LECTURE ONE
Angels, Folk Spirits,
Time Spirits: their part in the Evolution of Mankind.
[ Study Guide: Souls of the Nations — First Lecture ]
It affords me great
pleasure to speak at greater length for the third time to our friends
in Norway and I should like to say briefly, in response to the
cordial greetings of our friend Mr. Eriksen, that I reciprocate them
in an equally cordial and heartfelt manner.
I
hope that the course of lectures, which I am about to undertake, will
contribute in some degree to the general understanding of
Anthroposophy. In the course of these lectures I should like to draw
your attention to the fact that they must of necessity incorporate
much that touches upon the fundamental truths of Spiritual Science
and, at the same time, something that, as yet, is rather remote from
man's thinking today. I therefore beg especially those of our
friends who are less familiar with the wider questions of
Anthroposophy to bear in mind that we should not make progress in our
field of investigation if, from time to time, we did not repeatedly
take a great leap forward into those regions of spiritual knowledge
which are really somewhat remote from the thinking, feeling and
perception of man today.
From
this point of view it will sometimes be necessary to ask you to
accept what I shall have to say with a certain amount of good-will,
since to provide the necessary evidence and proof for my statements
in the forthcoming lectures would demand more time than I have at my
disposal. We should not break new ground in this sphere if I did not
appeal to a modicum of good will in you and to your sympathetic
spiritual understanding. Indeed the province we touch upon here is
one which hitherto has been more or less eschewed particularly by
occultists, mystics and theosophists, and has been eschewed for the
very reason that greater objectivity is necessary if we are to accept
the information I propose to offer without occasionally arousing a
certain degree of opposition.
Perhaps
the implications of this will be best understood if you recall that
at a certain stage of mystic or occult development one is called a
‘homeless man’. This is a technical expression. And if we
wish to characterize without further ado — since we are not
discussing the path of knowledge — what we understand by the
term ‘homeless man’ we may briefly say that a ‘homeless
man’ is one whose understanding and grasp of the great laws of
humanity cannot be influenced by whatsoever a person acquires through
association with his native country. Furthermore, a ‘homeless
man’ is one who is able to identify himself with the great laws
of human evolution without allowing the particular shades of feeling
and sentiment associated with his native country to colour his
outlook. It follows then that a certain degree of maturity in
mystical and occult development demands an unprejudiced attitude
towards our heritage that we justifiably consider to be an
inestimable boon and which, on the other hand, in relation to the
individual human life, we describe as the mission of the individual
Folk Spirits who, by drawing upon the hidden roots and the spirit of
the individual peoples make their individual concrete contributions
to the collective mission of humanity.
We
propose therefore to describe this heritage from which the ‘homeless
man’ must liberate himself to some extent. Now the ‘homeless
men’ of all times, from primeval ages down to our own day, have
always known that if they were to describe in detail the state of
homelessness they would meet with little understanding. In the first
place the voice of prejudice would reproach them for having severed
their connection with their native soil, for having sacrificed their
heritage. This is not so, however. In reality, homelessness is, or
may be, a detour, so that, once this sanctuary, the state of
homelessness, has been reached, the ‘homeless man’ may
rediscover the quintessence of the folk and achieve a harmonious
relationship with the stable element in the evolution of mankind.
From the outset it is necessary to draw attention to this. On the
other hand, we have every reason, especially at the present time, to
speak quite impartially about the mission of the individual, Folk
Souls. Just as it was justifiable to maintain complete silence about
their mission hitherto, so it is in order today to begin to speak of
this mission. It is particularly important because the destiny of
mankind in the near future will bring men together in far greater
measure than has hitherto been the case in order to fulfil a mission
common to all mankind. But the members of the individual peoples will
only be able to offer their proper, free and positive contributions
if they have, above all, an understanding of their ethnic origin, an
understanding for what we might call “the self-knowledge of the
folk”. The injunction “Know thyself!” played an
important part in the Apollonian Mysteries of ancient Greece. In the
not too distant future the following injunction will be addressed to
the Folk Souls: “Know yourselves as Folk Souls.” This
maxim will have a certain significance for the activity of mankind in
the future.
