LECTURE V
London, 16th November, 1922.
MY DEAR FRIENDS,
To-day
I want to speak of the spiritual powers and beings that live in
man's environment. They are super-sensible powers and beings we cannot
perceive them with our senses; nevertheless they are there, and they
play their part in our earthly existence. The things that take place
among such spiritual beings, the dealings they have with one another,
are of course altogether different from the actions and deeds of man
during his earthly life; it is therefore difficult to tell in human
language, which has been created expressly for human conditions and
human relationships, about the nature and activities of these
super-sensible Intelligences, these super-sensible beings. Since,
however, it is important that these things should in our age, be
brought to man's knowledge, we must speak of them in the only way
that is possible, namely, in pictures. This will mean that I
shall frequently describe things as if I were referring to human
conditions and relationships. The things that are told in this
way will be quite true and correct; only, since the language has to
be borrowed from human relationships, the truth will be presented in
a picture.
We
have around us, to begin with, the world of Nature in her various
kingdoms, mineral, plant and animal, and we may also add to
these the human kingdom, in so far as man's physical being is
concerned. Behind Nature lies a kind of second Nature, a
spiritual, super-sensible Nature. The first, the Nature to which we
are accustomed, man perceives with his senses. The super-sensible
Nature that is behind, he does not perceive. It has, for all that, a
great influence upon him.
And
then we have to recognise that we human beings have something of
physical Nature also within us. When we look within, we perceive this
physical nature in our instincts and our passions. These are of
course astral, but they rise up from the physical Nature. And this
physical Nature that we have within us and that we perceive in our
instincts and urges and passions, has again this time we have
to say beneath it, a kingdom of beings, who are intimately
connected with man, but are really sub-human.
Thus,
looking around us with the help of our senses, we behold the surface
of Nature, her external appearance; and behind it we have to divine
the presence of a super-sensible nature. When on the other hand we
look within and perceive ourselves in our instincts and passions,
then we have to divine beneath these the presence of a subsensible
Nature.
The
super-sensible Nature that is around us can be understood and
appreciated only by one who is equipped with spiritual insight, and
who is not always focusing attention, as Natural Science does to-day,
on the strict laws of Nature and on what takes place within their
framework. For Natural Science, as we know, is concerned with the
investigation of what takes place in accordance with firm laws of
Nature. The super-sensible that is behind external Nature will
never reveal itself to these researches. It will however become
manifest when we have learned to look with keen and discerning
spiritual vision upon things which are not to be explained by natural
law, but are generally regarded as subject to chance.
Of
this character are the phenomena of the weather, all the
irregularities of the atmosphere throughout, the four seasons of
the year. If you stop to consider, for example, in detail how a
London fog [There was an unusual thick fog in London during Dr.
Steiner's visit at this time.] takes its course, you will perhaps
find that in its main events you can trace the working of certain
laws. You will not however be able to do this for all its continual
changes and movements. When it comes to the particular single
phenomena of wind and weather, there we are inclined to say that we
are at the mercy of chance. You can of course read in the newspapers
a description of what kind of weather we are likely to have in the
near future, but you will not build upon it with certainty with which
you rely on the sun rising tomorrow morning. Phenomena which show
the working of natural law are in quite another category from the
phenomena of wind and weather, which are more or less generally
ascribed to the working of chance. People can and do acquire a
certain prophetic gift in regard to these phenomena, but this
prophetic gift cannot be given to place within the framework of
natural law, it has more the character of inspiration or intuition.
As
a matter of fact, beings live in all the various
manifestations of wind and weather, beings who are only not
seen because they lack a body that is visible to the senses. They are
present and alive, notwithstanding. The beings who live in wind and
weather have a body that consists of air and warmth, a body that has
in it no water no fluidity, that is, of any kind and
no solid earth; it consists of nothing but air and warmth. And this
body is continually undergoing sudden changes. At one moment it will
assume form and shape, then again it will dissolve and pass away. The
changing cloud formations that we observe in the sky, the play of the
currents of the wind, these are not the body, which remains
more hidden, they are but the outer expression, the deeds, of
the beings of whom I speak. When therefore we look out into the
atmosphere which surrounds our Earth, and within which we ourselves
are living, we have there around us a world of beings, who are
composed merely of air and warmth. They are of the same kind as the
beings whom I have called in my books and frequently spoken of in
lectures as the Luciferic beings.
Now
these beings have a specific end in view in regard to man.
