T
hirteen years
ago, almost to the day, in
a course of lectures
[See
Occult History. Historical Personalities and Events in the Light of Spiritual Science
by Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophical Publishing Company, London, 1957.
]
that I gave in Stuttgart between Christmas and New Year, I spoke
of the same events that we shall treat of in the present course
of lectures. Only we shall have to alter the standpoint somewhat.
In the first two introductory lectures we have been at pains to
acquire an understanding for the radical change in man's life
of thought and feeling that has come about in the course of
human evolution, prehistoric as well as historic. In to-day's
lecture, at any rate to begin with, we shall not need to go
back more than a few thousand years.
You
know that from the standpoint of Spiritual Science we have to
regard as of paramount importance in its consequences for
human evolution the so-called Atlantean catastrophe which
befell the Earth in the time commonly known as the later Ice
Age. It was the last Act in the downfall of the Atlantean
continent, which continent forms to-day the floor of the
Atlantic Ocean; and following it we have as we have often
described, five great successive epochs of civilisation,
leading up to our own time. Of the two earliest of these we
have no trace in historical tradition, for the literature
remaining in the East, even all that is contained in the
magnificent Vedas, in the profound Vedantic philosophy,
is but an echo of what we should have to describe, if we wanted
to recall these ancient epochs. In my
Outline of Occult Science
I have always spoken of them as the Ancient Indian and the Ancient
Persian.
To-day we shall not have to go so far back as this; we will
direct our thoughts to the period which I have often designated
as the Egypto-Chaldean, the period preceding the Graeco-Latin.
We have already had to draw attention to the fact that during
the time between the Atlantean catastrophe and the Greek
period, great changes took place in regard to man's power of
memory and also in regard to the social life of humanity. A
memory such as we have to-day — the temporal memory, by
means of which we can take ourselves back in time — was
not in existence in this third Post-Atlantean period; man had
then, as we have described in an earlier lecture, a memory that
was linked to rhythmic experience. And we have seen how this
rhythmic memory proceeded from a still earlier memory that was
particularly strong in the Atlantean period, namely, the
localised memory, where man only bore within him a
consciousness of the present, but used all manner of things
which he found in the external world or which he himself set
there, as memorials by means of which he put himself into
relationship with the past; and not alone with his own personal
past, but with the past of humanity in general.
In
this connection we have not only to think of memorials that
were on the Earth; in those ancient times the
constellations in the heavens served man as memorials,
especially in their recurrences and in the variations of these
recurrences. From the constellations man perceived how things
were in earlier times. Thus did heaven and earth work together
to build for an ancient humanity the localised memory.
Now
the man of long past times was different in the whole
constitution of his being from the man of a later time, and
still more so from the man of our own time. Man to-day, in his
waking condition, bears the Ego and astral body within him
unnoticed, as it were; most people do not notice how the
physical bears within it, along with the etheric body, a much
more important organisation than itself, namely, the astral
body and the Ego-organisation. You, of course, are familiar
with these connections. But an ancient humanity felt this fact
of their own being quite differently.
And
it is to such a humanity that we must return, when we go back
to the third epoch of Post-Atlantean civilisation, — the
Egypto-Chaldean. At that time man experienced himself as spirit
and soul still to a great extent outside his physical and
etheric body, even when awake. He knew how to distinguish: This
I have as my spirit and soul, — we, of course, call it
the Ego and the astral body — and it is linked with my
physical body and my etheric body. He went through the world in
this experience of twofold-ness. He did not call his physical
and his etheric body ‘I.’ He called ‘I’ only his soul and
spirit, that which was spiritual and was in a manner connected
downward with his physical and etheric bodies, had a connection
with them that he could observe and feel. And in this spirit
and soul, in this Ego and astral body, man was made aware of
the entry of the Divine-spiritual Hierarchies, even as to-day
he feels the entry of natural substances into his physical
body.
To-day man's experience in the physical body is of the
following nature. He knows that with the process of
nourishment, with the process of breathing, he receives
the substances of the external kingdoms of Nature.
