LECTURE IX.
KNOW
a poet who died some years ago. On one occasion, in the second
half of the '80s of last century, he said to me that he was
very anxious about the future of humanity. I admit that his
expression of anxiety was somewhat of a paradox, but he was
very much in earnest in his anxiety as to the tendency he
wished to point out by his paradox; indeed, this anxiety
inclined him to a certain pessimism. It seemed to him that the
development of humanity in the future would be such that man
would principally develop his head more and more, and that,
compared with his head, all the other parts of a man would be
stunted. He was very much in earnest over this idea, and he
expressed this in paradox by saying that he was afraid the
reasoning intellectual nature of man would get the upper hand
to such an extent that the head would become like a great
globe, and that men would then roll on earth as balls. The
anxiety was very real to the man, for he reflected that we are
living in the age of intellectualism, of the development of the
intellectual powers which are expressed in the head, and that
these reasoning powers would increase more and more, and that
mankind was moving towards an unenviable future. Now that, of
course, is a very paradoxical statement, and we might say also,
in a certain sense, that even the anxiety which gave rise to
his pessimism is also paradoxical. But the human intellect has
a tendency to deteriorate, to draw conclusions when some or
other observation has been made, and this is a case in point.
This may be amply noticed in the realm of the theosophical
movement as well as in the external, exoteric life. In
external, exoteric life we do not have to look very far before
we notice that the observations made by man at various times
have always given rise to a great number of theories. How many
hypotheses have been abandoned as worthless in the course of
the evolution of humanity! In the theosophical-occult field it
can also be observed that someone who has undergone occult
training, and has thus acquired some clairvoyant power, may
recount something from true clairvoyant observation, and then
come the theorists who invent all sorts of schemes and
theories, and so the matter develops. Very often the
observation is quite an insignificant one, but the schemes and
theories built upon it include whole worlds. That is always the
danger; the intellect has this tendency. We have this tendency
in a fairly passable sense in the well-known book,
‘Esoteric Buddhism’ by Sinnett. This book is based
upon a number of genuine occult facts; these are in the middle
of the book, and relate to the middle of the development of the
earth. But upon these facts he built up a scheme of Rounds and
Races, and this only rolls and turns, as it were, upon itself,
always more or less in the same way. They are inferences,
theories, made from the few genuine data to be found in the
book. And this was the case also with my poet. In the
background he had a sort of unconscious, instinctive
imagination which told him something true; we might say, there
is half an ounce of truth, and from this he made a
hundred-weight, or many hundred-weight. We often find cases
such as this in the world. Now, what is the truth of the
matter? The truth is this, that in our age man's head is
undergoing a certain evolution, the formation of the head, the
whole structure of the head will undergo change in the future.
If we direct our attention to a very far-distant period in the
earth's evolution, we have to imagine that, for example, the
formation of the human forehead, nose, and jaws will have
undergone essential changes, and that, in a certain sense, all
the rest which the human being bears as his earthly organism
will have retrograded; but, of course, never, during the earth
period, will the relation of the developing head to the rest of
the body be that of a rolling globe. This must only be taken
literally to a very, very limited extent. On the other hand, in
ancient epochs of development on the earth, before the middle
of the Atlantean epoch, the rest of the human organism was
capable of change; it was engaged in a sort of development.
Apart from the head, the human organism has changed
comparatively little — and again I say comparatively
little — since the middle of the Atlantean epoch; on the
other hand, prior to that time the remainder of the human
organism underwent great changes. From this you will be able to
draw the inference — which will now be correct, because
it is nothing but an actual observation clothed in words
— that the further we go back into the Atlantean and
Lemurian epochs the more essentially different man looked, even
to his own observation. In the ancient Lemurian epoch, man
looked quite different from what he now recognises as himself
at the present day.
The
appearance man would have presented to himself in the latter
portion of the Lemurian epoch is apparent to him again, in a
certain way, when he gradually approaches the clairvoyant
impression leading to what we have described as the
Paradise-Imagination. I have, indeed, told you — and it
is true — that this Paradise-Imagination corresponds to a
complete delineation of the human being, the physical human
body, so to say, as the Paradise itself. Man separated —
as it were — he divided; the present corporeal nature
appeared outspread in the manner described; but at that time,
the actual time to which we look back clairvoyantly, and we
have the Paradise Legend before us, a mighty leap forward was
made. And through this movement — which may also be
observed by means of clairvoyance — what might be called
the outspread human being was drawn together relatively rapidly
into that which then became the starting-point of man for the
development which followed. Directly after the time
corresponding to the Paradise-Imagination, the form of man was,
however, quite unlike what has developed out of it to-day. And,
fundamentally, all that surrounded man in the kingdoms of
nature was also quite unlike his present surroundings.
