VIII
The
Etheric Vision of the Future
The question often arises today as to why the teachings
of spiritual science must be imparted now, while one hundred and
twenty years ago, for instance, one heard nothing of it. Actually,
the communication of spiritual truths has always taken place, but in
a different form from today. In the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries the teachings penetrated out of small brotherhoods and, for
well-considered reasons, were put into writing not by the originators
but by other people. Only scanty accounts penetrated out of those
early mystery schools. One can still find today, however, one or two
books in whose dim pages — dim only on the surface — are
quite wonderful things. Such a book,
Aurea Catena Homeri,
was mentioned by Goethe. What its pages reveal will seem like fantasy or
nonsense to modern readers, especially the most “enlightened.”
If one approaches this “nonsense” with the tools of
spiritual science, however, one will find something quite different.
The greatest secrets are disclosed to one who studies its pages
carefully. In earlier times, only a few individuals could advance
into this occult science, but now there is unlimited opportunity for
everyone whose heartfelt longing leads him there. How has this come
about and why may these secrets now be brought to the public?
There is almost no historical age that cannot be
described as a time of transition. Every age is asserted to be so,
with more or less justification. Our present time, however, in which
such fundamental events are occurring, can rightly be called an era
of transition. To understand the deep foundations of our time, it is
necessary to consider some well-known facts. We are approaching an
era in which the ascent to higher worlds must take place with clear,
clairvoyant consciousness. The old clairvoyance of Atlantis expired
in 3101 BC, and then the time came when human beings began to
perceive everything around themselves with an understanding bound to
the brain. (This date is not to be taken as an absolute but as an
approximate date.) The clairvoyant consciousness of humanity had to
be darkened for a certain time in order that man should fully master
the physical plane. The lesser Kali Yuga, or the Dark Age, now began
and lasted 5,000 years; it had run its course by 1899. Now a time is
being prepared in which it will become possible for people to unfold
delicate clairvoyant faculties even without special training. From
1930 to 1950 there will already be people who will say, “Around
that person I can see something like a bright band of light.”
Another will see something rising before him like a dream-picture
with a strange content. If this person has just performed a deed or
action, something will appear to him that will rise like a picture in
his soul. This picture will show him what action he must undertake
sooner or later to compensate for this deed. It may happen that a
person in whom these faculties are found relates them to a friend who
will perhaps tell him, “Yes, there have always been human
beings who know what you have seen. They call it ‘the etheric
body of man,’ and what rises up in you like a dream-picture
they call ‘karma.’”
Spiritual science has had to appear so that this age of
etheric clairvoyance, which redeems the age of thinking that is
controlled by an understanding bound to the brain, should not pass by
unrecognized. As the Christ had to have a forerunner, so spiritual
science had to appear in order to prepare for this clairvoyant age.
Something could certainly happen now that would crush the bud of
these delicate faculties of soul. This danger exists when people will
not listen to the teachings of spiritual science, when they close
themselves to them. Then the persons in whom these faculties appear
will be called fantastic and foolish and will be locked up in mental
hospitals. Many will themselves believe that they have had
hallucinations; others will be afraid to speak about them, dreading
to be laughed at or ridiculed. All this can lead to destruction of
the new faculties of soul. Clever and enlightened persons in that era
— you can put “enlightened” in quotation marks —
will then say, “Look here! People lived long ago who declared
that in our age there would be individuals with special faculties of
soul. Where are these people? We are not aware of them.”
Nevertheless, the prophecy of spiritual science will have been
fulfilled. Although everything could be stifled by the increasing
power of materialism, one can expect from souls today an
understanding for that freer and lighter age just beginning.
Everything that happens in the world has an effect on
everything else. The microcosm corresponds to the macrocosm. Let us
study the events in the world that are connected with us. People are
so easily satisfied when they can assert the truth of something. For
spiritual science, however, it is of less concern always to emphasize
that something is true than that this truth is also important. Much,
for instance, is spoken and written about the similarity between
human and animal skeletons. That is certainly a fact to which there
could be no objection; yet there are truths that are much, much more
important. There is, for example, the truth everyone can observe, a
fact standing right before our eyes and yet connected with a great
cosmic event. This is the truth that man is the only being who walks
erect, who has raised himself up. Concerning the oft-mentioned
similarity of the human skeleton to that of the ape, the erect gait
of the ape has been botched. The ape tried to raise himself up but
did not succeed. His erect gait is bungled. The erect gait of man is
directly connected with the sun and the earth, with their spiritual
working one upon the other. In order for man to walk upright, the sun
and earth had to separate from each other. The animal is earthbound,
but man has raised himself, and his countenance is turned upward. He
walks in a vertical line, and with his erect gait he is a
continuation of the earth's radius. That this truth is of importance
is something we must feel; we must learn to feel it.
Let us look at another important instance of
correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm. In outer form a human
being appears as either masculine or feminine. It is important to
consider, however, that only in the outer form is one a man or a
woman, not in one's inner being (we are speaking now of the outer
characteristics in one incarnation). What contrast in the macrocosm
corresponds to what appears in us as masculine and feminine? To
clarify this, we must cast a glance into world space. There we find
material substances that have remained backward; they have not taken
on the laws of the sun and earth but have remained at the ancient
Moon stage of evolution. Just the opposite is the case with the
present moon, which is a body that has precipitated its own
evolution. On account of this, it has become too strongly hardened.