Before, they are outside; then they are within him. They enter
him, penetrate him and become part of him. In that earlier age,
when man experienced a certain separation of his
soul-and-spirit nature from his physical and etheric nature, he
knew that Angels, Archangels and other Beings up to the highest
Hierarchies are themselves spiritual substance that penetrates
his soul and spirit and becomes — if I may put it so
— part of him. So that at every moment of life he was
able to say: In me live the Gods. And he looked upon his Ego,
not as built up from below by means of physical and etheric
substances, but as bestowed on him through grace from above, as
coming from the Hierarchies. And as a burden, or rather as a
vehicle, in which he feels himself borne forward in the
physical world as in a vehicle of life — so did he
conceive of his physical-etheric nature. Until this is clearly
grasped, we shall not understand the course of events in the
evolution of mankind.
We
could trace this course of events by reference to many
different examples. To-day we will follow one thread, the same
that I touched upon thirteen years ago, when I spoke of
that historic document
[The Epic of Gilgamesh was discovered in
the ruins of a palace of Assurbanipal written in cuneiform
characters on twelve tablets. This text is based on older
Sumerian documents of which fragments remain.]
which represents the most ancient phase of
the evolution we have now to consider, — I mean, the Epic
of Gilgamesh.
The
Epic of Gilgamesh has in part the character of a Saga, and so
to-day I will set before you the events that I described
thirteen years ago, as they manifest themselves directly to
spiritual vision.
In
a certain town in Asia Minor — it is called
Erech
[Called Erech in the Bible
(1 Moses 10, 10),
the city is named Uruk in the cuneiform text.]
in the Epic — there lived a man who belonged to the conquering
type of which we spoke in the last lecture, the type that
sprang so truly and naturally out of the whole mental and
social conditions of the time. The Epic calls him Gilgamesh. We
have then to do with a personality who has preserved many
characteristics of the humanity of earlier times. Clear though
it is, however, to this personality that he has, as it were, a
dual nature, — that he has on the one hand the
spirit-and-soul nature into which the Gods descend, and on the
other hand, the physical-and-etheric into which substances of
the Earth and the Cosmos, physical and etheric
substances, enter, — it is none the less a fact
that the representative people of his time are already
passing through a transition into a later stage of human
evolution. The transition consisted in this. The
Ego-consciousness, which a comparatively short time
previously was above in the sphere of spirit and soul, had now,
if I may so express it, sunk down into the physical and
etheric, so that Gilgamesh was one of those who began no longer
to say ‘I’ to the spirit-and-soul part of their being, in which
they felt the presence of the Gods, but to say ‘I’ to that
which was earthly and etheric in them. Such was the stage of
development in the human soul life of that time.
But
along with this condition of soul, where the Ego has drawn down
from the spirit and soul and entered as conscious Ego
into the bodily and etheric, this personality had still left in
him habits belonging to the past; and especially the habit of
experiencing memory solely in connection with rhythm. He
still retained also that inward feeling that one must learn to
know the forces of death, because the death-forces can alone
give to man that which brings him to powers of reflection.
Now
owing to the fact that in the personality of Gilgamesh we have
to do with a soul who had already gone through many
incarnations on Earth and had now entered into the new form of
human existence which I have just described, we find him at
this point in a physical existence that bore in it a strain of
uncertainty. The justification, as it were, of the habits of
conquest, the justification, too, of the rhythmic memory, were
beginning to lose their validity for the Earth. And so the
experiences of Gilgamesh were throughout the experiences of an
age of transition.
Hence it came about that when this personality, in accordance
with the old custom, conquered and seized the city that in the
Epic is called Erech, dissensions arose in the city. At first
he was not liked. He was regarded as a foreigner and indeed
would never have been able alone to meet all the difficulties
that presented themselves in consequence of his capture of the
city. Then there appeared, because destiny had led him thither,
another personality — the Epic of Gilgamesh calls him
Eabani
[The cuneiform text has Enkidu or Engidu.]
— a personality who had descended
relatively late to the Earth from that planetary existence
which Earth-humanity led for a period, as you will find
described in my
Outline of Occult Science.
You
know how during the Atlantean epoch souls descended, some
earlier, some later, from the different planets, having
withdrawn thither from the Earth at a very early stage of Earth
evolution.
In
Gilgamesh we have to do with an individuality, who returned
comparatively early to the Earth; thus at the time of which we
are speaking he had already experienced many Earth
incarnations.
