CHAPTER V
N the preceding lecture it has been shown to what extent the external world
is an illusion, concealing the spiritual world behind it. The consciousness
of the seer penetrating through this illusion represents one path to
the spiritual world. It has, however, also been shown that everything
in the inner life of the soul, thinking, feeling, sensations, as also
the more complicated phenomena of conscience, and so on, form a kind
of veil concealing a spiritual world. And the consciousness of the
seer penetrating these veils represents the other path into the
spiritual world. The existence of these two different paths has been
known at all times to men who sought for initiation. Hence we find
that a distinction was made by ancient peoples between upper and
lower gods. In the Mysteries of all epochs it was taught that at a
certain stage of initiation man enters the world of the upper and of
the lower gods, but a great distinction was made between them. Man
has no influence upon the way in which the outer world confronts him
in the many coloured tapestry of colour impressions, warmth
impressions etc., or in the phenomena of the elements of fire, air,
water and earth. The sun rises in the morning; it sheds its rays of
light over the earth, and according to the different conditions set
up the external world of the senses appears; when man penetrates
through these outer phenomena, he reaches the spiritual world.
Man
is not in a position to destroy this world of the senses through his
own resources, because he cannot materially affect the outer
phenomena surrounding him; the sense world is placed before him by
the spiritual beings of whom it is an expression and manifestation;
through his own power he cannot impair it. At initiation he is able
to penetrate the veil of the sense world, but he must leave it just
as the spiritual beings have shaped and fashioned it.
The
relation of a man to his own inner life is different. His
perceptions, feelings, will, his thinking and the development of his
conscience depend upon the extent to which he has worked upon the
evolution of his soul life. Man cannot evoke a pure or an impure red
or green colour from the dawn or from a plant: but the corruption of
his soul life may well give rise to grotesque feelings and bad moral
judgements; he can submit in a greater or lesser degree to the
dictation of his conscience; in his fancies he can devote himself to
beauty or to ugliness, to true or to false thought images. Through
his own conduct a man modifies or changes the veil spread over the
spiritual world by the inner life of the soul. And because what we
see behind the veil of our own soul-life depends upon whether this
veil itself is pure or corrupt, it is easy to understand that in
cases where the inner life is corrupt or but slightly developed when
the ascent into the spiritual worlds, or descent to the realm of
lower spiritual beings takes place, grotesque images in the form of
false, nonsensical abnormal concepts and forces, may be called into
being. For this reason it came about that in every age a distinction
was made between the ascent to the upper gods and the descent to the
lower gods, and that this descent was regarded as more essentially
dangerous than the ascent to the upper gods, and on this latter path,
through the veils of the inner life to the spiritual worlds, very
high demands were made of the pupil of the Mysteries and of Occult
Science.
Mention
had to be made of this, because these two paths to the spiritual
world have played a great role in human evolution and because the
East and the West and the relation between the ‘Children of
Lucifer’ and the ‘Brothers of Christ’ can only be
rightly understood if their existence is taken into account. In the
outer world, which to the ordinary human eye is apt to appear a
motley web of many and varied facts and phenomena, there is nothing
which is not guided by wisdom, nothing in which spiritual beings,
spiritual forces and facts do not come into play; and we understand
the matter aright only when we have realised that the spiritual
events have been brought together under the direction of those powers
which have been described from many different aspects. To understand
why a certain form of wisdom has flourished in the East and why the
future of the Christian impulse depends upon the development of
powers residing in the West, we must consider the origin and
historical trend of the two worlds (East and West).
We
know that the spiritual life of the present had its origin in old
Atlantis. That an ancient spiritual life developed upon a land in the
West lying between modern Europe and America, and that such Asiatic,
African and American civilisations as exist are the last remnants of
those of ancient Atlantis. Atlantis is the Father and Motherland of
all the cultured life of today. Before the mighty catastrophe which
changed the face of the globe into its present configuration, there
were to be found in old Atlantis species of men very different from
those of the present time, men guided by high initiates and leaders.
