future. This concept is essential. We
shall have to rid ourselves of the mode of thought which
looks only to the past when cause and effect are being
considered. We shall have to learn to speak of the future as
something real, something moving towards us, just as we trail
the past behind us. It will be a long time before such
concepts are accepted; but until they are there will be no
real Psychology.
The nineteenth
century produced a really bright idea: Psychology without
Soul! People were very proud of it. Roughly, what it meant
was that psychological study should be confined to the
external manifestations of the human soul and should take no
account of the soul itself from which they originated. A
science of the soul without soul! As a method this might be
possible; but the outcome, to use a rough analogy, is a meal
without food. That is modern Psychology. People are anything
but satisfied if you give them a meal with nothing on their
plates, but nineteenth century science was wonderfully
content with a Psychology without soul. Such a trend began at
a comparatively early stage and spiritual life must flow as a
strong impulse into this whole domain.
The old life
has come to an end and a new life must begin. We must feel
that there was given to us from the ancient Atlantean epoch a
primeval wisdom which has gradually withered away and that in
our present incarnation we are faced with the task of
gathering a new wisdom for the men of a later time. To make
this possible was the purpose of the Christ Impulse, and the
activity and power of that Impulse will continually increase.
It may be that the Christ Impulse will work most strongly
when all tradition — in history too — has died away and men
find their way to Christ Himself as the true reality.
You can see,
then, that the course of post-Atlantean evolution and the
life of an individual human being are comparable as Macrocosm
with Microcosm. But the individual is in a strange situation.
What is there left to him in the second part of his life but
to absorb and assimilate what he acquired for himself in the
first half? And when that is all used up, death follows. The
spirit alone can be victorious over death and carry forward
into a new incarnation what begins to decay after the
half-way point of life has been passed. Development is on the
ascent until the thirty-fifth year. After that there is
decline. But it is precisely then that the spirit takes a
hand. What it cannot incorporate into the bodily nature of
man during the second half of life it brings to blossom in a
later incarnation. As the body withers the spirit gradually
comes to fruition.
The macrocosm
of humanity as a whole reveals a similar picture. Until the
fourth post-Atlantean epoch there is a youthful, thriving
development of culture. From then onwards there is a decline
— symptoms of death everywhere in the evolution of human
consciousness, but at the same time the inflow of new
spiritual life which will incarnate again as the spiritual
life of humanity in the culture-epoch following our own. But
man must work with full consciousness on what is subsequently
to incarnate again. The rest will die away. We can look
prophetically into the future and see the birth of many
sciences seeming to benefit post-Atlantean civilisation
although they belong to what is dying. But the life that is
poured into humanity under the direct influence of the Christ
Impulse will come to manifestation in the future just as the
Atlantean knowledge came again to manifestation in the holy
Rishis.
Ordinary
science knows of the Copernican system only that part which
is in process of dying. The part that will live on and bear
fruit — and that is not the part that has been influential
for four centuries — must now be mastered by men through
their own efforts. Copernicanism as presented to-day is not
strictly true. Spiritual investigation alone can reveal its
real truth. The same holds good for Astronomy, and for
everything else that is regarded as knowledge to-day. Science
can of course be of practical use and as technology
completely justified. But in so far as it pretends to
contribute to human knowledge in its real form, it is a dead
product. It is useful for the immediate handiwork of men and
for that no spiritual content is necessary. But as far as it
purports to have anything vital to say about the mysteries of
the Universe it belongs to the culture that is dying. If
knowledge of the mysteries of the Universe is to be enriched,
the orthodox science of to-day must be imbued with life
through the findings of Spiritual Science.
The foregoing
lectures were intended as an introduction to the study of St.
Mark's Gospel which we shall now begin. I had first to
show how essential this greatest of all spiritual impulses
was for human evolution just at the time when only the last,
most tenuous threads of spirituality remained to mankind.
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