Notwithstanding the fact that they inhabit an element which we often
find far from agreeable and pleasant living, as we have said,
in the weather! these beings attach great value to the moral
element in the human social order. So highly do they prize it, that
in their opinion it would be best for man not to have a physical body
at all not, at any rate, a body that partakes of the watery
or earthly elements. If they could have formed man in their own way,
they would have made of him a moral being, pure and simple. Man would
not of course in that case have had freedom, he would have been moral
without being inwardly free. As it is these beings wage a fearful
battle in the course of the year, struggling to wrest man away from
the Earth and draw him into their own sphere. They would like him to
be cut off from the Earth, a complete stranger to it. On this
account they are particularly dangerous for people who are
inclined to any kind of visionary idealism or vague mysticism. Such
persons readily fall a prey to these beings who seek to
entice man away from the Earth and endow him with a kind of angel
nature, so that under no circumstances shall he find himself tempted
to be otherwise than purely moral.
Strange
therefore and paradoxical as it may sound, dear friends,
inhabiting the forces that pulsate through the encircling air in all
the vagaries of wind and weather, are beings who, abhorring human
freedom and desiring nothing better than its complete annihilation,
want to make man a moral automaton, want to make of him indeed a kind
of good angel. And they fight hard to attain their end; to use an
earthly expression, they wage war to the teeth.
In
addition to these beings who build, as it were, their strongholds
in the air do not cavil at the word, I told you. I am obliged
to speak in pictures there are also beings of a contrary
nature, to whom I alluded in my last lecture in another connection.
And this latter class of beings has to do with all that comes to
expression in man's instinctive urges and impulses, in his desires
and passions. You must not however think of them as belonging first
and foremost to man. In man we can see the results of their activity.
But they have their home, so to speak, right on the Earth. Only we
cannot see them, for these beings too have not a body that is formed
in such a way as to be visible to us. They have, in fact, a body that
lives entirely in the elements of earth and water. And their deeds
are to be seen in the ebb and flow of the tides, in volcanic
eruptions and in earthquakes. Natural Science, as is well-known, can
find no satisfactory explanation for these phenomena. One who
has keen spiritual perception can however see behind them a world of
sub-human beings, who are under the control of the powers to
which I have always given the name of the Ahrimanic powers.
Now,
these Ahrimanic powers also cherish a particular aim as regards
man. With the help of their various sub-spirits, which inhabit the
earth and water elements of our Earth and can, for example, be
recognised even in the kobolds or brownies of fairy lore
aided by these, the Ahrimanic powers have set themselves to carry out
another and a different project.
If
one considers these Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings by themselves,
just as they are, one cannot, you know, be angry with them. Why be
angry with the Luciferic beings, for instance? They want to make man
into a being who is moral entirely as a matter of course. What could
be better? Man would, it is true, never under their influence be
free, he would be an automaton; but what they seek and desire
for him can nevertheless be truthfully described as good.
Now
let us see what is the aim of these other beings, who build their
strongholds immediately below the surface of the Earth, and whose
activities rise up into mans metabolism, for the
phenomena we observe in the tides and less frequently in volcanic
eruptions and earthquakes are always present also in the ebb and flow
in man's metabolism. Whilst the Luciferic spirits build, as we said,
their strongholds in the air, in order to fight for the moral
as against the earthly element in man, the Ahrimanic beings
struggle to harden man; they want to make him like themselves. Were
they to be successful, man would become extremely clever in the
material realm incredibly clever and intelligent. They cannot
achieve their end directly, but they aim at doing so indirectly. And
their efforts, which have actually been going on for thousands of
years, have in fact succeeded in producing a whole race of sub-human
beings. Their method is as follows.