It had to dry up and freeze because it overshot its normal
development. It is a future Jupiter condition that has miscarried, as
if in human life a child had the constitution of an old man. The moon
has thus missed its strength by going too far, thereby causing its
own death.
In general, people will swear to a truth if it comes to
them as an abstract principle; in concrete terms, however, this same
truth appears to them as illusion. In all theosophical books one
finds the remark that the world is an illusion or maya. Every
theosophist knows this as truth and often repeats it. To say that the
masculine or feminine body is only an illusion contributes something
concrete to the abstraction. It is a fact that neither the masculine
nor the feminine body, with the exception of the head, is properly
developed. The feminine body is not fully developed, whereas the
masculine has gone too far in its development. There is no middle
position here. The feminine form is untrue in its backwardness, the
masculine because it went too far beyond the middle position of
development. Great artists have always felt these imperfections.
Clothing arose from an exalted feeling for this fact. The ancient
robes of priests were supposed to represent what the human body
should be. Only sensual people can devote themselves to nudist
colonies, because they recognize no higher expression than the body
they see before them.
There is thus a lunar body, the moon, which has gone too
far in its evolution, and such bodies as have remained at an earlier
stage of evolution, namely, the comets. You may ask what all this has
to do with man and woman. A comet brings with it the laws of the
earlier Moon and therefore renews these ancient laws. It also brings
with it the cyanide compounds, as has recently been established by
outer science and has been known for a long time to occult science.
Just as oxygen and carbon compounds are necessary to us on earth, so
the cyanides were essential on the ancient Moon. In 1906 I enlarged
on this in Paris, at the annual meeting of the Theosophical Society,
in the presence of Colonel Olcutt, our president at that time, and
various others.
(see Note 2 )
Because a woman's body has remained behind in its
development, it has preserved a softer, more flexible, less
substantial materiality; her brain can more easily be ruled by the
spirit. A man, however, having rushed ahead in his development, now
has difficulty prevailing over his rigid material and more
impermeable brain substance. For this reason, a woman is more
receptive to new ideas, her soul takes possession of them, and she
can more easily direct her thoughts through the brain. It is harder
for a man to set into motion the rigid parts of his brain. It thus
stands to reason that there are, for example, more women than men in
the Theosophical Society, a fact much deplored on various sides.
Perhaps the men who stand in such dread of appearing as women in a
later incarnation will find these thoughts somewhat consoling.
We will now apply the law of correspondence between
macrocosm and microcosm, between the large and small worlds, to
another important matter. Just as in ordinary life we have our
humdrum days — waking up, going to bed, waking up again, going
about our usual tasks — so it is also in the far reaches of
space. There, too, everything goes about its usual course; the rising
and setting of the sun are repeated in a regular rhythm. Just as a
family's methodical pace is interrupted when a child appears, since a
completely new impulse enters earthly existence with a new spiritual
being, so the appearance of a new heavenly body, such as a comet, has
the same effect in space. All material is the expression of something
spiritual, and occult science is able to indicate what lies behind
the phenomena. The way in which modern science tries to occupy itself
with comets is similar to a fly observing the Sistine Madonna. When
it crawls over the Madonna, it certainly sees the colors, sees a spot
of red here, a spot of blue there, but beyond this it sees nothing at
all. This “fly-science” — the term is naturally
used only in reference to what was mentioned above — knows
nothing of the inner lawfulness whose outer sign is the comet.
Halley's Comet particularly has the tendency to drive humanity still
further into materialism. Without Halley's Comet, the books of the
Encyclopedists would not have appeared, and there would not have been
articles by Moleschott and Büchner after 1835. Today the ominous
sign of the comet is appearing again, and if people do not listen to
the teachings of spiritual science and do not make use of what is
offered through it, spirituality will receive a death-blow.
(see Note 4 )
There is another significant sign, however, one that
makes it possible for humanity to escape the destructive influence of
the comet; its forces are even stronger than the comet's. This is the
spring sign of Pisces, the Fish, in which we have stood for several
centuries; at the time of Christ the vernal equinox was in the
constellation of Aries, the Ram. We are thus well into this sign of
great spiritual forces that will carry us upward. Through
understanding these forces, we will develop the faculties that we
will be able to attain in this age of Pisces.
Man rises to true human dignity only when he grasps from
the depths the relationships that lie at the foundation of the
spiritual. People should not rush so blindly past what the heavenly
signs have to show them. Wisdom should inflame and enlighten its
association with small and great. You may take as an example of this
the wisdom-filled organization of an anthill. There the whole has a
meaning; every ant feels itself to be a member of a whole. Human
beings, however, regulate their social life according to what each
individual considers useful for himself. They run around each other
senselessly, without understanding. Human life is really nonsensical
in many ways.
Whenever a person takes on an inner discipline, however,
he makes himself ripe for what should be brought forward as a third
fact: the possibility of looking out into the etheric with newly
awakened faculties. There the soul will see what Paul once saw: the
Christ in His etheric body. Without books and documents this great
event — the second coming of Christ — will take place for
those who have made themselves worthy of it. It is the obligation of
anthroposophy to announce this. There are already human beings who
sense that we have overcome the Dark Age and are approaching a more
luminous era. Anthroposophists must walk this path consciously.
Anthroposophy must bring its fruits to humanity, so that souls are
made capable of uniting themselves with Christ. Whether these souls
inhabit a physical body or not makes no difference; He has descended
to the dead as well as to the living. The great and sublime event of
Christ's appearance in the etheric thus has significance for all the
world.
|