A civilisation developed there essentially under the influence of an
ancient clairvoyance, and men possessed a natural and instinctive
faculty for penetrating through the outer veils of the sense world to
the higher spiritual world as well as through their own soul life to
the lower gods. Just as it is natural to men of the present day to
see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and so on, it was natural
for men of that time not only to see colours and hear in the outer
world, but to be aware of spiritual beings as realities behind these
colours and tones. In the same way it was natural for men at that
time not only to hear the voice of conscience but also to perceive
those spiritual beings called Erinyes by the Greeks. The old
Atlanteans were intimately acquainted with a spiritual world. The
purpose of human evolution implies that men are gradually to rise up
out of this old instinctive but spiritually perceptive consciousness
and push forward to the consciousness proper to our modern time. It
was necessary for men to go through this stage of life on the
physical plane. It was not possible to guide the whole evolution of
mankind from the spiritual world in such a simple way that one stream
of humanity should pass from old Atlantis over the regions of Europe
and Africa into Asia, and that everything should develop, as it were,
along straight lines. Evolution is never a simple, straight line of
development from a single germ; another factor has to come in, and a
very simple analogy will show that this is the case. Consider a
plant. The seed is put into the earth and out of it develop the
elementary organs of the plant, the leaves, and later, the calyx,
stamen, pistils and so on. Now if development is to continue in plant
life, as we know it, it is essential that something else should
happen. The formation of the fruit from the blossom depends upon
fecundation the fertilising substances of one plant must pass over to
another, for the fruit could not develop simply out of the blossom. A
stream of influences from outside has to be introduced in order that
development may progress. What may be perceived in the plant is a
picture of universal life and is also an indication of the laws of
spiritual life. It is quite false to believe that in spiritual life a
stream of culture arises here or there and continually produces new
offshoots from itself. This may happen for a time, but it would no
more suffice to bring about what is to come to pass, than would the
blossom, without fertilisation, be able to produce the fruit. At a
certain definite point of cultural evolution, a side influence must
come in, a spiritual fertilisation of human development. Just as in
plant life the male and female elements develop independently, so in
human evolution from the time of Atlantis there had to be formed not
one stream but two, passing from old Atlantis towards the East. It
was necessary that these streams of civilisation should develop
separately for a while, and then meet again to fertilise each other
at a definite period. We can follow these two streams of human
evolution if we examine the records of spiritual seer-ship. One
stream of evolution is formed by the transmigration of certain
peoples from old Atlantis to more northerly regions, touching
territories which now include England, the north of France, and
thence extend to the present Scandinavia, Russia and into Asia as far
as India. In this movement were to be found peoples of various kinds,
forming the vehicle of a definite spiritual life. A second stream
went a different way, in a more southerly direction, through southern
Spain and Africa to Egypt and thence to Arabia. Each of these two
streams of civilisation goes its own way until they meet to fructify
each other at a later point of time.
Now
wherein consists the difference between these two streams of culture?
Men belonging to the northern stream were more adapted for the use of
the outer senses of external perception their tendency was to look
outwards to the veil of the surrounding world. There were initiates
among these northern men who showed them the way to the spiritual
worlds where the upper gods were to be found — gods who are
reached by penetrating through the veils of the outer sense world. To
this category belong the beings reverenced as the Northern Germanic
gods. Odin, Thor, etc., are the names of divine beings to be found
behind the outer veil of the sense world. Men belonging to the
southern stream were differently constituted. These peoples had a
greater tendency to delve into their soul life, into their inner
nature. Let us say — and do not take the word amiss — the
northern peoples had a greater gift for observing the world, the
southern peoples for brooding over their own soul life, seeking the
spiritual world through this inner veil. Hence it is not a matter for
wonder that the gods of the descendants of the southern stream
belonged to the Nether World and were rulers of the soul life.
Consider the Egyptian Osiris. Osiris is the divinity found by man on
Passing through the gate of death; Osiris is the god who cannot live
in the external sense world. He lived there in ancient times only,
and as the new era approached he was overcome by the powers of the
sense world, by the evil Set; and since then he has lived in the
world entered after death, accessible only by plunging into the
immortal, permanent human principle which passes from incarnation to
incarnation. This was why Osiris was felt to be most intimately bound
up with the inner life of man.
Here
we have the fundamental difference between the northern and the
southern peoples. There was, however, one race who in the first
period of the post Atlantean epoch combined both qualities. This race
was specially selected to follow both paths leading to the spiritual
world and along each of them to discover that which was serviceable
and right for that epoch, being possessed of the capacity both for
attaining the spiritual world behind the external sense world and
also for finding the spiritual world behind the veil of their own
soul life by sinking into the mystical depths of their inner nature.
