XI
Experience of the
World's Past
If we look
back on the descriptions given yesterday, we shall be aware that man,
living through successive times after death — and we have to use
the word “time” in relation to physical conditions —
comes first of all to the realm of the Moon Beings, and then passes
on to that of the Sun Beings. The Moon Beings still belong to
earthly-existence in a certain sense and the experiences a man
goes through under their influence in the soul-world are indeed
cosmic memories of earthly existence. He has experiences also of his
own earthly life, though now in a backwards direction, and these are
united with the judgments of the Cosmos, as I called them yesterday.
These cosmic judgments are made known to men after death through the
Moon Beings. We then come under the influence of these Beings, and it
is they who cause the judgments to flow into us, in the same way as
those that flow into us, here on Earth, from minerals, plants and
animals. So we can say: On entering spiritual-cosmic existence after
death, a man gains his first glimpse into such cosmic perceptions as
still proceed from Beings once connected with the Earth. We
have already had occasion to speak of how these Beings, before taking
up their abode in the cosmic stronghold of the Moon, were Teachers of
human beings in the ancient Mysteries. Hence, what a man once
experienced on Earth, in primeval times, he now experiences when
journeying through the soul-world, under the influence of those
Beings who have been raised — we might perhaps say — to
become inhabitants of the Moon. We can truly speak of them in this
way if sufficient consideration is given to what was said in my last
lecture. These inhabitants of the Moon, under the leadership of the
one-time Teachers of mankind, judge quite differently from the way
things are judged by people on Earth. For people on Earth, in their
life between birth and death, are now approaching a stage completed
by the Moon-dwellers in long past ages.
Reckoning by
earthly years, we must say that the inhabitants of the Moon, when on
Earth, accomplished quite 15,000 years ago what human beings still
have to do. More than 15,000 years have passed since these Moon
inhabitants acquired the power of making judgments which bring
together the naturalistic and the moral.
We on Earth
keep our naturalistic judgments separate, and when giving an opinion about
a stone or an animal we leave morality aside. We say: “Nature
follows only an amoral necessity.” But this is not true of the
world as a whole. Even though we may consider that moral
judgments are not applicable to individual animals, or to plants, or
to minerals above all, in their separate forms of existence, yet the
very fact of their creation, of their being in the world at all, is
entirely the result of cosmic moral judgment.
Now these
Moon-dwellers already judge in terms of cosmic morality. Therefore,
when we have passed through the gate of death and are together with
them, we must listen to all the Cosmos has to say about what we have
thought, wished, felt, willed and done on Earth. Our entire earthly
life is exposed to the light of cosmic judgment, and we learn the
value our deeds have for the whole great universe.
From these
lessons we develop the impulse to complete, to correct, or in some way to
set right, during our next life on Earth, whatever we have done either to
help or to hinder the evolution of the world. And so, while thus
under the influence of the Moon Beings, we take up the impulses for
our future destiny — for our karma, as oriental wisdom has
always called it. These impulses are thus absorbed while the human
being is still under the influence of dwellers in the Moon, who are
able to tell him how much his earthly deeds and thoughts are worth
for the Cosmos.
The spiritual
Beings of the higher world, in whose neighbourhood a man lives while under
the influence of the Moon-dwellers, are those grouped together in my
Occult Science
as the Hierarchy of Angels, Archangels,
Archai. Of the ranks of Beings whose realm a man enters after death,
they are the first who do not have to live through a phase of earthly
embodiment. On their side, they stand in close connection with
the Beings of the still higher Hierarchies. But it is with this
Hierarchy of Angels, Archangels and Archai that a man is essentially
concerned during his Moon existence after death, while the higher
Hierarchies are still beyond his ken.
The judgments
of the Angels are especially important for the deeds of individual men,
and it is thus from the Angels that a man learns the value his deeds have
in the Cosmos as a whole. From the Archangels he learns more about
the value of what he has done in connection with the language he
speaks, with the people to whom he belongs, and from this source also
come impulses which work into his further destiny, his karma. From
the Archai he learns what value his actions during a given period on
Earth will have for the time when he has to descend once more from
spiritual heights into earthly existence.