I
have already mentioned in the previous lectures of this course
that the pupil might attain to this Paradise-Imagination if he
were suddenly to become clairvoyant for a moment during sleep,
and to look back, as it were, at his physical body and etheric
body, stimulated to this Imagination by these. On the whole, it
may be said that a great deal of esoteric development is
necessary before attaining to this Paradise-Imagination. The
student must have gained many victories in order to transform
his own personal interests into those common to humanity and
the world. There then comes, when from the very deepest sleep
— for there are degrees of sleep — he passes to a
less deep sleep, and in this less deep sleep becomes
clairvoyant — there comes what later in earthly evolution
became reality: The condition of man in the ancient Lemurian
epoch after he had made the great leap forward.
Thus we say that it is possible to see this primeval period of
the earth through separation in the self and astral body from
the physical body and etheric body, looking back at them. Now,
as the order of nature comes to our aid — for in the
night we are outside our physical body — we can make use
of this arrangement of nature, and so regulate the training
that, as if awaking out of sleep, but not returning to the
physical body — as if awaking in a different state of
consciousness — we see the physical body. From this you
will be able to gather that the vision we have just spoken of
provides the only true possibility of learning to know how man
was formed in the primeval past.
In
the far-distant future will come a time when we shall be able
to say: How extraordinary were those people of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries! They believed themselves able to
discover the origin of man by means of the external
investigation of nature; they thought they could draw
conclusions regarding the ancestry of man from the observation
of the animals surrounding them on the physical plane. However,
through the true development of human knowledge, it becomes
evident that we can only arrive at a true idea of the origin of
man upon the earth, and of his ancient form, by means of
clairvoyant observation, and that we can never obtain insight
into what man was like in the Lemurian epoch, for example,
except through clairvoyant observation, through the
retrospective vision stimulated by the impressions of one's own
physical body and etheric body. But then it will be seen
— this will be admitted in that future time — that
man was never like any of the animal forms about him in the
nineteenth or twentieth centuries; for the forms which man had
in that time, and which manifest themselves to his clairvoyant
consciousness in the way we have described, are different from
all the animal forms around man in the nineteenth century. And
even the expressions we have made use of — bull, lion,
etc. — are only used comparatively. The men of the future
will say how very grotesque it is to see the way people in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries traced back their ancestry
to ape-like beings; for in the Lemurian epoch there were no
apes at all in the form in which they later appeared upon
earth; they only originated at a much later period, from
degraded and degenerated human forms. Animal beings which may
be compared to our present apes can only be found by
clairvoyant vision about the middle of the Atlantean epoch of
the earth's evolution. The further we go back in the
development of humanity, the more we see that to the
clairvoyant view, in the vision of our self during sleep in the
night, our shape, our form in ancient times is to some extent
preserved. And so it comes about that, when a student thus
looks at himself, he learns to recognise his physical
corporeality in an infinitely more delicate etheric body, one
might say, though not in the sense of our present ether. Thus
does man appear. His form appears more as a vivid dream-picture
than as the form of flesh and blood he now bears. We have to
become acquainted with the idea that when the self and astral
body are outside the human being they can scarcely see the
head; it is quite shadowy; not completely blotted out, but
quite shadowy. On the other hand, the rest of the organisation
of man is distinct. That is shadowy, too, but its condition is
such that the human being does not appear as made of flesh and
blood, but one has the distinct impression that he possesses a
more powerful organisation. It may appear paradoxical, yet it
is true that when a man looks at himself clairvoyantly in sleep
he has at certain moments such an appearance — that is,
to the self and astral body, his physical body and etheric body
present such an appearance — that he is reminded of the
form of the Centaur! The upper part, which appears in the
Centaur as the human part, bears the human face, but in a very
shadowy form; the other part, which is not exactly like any of
our present animal forms, but which is reminiscent of them in
certain respects, is more powerful, and the seer says to
himself: ‘To the spiritual view this is stronger, even
denser, than our present form of flesh and blood.’ I have
already touched upon these matters in a previous course of
lectures; but you must understand that all these Imaginations,
except the Paradise-Imagination, are fugitive, and can be
presented from different aspects. I might also present a
somewhat different aspect — and you would see that this
only corresponds to a different period of development —
and then we should arrive at the form of the Sphinx. The
consecutive order of the evolution of man is presented in
various aspects, in different views. The mythological pictures,
the so-called mythological symbols, contain much more truth
than the fantastic intellectual combinations made by
present-day science.