In
the other individuality who had now also come to that city we
have to do with one who had remained comparatively long in
planetary existence and only later found his way back to Earth.
You may read of this from a somewhat different point of view in
my Stuttgart lectures of thirteen years ago.
Now
this second individuality formed an intimate friendship
with Gilgamesh; and together they were able to establish the
social life of the city on a really permanent footing. This was
possible because there remained to this second personality a
great deal of the knowledge that came from that sojourn in the
Cosmos beyond the Earth, and that was preserved for a few
incarnations after the return to Earth. He had, as I said in
Stuttgart, a kind of enlightened cognition; clairvoyance,
clairaudience and what we may call clair-cognition. Thus we
have in the one personality what remained of the old habits of
conquest and of the rhythmically-directed memory, and in the
other what remained to him from vision and penetration into the
secret mysteries of the Cosmos. And from the flowing together
of these two things, there grew up, as was indeed generally the
case in those olden times, the whole social structure of that
city in Asia Minor. Peace and happiness descended upon the city
and its inhabitants, and everything would have been in order,
had not a certain event taken place that set the whole course
of affairs in another direction.
There was in that city a Mystery, the Mystery of a Goddess, and
this Mystery preserved very many secrets relating to the
Cosmos. It was, however, in the meaning of those times, what I
may call a kind of synthetic Mystery. That is to say, in this
Mystery revelations were collected together from various
Mysteries of Asia. And the contents of these Mysteries were
cultivated and taught there in diverse ways at different times.
Now this was not easily understood by the personality who bears
the name of Gilgamesh in the Epic, and he made complaint
against the Mystery that its teachings were contradictory. And
seeing that the two personalities of whom we are speaking were
those who really held the whole ordering of the city in their
hands and that complaints against the Mystery came from so
important a quarter, trouble ensued; and at length things
became so difficult that the priests of the Mysteries appealed
to those Powers Who in former times were accessible to man in
the Mysteries. It will not surprise you to hear that in the
ancient Mysteries man could actually address himself to the
Spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies; for, as I told you
yesterday, to the ancient Oriental, Asia was none else than the
lowest heaven and in this lowest heaven man was aware of the
presence of Divine-spiritual Beings and had intercourse with
them. Such intercourse was especially cultivated in the
Mysteries. And so the priests of the Istar Mysteries turned to
those Spiritual Powers to whom they always turned when they
sought enlightenment; and it came about that these Spiritual
Powers inflicted a certain punishment upon the city.
What happened was expressed at the time in the following way:
Something that is really a higher spiritual force, is working
in Erech as an animal power, as a terrible spectral animal
power. Trouble of all kinds befell the inhabitants, physical
illnesses and more especially diseases and disturbances
of the soul. The consequence was that the personality who had
attached himself to Gilgamesh and who is called Eabani in the
Epic, died; but in order that the mission of the other
personality might be continued on Earth, he remained with this
personality spiritually, even after death. Thus when we
consider the later life and development of the personality who
in the Epic bears the name of Gilgamesh, we have still to see
in it the working together in the two personalities; but now in
such a way that in the subsequent years of Gilgamesh's life he
receives intuitions and enlightenment from Eabani, and so
continues to act, although alone, not simply out of his own
will, but out of the will of both, from the flowing together of
the will of both.
What I have here placed before you is something that was fully
possible in those olden times. Man's life of thought and
feeling was not then so single and united as it is to-day.
Hence it could not have the experience of freedom, in the sense
in which we know it to-day. It was quite possible, either for a
spiritual Being who had never incarnated on Earth to work
through the will of an earthly personality, or, as was the case
here, for a human personality who had passed through death and
was living an after-death existence, to speak and act through
the will of a personality on Earth. So it was with Gilgamesh.
And from what resulted in this way through the flowing together
of the two wills, Gilgamesh was able to recognise with
considerable clearness at what point he himself stood in the
history of mankind. Through the influence of the spirit that
inspired him, he began to know that the Ego had sunk down into
the physical body and etheric body, — which are mortal;
and from that moment the problem of immortality began to play
an intensely strong part in his life. His whole longing was set
on finding his way by some means or other into the very heart
of this problem. The Mysteries, wherein was preserved what
there was to say on Earth in those days concerning immortality,
did not readily reveal their secrets to Gilgamesh. The
Mysteries had still their tradition, and in their tradition was
preserved also in great measure the living knowledge that was
present on Earth in Atlantean times, when the ancient original
wisdom ruled among men.