Suppose
a man has strong and rude instincts. These beings will clutch at his
instinctive nature and seize hold of it. The man then falls victim to
the Ahrimanic powers. He is completely given up to his passions and
leads a wild and dissolute life. When a man has in this way become a
prey, during his earthly life, to the Ahrimanic powers, then
these powers will be able to hold on to his instinctive nature
and tear it out of him after death. There exists already on the Earth
a whole population of beings who have arisen in this way. They are
there, in the elements of earth and water, a sub-human race. And then
what is it the Ahrimanic powers intend with this sub-human race? As
we have seen, they draw out of a human being his instinctive nature
and make of it an earth-and-water being. These earth-water beings
inhabit the strata immediately below the surface of the Earth;
and those who go down into mines, if they are able to look with
spiritual vision, are quite familiar with them. They are beings that
have been snatched out of man in the moment of death. And with what
ultimate aim? Ahriman is waiting. The Ahrimanic powers are waiting
for the time when men will descend to incarnation and, on account of
a karma that their instincts and passions have prepared for them,
feel particularly drawn to certain of these beings and say to
themselves: I will not go back to the spiritual world;
when I have left my physical body out of which, as you
know, man generally goes forth to a super-sensible life I
will incorporate myself in a subsensible being of this kind. And that
will mean, I shall be able to stay on the Earth. I shall not die any
more, but be permanently united with the Earth. Yes, I will choose to
be a subsensible being.
It
may sound incredible and indeed it is astonishing,
considering how extraordinary clever they are, but it is a
fact that the Ahrimanic beings persist in believing they will
ultimately be able in this way to entice such a vast number of human
beings into their own race that the Earth will one day be peopled
entirely with such Ahrimanic sub-human beings. By this means they
hope to make the Earth itself immortal, so that the hour may never
come for it to perish and be dispersed in cosmic space.
We
have thus around us in our earthly environment two hosts of beings;
one in the air, that wants to make man moral but to lift him away
from the Earth, and then we have also, immediately below the surface
of the Earth, the Ahrimanic beings who want to draw man down and
fasten him permanently to the Earth.
When
we come to consider the relation in which these two classes of beings
stand to one another, we find that in the mineral kingdom, in the
plant kingdom, in the animal kingdom, and even in the human kingdom
as it is by nature before mans passions and desires begin to
get the better of him, the two classes of beings have perforce to
agree, they must bear with one another. In a remote primeval past the
Godhead who is called in the Christian religion the Father God,
established peace in this respect. Peace was established by the
Father God for minerals, plants and animals, and also for man in his
animal nature, in so far as he does not allow himself to be perverted
and contaminated by passion and desire.
Take
up in your hand a crystal, or any other mineral, or again a plant;
you will not find that in that crystal or plant any conflict is
taking place between these two classes of beings. But the moment you
direct your observation to a man whose body is permeated and suffused
with soul, you will at once discern signs of their conflict. The
Luciferic beings are saying to Ahriman: We promised the Father
God that we would not fight nor do battle for the minerals, the
plants, the animals, nor for man so long as he remained an
unconscious being as in olden times and had not acquired the power of
reflection, but lived more like an animal; but as for men who have
acquired self-consciousness for then we will fight to the
teeth. And it is so: a fearful war is waged all the time
between the air-fire beings and the earth-water beings; they fight to
get possession of man. And it is important that man should be aware
of this war that is perpetually being waged for him; he must not be
blind to it. In our day we have advanced far in our knowledge of
external Nature. Here, as we have seen, the conditions are quite
different; here the Luciferic beings live at peace with the
Ahrimanic. But man's knowledge does not reach to that which lies
behind the world of the senses, does not reach to super-sensible
Nature, nor has he any knowledge of sub-human Nature. And these
two realms harbour beings who carry on, as I have said, a terrible
warfare, fighting for the possession of man.
*
The
Being who in the Old Testament is called Jahve, has his seat
I need not remind you of what I said at the beginning of the lecture
about the use of such expressions has his seat in the Moon.
That is to say, Jahve is that spiritual Being in the Cosmos who finds
expression in the physical phenomena of the Moon. And in the whole
ordering of the world this Being has the following task to perform.
When
man is descending from the divine spiritual world in order that he
may clothe himself in a body, then it is Jahve who leads him down to
Earth. Nor does the Jahve Being lose all part in man's life when man
has already come to Earth; he takes in hand the ordering of
everything that is connected with generation. The Jahve Being, who
has his seat in the Moon and who leads man down to Earth, claims
control in man over all that has to do with the instincts and
impulses of generation.
The
process of generation cannot however be regular or regulated by
itself, for it is connected with the other instincts and impulses.
Consequently, the Jahve Being needs helpers, he needs beings who
will, for instance, regulate the instincts connected with eating and
drinking, and bring these into harmony with the instincts of
generation. He needs helpers who will in fact see to the ordering of
the whole instinctive life of man. And Jahve the Moon God, if
we may call him so finds such helpers in Mercury and Venus.