Thus, at night the human figure becomes very peculiar.
Something else now becomes clear. When we consider with
clairvoyant eye this lower part which reminds us of an animal,
we become acquainted with something which makes a very definite
impression upon us; as I observed in the last lecture, these
impressions, these inner experiences, are really the essential
thing. The pictures are important, but the inner experiences
are still more so. We reach an impression so that we know
afterwards: That which really drives me during the day to my
personal interests alone, that which inoculates my soul with
merely personal interests, is the outcome of what I observe at
night as my lower animal part. During the day I do not see it;
but it is within me as forces, and these are the forces which
draw me down to a certain extent, and lead me astray into
personal interests.
Developing this impression more and more brings us to the
recognition of the place Lucifer really fills in our evolution.
The further we direct our clairvoyant vision back towards the
time that corresponds to the Paradise-Imagination, the more
beautiful becomes the structure, which is really only
reminiscent in a later time of what belongs to the animal
— kingdom. And if we go back altogether into what belongs
to Paradise, where the animal continuation of man appears as
though separated from man himself, and multiplied into —
bull, lion, and eagle, we may then say that these forms —
which we know in those ancient times by these names — may
also in a certain sense be for us symbols of beauty. More and
more beautiful become these forms, and, going still further
back, to the time of which we spoke in the last lecture, when
we represented the impression of the sacrifice, we arrive at
the period when Lucifer's true form appears to us in sublime
beauty, just as he wished to preserve himself unchanged in the
evolution from the ancient Moon to the earth.
From the account I have given in
‘Occult Science,’
you know that on ancient Moon the astral body was given to man.
What we bear within us in our astral body played a great part
on the ancient Moon. We have described it as personal selfhood,
as egotism. This egotism had to be implanted in man on the
ancient Moon, and, as man received his astral body on the
ancient Moon, egotism has its seat in the astral body; and, as
Lucifer has preserved his Moon-nature, he has brought egotism
to the earth as the inner soul-quality of his beauty.
Therefore, on the one hand he is the Spirit of Beauty, and on
the other the Spirit of Egotism. And what we may call his error
is only this: that he has transplanted to the earth something
which, as far as man is concerned, if I may use the expression,
belonged to the ancient Moon; that is, the permeating and
impregnating of himself with egotism. But thereby, as has often
been said, was given to man the possibility of becoming a
self-contained, free being, which he never would have become if
Lucifer had not carried over egotism from the Moon to the
Earth.
Thus inner experience teaches us to know Lucifer as the Night
Spirit, as it were. And it is part of the change that goes on
in our self and our astral body that at night we feel —
ourselves in the company of Lucifer.
You
may perhaps at first think — if you only think
superficially — that it must be disagreeable to a person,
when he goes to sleep and becomes clairvoyant, to become aware
that — during the night he comes into Lucifer's company.
But if you reflect more deeply, you will soon come to the
conclusion that it is wiser for us to learn to recognise
Lucifer; it is better to know that we are in his company than
to think that he is not there, and yet have him invisibly
active with his forces within us, as, indeed, is the case
during the day. The evil does not consist in Lucifer's being by
our side, for we gradually learn to recognise him as the Spirit
who brings — us freedom; the evil consists in our not
recognising him. But after men had caught sight of him, as it
were, when he misled them in the Lemurian epoch, they were not
permitted to see him any more; for then, in addition to that
original misleading in the Lemurian epoch, there would have
been innumerable other smaller misleadings. Therefore, the
divine-Spiritual Being who was watching over the progress of
mankind had to draw a veil over the vision of the night.
Thereby man lost as well all else that he would have seen
during sleep. Sleep covers from man with darkness the world in
which he is from the time of his going to sleep until he
awakens. At the withdrawal of the veil which covers the night
with darkness, we should instantly perceive Lucifer by our
side. If man were strong enough, this would do no harm; but as
at first he could not be strong in the sense required by our
earthly development, this veil had to be drawn during his sleep
at night. After the first great misleading, which left in its
train the possibility of human freedom, no other misleadings,
through the direct vision of Lucifer from the time of his going
to sleep until reawakening, were to come to man.
Now, there is an equivalent. We cannot see Lucifer at night if
during the day we do not see his comrade, Ahriman. Thus to the
student who has progressed as far as this in the development of
his self and his astral body, the daily experience which allows
him to have the vision of outer objects becomes different from
what it is to the ordinary man. He learns to recognise that he
sees things in a different light from before the development of
his self and his astral body. He first learns to look upon
certain impressions, which ordinarily he considered in an
abstract manner, as the activities of the Ahrimanic beings.