Now
in our age it is particularly difficult to admit the existence of
Beings who are inaccessible to sense perception. Today, however, we
may be more prepared to acknowledge that certain members of man's
being are super-sensible and invisible. The idea that beings such as
man, who at least in their external aspect can be apprehended
physically, may also have invisible, super-sensible members will be
more readily accepted by the modern materialist outlook. But it is
asking a great deal of our present age to believe in the existence of
beings who, from the ordinary point of view, have no reality. For
what is meant by the term Folk Soul or Folk Spirit which one hears
from time to time? At best it is something that is acknowledged to be
a common characteristic peculiar to hundreds and millions of people
concentrated in a certain geographical area. It is difficult to
persuade the man of today that, in addition to the teeming millions
in this area, a living reality exists there, a reality that he would
find to be identical with the conception of the Folk Spirit and which
underlies this conception. If we were to ask — to take a case
that is non-controversial — what do we understand today by the
Swiss Folk Spirit, we would describe in abstract terms a few
characteristics peculiar to the people inhabiting the Swiss regions
of the Alps and Jura. It would be perfectly clear to us that this
description bears no relation to anything that might be known through
external cognition. The first steps towards the understanding of this
living reality is the frank admission that it is possible to envisage
the existence of real Beings who are not immediately perceptible to
the senses; that there exist amongst the beings perceptible to the
senses other Beings invisibly at work, who express themselves through
visible beings just as the human being expresses himself through his
fingers and hands. We may therefore speak of a Swiss Folk Spirit in
the same way as we speak of the Spirit of a man. We can just as
clearly distinguish between the Spirit of man and his ten fingers
which are organs of this Spirit as we can distinguish the Swiss Folk
Spirit from the millions of people living in the mountains of
Switzerland. The Folk Spirit is something quite different from the
people, but nevertheless a spiritual Being, just as man himself is a
spiritual being. The difference between man and the Folk Spirit is
that man's external form is known through the medium of the
senses. Whilst the human being is known through sense-perception, a
Folk Spirit has no external manifestation; it is not something that
can be known through sense-experience or sensory impressions and yet
it is unmistakably a real Being.
Today
we shall endeavour as far as possible to form an idea of such a
Being. How do we proceed in Spiritual Science if we wish to form an
idea of a real Being? I propose to illustrate this by a
characteristic example. First, we study the being of man. From the
point of view of Anthroposophy we distinguish the physical body,
etheric body, astral or sentient body and ‘I’ or ego
which we look upon as the highest member. We know therefore that the
man of the present day consists of these bodies. Now you already know
that we look forward to an evolution of mankind in the future and
that the ego works upon the three lower members of the human being,
spiritualizes them and transmutes them from the present lower form
into the higher form of the future. The ego will transmute the astral
body into Manas or Spirit Self, so that it becomes something
different from what it is today. In the same way, at a higher level,
the ego will refashion and transmute the etheric or life-body into
Life Spirit or Buddhi. Finally the highest achievement of man that we
can envisage at present is the spiritualisation of the physical body,
the most intractable member of his being. When our present physical
body, the densest and most material member, is transmitted into Atma
or Spirit Man it will be the highest member of man's being.
Thus we are familiar with three members of the human organism which
were developed in past epochs, the organism in which we are at
present incarnated and three others which the ego will fashion into
something new in the future.
Between
the initial development of the higher members in the past and their
further development in the future there lies an intermediate stage.
We know that we must think of the ego itself as inwardly organized.
The ego works upon a kind of intermediate being. Therefore, between
the astral body which man has inherited from the past and the Spirit
Self or Manas which he will fashion out of the astral body in the
distant future, there are the three preparatory members; the Sentient
Soul, the lowest member in which the ego has already worked, the
Intellectual or Mind Soul and the Spiritual or Consciousness-Soul.