A
kind of compact has been made in the spiritual universe between the
Moon, that is, the Jahve Being and the beings that dwell with
him in the Moon and Mercury and Venus, And it is the will and
concern of the beings who have joined together in this way, to
control, from Moon, Mercury and Venus, the whole flesh-and-blood
nature of man. Man is by no means merely an earthly being; influences
play into him from the whole great Universe.
Turning
now again to the beings whom I called Ahrimanic and who have their
stronghold just below the surface of the Earth the
earth-water beings how do these compare with Jahve and the
Mercury and Venus beings? What place is assigned to them in the world
order? They are not ripe to take up their abode in a heavenly body,
in the way that Jahve has his abode in the Moon, and his helpers in
Mercury and Venus. No, these Ahrimanic beings are doomed to look for
a dwelling place just below the surface of the Earth, You will
accordingly not be surprised to find that it is not with the air-fire
beings alone that these earth-water beings feel themselves in
opposition, but particularly also with Jahve and with the powers of
Venus and Mercury. And this, notwithstanding the fact that they
are themselves devoid of morality. (Man's instinctive nature,
being regulated by Jahve from outside and beyond the Earth, is
thereby subject to another rulership than that of the aforesaid
moral beings, but it would not under this rulership
become immoral). The Ahrimanic beings wage war continually on
Jahve and on the Venus and Mercury powers, and are determined to
usurp from Jahve his rightful sovereignty. For it is owing to the
rightful sovereignty of Jahve that the human race as we know it has
come into existence on the Earth; it needed the powers of Moon and
also of Mercury and Venus for this to be accomplished.
In
a spirit of retaliation, the Ahrimanic beings are founding
over against the Jahve race, which is mankind this other race
of which I have been telling you. And a prime means for them to
attain their end is the device I explained in our last lecture. You
will remember I told you how they approach man in his sleep and say
to him: Good is evil; evil is good, Man hearkens to
this all too easily when he is asleep, and then he brings it back
with him into his physical and his ether-body. The Ahrimanic beings
are confident they will be able to achieve their end by means of
these vicious whisperings.
Man
should, you see, depend entirely in his lower nature
on the Moon, Venus and Mercury powers. The lower nature of man is not
in itself evil or degenerate; it is so only because powers that
are antagonistic to Jahve insinuate themselves into it in the manner
I have described. What Jahve would desire is that these earth-water
beings should express themselves merely in the ebb and flow of the
tides, in volcanic eruptions, in earthquakes. But they strain every
nerve to establish themselves also in man, to make their
presence felt in man too; and not content with attacking there the
air-fire beings, they launch their attacks with particular force
against Jahve and his helpers.
Man
therefore finds himself placed right in the very midst of a conflict.
On one side are ranged Jahve and his hosts, who are fighting for
righteousness; on the other side the hosts of Ahriman, who, in
respect of cleverness, far outstrip man, and whose concern it is
utterly to repudiate mans moral nature and make him into a
sheer automaton of cleverness.
Such
then are the influences that stream up from earth and water, and work
in man. For man is obliged to eat of the products of earth and water;
he cannot nourish himself on air, nor live on warmth alone!
In
the other direction are the beings who incorporate themselves in air
and warmth. These also, like the enemies of Jahve, are immature. And
the corresponding mature beings are in their case beings who dwell on
Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. And so we find these air-fire beings making
sallies from their strongholds not only upon the Ahrimanic powers,
but upon the influences that should be continually reaching man from
Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.
Now,
the influences of these more distant planets, or rather, of
their spiritual beings are to be found particularly in the
eyes, in the ears, in short, in the sense organs of man. So
that, whilst Moon and Venus exercise their influence in the interior
organs of man's body, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars work on man's
exterior, work in his sense organs. The influences, for example,
of Saturn are to be met with primarily in the human eye.
These
beings, Saturn beings, Jupiter beings and Mars beings
have it as their special concern to make man a real Earth man; that
is to say, they want first to give him senses that are properly
inserted into the human organism and that remain at its surface,
and then to supply him with nerves that run from the senses and
extend inwards into the organism. Saturn gives the senses,
Jupiter gives their continuation in the nerves, and Mars exerts the
kind of control that endows man, for example, with the faculty of
speech. The whole aim and purpose of these beings is to furnish man
with all that is on the surface of his body. For the senses, and the
nerves too, have come about through a turning outside in
of the human skin.