Thus that which comes from outside, which awakens desire in him
from outside — not that which comes from within, for that
is Luciferic — but that which attracts him in the objects
and beings around him, so that he follows this attraction from
personal interests; in short, all that entices him to enjoyment
from outside he learns to recognise as bearing the impress of
Ahriman. We also learn to recognise this in all that rouses
fear within us from outside. They are the two poles —
enjoyment and fear. Around us are the so-called material world
and the so-called Spiritual world; both these in our ordinary
waking life are enveloped in illusion. The external world of
the senses appears as maya, or illusion, for people do not see
that whenever they are stimulated to enjoyment by outer objects
and beings Ahriman peeps out and calls forth the enjoyment in
the soul. But the fact that there is a true Spiritual nature
everywhere in matter — which the materialists deny
— that produces fear, and when the materialists notice
that fear is beginning to appear from the astral depths of
their soul, they then stupefy themselves, and think out
materialistic theories; for what the poet says is profoundly
true, ‘People never notice the devil (that is Ahriman),
even when he has them by the collar.’ To what end are
materialistic meetings held? In order to swear allegiance to
the devil. This is literally true, only they do not know it.
Whenever materialists gather together to-day, to explain in
beautiful theories that nothing exists but matter, Ahriman then
has them by the collar; and there is no more favourable
opportunity for studying the devil to-day than by going to a
gathering of materialists or monists. Thus, when a man has
undergone a certain development in his astral body and self,
Ahriman accompanies him at every step. When we begin to see
him, then we can protect ourselves from him; we can see Ahriman
spying out in the allurements of enjoyment and in the
impressions of fear.
Again, on account of the immaturity of man, it was necessary
that Ahriman should be hidden; that is, a veil was drawn over
his nature. This was done somewhat differently from in the case
of Lucifer; the outer world was plunged into maya for man,
giving him the illusion that outside in the world, instead of
Ahriman peeping out, there was matter everywhere. Wherever man
dreams there is matter, there is, in reality, Ahriman; and the
greatest illusion is the materialistic theory of physics about
the material atoms, for in reality these are nothing but the
forces of Ahriman.
Now, humanity as a whole is developing, evolving, and this
evolution advances so that towards our future man will actually
develop the powers of pure intellect more and more. This will
cause his head to assume a different shape externally. In a
certain respect the beginning of this development towards
intellectuality was made with the dawn of modern natural
science, about the sixteenth century. When intensified, this
intellectual development will exercise great influence upon the
self and the astral body of man. A time set in when there still
remained traditions of the old clairvoyance. These came in
contact with one another exactly at the dawn of our modern
natural science. It was precisely in the sixteenth century; it
was then known that a future would come when, through the
higher development of the self and astral body, man would be
able really to see Ahriman more and more clearly. Then, because
in the early period of intellectual development it struggled
against the perception of the Spiritual with all its might, a
darkening set in; but in the figure of Mephistopheles, who is
none other than Ahriman, at the side of Faust, the sixteenth
century was able to point out that, fundamentally, Ahriman will
become more and more dangerous in a conscious manner to the
future development of humanity; that Mephistopheles will become
more and more a sort of tempter of the human race. At that time
this could only be demonstrated because man still had a
remembrance of the ancient Spiritual figures. But this has now
been forgotten by the general body of humanity, though in the
future the knowledge will be forced on man that through all his
waking life he is accompanied by Ahriman-Mephistopheles.
Naturally, this corresponds to the complementary picture that
man is living towards a future when, each time he awakes, he
will have — at first like a fleeting dream, but later
more clearly — the impression: ‘Thy companion
during the night was Lucifer.’ You see from this that
through the theosophical-occult development of the self and
astral body we may have the fore-knowledge of what will come to
humanity in the future, we can dimly sense the companionship of
Ahriman and Lucifer. Through a definite law of evolution,
Lucifer first came to man during the Lemurian epoch, then
later, as the consequences of the Luciferic influence, came the
Ahrimanic. In the future this will be reversed: The Ahrimanic
will first be strong, and subsequently the Luciferic influence
will be added. In the ever-developing clairvoyant conditions of
the human soul, the Ahrimanic influence will work principally
in the waking condition, the Luciferic influence principally
during sleep, or in all the conditions which are indeed similar
to sleep, but in which there is consciousness.