But very little of Spirit Self or Manas that we are in process of
developing is present in man today, at most only the first
indications. On the other hand ‘ man has laid the foundations
of this future development by having learnt to control his three
lower members to some extent. He learned to control the astral body
by permeating it with his ego and forming the Sentient Soul within
it. Just as the Sentient Soul stands in a certain relationship to the
sentient body, so does the Intellectual Soul or Mind-Soul to the
etheric body, so that the Intellectual or Mind-Soul is a feeble
foreshadowing of what the Life Spirit or Buddhi will be — a
feeble foreshadowing, it is true, but none the less a foreshadowing.
And in the Spiritual Soul (or Consciousness-Soul) the ‘I’
has worked down into the physical body to a certain extent. Therefore
the Spiritual Soul is a feeble foreshadowing of what will one day be
Spirit Man or Atma. Thus, apart from the limited transformation of
his astral body which he has already achieved as a first step towards
the development of Spirit Self or Manas, we recognize in man today
four different members. We can distinguish:
- the physical body,
- the etheric body,
- the astral body,
- the ego that works
within them, and further as a foreshadowing of the higher members:
the Sentient Soul,
the Intellectual or Mind-Soul,
the Spiritual Soul or Consciousness-Soul.
Such
is man as we know him today; such is our understanding of man at the
present stage of his evolution. We clearly see the ego fashioning the
higher members after the Sentient, Intellectual and Spiritual Souls
have already prepared the ground. We see the ego working with the
forces of the Sentient, Intellectual and Spiritual Souls upon the
astral body, upon the embryo of Spirit Self. We see man participating
in this stage of his development.
Those
of you — no doubt the majority of you — who have
concerned yourselves with researches into the Akashic Record, with
the evolution of man in the primeval past and the prospect for the
distant future, will know that man, such as I have portrayed him in
the brief sketch I have given you, has evolved. We can look into a
distant past when man required long epochs of time for his evolution
in order to prepare the foundations, first for his physical body,
then for the etheric body and finally for the astral body, and then
to develop these three members further. You will also be aware, no
doubt, that man did not complete the earlier evolution of his being,
the evolution of his astral body, for example, at a time when the
Earth was in the same condition as it is today, but that he developed
his astral body in an earlier Earth cycle, the Old Moon epoch. Just
as we recognize that our present life is the consequence of earlier
incarnations, so too do we realize that the Earth itself has known
earlier incarnations. The Sentient Soul and the Intellectual Soul
were first created during our present Earth epoch, the astral body
during the epoch of the Old Moon, the etheric body in a still earlier
stage, that of the Old Sun, and the physical body during ancient
Saturn. Thus we look back to three incarnations of the Earth and in
each of these incarnations we see one of the members which man bears
within him today implanted first as a seed and then perfected
further.
In
speaking of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon conditions another
factor must be borne in mind. We human beings (on Earth) are now
living through the stage of self-consciousness which other Beings
under-went during the earlier stages of our Earth-evolution, the
stages of Old Moon, Old Sun and Old Saturn. It is immaterial whether
we adopt the terminology of the East or the more familiar terminology
of the West in order to describe these Beings. Those Beings who
underwent their human stage on Old Moon and who therefore are one
stage above Man were called in Christian esoteric terminology,
Angeloi or Angels. They are one stage higher than man because they
completed their stage of human evolution one epoch earlier. Their
mode of existence on the Old Moon differed from that of man on Earth
today. They were Beings at the human stage, but were not incarnated
in a physical body. Their stage of evolution corresponded to the
human stage which man is experiencing today. In the same way we find
Beings of a higher order who underwent their human stage on the Old
Sun. These Beings are the Archangeloi or Archangels who are two
stages beyond man and who underwent their human stage two epochs
earlier. If we go still further back to the first incarnation of our
Earth-existence, to Old Saturn, we find that those Beings whom we
called the Spirits of Personality or Archai underwent their human
stage on Old Saturn. If we take our starting-point from those Beings
who were men in the primeval past, on Old Saturn, and follow the
incarnations of the Earth down to our own time, we have a picture of
the stages of evolution of the various Beings down to the present
day. To summarize: the First Beginnings, the Archai, were men on Old
Saturn, the Archangels or Archangeloi were men on Old Sun, the Angels
or Angeloi were men on Old Moon and men are men on our Earth.