Jupiter,
Saturn, and Mars are however resisted in their activities by the
air-fire beings of whom we were speaking. Here again, a furious fight
goes on all the time. The air-fire beings sit fast, so to speak, in
their airy strongholds and display their power and might in the fiery
flashes of the lightning. They would like to make the whole of man
what he should properly be on the surface only, so that the entire
physical being of man should partake of the nature that is
actually assigned only to eye and ear and nose. They would like
to pour the surface of man's organism right through him, to make him
all surface, so that he would do nothing but see and hear,
never eat nor drink, but only see and hear, be in fact a kind of
angel being.
The
Mars, Jupiter and Saturn beings, who work as we have seen in man's
senses, acquit themselves most praise-worthily if I may
employ the expression in speaking of such sublime beings in
the world of external nature. For they permeate what to our eyes
appears mere Nature, with morality. In this manner they bring
morality to man; for it is actually so, morality enters into us
through the senses. When therefore the air-fire beings seek to
permeate man through and through with his sense nature, it is with
the intention that man, seeing nothing but what is moral, may become
a moral automaton.
If
we look out on the world of Nature, we can know that whatever
manifests as forces in that world comes from the Mars beings,
whatever manifests as natural law from the Jupiter beings, and
whatever manifests as colour and sound from the Saturn beings. And
the air-fire beings would have man become nothing but force,
law (that is to say, thought), colour and sound. They want man not to
have a physical body at all, but to be insubstantial, rarefied; they
would like him to be, as we said, an angel being.
And
so you see, whilst in external nature. Moon, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter,
Mars and Saturn live at peace with one another and are held in
balance by the Sun, they wage a double fight for the possession of
man. First of all, there is the conflict that goes on between the
Ahrimanic and the Luciferic beings; and then we have on the one hand,
the fight that is put up by the Luciferic beings against the
planetary forces beyond the Sun, the Mars, Jupiter, and
Saturn influences whilst on the other hand the Ahrimanic
forces are waging war on the influences that proceed from Moon, Venus
and Mercury.
Behind
Nature and within man the hard-fought battle goes on; and it is with
this conflict raging all around him that man has to press forward in
his development and win his freedom. In an older time man had the
teaching of the Mysteries to aid him on his path; now he must turn to
what spiritual investigation can tell him concerning what lies behind
Nature and below man. For ignorance on these matters would
inevitably lead to the deterioration and ruin of mankind.
You
will have seen, my dear friends, from the descriptions I have given
you, that the beings we are accustomed to call Luciferic and
Ahrimanic, are particularly highly developed in respect of certain
qualities the Luciferic beings, namely, in morality, and the
Ahrimanic in cleverness and intelligence. And yet both these classes
of beings never relinquish the belief that they will one day achieve
their ends, and they are therefore always ready to begin the fight
over again. For, time after time, when they think they are on their
way to success, they experience frustration and disappointment. So
that when a modern initiate encounters such beings behind Nature
or below man, he sees how on the one hand they will not be deterred,
but press forward again and again to their goal with renewed
confidence in ultimate victory, and then how, on the other hand, they
are perpetually being frustrated. This kind of being may indeed be
said to live in a mood that oscillates between jubilation and
triumph on the one side and constantly recurring disappointment on
the other.
I
will show you how this can be observed in particular instances. Let
us see, in the first place, how the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings
suffer disillusionment through what happens with the physical part of
man's being. One can form a very good impression of the
disappointments that await Lucifer and Ahriman in this
connection, when one pays a visit to one of our hospitals or asylums.
Sickness, whether in mind or body, means disappointment for Lucifer
or Ahriman. These beings are, you see, fighting a battle to get
possession of the nature of man. But it does not help them at all, if
within man's nature one of them gains a victory over the other. The
situation is different if Ahriman gains a victory over the Moon
Godhead; or again, if the air-fire beings gain a victory over
Jupiter, Mars and Saturn. Such victories are, however, always
incomplete. They can only become complete if reinforced by some
success that the Luciferic or Ahrimanic beings achieve in their own
mutual conflict. But, as a matter of fact, by far the greater number
of these successes are only apparent; hence the disillusion that
ensues. Let us suppose for a moment that the Ahrimanic powers were
victorious in the physical body of some person, victorious, that is,
over the Luciferic powers who try to permeate man throughout
with what should by rights be only on the surface, only in the
senses. The result would be that the person would succumb to
illnesses producing tumours or carcinoma, or else to illnesses
of the metabolism, such as diabetes. Whenever an illness of this
description shows itself in a man's physical nature, it means that
Ahriman has won a victory over Lucifer. Since however, as a result,
that physical nature is temporarily ruined, it is of course of no use
to Ahriman; he cannot possibly pull up out of it the man's instincts
and impulses in order to create from these a race of his own.