The
bearers of this original wisdom, however, who once went about
on Earth as Spiritual Beings, had long ago withdrawn and
founded the cosmic colony of the Moon. For it is pure
childishness to suppose that the Moon is the dead frozen body
that modern physics describes. The Moon is, before all, the
cosmic world of those Spiritual Beings Who were the first great
teachers of earthly humanity, the Beings Who once brought to
earthly humanity the primeval wisdom and Who, when the Moon had
left the Earth and sought a place for itself in the planetary
system, withdrew also and took up their abode on this Moon.
He
who to-day through Imaginative cognition is able to attain to a
true knowledge of the Moon, gains knowledge too of the
Spiritual Beings in this cosmic colony, Who were once the
teachers of the ancient wisdom to humanity on Earth. What they
had taught was preserved in the Mysteries, and also the
impulses whereby man himself is able to come into a certain
relationship with this ancient wisdom.
The
personality who is called Gilgamesh in the Epic had, however,
no living connection with these Mysteries of Asia Minor. But
through the super-sensible influence of the friend who, in the
after-death existence, was still united with him, there arose
in Gilgamesh an inner impulse to seek out paths in the world
whereby he might be able to come to an experience concerning
the immortality of the soul. Later on, in the Middle Ages, when
man desired to learn something concerning the spiritual world,
he would sink down into his own inner being. In more modern
times one could say that a still more inward process is
followed. In those olden times, however, of which we are
speaking, it was a matter of clear and exact knowledge to man
that the Earth is not the mere lump of rock which the geology
books would lead one to imagine, but that the Earth is a living
being, — a living being, moreover, endowed with soul and
spirit. As a tiny insect that runs over a human being may learn
something of that human being as it passes over his nose and
forehead, or through his hair, as the insect acquires its
knowledge in this way by making a journey over the human being,
so in those times it was by setting forth upon journeys over
the Earth and by learning to know the Earth with its different
configurations in different places, that man gained
insight into the spiritual world. And this he was able to do,
whether access to the Mysteries were permitted to him or no. It
is in truth no mere superficial account that relates how
Pythagoras and others wandered far and wide in order to attain
their knowledge. Men went about the Earth in order to receive
what was revealed in its manifold configurations, in all that
they could observe from the different forms and shapes of the
Earth in different places; and not of the Earth in its physical
aspect alone, but of the Earth too as soul and spirit.
To-day men may travel to Africa, to Italy, — and yet,
with the exception of external details, at which they gape and
stare, their experience in these places may be very little
different from their experience at home. For man's
sensitiveness to the deep differences that subsist between
different places of the Earth has gone.
In
the period with which we are now dealing, it had not died out.
Thus the impulse to wander over the Earth and thereby receive
something that should help to the solution of the problem of
immortality, betokened something full of meaning for
Gilgamesh.
So
he set forth upon his wanderings. And they had for him a result
that was of very great significance. He came to a region that
is nearly the same as we now call Burgenland, a district much
talked of in recent times and concerning which there has been a
good deal of contention as to whether it should belong to
Hungary or not. The whole social conditions of the country have
of course greatly changed since those far off times. Gilgamesh
came thither and found there an ancient Mystery — the
High Priest of the Mystery is called
Xisuthros
[This is the Sumerian name Ziusudra
used by Berossus, priest of Bel in Babylon, who wrote a history
of Babylon and Chaldea in Greek around 280 B.C.
based on the archives of the Temple in Babylon. In cuneiform script
it is Utnapishtim.]
in the Epic — an ancient Mystery that was a genuine successor,
as it were, of the old Atlantean Mysteries; only, of course, in a
changed form, as must of necessity be the case after so long a
time had elapsed.