By means of
all that a man can achieve in this way if — and I beg you to bear
the following in mind — he has rightly prepared himself for
life after death through the impulses he is able to receive on Earth,
and particularly (as we shall see later) through his attitude towards
the great leaders of mankind, he can then find the way over from the
sphere of the Moon-dwellers to the sphere of the
Sun-dwellers.
The inhabitants
of the Moon we already know as those Beings who once dwelt on Earth and
were in close connection with it. In a very, very much earlier age this
was true also of the inhabitants of the Sun; they, too, participated
in earthly affairs.
On coming to
the realm of the Moon-dwellers it is quite clear to a man that he is meeting
Beings who once dwelt with him on Earth. And when he enters the realm
of the Sun Beings, something like a powerful cosmic memory of a
primeval age comes over him — an age which in
Occult Science
you will find described from another point of view. He is
taken possession of by something like a memory of an infinitely
ancient time, when the Sun, with its inhabitants, was still one with
the Earth. After death, therefore, we make our way through the
spiritual Cosmos by growing into, as it were, two spiritual cosmic
regions where we meet those Beings with whom, at one time, when we
lived on Earth as quite different beings, we were closely
associated.
So it is that
by going through these experiences between death and a new birth we look
back in grand, mighty memories on the evolution of the Earth in the
Cosmos. Whereas a man, while here on Earth, goes through only part of
human evolution, between death and rebirth he goes through part of
cosmic evolution, part of the evolution of the universe. Those Beings
who inhabit the Sun are such that in far distant times they had
already risen above the experiences possible for earthly beings, and
above those possible for the Beings of the Moon.
On reaching
the realm of the Sun Beings, a man enters a sphere of the highest wisdom,
where he can live only if on Earth he has prepared himself sufficiently for
it.
Now I said
yesterday that on passing from the soul-world into the land of spirit,
or, as we must express it to-day, from the sphere of the Moon-dwellers
to that of the Sun-dwellers, a man proceeds more slowly in his
journeyings through the Cosmos. Whereas the circling of the Moon
takes about a third of his earthly lifetime, the next rounds, the
circling of Mars, of Jupiter, and of Saturn — I mentioned
yesterday how these rounds are not completed — takes a more
leisurely course, twelve times slower than the circling of the
Moon.
If now we
reckon up the actual time, we arrive at the following result. We must
start from the original plan decreed for human beings by the Cosmos.
Then we find that a man goes through the Moon period in a third of
the time he has spent on Earth. If we allow for the fact that at the
beginning of life more time is spent in sleep, and add on the time
given to sleep in later life, we find that a man needs approximately
thirty years to accomplish the first cycle, that of the Moon. Each of
the following cycles takes twelve times as long, or 36o years for
each cycle. If we follow a man in his further journeying through the
worlds, we find him going through three cycles. He does not reach
Saturn, but has to go through the cycles in the way originally
decided. He then has to go backwards through the three again. Thus he
completes three cycles in an outward direction and, on returning
towards his next earthly life, another three backwards, making six in
all. We then have the time originally intended for man. I shall still
have to speak of how things are different for human beings to-day;
but according to the original cosmic decrees, the time was 2,160
years.
What do these
2,160 years signify? You have only to recall that the position of the Sun
at the vernal equinox moves forward year by year. In recent
centuries it has advanced from the Ram to the Fishes, and
approximately in 25,920 years — or close on 26,000 years
— the Sun travels round the whole zodiacal circle, and the
twelfth part of this is 2,160 years. In 2,160 years the Sun
progresses from one sign of the Zodiac to the next. It was originally
decreed that a man should return to Earth when the Sun had thus moved
on.
When we consider
the inner reasons for this number, and compare it with what from I said
from another point of view in
Occult Science,
those who have
read the book will remember that the time taken by the Sun to
pass from one sign of the Zodiac to the next was given there as the
original length of the interval between a man's incarnations. If we
look at this from two sides — more outwardly, from the cosmic
aspect, as in
Occult Science,
and then from the side of man's
inner life that we are dealing with to-day — the two numbers
are identical. Such things should be noticed; and it will be found
that whenever in Spiritual Science a correct judgment is made from
one point of view, and then another correct judgment from a quite
different point of view, the two judgments are inwardly in
agreement.