Since
we know that we continue our evolution into the future and that we
further develop our present astral body, etheric or life-body and our
physical body, the question arises: is it not equally natural that
the Beings who have already experienced the human stage have now
reached the stage when they are transmuting their astral body into
Spirit Self or Manas? Just as during the next incarnation of the
Earth, the Jupiter stage, we shall complete the transmutation of our
astral body into Spirit Self or Manas, so the Angeloi who underwent
the human stage on Old Moon have completed the transmutation of their
astral bodies into Spirit Self or Manas, or will do so during our
Earth evolution, a stage that we shall first have to undergo in the
next incarnation of the Earth. If we look still further back to the
Beings who underwent the human stage on Old Sun, we realize that they
already experienced on Old Moon the stage we shall have to experience
for the first time in the next incarnation of the Earth. They are
performing the work which will be the prerogative of man when, in his
ego, he transmutes his etheric or life-body into Life Spirit or
Buddhi. These Archangels, therefore, are Beings who are two stages
beyond man; they have reached the stage that will one day be ours
when from within our ego, we shall transform the life-body into Life
Spirit or Buddhi. When we contemplate these Beings, we recognize them
as Beings who are two stages beyond ourselves, who foreshadow what we
ourselves will experience in the future; they are Beings who are now
working upon their etheric or life-body and are transmuting it into
Life Spirit or Buddhi. In the same way we are aware of yet higher
Beings, the Spirits of Personality (Archai). They are at a still
higher stage than the Archangels, a stage which man will reach in a
still more distant future when he will be able to transmute his
physical body into Atma or Spirit Man.
As
surely as man is at the present stage of development, so surely are
these higher Beings at the respective stages of development which I
have just characterized. We doubt their reality as little as we doubt
their superiority to ourselves. Now this reality is not unrelated to
our life on Earth; it penetrates into it and acts upon it. The
question now is: what form does the activity of these higher Beings
take? In order to understand this, we must bear in mind that from a
spiritual aspect the activity of such Beings will be different from
that of man today. Indeed there is a considerable difference between
these Beings who are higher than man and those who are now only at
the human stage. Strange as this may seem, it will become perfectly
clear to you in the course of the following lectures. True spiritual
investigation shows that man, such as we know him today, is, to a
certain extent, at an intermediate stage of his existence. His ego
will not always work upon his lower vehicles in the same way as it
does today. The whole human entity at the present time is to some
extent an interrelated whole and forms, as it were, an unbroken
unity. This situation will be considerably modified in the future
evolution of mankind. When ultimately man will have developed so far
that he will be able to work upon his astral body in full
consciousness and, by means of his ego, transmute his astral body
into Spirit Self or Manas, then he will experience in full
consciousness a condition akin to the unconscious or subconscious
state of man during sleep.
Consider
for a moment the condition of man in sleep. His astral body and ego
relinquish his physical and etheric bodies which he leaves behind in
the bed, and float outside them. Now imagine that in this condition
man awakens to self-consciousness, that he is as fully conscious in
his spiritual body as in his waking life. How remarkable would be
man's impression of himself! At one moment he would feel: “Here
am I; below me, perhaps some distance away, are lying my physical and
etheric bodies which are part of me, whilst I with my other members
am floating outside and above them.” If, at the present time,
man becomes conscious in his astral body, i.e. outside his physical
and etheric bodies, then he is limited to the free and random
movements of his astral body and can be active in the world
independently of his physical body, activities which are denied to
his physical and etheric bodies. In the distant future, however, he
will be able to direct them from outside — for example, from a
place in the north of Europe to some other place; he will be able to
command their movements and direct them externally. That is not yet
possible at present, but it will be a possibility when he has evolved
from the stage of Earth-evolution to that of Jupiter, the next stage
in the evolution of man. We shall then feel that we can direct
ourselves from without. That is the essential step. And this implies
a transformation of man's present condition. Here materialistic
consciousness is at a loss. It is unable to realize that the
spiritual activities now at work to some extent in the external world
will also be active within the human being at some future time.