This faculty, in the
first epochs at all events of the old Atlantean era, was possessed by
all men — and connected with it was a very definite experience.
If a man who is only able to reach the spiritual world through the
external sense world and to find the upper gods hears that somewhere
else on the earth there are other gods, he does not understand them
aright. But where the two faculties of penetrating through the
external sense world and through the veil of the soul life are
united, a man makes the very significant discovery that what is to be
found behind the veil of the soul life is exactly the same, in
essence, as that behind the veil of the outer sense world. A uniform
spiritual world is revealed from without and from within. If a man
should get to know the spiritual world by both paths, he realises
their unity. The people of ancient India were in a position to
realise the unity of spiritual life. When the super-sensible sight of
the ancient Indian was directed outwards he perceived spiritual
beings holding together and coordinating external phenomena. When he
sank into his inner nature he found his Brahman; and he knew what he
found behind the veil of his soul life to be identical with that
which, passing through the Cosmos on mighty pinions, created and
fashioned the external world. Such mighty conceptions — fruits
of ancient Atlantean culture, preserved over the post Atlantean times
— still influence us. But evolution, remember, does not
progress by the mere transformation of preservation of the old, but
by the bringing to birth of other streams of evolution so that mutual
enrichment may take place. If we follow up the northern stream of
evolution into Asia, we find that the Indian people traveled the
farthest, and after amalgamation with other elements, built up
ancient Indian culture. But more to the north, in the region of
Persia, we find an ancient civilisation known in later history as the
Zarathustrian culture. When we investigate this Zarathustrian culture
with super-sensible sight, we find that the characteristic of its
people was to look more to the outer world, and to advance towards
the spiritual world by this path. In view of this characteristic it
is evident why Zarathustra, the leader of this ancient Persian
culture, attached less importance to inner, mystical absorption, and
why he was in a way opposed to it. Zarathustra pointed more
particularly to the external sense world and to the visible sun, in
order to call men's attention to the existence behind this visible
sun of a spiritual Solar Being, Ahura Mazdao. This is an exact
instance of the path followed by initiates of the northern peoples.
The highest form of this more external realisation of the spiritual
world was developed in ancient Persian culture under the leadership
of the original Zarathustra. This form of outer perception was less
and less perfect the further the peoples had lagged behind the
ancient Persians who pressed on to Western Asia. [These
are not the Persians of whom history tells but ancient, pre-historic
peoples, inhabiting the region which, in later times, was known as
Persia. The ‘Ancient Indians’ mentioned in these lectures
are even earlier.] Other peoples remained behind in Asia and
Europe, but the tendency of them all was to look more towards the
external world, and all their initiates chose the path of pointing
out to their followers the spiritual world behind the veil of the
outer sense world. In Europe, if we make use of spiritual sight, we
find in that wonderful Celtic culture which really underlies all
other European culture the remnant of what arose as a result of the
cooperation of the mind of the peoples with the wisdom of the
initiates. Today Celtic wisdom has very largely been lost, and can be
deciphered only to a certain extent by those who have spiritual
vision. Wherever ancient Celticism still shines out as the
fundamental basis of other European civilisations, there you have an
echo of still older European civilisations which, although their
paths were in reality the same, remained with the mighty
Zarathustrian culture in so far as the characteristics of their
peoples were concerned. According to the external distribution of the
people their path to the spirit differed.