Anyone
judging Spiritual Science from the ordinary standpoint of to-day will
quite possibly ask: “What is there to support this Spiritual
Science of yours? Our natural science rests upon observation,
experiment; that is the firm ground from which we start.” But
one might just as well say: “As earthly man I stand on firm
ground, and a rock, too, has solid ground beneath it — like
everything else on Earth. As for you astronomers — it is really
fantastic for you to tell us that the Earth is floating freely in
celestial space. If you want to be reasonable, you must say that the
Earth, like any great mass of rock, is somewhere resting on firm
ground.” That is virtually the same as accusing
Anthroposophy of having no firm ground to stand on. Naturally, people
would appear foolish, even to themselves, were they to say that the
Earth has something to rest on, but they do not see how foolish
it is not to realise that Spiritual Science, which is carried by its
own inner resources, just as the heavenly bodies move by their own
impulses, cannot rest on the ground of experiment and
explanation. Were they only to be consistent in their
judgments, they would see how, in the Spiritual Science intended
here, every step is made with the utmost exactitude, and full
accountability is taken for every statement concerning the
world and the beings of the world.
Thus, after
death, a man enters a world which he at first experiences in common with
souls who, like himself, have entered the spiritual worlds through the
gate of death after an earthly life. A man thus grows familiar with the
sphere of disembodied human beings and continues with them the
earthly relations experienced spiritually at night.
But we have
also seen how a man finds himself in the company of other spiritual
Beings, the inhabitants of the Moon who were once dwelling with him
on the Earth, and how, afterwards, he ascends to the community on the
Sun. These Sun-dwellers also were once inhabitants of the Earth
together with human beings, though in times far more remote. Here a
man's first meeting is with the Beings who constitute the second
Hierarchy, described in my
Occult Science
as Exusiai, Dynamis,
Kyriotetes. These are the Beings with whom he has to work in order
that he may be able to manifest in his next earthly life the
cosmically elaborated karma derived from his earlier lives on
Earth.
Having passed
through the realm of the Moon-dwellers, a man knows — not with
earthly thoughts but with cosmic ones — what in a cosmic sense he
has done wrong; he realises the worth for cosmic evolution as a whole of
all he has done, thought and felt. But he cannot prepare his new
earthly life with cosmic thoughts alone. Therefore in the Moon-sphere
he comes to know what he is destined to be in his next earthly
existence, though the actual preparations for it cannot be made at
that stage. For this, he has to rise to the sphere of the Sun, where
live the Beings who, no longer having to concern themselves with
earthly existence, are occupied with the affairs of our whole
planetary system.
So a man's
experience of the Cosmos embraces two spiritual regions, together with
the spiritual Beings dwelling in them. It embraces the soul-world of
the Moon-dwellers, and the more extensive population of the spirit
region. Whereas the Moon-dwellers, because they were closely
connected with the Earth in comparatively recent times, have united
their interests with the peoples of the Earth, and while the Moon is
in a sense only a cosmic colony, occupied with and orientated towards
earthly affairs, the Sun-sphere, whose dwellers live under the
leadership of the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, is a cosmic whole,
concerned with the affairs of the entire planetary system —
Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Venus and so on, including the Earth and the
Moon.
On coming
into this vast sphere of the Sun, where our interests are substantially
widened, we are able to work with the Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes
on preparing the spirit-germ of a physical body which can then be
born for us from human parents. No parents could ever produce a
suitable physical body were it not prepared during long periods
through work carried out in co-operation with the highest, most
sublime spiritual Beings in the spiritual Cosmos. Our essential work
there — a work far greater and more comprehensive than anything
achieved during our little life on Earth — is to concern
ourselves, together with Beings of a higher degree, with all that
takes place among these Beings as spiritual events, just as here
there are natural events; with all that takes place in them as art of
the spirit, just as here we have the art of nature. All this finally
enables us to bring together what has thus been worked upon into a
great, spiritual, archetypal picture which is the spirit-germ —
as it were the fore-shadowing — of what will later be born on
Earth as our physical body.