Such
phenomena exist already and man could perceive them if only he would
give heed to them. He would then see that there are certain entities,
for example, who have developed prematurely. Just as man, if he waits
for the appropriate moment, will attain the Jupiter state at the
right time so that he will then be able to direct his physical and
etheric bodies, so there are beings who in a certain respect have
developed prematurely. Such prematurely developed beings are to be
found amongst the birds, especially the migratory birds. Here we have
an example of the group-soul to which the etheric body of each
individual bird is related. Just as the group-soul directs the
regular migrations of birds, so will man, after he has developed
Spirit Self or Manas, command his physical and etheric bodies; he
will control and direct them. He will do this in a still higher sense
from without when he has so far perfected himself that he is still in
the process of transmuting his etheric or life-body. The Beings who
can already do this today are the Archangels or Archangeloi. They are
Beings who can already do what man will be able to do some day,
Beings who are able to compass what is called ‘directing the
physical and etheric bodies from without’, but who are able at
the same time to work upon their own etheric body.
Try
to form an idea of Beings living and working as it were with their
ego in the spiritual atmosphere of our Earth, whose ego has already
transformed the astral body and who with their fully developed Spirit
Self or Manas continue to work on our Earth and into human beings,
transforming our etheric or life body; Beings who are themselves at
the stage of transmuting their etheric or life-body into Buddhi or
Life Spirit. If you imagine such Beings who are at the Archangel
stage among the spiritual Hierarchies, you will then have an idea of
what are called the “Folk Spirits”, the directing Folk
Spirits of the Earth. The Folk Spirits belong to the rank of the
Archangels or Archangeloi. We shall see how they, for their part,
direct their own etheric or life-body, and how they thereby work down
into mankind and thus draw mankind into the sphere of their own
activity. If we survey the various peoples on Earth and select out
individual examples, then we see in the life and activity of these
peoples, in the characteristic attributes peculiar to these peoples,
a reflection of what we regard as the mission of the Folk Spirits.
When
we recognize the mission of these Beings — for they are
inspirers of the nations — we are then able to say what a
nation really is. A nation is a homogeneous group of people directed
by one of the Archangels. All that the individual members of a nation
perform or undertake is inspired by them, i.e. the Archangels. Hence
if we can conceive that these Folk Spirits, like human beings, betray
individual differences, we shall have no difficulty in understanding
that the individual peoples reflect the Particular mission of their
individual Archangels. If we have a Clear mental picture of how in
the history of the world nation succeeds nation, how peoples work
side by side, we can then imagine, at least theoretically — and
we shall have more and more concrete evidence in the following
lectures — how all these changing circumstances are inspired by
these spiritual Beings. But at the same time it will be clear to us
that, in addition to this activity of successive peoples, something
else takes place in human evolution. In the period of time which we
reckon from the beginning of the great Atlantean catastrophe and
which so completely changed the face of the Earth that the continent
which lay between the Africa, America and Europe of today was
submerged, one can distinguish the epochs of the post-Atlantean
cultures — the old Indian, the Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean,
the Graeco-Latin and our present culture which in the course of time
will pass over into the sixth cultural epoch. We also realize that
various inspirers of the peoples have successively been at work in
these civilizations. We know that the Egypto-Chaldean civilization
continued long after the Greek civilization had begun, and that this
in its turn perished after the birth of the Roman Civilization. We
are in a position therefore to observe the coexistence and continuity
of the peoples.
But
in addition to the evolution of the peoples and all that is
associated with their evolution, a progressive evolution of mankind
takes place. Whether we consider one particular civilization to be
superior to another is of no consequence. To express a preference for
the old Indian culture is a matter of personal opinion. But he who is
not swayed by personal opinions will be indifferent to value
judgments. Human progress follows ineluctably upon the necessary
course of events, although some may later regard this as a decline.