Thus, as Ahriman entered our external sensible life in our
waking condition, man first needed a protection against Ahriman
during this waking condition. These protective impulses are
given in the development of humanity many, many centuries
before the danger appears. Although the general body of
humanity has not yet developed the full consciousness of
Ahriman-Mephistopheles, the protective impulse came at the
beginning of our era in the physical appearance of Christ in
the earth-development. Christ once appeared in the physical
body in the earth-development to make provision that man might
be armed, through receiving the Christ-impulse, against the
necessary influence which will come from
Ahriman-Mephistopheles. The power through which man will be
armed later on when the Luciferic influence is there, is an
influence which will affect a different consciousness; man will
be armed against this by the appearance of Christ in the
etheric body, regarding which we have often said that it is
drawing near. Just as Christ appeared once in a physical body
and thence his impulse has proceeded further, so from this
twentieth century onward Christ will be seen in an etheric
form, at first by a small number, and then by an
ever-increasing number of human beings. Thus we see that the
progressive development of man is brought about by a kind of
equilibrium; a kind of balancing of the different impulses.
What is related in the Gospels as the story of the Temptation,
the confronting of Lucifer and Ahriman by Christ, portrayed in
different ways in the different Gospels — I have spoken
of this on a previous occasion — is a sign that through
the Christ-Impulse, through the Mystery of Golgotha, man will
be able to find the right way of development in the future. It
forms part of a true development of the self and the astral
body of man that in this transformed self and astral body he
can receive the impressions of the positions occupied by
Ahriman, Lucifer, and Christ in the development of humanity,
and a correct development of the self and astral body leads to
this knowledge of the three impulses which condition the
evolution of mankind.
A
correct development, however, includes the extension of the
sense of self in the astral body to interests common to
humanity and the world. And it acts like poison when a man
carries his personal aspirations into those regions of his
clairvoyant observation which he ought only to observe when
filled with interests common to humanity and the world. He
cannot then perceive the truth, but has imaginations which are
incorrect, untrue, which are only the reflections of his own
personal interests and aspirations. It may sometimes happen
that a clairvoyant who is still filled with personal
aspirations and interests experiences something like the
following. I received a letter in which someone wrote that he
had to communicate something that I ought to know. He said that
Christ was reborn in a physical body, and his address is
somewhere in London, W.; that Mary is reborn in a physical
body; her address is that of his niece, in such-and-such a
street. Paul is reborn, and was his brother-in-law, and his
address was also given. And all those mentioned in the Gospels
were reborn among the relatives, and in this letter all their
various addresses were given. I could show this letter to
anyone: it is a document — grotesque as it may appear
— which shows the effect of carrying personal interests
into those heights where there should only be the interests of
the world and of humanity.
But
now we must clearly understand that when someone makes a
mistake in abstract intellectual knowledge in general, this
kind of error can easily be controlled, it is something that
can be done away with comparatively quickly, although, indeed,
human knowledge has the frightful origin, which was referred to
in the last lecture. As the knowledge of man, which is
expressed in our waking daily life, receives such diluted
impulses that everyone may develop perfect freedom with respect
to them, hence no one need be dazzled by the foolish things
thought out by human intellect, and those who allow themselves
to be dazzled by these foolish imaginings can be cured in a
comparatively short time. But suppose that in this clairvoyant
observation a person arrives at incorrect imaginations in the
manner we have described; these incorrect imaginings then act
as a poison in the soul in a certain way; they poison it by
obliterating the healthy human reason and intellectual grasp.
Thus they injure one much more deeply than do merely
intellectual follies. If, therefore, we try to permeate
everything obtained in the fields of occultism with the forms
of sound human intellect, we do well. If an Imagination is
simply given out, without any attempt to justify it, as we have
tried to justify such in this course of lectures (and incorrect
imaginations would only be cited as mere imaginations), then
this will impose upon the very faculty in others which should
bestir itself to reject such imaginations. And it might very
well be that, while one who spreads intellectual follies may
easily provoke criticism, one who spreads false imaginations by
this means takes away from those who believe in him the power
to criticise; that is, he blinds them to the challenge that
ought to be given to the imaginations in question.
From this we may gather, my dear friends, how very necessary it
is that the moment the knowledge goes beyond what is intended
for man in the natural course of evolution, the moment a man
uplifts himself to clairvoyant knowledge, how unconditionally
necessary it is that his development should move unswervingly
towards interests common to humanity and the world. This will
always be recognised in true occultism. And to assert the
opposite, that there can be sound entry into the Spiritual
world, that is, a sound development of the astral body and the
self apart from the extension of the human interests to
selfless world-interests and interests common to humanity; that
is, to make the opposite affirmation to the one made here,
could only spring from a disposition that permeates occultism
with frivolity. We must bear in mind the serious importance of
these things in speaking of the changes which take place in the
astral body and the Self of man during his higher Spiritual
development.
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