When a man,
having completed the three circles, starts on the return journey, his
interest in earthly affairs revives. Then — still many years
before birth — he looks down on the successive
generations in earthly evolution, at the end of which will stand his
father and his mother. As soon as he makes this complete change of
direction in the Cosmos, he begins to focus his attention upon the
Earth. He watches many preceding generations of his ancestry,
one after another, until, centuries later, his parents are born. To
them he can send down the potent, far-reaching spirit-germ,
diminished in size, of his future physical body, so that this
spirit-germ can be united with the physical embryo in the body of the
mother.
The spirit-germ
is at first majestic and great, like the Cosmos itself. While a man is
making his return journey to the physical world, and watching the
generations through which his parents descend, and while from the
spiritual world he is actively concerned with this sequence of
generations, the germ becomes smaller and smaller — until
at last it arrives back in the Mars-sphere, the actual sphere of the
Sun, and then, passing quickly through the Moon-sphere, it descends
to its next life on Earth.
Some time before
the man himself descends as a being of soul, he sends down in advance
this spirit-germ, so that what he has prepared for his physical body
enters the physical world before him. On completing his work for the
new earthly life, he is able to enter into a different relation with
the cosmos — a relation indeed to the whole cosmic ether. And,
as the final act in his descent, he draws from spiritual worlds, out
of the whole world-ether, the forces to form his etheric
body.
When a man has
already sent down the spirit-germ for his physical body — that is,
when the spirit-germ has at last descended to the parents at the end of
its long journey down from the spiritual world — the man
himself, still in the spiritual world, gathers ether around him
there, and for a short time becomes a being of Ego, astral body and
ether, the ether having been drawn together from the world-ether. It
is not until after conception, during the third or fourth week of the
embryonic period, that the human being unites himself with the
organism that has been formed by combining the spirit-germ with the
physical germ, and bestows upon it the etheric body drawn from the
world-ether. Man then becomes a being composed of physical body, an
etheric body drawn together in the last moments of his cosmic
existence, and the astral body and Ego which have gone through the
life between death and rebirth.
Thus, after
experiencing the purely spiritual, a man descends to yet another
existence in the physical world.
From what has
been said you will have gathered that while passing through life in the
world between death and a new birth, we experience in memory past
ages of the Earth's evolution — the evolution of worlds, one
might call it. The world-memories thus lived through become a man's
deeds, for he does something with these memories, in cooperation with
the higher Beings of whom I have already spoken and will speak
further. What he carries out, while active in memory and remembering
in activity, gives a significant perspective into the past of
the Earth and of the world.
The experiences
he goes through while in connection with the inhabitants of the Moon
conjures up in his soul a time during which he passed through earlier
lives on Earth in a similar relation to them as now. He surveys a
series of earthly lives resembling those of the present. He then
looks further back to a time when, even while on Earth, he was more
closely connected with the present dwellers on the Moon; to a time
from which he is separated by what geologists call the Ice Age. He
looks back to a phase in earthly evolution you will find described in
my books as the Atlantean age. But he penetrates still further back
to what is called the age of Lemuria, when man is still to be found
on Earth, though under quite different conditions. He was not yet so
closely bound to the Earth that he trod it with his feet; he lived
more as an etheric being in the environment of the Earth, in its
atmosphere. This he could do because at that time the atmosphere
consisted mainly of a watery solution that has now been distributed
between seas and continents, together with solutions of other
substances that have since become the solid earth of to-day. Hence he
lived more in the Earth's circumference during the age — here
again names are unimportant — called the Lemurian, which
corresponds to what natural scientists call, with some
justification, the oldest period of the Earth.