When we compare the various periods, 5,000 BC, 3,000 BC and AD 1,000
we are aware of the existence of something that transcends the Folk
Spirits, something in which the several Folk Spirits participate. You
can observe this at the present time. How is it that so many persons
are able to sit together in this hall, people who have come here from
many different countries and who understand each other or try to
understand each other when they touch upon vital questions that have
brought them together here? They come from the spheres of activity of
widely different Folk Spirits and yet they have some common ground of
understanding. In the same way various people were able to understand
one another in Atlantean times because in every age there is
something that transcends the Folk Soul, which can bring the various
Folk Souls together, something that is more or less universally
understood. This is the Zeitgeist or Time Spirit, the Spirit
of the Age, to use an unfortunate term which is in common usage. Each
epoch has its particular Zeitgeist; the Zeitgeist of the Greek
epoch is different from that of our own age. Those who understand the
Spirit today are drawn towards Spiritual Science. It is this Spirit
which, reflecting the Spirit of the Age, transcends the individual
Folk Souls. At the time when Christ Jesus appeared on Earth, His
forerunner John the Baptist characterized the Spirit, which might be
described as Zeitgeist, in these words: “Repent, change
your mental attitude, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Thus
for every epoch we can discover the Spirit of the Age, which is
something that permeates the activity of the Folk Spirits, an
activity we have already described as the activity of the Archangels.
To the materialist of today the Spirit of the Age is an abstraction,
devoid of reality; still less would he be prepared to accept the
Spirit of the Age as an authentic entity. Nevertheless the term
‘Spirit of the Age’ conceals the existence of a real
Being, who is three stages above man. It conceals the identity of the
Beings, the Archai, who underwent their human stage on Old Saturn and
who at the present time are working from the spiritual aura of the
Earth at the transformation of the Earth and are thus undergoing the
last stage in the transformation of their physical body into Spirit
Man or Atma. We are here dealing with exalted Beings and the
contemplation of their attributes might well overwhelm us. They are
the Beings who might be described as the inspirers — or if we
choose to use the technical expression of occultism — the
“intuitors” of the Spirit or Spirits of the Age. They
work in such a way that they take over from one another and mutually
support each other. From epoch to epoch they pass on their mission to
their successor. The Spirit of the Age who was active in the Greek
epoch handed on his mission to his successor, and so on. As we have
already observed, there are a number of such Time Spirits, of such
Spirits of Personality who work as Spirits of the Age. These Spirits
of Personality, these inspirers of the Spirit of the Age, are of a
higher order than the Folk Spirits. In every epoch one of these
Spirits of Personality is predominant and sets his seal upon the
whole epoch, assigns to the Folk Spirits their specific tasks, so
that the whole spirit of the epoch is determined by the special or
individual characteristics of the Folk Spirit. Then, in the following
epoch, another Spirit of Personality, another of the Archai, takes
over.
After
a certain number of epochs have elapsed, a Spirit of the Age has
evolved further. We must picture this in the following way: when we
die, having completed our present stage of evolution, our personality
transmits the achievements of this Earth-life to the next Earth-life.
The same holds good for the Spirits of the Age. In each Age we have
one such Spirit of the Age, and at the end of the epoch he hands over
to his successor, who, in his turn, hands over to his successor, and
so on. The earlier Spirits, meanwhile, continue their own
development. Then the original Spirit takes over again, so that in a
later epoch, whilst the others are proceeding with their own
evolution, he takes over again and infuses intuitively into mankind
what he himself has acquired for his higher mission, for the benefit
of the more developed humanity. We look up to these Spirits of
Personality, to these Beings who may be characterized by the somewhat
colourless term ‘Spirit of the Age’. Now we human beings
pass from incarnation to incarnation; but we know for certain that,
whilst we ourselves progress from epoch to epoch, when we look into
the future, we see ever different Spirits of the Age determining
events on Earth. But our Spirit of the Age will return too and we
shall meet him once again. Because a characteristic feature of these
Spirits of Personality is to perform cyclic revolutions and return to
their starting-point, they are therefore called “Spirits of
Cyclic Periods”. (We shall justify the use of this expression
by giving further details later.) These higher Spiritual Beings then
who issue their commands to the Folk Spirits are also called Spirits
of Cyclic Periods. We are here referring to those cyclic periods
which man himself has to go through when from epoch to epoch he
returns to earlier conditions and repeats them in a higher form. Now
this repetition of the characteristics of earlier forms may surprise
you. If you examine carefully the stages of man's evolution on
Earth in the light of Spiritual Science, you will find that these
occurrences recur in many different forms. Thus the seven consecutive
epochs following upon the Atlantean catastrophe which we call the
post-Atlantean culture-epochs, are a repetition. The Graeco-Latin
epoch marks the turning point in our cycle and will not therefore be
repeated. This stage is followed by a repetition of the
Egypto-Chaldean epoch in our own age. This will be followed by a
repetition of the Persian epoch, but in a somewhat different form.