And
it was so that in this ancient Mystery centre they knew how to
judge and appraise the faculty of knowledge that Gilgamesh
possessed. He was met with understanding. A test was imposed
upon him, one that in those days was often imposed on pupils of
the Mysteries. He had to go through certain exercises,
wide-awake, for seven days and seven nights. It was too much
for him, so he submitted himself only to the substitute or
alternative for the test. Certain substances were made ready
for him, of which he then partook, and by means of them
received a certain enlightenment; although, as is always the
case when certain exceptional conditions are not assured, the
enlightenment might be doubtful in some respects. Nevertheless
a degree of enlightenment was there, a certain insight into the
great connections in the Universe, into the spiritual structure
of the Universe. And so, when Gilgamesh had ended his wandering
and was returning home again, he did in fact possess a high
spiritual insight.
He
travelled along the Danube, following the river on its northern
bank, until he came again to his home, to the home of his
choice. But before he reached home, because he did not receive
the initiation into the Post-Atlantean Mystery in the other way
that I described, but instead in a somewhat uncertain way, he
succumbed to the first temptation that assailed him and fell
into a terrible fit of anger over an event that came to his
notice, — something, in effect, which he heard had taken
place in the city. He heard of the event before he reached the
city, and burst out into a storm of anger; and in consequence,
the enlightenment he had received was almost entirely
darkened, so that he arrived home without it.
Nevertheless, — and this is the peculiar characteristic
of this personality — he still had the possibility,
through the connection with the spirit of his dead friend, of
looking into the spiritual world, or at least of receiving
information thence.
It
is, however, one thing by means of an initiation to acquire
direct vision into the spiritual world, and another thing to
receive information from a personality who is in the
after-death condition. Still, we may say with truth that
something of an insight into the nature of immortality did
remain with Gilgamesh. I am setting aside just now the
experiences that are undergone by man after death; these do not
yet play very strongly into the consciousness of the next
incarnation, nor did they in those days; — into the life,
into the inner constitution they do work very strongly, but not
into the consciousness.
You
now have before you these two personalities whom I have
described and who together bring to expression the mental and
spiritual constitution of man in the third Post-Atlantean
period of civilisation at about the middle point of its
development, — two personalities who still lived in such
a way that the whole manner of their life was in itself strong
evidence of the duality in man's nature. The one —
Gilgamesh — was conscious of this duality; he was one of
the first to experience the descent of the Ego-consciousness,
the descent of the Ego into the physical and etheric nature in
man. The other, inasmuch as he had passed through but few
incarnations on Earth, had a clairvoyant knowledge, by means of
which he was able to know that there is no such thing as
matter, but that everything is spiritual and the so-called
material only another form of the spiritual.
Now
you can imagine that, if a man's being were so
constituted, he could certainly not think and feel what
we think and feel to-day. His whole thinking and feeling was
indeed totally different from ours. And what such personalities
could receive in the way of instruction was of course quite
unlike what is taught to-day at school or in the universities.
Everything of a spiritual or cultural nature that men received
in those days came to them from the Mysteries, whence it was
spread abroad as widely as possible among men by all manner of
channels. It was the wise men, the priests, in the Mysteries,
who were the true teachers of humanity.
Now
it was characteristic of these two personalities that in the
incarnation that we have described they were unable just
because of their special constitution of soul, to approach the
Mysteries of their own land. The one who is named Eabani in the
Epic stood near the Mysteries through his sojourn in the
extra-earthly regions of the Cosmos; the one who is named
Gilgamesh experienced a kind of initiation in a Post-Atlantean
Mystery, which however only bore half fruit in him. The result
of all this was that both felt in their own being, as it were,
something that made them kin to the primeval times of earthly
humanity. Both were able to put the question to themselves: How
have we become what we are? What share have we had in the
evolution of the Earth? We have become what we are through the
evolution of the Earth; what part have we played in its
evolution?
The
question of immortality that was the occasion of such suffering
and conflict to Gilgamesh, was connected in those days with a
necessary vision into the evolution of the Earth in primeval
times. One could not think or feel — using the words in
the sense of those times — about the immortality of the
soul unless one had at the same time some vision of how human
souls who were already there in very early phases of the
Earth's evolution, during the Ancient Sun and Ancient Moon
embodiments, saw approaching them, that which later has become
what we call earthly. Men felt they belonged to the Earth. They
felt that to know himself, man must behold and recognise his
connection with the Earth.