It
must be understood that the interplay of man with the external world,
whether it be the external spiritual world or the external sense
world, has no effect upon him. Experiences that arise are not a kind
of cosmic reflection, but exist in order to bring about the progress
of humanity in a perfectly definite way. Now what, in reality, is man
of a particular epoch? Man is the result or product of the activities
of cosmic powers surrounding him, and is fashioned according to the
way in which these cosmic powers permeate him. A man who inhales
healthy air develops his organs correspondingly, and the same thing
happens to the spiritual organism of a man who absorbs one or another
kind of spiritual life and culture. Since the bodily organism is a
product of the spiritual it is affected accordingly. Human evolution
is a continuous process and so it is clear that in all the peoples of
this northern stream he development of the external bodily qualities
is noticeable, for the forces and powers of the outer world —
everything that can fashion from without — were the special
ones which streamed into them. Through these outer forces was
developed what can be seen and perceived outwardly. Hence in these
peoples, we find not only a development of warlike qualities, but
also an instrument of ever increasing suitability for penetrating the
external world; the brain itself grows to greater perfection under
the influence of these external forces. The fundamental factors,
therefore, for understanding the external world are present in men
belonging to this northern stream, and only from them could be
derived that spiritual culture which led finally to the mastery of
the powers and forces of external nature. It may be said that the
principal task of these people consisted in perfecting man's outer
instrument, that part of him Which is perceptible from without, not
only in a physical but also in an intellectual, moral and aesthetic
sense. More and more of the spirit was poured into the outer
corporeality. Physical corporeality was developed to greater and
greater perfection, and so the individual souls passing from one
incarnation to another were generally able to find better vehicles in
succeeding births, not only in a physical, but also in a moral sense.
Now let us enquire
what special characteristic developed among the peoples who took the
more southern way. It was of course the refinement of the life of the
soul, the inner life. The conception of conscience is not to be found
in olden times among those peoples whose task was the
spiritualisation of the outer corporeal qualities. Conscience as a
conception arises from among the southern peoples; among them the
inner life of the soul was enriched with ideas and conceptions to
such an extent that it finally developed into that wealth of secret
hermetic science possessed by the ancient Egyptians which amazes us
even today. The wisdom of the Egyptians, held in such high honour by
those who have knowledge of such matters, could only arise as the
result of the development of the inner soul life. All the art and the
wisdom which man had to develop from within appeared in the stream of
evolution, wherein less importance was attached to the
spiritualisation of the external corporeality than to the refinement
and elaboration of the inner forces of the soul.
Let
us now consider Greek sculpture. When a Greek sculptor wished to
represent a physical body purified and spiritualised; he produced a
type of the northern peoples. All the external forms of Zeus, of
Aphrodite, of Pallas Athene, are racial types of the north. Where it
was a matter of indicating the inner development of the life of the
soul, it was necessary to show that forces develop invisibly within
the soul, and then such a figure as Hermes or Mercury was produced.
The form of Hermes is that of the African peoples, and it differs
from the figures of the other gods; the ears are different, so is the
hair, and the eyes are narrow and unlike the eyes of the northern
types. — It was known that this type of humanity represented
the vehicle of the scientific element, of wisdom, of everything which
works upon the soul, and with this was connected the conception of
Hermes as messenger to the lower gods.
Again we might
characterise the difference between the two evolutionary streams by
saying that the northern peoples worked at the production of a human
being whose outer bodily form is an image of the spirit; whereas the
southern peoples were busy developing the invisible forces of soul,
perceptible only when the gaze is directed inwards (to the inner
life). The northern races created the outer aspect of the image of
divinity in man; the southern peoples created the invisible
soul-image of the godhead in the inner life.
Thus
the gods of the southern peoples are invisible divinities which man
contacts in his inner nature, who arouse a certain fear and dread,
but who from another aspect inspire trust and confidence. It has been
pointed out that a man sees these gods of the inner world according
to his own nature; if he is morally, developed he confronts these
gods with moral qualities of soul and their true image is revealed;
their essence flows into him and he experiences inner illumination
and enlightenment. If a man is immoral and his conceptions are bad,
or ugly, or untrue he perceives a distorted image of this world of
the gods; fearful demoniacal shapes and figures appear, even as the
most beautiful face is twisted and caricatured if observed in a
spherical mirror. This is why a man confronting these inner gods
might feel them to be friendly, intimate spiritual companions,
pouring forces into the very depths of soul life, belonging to him in
the most intimate sense, strengthening and illuminating him; but if
he saw them in images distorted by his own qualities, horror and
terror might arise; he could be tormented, persecuted and led to the
wildest excesses of life just because of their manifestation in the
grotesque image of his lower passions. From this we may judge why
care was taken that no unprepared human being should meet these
particular gods; but where access was made possible to the spiritual
world a preliminary development of the moral nature was imperatively
demanded, and a very thorough preparation was ensured; the initiates
were never tired of giving warning about the dangers awaiting weak
souls at the meeting with these gods.