Then will follow the seventh epoch which will be a repetition of the
ancient Indian civilizations the epoch of the Holy Rishis, so that in
this coming epoch certain aptitudes which had been implanted in
ancient India will reappear in a new form. The direction of these
occurrences devolves upon the Spirits of the Age.
In
order that, distributed amongst the various peoples of the Earth, the
progressive development of successive epochs may be realized, in
order that the widely differing ethnic types may be moulded by a
particular geographical area or community of language, in order that
a particular form — language, architecture, art or science may
flourish and their various metamorphoses receive all that the Spirit
of the Age can pour into mankind — for this we need the Folk
Spirits, who, in the hierarchy of higher Beings, belong to the
Archangels.
Now
we require yet another intermediary agent between the higher missions
of the Folk Spirits and those beings here on Earth who are to be
inspired by them. You will readily perceive at least theoretically at
first, that the mediator between the two different kinds of Spirits
is the Hierarchy of the Angels. They are the intermediaries between
the single human being and the Archangel of the folk. In order that
the individual may receive into himself that which the Folk Spirit
has to pour into the whole people, in order that the single human
being may be instrumental in fulfilling the mission of his people,
this intermediary agent between the human being and the Archangel of
his people is indispensable.
Thus
we have looked up to the Beings who attained their human stage three
stages above man and have noted how they placed themselves
consciously at the service of mankind and influenced our
Earth-evolution. In the next lecture we propose to show how far the
activity of the Archangels working down from above, from within their
Ego which has already developed Manas or Spirit Self and is
perfecting the etheric or life-body of man, is expressed in the
achievements, attributes and character of a people.
Man
is directly associated with the work of the higher Beings, for, as a
member of a nation, he is an integral part of it. It is true that man
is, in the first place, an individual, a creation of his Ego being;
but he is not only an individual, he is also a member of a particular
people, something over which, as an individual, he has no control. As
a member of a particular people the individual has no choice but to
speak the language of his people. He does not acquire this by his own
efforts, it does not stem from his individual initiative, it is the
legacy of his inheritance. Individual human progress is something
totally different. As we watch the life and activity of the Folk
Souls, we must bear in mind what is involved in the progress of man
and what is demanded of him in order to achieve it. We shall see what
determines not only his own particular development but also the
development of wholly different Beings.
Thus
we see how man is integrated into the ranks of the Hierarchies, how,
from age to age, from epoch to epoch, Beings whom we already know
from another aspect, cooperate in his evolution, And we have seen how
opportunities are provided for these Beings to express themselves in
a variety of ways peculiar to themselves and that what they have to
offer can be imparted to man.
The
guiding principles of the several epochs are determined by the Time
Spirits (Zeitgeister). The single folk-individualities are
responsible for disseminating the Spirit of the Age over the whole
Earth. Whilst the Time Spirits inspire the Folk Spirits, the Angels
act as mediators between the Folk Spirit and the single human beings,
so that these individuals may fulfil the mission of the Folk Spirits.
One of the purposes of these lectures will be to show how this
wonderful pattern reveals the working of the various
folk-individualities, past and present. In the next lecture we shall
begin to throw light upon how this pattern is woven which we have
indicated only sketchily today, that spiritual pattern which
represents our immediate destiny in the world.
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