We
have in this way arrived at a perhaps paradoxical, but nevertheless
correct picture of illness. Illness is in very many cases the sole
means left to the good Powers, to rescue man from the fangs of
Ahriman.
If
on the other hand Lucifer gains a victory in a man's physical nature
over the Ahrimanic powers, who would like to harden man and drag him
down into their race of earth-water beings, if Lucifer gains
a victory over these powers, then the person concerned succumbs to
illnesses of a catarrhal nature, or else to insanity. Once
again, for Lucifer this time, the victory turns out to be quite
indecisive.
The
Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers, who work unceasingly with all their
might for the attainment of their ends, are thus compelled to turn
away sad and disappointed from beds of sickness, from hospitals and
from mental asylums. These show them all too clearly that though they
may continue to carry on their fight, they cannot ever be really
victorious.
And
now, if you are able to look with real insight into man's etheric
nature, not merely into his physical, but into his etheric
nature you will find there too, occasion for disappointment
to the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers. For when the Luciferic powers
are victorious over the Ahrimanic in the ether-body, then the person
becomes a liar, he becomes an habitual liar. In that case he is
obviously not moral; and so he falls out of the world within which
Lucifer would like to secure him. Instead of making him a moral
automaton, Lucifer has turned him into a liar. And, strange as it may
seem, the fact that the person becomes addicted to lying is a weapon
in the hands of the good Powers, to aid them in rescuing him from
Lucifer. For when someone turns liar, well, that can be
ameliorated in the further course of karma; whereas if Lucifer were
really to gain the victory he seeks, the Earth would lose that human
soul, it would soar right away above the Earth. If, on the other
hand, Ahriman were to conquer, or come near to conquering, in the
ether body, then the person would become possessed possessed
by his own cleverness. And since he is inwardly possessed by it, the
cleverness must needs remain within him. It has hold of him; his
ether-body is absolutely charged with it. And so there is no
possibility for Ahriman to draw out the instincts and impulses;
they are stuck fast in the ether-body, because the person is
possessed by his cleverness. Here too, then, will be plenty of
opportunity for Lucifer and Ahriman to experience bitter frustration
and disappointment, when addiction to lying, or on the other hand,
obsession follows as a consequence of their apparent victories.
Let
us now see what can happen with the astral body. Suppose the
Ahrimanic powers come near to being victorious in the astral body.
The person in question will in this case tend to become an
out-and-out egoist. But that will mean that he, as an egoist,
keeps fast hold of his instincts, and there will be no chance for
Ahriman to snatch them away. So once more, Ahriman's prize escapes
him. Suppose on the other hand, Lucifer nearly gains a victory. Then
the person is liable to turn into a dreamer in the astral body, to
become an ego-less dreamer, who is, as one says, not in his
right mind. Such things happen; it can well be that people
succumb, if only for a time, to such a condition. The Luciferic and
Ahrimanic powers are thus subject to disillusionment on earth in many
directions.
But
do you see in what a critical situation man stands to-day? In olden
times it was different. Let us look back and see how things were for
man in the past. The first great teachers in the Mysteries were
messengers of the Father God. They had disciples, the Gurus; and then
there were the Chelas who were disciples of a second grade, for they
were disciples of the Gurus. The highest Gurus however received their
instruction direct from the messengers of the Father God, And these
messengers of the Father God were able to find remedies with which to
heal man. Illnesses are, as we have seen, the occasion of deep
disappointment and frustration to Ahriman and Lucifer, so much
so that they leave these beings quite benumbed and bewildered. For,
outstandingly clever and moral as the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings
are, just because their consciousness is so particularly keen and
wide-awake, they are all the more liable to suffer a clouding of it;
and so the messengers of the Father God were on this account able to
approach the sick person undisturbed by Lucifer and Ahriman, and
could then find the remedy for the illness. I told you last time, you
will remember, how an illness due to Saturn influence could be cured
with a remedy taken from the Moon, and so on. This, then, is how
things were in the time of the ancient Mysteries. The messengers
of the Father God were able to intervene directly and extricate
man from the confusion in which he finds himself owing to the fight
which is going on, as, I have explained to you, all the time, behind
Nature and below man.