We then look
back to an age when man was still associated with the Sun Beings, with the
inhabitants of the Sun, before in the course of cosmic evolution the
Sun separated from the Earth. This does not mean looking back to an
age when, as described in
Occult Science,
the Earth itself
went through its Sun period — the second age in the evolution
of the Earth — but to the recapitulation in earthly existence
of that cosmic age. But this recapitulation does come into view. And
so a man's knowledge, when supplemented by what he is able to
experience between death and a new birth, becomes cosmological
knowledge. Earth-evolution advances through repeated stages, in
conjunction with the results of human deeds carried out together with
higher Beings. The Earth's past, in its connection with the whole
planetary system — Sun, Moon, and all the planets dependent on
them — becomes apparent in the deeds of men. Out of it a man
shapes the part of the future for which he is responsible — his
next earthly life. At the same time, however, he is involved in the
preparation of future worlds, the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan
existences, for into each of these in turn the Earth existence will
eventually be transformed.
If we look
deeply into such matters, we can understand how ancient cosmic times were
part of the world-evolution of the Earth. We look back indeed into an age
when the Moon-dwellers of to-day provided the instructors of
mankind. Then, together with the latest great instructors, they
withdrew into the cosmic stronghold of the Moon.
Over and over
again on Earth, however, men were born with the capacity to remain throughout
their karmic life in close connection with the experiences of those
who now dwell on the Moon. Born again and again in the course of
world-evolution, they were like ambassadors of the great community
within the Moon. They appeared among the people of the Earth during
the first, second and third postAtlantean culture-epochs and in
the East they developed a lofty civilisation. These ambassadors of
the Moon were called Bodhisattvas. They dwelt on Earth as men, but in
them lived on the spiritual teaching that had been given directly by
the great Moon teachers on Earth.
Now there are
often times in the universe when the inhabitants of the Moon, because
they are more nearly connected with the inhabitants of the Sun than
with those of the Earth, develop a particularly intimate relation
with these Sun-dwellers, so that, indirectly, through the Moon
ambassadors — called in the East the Bodhisattvas —
the wisdom of the Sun was able to reach men on Earth in the older
oriental civilisations. Because of the progress made in the evolution
of the Earth, it then became necessary that earthly civilisation
should no longer be nourished, as it were, by the Moon Beings only.
The whole evolution of the Earth would have had to take a course
different from the one prescribed by cosmic wisdom, if only the Moon
ambassadors had figured in it. For this reason there came about the
great, momentous event we call the Mystery of Golgotha.
Whereas
in more ancient times it was the Moon ambassadors who, to a certain
extent, brought the Sun wisdom to Earth, it was the Leader of the Sun
Beings Himself, foremost in the ranks of Sun Spirits, who, through
the Mystery of Golgotha, came down to Earth into the body of the man
Jesus. Through this, quite different conditions arose for the
evolution of the Earth. The wisdom of the Sun-dwellers was brought
into it as impulse by Christ Jesus; and under this impulse the
further course of Earth-evolution must therefore proceed.
At the time
of the Mystery of Golgotha, so much Moon wisdom was still spread over the
whole Earth that as Gnosis, as Pistis Sophia — which was old
Moon wisdom — it was able to understand the nature of the
Christ. Gnosis was essentially an endeavour to grasp His whole
spiritual significance. But Gnosis has been entirely rooted out. In
the phase of evolution which led to a temporary lack of understanding
of the Mystery of Golgotha, the first act was the rooting out of the
Gnosis — down, almost, to the very writings of its
opponents.
Imagine that
nothing were left of our present Anthroposophy except what its
opponents have written about it, and this will give you some idea of
what people know of Gnosis from external sources. Their knowledge is
limited to the opinions of its opponents, perhaps to some
acquaintance with the Pistis Sophia and so on, which they don't
understand. That is all they know of the Gnosis, which is indeed a
gift of the Moon, out of the past, to the first centuries of
Christianity — particularly the first four centuries, for
after that it was no longer understood. It was what could be said out
of the old Moon wisdom, out of the Moon Logos, to the Sun Logos who
had come to Earth — said, that is, to the Christ. Anyone aware
of this can really understand the Gnosis, which has been greatly
misjudged, and of which such strange things are said
to-day.