Now
the secret knowledge that was cultivated in all Mysteries of
Asia, was first and foremost cosmic knowledge; its wisdom and
its teachings unfolded the origin of the evolution of the Earth
in connection with the Cosmos. So that in these Mysteries there
appeared before men in a living way, in such a way that it
could become living Ideas in them, a far-spread vision, showing
them how the Earth evolved, and how in the heave and surge of
the substances and forces of the Earth, all through the Sun,
Moon and Earth periods of evolution, man has been evolving
together with all these substances. All this was set before men
in a most vivid manner.
One
of the Mysteries where such things were taught, was continued
on into much later times. It was the
Mystery centre of Ephesus
[Rudolf Steiner spoke in detail about this place
in the 6th lecture of
Mystery Knowledge and Mystery Centres,
Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1973.].
This Mystery had in the very middle of its sanctuary the image
of the Goddess Artemis. When we look to-day at pictures of the
goddess Artemis, we have perhaps only the grotesque impression
of a female form with many breasts. This is because we have no
idea how such things were experienced in olden times; and it
was the inner experience evoked by these things that was
all-important. The pupils of the Mysteries had to go through a
certain preparation before they were conducted to the true
centre of the Mysteries. In the Ephesian Mysteries the centre
was this image of the Goddess Artemis. When the pupil was led
up to the centre, he became one with such an image. As he stood
before the image, he lost the consciousness that he was there
in front of it, enclosed in his skin. He acquired the
consciousness that he himself is what the image is. He
identified himself with the image. This identification of
himself in consciousness with the divine image at Ephesus had
the following effect. The pupil no longer merely looked out
upon the kingdoms of the Earth that were round about him
— the stones, trees, rivers, clouds and so forth —
but when he felt himself one with the image, when he entered as
it were into the image of Artemis, he received an inner vision
of his connection with the kingdoms of the Ether. He felt
himself one with the world of the stars, one with the processes
in the world of the stars. He did not feel himself as earthly
substance within a human skin, he felt his cosmic existence. He
felt himself in the etheric. And as he did so, there rose
before him earlier conditions of Earth-experience and of man's
experience on Earth. He began to see what these earlier
conditions had been. To-day we look upon the Earth as a great
piece of rock or stone, covered with water over a large part of
its surface and surrounded by a sphere of air containing oxygen
and nitrogen and other substances, — containing, in fact,
what the human being requires for breathing. And so on and so
on. And when men begin to explain and speculate on what passes
to-day for scientific knowledge, then we get a fine result
indeed! For only by means of spiritual vision can one penetrate
to the conditions that prevailed in the earliest primeval
times. Such a spiritual vision, however, concerning
primeval conditions of the Earth
[See the 5th lecture in
Mystery Knowledge and Mystery Centres.
]
and of mankind was attained by
the pupils of Ephesus, when they identified themselves with the
divine image; they beheld and understood how formerly
what surrounds the Earth to-day as atmosphere was not as it now
is; surrounding the Earth, in the place where the atmosphere is
to-day, was an extraordinarily fine albumen, a volatile,
fluid albumenous substance. And they saw how everything
that lived on the Earth required for its own genesis the forces
of this volatile, fluid albumenous substance, that was spread
over the Earth, and how everything also lived in it. They saw
too how that which was in a certain sense already within this
substance — finely distributed but everywhere with
a tendency to crystallisation — how that which was
present in a finely distributed condition as silicic acid was
in reality a kind of sense-organ for the Earth and could take
up into itself from all sides the Imaginations and influences
from the surrounding Cosmos. And thus in the silicic acid
contained in the earthly albumenous atmosphere were everywhere
Imaginations, concretely, externally present.
These Imaginations had the form of gigantic, plant-like
organisms, and out of that which was, so to speak, ‘imagined’
into the Earth in this way, there developed later, through
absorption of the atmospheric substance, — the plant;
everything that is of a plant-like nature. At first it was in
the environment of the Earth, in volatile, fluid form; only
later did it sink down into the soil and become what is known
to us as the plant.