My
dear friends, the confusion that reigns within man to-day is no whit
less than it was in olden times. That man is unaware of it makes no
difference, the confusion is there, just the same. Man is perpetually
being torn and tossed, this way and that, while the powers behind
Nature and below himself fight to get possession of him. And when one
crosses the Threshold and, looking consciously into the spiritual
world, observes this terrific battle that is going on, this
complicated game that is being played with man as the prize, then one
may look now in vain for the messengers of God who in an earlier age
would come forward with the staff of Mercury, for example, and
with other symbols of that nature, ready to give them into the hands
of the Mystery doctors, who could then use them to bring healing to
man. At the present time, when you cross the Threshold, you find
yourself only in the midst of the terrific conflict of which we have
spoken, between beings of the upper planets who have
remained behind in their evolution, immature Mars, Jupiter
and Saturn beings and beings of the lower planets who have
remained behind, immature Moon, Mercury and Venus beings.
Like two armed encampments they stand facing one another; on one
side, the air-fire beings, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars beings
that have failed and fallen out of their true evolution; and on the
other side, facing them, the earth-water beings, Moon,
Mercury and Venus beings who have also failed and fallen behind. And
there, beyond the Threshold, the fight goes on with such fury that
the Sun becomes first of all fiery and aflame, and then grows darker
and darker, until at last it shows like a terrible black disk. It was
not so for the initiates of long ago. They saw right through
the black disk; and from the direction of the black disk itself came
towards them the messengers of God, of the Father God, who were also
in those times the bearers of the knowledge of healing. But for us,
when we cross the Threshold and see before us the terrific battle and
behold how the Sun becomes fiery red and then black, for us,
the Sun remains black, it remains a black disk. And we are rebuffed,
we are turned back; for if we men of modern times are to find our way
amid all this confusing and perplexing conflict, it is on the Earth
that we must look for help.
And
then, my dear friends, then we are guided to turn our eyes to the
Christ. Christ stands before us, the Spirit Being who, through the
Mystery of Golgotha, united Himself with the Earth. And He says to
us: Be not dismayed that the Sun has become black; it is black
because I, the God of the Sun, am no longer in it; for I have come
down and united myself with the Earth.
And
if, with inner devotion, and with quick and sensitive recognition
of all that a knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha can bring, we draw
near to Christ, and then the Sun does not, it is true, become bright
again, it remains the black disk that it was, but the Sun begins to
make audible for us what Christ is saying to us. And this experience
reveals to us the relationship of Christ with the Sun. Yes, the Sun,
although still a black disk, becomes a being who enables us to listen
to the Christ, if we are duly prepared and approach Him in the right
mood and attitude of soul.
And
it is the Christ who provides now for man the means of reconciliation
so that in man too the upper then the lower powers may be reconciled,
the powers that are above the black Sun disk and that make
themselves known around our Earth as air-fire beings, and the powers
that manifest as lower beings. And we can receive guidance, we men,
for the healing of diseases, and for the true understanding of all
the other evils that are constantly leaving Lucifer and Ahriman
disappointed. Through the power of Christ and through the power
of the Mystery of Golgotha we then become able to speak to these
beings, and what we say to them is wonderful enough. Ye
creatures of Lucifer and Ahriman, we say, the
disappointment and great frustration that you meet with, time and
again, are due to evils of your own making, evils that are bound to
arise on Earth in consequence of your own partial victories. And that
must go on; for you will not cease from making people sick and ill
and obsessed, nor from turning people into liars and self-seekers and
ego-less dreamers. And so you have no choice but to continue this
restless alternation between triumphant joy and the grief of acute
disappointment.
But
as for man, if he can find the right relation to the Christ, then it
will be given him not to despair, even in face of the despair of
higher beings than himself, beings however whose will it is
to go another way than the way of the Gods to whom man belongs and to
whom he should remain true throughout the further course of the
Earth. At the centre of these sublime God Beings is the Christ Being,
who spoke to the initiates of old through the Sun disk and who speaks
also to us but now from the Earth with the help of the Sun.
When
therefore we speak of Christ to-day, we are speaking of One who can
be at our side here on Earth as our Leader, guiding us out of the
terrible conflict that the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers are
waging, with one another and with the worlds of the
Upper and Lower Gods.
In
my next lecture, on Sunday at 7:o'clock, I will say more of this.
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