It is not
possible, however, for matters to remain thus, for the evolution of the
Earth must continue. We have to progress from the old wisdom of the
Moon to a new Sun wisdom, for which we must learn to have an
immediate understanding. To-morrow I shall have to describe how it
was essentially the old Moon wisdom — after it had come
virtually to an end — which still spoke to human beings through
a form of Yoga breathing, through a changed breathing process. It was
a striving after the old wisdom of the Moon.
This Yoga
cult is no longer suitable for Western people; they must attain to
Imagination. For civilisation in general, that is the necessary next
step — the endeavour to come to Imagination. But there are all
sorts of obstacles, and this means that the evolution of human civilisation
can advance only if a new impulse from the spirit is accepted. This
depends on intimate human destinies. When Bodhisattvas appeared, they
never found people generally hostile. Those ancient times may often
appear to us outwardly as gruesome and terrible, but it was always
possible to meet with good will when bringing impulses from the
spiritual worlds. Hence the Bodhisattvas found men ready to receive
the old Moon Logos — the reflection, that is, of the Sun Logos.
But it will never again be possible to speak to mankind in that old
way.
The old Moon
wisdom, the old Moon Logos, however, cannot cease — like everything
else, it has to progress. But it will have to be understood through
the Sun Word, which, having lost its last legacy in the Gnosis, must
be re-discovered. It will be impossible to speak to people in the
true language of the Sun until they bring good will to meet it. Until
they do so, they will wait in vain for the coming of a successor to
the Bodhisattvas of old, for that depends upon whether human beings
welcome him with understanding.
To-day there
is a deep rift between the humanity of the East and the humanity of the
West. And those who do not go deeply enough into these matters cannot see
how East and West are divided, and how the East is waiting for the
new Bodhisattva to bring them in his own way something of which the
West has only the vaguest idea. The nationalistic struggles of to-day
have not yet been sufficiently overcome throughout the Earth by the
universal consciousness which must flow essentially from the Christ
impulse. Men will never discover how to rise to this common humanity,
this genuine Christ impulse, and will never be able to understand
what a potential Bodhisattva would have to say, until they have
developed enough spiritual longing in them to create a bridge for a
world-wide understanding between East and West.
I am touching
here on a theme we must go further into to-morrow — a theme that will
show how different the present time is from the days when man waited
expectantly for the coming of a Bodhisattva. Now, before the
Bodhisattva can speak to men, he has himself to wait until they are
ready to understand the words he will use, for men have now entered
the epoch of freedom.
This entry
into the epoch of freedom, in relation to our present theme, will be a
subject for to-morrow. But all that mankind has to go through, in order
to find the innermost impulse in the spiritual world above, is connected
with many apparently insignificant cultural systems and symptoms of
our civilisation.
Forgive me
for intermingling the great with the trivial, but trivial symptoms can
sometimes throw light on the great. A few days ago I said that in
this region, where Imaginations take so firm a hold on the spirit, we
get the disturbance of motor-cars. I added that I was not saying
anything against motor-cars, for in Anthroposophy we cannot express
reactionary views, and when necessary I am obviously very fond
of travelling by car myself. One must take the world as it is. But
anything one-sided must always be balanced by its opposite. Thus
there is no harm in motoring — provided we take it, and
everything of that kind, with a heart attuned to the spiritual world.
Then, if other things besides cars come to disturb us, we shall be
able to press on by dint of our own strength and freedom, for freedom
had to come, and it must lead us back to the Bodhisattva.
Human beings
will be able to help themselves, where things are concerned that do us
good service mechanically. It can truly be said that men will be
able to help themselves in face of what comes upon them in the way of
cars, typewriters, and so on.
With gramophones,
however, it is different — forgive me for concluding on such an
apparently trivial note. With gramophones, art is being thrust down
into a machine. When people develop a passion for such a thing
— which is really a mechanising of what comes down to us as a
shadow of the spiritual — when they show enthusiasm for the
kind of thing represented by gramophones, then in this connection
they no longer have the power to help themselves. At this point the
Gods have to help.
Now the Gods
are merciful, and to-day our hope for the future progress of human
civilisation must be that the Gods in their mercy will themselves
come to the rescue where — as in the case of the gramophone
— men's taste has gone astray.
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