In
accordance with the nature of the powers holding sway in the
spiritual world accessible to the southern peoples it is called the
world of Lucifer, the Light-bearer. It is a world, spiritual and
divine in its nature, illumined in the inner being of man by a light
invisible to outward sight and which has to be acquired by the
process of individual perfecting. This was the path which people of
the southern evolutionary stream took to the world of Lucifer.
As
we have seen, the ideal before the more northern stream was the
production of a human individuality, so perfect, so full of spirit,
so noble in regard to everything in life between birth and death,
that the outer body should be a worthy vessel for spirituality of the
very highest order. And in Zarathustra, [The Zarathustra to whom
reference is here made, is not, of course, the historical figure, but
an ancient pre-historic ancestor. In olden times it was the custom
for the successors of a great Individuality to retain his name
through long periods of time.] the being who had most truly shown the
way to the spiritual world behind the veil of sense phenomena, there
arose the thought that an outer body must be created by so moral,
intellectual and spiritual a force as should bring it to the highest
point of spirituality of which an external body is capable. And since
this thought first arose in Zarathustra, he set himself the task of
reaching an increasingly lofty standard of perfection, living through
every succeeding incarnation in bodies of higher moral, aesthetic and
intellectual qualities. Zarathustra, then, brought these physical
qualities to such a point of excellence that his body became not a
mere image of the divine world of spirit, but a vessel for the
reception of the Godhead otherwise to be seen only behind the veil of
the sense world. That to which the old Zarathustra had pointed as the
world of Sun Beings behind the physical sun, as the hidden spirit of
the Good — Ahura Mazdao, needed, as it approached nearer and
nearer to the earth, to find a dwelling place within a body of great
spiritual perfection. And so in one of his incarnations, Zarathustra
appeared in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, a body so spiritualised,
so noble that into its external corporeality could be poured that
spiritual essence formerly to be found only behind the veil of the
sense world. [This will show how erroneous is the statement
that Dr. Steiner has ever identified Christ with Zarathustra. This he
has never done, any more than he has declared Christ to be the same
being as Buddha.] The human body which had been
developed in the northern evolutionary stream by the turning of the
external gaze to the spiritual world was prepared for the reception
of the spiritual essence concealed behind the sense world. For in
this manner, preparation was made for the mighty event of the
reception of the spirit behind the sense world, invisible to all save
spiritual sight, upon earth, and its maturing there for three years
in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Hence it devolved upon the northern
peoples not only to develop an understanding of what lay behind the
sense world, but to prepare for the possibility of that spirit
flooding our earthly world, of the being heretofore hidden behind the
sun, treading the earth for three years, as man among men. Thus
Lucifer had entered into humanity in the southern peoples, and Christ
into the northern peoples, each in conformity with the
characteristics of the two streams of evolution. We ourselves live at
a time when the two streams must unite as the male and female
fertilising substances of plants coalesce; we live at a time when the
Christ who was drawn from outside as an objective Being into the
purified body of Jesus of Nazareth must be understood through deep
contemplation on the part of the soul, and its union with the world
of spirit to be discovered in the inner being, the world arising from
Lucifer's kingdom. In this way will come to pass the mutual
fertilisation of these two evolutionary streams of men. It has
already begun; it began at the moment indicated in the story which
tells us that the sacrificial blood of the Christ flowing from the
Cross was received into the vessel of the Holy Grail and brought to
the West from the East, where preparation for the understanding of
the incarnation of Christ had been made in a very definite way by
cultivating that which represents the light of Lucifer. In this way
the union of these two streams in humanity will become more and more
complete. Whatever mankind of the present time may say or do, the
healing of the future humanity will be accomplished by the fact that
within the union of the two streams, the mighty Christ Being, guiding
as He does the evolution of the universe and of man, is understood
through the light received by the soul from within, out of the
kingdom of Lucifer. [The above statement has led some of Dr.
Steiner's critics to infer that he sees the human soul as an union of
the Christ with Lucifer. A careful study of Dr. Steiner's lectures
will show there is no reason for the inference.] Christ
will give the substance, Lucifer the form, and from their union will
arise impulses which shall permeate the spiritual evolution of
mankind, and bring about what the future has in store for the healing
and the blessing of the peoples.
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