Besides the silicic acid, there was imbedded also in this
albumen-atmosphere another substance, lime, in a finely-divided
condition. Again, out of the lime substance, under the
influence of the congelation of the albumen there arose the
animal kingdom. And the human being felt himself within all
this. He felt one with the whole Earth. He lived in that which
formed itself as plant in the Earth through Imagination, he
lived too in that which was developing on Earth as animal, in
the way I have described. Each single human being felt himself
spread out over the whole Earth, felt himself one with the
Earth. So that the human beings were all — as I have
described it for the Platonic teaching in my book
Christianity as Mystical Fact,
in reference to the human capacity for ideas — were all each
within the other.
Now
destiny brought it about that the two personalities, of whom I
spoke in Stuttgart and of whom I am speaking to you again here,
reincarnated as adherents of the Mystery of Ephesus, and there
received with deep devotion into their souls the things that I
have here pictured to you in brief outline. Thereby their souls
were, in a manner, inwardly established. Through the Mystery
they now received as Earth-wisdom what had formerly been
accessible to them only in experience, — for the most
part unconscious experience.
Thus was the human experience of these personalities divided
between two separate incarnations. And thereby did they bear
within them a strong consciousness of man's connection with the
higher, the spiritual world, and at the same time a strong, an
intense capacity for feeling and experiencing all that belongs
to the Earth.
For
if you have two things that perpetually flow together, so that
you cannot keep them apart, then they merge and lose themselves
in each other. If, on the other hand, they show themselves
clearly distinct, then you can judge the one by the other. And
so these two personalities were able on the one hand to judge
the spiritual of the higher world that came to them as a result
of life-experience and that lived in them as an echo from their
earlier incarnations. And now, as the origin of the kingdoms of
nature was communicated to them in the Mystery of Ephesus under
the influence of the Goddess Artemis, they were able, on the
other hand, to judge how the things external to man on the
Earth came into being, how gradually everything external to man
on the Earth was formed out of a primeval substance, which
substance also included man. And the life of these two personalities
— it fell partly in the latter end of the time when
Heraclitus
[Heraclitus of Ephesus, Greek philosopher. He lived
around 500 B.C. and deposited his chief work
in the Temple of Artemis. See
Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity
by Rudolf Steiner, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1972.]
was still living in Ephesus, and partly in
the time that followed — became particularly rich
inwardly and was powerfully lit up from within with the light
of great cosmic secrets. There was in them moreover a strong
consciousness of how man in his life of soul may be
connected, not merely with that which lies spread out
around him on the Earth, but with that too which extends
upward, — when he himself reaches upward with his being.
Such was the inner configuration of soul of these two
personalities, who had worked together in the earlier
Egypto-Chaldean epoch and then lived together at the time of
Heraclitus and after, in connection with the Mystery of
Ephesus. And now this working together was able to continue
still further. The configuration of soul that had been
developed in both, passed through death, through the spiritual
world, and began to prepare itself for an Earth life that must
needs again bring problems which will now of course present
themselves in quite a different way. And when we observe in
what manner these two personalities had to find their part
later in the history of Earth evolution, we may see how through
the experiences of the soul in earlier times — these
experiences having their karmic continuation in the next life
on Earth — things are prepared which afterwards appear in
totally different form in the later life, when the
personalities are once more incorporated into the evolution of
humanity on Earth.
I
have brought forward this example, because these two
personalities make their appearance later in a period that was
of extraordinary importance in the history of mankind. I
indicated this in my lectures at Stuttgart thirteen years ago;
in fact, I dealt with all these matters from a certain point of
view. These personalities who had first in the Egypto-Chaldean
epoch gone through what I may call a widely-extended cosmic
life, and had then deepened this cosmic experience within them,
thereby in a sense establishing their souls, now lived again
in a later incarnation as
Aristotle
[Greek philosopher from Stagira
(384–322 B.C.). See
Riddles of Philosophy
by Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophic Press, New York, 1973.]
and
Alexander the Great
[(356-323 B.C.).
From 336 King of Macedonia. Died in Babylon.].
When one understands the underlying depths in the souls
of Aristotle and Alexander the Great, then one can begin to
understand, as I explained in Stuttgart, all that was working
so problematically in these two personalities, whose lives took
their course in the time when Greek culture was falling into
decay and Roman rule beginning to have dominion.
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